94.
You are Beyond Space and Time
Questioner:
You keep on saying that I was never born and will never die. If so,
how is it that I see
the
world as one which has been born and will surely die?
Nisargadatta:
You believe so because you have never questioned your belief that
you are the body
which,
obviously, is born and dies. While alive, it attracts attention and
fascinates so completely that
rarely
does one perceive one's real nature. It is like seeing the surface
of the ocean and completely
forgetting
the immensity beneath. The world is but the surface of the mind and
the mind is infinite.
What
we call thoughts are just ripples in the mind. When the mind is
quiet it reflects reality. When it
is
motionless through and through, it dissolves and only reality
remains. This reality is so concrete,
so
actual, so much more tangible than mind and matter, that compared to
it even diamond is soft
like
butter. This overwhelming actuality makes the world dreamlike,
misty, irrelevant.
Questioner:
This world, with so much suffering in it, how can you see it as
irrelevant. What callousness!
Nisargadatta:
It is you who is callous, not me. If your world is so full of
suffering, do something about it; don't
add
to it through greed or indolence. I am not bound by your dreamlike
world. In my world the seeds
of
suffering, desire and fear are not sown and suffering does not grow.
My world is free from
opposites,
of mutually distinctive discrepancies; harmony pervades; its peace
is rocklike; this peace
and
silence are my body.
Questioner:
What you say reminds me of the dharmakaya of the Buddha.
Nisargadatta:
Maybe. We need not run off with terminology. Just see the person you
imagine yourself to be as
a
part of the world you perceive within your mind and look at the mind
from the outside, for you are
not
the mind. After all, your only problem is the eager
self-identification with whatever you perceive.
Give
up this habit, remember that you are not what you perceive, use your
power of alert aloofness.
See
yourself in all that lives and your behaviour will express your
vision. Once you realise that there
is
nothing in this world, which you can call your own, you look at it
from the outside as you look at a
play
on the stage, or a picture on the screen, admiring and enjoying, but
really unmoved. As long as
you
imagine yourself to be something tangible and solid, a thing among
things, actually existing in
time
and space, short-lived and vulnerable, naturally you will be anxious
to survive and increase.
But
when you know yourself as beyond space and time -- in contact with
them only at the point of
here
and now, otherwise all-pervading and all-containing, unapproachable,
unassailable,
invulnerable
-- you will be afraid no longer. Know yourself as you are -- against
fear there is no
other
remedy.
You
have to learn to think and feel on these lines, or you will remain
indefinitely on the personal
level
of desire and fear, gaining and losing, growing and decaying. A
personal problem cannot be
solved
on its own level. The very desire to live is the. messenger of
death, as the longing to be
happy
is the outline of sorrow. The world is an ocean of pain and fear, of
anxiety and despair.
Pleasures
are like the fishes, few and swift, rarely come, quickly gone. A man
of low intelligence
believes,
against all evidence, that he is an exception and that the world
owes him happiness. But
the
world cannot give what it does not have; unreal to the core, it is
of no use for real happiness. It
cannot
be otherwise. We seek the real because we are unhappy with the
unreal. Happiness is our
real
nature and we shall never rest until we find it. But rarely we know
where to seek it. Once you
have
understood that the world is but a mistaken view of reality, and is
not what it appears to be,
you
are free of its obsessions. Only what is compatible with your real
being can make you happy
and
the world, as you perceive it, is its outright denial.
Keep
very quiet and watch what comes to the surface of the mind. Reject
the known, welcome the
so
far unknown and reject it in its turn. Thus you come to a state in
which there is no knowledge,
only
being, in which being itself is knowledge. To know by being is
direct knowledge. It is based on
the
identity of the seer and the seen. Indirect knowledge is based on
sensation and memory, on
proximity
of the perceiver and his percept, confined with the contrast between
the two. The same
with
happiness. Usually you have to be sad to know gladness and glad to
know sadness. True
happiness
is uncaused and this cannot disappear for lack of stimulation. It is
not the opposite of
sorrow,
it includes all sorrow and suffering.
Questioner:
How can one remain happy among so much suffering?
Nisargadatta:
One cannot help it -- the inner happiness is overwhelmingly real.
Like the sun in the sky, its
expressions
may be clouded, but it is never absent.
Questioner:
When we are in trouble, we are bound to be unhappy.
Nisargadatta:
Fear is the only trouble. Know yourself as independent and you will
be free from fear and its
shadows.
Questioner:
What is the difference between happiness and pleasure?
Nisargadatta:
Pleasure depends on things, happiness does not.
Questioner:
If happiness is independent, why are we not always happy?
Nisargadatta:
As long as we believe that we need things to make us happy, we shall
also believe that in their
absence
we must be miserable. Mind always shapes itself according to its
beliefs. Hence the
importance
of convincing oneself that one need not be prodded into happiness;
that, on the
contrary,
pleasure is a distraction and a nuisance, for it merely increases
the false conviction that
one
needs to have and do things to be happy when in reality it is just
the opposite.
But
why talk of happiness at all? You do not think of happiness except
when you are unhappy. A
man
who says: 'Now I am happy', is between two sorrows -- past and
future. This happiness is
mere
excitement caused by relief from pain. Real happiness is utterly
unselfconscious. It is best
expressed
negatively as: 'there is nothing wrong with me. I have nothing to
worry about'. After all,
the
ultimate purpose of all sadhana is to reach a point, when this
conviction, instead of being only
verbal,
is based on the actual and ever-present experience.
Questioner:
Which experience?
Nisargadatta:
The experience of being empty, uncluttered by memories and
expectations; it is like the
happiness
of open spaces, of being young, of having all the time and energy
for doing things, for
discovery,
for adventure.
Questioner:
What remains to discover?
Nisargadatta:
The universe without and the immensity within as they are in
reality, in the great mind and heart
of
God. The meaning and purpose of existence, the secret of suffering,
life's redemption from
ignorance.
Questioner:
If being happy is the same as being free from fear and worry, cannot
it be said that absence of
trouble
is the cause of happiness?
Nisargadatta:
A state of absence, of non-existence cannot be a cause; the
pre-existence of a cause is implied
in
the notion. Your natural state, in which nothing exists, cannot be a
cause of becoming; the
causes
are hidden in the great and mysterious power of memory. But your
true home is in
nothingness,
in emptiness of all content.
Questioner:
Emptiness and nothingness -- how dreadful!
Nisargadatta:
You face it most cheerfully, when you go to sleep! Find out for
yourself the state of wakeful
sleep
and you will find it quite in harmony with your real nature. Words
can only give you the idea
and
the idea is not the experience. All I can say is that true happiness
has no cause and what has
no
cause is immovable. Which does not mean it is perceivable, as
pleasure. What is perceivable is
pain
and pleasure; the state of freedom from sorrow can be described only
negatively. To know it
directly
you must go beyond the mind addicted to causality and the tyranny of
time.
Questioner:
If happiness is not conscious and consciousness -- not happy, what
is the link between the two?
Nisargadatta:
Consciousness being a product of conditions and circumstances,
depends on them and
changes
along with them. What is independent, uncreated, timeless and
changeless, and yet ever
new
and fresh, is beyond the mind. When the mind thinks of it, the mind
dissolves and only
happiness
remains.
Questioner:
When all goes, nothingness remains.
Nisargadatta:
How can there be nothing without something? Nothing is only an idea,
it depends on the
memory
of something. Pure being is quite independent of existence, which is
definable and
describable.
Questioner:
Please tell us; beyond the mind does consciousness continue, or does
it end with the mind?
Nisargadatta:
Consciousness comes and goes, awareness shines immutably.
Questioner:
Who is aware in awareness?
Nisargadatta:
When there is a person, there is also consciousness. 'I am' mind,
consciousness denote the
same
state. If you say 'I am aware', it only means: 'I am conscious of
thinking about being aware'.
There
is no 'I am' in awareness.
Questioner:
What about witnessing?
Nisargadatta:
Witnessing is of the mind. The witness goes with the witnessed. In
the state of non-duality all
separation
ceases.
Questioner:
What about you? Do you continue in awareness?
Nisargadatta:
The person, the 'I am this body, this mind, this chain of memories,
this bundle of desires and
fears'
disappears, but something you may call identity, remains. It enables
me to become a person
when
required. Love creates its own necessities, even of becoming a
person.
Questioner:
It is said that Reality manifests itself as existence --
consciousness -- bliss. Are they absolute or
relative?
Nisargadatta:
They are relative to each other and depend on each other. Reality is
independent of its
expressions.
Questioner:
What is the relation between reality and its expressions?
Nisargadatta:
No relation. In reality all is real and identical. As we put it,
saguna and nirguna are one in
Parabrahman.
There is only the Supreme. In movement, it Is saguna. Motionless, it
is nirguna. But it
is
only the mind that moves or does not move. The real is beyond, you
are beyond. Once you have
understood
that nothing perceivable, or conceivable can be yourself, you are
free of your
imaginations.
To see everything as imagination, born of desire, is necessary for
self-realisation. We
miss
the real by lack of attention and create the unreal by excess of
imagination.
You
have to give your heart and mind to these things and brood over them
repeatedly. It is like
cooking
food. You must keep it on the fire for some time before it is ready.
Questioner:
Am I not under the sway of destiny, of my karma? What can I do
against it? What I am and
what
I do is pre-determined. Even my so-called free choice is
predetermined; only I am not aware of
it
and imagine myself to be free.
Nisargadatta:
Again, it all depends how you look at it. Ignorance is like a fever
-- it makes you see things
which
are not there. Karma is the divinely prescribed treatment. Welcome
it and follow the
instructions
faithfully and you will get well. A patient will leave the hospital
after he recovers. To
insist
on immediate freedom of choice and action will merely postpone
recovery. Accept your
destiny
and fulfil it -- this is the shortest way to freedom from destiny,
though not from love and its
compulsions.
To act from desire and fear is bondage, to act from love is freedom.