15. The Jnani
Questioner:
Without God's power nothing can be done. Even you would not be
sitting here and
talking
to us without Him.
Nisargadatta:
All is His doing, no doubt. What is it to me, since I want
nothing? What can God give me,
or
take away from me? What is mine is mine and was mine even when
God was not. Of course, it is
a
very tiny little thing, a speck -- the sense 'I am', the fact
of being. This is my own place, nobody
gave
it to me. The earth is mine; what grows on it is God's.
Questioner:
Did God take the earth or rent from you?
Nisargadatta:
God is my devotee and did all this for me.
Questioner:
Is there no God apart from you?
Nisargadatta:
How can there be? 'I am' is the root, God is the tree. Whom am
I to worship, and what for?
Questioner:
Are you the devotee or the object of devotion?
Nisargadatta:
I am neither, I am devotion itself.
Questioner:
There is not enough devotion in the world.
Nisargadatta:
You are always after the improvement of the world. Do you
really believe that the world is
waiting
for you to be saved?
Questioner:
I just do not know how much I can do for the world. All I can
do, is to try. Is there anything else
you
would like me to do?
Nisargadatta:
Without you is there a world? You know all about the world,
but about yourself you know
nothing.
You yourself are the tools of your work, you have no other
tools. Why don't you take care of
the
tools before you think of the work?
Questioner:
I can wait, while the world cannot.
Nisargadatta:
By not enquiring you keep the world waiting.
Questioner:
Waiting for what?
Nisargadatta:
For somebody who can save it.
Questioner:
God runs the world, God will save it.
Nisargadatta:
That's what you say! Did God come and tell you that the world
is His creation and concern and
not
yours?
Questioner:
Why should it be my sole concern?
Nisargadatta:
Consider. The world in which you live, who else knows about
it?
Questioner:
You know. Everybody knows.
Nisargadatta:
Did anybody come from outside of your world to tell you?
Myself and everybody else appear
and
disappear in your world. We are all at your mercy.
Questioner:
It cannot be so bad! I exist in your world as you exist in
mine.
Nisargadatta:
You have no evidence of my world. You are completely wrapped
up in the world of your own
making.
Questioner:
I see. Completely, but -- hopelessly?
Nisargadatta:
Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you
that the world of painful
contradictions,
which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent
and is based on a
misapprehension.
He pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way by which
you got into it. You
got
into it by forgetting what you are and you will get out of it
by knowing yourself as you are.
Questioner:
In what way does it affect the world?
Nisargadatta:
When you are free of the world, you can do something about it.
As long as you are a prisoner of
it,
you are helpless to change it. On the contrary, whatever you
do will aggravate the situation.
Questioner:
Righteousness will set me free.
Nisargadatta:
Righteousness will undoubtedly make you and your world a
comfortable, even happy place. But
what
is the use? There is no reality in it. It cannot last.
Questioner:
God will help.
Nisargadatta:
To help you God must know your existence. But you and your
world are dream states. In dream
you
may suffer agonies. None knows them, and none can help you.
Questioner:
So all my questions, my search and study are of no use?
Nisargadatta:
These are but the stirrings of a man who is tired of sleeping.
They are not the causes of
awakening,
but its early signs. But, you must not ask idle questions, to
which you already know the
answers.
Questioner:
How am I to get a true answer?
Nisargadatta:
By asking a true question -- non-verbally, but by daring to
live according to your lights. A man
willing
to die for truth will get it.
Questioner:
Another question. There is the person. There is the knower of
the person. There is the witness.
Are
the knower and the witness the same, or are they separate
states?
Nisargadatta:
The knower and the witness are two or one? When the knower is
seen as separate from the
known,
the witness stands alone. When the known and the knower are
seen as one, the witness
becomes
one with them.
Questioner:
Who is the jnani? The witness or the supreme?
Nisargadatta:
The jnani is the supreme and also the witness. He is both
being and awareness. In relation to
consciousness
he is awareness. In relation to the universe he is pure being.
Questioner:
And what about the person? What comes first, the person or the
knower.
Nisargadatta:
The person is a very small thing. Actually it is a composite,
it cannot be said to exist by itself.
Unperceived,
it is just not there. It is but the shadow of the mind, the
sum total of memories. Pure
being
is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is
known takes the shape of a person,
based
on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a projection of
the knower onto the screen of the
mind.
Questioner:
The mirror is there, the reflection is there. But where is the
sun?
Nisargadatta:
The supreme is the sun.
Questioner:
It must be conscious.
Nisargadatta:
It is neither conscious nor unconscious. Don't think of it in
terms of consciousness or
unconsciousness.
It is the life, which contains both and is beyond both.
Questioner:
Life is so intelligent. How can it be unconscious?
Nisargadatta:
You talk of the unconscious when there is a lapse in memory.
In reality there is only
consciousness.
All life is conscious, all consciousness -- alive.
Questioner:
Even stones?
Nisargadatta:
Even stones are conscious and alive.
Questioner:
The worry with me is that I am prone to denying existence to
what I cannot imagine.
Nisargadatta:
You would be wiser to deny the existence of what you imagine.
It is the imagined that is unreal.
Questioner:
Is all imaginable unreal?
Nisargadatta:
Imagination based on memories is unreal. The future is not
entirely unreal.
Questioner:
Which part of the future is real and which is not?
Nisargadatta:
The unexpected and unpredictable is real.