Only
the Self is Real
extract
from chapter 40 from the book “I AmThat” of Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Maharaj: The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It
is, and yet is not. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in
it. When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose.
It just happens when we are absentminded. It appears exactly as it looks, but
there is no depth in it, nor meaning.
Only the onlooker is real. Call him Self
or Atma. To the Self the world is but a colourful show, which he enjoys as long
as it lasts and forgets when it is over. Whatever happens on the stage makes
him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, yet all the time he is aware that
it is but a show. Without desire or fear he enjoys it, as it happens.
Questioner: The person immersed in the world has a life of many flavours. He weeps, he laughs, loves and hates, desires and fears, suffers and rejoices. The desireless and fearless jnani, what life has he? Is he not left high and dry in his aloofness?
Questioner: The person immersed in the world has a life of many flavours. He weeps, he laughs, loves and hates, desires and fears, suffers and rejoices. The desireless and fearless jnani, what life has he? Is he not left high and dry in his aloofness?
Maharaj: His state is not so
desolate. It tastes of the pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss. He is happy and
fully aware that happiness is his very nature and that he need not do anything,
nor strive for anything to secure it. It follows him, more real than the body,
nearer than the mind itself.
You imagine that without cause there can be no
happiness. To me dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery. Pleasure
and pain have causes, while my state is my own, totally uncaused, independent,
unassailable.