42.
Reality can not be Expressed
Questioner:
I have noticed a new self emerging in me, independent of the old
self. They somehow co-exist.
The
old self goes on its habitual ways; the new lets the old be, but
does not identify itself with it.
Nisargadatta:
What is the main difference between the old self and the new?
Questioner:
The old self wants everything defined and explained. It wants
things to fit each other verbally.
The
new does not care for verbal explanations -- it accepts things as
they are and does not seek to
relate
them to things remembered.
Nisargadatta:
Are you fully and constantly aware of the difference between the
habitual and the spiritual. What
is
the attitude of the new self to the old?
Questioner:
The new just looks at the old. It is neither friendly nor
inimical. It just accepts the old self along
with
everything else. It does not deny its being, but does not accept
its value and validity.
Nisargadatta:
The new is the total denial of the old. The permissive new is not
really new. It is but a new
attitude
of the old. The really new obliterates the old completely. The two
cannot be together. Is
there
a process of self-denudation, a constant refusal to accept the old
ideas and values, or is there
just
a mutual tolerance? What is their relation?
Questioner:
There is no particular relation. They co-exist.
Nisargadatta:
When you talk of the old self and new, whom do you have in mind?
As there is continuity in
memory
between the two, each remembering the other, how can you speak of
two selves?
Questioner:
One is a slave to habits, the other is not. One conceptualises,
the other is free from all ideas.
Nisargadatta:
Why two selves? Between the bound and the free there can be no
relationship. The very fact of
co-existence
proves their basic unity. There is but one self -- it is always
now. What you call the
other
self -- old or new -- is but a modality, another aspect of the one
self. The self is single. You are
that
self and you have ideas of what you have been or will be. But an
idea is not the self. Just now,
as
you are sitting in front of me, which self are you? The old or the
new?
Questioner:
The two are in conflict.
Nisargadatta:
How can there be conflict between what is and what is not?
Conflict is the characteristic of the
old.
When the new emerges the old is no longer. You cannot speak of the
new and the conflict in
the
same breath. Even the effort of striving for the new self is of
the old. Wherever there is conflict,
effort,
struggle, striving, longing for a change, the new is not. To what
extent are you free from the
habitual
tendency to create and perpetuate conflicts?
Questioner:
I cannot say that I am now a different man. But I did discover new
things about myself, states
so
unlike what I knew before that I feel justified in calling them
new.
Nisargadatta:
The old self is your own self. The state which sprouts suddenly
and without cause, carries no
stain
of self; you may call it 'god'. What is seedless and rootless,
what does not sprout and grow,
flower
and fruit, what comes into being suddenly and in full glory,
mysteriously and marvellously,
you
may call that 'god'. It is entirely unexpected yet inevitable,
infinitely familiar yet most surprising,
beyond
all hope yet absolutely certain. Because it is without cause, it
is without hindrance. It obeys
one
law only; the law of freedom. Anything that implies a continuity,
a sequence, a passing from
stage
to stage cannot be the real. There is no progress in reality, it
is final, perfect, unrelated.
Questioner:
How can I bring it about?
Nisargadatta:
You can do nothing to bring it about, but you can avoid creating
obstacles. Watch your mind,
how
it comes into being, how it operates. As you watch your mind, you
discover your self as the
watcher.
When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self
as the light behind the
watcher.
The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge.
That source alone is. Go
back
to that source and abide there. It is not in the sky nor in the
all-pervading ether. God is all that
is
great and wonderful; I am nothing, have nothing, can do nothing.
Yet all comes out of me -- the
source
is me; the root, the origin is me.
When
reality explodes in you, you may call it experience of God. Or,
rather, it is God experiencing
you.
God knows you when you know yourself. Reality is not the result of
a process; it is an
explosion.
It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is to know
your mind well. Not that the
mind
will help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind
disabling you. You have to
be
very alert, or else your mind will play false with you. It is like
watching a thief -- not that you
expect
anything from a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the
same way you give a lot of
attention
to the mind without expecting anything from it.
Or,
take another example. We wake and we sleep. After a day's work
sleep comes. Now, do I go to
sleep
or does inadvertence -- characteristic of the sleeping state --
come to me? In other words --
we
are awake because we are asleep. We do not wake up into a really
waking state. In the waking
state
the world emerges due to ignorance and takes one into a
waking-dream state. Both sleep and
waking
are misnomers. We are only dreaming. True waking and true sleeping
only the jnani knows.
We
dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep. The three
states are only varieties of
the
dream state. Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as
you give reality to dreams,
you
are their slave. By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you
become a slave to the so-and-
so.
The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to
have past and future, to have
history.
In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not
develop, nor decay; also see all
as
a dream and stay out of it.
Questioner:
What benefit do I derive from listening to you?
Nisargadatta:
I am calling you back to yourself. All I ask you is to look at
yourself, towards yourself, into
yourself.
Questioner:
To what purpose?
Nisargadatta:
You live, you feel, you think. By giving attention to your living,
feeling and thinking, you free
yourself
from them and go beyond them. Your personality dissolves and only
the witness remains.
Then
you go beyond the witness. Do not ask how it happens. Just search
within yourself.
Questioner:
What makes the difference between the person and the witness?
Nisargadatta:
Both are modes of consciousness. In one you desire and fear, in
the other you are unaffected
by
pleasure and pain and are not ruffled by events. You let them come
and go.
Questioner:
How does one get established in the higher state, the state of
pure witnessing?
Nisargadatta:
Consciousness does not shine by itself. It shines by a light
beyond it. Having seen the
dreamlike
quality of consciousness, look for the light in which it appears,
which gives it being. There
is
the content of consciousness as well as the awareness of it.
Questioner:
I know and I know that I know.
Nisargadatta:
Quite so, provided the second knowledge is unconditional and
timeless. Forget the known, but
remember
that you are the knower. Don't be all the time immersed in your
experiences. Remember
that
you are beyond the experience ever unborn and deathless. In
remembering it, the quality of
pure
knowledge will emerge, the light of unconditional awareness.
Questioner:
At what point does one experience reality?
Nisargadatta:
Experience is of change, it comes and goes. Reality is not an
event, it cannot be experienced. It
is
not perceivable in the same way as an event is perceivable. If you
wait for an event to take place,
for
the coming of reality, you will wait for ever, for reality neither
comes nor goes. It is to be
perceived,
not expected. It is not to be prepared for and anticipated. But
the very longing and
search
for reality is the movement, operation, action of reality. All you
can do is to grasp the central
point,
that reality is not an event and does not happen and whatever
happens, whatever comes and
goes,
is not reality. See the event as event only, the transient as
transient, experience as mere
experience
and you have done all you can. Then you are vulnerable to reality,
no longer armoured
against
it, as you were when you gave reality to events and experiences.
But as soon as there is
some
like or dislike, you have drawn a screen.
Questioner:
Would you say that reality expresses itself in action rather than
in knowledge? Or, is it a feeling
of
sorts?
Nisargadatta:
Neither action, nor feeling, nor thought express reality. There is
no such thing as an expression
of
reality. You are introducing a duality where there is none. Only
reality is, there is nothing else.
The
three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping are not me and I am
not in them. When I die, the
world
will say -- 'Oh, Maharaj is dead!' But to me these are words
without content; they have no
meaning.
When the worship is done before the image of the Guru, all takes
place as if he wakes
and
bathes and eats and rests, and goes for a stroll and returns,
blesses all and goes to sleep. All is
attended
to in minutest details and yet there is a sense of unreality about
it all. So is the case with
me.
All happens as it needs, yet nothing happens. I do what seems to
be necessary, but at the
same
time I know that nothing is necessary, that life itself is only a
make-belief.
Questioner:
Why then live at all? Why all this unnecessary coming and going,
waking and sleeping, eating
and
digesting?
Nisargadatta:
Nothing is done by me, everything just happens I do not expect, I
do not plan, I just watch
events
happening, knowing them to be unreal.
Questioner:
Were you always like this from the first moment of enlightenment?
Nisargadatta:
The three states rotate as usual -- there is waking and sleeping
and waking again, but they do
not
happen to me. They just happen. To me nothing ever happens. There
is something changeless,
motionless,
immovable, rocklike, unassailable; a solid mass of pure
being-consciousness-bliss. I am
never
out of it. Nothing can take me out of it, no torture, no calamity.
Questioner:
Yet, you are conscious!
Nisargadatta:
Yes and no. There is peace -- deep, immense, unshakeable. Events
are registered in memory,
but
are of no importance. I am hardly aware of them.
Questioner:
If I understand you rightly, this state did not come by
cultivation.
Nisargadatta:
There was no coming. It was so -- always. There was discovery and
it was sudden. Just as at
birth
you discover the world suddenly, as suddenly I discovered my real
being.
Questioner:
Was it clouded over and your sadhana dissolved the mist? When your
true state became clear
to
you, did it remain clear, or did it get obscured again? Is your
condition permanent or intermittent?
Nisargadatta:
Absolutely steady. Whatever I may do, it stays like a rock --
motionless. Once you have
awakened
into reality, you stay in it. A child does not return to the womb!
It is a simple state, smaller
than
the smallest, bigger than the biggest. It is self-evident and yet
beyond description.
Questioner:
Is there a way to it?
Nisargadatta:
Everything can become a way, provided you are interested. Just
puzzling over my words and
trying
to grasp their full meaning is a sadhana quite sufficient for
breaking down the wall. Nothing
troubles
me. I offer no resistance to trouble -- therefore it does not stay
with me. On your side there
is
so much trouble. On mine there is no trouble at all. Come to my
side. You are trouble-prone. I am
immune.
Anything may happen -- what is needed is sincere interest.
Earnestness does it.
Questioner:
Can I do it?
Nisargadatta:
Of course. You are quite capable of crossing over. Only be
sincere.