86.
The Unknown is the Home of the Real
Questioner:
Who is the Guru and who is the supreme Guru?
Nisargadatta:
All that happens in your consciousness is your Guru. And pure
awareness beyond
consciousness
is the supreme Guru.
Questioner:
My Guru is Sri Babaji. What is your opinion of him?
Nisargadatta:
What a question to ask! The space in Bombay is asked what is its
opinion of the space in
Poona.
The names differ, but not the space. The word ‘Babaji’ is merely as
address. Who lives
under
the address? You ask questions when you are in trouble. Enquire who
is giving trouble and to
whom.
Questioner:
I understand everybody is under the obligation to realise. Is it his
duty, or his destiny?
Nisargadatta:
Realisation is of the fact that you are not a person. Therefore, it
cannot be the duty of the
person
whose destiny is to disappear. Its destiny is the duty of him who
imagines himself to be the
person.
Find out who he is and the imagined person will dissolve. Freedom is
from something. What
are
you to be free from? Obviously, you must be free from the person,
you take yourself to be, for it
is
the idea you have of yourself that keeps you in bondage.
Questioner:
How is the person removed?
Nisargadatta:
By determination. Understand that it must go and wish it to go -- it
shall go if you are earnest
about
it. Somebody, anybody, will tell you that you are pure
consciousness, not a body-mind.
Accept
it as a possibility and investigate earnestly. You may discover that
it is not so, that you are
not
a person bound in space and time. Think of the difference it would
make!
Questioner:
If I am not a person, then what am I?
Nisargadatta:
Wet cloth looks, feels, smells differently as long as it is wet.
When dry it is again the normal
cloth.
Water has left it and who can make out that it was wet? Your real
nature is not like what you
appear
to be. Give up the idea of being a person, that is all. You need not
become what you are
anyhow.
There is the identity of what you are and there is the person
superimposed on it. All you
know
is the person, the identity -- which is not a person -- you do not
know, for you never doubted,
never
asked yourself the crucial question -- ‘Who am I’. The identity is
the witness of the person and
sadhana
consists in shifting the emphasis from the superficial and changeful
person to the
immutable
and ever-present witness.
Questioner:
How is it that the question ‘Who am I’ attracts me little? I prefer
to spend my time in the sweet
company
of saints.
Nisargadatta:
Abiding in your own being is also holy company. If you have no
problem of suffering and release
from
suffering, you will not find the energy and persistence needed for
self-enquiry. You cannot
manufacture
a crisis. It must be genuine.
Questioner:
How does a genuine crisis happen?
Nisargadatta:
It happens every moment, but you are not alert enough. A shadow on
your neighbour’s face, the
immense
and all-pervading sorrow of existence is a constant factor in your
life, but you refuse to
take
notice. You suffer and see others suffer, but you don’t respond.
Questioner:
What you say is true, but what can I do about it? Such indeed is the
situation. My helplessness
and
dullness are a part of it.
Nisargadatta:
Good enough. Look at yourself steadily -- it is enough. The door
that locks you in, is also the
door
that lets you out. The ‘I am’ is the door. Stay at it until it
opens. As a matter of fact, it is open,
only
you are not at it. You are waiting at the non-existent painted
doors, which will never open.
Questioner:
Many of us were taking drugs at some time, and to some extent.
People told us to take drugs in
order
to break through into higher levels of consciousness. Others advised
us to have abundant sex
for
the same purpose. What is your opinion in the matter?
Nisargadatta:
No doubt, a drug that can affect your brain can also affect your
mind, and give you all the
strange
experiences promised. But what are all the drugs compared to the
drug that gave you this
most
unusual experience of being born and living in sorrow and fear, in
search of happiness, which
does
not come, or does not last. You should enquire into the nature of
this drug and find an antidote.
Birth,
life, death -- they are one. Find out what had caused them. Before
you were born, you were
already
drugged. What kind of drug was it? You may cure yourself of all
diseases, but if you are still
under
the influence of the primordial drug, of what use are the
superficial cures?
Questioner:
Is it not karma that causes rebirth?
Nisargadatta:
You may change the name, but the fact remains. What is the drug
which you call karma or
destiny?
It made you believe yourself to be what you are not. What is it, and
can you be free of it?
Before
you go further you must accept, at least as a working theory, that
you are not what you
appear
to be, that you are under the influence of a drug. Then only will
you have the urge and the
patience
to examine the symptoms and search for their common cause. All that
a Guru can tell you
is:
‘My dear Sir, you are quite mistaken about yourself. You are not the
person you think yourself to
be.’
Trust nobody, not even yourself. Search, find out, remove and reject
every assumption till you
reach
the living waters and the rock of truth. Until you are free of the
drug, all your religions and
sciences,
prayers and Yogas are of no use to you, for based on a mistake, they
strengthen it. But if
you
stay with the idea that you are not the body nor the mind, not even
their witness, but altogether
beyond,
your mind will grow in clarity, your desires -- in purity, your
actions -- in charity and that
inner
distillation will take you to another world, a world of truth and
fearless love. Resist your old
habits
of feeling and thinking; keep on telling yourself: ‘No, not so, it
cannot be so; I am not like this,
I
do not need it, I do not want it’, and a day will surely come when
the entire structure of error and
despair
will collapse and the ground will be free for a new life. After all,
you must remember, that all
your
preoccupations with yourself are only in your waking hours and
partly in your dreams; in sleep
all
is put aside and forgotten. It shows how little important is your
waking life, even to yourself, that
merely
lying down and closing the eyes can end it. Each time you go to
sleep you do so without the
least
certainty of waking up and yet you accept the risk.
Questioner:
When you sleep, are you conscious or unconscious?
Nisargadatta:
I remain conscious, but not conscious of being a particular person.
Questioner:
Can you give us the taste of the experience of self-realisation?
Nisargadatta:
Take the whole of it! It is here for the asking. But you do not ask.
Even when you ask, you do
not
take. Find out what prevents you from taking.
Questioner:
I know what prevents -- my ego.
Nisargadatta:
Then get busy with your ego -- leave me alone. As long as you are
locked up within your mind,
my
state is beyond your grasp.
Questioner:
I find I have no more questions to ask.
Nisargadatta:
Were you really at war with your ego, you would have put many more
questions. You are short
of
questions because you are not really interested. At present you are
moved by the pleasure-pain
principle
which is the ego. You are going along with the ego, you are not
fighting it. You are not
even
aware how totally you are swayed by personal considerations. A man
should always revolt
against
himself, for the ego, like a crooked mirror, narrows down and
distorts. It is the worst of all
the
tyrants, it dominates you absolutely.
Questioner:
When there is no ‘I’ who is free?
Nisargadatta:
The world is free of a mighty nuisance. Good enough.
Questioner:
Good for whom?
Nisargadatta:
Good for everybody. It is like a rope stretched across the street,
it snarls up the traffic. Roll up, it
is
there, as mere identity, useful when needed. Freedom from the
ego-self is the fruit of self-enquiry.
Questioner:
There was a time when I was most displeased with myself. Now I have
met my Guru and I am
at
peace, after having surrendered myself to him completely.
Nisargadatta:
If you watch your daily life you will see that you have surrendered
nothing. You have merely
added
the word ‘surrender’ to your vocabulary and made your Guru into a
peg to hang your
problems
on. Real surrender means doing nothing, unless prompted by your
Guru. You step, so to
say,
aside and let your Guru live your life. You merely watch and wonder
how easily he solves the
problems
which to you seemed insoluble.
Questioner:
As I sit here, I see the room, the people. I see you too. How does
it look at your end? What do
you
see?
Nisargadatta:
Nothing. I look, but I do not see in the sense of creating images
clothed with judgements. I do
not
describe nor evaluate. I look, I see you, but neither attitude nor
opinion cloud my vision. And
when
I turn my eyes away, my mind does not allow memory to linger; it is
at once free and fresh for
the
next impression.
Questioner:
As I am here, looking at you, I cannot locate the event in space and
time. There is something
eternal
and universal about the transmission of wisdom that is taking place.
Ten thousand years
earlier,
or later, make no difference -- the event itself is timeless.
Nisargadatta:
Man does not change much over the ages. Human problems remain the
same and call for the
same
answers. Your being conscious of what you call transmission of
wisdom shows that wisdom
has
not yet been transmitted. When you have it, you are no longer
conscious of it. What is really
your
own, you are not conscious of. What you are conscious of is neither
you nor yours. Yours is
the
power of perception, not what you perceive. It is a mistake to take
the conscious to be the whole
of
man. Man is the unconscious, conscious and the super-conscious, but
you are not the man.
Yours
is the cinema screen, the light as well as the seeing power, but the
picture is not you.
Questioner:
Must I search for the Guru, or shall I stay with whomever I have
found?
Nisargadatta:
The very question shows that you have not yet found one. As long as
you have not realised,
you
will move from Guru to Guru, but when you have found yourself, the
search will end. A Guru is
a
milestone. When you are on the move, you pass so many milestones.
When you have reached
your
destination, it is the last alone that mattered. In reality all
mattered at their own time and none
matters
now.
Questioner:
You seem to give no importance to the Guru. He is merely an incident
among others.
Nisargadatta:
All incidents contribute, but none is crucial. On the road each step
helps you reach your
destination,
and each is as crucial as the other, for each step must be made, you
cannot skip it. If
you
refuse to make it, you are stuck!
Questioner:
Everybody sings the glories of the Guru, while you compare him to a
milestone. Don’t we need
a
Guru?
Nisargadatta:
Don’t we need a milestone? Yes and no. Yes, if we are uncertain, no
if we know our way. Once
we
are certain in ourselves, the Guru is no longer needed, except in a
technical sense. Your mind is
an
instrument, after all, and you should know how to use it. As you are
taught the uses of your
body,
so you should know how to use your mind.
Questioner:
What do I gain by learning to use my mind?
Nisargadatta:
You gain freedom from desire and fear, which are entirely due to
wrong uses of the mind. Mere
mental
knowledge is not enough. The known is accidental, the unknown is the
home of the real. To
live
in the known is bondage, to live in the unknown is liberation.
Questioner:
I have understood that all spiritual practice consists in the
elimination of the personal self. Such
practice
demands iron determination and relentless application. Where to find
the integrity and
energy
for such work?
Nisargadatta:
You find it in the company of the wise?
Questioner:
How do I know who is wise and who is merely clever?
Nisargadatta:
If your motives are pure, if you seek truth and nothing else, you
will find the right people. Finding
them
is easy, what is difficult is to trust them and take full advantage
of their advice and guidance.
Questioner:
Is the waking state more important for spiritual practice than
sleep?
Nisargadatta:
On the whole we attach too much importance, to the waking state.
Without sleep the waking
state
would be impossible; without sleep one goes mad or dies; why attach
so much importance to
waking
consciousness, which is obviously dependent on the unconscious? Not
only the conscious
but
the unconscious as well should be taken care of in our spiritual
practice.
Questioner:
How does one attend to the unconscious?
Nisargadatta:
Keep the ‘I am’ in the focus of awareness, remember that you are,
watch yourself ceaselessly
and
the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special
effort on your part. Wrong
desires
and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and
preventing its free interplay with
the
conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one
becomes all. The person
merges
into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure
being, yet identity is not
lost,
only its limitations are lost. It is transfigured, and becomes the
real Self, the sadguru, the
eternal
friend and guide. You cannot approach it in worship. No external
activity can reach the inner
self;
worship and prayers remain on the surface only; to go deeper
meditation is essential, the
striving
to go beyond the states of sleep, dream and waking. In the beginning
the attempts are
irregular,
then they recur more often, become regular, then continuous and
intense, until all
obstacles
are conquered.
Questioner:
Obstacles to what?
Nisargadatta:
To self-forgetting.
Questioner:
If worship and prayers are ineffectual why do you worship daily,
with songs and music, the
image
of your Guru!
Nisargadatta:
Those who want it, do it. I see no purpose in interfering.
Questioner:
But you take part in it.
Nisargadatta:
Yes, it appears so. But why be so concerned with me? Give all your
attention to the question:
‘What
is it that makes me conscious?’, until your mind becomes the
question itself and cannot think
of
anything else.
Questioner:
All and sundry are urging me to meditate. I find no zest in
meditation, but I am interested in
many
other things; some I want very much and my mind goes to them; my
attempts at meditation
are
so half-hearted. What am I to do?
Nisargadatta:
Ask yourself: ‘To whom it all happens?’ Use everything as an
opportunity to go within. Light your
way
by burning up obstacles in the intensity of awareness. When you
happen to desire or fear, it is
not
the desire or fear that are wrong and must go, but the person who
desires and fears. There is
no
point in fighting desires and fears which may be perfectly natural
and justified; It is the person,
who
is swayed by them, that is the cause of mistakes, past and future.
The person should be
carefully
examined and its falseness seen; then its power over you will end.
After all, it subsides
each
time you go to sleep. In deep sleep you are not a self-conscious
person, yet you are alive.
When
you are alive and conscious, but no longer self-conscious, you are
not a person anymore.
During
the waking hours you are, as if, on the stage, playing a role, but
what are you when the play
is
over? You are what you are; what you were before the play began you
remain when it is over.
Look
at yourself as performing on the stage of life. The performance may
be splendid or clumsy, but
you
are not in it, you merely watch it; with interest and sympathy, of
course, but keeping in mind all
the
time that you are only watching while the play -- life -- is going
on.
Questioner:
You are always stressing the cognition aspect of reality. You hardly
ever mention affection, and
will
-- never?
Nisargadatta:
Will, affection, bliss, striving and enjoying are so deeply tainted
with the personal, that they
cannot
be trusted. The clarification and purification needed at the very
start of the journey, only
awareness
can give. Love and will shall have their turn, but the ground must
be prepared. The sun
of
awareness must rise first -- all else will follow.