A question

[Guest guest]

Awareness of Being Is Bliss

 

 

M: Truth is permanent. The real is changeless. What changes is not

real, what is real does not change. Now, what is it in you that does

not change? As long as there is food, there is a body and mind. When

the food is stopped, the body dies and the mind dissolves. But does

the observer perish?

 

Q: I guess it does not. But I have no proof.

 

M: You yourself are the proof. You have not, nor can you have any

other proof. You are yourself, you know yourself, you love yourself.

Whatever the mind does, it does for the love of its own self. The

very nature of the self is love. It is loved, loving and lovable. It

is the self that makes the body and the mind so interesting, so very

dear. The very attention given to them comes from the self.

 

Q: If the self is not the body nor the mind, can it exist without the

body and the mind?

 

M: Yes, it can. It is a matter of actual experience that the self has

being independent of mind and body. It is being - awareness - bliss.

Awareness of being is bliss.

 

Q: It may be a matter of actual experience to you, but it is not my

case. How can I come to the same experience? What practices to

follow, what exercises to take up?

 

M: To know that you are neither body nor mind, watch yourself

steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof,

as if you were dead. It means you have no vested interests, either in

the body or in the mind.

 

Q: Dangerous!

 

M: I am not asking you to commit suicide. Nor can you. You can only

kill the body, you cannot stop the mental process, nor can you put an

end to the person you think you are. Just remain unaffected. This

complete aloofness, unconcern with mind and body is the best proof

that at the core of your being you are neither mind nor body. What

happens to the body and mind may not be within your power to change,

but you can always put an end to your imagining yourself to be body

and mind. Whatever happens, remind yourself that only your body and

mind are affected, not yourself. The more earnest you are at

remembering what needs to be remembered, the sooner you will be aware

of yourself as you are, for memory will become experience.

Earnestness reveals being. What is imagined and willed becomes

actuality - here lies the danger as well as the way out.

Tell me, what steps have you taken to separate your real self, that

in you which is changeless, from your body and mind?

 

Q: I am a medical man, I have studied a lot, I imposed on myself a

strict discipline in the way of exercises and periodical fasts and I

am a vegetarian.

 

M: But in the depth of your heart what is it that you want?

 

Q: I want to find reality.

 

M: What price are you willing to pay for reality? Any price?

 

Q: While in theory I am ready to pay any price, in actual life again

and again I am prompted to behave in ways which come between me and

reality. Desire carries me away.

 

M: Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can

fulfill them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and

smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means be devoted to the real,

the infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love.

All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be,

are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically, you wish

yourself well.

 

Q: I know that I should not ...

 

M: Wait! Who told you that you should not? What is wrong with wanting

to be happy?

 

Q: The self must go, I know.

 

M: But the self is there. Your desires are there. Your longing to be

happy is there. Why? Because you love yourself. By all means love

yourself - wisely. What is wrong is to love yourself stupidly, so as

to make yourself suffer. Love yourself wisely. Both indulgence and

austerity have the same purpose in view - to make you happy.

Indulgence is the stupid way, austerity is the wise way.

 

Q: What is austerity?

 

M: Once you have gone through an experience, not to go through it

again is austerity. To eschew the unnecessary is austerity. Not to

anticipate pleasure or pain is austerity. Having things under control

at all times is austerity. Desire by itself is not wrong. It is life

itself, the urge to grow in knowledge and experience.

It is the choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some

little thing - food, sex, power, fame - will make you happy is to

deceive yourself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self

can make you truly and lastingly happy.

 

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, from "I Am That"

 

 

LoveAlways