RE: Excerpt from " I AM THAT" <http://www.advaita.org>

[Guest guest]

Pieter Schoonheim Samara

[pietersa (AT) loxinfo (DOT) co.th]Wednesday, January 17, 2001 5:39

PMsatsangh; NondualitySalonCc: ColetteExcerpt from

" I AM THAT" <http://www.advaita.org>

 

Nisargadatta Maharaj

I AM THAT

dialog

 

 

Maharaj

 

....realization is explosive. It takes place spontaneously, or at the

slightest hint. The quick is not better than the slow. Slow ripening

and rapid flowering alternate. Both are natural and right. Yet, all

this is so in the mind only. As I see it, there is really nothing of

the kind. In the great mirror of consciousness images arise and

disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is

material -- destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy

foundations we build a sense of personal existence -- vague,

intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion: 'I-am-so-and-so'

obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe

that we are born to suffer and to die.

 

Seeker

 

I was told that a realized person will never do anything unseemly.

That they will behave in an exemplary way.

 

Maharaj

 

Who sets the example? Why should a liberated one necessarily follow

conventions? The moment one becomes predictable, one cannot be free.

Ones freedom lies in being free to fulfill the need of the moment, to

obey the necessity of the situation. Freedom to do what one likes is

really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right,

is real freedom.

 

Seeker

 

What about cause and effect?

 

Maharaj

 

Each moment contains the whole of the past and creates the whole of the future.

 

Seeker

 

But past and future exist?

 

Maharaj

 

In the mind only. Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law

of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here

and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind

only.

 

Seeker

 

A message in print may be paper and ink only. It is the text that

matters. By analysing the world into elements and qualities we miss

the most important -- its meaning. Your reduction of everything to

dream disregards the difference between the dream of an insect and

the dream of a poet. All is dream, granted. But not all are equal.

 

Maharaj

 

The dreams are not equal, but the dreamer is one. I am the insect. I

am the poet -- in dream. But in reality I am neither. I am beyond all

dreams. I am light in which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both

inside and outside the dream. Just as a man having a headache knows

the ache and also knows that he is not the ache, so do I know the

dream, myself dreaming and myself not dreaming -- all at the same

time. I am what I am before, during and after the dream. But what I

see in dream, I am not."

 

Seeker

 

If both dream and escape from dream are imaginings, what is the way out?

 

Maharaj

 

There is no need of a way out! Don't you see that a way out is also

part of the dream? All you have to do is to see the dream as dream.

 

Seeker

 

If I start the practice of dismissing everything as a dream, where will it lead me?

 

Maharaj

 

Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going

beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realize that you

are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways

out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one

part of the dream and not another. When you have seen the dream as a

dream, you have done all that needs be done.