What is Pure, Unalloyed, Unattached is Real
Chapter 72 from the book “I AmThat” of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Maharaj: You
are back in India! Where have you been, what have you seen?
Questioner: I come from Switzerland. I stayed there with
a remarkable man who claims to have realised. He has done many Yogas in
his past and had many experiences that passed away. Now he claims no special
abilities, nor knowledge; the only unusual thing about him is connected with
sensations; he is unable to separate the seer from the seen. For instance, when
he sees a car rushing at him, he does not know whether the car is rushing at
him, or he at a car. He seems to be both at the same time, the seer and the
seen. They become one. Whatever he sees, he sees himself. When I asked him some
Vedantic questions he said: 'I really cannot answer. I do not know. All I know
is this strange identity with whatever I perceive. You know, I expected
anything but this.'
He is on the whole a humble man; he makes no
disciples and in no way puts himself on a pedestal. He is willing to talk about
his strange condition, but that is all.
M: Now he knows
what he knows. All else is over. At least he still talks. Soon he may cease
talking.
Q: What will he
do then?
M: Immobility
and silence are not inactive. The flower fills the space with perfume, the
candle -- with light. They do nothing yet they change everything by their mere
presence. You can photograph the candle, but not its light. You can know the
man, his name and appearance, but not his influence. His very presence is
action.
Q: Is it not
natural to be active?
M: Everybody
wants to be active, but where do his actions originate? There is no central
point each action begets another, meaninglessly and painfully, in endless succession.
The alternation of work and pause is not there. First find the immutable centre
where all movement takes birth. Just like a wheel turns round an axle, so must
you be always at the axle in the centre and not whirling at the periphery.
Q: How do I go
about it in practice?
M: Whenever a
thought or emotion of desire or fear comes to your mind, just turn away from
it.
Q: By
suppressing my thoughts and feelings I shall provoke a reaction.
M: I am not
talking of suppression. Just refuse attention.
Q: Must I not use effort to arrest the movements
of the mind?
M: It has
nothing to do with effort. Just turn away, look between the thoughts, rather
than at the thoughts. When you happen to walk in a crowd, you do not fight
every man you meet -- you just find your way between.
Q: If I use my
will to control the mind, it only strengthens the ego.
M: Of course.
When you fight, you invite a fight. But when you do not resist, you meet with
no resistance. When you refuse to play the game, you are out of it.
Q: How long
will it take me to get free of the mind?
M: It may take
a thousand years, but really no time is required. All you need is to be in dead
earnest. Here the will is the deed. If you are sincere, you have it. After all,
it is a matter of attitude. Nothing stops you from being a jnani here
and now, except fear. You are afraid of being impersonal, of impersonal being.
It is all quite simple. Turn away from your desires and fears and from the
thoughts they create and you are at once in your natural state.
Q: No question
of reconditioning, changing, or eliminating the mind?
M: Absolutely
none. Leave your mind alone, that is all. Don't go along with it. After all,
there is no such thing as mind apart from thoughts which come and go obeying
their own laws, not yours. They dominate you only because you are interested in
them. It is exactly as Christ said 'Resist not evil'. By resisting evil you
merely strengthen it.
Q: Yes, I see
now. All I have to do is to deny existence to evil. Then it fades away. But
does it not boil down to some kind of auto-suggestion?
M: The
auto-suggestion is in full swing now, when you think yourself to be a person,
caught between good and evil. What I am asking you to do is to put an end to
it, to wake up and see things as they are.
About your stay in Switzerland with that
strange friend of yours: what did you gain in his company?
Q: Nothing
absolutely. His experience did not affect me at all. One thing I have
understood: there is nothing to search for. Wherever I may go, nothing waits
for me at the end of the journey. Discovery is not the result of
transportation.
M: Yes, you are
quite apart from anything that can be gained or lost.
Q: Do you call
it vairagya, relinquishment, renunciation?
M: There is
nothing to renounce. Enough if you stop acquiring. To give you must have, and
to have you must take. Better don't take. It is simpler than to practice
renunciation, which leads to a dangerous form of 'spiritual' pride.
All this
weighing, selecting, choosing, exchanging -- it is all shopping in some
'spiritual' market. What is your business there? What deal are you out to
strike? When you are not out for business, what is the use of this endless
anxiety of choice? Restlessness takes you nowhere. Something prevents you from
seeing that there is nothing you need. Find it out and see its falseness. It is
like having swallowed some poison and suffering from unquenchable craving for
water. Instead of drinking beyond all measure, why not eliminate the poison and
be free of this burning thirst?
Q: I shall have
to eliminate the ego!
M: The sense 'I
am a person in time and space' is the poison. In a way, time itself is the
poison. In time all things come to an end and new are born, to be devoured in
their turn. Do not identify yourself with time, do not ask anxiously: 'what
next, what next?' Step out of time and see it devour the world. Say: 'Well, it
is in the nature of time to put an end to everything. Let it be. It does not
concern me. I am not combustible, nor do I need to collect fuel'.
Q: Can the
witness be without the things to witness?
M: There is
always something to witness. If not a thing, then its absence. Witnessing is
natural and no problem. The problem is excessive interest, leading to
self-identification. Whatever you are engrossed in you take to be real.
Q: Is the 'I
am' real or unreal? Is the 'I am' the witness? Is the witness real or unreal?
M: What is
pure, unalloyed, unattached, is real. What is tainted, mixed up, dependent and
transient is unreal. Do not be misled by words -- one word may convey several
and even contradictory meanings. The 'I am’ that pursues the pleasant and shuns
the unpleasant is false; the 'I am' that sees pleasure and pain as inseparable
sees rightly. The witness that is enmeshed in what he perceives is the person;
the witness who stands aloof, unmoved and untouched, is the watch-tower of the
real, the point at which awareness, inherent in the unmanifested, contacts the
manifested. There can be no universe without the witness, there can be no
witness without the universe.
Q: Time
consumes the world. Who is the witness of time?
M: He who is
beyond time -- the Un-nameable. A glowing ember, moved round and round quickly
enough, appears as a glowing circle. When the movement ceases, the ember
remains. Similarly, the 'I am' in movement creates the world. The 'I am' at
peace becomes the Absolute. You are like a man with an electric torch walking
through a gallery. You can see only what is within the beam. The rest is in
darkness.
Q: If I project
the world, I should be able to change it.
M: Of course,
you can. But you must cease identifying yourself with it and go beyond. Then
you have the power to destroy and re-create.
Q: All I want
is to be free.
M: You must
know two things: What are you to be free from and what keeps you bound.
Q: Why do you want to annihilate the universe?
M: I am not
concerned with the universe. Let it be or not be. It is enough if I know
myself.
Q: If you are
beyond the world, then you are of no use to the world.
M: Pity the
self that is, not the world that is not! Engrossed in a dream you have
forgotten your true self.
Q: Without the
world there is no place for love.
M: Quite so.
All these attributes; being, consciousness, love and beauty are reflections of
the real in the world. No real -- no reflection.
Q: The world is
full of desirable things and people. How can I imagine it non-existent?
M: Leave the
desirable to those who desire. Change the current of your desire from taking to
giving. The passion for giving, for sharing, will naturally wash the idea of an
external world out of your mind, and of giving as well. Only the pure radiance
of love will remain, beyond giving and receiving.
Q: In love
there must be duality, the lover and the beloved.
M: In love
there is not the one even, how can there be two? Love is the refusal to
separate, to make distinctions. Before you can think of unity, you must first
create duality. When you truly love, you do not say: 'I love you'; where there
is mentation, there is duality.
Q: What is it
that brings me again and again to India? It cannot be only the comparative
cheapness of life here? Nor the colourfulness and variety of impressions. There
must be some more important factor.
M: There is
also the spiritual aspect. The division between the outer and the inner is less
in India. It is easier here to express the inner in the outer. Integration is
easier. Society is not so oppressive.
Q: Yes, in the
West it is all tamas and rajas. In India there is more of sattva,
of harmony and balance.
M: Can't you go
beyond the gunas? Why choose the sattva? Be what you are,
wherever you are and worry not about gunas.
Q: I have not
the strength.
M: It merely
shows that you have gained little in India. What you truly have you cannot
lose. Were you well-grounded in your self, change of place would not affect it.
Q: In India spiritual life is easy. It is not so
in the West. One has to conform to environment to a much greater extent.
M: Why don't
you create your own environment? The world has only as much power over you as
you give it. Rebel. Go beyond duality, make no difference between east and
west.
Q: What can one
do when one finds oneself in a very unspiritual environment?
M: Do nothing.
Be yourself. Stay out. Look beyond.
Q: There may be
clashes at home. Parents rarely understand.
M: When you
know your true being, you have no problems. You may please your parents or not,
marry or not, make a lot of money or not; it is all the same to you. Just act
according to circumstances, yet in close touch with the facts, with the reality
in every situation.
Q: Is it not a
very high state?
M: Oh no, it is
the normal state. You call it high because you are afraid of it. First be free
from fear. See that there is nothing to be afraid of. Fearlessness is the door
to the Supreme.
Q: No amount of
effort can make me fearless.
M: Fearlessness
comes by itself, when you see that there is nothing to be afraid of. When you
walk in a crowded street, you just bypass people. Some you see, some you just
glance at, but you do not stop. It is the stopping that creates the bottleneck.
Keep moving! Disregard names and shapes, don't be attached to them; your
attachment is your bondage.
Q: What should
I do when a man slaps me on my face?
M: You will react
according to your character, inborn or acquired.
Q: Is it
inevitable? Am I, is the world, condemned to remain as we are?
M: A jeweller
who wants to refashion an ornament, first melts it town to shapeless gold.
Similarly, one must return to one's original state before a new name and form
can emerge. Death is essential for renewal.
Q: You are
always stressing the need of going beyond, of aloofness, of solitude. You
hardly ever use the words 'right' and 'wrong'. Why is it so?
M: It is right
to be oneself, it is wrong not to be. All else is conditional. You are eager to
separate right from wrong, because you need some basis for action. You are
always after doing something or other. But, personally motivated action, based
on some scale of values, aiming at some result is worse than inaction, for its
fruits are always bitter.
Q: Are awareness and love one and the same?
M: Of course.
Awareness is dynamic, love is being. Awareness is love in action. By itself the
mind can actualise any number of possibilities, but unless they are prompted by
love, they are valueless. Love precedes creation. Without it there is only
chaos.
Q: Where is the
action in awareness?
M: You are so
incurably operational! Unless there is movement, restlessness, turmoil, you do
not call it action. Chaos is movement for movement's sake. True action does not
displace; it transforms. A change of place is mere transportation; a change of
heart is action. Just remember, nothing perceivable is real. Activity is not
action. Action is hidden, unknown, unknowable. You can only know the fruit.
Q: Is not God
the all-doer?
M: Why do you
bring in an outer doer? The world recreates itself out of itself. It is an
endless process, the transitory begetting the transitory. It is your ego that
makes you think that there must be a doer. You create a God to your own Image,
however dismal the image. Through the film of your mind you project a world and
also a God to give it cause and purpose. It is all imagination -- step out of
it.
Q: How
difficult it is to see the world as purely mental! The tangible reality of it
seems so very convincing.
M: This is the
mystery of imagination, that it seems to be so real. You may be celibate or
married, a monk or a family man; that is not the point. Are you a slave of your
imagination, or are you not? Whatever decision you take, whatever work you do,
it will be invariably based on imagination, on assumptions parading as facts.
Q: Here I am
sitting in front of you. What part of it is imagination?
M: The whole of
it. Even space and time are imagined.
Q: Does it mean
that I don't exist?
M: I too do not
exist. All existence is imaginary.
Q: Is being too imaginary?
M: Pure being,
filling all and beyond all, is not existence which is limited. All limitation
is imaginary, only the unlimited is real.
Q: When you
look at me, what do you see?
M: I see you
imagining yourself to be.
Q: There are many like me. Yet each is different.
M: The totality
of all projections is what is called maha-maya, the Great Illusion.
Q: But when you
look at yourself, what do you see?
M: It depends
how I look. When I look through the mind, I see numberless people. When I look
beyond the mind, I see the witness. Beyond the witness there is the infinite
intensity of emptiness and silence.
Q: How to deal
with people?
M: Why make
plans and what for? Such questions show anxiety. Relationship is a living
thing. Be at peace with your inner self and you will be at peace with
everybody.
realise that you are not the master of what
happens, you cannot control the future except in purely technical matters.
Human relationship cannot be planned, it is too rich and varied. Just be
understanding and compassionate, free of all self seeking.
Q: Surely, I am
not the master of what happens. Its slave rather.
M: Be neither
master, nor slave. Stand aloof.
Q: Does it
imply avoidance of action?
M: You cannot
avoid action. It happens, like everything else.
Q: My actions,
surely, I can control.
M: Try. You
will soon see that you do what you must.
Q: I can act
according to my will.
M: You know
your will only after you have acted.
Q: I remember
my desires, the choices made, the decisions taken and act accordingly.
M: Then your
memory decides, not you.
Q: Where do I
come in?
M: You make it
possible by giving it attention.
Q: Is there no
such thing as free will? Am I not free to desire?
M: Oh no, you are compelled to desire. In
Hinduism the very idea of free will is non-existent, so there is no word for
it. Will is commitment, fixation, bondage.
Q: I am free to
choose my limitations.
M: You must be
free first. To be free in the world you must be free of the world. Otherwise
your past decides for you and your future. Between what had happened and what
must happen you are caught. Call it destiny or karma, but never --
freedom. First return to your true being and then act from the heart of love.
Q: Within the
manifested what is the stamp of the unmanifested?
M: There is
none. The moment you begin to look for the stamp of the unmanifested, the
manifested dissolves. If you try to understand the unmanifested with the mind,
you at once go beyond the mind, like when you stir the fire with a wooden
stick, you burn the stick. Use the mind to investigate the manifested. Be like
the chick that pecks at the shell. Speculating about life outside the shell
would have been of little use to it, but pecking at the shell breaks the shell
from within and liberates the chick. Similarly, break the mind from within by
investigation and exposure of its contradictions and absurdities.
Q: The longing
to break the shell, where does it come from?
M: From the
unmanifested.