34.
Mind is restlessness Itself
Questioner:
I am a Swede by birth. Now I am teaching Hatha Yoga in Mexico and in
the States.
Nisargadatta:
Where did you learn it?
Questioner:
I had a teacher in the States, an Indian Swami.
Nisargadatta:
What did it give you?
Questioner:
It gave me good health and a means of livelihood.
Nisargadatta:
Good enough. Is it all you want?
Questioner:
I seek peace of mind. I got disgusted with all the cruel things done
by the so-called Christians in
the
name of Christ. For some time I was without religion. Then I got
attracted to Yoga.
Nisargadatta:
What did you gain?
Questioner:
I studied the philosophy of Yoga and it did help me.
Nisargadatta:
In what way did it help you? By what signs did you conclude that you
have been helped?
Questioner:
Good health is something quite tangible.
Nisargadatta:
No doubt it is very pleasant to feel fit. Is pleasure all you
expected from Yoga?
Questioner:
The joy of well-being is the reward of Hatha Yoga. But Yoga in
general yields more than that. It
answers
many questions.
Nisargadatta:
What do you mean by Yoga?
Questioner:
The whole teaching of India -- evolution, re-incarnation, karma and
so on.
Nisargadatta:
All right, you got all the knowledge you wanted. But in what way are
you benefited by it?
Questioner:
It gave me peace of mind.
Nisargadatta:
Did it? Is your mind at peace? Is your search over?
Questioner:
No, not yet.
Nisargadatta:
Naturally. There will be no end to it, because there is no such
thing as peace of mind. Mind
means
disturbance; restlessness itself is mind. Yoga is not an attribute
of the mind, nor is it a state
of
mind.
Questioner:
Some measure of peace I did derive from Yoga.
Nisargadatta:
Examine closely and you will see that the mind is seething with
thoughts. It may go blank
occasionally,
but it does it for a time and reverts to its usual restlessness. A
becalmed mind is not a
peaceful
mind. You say you want to pacify your mind. Is he, who wants to
pacify the mind, himself
peaceful?
Questioner:
No. I am not at peace, I take the help of Yoga.
Nisargadatta:
Don't you see the contradiction? For many years you sought your
peace of mind. You could not
find
it, for a thing essentially restless cannot be at peace.
Questioner:
There is some improvement.
Nisargadatta:
The peace you claim to have found is very brittle any little thing
can crack it. What you call
peace
is only absence of disturbance. It is hardly worth the name. The
real peace cannot be
disturbed.
Can you claim a peace of mind that is unassailable?
Questioner:
l am striving.
Nisargadatta:
Striving too is a form of restlessness.
Questioner:
So what remains?
Nisargadatta:
The self does not need to be put to rest. It is peace itself, not at
peace. Only the mind is
restless.
All it knows is restlessness, with its many modes and grades. The
pleasant are considered
superior
and the painful are discounted. What we call progress is merely a
change over from the
unpleasant
to the pleasant. But changes by themselves cannot bring us to the
changeless, for
whatever
has a beginning must have an end. The real does not begin; it only
reveals itself as
beginningless
and endless, all-pervading, all-powerful, immovable prime mover,
timelessly
changeless.
Questioner:
So what has one to do?
Nisargadatta:
Through Yoga you have accumulated knowledge and experience. This
cannot be denied. But of
what
use is it all to you? Yoga means union, joining. What have you
re-united, re-joined?
Questioner:
I am trying to rejoin the personality back to the real self.
Nisargadatta:
The personality (vyakti) is but a product of imagination. The self
(vyakta) is the victim of this
imagination.
It is the taking yourself to be what you are not that binds you. The
person cannot be
said
to exist on its own rights; it is the self that believes there is a
person and is conscious of being
it.
Beyond the self (vyakta) lies the unmanifested (avyakta), the
causeless cause of everything.
Even
to talk of re-uniting the person with the self is not right, because
there is no person, only a
mental
picture given a false reality by conviction. Nothing was divided and
there is nothing to unite.
Questioner:
Yoga
helps in the search for and the finding of the self.
Nisargadatta:
You can find what you have lost. But you cannot find what you have
not lost.
Questioner:
Had I never lost anything, I would have been enlightened. But I am
not. I am searching. Is not
my
very search a proof of my having lost something?
Nisargadatta:
It only shows that you believe you have lost. But who believes it?
And what is believed to be
lost?
Have you lost a person like yourself? What is the self you are in
search of? What exactly do
you
expect to find?
Questioner:
The true knowledge of the self.
Nisargadatta:
The true knowledge of the self is not a knowledge. It is not
something that you find by
searching,
by looking everywhere. It is not to be found in space or time.
Knowledge is but a
memory,
a pattern of thought, a mental habit. All these are motivated by
pleasure and pain. It is
because
you are goaded by pleasure and pain that you are in search of
knowledge. Being oneself
is
completely beyond all motivation. You cannot be yourself for some
reason. You are yourself, and
no
reason is needed.
Questioner:
By doing Yoga I shall find peace.
Nisargadatta:
Can there be peace apart from yourself? Are you talking from your
own experience or from
books
only? Your book knowledge is useful to begin with, but soon it must
be given up for direct
experience,
which by its very nature is inexpressible. Words can be used for
destruction also; of
words
images are built, by words they are destroyed. You got yourself into
your present state
through
verbal thinking; you must get out of it the same way.
Questioner:
I did attain a degree of inner peace. Am I to destroy it?
Nisargadatta:
What has been attained may be lost again. Only when you realise the
true peace, the peace
you
have never lost, that peace will remain with you, for it was never
away. Instead of searching for
what
you do not have, find out what is it that you have never lost? That
which is there before the
beginning
and after the ending of everything; that to which there is no birth,
nor death. That
immovable
state, which is not affected by the birth and death of a body or a
mind, that state you
must
perceive.
Questioner:
What are the means to such perception?
Nisargadatta:
In life nothing can be had without overcoming obstacles. The
obstacles to the clear perception
of
one's true being are desire for pleasure and fear of pain. It is the
pleasure-pain motivation that
stands
in the way. The very freedom from all motivation, the state in which
no desire arises is the
natural
state.
Questioner:
Such giving up of desires, does it need time?
Nisargadatta:
If you leave it to time, millions of years will be needed. Giving up
desire after desire is a lengthy
process
with the end never in sight. Leave alone your desires and fears,
give your entire attention to
the
subject, to him who is behind the experience of desire and fear.
Ask: 'who desires?' Let each
desire
bring you back to yourself.
Questioner:
The root of all desires and fears is the same -- the longing for
happiness.
Nisargadatta:
The happiness you can think of and long for, is mere physical or
ment
al
satisfaction. Such
sensory
or mental pleasure is not the real, the absolute happiness.
Questioner:
Even sensory and mental pleasures and the general sense of
well-being which arises with
physical
and mental health, must have their roots in reality.
Nisargadatta:
They have their roots in imagination. A man who is given a stone and
assured that it is a
priceless
diamond will be mightily pleased until he realises his mistake; in
the same way pleasures
lose
their tang and pains their barb when the self is known. Both are
seen as they are -- conditional
responses,
mere reactions, plain attractions and repulsions, based on memories
or pre-
conceptions.
Usually pleasure and pain are experienced when expected. It is all a
matter of
acquired
habits and convictions.
Questioner:
Well, pleasure may be imaginary. But pain is real.
Nisargadatta:
Pain and pleasure go always together. Freedom from one means freedom
from both. If you do
not
care for pleasure, you will not be afraid of pain. But there is
happiness which is neither, which is
completely
beyond. The happiness you know is describable and measurable. It is
objective, so to
say.
But the objective cannot be your own. It would be a grievous mistake
to identify yourself with
something
external. This churning up of levels leads nowhere. Reality is
beyond the subjective and
objective,
beyond all levels, beyond every distinction. Most definitely it is
not their origin, source or
root.
These come from ignorance of reality, not from reality itself, which
is indescribable, beyond
being
and not-being.
Questioner:
Many teachers have I followed and studied many doctrines, yet none
gave me what I wanted.
Nisargadatta:
The desire to find the self will be surely fulfilled, provided you
want nothing else. But you must
be
honest with yourself and really want nothing else. If in the
meantime you want many other things
and
are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until
you grow wiser and
cease
being torn between contradictory urges. Go within, without swerving,
without ever looking
outward.
Questioner:
But my desires and fears are still there.
Nisargadatta:
Where are they but in your memory? realise that their root is in
expectation born of memory and
they
will cease to obsess you.
Questioner:
I have understood very well that social service is an endless task,
because improvement and
decay,
progress and regress, go side by side. We can see it on all sides
and on every level. What
remains?
Nisargadatta:
Whatever work you have undertaken -- complete it. Do not take up new
tasks. unless it is called
for
by a concrete situation of suffering and relief from suffering. Find
yourself first, and endless
blessings
will follow. Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of
profits. A man who no
longer
thinks in terms of loss and gain is the truly non-violent man, for
he is beyond all conflict.
Questioner:
Yes, I was always attracted by the idea of ahimsa (non-violence).
Nisargadatta:
Primarily, ahimsa means what it says: 'don't hurt'. It is not doing
good that comes first, but
ceasing
to hurt, not adding to suffering. Pleasing others is not ahimsa.
Questioner:
I am not talking of pleasing, but I am all for helping others.
Nisargadatta:
The only help worth giving is freeing from the need for further
help. Repeated help is no help at
all.
Do not talk of helping another, unless you can put him beyond all
need of help.
Questioner:
How does one go beyond the need of help? And can one help another to
do so?
Nisargadatta:
When you have understood that all existence, in separation and
limitation, is painful, and when
you
are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life,
as pure being, you have gone
beyond
all need of help. You can help another by precept and example and,
above all, by your
being.
You cannot give what you do not have and you don't have what you are
not. You can only
give
what you are -- and of that you can give limitlessly.
Questioner:
But, is it true that all existence is painful?
Nisargadatta:
What else can be the cause of this universal search for pleasure?
Does a happy man seek
happiness?
How restless people are, how constantly on the move! It is because
they are in pain
that
they seek relief in pleasure. All the happiness they can imagine is
in the assurance of repeated
pleasure.
Questioner:
If what I am, as I am, the person I take myself to be, cannot be
happy, then what am I to do?
Nisargadatta:
You can only cease to be -- as you seem to be now. There is nothing
cruel in what I say. To
wake
up a man from a nightmare is compassion. You came here because you
are in pain, and all I
say
is: wake up, know yourself, be yourself. The end of pain lies not in
pleasure. When you realise
that
you are beyond both pain and pleasure, aloof and unassailable, then
the pursuit of happiness
ceases
and the resultant sorrow too. For pain aims at pleasure and pleasure
ends in pain,
relentlessly.
Questioner:
In the ultimate state there can be no happiness?
Nisargadatta:
Nor sorrow. Only freedom. Happiness depends on something or other
and can be lost; freedom
from
everything depends on nothing and cannot be lost. Freedom from
sorrow has no cause and,
therefore,
cannot be destroyed. realise that freedom.
Questioner:
Am I not born to suffer as a result of my past? Is freedom possible
at all? Was I born of my own
will?
Am I not just a creature?
Nisargadatta:
What is birth and death but the beginning and the ending of a stream
of events in
consciousness?
Because of the idea of separation and limitation they are painful.
Momentary relief
from
pain we call pleasure -- and we build castles in the air hoping for
endless pleasure which we
call
happiness. It is all misunderstanding and misuse. Wake up, go
beyond, live really.
Questioner:
My knowledge is limited, my power negligible.
Nisargadatta:
Being the source of both. the self is beyond both knowledge and
power. The observable is in
the
mind. The nature of the self is pure awareness, pure witnessing,
unaffected by the presence or
absence
of knowledge or liking.
Have
your being outside this body of birth and death and all your
problems will be solved. They
exist
because you believe yourself born to die. Undeceive yourself and be
free. You are not a
person.