Category Archives: Nisargadatta Maharaj

October 9, 2012 · 9:33 am

Only Oneness Is Complete – Ranjit Maharaj

Question: Would you say that Reality is silence reflecting Itself?

Ranjit: You can see the space, you can observe the space, you can feel the space, but Reality is beyond space. Space is zero. No silence is there, no voice is there, no peace is there, no state is there. All these are conditional things. When you sleep, you feel happy, but here there is no happiness, take it for granted. So, silence is also not He [Reality], peace is not He. Action and reaction are opposite and equal, it is like that. He has got nothing. If anything would have been there, that would have been something other than Reality and not He. Nothing disturbs Him. And why doesn’t It get disturbed? Because It doesn’t exist. When you sleep, nothing exists. Then you feel peace there. Why? Because, for example, suppose a man is running in a race during the whole day. When he wins that race, he is sweating and breathing so much. But that is not the pleasure, winning is the pleasure. Nothing is required for Reality, otherwise that would have disturbed the Reality.

Question: Then, Reality is known by Itself only.

Ranjit: That will do, at least. Otherwise, that is also not there. How can It see anything?

Question: It speaks for Itself.

Ranjit: It doesn’t speak either. Forget this point, it’s easier. There’s no experience in It. What experience have you got when you sleep? Is there something there, some knowledge or some power? Everything goes away. So, nothing is there, not even knowledge. It’s beyond knowledge and beyond zero. It’s beyond ignorance and knowledge. Knowledge is a concept, nothing else. Just yesterday I said, “Darkness and light go together.” When a light goes off, then darkness appears. You have not to even call for it. And if again you turn on the light, darkness automatically disappears.

You have not to say, “Please guy, go out”, because they are one. In the same way, knowledge and ignorance are both one. In my Master’s words, Siddharameshwar Maharaj, “Knowledge is the greatest ignorance.” By knowledge, we know that which is nothing, and that is a trick, nothing else. One should know the trick. A magician does many quick movements, and everything disappears all of a sudden. Here, it is also the same. Master only teaches you this trick. There’s no Master and no aspirant in the Reality. Both are not there, they cannot remain. How can duality be there when there is completeness? When there is duality, there is incompleteness. Only ‘Oneness’ is complete. We have to use the word, ‘Oneness’. Why? Because you see so many things, so you have to use the word ‘Oneness’. But in Reality, there is neither peace, nor any state. ‘Peace’, ‘state’, ‘samadhi’ are only methods. They are the real poison, because they take you away from It, and as a result your ego becomes stronger and stronger.

Then the question may arise from the aspirant, “What should I do?” Do nothing! Words only go up to the space. Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, “There, from where the words come, that is my Self. That is my Self.” The same thing was said by Christ also, in the Bible, “Know thyself and you know the world.” Go up to that point where thinking ends, go up to That, and there is the Self. So, I always call it, “Self without self”. So, Self realisation is Self without self. As long as realising remains, self remains. The eyes have got the habit to see that which is not. You say, “This is a chair”, but it is not. The child will say, “This is water.” His parents will say, “No, no, it’s called an ocean.” They pour more ignorance into him. On the contrary, he is right, it’s nothing but water. He submits to their instructions. Ignorant people will always like ignorance and will not like knowledge. In the Hindi scripts it is written, “Mind has got the curse not to hear the Master.” Mind doesn’t like it. All the people around you are just full of ignorance and they want to support their ignorance. They don’t want to get rid of their ignorance. People don’t like to go and see a saint and also don’t like it when other people go because they’re afraid to lose a person from their circle. The saint takes you up to That, up to the Reality and says, “Understand yourself.” This is the position.

Question: But life springs out from Reality. Isn’t life under the authority of Reality?

Ranjit: The whole dream reflects from where? From zero. It doesn’t reflect from Reality, it reflects from zero. In ignorance, you forget the Reality and then something comes up. In sleep we forget everything, but when we wake up, everything returns at once, in a fraction of a second. So, from where does it come? Not from Him. If it had come from There, it would have been the Reality and if so, then the world ends there.

-Ranjit Maharaj

Excerpt from Satsang with Ranjit Maharaj

This article was posted on: http://www.inner-quest.org/

The entire satsang can be seen here.

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August 8, 2012 · 10:10 am

Your Last Trump: The ‘I-am-ness’ – Alexander Smit

Visitor: You were talking once about the last trump which everybody is holding back, the last card that is held back in the game of Self-realisation, when one is standing face to face with oneself. Could you say something more about that?

Alexander: At first sight everybody seems to have his own trump-card, but in the end it all boils down to one thing: the ‘I-am’-awareness, your subjectivity. The awareness of ‘I am’ is your last trump, it is the ground from which you can form opinions, hold views, have a certain idea about something or somebody, or have a self-image. The foundation of this is the phenomenon that ‘I am’.

V: Is there a link between that phenomenon and the ego?

A: The word ‘ego’ leads to a confusion of speech. The ego was introduced by psychologists to mean the whole personality-structure, the ‘I’-structure. But at the root of it there is an almost formless sense of… ‘I am’. Nobody doubts that. Even in order to be able to doubt it you have to be there in the first place.

V: But how can this ‘I-am-ness’ be employed as a last trump?

A: The big delusion is this very ‘I-am-ness’, though hardly anyone gets down to that point. This ‘I-am-ness’ is what is called ‘mula maya’ in Sanskrit, the ‘root of illusion’. Whichever way you turn it, some form of self-awareness is there. You could also call it a sort of ‘perceivership’. But don’t be mistaken! What you want in the end is to disappear, to dissolve in love.

Just look at what you are eagerly longing for. All the things you eagerly want are solvents, i.e. means to disappear in love, your true nature. Whether it is playing the violin, sex, eating or dancing, meditation or football. These things give a sense of liberation, a sense of relief. That’s why they are so popular, because there the state of self-awareness is dissolved for the time being—please note: for the time being.

As a matter of fact, this ‘perceivership’ is the same as the self-awareness. Man is struck by a curious fate, for he is—and, at the same time, he perceives that he is. At the same time, which is a peculiar phenomenon. Perhaps one could try and explain this phenomenon in a scientific way on the basis of the structure of the brains etc., but even so! It is inevitable that all such suppositions, all such hypotheses, again, are being perceived.

V: I am still not clear about that trump of yours.

A: The difficulty is that you are stuck with what your senses are dangling before your eyes. Through the play of the five elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether—a gigantic creation is being conjured up before you. As a result of a misunderstanding you have begun to look upon yourself as a product of that creation. You were getting consciousness mixed up with its contents. It could hardly be otherwise, for until now the only thing you knew was contents. Such is the game.

All you can possibly perceive—from the waking to the dream state up to deep, dreamless sleep—is the ‘I-am-ness’. With deep, dreamless sleep it is perhaps most difficult to perceive it, for you refer to it as, ‘nothing is there’. You bet there is! There is something there, only your search doesn’t go quite that fare! The problem is not that everything is so terribly complex, but that one is not going sufficiently deep.

(8^th December, 1978)

-Alexander Smit

From Consciousness, Chapter one

For more from Alexander Smit look here.

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October 31, 2011 · 3:00 pm

Perfection, Destiny of All – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Questioner: When asked about the means for self-realisation, you invariably stress the importance of the mind dwelling on the sense ‘I am’. Where is the causal factor? Why should this particular thought result in self-realisation? How does the contemplation of ‘I am’ affect me?

Maharaj: The very fact of observation alters the observer and the observed. After all, what prevents the insight into one’s true nature is the weakness and obtuseness of the mind and its tendency to skip the subtle and focus on the gross only. When you follow my advice and try to keep your mind on the notion of ‘I am’ only, you become fully aware of your mind and its vagaries. Awareness, being lucid harmony (sattva) in action, dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness of the mind and gently, but steadily changes its very substance. This change need not be spectacular; it may be hardly noticeable; yet it is a deep and fundamental shift from darkness to light, from inadvertence to awareness.

Q: Must it be the ‘I am’ formula? Will not any other sentence do? If I concentrate on ‘there is a table’, will it not serve the same purpose?

M: As an exercise in concentration — yes. But it will not take you beyond the idea of a table. You are not interested in tables, you want to know yourself. For this keep steadily in the focus of consciousness the only clue you have: your certainty of being. Be with it, play with it, ponder over it, delve deeply into it, till the shell of ignorance breaks open and you emerge into the realm of reality.

Q: Is there any causal link between my focusing the ‘I am’ and the breaking of the shell?

M: The urge to find oneself is a sign that you are getting ready. The impulse always comes from within. Unless your time has come, you will have neither the desire nor the strength to go for self-enquiry whole-heartedly.

Q: Is not the grace of the Guru responsible for the desire and its fulfillment? Is not the Guru’s radiant face the bait on which we are caught and pulled out of this mire of sorrow?

M: It is the Inner Guru (sadguru) who takes you to the Outer Guru, as a mother takes her child to a teacher. Trust and obey your Guru, for he is the messenger of your Real Self. Q: How do I find a Guru whom I can trust?

M: Your own heart will tell you. There is no difficulty in finding a Guru, because the Guru is in search of you. The Guru is always ready; you are not ready. You have to be ready to learn; or you may meet your Guru and waste your chance by sheer inattentiveness and obstinacy. Take my example; there was nothing in me of much promise, but when I met my Guru, I listened, trusted and obeyed.

Q: Must I not examine the teacher before I put myself entirely into his hands?

M: By all means examine! But what can you find out? Only as he appears to you on your own level.

Q: I shall watch whether he is consistent, whether there is harmony between his life and his teaching.

M: You may find plenty of disharmony — so what? It proves nothing. Only motives matter. How will you know his motives?

Q: I should at least expect him to be a man of self-control who lives a righteous life.

M: Such you will find many — and of no use to you. A Guru can show the way back home, to your real self. What has this to do with the character, or temperament of the person he appears to be? Does he not clearly tell you that he is not the person? The only way you can judge is by the change in yourself when you are in his company. If you feel more at peace and happy, if you understand yourself with more than usual clarity and depth, it means you have met the right man. Take your time, but once you have made up your mind to trust him, trust him absolutely and follow every instruction fully and faithfully. It does not matter much if you do not accept him as your Guru and are satisfied with his company only. Satsang alone can also take you to your goal, provided it is unmixed and undisturbed. But once you accept somebody as your Guru, listen, remember and obey. Half-heartedness is a serious drawback and the cause of much self-created sorrow. The mistake is never the Guru’s; it is always the obtuseness and cussedness of the discipline that is at fault.

Q: Does the Guru then dismiss, or disqualify a disciple?

M: He would not be a Guru if he did! He bides his time and waits till the disciple, chastened and sobered, comes back to him in a more receptive mood.

Q: What is the motive? Why does the Guru take so much trouble?

M: Sorrow and the ending of sorrow. He sees people suffering in their dreams and he wants them to wake up. Love is intolerant of pain and suffering. The patience of a Guru has no limits and, therefore, it cannot be defeated. The Guru never fails.

Q: Is my first Guru also my last, or do I have to pass from Guru to Guru?

M: The entire universe is your Guru. You learn from everything, if you are alert and intelligent. Were your mind clear and your heart clean, you would learn from every passer-by;. It is because you are indolent or restless, that your inner Self manifests as the outer Guru and makes you trust him and obey.

Q: Is a Guru inevitable?

M: It is like asking ‘Is a mother inevitable?’ To rise in consciousness from one dimension to another, you need help. The help may not always be in the shape of a human person, it may be a subtle presence, or a spark of intuition, but help must come. The inner Self is watching and waiting for the son to return to his father. At the right time he arranges everything affectionately and effectively. Where a messenger is needed, or a guide, he sends the Guru to do the needful.

Q: There is one thing I cannot grasp. You speak of the inner self as wise and good and beautiful and in every way perfect, and of the person as mere reflection without a being of its own. On the other hand you take so much trouble in helping the person to realise itself. If the person is so unimportant, why be so concerned with its welfare? Who cares for a shadow?

M: You have brought in duality where there is none. There is the body and there is the Self. Between them is the mind, in which the Self is reflected as ‘I am’. Because of the imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, lack of discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body, not the Self. All that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realise its identity with the Self. When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire within: The ultimate value of the body is that it serves to discover the cosmic body, which is the universe in its entirety. As you realise yourself in manifestation, you keep on discovering that you are ever more than what you have imagined.

Q: Is there no end to self-discovery?

M: As there is no beginning, there is no end. But what I have discovered by the grace of my Guru is: I am nothing that can be pointed at. I am neither a ‘this’ nor a ‘that’. This holds absolutely.

Q: Then, where comes in the never-ending discovery, the endless transcending oneself into hew dimensions?

M: All this belongs to the realm of manifestation; it is in the very structure of the universe, that the higher can be had only through the freedom from the lower.

Q: What is lower and what is higher?

M: Look at it in terms of awareness. Wider and deeper consciousness is higher. All that lives, works for protecting, perpetuating and expanding consciousness. This is the world’s sole meaning and purpose. It is the very essence of Yoga – ever raising the level of consciousness, discovery of new dimensions, with their properties, qualities and powers. In that sense the entire universe becomes a school of Yoga (yogakshetra).

Q: Is perfection the destiny of all human beings?

M: Of all living beings — ultimately. The possibility becomes a certainty when the notion of enlightenment appears in the mind. Once a living being has heard and understood that deliverance is within his reach, he will never forget, for it is the first message from within. It will take roots and grow and in due course take the blessed shape of the Guru.

Q: So all we are concerned with is the redemption of the mind?

M: What else? The mind goes astray, the mind returns home. Even the word ‘astray’ is not proper. The mind must know itself in every mood. Nothing is a mistake unless repeated.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

From I Am That, Chapter 58

You can download a PDF of the entire book here.

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October 12, 2011 · 9:44 am

The Way of Nisargadatta Maharaj – Jean Dunn

An Interview with Jean Dunn first posted on September 13, 2010 on the Inner Directions Journal website.

Jean Dunn had the rare opportunity of being close to the contemporary sage, Nisargadatta Maharaj. With unquestioning faith, she wholeheartedly absorbed the teachings and presence of Maharaj, opening herself up like a reed to the flow of consciousness that Nisargadatta Maharaj was and is.

Jean Dunn

Over the years Jean published three books that contain transcripts of Nisargadatta’s talks, recorded during the years she spent with him. This is an interview between Jean Dunn and The Inner Directions Journal, followed by a few selections from the personal diary she kept from 1977-1981.

IDJ: Was your introduction to spiritual life through Ramana Maharshi or were there other influences before Ramana?
Jean Dunn: Well, yes. That’s a long story. I was interested in Joel Goldsmith. All my life, it seems I have been searching for something. We all are searching but usually in the wrong places; it does lead us on.
IDJ: Did Joel mention Ramana Maharshi’s name to you?
Jean: No. I was told that he was preparing to visit India when he died.

IDJ: When did you first hear about Nisargadatta Maharaj?
Jean: About one year before I first saw him. I was staying in Sri Ramanasramam (the Ashram of Ramana Maharshi), and friends were regularly going to see him (Maharaj) in Bombay. I felt there was no need to see anyone else since the Maharshi was my teacher. I put off the trip twice. The third time friends came and asked me to go, I agreed. So I did, and that was it.
IDJ: After seeing Maharaj did you return to Ramanasramam?
Jean: Yes, I continued to stay at the Ashram. When Maharaj got very sick, during the last couple of years of his life, I moved to Bombay.

IDJ: Can you give me a brief description of what took place daily in Maharaj’s flat? Did he have a special routine?
Jean: Early in the morning, about 6:00 a.m., there was arati (offering of lights) with a group of us. I would arrive before it started and help clean up the room from the day before. After arati I went out for coffee and returned to help Maharaj hang the garlands and put kumkum (vermilion) on the pictures of different saints hanging in the room. There was a meditation for an hour, then bhajans (devotional singing). From 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon Maharaj answered questions from visitors. When the visitors left, we usually went out for tea or buttermilk. Maharaj would usually buy something for his granddaughter; he was crazy about her. When Maharaj rested in the afternoon, I would often go and just sit with him. There wasn’t another meeting until 5:00 p.m. and this lasted until 7:00 p.m. Following the evening session there were bhajans, then Maharaj read from various Hindu scriptures, explaining the meaning in Marathi, the local language.
IDJ: Was there a particular reading that Maharaj liked best?
Jean: Not that I know of, though I never asked. I sat through them because it didn’t matter to me what he was reading from.
IDJ: Maharaj did not use traditional Vedantic terminology to describe the approach to Truth and the removal of ignorance. Would you say that was one of the unique aspects of his teachings?
Jean: To me it was. He was so natural, and yet you knew that he knew he was not that body. He let that body do whatever it was doing, whatever its nature was. I don’t know how to explain it.

IDJ: Did Maharaj provide any type of initiation to those who accepted him as a teacher?
Jean: Yes. He gave me a mantra.
IDJ: Did Maharaj recognize a formal Guru-disciple relationship?
Jean: Well you see we’re not separate. There’s no separation; we are one. For the sake of conversation he may have said so, but he told me and the others there, “Don’t imagine any separation; we are one.”

IDJ: I believe Maharaj’s own spiritual practice was complete in about three years, so he must have been a ripe soul. Did he ever admit to that? Did he ever talk about that?
Jean: No. He’d often talk before visitors came. There was a group of us that would come early, and he’d tell us stories.

Maharaj left everything after his Guru died; he was going to the Himalayas and decided to stay there until he got Realization. Along the way he was walking barefoot in an area where there were no houses to be seen. As soon as he felt hungry, he noticed smoke coming from a house on his left, so he approached it to ask the residents for food. The residents fed him and he drank water from their well. When he went back to the road and turned to look behind, from where he had just come, there was no house there at all.

Later, in the Himalayas he met a fellow disciple who persuaded him that it was more fruitful spiritually, to go back into the world. So he did and he returned to Bombay.

IDJ: At the time Maharaj returned to Bombay, was that what we would call a period of sadhana or spiritual practice?
Jean: Yes. That’s when he built the room upstairs where we all met. He only had one business left out of eight, so he took care of that business while all of his spare time was spent upstairs in meditation. It took him three years, after his teacher died, to realize his true nature.

IDJ: Is there anything Maharaj specifically said or did that helped to transform your own life spiritually?
Jean: It was simply what he was. I probably needed all the teachings; just being in his presence was the key.

IDJ: Is it correct to say that Maharaj didn’t stress any preconditions for serious seekers?
Jean: He said you must do your homework.
IDJ: What do you think he meant by homework?
Jean: I think he meant one must have been on a spiritual path and have studied the various teachings.
IDJ: Were there any other restrictions such as diet, etc.?
Jean: No, Maharaj was not a vegetarian.
IDJ: What about traditional practices?
Jean: No, though he did them at one time when he was young. The only thing he continued to carry on, in a traditional sense, were bhajans.

IDJ: Maurice Frydman said that “simplicity and humility are keynotes of his life and teachings.” How would you summarize his message to someone who is reading this for the first time?
Jean: If you’re seeking the Truth, this is it. But it’s not something everyone wants. Most people want something to make their life better: money, a better house, and so forth. This has nothing to do with the world. That’s why loving a Guru is so helpful. That love is your own Self.
IDJ: We don’t often find, in reading Maharaj’s teachings, the integration of Love and Wisdom that were manifest in him. Do you find that this understanding may be missing on the part of the reader?
Jean: Yes, particularly in European or Western countries. Until you meet your Guru or become one with the Guru within, the understanding is mostly intellectual. Maharaj said that this generation is ready for this teaching. There was a time when devotion to a God was prevalent; now people want Truth and the search is with the intellect.
IDJ: Could you expand on this further?
Jean: When you become one with your Self, it’s pure love. You can’t help but feel love and that love flows out. This love combines with knowledge, and you yourself are that knowledge. We have been seeking knowledge outside, but it’s right here where we are.
IDJ: Maharaj often uses the words I Am or I Amness to describe the gateway to the Absolute. What is the I Am he refers to?
Jean: That’s what you are at the present time, Universal Consciousness. That I Amness is the same as Consciousness, that which lets you know you exist.

IDJ: Did Maharaj encourage you to record his conversations, or did he have any direct participation in their subsequent publication?
Jean: No. I had been home to visit my family, and when I came back, there was no recording taking place. The talks were so deep that Suresh Mehta and I got a tape recorder and asked Vanaja, who attended daily, to record the talks for us. When she sent me the completed tapes, I just started transcribing them. It was continuing without anyone mentioning it until Maharaj discovered what I was doing. He then gave me his blessings, and it just developed into the books.
IDJ: Did you feel any difference when you returned to the states and practiced Maharaj’s teachings, as compared to being in his presence in India?
Jean: No, no difference.

IDJ: Are there certain aspects of Maharaj’s teachings that you would hold forth for those here in the West?
Jean: He stressed meditation and being your true Self.
IDJ: While Maharaj often didn’t talk about effort in the conventional way, since no effort is needed to attain one’s own Self, did he encourage effort, understanding that Realization is an effortless state?
Jean: There is no need for effort, only understanding. What effort can give you that which you already are? Simply observe that which you have been identifying with, with detachment, make no judgments; do not try to change anything. What is this thing which you have identified with? You will find that it is just like a robot or computer, which has been programmed by others. A child lives in pure Consciousness at a very young age. The mother tells it: “You are a boy (or girl), your name is ——, I am your mother, this is your father.” The programming starts. Others, such as teachers, friends, etc. also program the child. The actions and reactions of that “person” are based on this programming.

From Jean’s Journal

November 18, 1980
Maharaj: (to me) Whatever projects you have started, complete them to the best of your ability. It doesn’t matter if the projects are a success or failure. Complete what you start to the best of your ability.

Do not talk about the experiences you have with the blooming of the Consciousness; keep it to yourself. Stabilize in the Consciousness. Stabilize the Consciousness. Self must be determined to do this. You must make a decision.
Questioner: Is there anything which can be considered sacred?
M: Yes. That which does not get polluted with the experiences of the objective world is sacred.

December, 1980
Maharaj: Perhaps you might be getting some blessings, some benefits from listening to my talks, I don’t know. A person who is already dead is not worried about anything. Whether the people like it or not, I don’t care. All my actions are not through my body and mind but always Universal Consciousness, appearing to work through this body. So, I don’t remember anything of the past and act. It is action in the now.
Questioner: Where does Consciousness come from?
M: It never comes and goes; it only appears to have come. It is a feeling that it comes and goes.
Q: Why does Maharaj know this and we do not?
M: It is not difficult for you to know also, but what is the identity with which you are asking?
Q: Can karma be changed? Is it karmic?
M: It is all Consciousness working, not this one is working and that one; it is all Consciousness working.
Q: Maharaj said he is not going to die?
M: No one was born and no one dies. When people first learned about this illness, those who have affection for me come and talk to me and write to me. They give so many medicines and advice. Why should I do that? Whatever has to happen will happen. I have no interest. Why should I run from doctor to doctor? I don’t have fear, so I don’t have to do anything. Those who have fear run from doctor to doctor, from medicine to medicine.
Q: What is Sat-Chit-Ananda (the literal translation is Being-Consciousness-Bliss)?
M: It is words, language. In the Absolute there is no emotion. You can take it that Sat-Chit-Ananda is the limit which your mind can describe of that state which cannot be described. The one who experiences Sat-Chit-Ananda is there before the experience.

You see me as tangible you think I am, but actually I am not. In my true state, I am not.

April 22, 1981
Questioner: Is stabilizing in Consciousness meditation?
Maharaj: Who stabilizes? It is Consciousness that stabilizes in Itself. (Looking at me) This one has understood her nature. It is all due to her faith in the Guru. Unless you have such faith in the Guru, you do not establish in your Self. These people go from this swami to that swami. What for? To gather knowledge from scriptures. Stick to your Consciousness; remain in that, and all the burden of your concepts will drop off. Do not take the help of your Consciousness to build up new concepts.
Q: Habit is a great force which makes one stray off.
M: The habit of considering Self as the body has influenced everyone so much. The knowledge “I AM” is your Guru.

Be in the One who continually remains a witness to this “I AM.” That is Avalia (Avalia is an Urdu word meaning one who is Original).

Who is the one who sings bhajans? It is the intellect of that Guru; who are you, an intruder?

The actions of the whole world depend on this intellect, but when this intellect reaches its apex, it gets merged into Parabrahman (the Absolute).

This article and many more can be seen at: http://www.innerdirections.org/journal/dialogues/the-way-of-nisargadatta-maharaj/

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July 7, 2011 · 3:34 pm

God is the Supreme Self, Paramatman – Siddharameshwar Maharaj

If you aspire to be with God, discard Illusion (Maya). The hope that is hidden deep in the innermost layers of your heart and mind is only Illusion. Illusion puts a veil on the Self. The Self is within, and on it, Illusion puts a covering. Brahman is only “Pure Consciousness.” The human mind by nature is normally extroverted, focusing objectively. When the mind becomes desireless, and remains so, it is Brahman. However, do not consider the mind to be Brahman. To be constantly thinking about the objects of the senses is to eclipse the Self. When attention is diverted from the Self towards objects, that is called the beginning of the eclipse. That is the Illusion. That is mind.

To remain without thought is Brahman. Naturalness is the sign of Brahman. There is no worry, no lust, and no desire there. In this naturalness even if one’s whole kingdom is lost, the mind does not feel anxiety. When the objective functioning of the mind is over, the natural state comes into being and one becomes steady in the Self. When the worry and concern about worldly life ceases, the eclipse of the Self is over. The Illusion is then seen as the play of God (Vishnu), and is seen to be only Him. The Illusion when seen as only the play of God, makes the mind desireless and free of all worry. The illusion of the individual (Jiva) remains full of cravings and desire. The desire of the individual ego goes even to the level of expecting that one must get a drop of water in the mouth at the time of death. Meanwhile, the Consciousness which is the Self, never cares for the body. Of what use then is the repetition of a name of God or a Mantra at the time of death, for the Self? This is the key of Desirelessness.

How long is this earthly life? One foot is in the grave while the other foot is in the house. What is the use of this family life? This attitude is the sign of Desirelessness. However, for a man who is attached to worldly life though it is possible that he may die tomorrow, he carries on all his activities as if his life span will be for hundreds of years. The man without desire considers the life span of a hundred thousand years as if but one moment. The attachment in the heart that takes the form of pits towards all the beings is only the illusory play of God, and is nothing but worldliness and worry. We should live for the Supreme Self, Paramatman, and our time should be utilized in the service of Paramatman. Morning, 20-11-1934

-Siddharameshwar Maharaj

From Master of Self-Realization, Volume One, Chapter Six

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June 19, 2011 · 8:25 am

Keep the Mind Silent and You Shall Discover – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Questioner: Once I had a strange experience. I was not, nor was the world, there was only light — within and without — and immense peace. This lasted for four days and then I returned to the every-day consciousness.

Now I have a feeling that all I know is merely a scaffolding, covering and hiding the building under construction. The architect, the design, the plans, the purpose — nothing I know; some activity is going on, things are happening; that is all I can say. I am that scaffolding, some thing very flimsy and short-lived; when the building is ready, the scaffolding will be dismantled and removed. The ‘I am’ and the ‘What am I’ are of no importance, because once the building is ready, the ‘I’ will go as a matter of course, leaving no questions about itself to answer.

Maharaj: Are you not aware of all this? Is not the fact of awareness the constant factor?

Q: My sense of permanency and identity is due to memory, which is so evanescent and unreliable. How little I remember, even of the recent past! I have lived a life-time, and now what is left with me? A bundle of events, at best a short story.

M: All this takes place within your consciousness.

Q: Within and without. In daytime — within; in the night — without. Consciousness is not all. So many things happen beyond its reach. To say that what I am not conscious of does not exist, is altogether wrong.

M: What you say is logical, but actually you know only what is in your consciousness. What you claim exists outside conscious experience is inferred.

Q: It may be inferred and yet it is more real than the sensory.

M: Be careful. The moment you start talking you create a verbal universe, a universe of words, ideas, concepts and abstractions, interwoven and inter-dependent, most wonderfully generating, supporting and explaining each other and yet all without essence or substance, mere creations of the mind. Words create words, reality is silent.

Q: When you talk, I hear you. Is it not a fact?

M: That you hear is a fact. What you hear — is not. The fact can be experienced, and in that sense the sound of the word and the mental ripples it causes are experienced. There is no other reality behind it. Its meaning is purely conventional, to be remembered; a language can be easily forgotten, unless practiced.

Q: If words have no reality in them why talk at all?

M: They serve their limited purpose of inter-personal communication. Words do not convey facts, they signal them. Once you are beyond the person, you need no words.

Q: What can take me beyond the person? How to go beyond consciousness?

M: Words and questions come from the mind and hold you there. To go beyond the mind, you must be silent and quiet. Peace and silence, silence and peace — this is the way beyond. Stop asking questions.

Q: Once I give up asking questions, what am I to do?

M: What can you do but wait and watch?

Q: What am I to wait for?

M: For the centre of your being to emerge into consciousness. The three states — sleeping, dreaming and waking are all in consciousness, the manifested; what you call unconsciousness will also be manifested — in time; beyond consciousness altogether lies the unmanifested. And beyond all, and pervading all, is the heart of being which beats steadily — manifested-unmanifested; manifested-unmanifested (saguna-nirguna).

Q: On the verbal level it sounds all right. I can visualise myself as the seed of being, a point in consciousness, with my sense ‘I am’ pulsating, appearing and disappearing alternately. But what am I to do to realise it as a fact, to go beyond into the changeless, wordless Reality?

M: You can do nothing. What time has brought about, time will take away.

Q: Why then all these exhortations to practice Yoga and seek reality? They make me feel empowered and responsible, while in fact it is time that does all.

M: This is the end of Yoga – to realise independence. All that happens, happens in and to the mind, not to the source of the ‘I am’. Once you realise that all happens by itself, (call it destiny, or the will of God or mere accident), you remain as witness only, understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed.

Q: If I cease trusting words altogether, what will be my condition?

M: There is a season for trusting and for distrusting. Let the seasons do their work, why worry?

Q: Somehow I feel responsible for what happens around me.

M: You are responsible only for what you can change. All you can change is only your attitude. There lies your responsibility.

Q: You are advising me to remain indifferent to the sorrows of others!

M: It is not that you are indifferent. All the sufferings of mankind do not prevent you from enjoying your next meal. The witness is not indifferent. He is the fullness of understanding and compassion. Only as the witness you can help another.

Q: All my life I was fed on words. The number of words I have heard and read go into the billions. Did it benefit me? Not at all!

M: The mind shapes the language and the language shapes the mind. Both are tools, use them but don’t misuse them. Words can bring you only unto their own limit; to go beyond, you must abandon them. Remain as the silent witness only.

Q: How can I? The world disturbs me greatly.

M: It is because you think yourself big enough to be affected by the world. It is not so. You are so small that nothing can pin you down. It is your mind that gets caught, not you. Know yourself as you are – a mere point in consciousness, dimensionless and timeless. You are like the point of the pencil — by mere contact with you the mind draws its picture of the world. You are single and simple — the picture is complex and extensive. Don’t be misled by the picture — remain aware of the tiny point — which is everywhere in the picture.

What is, can cease to be; what is not, can come to be; but what neither is nor is not, but on which being and non-being depend, is unassailable; know yourself to be the cause of desire and fear, itself free from both.

Q: How am I the cause of fear?

M: All depends on you. It is by your consent that the world exists. Withdraw your belief in its reality and it will dissolve like a dream. Time can bring down mountains; much more you, who are the timeless source of time. For without memory and expectation there can be no time.

Q: Is the ‘I am’ the Ultimate?

M: Before you can say: ‘I am’, you must be there to say it. Being need not be self-conscious. You need not know to be, but you must be to know.

Q: Sir, I am getting drowned in a sea of words! I can see that all depends on how the words are out together, but there must be somebody to put them together — meaningfully. By drawing words at random the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavata could never be produced. The theory of accidental emergence is not tenable. The origin of the meaningful must be beyond it. What is the power that creates order out of chaos? Living is more than being, and consciousness is more than living. Who is the conscious living being?

M: Your question contains the answer: a conscious living being is a conscious living being. The words are most appropriate, but you do not grasp their full import. Go deep into the meaning of the words: being, living, conscious, and you will stop running in circles, asking questions, but missing answers. Do understand that you cannot ask a valid question about yourself, because you do not know whom you are asking about. In the question ‘Who am I?’ the ‘I’ is not known and the question can be worded as: “I do not know what I mean by ‘I’” What you are, you must find out. I can only tell you what you are not. You are not of the world, you are not even in the world. The world is not, you alone are. You create the world in your imagination like a dream. As you cannot separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself. You are independent, not the world. Don’t be afraid of a world you yourself have created. Cease from looking for happiness and reality in a dream and you will wake up. You need not know ‘why’ and ‘how’, there is no end to questions. Abandon all desires, keep your mind silent and you shall discover.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

From I Am That, Chapter 87

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June 17, 2011 · 3:07 pm

Surrender to Your Own Self – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Questioner: I was born in the United States, and the last fourteen months I have spent in Sri Ramanashram; now I am on my way back to the States where my mother is expecting me.

Maharaj: What are your plans?

Q: I may qualify as a nurse, or just marry and have babies.

M: What makes you want to marry?

Q: Providing a spiritual home is the highest form of social service I can think of. But, of course, life may shape otherwise. I am ready for whatever comes.

M: These fourteen months at Sri Ramanashram, what did they give you? In what way are you different from what you were when you arrived there?

Q: I am no longer afraid. I have found some peace.

M: What kind of peace is it? The peace of having what you want, or not wanting what you do not have?

Q: A little of both, I believe. It was not easy at all. While the Ashram is a very peaceful place, inwardly I was in agonies.

M: When you realise that the distinction between inner and outer is in the mind only, you are no longer afraid.

Q: Such realisation comes and goes with me. I have not yet reached the immutability of absolute completeness.

M: Well, as long as you believe so, you must go on with your sadhana, to disperse the false idea of not being complete. Sadhana removes the super-impositions. When you realise yourself as less than a point in space and time, something too small to be cut and too short-lived to be killed, then, and then only, all fear goes. When you are smaller than the point of a needle, then the needle cannot pierce you — you pierce the needle!

Q: Yes, that is how I feel sometimes — indomitable. I am more than fearless — I am fearlessness itself.

M: What made you go to the Ashram?

Q: I had an unhappy love affair and suffered hell. Neither drink nor drugs could help me. I was groping and came across some books on Yoga. From book to book, from clue to clue — I came to Ramanashram.

M: Were the same tragedy to happen to you again, would you suffer as much, considering your present state of mind?

Q: Oh no, I would not let myself suffer again. I would kill myself.

M: So you are not afraid to die!

Q: I am afraid of dying, not of death itself. I imagine the dying process to be painful and ugly.

M: How do you know? It need not be so. It may be beautiful and peaceful. Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment.

Q: I am fully aware that my fear of death is due to apprehension and not knowledge.

M: Human beings die every second, the fear and the agony of dying hangs over the world like a cloud. No wonder you too are afraid. But once you know that the body alone dies and not the continuity of memory and the sense of ‘I am’ reflected in it, you are afraid no longer.

Q: Well, let us die and see.

M: Give attention and you will find that birth and death are one, that life pulsates between being and non-being, and that each needs the other for completeness. You are born to die and you die to be reborn.

Q: Does not detachment stop the process?

M: With detachment the fear goes, but not the fact.

Q: Shall I be compelled to be reborn? How dreadful!

M: There is no compulsion. You get what you want. You make your own plans and you carry them out.

Q: Do we condemn ourselves to suffer?

M: We grow through investigation, and to investigate we need experience. We tend to repeat what we have not understood. If we are sensitive and intelligent, we need not suffer. Pain is a call for attention and the penalty of carelessness. Intelligent and compassionate action is the only remedy.

Q: It is because I have grown in intelligence that I would not tolerate my suffering again. What is wrong with suicide?

M: Nothing wrong, if it solves the problem. What, if it does not? Suffering caused by extraneous factors — some painful and incurable disease, or unbearable calamity — may provide some justification, but where wisdom and compassion are lacking, suicide cannot help. A foolish death means foolishness reborn. Besides there is the question of karma to consider. Endurance is usually the wisest course.

Q: Must one endure suffering, however acute and hopeless?

M: Endurance is one thing and helpless agony is another. Endurance is meaningful and fruitful, while agony is useless.

Q: Why worry about karma? It takes care of itself anyhow.

M: Most of our karma is collective. We suffer for the sins of others, as others suffer for ours. Humanity is one. Ignorance of this fact does not change it. We could have been much happier people ourselves, but for our indifference to the sufferings of others.

Q: I find I have grown much more responsive.

M: Good. When you say it, what do you have in mind? Yourself, as a responsive person within a female body?

Q: There is a body and there is compassion and there is memory and a number of things and attitudes; collectively they may be called a person.

M: Including the ‘I am’ idea?

Q: The ‘I am’ is like a basket that holds the many things that make a person.

M: Or, rather, it is the willow of which the basket is woven. When you think of yourself as a women, do you mean that you are a women, or that your body is described as female?

Q: It depends on my mood. Sometimes I feel myself to be a mere centre of awareness.

M: Or, an ocean of awareness. But are there moments when you are neither man nor women, not the accidental, occasioned by circumstances and conditions?

Q: Yes, there are, but I feel shy to talk about it.

M: A hint is all that one can expect. You need not say more.

Q: Am I allowed to smoke in your presence? I know that it is not the custom to smoke before a sage and more so for a women.

M: By all means, smoke, nobody will mind. We understand.

Q: I feel the need of cooling down.

M: It is very often so with Americans and Europeans. After a stretch of sadhana they become charged with energy and frantically seek an outlet. They organise communities, become teachers of Yoga, marry, write books — anything except keeping quiet and turning their energies within, to find the source of the inexhaustible power and learn the art of keeping it under control.

Q: I admit that now I want to go back and live a very active life, because I feel full of energy.

M: You can do what you like, as long as you do not take yourself to be the body and the mind. It is not so much a question of actual giving up the body and all that goes with it, as a clear understanding that you are not the body. A sense of aloofness, of emotional non-involvement.

Q: I know what you mean. Some four years ago I passed through a period of rejection of the physical; I would not buy myself clothes, would eat the simplest foods, sleep on bare planks. It is the acceptance of the privations that matters, not the actual discomfort. Now I have realised that welcoming life as it comes and loving all it offers, is best of it. I shall accept with glad heart whatever comes and make the best of it. If I can do nothing more than give life and true culture to a few children — good enough; though my heart goes out to every child, I cannot reach all.

M: You are married and a mother only when you are man-women conscious. When you do not take yourself to be the body, then the family life of the body, however intense and interesting, is seen only as a play on the screen of the mind, with the light of awareness as the only reality.

Q: Why do you insist on awareness as the only real? Is not the object of awareness as real, while it lasts?

M: But it does not last! Momentary reality is secondary; it depends on the timeless.

Q: Do you mean continuous, or permanent?

M: There can be no continuity in existence. Continuity implies identity in past, present and future. No such identity is possible, for the very means of identification fluctuate and change. Continuity, permanency, these are illusions created by memory, mere mental projections of a pattern where no pattern can be; Abandon all ideas of temporary or permanent, body or mind, man or women; what remains? What is the state of your mind when all separation is given up? I am not talking of giving up distinctions, for without them there is no manifestation.

Q: When I do not separate, I am happily at peace. But somehow I lose my bearings again and again and begin to seek happiness in outer things. Why is my inner peace not steady, I cannot understand.

M: Peace, after all, is also a condition of the mind.

Q: Beyond the mind is silence. There is nothing to be said about it.

M: Yes, all talk about silence is mere noise.

Q: Why do we seek worldly happiness, even after having tasted one’s own natural spontaneous happiness?

M: When the mind is engaged in serving the body, happiness is lost. To regain it, it seeks pleasure. The urge to be happy is right, but the means of securing it are misleading, unreliable and destructive of true happiness.

Q: Is pleasure always wrong?

M: The right state and use of the body and the mind are intensely pleasant. It is the search for pleasure that is wrong. Do not try to make yourself happy, rather question your very search for happiness. It is because you are not happy that you want to be happy. Find out why you are unhappy. Because you are not happy you seek happiness in pleasure; pleasure brings in pain and therefore you call it worldly; you then long for some other pleasure, without pain, which you call divine. In reality, pleasure is but a respite from pain. Happiness is both worldly and unworldly, within and beyond all that happens. Make no distinction, don’t separate the inseparable and do not alienate yourself from life.

Q: How well I understand you now! Before my stay at Ramanashram I was tyrannised by conscience, always sitting in judgment of myself. Now I am completely relaxed, fully accepting myself as I am. When I return to the States, I shall take life as it comes, as Bhagavan’s grace, and enjoy the bitter along with the sweet. This is one of the things I have learnt in the Ashram — to trust Bhagavan. I was not like this before. I could not trust.

M: Trusting Bhagavan is trusting yourself. Be aware that whatever happens, happens to you, by you, through you, that you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive and you will not be afraid. Unafraid, you will not be unhappy, nor will you seek happiness.

In the mirror of your mind all kinds of pictures appear and disappear. Knowing that they are entirely your own creations, watch them silently come and go, be alert, but not perturbed. This attitude of silent observation is the very foundation of Yoga. You see the picture, but you are not the picture.

Q: I find that the thought of death frightens me because I do not want to be reborn. I know that none compels, yet the pressure of unsatisfied desires is overwhelming and I may not be able to resist.

M: The question of resistance does not arise. What is born and reborn is not you. Let it happen, watch it happen.

Q: Why then be at all concerned?

M: But you are concerned! And you will be concerned as long as the picture clashes with your own sense of truth, love and beauty. The desire for harmony and peace is in eradicable. But once it is fulfilled, the concern ceases and physical life becomes effortless and below the level of attention. Then, even in the body you are not born. To be embodied or bodyless is the same to you. You reach a point when nothing can happen to you. Without body, you cannot be killed; without possessions you cannot be robbed; without mind, you cannot be deceived. There is no point where a desire or fear can hook on. As long as no change can happen to you, what else matters?

Q: Somehow I do not like the idea of dying.

M: It is because you are so young. The more you know yourself the less you are afraid. Of course, the agony of dying is never pleasant to look at, but the dying man is rarely conscious.

Q: Does he return to consciousness?

M: It is very much like sleep. For a time the person is out of focus and then it returns.

Q: The same person?

M: The person, being a creature of circumstances, necessarily changes along with them, like the flame that changes with the fuel. Only the process goes on and on, creating time and space.

Q: Well, God will look after me. I can leave everything to Him.

M: Even faith in God is only a stage on the way. Ultimately you abandon all, for you come to something so simple that there are no words to express it.

Q: I am just beginning. At the start I had no faith, no trust; I was afraid to let things happen. The world seemed to be a very dangerous and inimical place. Now, at least I can talk of trusting the Guru or God. Let me grow. Don’t drive me on. Let me proceed at my own pace.

M: By all means proceed. But you don’t. You are still stuck in the ideas of man and women, old and young, life and death. Go on, go beyond. A thing recognised is a thing transcended.

Q: Sir, wherever I go people take it to be their duty to find faults with me and goad me on. I am fed up with this spiritual fortune making. What is wrong with my present that it should be sacrificed to a future, however glorious? You say reality is in the now. I want it. I do not want to be eternally anxious about my stature and its future. I do not want to chase the more and the better. Let me love what I have.

M: You are quite right; do it. Only be honest — just love what you love — don’t strive and strain.

Q: This is what I call surrender to the Guru.

M: Why exteriorise? Surrender to your own self, of which everything is an expression.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

From I Am That, Chapter 90

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May 24, 2011 · 7:42 pm

The Reverse Path – Siddharameshwar Maharaj

The “King of Knowledge” (“I Am”) influences all of the senses, and seems to grant these senses “lordship” over the sense objects. It is because of this externalization that the fact that He is present prior to the senses does not attract anyone’s attention. Over many births, the mind and the intellect have acquired the habit of only looking outwards. Therefore to “turn within” has become a very difficult task. This is called “the reverse path” which the Saints follow when they turn in the opposite direction, and behold the mind completely giving up seeing all that is external. Where an ordinary man is asleep, the Saints are awake, and where an ordinary man is awake, the Saints doze off. All beings find themselves awakened to external objects, and have become extremely skillful in this type of awakening. The Saints however, have closed their eyes to external things, and it is the Self, to which other beings are asleep, that keeps the Saints wide awake.

-Siddharameshwar Maharaj

From Master Key to Self-Realization, Chapter One

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May 2, 2011 · 9:33 am

Self-Awareness is the Witness – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Questioner: You told me that I can be considered under three aspects: the personal (vyakti), the super-personal (vyakta) and the impersonal (avyakta). The Avyakta is the universal and real pure ‘I’; the Vyakta is its reflection in consciousness as ‘I am’; the Vyakti is the totality of physical and vital processes. Within the narrow confines of the present moment, the super-personal is aware of the person, both in space and time; not only one person, but the long series of persons strung together on the thread of karma. It is essentially the witness as well as the residue of the accumulated experiences, the seat of memory, the connecting link (sutratma). It is man’s character which life builds and shapes from birth to birth. The universal is beyond all name and shape, beyond consciousness and character, pure unselfconscious being. Did I put down your views rightly?

Maharaj: On the level of the mind — yes. Beyond the mental level not a word applies.

Q: I can understand that the person is a mental construct, a collective noun for a set of memories and habits. But, he to whom the person happens, the witnessing centre, is it mental too?

M: The personal needs a base, a body to identify oneself with, just as a colour needs a surface to appear on. The seeing of the colour is independent of the colour — it is the same whatever the colour. One needs an eye to see a colour. The colours are many, the eye is single. The personal is like the light in the colour and also in the eye, yet simple, single, indivisible and unperceivable, except in its manifestations. Not unknowable, but unperceivable, un-objectival, inseparable. Neither material nor mental, neither objective nor subjective, it is the root of matter and the source of consciousness. Beyond mere living and dying, it is the all-inclusive, all-exclusive Life, in which birth is death and death is birth.

Q: The Absolute or Life you talk about, is it real, or a mere theory to cover up our ignorance?

M: Both. To the mind, a theory; in itself — a reality. It is reality in its spontaneous and total rejection of the false. Just as light destroys darkness by its very presence, so does the absolute destroy imagination. To see that all knowledge is a form of ignorance is itself a movement of reality. The witness is not a person. The person comes into being when there is a basis for it, an organism, a body. In it the absolute is reflected as awareness. Pure awareness becomes self-awareness. When there is a self, self-awareness is the witness. When there is no self to witness, there is no witnessing either. It is all very simple; it is the presence of the person that complicates. See that there is no such thing as a permanently separate person and all becomes clear. Awareness — mind — matter — they are one reality in its two aspects as immovable and movable, and the three attributes of inertia, energy and harmony.

Q: What comes first: consciousness or awareness?

M: Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object. The object changes all the time. In consciousness there is movement; awareness by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now.

Q: There is suffering and bloodshed in East Pakistan at the present moment. How do you look at it? How does it appear to you, how do you react to it?

M: In pure consciousness nothing ever happens.

Q: Please come down from these metaphysical heights! Of what use is it to a suffering man to be told that nobody is aware of his suffering but himself? To relegate everything to illusion is insult added to injury. The Bengali of East Pakistan is a fact and his suffering is a fact. Please, do not analyse them out of existence! You are reading newspapers, you hear people talking about it. You cannot plead ignorance. Now, what is your attitude to what is happening?

M: No attitude. Nothing is happening.

Q: Any day there may be a riot right in front of you, perhaps people killing each other. Surely you cannot say: nothing is happening and remain aloof.

M: I never talked of remaining aloof. You could as well see me jumping into the fray to save somebody and getting killed. Yet to me nothing happened. Imagine a big building collapsing. Some rooms are in ruins, some are intact. But can you speak of the space as ruined or intact? It is only the structure that suffered and the people who happened to live in it. Nothing happened to space itself. Similarly, nothing happens to life when forms break down and names are wiped out. The goldsmith melts down old ornaments to make new. Sometimes a good piece goes with the bad. He takes it in his stride, for he knows that no gold is lost.

Q: It is not death that I rebel against. It is the manner of dying.

M: Death is natural, the manner of dying is man-made. Separateness causes fear and aggression, which again cause violence. Do away with man-made separations and all this horror of people killing each other will surely end. But in reality there is no killing and no dying. The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Set your mind right and all will be right. When you know that the world is one, that humanity is one, you will act accordingly. But first of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live. Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in the world.

In reality nothing happens. Onto the screen of the mind destiny forever projects its pictures, memories of former projections and thus illusion constantly renews itself. The pictures come and go — light intercepted by ignorance. See the light and disregard the picture.

Q: What a callous way of looking at things! People are killing and getting killed and here you talk of pictures.

M: By all means go and get killed yourself — if that is what you think you should do. Or even go and kill, if you take it to be your duty. But that is not the way to end the evil. Evil is the stench of a mind that is diseased. Heal your mind and it will cease to project distorted, ugly pictures.

Q: What you say I understand, but emotionally I cannot accept it. This merely idealistic view of life repels me deeply. I just cannot think myself to be permanently in a state of dream.

M: How can anybody be permanently in a state caused by an impermanent body? The misunderstanding is based on your idea that you are the body. Examine the idea, see its inherent contradictions, realise that your present existence is like a shower of sparks, each spark lasting a second and the shower itself — a minute or two. Surely a thing of which the beginning is the end, can have no middle. Respect your terms. Reality cannot be momentary. It is timeless, but timelessness is not duration.

Q: I admit that the world in which I live is not the real world. But there is a real world, of which I see a distorted picture. The distortion may be due to some blemish in my body or mind. But when you say there is no real world, only a dream world in my mind, I just cannot take it. I wish I could believe that all horrors of existence are due to my having a body. Suicide would be the way out.

M: As long as you pay attention to ideas, your own or of others, you will be in trouble. But if you disregard all teachings, all books, anything out into words and dive deeply within yourself and find yourself, this alone will solve all your problems and leave you in full mastery of every situation, because you will not be dominated by your ideas about the situation. Take an example. You are in the company of an attractive woman. You get ideas about her and this creates a sexual situation. A problem is created and you start looking for books on continence, or enjoyment. Were you a baby, both of you could be naked and together without any problem arising. Just stop thinking you are the bodies and the problems of love and sex will lose their meaning. With all sense of limitation gone, fear, pain and the search for pleasure — all cease. Only awareness remains.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

From I Am That, Chapter 50

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April 24, 2011 · 1:51 pm

Awareness is Free – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Questioner: I have just arrived from Sri Ramanashram. I have spent seven months there.

Maharaj: What practice were you following at the Ashram?

Q: As far as I could, I concentrated on the ‘Who am l’?

M: Which way were you doing it? Verbally?

Q: In my free moments during the course of the day. Sometimes I was murmuring to myself ‘Who am l?’ ‘I am, but who am l?’ Or, I did it mentally. Occasionally I would have some nice feeling, or get into moods of quiet happiness. On the whole I was trying to be quiet and receptive, rather than labouring for experiences.

M: What were you actually experiencing when you were in the right mood?

Q: A sense of inner stillness, peace and silence.

M: Did you notice yourself becoming unconscious?

Q: Yes, occasionally and for a very short time. Otherwise I was just quiet, inwardly and outwardly.

M: What kind of quiet was it? Something akin to deep sleep, yet conscious all the same. A sort of wakeful sleep?

Q: Yes. Alertly asleep. (jagrit-sushupti).

M: The main thing is to be free of negative emotions — desire, fear etc., the ‘six enemies’ of the mind. Once the mind is free of them, the rest will come easily. Just as cloth kept in soap water will become clean, so will the mind get purified in the stream of pure feeling.

When you sit quiet and watch yourself, all kinds of things may come to the surface. Do nothing about them, don’t react to them; as they have come so will they go, by themselves. All that matters is mindfulness, total awareness of oneself or rather, of one’s mind.

Q: By ‘oneself’ do you mean the daily self?

M: Yes, the person, which alone is objectively observable. The observer is beyond observation. What is observable is not the real self.

Q: I can always observe the observer, in endless recession.

M: You can observe the observation, but not the observer. You know you are the ultimate observer by direct insight, not by a logical process based on observation. You are what you are, but you know what you are not. The self is known as being, the not-self is known as transient. But in reality all is in the mind. The observed, observation and observer are mental constructs. The self alone is.

Q: Why does the mind create all these divisions?

M: To divide and particularise is in the mind’s very nature. There is no harm in dividing. But separation goes against fact. Things and people are different, but they are not separate. Nature is one, reality is one. There are opposites, but no opposition.

Q: I find that by nature I am very active. Here I am advised to avoid activity. The more I try to remain inactive, the greater the urge to do something. This makes me not only active outwardly, but also struggling inwardly to be what by nature I am not. Is there a remedy against longing for work?

M: There is a difference between work and mere activity. All nature works. Work is nature, nature is work. On the other hand, activity is based on desire and fear, on longing to possess and enjoy, on fear of pain and annihilation. Work is by the whole for the whole, activity is by oneself for oneself.

Q: Is there a remedy against activity?

M: Watch it, and it shall cease. Use every opportunity to remind yourself that you are in bondage, that whatever happens to you is due to the fact of your bodily existence. Desire, fear, trouble, joy, they cannot appear unless you are there to appear to. Yet, whatever happens, points to your existence as a perceiving centre. Disregard the pointers and be aware of what they are pointing to. It is quite simple, but it needs be done. What matters is the persistence with which you keep on returning to yourself.

Q: I do get into peculiar states of deep absorption into myself, but unpredictably and momentarily. I do not feel myself to be in control of such states.

M: The body is a material thing and needs time to change. The mind is but a set of mental habits, of ways of thinking and feeling, and to change they must be brought to the surface and examined. This also takes time. Just resolve and persevere, the rest will take care of itself.

Q: I seem to have a clear idea of what needs be done, but I find myself getting tired and depressed and seeking human company and thus wasting time that should be given to solitude and meditation.

M: Do what you feel like doing. Don’t bully yourself. Violence will make you hard and rigid. Do not fight with what you take to be obstacles on your way. Just be interested in them, watch them, observe, enquire. Let anything happen — good or bad. But don’t let yourself be submerged by what happens.

Q: What is the purpose in reminding oneself all the time that one is the watcher?

M: The mind must learn that beyond the moving mind there is the background of awareness, which does not change. The mind must come to know the true self and respect it and cease covering it up, like the moon which obscures the sun during solar eclipse. Just realise that nothing observable or experienceable is you, or binds you. Take no notice of what is not yourself.

Q: To do what you tell me I must be ceaselessly aware.

M: To be aware is to be awake. Unaware means asleep. You are aware anyhow; you need not try to be. What you need is to be aware of being aware. Be aware deliberately and consciously, broaden and deepen the field of awareness. You are always conscious of the mind, but you are not aware of yourself as being conscious.

Q: As I can make out, you give distinct meanings to the words ‘mind’, ‘consciousness’, and ‘awareness’.

M: Look at it this way. The mind produces thoughts ceaselessly, even when you do not look at them. When you know what is going on in your mind, you call it consciousness. This is your waking state — your consciousness shifts from sensation to sensation, from perception to perception, from idea to idea, in endless succession. Then comes awareness, the direct insight into the whole of consciousness, the totality of the mind. The mind is like a river, flowing ceaselessly in the bed of the body; you identify yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it: ‘my thought’. All you are conscious of is your mind; awareness is the cognisance of consciousness as a whole.

Q: Everybody is conscious, but not everybody is aware.

M: Don’t say: ‘everybody is conscious’. Say: ‘there is consciousness’, in which everything appears and disappears. Our minds are just waves on the ocean of consciousness. As waves they come and go. As ocean they are infinite and eternal. Know yourself as the ocean of being, the womb of all existence. These are all metaphors of course; the reality is beyond description. You can know it only by being it.

Q: Is the search for it worth the trouble?

M: Without it all is trouble. If you want to live sanely, creatively and happily and have infinite riches to share, search for what you are.

While the mind is centred in the body and consciousness is centred in the mind, awareness is free. The body has its urges and mind its pains and pleasures. Awareness is unattached and unshaken. It is lucid, silent, peaceful, alert and unafraid, without desire and fear. Meditate on it as your true being and try to be it in your daily life, and you shall realise it in its fullness.

Mind is interested in what happens, while awareness is interested in the mind itself. The child is after the toy, but the mother watches the child, not the toy.

By looking tirelessly, I became quite empty and with that emptiness all came back to me except the mind. I find I have lost the mind irretrievably.

Q: As you talk to us just now, are you unconscious?

M: I am neither conscious nor unconscious; I am beyond the mind and its various states and conditions. Distinctions are created by the mind and apply to the mind only. I am pure Consciousness itself, unbroken awareness of all that is. I am in a more real state than yours. I am undistracted by the distinctions and separations which constitute a person. As long as the body lasts, it has its needs like any other, but my mental process has come to an end.

Q: You behave like a person who thinks.

M: Why not? But my thinking, like my digestion, is unconscious and purposeful.

Q: If your thinking is unconscious, how do you know that it is right?

M: There is no desire, nor fear to thwart it. What can make it wrong? Once I know myself and what I stand for, I do not need to check on myself all the time. When you know that your watch shows correct time, you do not hesitate each time you consult it.

Q: At this very moment who talks, if not the mind?

M: That which hears the question, answers it.

Q: But who is it?

M: Not who, but what. I’m not a person in your sense of the word, though I may appear a person to you. I am that infinite ocean of consciousness in which all happens. I am also beyond all existence and cognition, pure bliss of being. There is nothing I feel separate from, hence I am all. No thing is me, so I am nothing.

The same power that makes the fire burn and the water flow, the seeds sprout and the trees grow, makes me answer your questions. There is nothing personal about me, though the language and the style may appear personal. A person is a set pattern of desires and thoughts and resulting actions; there is no such pattern in my case. There is nothing I desire or fear — how can there be a pattern?

Q: Surely, you will die.

M: Life will escape, the body will die, but it will not affect me in the least. Beyond space and time I am, uncaused, uncausing, yet the very matrix of existence.

Q: May I be permitted to ask how did you arrive at your present condition?

M: My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realised within myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am — unbound.

Q: Was your realisation sudden or gradual.

M: Neither. One is what one is timelessly. It is the mind that realises as and when it gets cleared of desires and fears.

Q: Even the desire for realisation?

M: The desire to put an end to all desires is a most peculiar desire, just like the fear of being afraid is a most peculiar fear. One stops you from grabbing and the other from running. You may use the same words, but the states are not the same. The man who seeks realisation is not addicted to desires; he is a seeker who goes against desire, not with it. A general longing for liberation is only the beginning; to find the proper means and use them is the next step. The seeker has only one goal in view: to find his own true being. Of all desires it is the most ambitious, for nothing and nobody can satisfy it; the seeker and the sought are one and the search alone matters.

Q: The search will come to an end. The seeker will remain.

M: No, the seeker will dissolve, the search will remain. The search is the ultimate and timeless reality.

Q: Search means lacking, wanting, incompleteness and imperfection.

M: No, it means refusal and rejection of the incomplete and the imperfect. The search for reality is itself the movement of reality. In a way all search is for the real bliss, or the bliss of the real. But here we mean by search the search for oneself as the root of being conscious, as the light beyond the mind. This search will never end, while the restless craving for all else must end, for real progress to take place.

One has to understand that the search for reality, or God, or Guru and the search for the self are the same; when one is found, all are found. When ‘I am’ and ‘God is’ become in your mind indistinguishable, then something will happen and you will know without a trace of doubt that God is because you are, you are because God is. The two are one.

Q: Since all is preordained, is our self-realisation also preordained? Or are we free there at least?

M: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free. The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on. But the space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise it is just space. As long as there is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body you are not disembodied — you Just are.

Even destiny is but an idea. Words can be put together in so many ways! Statements can differ, but do they make any change in the actual? There are so many theories devised for explaining things — all are plausible, none is true. When you drive a car, you are subjected to the laws of mechanics and chemistry: step out of the car and you are under the laws of physiology and biochemistry.

Q: What is meditation and what are its uses?

M: As long as you are a beginner certain formalised meditations or prayers may be good for you. But for a seeker for reality there is only one meditation — the rigorous refusal to harbour thoughts. To be free from thoughts is itself meditation.

Q: How is it done?

M: You begin by letting thoughts flow and watching them. The very observation slows down the mind till it stops altogether. Once the mind is quiet, keep it quiet. Don’t get bored with peace, be in it, go deeper into it.

Q: I heard of holding on to one thought in order to keep other thoughts away. But how to keep all thoughts away? The very idea is also a thought.

M: Experiment anew, don’t go by past experience. Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts. The state of freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall recognise it.

Q: Are you not at all concerned about the state of the world? Look at the horrors in East Pakistan [1971, now Bangladesh]. Do they not touch you at all?

M: I am reading newspapers; I know what is going on! But my reaction is not like yours. You are looking for a cure, while I am concerned with prevention. As long as there are causes, there must also be results. As long as people are bent on dividing and separating, as long as they are selfish and aggressive, such things will happen. If you want peace and harmony in the world, you must have peace and harmony in your hearts and minds. Such change cannot be imposed; it must come from within. Those who abhor war must get war out of their system. Without peaceful people how can you have peace in the world? As long as people are as they are, the world must be as it is. I am doing my part in trying to help people to know themselves as the only cause of their own misery. In that sense I am a useful man. But what I am in myself, what is my normal state cannot be expressed in terms of social consciousness and usefulness.

I may talk about it, use metaphors or parables, but I am acutely aware that it is just not so. Not that it cannot be experienced. It is experiencing itself! But it cannot be described in the terms of a mind that must separate and oppose in order to know.

The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed. The reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is the common factor, always present, rarely perceived. When the ribbon is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper. So is my mind — the impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left.

Q: Why do you sit here talking to people? What is your real motive?

M: No motive. You say I must have a motive. I am not sitting here, nor talking: no need to search for motives. Don’t confuse me with the body. I have no work to do, no duties to perform. That part of me which you may call God will look after the world. This world of yours, that so much needs looking after, lives and moves in your mind. Delve into it, you will find your answers there and there only. Where else do you expect them to come from? Outside your consciousness does anything exist?

Q: It may exist without my ever knowing it.

M: What kind of existence would it be? Can being be divorced from knowing? All being, like all knowing, relates to you. A thing is because you know it to be either in your experience or in your being. Your body and your mind exist as long as you believe so. Cease to think that they are yours and they will just dissolve. By all means let your body and mind function, but do not let them limit you. If you notice imperfections, just keep on noticing: your very giving attention to them will set your heart and mind and body right.

Q: Can I cure myself of a serious illness by merely taking cognisance of it?

M: Take cognisance of the whole of it, not only of the outer symptoms. All illness begins in the mind. Take care of the mind first, by tracing and eliminating all wrong ideas and emotions. Then live and work disregarding illness and think no more of it. With the removal of causes the effect is bound to depart.

Man becomes what he believes himself to be. Abandon all ideas about yourself and you will find yourself to be the pure witness, beyond all that can happen to the body or the mind.

Q: If I become anything I think myself to be, and I start thinking that I am the Supreme Reality, will not my Supreme Reality remain a mere idea?

M: First reach that state and then ask the question.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

From I Am That, Chapter 48

For more posts on Nisargadatta Maharaj see: http://o-meditation.com/category/nisargadatta-maharaj/

To read more from Nisargadatta Maharaj see: http://o-meditation.com/jai-guru-deva/some-good-books/downloadable-books/nisargadatta-maharaj/

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