Q: I want direct experience of the Ultimate.

[Guest guest]

Prior to Consciousness..Nisargadatta

 

12/7/1980

 

Q: I want direct experience of the Ultimate.

Maharaj: The Absolute cannot be experienced. It is not an objective affair.

When I am unicity then that is pure awareness which is not aware of its

awareness, and there can be no subject and object - therefore there can be no

witnessing. Any manifestation, and functioning, any witnessing, can only take

place in duality. There has to be a subject and an object, they are two, but

they are not two, they are two ends of the same thing. When consciousness

stirs, duality arises. There are millions of objects, but each object, when it

sees another, assumes the subjectivity of the Absolute, although it is an

object. I, as an object, perceive and interpret all the other objects, and I

assume that I am the subject, and the witnessing takes place.

Q: Why does consciousness stir? What is the cause?

M: With any cause, spontaneously, it happens; there is no reason. That

consciousness is universal - there is no individuality. But when the

consciousness stirs in a particular form which has also arisen spontaneously,

and start functioning in that form, that form assumes that it is an individual

and what is unlimited limits itself to a particular form and the trouble starts.

Let us say that someone has become a jnani, but what was it to begin with?

It was that sour, bitter, principle, that secretion because of which the

consciousness has taken place. That very principle, the knowledge "I" Am," has

developed, grown, and become sweet; it matures and becomes the manifest jnani

state; but what is that; It is the product of the five elemental food essence.

When that goes, what remains? The Absolute which does not know itself.

Q: The desire for liberation is also a desire, isn't it?

M: Don't talk about liberation, talk about yourself, what you are. When you

understand that, both knowledge and ignorance disappear. You only require

knowledge so long as the ignorance it there.

A knowledgeable person can tell anything to an ignorant person to remove

his ignorance. For that purpose he takes the aid of the so-called worldly

knowledge, concepts, and both the worldly conceptual knowledge and the ignorance

go simultaneously. A jnani will give you any concepts to remove you ignorance.

This "I Amness" is the knowledge and you are embracing that. To remove that he

gives you all these concepts; to understand that you are not this "I Amness"

which is an outcome of the food essence product. Once you realize that,

whatever concepts

he has given you, together with this "I Amness," are to be thrown out. What

remain is the Absolute.

This is the actual state of affairs. You can never say I am like this or

that - you are without knowledge. Rarely will one understand this and transcend

the domain of consciousness.

After listening to my talks, you think it is all very simple, but it is not

that easy.

 

 

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