Alexander Smit on NiZ

[Guest guest]

Posted at advaitatozen by Jan Sultan

 

Alexander Smit being interviewed ... relates how his spiritual master

Nisargadatta worked on him.

[Alexander met Nisargadatta in September of 1978.}

 

 

Q: What precisely did you want from him ?

Self-realization. I wanted to know how I was put together. I said: 'I

have heard that your are the greatest ego killer who exists. And that

is what I want.' He said: 'I am not a killer. I am a diamond cutter.

You are also a diamond. But you are a raw diamond and you can only be

cut by a pure diamond. And that is very precise work, because if that

is not done properly then you fall apart into a hundred pieces, and

then there is nothing left for you. Do you have any questions?'

I told him that Maurice Frydman was the decisive reason for my

coming. Frydman was a friend of Krishnamurti and Frydman was planning

to publish all of the earlier work of Krishnamurti at Chetana

Publishers in Bombay, And that he had heard from Mr. Dikshit , the

publisher, that there was someone in Bombay who he had to meet. (I AM

THAT was of course not yet published at that time because Frydman had

yet to meet Nisargadatta). Frydman went there with his usual

skeptical ideas. He came in there, and within two weeks things became

clear to him that had never become clear with Krishnamurti. And I

thought then: if it all became clear to Frydman within two weeks, how

will it go with me?

I told all this to Nisargadatta and he said: 'That says nothing about

me, but everything about Frydman.' And he also said: 'People who

don't understand Krishnamurti don't understand themselves.' I thought

that was beautiful, because all the gurus I knew always ran everyone

down. It seemed as if he wanted to help me relax. He didn't launch

any provocations. I was able to relax, because as you can understand

it was of course a rather tense situation there.

He said; 'Do you have any questions?'

I said; 'No.'

'When are you going to come?'

'Every day if you allow me.'

'That's good. Come just two times every day, mornings and afternoons,

for the lectures, and we'll see how it goes.'

I said: 'Yes, and I am not leaving until it has become clear.'

He said; 'That's good.'

 

Q: Was that true?

Yes, without a doubt. Because what he did — within two minutes he

made it clear, whatever you brought up, that the knowledge you

presented was not yours. That it was from a book, or that you had

borrowed or stolen it, or that it was fantasy, but that you were

actually not capable of having a direct observation, a direct

perception, seeing directly, immediately, without a mediator, without

self consciousness.

And that frightened me terribly, because everything you said was cut

down in a brutal way.

 

Q: What happened with you exactly?

The second day he asked if I had any questions. Then I began to ask a

question about reincarnation in a more or less romanticized way. I

told that I had always had a connection with India, that when I heard

the word 'India' for the first time it was shock for me, and that the

word 'yoga' was like being hit by a bomb when I first heard it on TV,

and that the word 'British India' was like a dog hearing his boss

whistle. And I asked, could it mean that I had lived in India in

previous lives? And then he began to curse in Marathi, and to get

unbelievably agitated, and that lasted for at least ten minutes. I

thought, my god, what's happening here? The translator was apparently

used to it, because he just sat calmly by, and when Maharaj was

finished he summarized it all together; 'Maharaj is asking himself if

you are really serious. Yesterday you came and you wanted self-

realization, but now you begin with questions that belong in

kindergarten'…

In this way you were forced to be unbelievably alert. Everything

counted heavily. It became clear to me within a few days that I knew

absolutely nothing, that all that I knew, all the knowledge that I

had gathered was book knowledge, second hand, learned, but that out

of myself I knew nothing.

I can assure you that this put what was needed into motion. And

that's how it went every day! Whatever I came up with, whether I

asked an intelligent question or a dumb question, made absolutely no

difference. And one day he asserted this, and the following day he

asserted precisely the opposite and the following day he twisted it

around one more time even though that was not actually possible. And

so it went, until by observation I understood why that was, and that

was a really wonderful realization. Why do I try all the time to cram

everything into concepts, to try to understand everything in terms of

thinking or in the feelings sphere?

And, he gave me tips about how I could look at things in another way,

thus really looking. And then it became clear to me that it just made

no sense to regard yourself — whatever you call yourself, or don't

call yourself — in that way. That was an absolute undermining of the

self-consciousness, like a termite eating a chair. At a certain

moment it becomes sawdust. It still looks like a chair, but it isn't

a chair anymore.

 

Q: Did that lead to self realization?

He kept going on like this, and then there came a moment that I just

plain had enough of it. Really just so much … I would not say that I

became angry, but a shift took place in me, a shift of the accent on

all authorities outside of myself, including Nisargadatta, to an

authority inside myself. He was talking, and at a given moment he

said 'nobody'. He said : 'Naturally there is nobody here who talks.'

That was too much for me. And I said: 'If you don't talk then why

don't you shut up then? Why say anything then?'

And it seemed as if that is what had been waiting for. He said: 'Do

you want that I should not talk anymore? That's good, then I won't

talk anymore and if people want to know something then they can just

go to Alexander. From now on there are no more translations,

translators don't have to come anymore, there is no more English

spoken. Only Marathi will be spoken, and if people have any problems

then they can go to Alexander because he seems to know everything.'

And then began all the trouble with the others, the bootlickers and

toadies who insisted that I had to offer my apologies! Not on my

life. Yeah, you can't offer excuses to a nobody, eh?!

And to me he said; 'And you, you can't come here anymore.' And I

said: 'What do you mean I can't come here anymore. Try and stop me.

Have you gone completely crazy? ' And the translators were naturally

completely upset.

They said nothing like this had ever been seen before. And he was

angry! Unbelievably angry!. And he threw the presents that I had

brought for him at my feet and said: 'I want nothing from you,

Nothing from you I want.'

And that was the breakthrough, because something happened, there was

no thinking because I was.. the shift in authority had happened. As I

experienced it everything came to me from all sides: logic,

understanding, on the one hand the intellect and on the other hand at

the same time the heart, feelings and all phenomena, the entire

manifest came directly to me from all sides to an absolute center

where the whole thing exploded. Bang. After that everything became

clear to me…

The next day I went there as usual. There was a lecture, but indeed

no English was spoken. I can assure you that the tension could be cut

with a knife, because I was the guilty party of course. He wanted to

push that down my throat and the translators just went along quietly.

There was not even any talking. And the next day, there was not even

a lecture. He arrived in a car, and drove away when he saw me and

went to a movie… Then I wrote him a letter. Twelve pages. In perfect

English. I had someone bring the letter to him. Everything was

running over. I wrote everything. And his answer was: let him come

tomorrow at 10 o'clock. And he read my letter and said: ´You

understood. This confrontation was needed to eliminate that self-

consciousness. But you understood completely and I am very happy with

your letter and nothing happened.' Naturally , that cleared the air.

He asked if I wanted to stay longer. 'From this situation that took

place on September 21, 1978, I want to be here in love .' And he

said; 'that is good.' From that day on I attended all the talks and

also translated sometimes, for example when Spaniards, or Frenchmen

or Germans came. I was a bit of a helper then.

 

Q: So actually you apply the same method as he did: the cutting away

of the self-consciousness to the bone and letting people see their

identities. Was that his method?

Yes. Recognizing the false as false and thereafter letting the truth

be born. But the most wonderful thing was, MY basis dilemma, and if I

say 'my' I mean everyone in a certain sense, is that if at a certain

moment you ask yourself: what did I come here for, that seems to be

something completely different from what you thought. Everyone has

ideas about this question, and I had never suspected in the farthest

reaches of my mind that the Realization of it would be something like

this. That is the first point. The second is, it appears that a

certain point you have the choice of maintaining your self-

consciousness out of pride, arrogance, intellect. And the function of

the Guru, the skill with which he can close the escapes from the real

confrontation was in his case uncommonly great, at least in my case.

And for me that was the decisive factor. Because if there had been a

chance to 'escape', I would certainly have taken it. Like a thief who

still tries to get away.

 

Q: Did he ever say anything about it?

He said that unbelievable courage is needed not to flee. And that my

being there had almost given him a heart attack, that he no longer

had the strength to tackle cases like mine as he became older. So I

have the feeling that I got there at just the right moment. Later he

became sick. He said: 'I have no strength anymore to try to convince

people. If you like it, continue to come, maybe you can get something

out of it, but I have no strength anymore to convince people like him

(and then he pointed to me). I am so grateful to him, because it only

showed how great my resistance was. There has to be a proportional

force that is just a bit stronger than your strangest and strongest

resistance. You need that. It showed how great my resistance was. And

it showed how great his strength was, and his skill. For me he was

the great Satguru. The fact that he was capable of defeating my most

cunning resistance — and I can assure you after having gone into

these things for 15 years — my resistance was extremely refined and

cunning, was difficult for him even though he knew who he was dealing

with. That's why I had to go to such a difficult person of course. It

says everything about me. Just as he said in the beginning that it

said everything about Frydman. But I have never seen the skill he had

in closing the escape routes of the lies and falsehoods so immensely

great anywhere else.

Of course I have not been everywhere, but with Ramana Maharshi you

just melted. That was another way. With Krishna Menon the intellect

could just not keep it together under the gigantic dismantling, but

by Nisargadatta, every escape was doomed to failure. People who came

to get something, or people who thought they could bring something

stood naked outside the door within five minutes. I saw a great many

people there walking away in great terror. At a certain moment I was

no longer afraid, because I felt that I had nothing more to lose. So

I can't really say that it was very courageous of me. I can only say

that in a certain sense with him I went on the attack. And what was

nice about it is that he also valued that. Because, he sent many

people away, and these really went and mostly didn't come back. The

he would say: 'They are cowards. I didn't send them away, I sent away

the part of them that was not acceptable here.' And if they then

returned, completely open, then he would say nothing about it. But

during those happenings with me, people forgot that. There was also a

doctor, a really fine man, who said; 'don't think that he is being

brutal with you; you don't have any idea how much love there is in

him to do this with you.' I said: 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that.'

Because I didn't want any commentary from anyone. After all, this is

what I had come for! Only the form in which it happened was totally

different from what I had expected in my wildest dreams. But again,

that says more about me than about Maharaj, and I still think that.

 

Q: So, his method was thus to let you recognize the false as false,

to see through the lies as lies, and to come to truth in this way?

Yes, and that went deeper than I could have ever suspected. The

thinking was absolutely helpless. The intellect had no ghost of

chance. The heart was also a trap. And that is exactly what happened

there. That is everything. And I know that after that day, September

21, 1978, there has never been even a grain of doubt about this

question, and the authority, the command, the authenticity, has never

left, has never again shifted. There is no authority, neither in this

world or in another world, that can thrust me out of the realization.

That's the way it is.