12.
The Person is not Reality
Questioner:
Kindly tell us how you realised.
Nisargadatta:
I met my Guru when I was 34 and realised by 37.
Questioner:
What happened? What was the change?
Nisargadatta:
Pleasure and pain lost their sway over me. I was free from
desire and fear. I found myself full,
needing
nothing. I saw that in the ocean of pure awareness, on the
surface of the universal
consciousness,
the numberless waves of the phenomenal worlds arise and
subside beginninglessly
and
endlessly. As consciousness, they are all me. As events they
are all mine. There is a
mysterious
power that looks after them. That power is awareness, Self,
Life, God, whatever name
you
give it. It is the foundation, the ultimate support of all
that is, just like gold is the basis for all gold
jewellery.
And it is so intimately ours! Abstract the name and shape from
the jewellery and the gold
becomes
obvious. Be free of name and form and of the desires and fears
they create, then what
remains?
Questioner:
Nothingness.
Nisargadatta:
Yes, the void remains. But the void is full to the brim. It is
the eternal potential as consciousness
is
the eternal actual.
Questioner:
By potential you mean the future?
Nisargadatta:
Past, present and future -- they are all there. And infinitely
more.
Questioner:
But since the void is void, it is of little use to us.
Nisargadatta:
How can you say so? Without breach in continuity how can there
be rebirth? Can there be
renewal
without death? Even the darkness of sleep is refreshing and
rejuvenating. Without death
we
would have been bogged up for ever in eternal senility.
Questioner:
Is there no such thing as immortality?
Nisargadatta:
When life and death are seen as essential to each other, as
two aspects of one being, that is
immortality.
To see the end in the beginning and beginning in the end is
the intimation of eternity.
Definitely,
immortality is not continuity. Only the process of change
continues. Nothing lasts.
Questioner:
Awareness lasts?
Nisargadatta:
Awareness is not of time. Time exists in consciousness only.
Beyond consciousness where are
time
and space?
Questioner:
Within the field of your consciousness there is your body
also.
Nisargadatta:
Of course. But the idea 'my body', as different from other
bodies, is not there. To me it is 'a
body',
not 'my body', 'a mind', not 'my mind'. The mind looks after
the body all right, I need not
interfere.
What needs be done is being done, in the normal and natural
way.
You
may not be quite conscious of your physiological functions,
but when it comes to thoughts and
feelings,
desires and fears you become acutely self-conscious. To me
these too are largely
unconscious.
I find myself talking to people, or doing things quite
correctly and appropriately,
without
being very much conscious of them. It looks as if I live my
physical, waking life
automatically,
reacting spontaneously and accurately.
Questioner:
Does this spontaneous response come as a result of
realisation, or by training?
Nisargadatta:
Both. Devotion to you goal makes you live a clean and orderly
life, given to search for truth and
to
helping people, and realisation makes noble virtue easy and
spontaneous, by removing for good
the
obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas.
Questioner:
Don’t you have desires and fears any more?
Nisargadatta:
My destiny was to be born a simple man, a commoner, a humble
tradesman, with little of formal
education.
My life was the common kind, with common desires and fears.
When, through my faith in
my
teacher and obedience to his words, I realised my true being,
I left behind my human nature to
look
after itself, until its destiny is exhausted. Occasionally an
old reaction, emotional or mental,
happens
in the mind, but it is at once noticed and discarded. After
all, as long as one is bur-dened
with
a person, one is exposed to its idiosyncrasies and habits.
Questioner:
Are you not afraid of death?
Nisargadatta:
I am dead already.
Questioner:
In what sense?
Nisargadatta:
I am double dead. Not only am I dead to my body, but to my
mind too.
Questioner:
Well, you do not look dead at all!
Nisargadatta:
That’s what you say! You seem to know my state better than I
do!
Questioner:
Sorry. But I just do not understand. You say you are bodyless
and mindless, while I see you
very
much alive and articulate.
Nisargadatta:
A tremendously complex work is going on all the time in your
brain and body, are you conscious
of
it? Not at all. Yet for an outsider all seems to be going on
intelligently and purposefully. Why not
admit
that one’s entire personal life may sink largely below the
threshold of consciousness and yet
proceed
sanely and smoothly?
Questioner:
Is it normal?
Nisargadatta:
What is normal? Is your life -- obsessed by desires and fears,
full of strife and struggle,
meaningless
and joyless -- normal? To be acutely conscious of your body is
it normal? To be torn
by
feelings, tortured by thoughts: is it normal? A healthy body,
a healthy mind live largely
unperceived
by their owner; only occasionally, through pain or suffering
they call for attention and
insight.
Why not extend the same to the entire personal life? One can
function rightly, responding
well
and fully to whatever happens, without having to bring it into
the focus of awareness. When self-
control
becomes second nature, awareness shifts its focus to deeper
levels of existence and action.
Questioner:
Don’t you become a robot?
Nisargadatta:
What harm is there in making automatic, what is habitual and
repetitive? It is automatic anyhow.
But
when it is also chaotic, it causes pain and suffering and
calls for attention. The entire purpose of
a
clean and well-ordered life is to liberate man from the
thraldom of chaos and the burden of sorrow.
Questioner:
You seem to be in favour of a computerised life.
Nisargadatta:
What is wrong with a life which is free from problems?
Personality is merely a reflection of the
real.
Why should not the reflection be true to the original as a
matter of course, automatically? Need
the
person have any designs of its own? The life of which it is an
expression will guide it. Once you
realise
that the person is merely a shadow of the reality, but not
reality itself, you cease to fret and
worry.
You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey
into the unknown.