Nisargadatta Maharaj

[Guest guest]

I Am That Chapter 18 To Know What you Are

 

To Know What you Are, Find What You are Not

 

Q: Your way of describing the universe as consisting of matter, mind

and spirit is one of the many. There are other patterns to which the

universe is expected to conform, and one is at a loss to know which

pattern is true and which is not. One ends in suspecting that all

patterns are only verbal and that no pattern can contain reality.

According to you, reality consists of three expanses: The expanse of

matter-energy (mahadakash), the expanse of consciousness (chidakash)

and the pure spirit (paramakash). The first is something that has both

movement and inertia, that we perceive. We also know that we perceive

- we are conscious and also aware of being conscious. Thus, we have

two: matter-energy and consciousness. Matter seems to be in space

which energy is always in time, being connected with change and

measured by the rate of change. Consciousness seems to be somehow here

and now, in a single point of time and space. But you seem to suggest

that consciousness to is universal - Which makes it timeless,

spaceless and impersonal. I can somehow understand that there is no

contradiction between the timeless and spaceless and the here and now,

but impersonal consciousness I cannot fathom. To me consciousness is

always focalized, centered, individualized , a person. You seem to say

that there can be perceiving without a perceiver, knowing without a

knower, loving without a lover, acting without an actor. I feel that

the trinity of knowing, knower and known can be seen it every movement

of life. Consciousness implies a conscious being, and object of

consciousness and the fact of being conscious. That which is conscious

I call a person. A person lives in the world, is a part of it, affects

it and is affected by it.

 

Nisargadatta Maharaj: Why don't you enquire how real are the world and

the person?

Q: Oh, no! I need not enquire. Enough if the person is not less real

that the world in which the person exists.

M: Then what is the question?

Q: Are persons real, and universals conceptual, or are universals real

and persons imaginary?

M: Neither are real

Q: Surely I am real enough to merit your reply and I am a person.

M: Not when asleep.

Q: Submergence is not absence, Even though asleep, I am.

M: To be a person you must be self-conscious. Are you so always?

Q: Not when I sleep, of course, nor when I am in a swoon, or drugged.

M: During your waking hours are you continually self-conscious?

Q: No sometimes I am absent-minded, or just absorbed.

M: Are you a person during the gaps in self-consciousness?

Q: Of course I am the same person throughout. I remember myself as I

was yesterday and yester-year - definitely, I am the same person.

M: So, to be a person, you need memory?

Q: Of course.

M: And without memory, what are you?

Q: Incomplete memory entails incomplete personality,. Without memory I

cannot exit as a person.

M: Surely, you can exist without memory. You did so - in sleep.

Q: Only in the sense of remaining alive. Not a person.

M: Since you admit that as a person you have only intermittent

existence, can you tell me what are you in the intervals in between

experiencing yourself as a person?

Q: I am, but not as a person. Since I am not conscious of myself in

the intervals, I can only say that I exist, but not as a person.

M: Shall we call it impersonal existence?

Q: I would rather call it unconscious existence; I am, but I do not

know that I am.

M: You have said just now: 'I am, but I don't not know that I am'.

Could you possibly say it about your being in an unconscious state?

Q: No, I could not.

M: You can only describe it in the past tense: 'I did not know.

I was unconscious', in the sense of not remembering.

Q: Having been unconscious, how could I remember and what?

M: Were you really unconscious, or you just do not remember?

Q: How are I to make out?

M: Consider. Do you remember every second of yesterday?

Q: Of course not.

M: So, you are conscious and yet you do not remember?

Q: Yes.

M: Maybe you were conscious in sleep and just do not remember.

Q: No, I was not conscious. I was asleep. I did not behave like a

conscious person.

M: Again, how do you know?

Q: I was told so by those who saw me asleep.

M: All they can testify to is that they saw you lying quietly with

closed eyes and breathing regularly. They could not make out whether

you were conscious or not. You only proof is your own memory. A very

uncertain proof it is!

Q: Yes, I admit that on my own terms I am a person only during my

waking hours. What I am in between, I do not know.

M: At least you know that you do not know! Since you pretend not to be

conscious in the intervals between the waking hours, leave the

intervals alone. Let us consider the waking hours only.

Q: I am the same person in my dreams.

M: Agreed. Let us consider them together - waking and dreaming. The

difference is merely in continuity. Were your dreams consistently

continuous, bringing back night after night the same surroundings and

the same people, you would be at a loss to know which is the waking

and which is the dream. Hence forward, when we talk of the waking

state, we shall include the dream state too.

Q: Agree. I am a person in a conscious relation with a world.

M: Are the world and the conscious relation with it essential to your

being a person?

Q: Even immured in a cave, I remain a person.

M: This makes the person a part and parcel of the world, or vice

versa. The two are one.

Q: Consciousness stands alone. The person and the world appear in

consciousness.

M: Maybe it is the other way round. Because of you, there is a world.

Q: To me such a statement appears meaningless.

M: Its meaninglessness may disappear on investigation.

Q: Where do we begin?

M: Al I know is that whatever depends, is not real. The real is truly

independent. since the existence of the person depends on the

existence of the world and it is circumscribed and defined by the

world, it cannot be real.

Q: It cannot be a dream, surely.

M: Even a dream has existence, when it is cognized and enjoyed, or

endured. Whatever you think and feel has being. But it may not be what

you take it to be. what you take to be a person may be something quite

different.

Q: I am what I know myself to be.

M: You cannot possibly say that you are what you think yourself to be!

Your ideas about yourself change from day to day and from moment to

moment. Your self-image is the most changeful thing you have. It is

utterly vulnerable, at the mercy of a passerby. A bereavement, the

loss of a job, and insult, and your image of yourself, which you call

your person, changes deeply. To know what you are, you must first

investigate and know what you are not. And to know what you are not,

you must watch yourself carefully, rejecting all that does not

necessarily go with the basic fact: 'I am'. The ideas I am born at a

given place, at a given time, from my parent and now I am so-and-so,

living at, married to, father of, employed by, and so one, are not

inherent in the sense ''I am'. Our usual attitude is of 'I am this'.

Separate consistently and perseveringly the 'I am' from; this' or

'that' and try to feel 'what it means to be, just to be, without

being' 'this or 'that'. All our habits go against it and the task of

fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding

helps a lot. The clearer you understand that on the lever of the mind

you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker you will come

to the end of your search and realize your limitless being.