23.
Discrimination leads to Detachment
Nisargadatta:
You are all drenched for it is raining hard. In my world it
is always fine weather. There is
no
night or day, no heat or cold. No worries beset me there,
nor regrets. My mind is free of
thoughts,
for there are no desires to slave for.
Questioner:
Are there two worlds?
Nisargadatta:
Your world is transient, changeful. My world is perfect,
changeless. You can tell me what you
like
about your world -- I shall listen carefully, even with
interest, yet not for a moment shall I forget
that
your world is not, that you are dreaming.
Questioner:
What distinguishes your world from mine?
Nisargadatta:
My world has no characteristics by which it can be
identified. You can say nothing about it. I am
my
world. My world is myself. It is complete and perfect. Every
impression is erased, every
experience
-- rejected. I need nothing, not even myself, for myself I
cannot lose.
Questioner:
Not even God?
Nisargadatta:
All these ideas and distinctions exist in your world; in
mine there is nothing of the kind. My world
is
single and very simple.
Questioner:
Nothing happens there?
Nisargadatta:
Whatever happens in your world, only there it has validity
and evokes response. In my world
nothing
happens.
Questioner:
The very fact of your experiencing your own world implies
duality inherent in all experience.
Nisargadatta:
Verbally -- yes. But your words do not reach me. Mine is a
non-verbal world. In your world the
unspoken
has no existence. In mine -- the words and their contents
have no being. In your world
nothing
stays, in mine -- nothing changes. My world is real, while
yours is made of dreams.
Questioner:
Yet we are talking.
Nisargadatta:
The talk is in your world. In mine -- there is eternal
silence. My silence sings, my emptiness is
full,
I lack nothing. You cannot know my world until you are
there.
Questioner:
It seems as if you alone are in your world.
Nisargadatta:
How can you say alone or not alone, when words do not apply?
Of course, I am alone for I am
all.
Questioner:
Are you ever coming into our world?
Nisargadatta:
What is coming and going to me? These again are words. I am.
Whence am I to come from and
where
to go?
Questioner:
Of what use is your world to me?
Nisargadatta:
You should consider more closely your own world, examine it
critically and, suddenly, one day
you
will find yourself in mine.
Questioner:
What do we gain by it?
Nisargadatta:
You gain nothing. You leave behind what is not your own and
find what you have never lost --
your
own being.
Questioner:
Who is the ruler of your world?
Nisargadatta:
There are no ruler and ruled here. There is no duality
whatsoever. You are merely projecting
your
own ideas. Your scriptures and your gods have no meaning
here.
Questioner:
Still you have a name and shape, display consciousness and
activity.
Nisargadatta:
In your world I appear so. In mine I have being only.
Nothing else. You people are rich with your
ideas
of possession, of quantity and quality. I am completely
without ideas.
Questioner:
In my world there is disturbance, distress and despair. You
seem to be living on some hidden
income,
while I must slave for a living.
Nisargadatta:
Do as you please. You are free to leave your world for mine.
Questioner:
How is the crossing done?
Nisargadatta:
See your world as it is, not as you imagine it to be.
Discrimination will lead to detachment;
detachment
will ensure right action; right action will build the inner
bridge to your real being. Action
is
a proof of earnestness. Do what you are told diligently and
faithfully and all obstacles will dissolve.
Questioner:
Are you happy?
Nisargadatta:
In your world I would be most miserable. To wake up, to eat,
to talk, to sleep again -- what a
bother!
Questioner:
So you do not want to live even?
Nisargadatta:
To live, to die -- what meaningless words are these! When
you see me alive, I am dead. When
you
think me dead, I am alive. How muddled up you are!
Questioner:
How indifferent you are? All the sorrows of our world are as
nothing to you.
Nisargadatta:
I am quite conscious of your troubles.
Questioner:
Then what are you doing about them?
Nisargadatta:
There is nothing I need doing. They come and go.
Questioner:
Do they go by the very act of your giving them attention?
Nisargadatta:
Yes. The difficulty may be physical, emotional or mental;
but it is always individual. Large scale
calamities
are the sum of numberless individual destinies and take time
to settle. But death is never
a
calamity.
Questioner:
Even when a man is killed?
Nisargadatta:
The calamity is of the killer.
Questioner:
Still, it seems there are two worlds, mine and yours.
Nisargadatta:
Mine is real, yours is of the mind.
Questioner:
Imagine a rock and a hole in the rock and a frog in the
hole. The frog may spend its life in
perfect
bliss, undistracted, undisturbed. Outside the rock the world
goes on. If the frog in the hole
were
told about the outside world, he would say: 'There is no
such thing. My world is of peace and
bliss.
Your world is a word structure only, it has no existence'.
It is the same with you. When you tell
us
that our world simply does not exist, there is no common
ground for discussion. Or, take another
example.
I go to a doctor and complain of stomach ache. He examines
me and says: 'You are all
right'.
'But it pains' I say. 'Your pain is mental' he asserts. I
say 'It does not help me to know that my
pain
is mental. You are a doctor, cure me of my pain. If you
cannot cure me, you are not my doctor.'
Nisargadatta:
Quite right.
Questioner:
You have built the railroad, but for lack of a bridge no
train can pass. Build the bridge.
Nisargadatta:
There is no need of a bridge.
Questioner:
There must be some link between your world and mine.
Nisargadatta:
There is no need of a link between a real world and an
imaginary world, for there cannot be any.
Questioner:
So what are we to do?
Nisargadatta:
Investigate your world, apply your mind to it, examine it
critically, scrutinise every idea about it;
that
will do.
Questioner:
The world is too big for investigation. All I know is that I
am the world is, the world troubles me
and
I trouble the world.
Nisargadatta:
My experience is that everything is bliss. But the desire
for bliss creates pain. Thus bliss
becomes
the seed of pain. The entire universe of pain is born of
desire. Give up the desire for
pleasure
and you will not even know what is pain.
Questioner:
Why should pleasure be the seed of pain?
Nisargadatta:
Because for the sake of pleasure you are committing many
sins. And the fruits of sin are
suffering
and death.
Questioner:
You say the world is of no use to us -- only a tribulation.
I feel it cannot be so. God is not such a
fool.
The world seems to me a big enterprise for bringing the
potential into actual, matter into life,
the
unconscious into full awareness. To realise the supreme we
need the experience of the
opposites.
Just as for building a temple we need stone and mortar, wood
and iron, glass and tiles,
so
for making a man into a divine sage, a master of life and
death, one needs the material of every
experience.
As a woman goes to the market, buys provisions of every
sort, comes home, cooks,
bakes
and feeds her lord, so we bake ourselves nicely in the fire
of life and feed our God.
Nisargadatta:
Well, if you think so, act on it. Feed your God, by all
means.
Questioner:
A child goes to school and learns many things, which will be
of no use to it later. But in the
course
of learning it grows. So do we pass through experiences
without number and forget them all,
but
in the meantime we grow all the time. And what is a jnani
but a man with a genius for reality!
This
world of mine cannot be an accident. It makes sense, there
must be a plan behind it. My God
has
a plan.
Nisargadatta:
If the world is false, then the plan and its creator are
also false.
Questioner:
Again, you deny the world. There is no bridge between us.
Nisargadatta:
There is no need of a bridge. Your mistake lies in your
belief that you are born. You were never
born
nor will you ever die, but you believe that you were born at
a certain date and place and that a
particular
body is your own.
Questioner:
The world is, I am. These are facts.
Nisargadatta:
Why do you worry about the world before taking care of
yourself? You want to save the world,
don't
you? Can you save the world before saving yourself? And what
means being saved? Saved
from
what? From illusion. Salvation is to see things as they are.
I really do not see myself related to
anybody
and anything. Not even to a self, whatever that self may be.
I remain forever -- undefined. I
am
-- within and beyond -- intimate and unapproachable.
Questioner:
How did you come to it?
Nisargadatta:
By my trust in my Guru. He told me 'You alone are' and I did
not doubt him. I was merely
puzzling
over it, until I realised that it is absolutely true.
Questioner:
Conviction by repetition?
Nisargadatta:
By self-realisation. I found that I am conscious and happy
absolutely and only by mistake I
thought
I owed being- consciousness-bliss to the body and the world
of bodies.
Questioner:
You are not a learned man. You have not read much and what
you read, or heard did perhaps
not
contradict itself. I am fairly well educated and have read a
lot and I found that books and
teachers
contradict each other hopelessly. Hence whatever I read or
hear, I take it in a state of
doubt.
'It may be so, it may not be so' is my first reaction. And
as my mind is unable to decide what
is
true and what is not, I am left high and dry with my doubts.
In Yoga a doubting mind is at a
tremendous
disadvantage.
Nisargadatta:
I am glad to hear it; but my Guru too taught me to doubt --
everything and absolutely. He said:
'deny
existence to everything except your self.' Through desire
you have created the world with its
pains
and pleasures.
Questioner:
Must it be also painful?
Nisargadatta:
What else? By its very nature pleasure is limited and
transitory. Out of pain desire is born, in
pain
it seeks fulfilment, and it ends in the pain of frustration
and despair. Pain is the background of
pleasure,
all seeking of pleasure is born in pain and ends in pain.
Questioner:
All you say is clear to me. But when some physical or mental
trouble comes, my mind goes dull
and
grey, or seeks frantically for relief.
Nisargadatta:
What does it matter? It is the mind that is dull or
restless, not you. Look, all kinds of things
happen
in this room. Do I cause them to happen? They just happen.
So it is with you -- the roll of
destiny
unfolds itself and actualises the inevitable. You cannot
change the course of events, but you
can
change your attitude and what really matters is the attitude
and not the bare event. The world is
the
abode of desires and fears. You cannot find peace in it. For
peace you must go beyond the
world.
The root- cause of the world is self-love. Because of it we
seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Replace
self-love by love of the Self and the picture changes.
Brahma the Creator is the sum total
of
all desires. The world is the instrument for their
fulfilment. Souls take whatever pleasure they
desire
and pay for them in tears. Time squares all accounts. The
law of balance reigns supreme.
Questioner:
To be a superman one must be a man first. Manhood is the
fruit of innumerable experiences:
Desire
drives to experience. Hence at its own time and level desire
is right.
Nisargadatta:
All this is true in a way. But a day comes when you have
amassed enough and must begin to
build.
Then sorting out and discarding (viveka-vairagya) are
absolutely necessary. Everything must
be
scrutinised and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed.
Believe me, there cannot be too much
destruction.
For in reality nothing is of value. Be passionately
dispassionate -- that is all.