I am that by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj - HTML preview

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M: Of what use is the relative view to you? You are able to look from the absolute point of view — why go back to the relative?

Are you afraid of the absolute?

Q: I am afraid. I am afraid of falling asleep over my so-called absolute certainties. For living a life decently absolutes don’t heir. When you need a shirt, you buy cloth, call a tailor and so on.

M: All this talk shows ignorance.

Q: And what is the knower’s view?

M: There is only light and the light is all. Everything else is but a APPEARANCES AND THE REALITY

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picture made of light. The picture is in the light and the light is in the picture. Life and death, self and not-self — abandon all these ideas. They are of no use to you.

Q: From what point of view you deny causation? From the relative — the universe is the cause of everything. From the absolute — there is no thing at all.

M: From which state are you asking?

Q: From the daily waking state, in which alone all these discussions take place.

M: In the waking state all these problems arise, for such is its nature. But, you are not always in that state. What good can you do in a state into which you fall and from which you emerge, helplessly. In what way does it help you to know that things are causally related — as they may appear to be in your waking state?

Q: The world and the waking state emerge and subside together.

M: When the mind is still, absolutely silent, the waking state is no more.

Q: Words like God, universe, the total, absolute, supreme are just noises in the air, because no action can be taken on them.

M: You are bringing up questions which you alone can answer.

Q: Don’t brush me off like this! You are so quick to speak for the totality, the universe and such imaginary things! They cannot come and forbid you to talk on their behalf. I hate those irresponsible generalizations! And you are so prone to personalize them. Without causality there will be no order; nor purposeful action will be possible.

M: Do you want to know all the causes of each event? Is it possible?

Q: I know it is not possible! All I want to know is if there are causes for everything and the causes can be influenced, thereby affecting the events?

M: To influence events, you need not know the causes. What a roundabout way of doing things! Are you not the source and the end of every event? Control it at the source itself.

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I AM THAT

Q: Every morning I pick up the newspaper and read with dis-may that the world’s sorrows — poverty, hatred and wars —

continue unabated. My questions are concerning the fact of sorrow, the cause, the remedy. Don’t brush me off saying that it is Buddhism! Don’t label me. Your insistence on causelessness removes all hope of the world ever changing.

M: You are confused, because you believe that you are in the world, not the world in you. Who came first — you or your parents? You imagine that you were born at a certain time and place, that you have a father and a mother, a body and a name.

This is your sin and your calamity! Surely you can change your world if you work at it. By all means, work. Who stops you? I have never discouraged you. Causes or no causes, you have made this world and you can change it.

Q: A causeless world is entirely beyond my control.

M: On the contrary, a world of which you are the only source and ground is fully within your power to change. What is created can be always dissolved and re-created. All will happen as you want it, provided you really want it.

Q: All I want to know is how to deal with the world’s sorrows.

M: You have created them out of your own desires’ and fears, you deal with them. All is due to your having forgotten your own being. Having given reality to the picture on the screen, you love its people and suffer for them and seek to save them. It is just not so. You must begin with yourself. There is no other way.

Work, of course. There is no harm in working.

Q: Your universe seems to contain every possible experience.

The individual traces a line through it and experiences pleasant and unpleasant states. This gives rise to questioning and seeking, which broaden the outlook and enable the individual to go beyond his narrow and self-created world, limited and self-centered. This personal world can be changed — in time. The universe is timeless and perfect.

M: To take appearance for reality is a grievous sin and the cause of all calamities. You are the all-pervading, eternal and infinitely creative awareness — consciousness. All else is local and temporary. Don’t forget what you are. In the meantime work APPEARANCES AND THE REALITY

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to your heart’s content. Work and knowledge should go hand in hand.

Q: My own feeling is that my spiritual development is not in my hands. Making one’s own plans and carrying them out leads nowhere. I just run in circles round myself. When God considers the fruit to be ripe, He will pluck it and eat it. Whichever fruit seems green to Him will remain on the world’s tree for another day.

M: You think God knows you? Even the world He does not know.

Q: Yours is a different God. Mine is different. Mine is merciful.

He suffers along with us.

M: You pray to save one, while thousands die. And if all stop dying, there will be no space on earth.

Q: I am not afraid of death. My concern is with sorrow and suffering. My God is a simple God and rather helpless. He has no power to compel us to be wise. He can only stand and wait.

M: If you and your God are both helpless, does it not imply that the world is accidental? And if it is, the only thing you can do is to go beyond it.

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The Gnani

Questioner: Without God’s power nothing can be done. Even you would not be sitting here and talking to us without Him.

Maharaj: All is His doing, no doubt. What is it to me, since I want nothing? What can God give me, or take away from me?

What is mine is mine and was mine even when God was not. Of course, it is a very tiny little thing, a speck — the sense ‘I am’, the fact of being. This is my own place, nobody gave it to me.

The earth is mine; what grows on it is God’s.

Q: Did God take the earth on rent from you?

M: God is my devotee and did all this for me.

Q: Is there no God apart from you?

M: How can there be? ‘I am’ is the root, God is the tree. Whom am I to worship, and what for?

Q: Are you the devotee or the object of devotion?

M: Am neither, I am devotion itself.

Q: There is not enough devotion in the world.

M: You are always after the improvement of the world. Do you really believe that the world is waiting for you to be saved?

Q: I just do not know how much I can do for the world. All I can do, is to try. Is there anything else you would like me to do?

M: Without you is there a world? You know all about the world, but about yourself you know nothing. You yourself are the tools of your work, you have no other tools. Why don’t you take care of the tools before you think of the work?

Q: I can wait, while the world cannot.

M: By not enquiring you keep the world waiting.

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Q: Waiting for what?

M: For somebody who can save it.

Q: God runs the world, God will save it.

M: That’s what you say! Did God come and tell you that the world is His creation and concern and not yours?

Q: Why should it be my sole concern?

M: Consider. The world in which you live, who else knows about it?

Q: You know. Everybody knows.

M: Did anybody come from outside of your world to tell you?

Myself and everybody else appear and disappear in your world.

We are all at your mercy.

Q: It cannot be so bad! I exist in your world as you exist in mine.

M: You have no evidence of my world. You are completely wrapped up in the world of your own making.

Q: I see. Completely, but — hopelessly?

M: Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way by which you got into it. You got into it by forgetting what you are and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are.

Q: In what way does it affect the world?

M: When you are free of the world, you can do something about it. As long as you are a prisoner of it, you are helpless to change it. On the contrary, whatever you do will aggravate the situation.

Q: Righteousness will set me free.

M: Righteousness will undoubtedly make you and your world a comfortable, even happy place. But what is the use? There is no reality in it. It cannot last.

Q: God will help.

M: To help you God must know your existence. But you and your world are dream states. In dream you may suffer agonies.

None knows them, and none can help you.

Q: So all my questions, my search and study are of no use?

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I AM THAT

M: These are but the stirrings of a man who is tired of sleeping.

They are not the causes of awakening, but its early signs. But, you must not ask idle questions, to which you already know the answers.

Q: How am I to get a true answer?

M: By asking a true question — non-verbally, but by daring to live according to your lights. A man willing to die for truth will get it.

Q: Another question. There is the person. There is the knower of the person. There is the witness. Are the knower and the witness the same, or are they separate states?

M: The knower and the witness are two or one? When the knower is seen as separate from the known, the witness stands alone. When the known and the knower are seen as one, the witness becomes one with them.

Q: Who is the gnani? The witness or the supreme?

M: The gnani is the supreme and also the witness. He is both being and awareness. In relation to consciousness he is awareness. In relation to the universe he is pure being.

Q: And what about the person? What comes first, the person or the knower.

M: The person is a very small thing. Actually it is a composite, it cannot be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there.

It is but the shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure being is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is known takes the shape of a person, based on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a projection of the knower onto the screen of the mind.

Q: The mirror is there, the reflection is there. But where is the sun?

M: The supreme is the sun.

Q: It must be conscious.

M: It is neither conscious nor unconscious. Don’t think of it in terms of consciousness or unconsciousness. It is the life, which contains birth and is beyond both.

Q: Life is so intelligent. How can it be unconscious?

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M: You talk of the unconscious when there is a lapse in memory. In reality there is only consciousness. All life is conscious, all consciousness — alive.

Q: Even stones?

M: Even stones are conscious and alive.

Q: The worry with me is that I am prone to denying existence to what I cannot imagine.

M: You would be wiser to deny the existence of what you imagine. It is the imagined that is unreal.

Q: Is all imaginable unreal?

M: Imagination based on memories is unreal. The future is not entirely unreal.

Q: Which part of the future is real and which is not?

M: The unexpected and unpredictable is real.

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Desirelessness, the Highest

Bliss

Questioner: I have met many realized people, but never a liberated man. Have you come across a liberated man, or does liberation mean, among other things, also abandoning the body?

Maharaj: What do you mean by realization and liberation?

Q: By realization I mean a wonderful experience of peace, 48

I AM THAT

goodness and beauty, when the world makes sense and there is an all-pervading unity of both substance and essence. While such experience does not last, it cannot be forgotten. It shines in the mind, both as memory and longing. I know what I am talking about, for I have had such experiences.

By liberation I mean to be permanently in that wonderful state.

What I am asking is whether liberation is compatible with the survival of the body.

M: What is wrong with the body?

Q: The body is so weak and shortlived. It creates needs and cravings. It limits one grievously.

M: So what? Let the physical expressions be limited. But liberation is of the self from its false and self-imposed ideas; it is not contained in some particular experience, however glorious.

Q: Does it last for ever?

M: All experience is time bound. Whatever has a beginning must have an end.

Q: So liberation; in my sense of the word, does not exist?

M: On the contrary, one is always free. You are, both conscious and free to be conscious. Nobody can take this away from you.

Do you ever know yourself non-existing, or unconscious?

Q: I may not remember, but that does not disprove my being occasionally unconscious.

M: Why not turn away from the experience to the experiencer and realize the full import of the only true statement you can make: ‘I am’?

Q: How is it done?

M: There is no ‘how’ here. Just keep in mind the feeling ‘I am’, merge in it, till your mind and feeling become one. By repeated attempts you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-feeling ‘I am’. Whatever you think, say, or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind.

Q: And you call it liberation?

M: I call it normal. What is wrong with being, knowing and act-DESIRELESSNESS, THE HIGHEST BLISS

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ing effortlessly and happily? Why consider it so unusual as to expect the immediate destruction of the body? What is wrong with the body that it should die? Correct your attitude to your body and leave it alone. Don’t pamper, don’t torture. Just keep it going, most of the time below the threshold of conscious attention.

Q: The memory of my wonderful experiences haunts me. I want them back.

M: Because you want them back, you cannot have them. The state of craving for anything blocks all deeper experience. Nothing of value can happen to a mind which knows exactly what it wants. For nothing the mind can visualize and want is of much value.

Q: Then what is worth wanting?

M: Want the best. The highest happiness, the greatest freedom. Desirelessness is the highest bliss.

Q: Freedom from desire is not the freedom I want. I want the freedom to fulfil my longings.

M: You are free to fulfil your longings. As a matter of fact, you are doing nothing else.

Q: I try, but there are obstacles which leave me frustrated.

M: Overcome them.

Q: I cannot, I am too weak.

M: What makes you weak? What is weakness? Others fulfil their desires, why don’t you?

Q: I must be lacking energy.

M: What happened to your energy? Where did it go? Did you not scatter it over so many contradictory desires and pursuits?

You don’t have an infinite supply of energy.

Q: Why not?

M: Your aims are small and low. They do not call for more. Only God’s energy is infinite — because He wants nothing for Himself. Be like Him and all your desires will be fulfilled. The higher your aims and vaster your desires, the more energy you will have for their fulfilment. Desire the good of all and the universe 50

I AM THAT

will work with you. But if you want your own pleasure, you must earn it the hard way. Before desiring, deserve.

Q: I am engaged in the study of philosophy, sociology and education. I think more mental development is needed before I can dream of self-realization. Am I on the right track?

M: To earn a livelihood some specialized knowledge is needed. General knowledge develops the mind, no doubt. But if you are going to spend your life in amassing knowledge, you build a wall round yourself. To go beyond the mind, a well-furnished mind is not needed.

Q: Then what is needed?

M: Distrust your mind, and go beyond.

Q: What shall I find beyond the mind?

M: The direct experience of being, knowing and loving.

Q: How does one go beyond the mind?

M: There are many starting points — they all lead to the same goal. You may begin with selfless work, abandoning the fruits of action; you may then give up thinking and end in giving up all desires. Here, giving up (tyaga) is the operational factor. Or, you may not bother about any thing you want, or think, or do and just stay put in the thought and feeling ‘I am’, focussing ‘I am’

firmly in your mind. AII kinds of experience may come to you —

remain unmoved in the knowledge that all perceivable is transient, and only the ‘I am’ endures.

Q: I cannot give all my life to such practices. I have my duties to attend to.

M: By all means attend to your duties. Action, in which you are not emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause suffering will not bind you. You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror-like mind, which reflects all, without being affected.

Q: Is such a state realizable?

M: I would not talk about it, if it were not. Why should I engage in fancies?

Q: Everybody quotes scriptures.

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M: Those who know only scriptures know nothing. To know is to be. I know what I am talking about; it is not from reading, or hearsay.

Q: I am studying Sanskrit under a professor, but really I am only reading scriptures. I am in search of self-realization and I came to get the needed guidance. Kindly tell me what am I to do?

M: Since you have read the scriptures, why do you ask me?

Q: The scriptures show the general directions but the individual needs personal instructions.

M: Your own self is your ultimate teacher (sadguru). The outer teacher (Guru) is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher, that will walk with you to the goal, for he is the goal.

Q: The inner teacher is not easily reached.

M: Since he is in you and with you, the difficulty cannot be serious. Look within, and you will find him.

Q: When I look within, I find sensations and perceptions, thoughts and feelings, desires and fears, memories and expectations. I am immersed in this cloud and see nothing else.

M: That which sees all this, and the nothing too, is the inner teacher. He alone is, all else only appears to be. He is your own self (swarupa), your hope and assurance of freedom; find him and cling to him and you will be saved and safe.

Q: I do believe you, but when it comes to the actual finding of this inner self, I find it escapes me.

M: The idea ‘it escapes me’, where does it arise?

Q: In the mind.

M: And who knows the mind.

Q: The witness of the mind knows the mind.

M: Did anybody come to you and say: ‘I am the witness of your mind’?

Q: Of course not. He would have been just another idea in the mind.

M: Then who is the witness?

Q: l am.

M: So, you know the witness because you are the witness. You 52

I AM THAT

need not see the witness in front of you. Here again, to be is to know.

Q: Yes, I see that I am the witness, the awareness itself. But in which way does it profit me?

M: What a question! What kind of profit do you expect? To know what you are, is it not good enough?

Q: What are the uses of self-knowledge?

M: It helps you to understand what you are not and keeps you free from false ideas, desires and actions.

Q: If I am the witness only, what do right and wrong matter?

M: What helps you to know yourself is right. What prevents, is wrong. To know one’s real self is bliss, to forget — is sorrow.

Q: Is the witness-consciousness the real Self?

M: It is the reflection of the real in the mind (buddhi). The real is beyond. The witness is the door through which you pass beyond.

Q: What is the purpose of meditation?

M: Seeing the false as the false, is meditation. This must go on all the time.

Q: We are told to meditate regularly.

M: Deliberate daily exercise in discrimination between the true and the false and renunciation of the false is meditation. There are many kinds of meditation to begin with, but they all merge finally into one.

Q: Please tell me which road to self-realization is the shortest.

M: No way is short or long, but some people are more in earnest and some are less. I can tell you about myself. I was a simple man, but I trusted my Guru. What he told me to do, I did. He told me to concentrate on ‘I am’ — I did. He told me that I am beyond all perceivables and conceivables — I believed. I gave him my heart and soul, my entire attention and the whole of my spare time (I had to work to keep my family alive). As a result of faith and earnest application, I realized my self (swarupa) within three years.

You may choose any way that suits you; your earnestness will determine the rate of progress.

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Q: No hint for me?

M: Establish yourself firmly in the awareness of ‘I am’. This is the beginning and also the end of all endeavour.

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The Ever-present

Questioner: The highest powers of the mind are understanding, intelligence and insight. Man has three bodies — the physical, the mental and the causal (prana, mana, karana). The physical reflects his being; the mental — his knowing and the causal —

his joyous creativity. Of course, these are all forms in consciousness. But they appear to be separate, with qualities of their own. Intelligence (buddhi) is the reflection in the mind of the power to know (chit). It is what makes the mind knowledge-able. The brighter the intelligence, the wider, deeper and truer the knowledge. To know things, to know people and to know oneself are all functions of intelligence: the last is the most important and contains the former two. Misunderstanding oneself and the world leads to false ideas and desires, which again lead to bondage. Right understanding of oneself is necessary for freedom from the bondage of illusion. I understand all this in theory, but when it comes to practice, I find that I fail hopelessly in my responses to situations and people and by my inappropriate reactions I merely add to my bondage. Life is too quick for my dull and slow mind. I do understand but too late, when the old mistakes have been already repeated.

Maharaj: What then is your problem?

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I AM THAT

Q: I need a response to life, not only intelligent, but also very quick. It cannot be quick unless it is perfectly spontaneous.

How can I achieve such spontaneity?

M: The mirror can do nothing to attract the sun. It can only keep bright. As soon as the mind is ready, the sun shines in it.

Q: The light is of the Self, or of the mind?

M: Both. It is uncaused and unvarying by itself and coloured by the mind, as it moves and changes. It is very much like a cinema. The light is not in the film, but the film colours the light and makes it appear to move by intercepting it.

Q: Are you now in the perfect state?

M: Perfection is a state of the mind, when it is pure. I am beyond the mind, whatever its state, pure or impure. Awareness is my nature; ultimately I am beyond being and non-being.

Q: Will meditation help me to reach your state?

M: Meditation will help you to find your bonds, loosen them, untie them and cast your moorings. When you are no longer attached to anything, you have done your share. The rest will be done for you.

Q: By whom?

M: By the same power that brought you so far, that prompted your heart to desire truth and your mind to seek it. It is the same power that keeps you alive. You may call it Life or the Supreme.

Q: The same power kills me in due course.

M: Were you not present at your birth? Will you not be present at your death? Find him who is always present and your problem of spontaneous and perfect response will be solved.

Q: Realization of the eternal and an effortless and adequate response to the ever-changing temporary event are two different and separate questions. You seem to roll them into one. What makes you do so?

M: To realize the Eternal is to become the Eternal, the whole, the universe, with all it contains. Every event is the effect and the expression of the whole and is in fundamental harmony with the whole. All response from the whole must be right, effortless and instantaneous.

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It cannot be otherwise, if it is right. Delayed response is wrong response. Thought, feeling and action must be one and simultaneous with the situation that calls for them.

Q: How does it come?

M: I told you already. Find him who was present at your birth and will witness your death.

Q: My father and mother?

M: Yes, your father-mother, the source from which you came.

To solve a problem you must trace it to its source. Only in the dissolution of the problem in the universal solvents of enquiry and dispassion, can its right solution be found.