i am that - chapter 69 - sri nisargadatta maharaj

July 12, 2005

~I Am That

Chapter 69

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Questioner: I am in India over a year, wandering from ashram to

ashram.

Maharaj: Shall I ask you? What is the purpose of your moving from

place to place?

Q; To meet people, to try to understand them.

M: What people are you trying to understand? What exactly are you

after?

Q: Integration.

M: If you want integration, you must know whom you want to integrate.

Q: By meeting people and watching them, one comes to know oneself

also. It goes together.

M: It does not necessarily go together.

Q: One improves the other.

M: It does not work that way. The mirror reflects the image, but the

image does not improve the mirror. You are neither the mirror nor the

image in the mirror. Having perfected the mirror so that it reflects

correctly, truly, you can turn the mirror around and see in it a true

reflection of yourself – true as far as the mirror can reflect. But

the reflection is not yourself – you are the seer of the reflection.

Do understand it clearly – whatever you may perceive,

You are not what you perceive.

Q: I am the mirror and the world is the image?

M: You can see both the image and the mirror. You are neither. Who

are you? Don't go by formulas. The answer is not in words. The

nearest you can say in words is: I am what makes perception possible.

The life beyond the experiencer and his experience.

Now, can you separate yourself from both the mirror and the image in

the mirror and stand completely alone, all by yourself?

Q: No, I cannot.

M: How do you know that you cannot? There are so many things you are

doing without knowing how to do it. You digest, you circulate your

blood, you move your muscles – all without knowing how. In the same

way, you perceive, you feel, you think, without knowing the why nor

how of it. Similarly, you are yourself without knowing it. There is

nothing wrong with you as the Self. It is what it is to perfection. It

is the mirror that is not clear and true and, therefore, gives you

false images. You need not correct yourself, only set right your idea

of yourself. Learn to separate yourself from the image and the

mirror, keep on remembering: I am neither the mind nor its ideas. Do

it patiently and with conviction and you will surely come to the

direct vision of yourself as the source of being – knowing – loving,

all-embracing all-pervading. You are the infinite focused in a body.

Now, you see the body only. Try earnestly and you will come to see

the infinite only.

Q: The experience of reality, when it comes, does it last?

M: All experience is necessarily transient. But the ground of all

experience is immovable. Nothing that may be called an event will

last. But some events purify the mind and some stain it. Movements of

deep insight and all-embracing love purify the mind, while desires

and fears, envies and anger, blind beliefs and intellectual arrogance

pollute and dull the psyche.

Q: Is self-realization so important?

M: Without it you will be consumed by desires and fears, repeating

themselves meaninglessly in endless suffering. Most of the people do

not know that there can be an end to pain. But once they have heard

the good news, obviously going beyond all strife and struggle is the

most urgent task that can be. You know that you can be free and now

it is up to you. Either you remain forever hungry and thirsty,

longing, searching, grabbing, holding, ever losing and sorrowing, or

go out wholeheartedly in search of the state of timeless perfection,

to which nothing can be added, from which nothing – taken away. In it

all desires and fears are absent, not because they were given up, but

because they have lost their meaning.

Q: So far I have been following you. Now, what am I expected to do?

M: There is nothing to do. Just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing

mountains and sitting in caves. I do not even say, " be yourself " ,

since you do not know yourself. Just be. Having seen that you are

neither the `outer' world of perceivables, nor the `inner' world of

thinkables, that you are neither the body nor the mind – just be.

Q: Surely there are degrees of realization.

M: There are no steps to self-realization. There is nothing gradual

about it. It happens suddenly and is irreversible. You rotate into a

new dimension, seen from which, the previous ones are mere

abstractions. Just as on sunrise you see things as they are, so on

self-realization you see everything as it is. The world of illusions

is left behind.

Q: In the state of realization, do things change, become colorful and

full of meaning?

M: The experience is alright, yet it is not the experience of reality

(Sadanubhava), but of universal harmony (Satvanubhava).

Q: Nevertheless, there is progress.

M: There can be progress only in the preparation (sadhana).

Realization is sudden. The fruit ripens slowly, but falls suddenly,

and without return.

Q: I am physically and mentally at peace. What more do I need?

M: Yours may not be the ultimate state. You will recognize that you

have returned to your natural state by a complete absence of all

desire and fear. After all, at the root of all desire and fear is the

feeling of not being what you are. Just as a dislocated joint pains

only as long as it is out of shape, and is forgotten as soon as it is

set right, so is all self-concern a symptom of mental distortion

which disappears as soon as one is in the natural state.

Q: Yes, but what is the sadhana for achieving the natural state?

M: Hold onto the sense `I am' to the exclusion of everything else.

When thus the mind becomes completely silent, it shines with a new

light and vibrates with new knowledge. It all comes spontaneously,

you need only hold onto the `I am'. Just like emerging from sleep or

a state of rapture you feel rested and yet you cannot explain why or

how you come to feel so well, in the same way on realization you feel

complete, fulfilled, free from the pleasure/pain complex, and yet not

always able to explain what happened, why and how. You can put only

in negative terms: `Nothing is wrong with me any longer'. It is only

by comparison with the past that you know that you are out of it.

Otherwise – you are just yourself. Don't try and convey it to others.

If you can, it is not the real thing. Be silent and watch it

expressing itself in action.

Q: If you could tell me what I shall become, it may help me to watch

over my development.

M: How can anybody tell you what you shall become when there is no

becoming? You merely discover what you are. All molding oneself to a

pattern is a grievous waste of time. Think neither of the past nor of

the future. Just be.

Q: How can I just be? Changes are inevitable.

M: Changes are inevitable in the changeful, but you are not subject

to them. You are the changeless background, against which changes are

perceived.

Q: Everything changes, the background also changes. There is no need

of a changeless background to notice changes. The self is momentary -

- it is merely the point where the past meets the future.

M: Of course the self based on memory is momentary. But such self

demands unbroken continuity behind it. You know from experience that

there are gaps when yourself is forgotten. What brings it back to

life? What wakes you up in the morning? There must be some constant

factor bridging the gaps in consciousness. If you watch carefully,

you will notice that even your daily consciousness is in flashes,

with gaps intervening all the time. What is in the gaps? What can

there be but your real being, that is timeless; mind and mindlessness

are one to it.

Q: Is there any particular place you would advise me to go to for

spiritual attainment?

M: The only proper place is within. The outer world can neither help

nor hinder. No system, no pattern of action will take you to your

goal. Give up all working for a future, concentrate totally on the

now, be concerned only with your response to every movement of life

as it happens.

Q: What is the cause for the urge to roam about?

M: There is no cause. You merely dream you roam about. In a few years

your stay in India will appear as a dream to you. You will dream some

other dream at that time. Do realize that it is not you that moves

from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you, and you are the

immutable witness. No happening affects your real being – this is the

absolute truth.

Q: Cannot I move about physically and keep steady inwardly?

M: You can, but what purpose does it serve? If you are earnest, you

will find that in the end you will get fed up with roaming and regret

the waste of time and energy. To find yourself you need not take a

single step.

Q: Don't we reach the Absolute through a gradation of experiences?

Beginning with the grossest, we end with the most sublime.

M: There can be no experience without desire for it. There can be

gradation between desires, but between the most sublime desire and

the freedom from all desire there is an abyss which must be crossed.

The unreal may look real, but it is transient. The real is not afraid

of time.

Q: Is not the unreal the expression of the real?

M: How can it be? It is like saying that truth expresses itself in

dreams. To the real the unreal is not. It appears to be real only

because you believe in it. Doubt it, and it ceases. When you are in

love with somebody, you give it reality – you imagine your love to be

all-powerful and everlasting. When it comes to an end you say, `I

thought it was real, but it wasn't'. Transiency is the best proof of

unreality. What is limited in time and space, and applicable to one

person only, is not real. The real is for all and forever.

Above everything else you cherish yourself. You would accept nothing

in exchange for your existence. The desire to be is the strongest of

all desires, and will go only upon realization of your true nature.

Q: Even in the unreal there is a touch of reality.

M: Yes, the reality you impart to it by taking it to be real. Having

convinced yourself, you are bound by your conviction. When the sun

shines, colors appear. When it sets, they disappear. Where are the

colors without the light?

Q: This is thinking in terms of duality.

M: All thinking is in duality, in identity no thought survives.

~I Am That

Chapter 69

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

July 12, 2005

Nisargadatta , " joenorwood2005 "

<joenorwood2005> wrote:

~I Am That

Chapter 69

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Questioner: I am in India over a year, wandering from ashram to

ashram.

Maharaj: Shall I ask you? What is the purpose of your moving from

place to place?

Q; To meet people, to try to understand them.

M: What people are you trying to understand? What exactly are you

after?

Q: Integration.

M: If you want integration, you must know whom you want to integrate.

Q: By meeting people and watching them, one comes to know oneself

also. It goes together.

M: It does not necessarily go together.

Q: One improves the other.

M: It does not work that way. The mirror reflects the image, but the

image does not improve the mirror. You are neither the mirror nor the

image in the mirror. Having perfected the mirror so that it reflects

correctly, truly, you can turn the mirror around and see in it a true

reflection of yourself – true as far as the mirror can reflect. But

the reflection is not yourself – you are the seer of the reflection.

Do understand it clearly – whatever you may perceive,

You are not what you perceive.

Q: I am the mirror and the world is the image?

M: You can see both the image and the mirror. You are neither. Who

are you? Don't go by formulas. The answer is not in words. The

nearest you can say in words is: I am what makes perception possible.

The life beyond the experiencer and his experience.

Now, can you separate yourself from both the mirror and the image in

the mirror and stand completely alone, all by yourself?

Q: No, I cannot.

M: How do you know that you cannot? There are so many things you are

doing without knowing how to do it. You digest, you circulate your

blood, you move your muscles – all without knowing how. In the same

way, you perceive, you feel, you think, without knowing the why nor

how of it. Similarly, you are yourself without knowing it. There is

nothing wrong with you as the Self. It is what it is to perfection.

It