39.
By Itself Nothing has Existence
Questioner:
As I listen to you I find that it is useless to ask you questions.
Whatever the question,
you
invariably turn it upon itself and bring me to the basic fact that
I am living in an illusion of my
own
making and that reality is inexpressible in words. Words merely
add to the confusion and the
only
wise course is the silent search within.
Nisargadatta:
After all, it is the mind that creates illusion and it is the mind
that gets free of it. Words
may
aggravate illusion, words may also help dispel it. There is
nothing wrong in repeating the same
truth
again and again until it becomes reality. Mother's work is not
over with the birth of the child.
She
feeds it day after day, year after year until it needs her no
longer. People need hearing words,
until
facts speak to them louder than words.
Questioner:
So we are children to be fed on words?
Nisargadatta:
As long as you give importance to words, you are children.
Questioner:
All right, then be our mother.
Nisargadatta:
Where was the child before it was born? Was it not with the
mother? Because it was already
with
the mother it could be born.
Questioner:
Surely, the mother did not carry the child when she was a child
herself.
Nisargadatta:
Potentially, she was the mother. Go beyond the illusion of time.
Questioner:
Your answer is always the same. A kind of clockwork which strikes
the same hours again and
again.
Nisargadatta:
It can not be helped. Just like the one sun is reflected in a
billion dew drops, so is the timeless
endlessly
repeated. When l repeat: 'I am, I am', I merely assert and
re-assert an ever-present fact.
You
get tired of my words because you do not see the living truth
behind them. Contact it and you
will
find the full meaning of words and of silence -- both.
Questioner:
You say that the little girl is already the mother of her future
child. Potentially -- yes. Actually --
no.
Nisargadatta:
The potential becomes actual by thinking. The body and its affairs
exist in the mind.
Questioner:
And the mind is consciousness in motion and consciousness is the
conditioned (saguna)
aspect
of the Self. The unconditioned (nirguna) is another aspect and
beyond lies the abyss of the
absolute
(paramartha).
Nisargadatta:
Quite right -- you have put it beautifully.
Questioner:
But these are mere words to me. Hearing and repeating them is not
enough, they must be
experienced.
Nisargadatta:
Nothing stops you but preoccupation with the outer which prevents
you from focussing the
inner.
It cannot be helped, you cannot skip your sadhana . You have to
turn away from the world and
go
within, until the inner and the outer merge and you can go beyond
the conditioned, whether inner
or
outer.
Questioner:
Surely, the unconditioned is merely an idea in the conditioned
mind. By itself it has no
existence.
Nisargadatta:
By itself nothing has existence. Everything needs its own absence.
To be, is to be
distinguishable,
to be here and not there, to be now and not then, to be thus and
not otherwise. Like
water
is shaped by the container, so is everything determined by
conditions (gunas). As water
remains
water regardless of the vessels, as light remains itself
regardless of the colours it brings
out,
so does the real remain real, regardless of conditions in which it
is reflected. Why keep the
reflection
only in the focus of consciousness? Why not the real itself?
Questioner:
Consciousness itself is a reflection. How can it hold the real?
Nisargadatta:
To know that consciousness and its content are but reflections,
changeful and transient, is the
focussing
of the real. The refusal to see the snake in the rope is the
necessary condition for seeing
the
rope.
Questioner:
Only necessary, or also sufficient?
Nisargadatta:
One must also know that a rope exists and looks like a snake.
Similarly, one must know that the
real
exists and is of the nature of witness-consciousness. Of course it
is beyond the witness, but to
enter
it one must first realise the state of pure witnessing. The
awareness of conditions brings one
to
the unconditioned.
Questioner:
Can the unconditioned be experienced?
Nisargadatta:
To know the conditioned as conditioned is all that can be said
about the unconditioned. Positive
terms
are mere hints and misleading.
Questioner:
Can we talk of witnessing the real?
Nisargadatta:
How can we? We can talk only of the unreal, the illusory, the
transient, the conditioned. To go
beyond,
we must pass through total negation of everything as having
independent existence. All
things
depend.
Questioner:
On what do they depend?
Nisargadatta:
On consciousness. And consciousness depends on the witness.
Questioner:
And the witness depends on the real?
Nisargadatta:
The witness is the reflection of the real in all its purity. It
depends on the condition of the mind.
Where
clarity and detachment predominate, the witness-consciousness
comes into being. It is just
like
saying that where the water is clear and quiet, the image of the
moon appears. Or like daylight
that
appears as sparkle in the diamond.
Questioner:
Can there be consciousness without the witness?
Nisargadatta:
Without the witness it becomes unconsciousness, just living. The
witness is latent in every state
of
consciousness, just like light in every colour. There can be no
knowledge without the knower and
no
knower without his witness. Not only you know, but you know that
you know.
Questioner:
If the unconditioned cannot be experienced, for all experience is
conditioned, then why talk of it
at
all?
Nisargadatta:
How can there be knowledge of the conditioned without the
unconditioned? There must be a
source
from which all this flows, a foundation on which all stands.
Self-realisation is primarily the
knowledge
of one's conditioning and the awareness that the infinite variety
of conditions depends
on
our infinite ability to be conditioned and to give rise to
variety. To the conditioned mind the
unconditioned
appears as the totality as well as the absence of everything.
Neither can be directly
experienced,
but this does not make it not-existent.
Questioner:
Is it not a feeling?
Nisargadatta:
A feeling too is a state of mind. Just like a healthy body does
not call for attention, so is the
unconditioned
free from experience. Take the experience of death. The ordinary
man is afraid to
die,
because he is afraid of change. The jnani is not afraid because
his mind is dead already. He
does
not think: 'I live'. He knows: 'There is life'. There is no change
in it and no death. Death
appears
to be a change in time and space. Where there is neither time nor
space, how can there be
death?
The jnani is already dead to name and shape. How can their loss
affect him? The man in the
train
travels from place to place, but the man off the train goes
nowhere, for he is not bound for a
destination.
He has nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to become. Those who
make plans will be
born
to carry them out. Those who make no plans need not be born.
Questioner:
What is the purpose of pain and pleasure?
Nisargadatta:
Do they exist by themselves, or only in the mind?
Questioner:
Still, they exist. Never mind the mind.
Nisargadatta:
Pain and pleasure are merely symptoms, the results of wrong
knowledge and wrong feeling. A
result
cannot have a purpose of its own.
Questioner:
In God's economy everything must have a purpose.
Nisargadatta:
Do you know God that you talk of him so freely? What is God to
you? A sound, a word on
paper,
an idea in the mind?
Questioner:
By his power I am born and kept alive.
Nisargadatta:
And suffer, and die. Are you glad?
Questioner:
It may be my own fault that I suffer and die. I was created unto
life eternal.
Nisargadatta:
Why eternal in the future and not in the past. What has a
beginning must have an end. Only the
beginningless
is endless.
Questioner:
God may be a mere concept, a working theory. A very useful concept
all the same!
Nisargadatta:
For this it must be free of inner contradictions, which is not the
case. Why not work on the
theory
that you are your own creation and creator. At least there will be
no external God to battle
with.
Questioner:
This world is so rich and complex -- how could I create it?
Nisargadatta:
Do you know yourself enough to know what you can do and what you
cannot? You do not know
your
own powers. You never investigated. Begin with yourself now.
Questioner:
Everybody believes in God.
Nisargadatta:
To me you are your own God. But if you think otherwise, think to
the end. If there be God, then
all
is God's and all is for the best. Welcome all that comes with a
glad and thankful heart. And love
all
creatures. This too will take you to your Self.