5.
What is Born must Die
Questioner:
Is the witness-consciousness permanent or not?
Nisargadatta:
It is not permanent. The knower rises and sets with the known. That
in which both the
knower
and the known arise and set, is beyond time. The words permanent or
eternal do not apply.
Questioner:
In sleep there is neither the known, nor the knower. What keeps the
body sensitive and
receptive?
Nisargadatta:
Surely you cannot say the knower was absent. The experience of
things and thoughts was not
there,
that is all. But the absence of experience too is experience. It is
like entering a dark room and
saying:
'I see nothing'. A man blind from birth knows not what darkness
means. Similarly, only the
knower
knows that he does not know. Sleep is merely a lapse in memory. Life
goes on.
Questioner:
And what is death?
Nisargadatta:
It is the change in the living process of a particular body.
Integration ends and disintegration
sets
in.
Questioner:
But what about the knower. With the disappearance of the body, does
the knower disappear?
Nisargadatta:
Just as the knower of the body appears at birth, so he disappears at
death.
Questioner:
And nothing remains?
Nisargadatta:
Life remains. Consciousness needs a vehicle and an instrument for
its manifestation. When life
produces
another body, another knower comes into being,
Questioner:
Is there a causal link between the successive body-knowers, or
body-minds?
Nisargadatta:
Yes, there is something that may be called the memory body, or
causal body, a record of all that
was
thought, wanted and done. It is like a cloud of images held
together.
Questioner
What is this sense of a separate existence?
Nisargadatta:
It is a reflection in a separate body of the one reality. In this
reflection the unlimited and the
limited
are confused and taken to be the same. To undo this confusion is the
purpose of Yoga.
Questioner
Does not death undo this confusion?
Nisargadatta:
In death only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not,
reality does not. And the life
is
never so alive as after death.
Questioner
But does one get reborn?
Nisargadatta:
What was born must die. Only the unborn is deathless. Find what is
it that never sleeps and
never
wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of 'I'.
Questioner
How am I to go about this finding out?
Nisargadatta:
How do you go about finding anything? By keeping your mind and heart
in it. Interest there must
be
and steady remembrance. To remember what needs to be remembered is
the secret of success.
You
come to it through earnestness.
Questioner:
Do you mean to say that mere wanting to find out is enough? Surely,
both qualifications and
opportunities
are needed.
Nisargadatta:
These will come with earnestness. What is supremely important is to
be free from contradictions:
the
goal and the way must not be on different levels; life and light
must not quarrel; behaviour
must not betray belief. Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you
must not go back, undo, uproot,
abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty in
pursuit will bring you to
your
goal.
Questioner:
Tenacity and honesty are endowments, surely! Not a trace of them I
have.
Nisargadatta:
All will come as you go on. Take the first step first. All blessings
come from within. Turn within. 'l
am'
you know. Be with it all the time you can spare, until you revert to
it spontaneously. There is no
simpler
and easier way.