87.
Keep the Mind Silent and You shall Discover
Questioner:
Once I had a strange experience. I was not, nor was the world, there
was only light --within and without
--
and immense peace. This lasted for four days and then I returned to
the every-day consciousness.
Now
I have a feeling that all I know is merely a scaffolding, covering
and hiding the building under
construction.
The architect, the design, the plans, the purpose -- nothing I know;
some activity is
going
on, things are happening; that is all I can say. I am that
scaffolding, some thing very flimsy
and
short-lived; when the building is ready, the scaffolding will be
dismantled and removed. The ‘I
am’
and the ‘What am I’ are of no importance, because once the building
is ready, the ‘I’ will go as a
matter
of course, leaving no questions about itself to answer.
Nisargadatta:
Are you not aware of all this? Is not the fact of awareness the
constant factor?
Questioner:
My sense of permanency and identity is due to memory, which is so
evanescent and unreliable.
How
little I remember, even of the recent past! I have lived a
life-time, and now what is left with me?
A
bundle of events, at best a short story.
Nisargadatta:
All this takes place within your consciousness.
Questioner:
Within and without. In daytime -- within; in the night -- without.
Consciousness is not all. So
many
things happen beyond its reach. To say that what I am not conscious
of does not exist, is
altogether
wrong.
Nisargadatta:
What you say is logical, but actually you know only what is in your
consciousness. What you
claim
exists outside conscious experience is inferred.
Questioner:
It may be inferred and yet it is more real than the sensory.
Nisargadatta:
Be careful. The moment you start talking you create a verbal
universe, a universe of words,
ideas,
concepts and abstractions, interwoven and inter-dependent, most
wonderfully generating,
supporting
and explaining each other and yet all without essence or substance,
mere creations of
the
mind. Words create words, reality is silent.
Questioner:
When you talk, I hear you. Is it not a fact?
Nisargadatta:
That you hear is a fact. What you hear -- is not. The fact can be
experienced, and in that sense
the
sound of the word and the mental ripples it causes are experienced.
There is no other reality
behind
it. Its meaning is purely conventional, to be remembered; a language
can be easily
forgotten,
unless practiced.
Questioner:
If words have no reality in them why talk at all?
Nisargadatta:
They serve their limited purpose of inter-personal communication.
Words do not convey facts,
they
signal them. Once you are beyond the person, you need no words.
Questioner:
What can take me beyond the person? How to go beyond consciousness?
Nisargadatta:
Words and questions come from the mind and hold you there. To go
beyond the mind, you must
be
silent and quiet. Peace and silence, silence and peace -- this is
the way beyond. Stop asking
questions.
Questioner:
Once I give up asking questions, what am I to do?
Nisargadatta:
What can you do but wait and watch?
Questioner:
What am I to wait for?
Nisargadatta:
For the centre of your being to emerge into consciousness. The three
states -- sleeping,
dreaming
and waking are all in consciousness, the manifested; what you call
unconsciousness will
also
be manifested -- in time; beyond consciousness altogether lies the
unmanifested. And beyond
all,
and pervading all, is the heart of being which beats steadily --
manifested-unmanifested;
manifested-unmanifested
(saguna-nirguna).
Questioner:
On the verbal level it sounds all right. I can visualise myself as
the seed of being, a point in
consciousness,
with my sense ‘I am’ pulsating, appearing and disappearing
alternately. But what
am
I to do to realise it as a fact, to go beyond into the changeless,
wordless Reality?
Nisargadatta:
You can do nothing. What time has brought about, time will take
away.
Questioner:
Why then all these exhortations to practice Yoga and seek reality?
They make me feel
empowered
and responsible, while in fact it is time that does all.
Nisargadatta:
This is the end of Yoga-- to realise independence. All that happens,
happens in and to the
mind,
not to the source of the ‘I am’. Once you realise that all happens
by itself, (call it destiny, or
the
will of God or mere accident), you remain as witness only,
understanding and enjoying, but not
perturbed.
Questioner:
If I cease trusting words altogether, what will be my condition?
Nisargadatta:
There is a season for trusting and for distrusting. Let the seasons
do their work, why worry?
Questioner:
Somehow I feel responsible for what happens around me.
Nisargadatta:
You are responsible only for what you can change. All you can change
is only your attitude.
There
lies your responsibility.
Questioner:
You are advising me to remain indifferent to the sorrows of others!
Nisargadatta:
It is not that you are indifferent. All the sufferings of mankind do
not prevent you from enjoying
your
next meal. The witness is not indifferent. He is the fullness of
understanding and compassion.
Only
as the witness you can help another.
Questioner:
All my life I was fed on words. The number of words I have heard and
read go into the billions.
Did
it benefit me? Not at all!
Nisargadatta:
The mind shapes the language and the language shapes the mind. Both
are tools, use them but
don’t
misuse them. Words can bring you only unto their own limit; to go
beyond, you must abandon
them.
Remain as the silent witness only.
Questioner:
How can I? The world disturbs me greatly.
Nisargadatta:
It is because you think yourself big enough to be affected by the
world. It is not so. You are so
small
that nothing can pin you down. It is your mind that gets caught, not
you. Know yourself as you
are--
a mere point in consciousness, dimensionless and timeless. You are
like the point of the
pencil
-- by mere contact with you the mind draws its picture of the world.
You are single and simple
--
the picture is complex and extensive. Don’t be misled by the picture
-- remain aware of the tiny
point
-- which is everywhere in the picture.
What
is, can cease to be; what is not, can come to be; but what neither
is nor is not, but on which
being
and non-being depend, is unassailable; know yourself to be the cause
of desire and fear,
itself
free from both.
Questioner:
How am I the cause of fear?
Nisargadatta:
All depends on you. It is by your consent that the world exists.
Withdraw your belief in its reality
and
it will dissolve like a dream. Time can bring down mountains; much
more you, who are the
timeless
source of time. For without memory and expectation there can be no
time.
Questioner:
Is the ‘I am’ the Ultimate?
Nisargadatta:
Before you can say: ‘I am’, you must be there to say it. Being need
not be self-conscious. You
need
not know to be, but you must be to know.
Questioner:
Sir, I am getting drowned in a sea of words! I can see that all
depends on how the words are
out
together, but there must be somebody to put them together --
meaningfully. By drawing words at
random
the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavata could never be produced. The
theory of
accidental
emergence is not tenable. The origin of the meaningful must be
beyond it. What is the
power
that creates order out of chaos? Living is more than being, and
consciousness is more than
living.
Who is the conscious living being?
Nisargadatta:
Your question contains the answer: a conscious living being is a
conscious living being. The
words
are most appropriate, but you do not grasp their full import. Go
deep into the meaning of the
words:
being, living, conscious, and you will stop running in circles,
asking questions, but missing
answers.
Do understand that you cannot ask a valid question about yourself,
because you do not
know
whom you are asking about. In the question ‘Who am I?’ the ‘I’ is
not known and the question
can
be worded as: “I do not know what I mean by ‘I’” What you are, you
must find out. I can only tell
you
what you are not. You are not of the world, you are not even in the
world. The world is not, you
alone
are. You create the world in your imagination like a dream. As you
cannot separate the dream
from
yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself.
You are independent, not
the
world. Don’t be afraid of a world you yourself have created. Cease
from looking for happiness
and
reality in a dream and you will wake up. You need not know ‘why’ and
‘how’, there is no end to
questions.
Abandon all desires, keep your mind silent and you shall discover.