Nisargadatta Maharaj

[Guest guest]

The Person is not Reality

 

Q: Kindly tell us how you realized.

Nisargadatta Maharaj: I met my Guru when I was 34 and realized by 37.

Q: What happened? What was the change?

M: Pleasure and pain lost their sway over me. I was free from desire

and fear. I found myself full, needing nothing. I saw that in the

ocean of pure awareness, on the surface of the universal

consciousness, the numberless waves of the phenomenal worlds

arise and subside beginninglessly and endlessly. As consciousness,

they are all me. As events that are all mine. There is a mysterious

power that looks after them. That power is awareness, Self, Life,

God, whatever name you give it. It is the foundation, the ultimate

support of all that is, just like gold is the basis of all gold

jewellery. And it is so intimately ours! Abstract the name and shape

from the jewellery and the gold become obvious. Be free of name and

form and of the desires and fears they create, then what remains?

Q: Nothingness.

M: Yes, the void remains. But the void is full to the brim. It is the

eternal potential as consciousness is the eternal actual.

Q: By potential you mean the future?

M: Past, present and future- they are all there. And infinitely

more.

Q: But since the void is void, it is of little use to us.

M: How can you say so? Without breach in continuity how can there be

rebirth? Can there be renewal without death? Even the darkness of

sleep is refreshing and rejuvenating. Without death we would have

been bogged down forever in eternal senility.

Q: Is there no such thing as immortality?

M: When life and death are seen as essential to each other, as two

aspects of one being, that is immortality. To see the end in the

beginning and the beginning is the end is the intimation of eternity.

Definitely, immortality is not continuity. Only the process of change

continues. Nothing lasts.

Q: Awareness lasts?

M: Awareness is not of time. Time exists in consciousness only.

Beyond consciousness where are time and space?

Q: Within the field of your consciousness there is your body also.

M: Of course. But the idea 'my body', as different from other bodies,

in not there. To me it is 'a body' not 'my body', 'a mind', not 'my

mind'. The mind looks after the body all right, I need not interfere.

What needs to be done is being done, in the normal and natural way.

You may not be quite conscious of your physiological functions, but

when it comes to thoughts and feelings, desire and fears, you become

acutely self-conscious. To me, these too are largely unconscious. I

find myself talking to people, or doing things quite. correctly and

appropriately, without being very much conscious of them. It is as if

I live my physical waking life automatically. reacting spontaneously

and accurately.

Q: Does the spontaneous response come as a result of realization, or

by training?

M: Both. Devotion to your goal makes you live a clean and orderly

life, given to search for truth and to helping people, and

realization makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for

good the obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas.

Q: Don't you have desires and fears anymore?

M: My destiny was to be born a simple man, a commoner, a humble

tradesman, with little formal education. My life was of the common

kind, with common desires and fears. When, through my faith in my

teacher and obedience to his words, I realized my true being, I left

behind my human nature to look after itself, until its destiny is

exhausted. Occasionally and old reaction, emotional or mental,

happens in the mind, but is it at once noticed and discarded. After

all, as long as one is burdened with a person, one is exposed to its

idiosyncrasies and habits.

Q: Are you not afraid of death?

M: I am dead already.

Q: In what sense?

M: I am double dead. Not only am I dead to my body, but to my mind

too.

Q: Well, you do not look dead at all!

M: That's what you say! You seem to know my state better than I do!

Q: Sorry, but I just do not understand. You say you are bodiless and

mindless, while I see you very much alive and articulate.

M: A tremendously complex work is going on all the time in your brain

and body, are you conscious of it? Now at all. Yet for an outsider

all seems to be going on intelligently and purposefully. Why not

admit that one's entire personal life may sink largely below the

threshold of consciousness and yet proceed sanely and smoothly?

Q: Is it normal?

M: What is normal? Is your life - obsessed by desires and fears, full

of strife and struggle, meaningless and joyless - normal? To be

acutely conscious of your body - is it normal? To be torn by

feelings, tortured by thoughts: is it normal? A healthy body, a

healthy mind live largely unperceived by their owner; only

occasionally, through pain or suffering they call for attention and

insight. Why not extend the same to the entire personal life? One can

function rightly, responding well and fully to whatever happens,

without having to bring it into the focus of awareness. When self-

control becomes second nature, awareness shifts its focus to deeper

levels of existence and action.

Q: Don't you become a robot?

M: What harm is there is making automatic, what is habitual and

repetitive? It is automatic anyhow. But when it is also chaotic it

causes pain and suffering and calls for attention. The entire

purpose of a clean and well-ordered life is to liberate man from the

thralldom of chaos and the burden of sorrow.

Q: You seem to be in favor of a computerized life.

M: What is wrong with a life which is free from problems?

Personality is merely a reflection of the real, why should not the

reflection be true to the original as a matter of course,

automatically? Need the person have any designs of its own? The life

of which it is an expression will guide it. Once you realize that the

person is merely a shadow of the reality, but not reality itself,

you cease to fret and worry. You agree to be guided from within and

life becomes a journey in the unknown.