Nisargadatta Maharaj

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" I Am That " Chapter 23 - Discrimination leads to Detachment

 

M: You are all drenched for it is raining hard. In my world it is

always fine weather. There is no night or day, no heat or cold. No

worries beset me there, nor regrets. My mind is free of thoughts, for

there are no desires to slave for.

Q: Are there two worlds?

M: Your world is transient, changeful. My world is perfect,

changeless. You can tell me what you like about your world-I shall

listen carefully, even with interest, yet not for a moment shall I

forget that your world is not, that you are dreaming.

Q: What distinguishes your world from mine?

M: My world has no characteristics by which it can be identified. You

can say nothing about it.. I am my world. My world is myself. It is

complete and perfect. Every impression is erased, every experience -

rejected. I need nothing, not even myself, my myself I cannot lose.

Q: Not even God?

M: All these ideas and distinctions exist in your world' in mine there

is nothing of the kind. My world is single and very simple.

Q: Nothing happens there?

M: Whatever happens in your world, only there it has validity and

evokes response, In my world nothing happens.

Q: The very fact of your experiencing your own world implies duality

inherent in all experience.

M: Verbally - yes. But your words do not reach me. Mine is a

non-verbal world. In your world the unspoken has no existence. In mine

- the words and their contents have no being. In your world nothing

stays, in mine - nothing changes. My world is real, while yours is

made of dreams.

Q: Yet we are talking.

M: The talk is in your world. In mine - there is eternal silence. My

silence sings, my emptiness is full, I lack nothing. You cannot know

my world until you are there.

Q: It seems as if you alone are in your world.

M: How can you say alone or not alone when words do not apply? Of

course, I am alone for I am all.

Q: Do you ever come into our world?

M: What is coming and going to me? These again are words. I am. Whence

am I to come from and where to go?

Q: Of what use is your world to me?

M: You should consider more closely your own world, examine it

critically and, suddenly, one day you will find yourself in mine.

Q: What do we gain by it?

M: You gain nothing. You leave behind what is not your own and find

what you have never lost - your own being.

Q: Who is the ruler of your world?

M: There are no ruler and ruled here. There is no duality whatsoever.

You are merely projecting your own ideas. Your scriptures and your

gods have no meaning here.

Q: Still you have name and shape, display consciousness and activity.

M: In your world I appear so. In mine I have being only. Nothing else.

You people are rich with your ideas of possession, of quantity and

quality. I am completely without ideas.

Q: In my world there is disturbance, distress and despair. You seem to

be living on some hidden income, while I must slave for a living.

M: Do as you please. You are free to leave your world for mine.

Q: How is the crossing done?

M: See your world as it is, not as your imagine it to be.

Discrimination will lead to detachment: detachment will ensure right

action, right action will build the inner bridge to your real being.

Action is a proof of earnestness. Do what you are told diligently and

faithful and all obstacles will dissolve.

Q: Are you happy?

M: In your would I would be most miserable. To wake up, to eat, to

talk, to sleep again - what a bother!

Q: So you do not want to live even?

M: To live, to die - what meaningless words are there! When your see

me alive, I am dead. When you think me dead, I am alive. How muddled

up you are!

Q: How indifferent you are! All the sorrows of our world are as

nothing to you.

M: I am quite conscious of your troubles.

Q: Then what are you doing about them?

M: There is nothing I need do. They come and go.

Q: Do they go by the very act of your giving them attention?

M: Yes. The difficulty may be physical, emotional or mental; but it is

always individual. Large-scale calamities are the sum of numberless

individual destinies and take time to settle. But death is never a

calamity.

Q: Even when a man is killed?

M: The calamity is of the killer.

Q: Still, it seems there are two worlds, mine and yours.

M: Mine is real, yours is of the mind.

Q: Imagine a rock and a hole in the rock and a frog in the hole. The

frog may spend its life in perfect bliss, undistracted, undisturbed.

Outside the rock the world goes on. If the frog in the hole were told

about the outside world, he would say: 'There is no such thing. My

world is of peace and bliss. Your world is a word structure only, it

has no existence.' It is the same with you. When you tell us that our

world simply does not exist, there is no common ground for discussion.

Or, take another example. I go to a doctor and complain of stomach

ache. He examines me and says: ' You are all right'. 'But it pains, I

say. 'You pain is mental', he asserts. I say, 'It does to help me to

know that my pain is mental. You are a doctor, cure me of my pain. If

you cannot cure me, you are not my doctor.'

M: Quite right.

Q: You have built the railroad, but for lack of a bridge no train can

pass. Build the bridge.

M: There is no need for a bridge.

Q: There must be some link between your world and mine.

M: There is no need of a link between a real world and an imaginary

world, for there cannot be any.

Q: So what are we to do?

M: Investigate your world, apply your mind to it, examine it

critically, scrutinize every idea about it; that will do.

Q: The world is too big for investigation. All I know is that I am,

the world is, the world troubles me and I trouble the world.

M: My experience is that everything is bliss. But the desire for bliss

creates pain. Then bliss becomes the seed of pain. The entire universe

of pain is born of desire. Give up the desire for pleasure and you

will not even know what is pain.

Q: Why should pleasure be the seed of pain?

M: Because for the sake of pleasure you are committing many sins. And

the fruits of sin are suffering and death.

Q: You say the world is no use to us - only a tribulation. I feel it

cannot be so. God in not such a fool. The world seems to me a big

enterprise for bringing the potential into actual, matter into life,

the unconscious into full awareness. To realize the supreme we need

the experience of the opposites. Just as for building a temple we need

stone and mortar, wood and iron, glass and tiles, so for making a man

into divine sage, a master of life and death, one needs the material

of every experience. As a woman goes to the market, buys provisions of

every sort, comes home, cooks, bakes and feeds her lord, so we bake

ourselves nicely in the fire of life.

and feed our God.

M: Well, if you think so, act on it. Feed your God, by all means.

Q: A child goes to school and learns many things, which will be of no

use to it later, But in the course of learning it grows. So do we pass

through experiences without number and forget them all, but in the

meantime we grow all the time. and what is a gnani but a man with a

genius for reality! This world of mine cannot be an accident.

It makes sense, there must be a plan behind it. My God has a plan.

M: If the world is false, then the plan and its creator are also false.

Q: Again, you deny the world. There is no bridge between us.

M: There is no need of a bridge. Your mistake lies in your belief that

you are born. You were never born nor will you ever die, but you

believe that you were born at a certain date and place and that a

particular body is your own.

Q: The world is, I am. there are facts.

M: Why do you worry about the world before taking care of yourself?

You want to save the world, don't you? Can you save the world before

saving yourself? And what is the meaning of being saved? Saved from

what? From illusion. Salvation is to see things as they are. I really

do not see myself related to anybody and anything. Not even to a self,

whatever that self may be. I remain forever - undefined. I am within

and beyond - intimate and unapproachable.

Q: How did you come to it?

M; By my trust in my Guru " He told me 'you alone are' and I did not

doubt him. I was merely puzzling over it, until I realized that is

absolutely true.

Q: Conviction by repetition?

M: By self-realization. I found that I am conscious and happy

absolutely and only by mistake I thought I owed being -

consciousness-bliss to the body and the world of bodies.

Q: You are not a learned man. You have not read much and what you read

or heard did not perhaps contradict itself. I am fairly well educated

and have read a lot and I found that books and teachers contradict

each other hopelessly. Hence, whatever I read or hear, I take it in a

state of doubt.. 'It may be so, it may not be so'. is my first

reaction. And as my mind is unable to decide doubts. In yoga a

doubting mind is a tremendous disadvantage.

M; I am glad to hear it; but my Guru too, taught me to doubt -

everything and absolutely. He said " 'deny existence to everything

except your self.' Through desire you have created the world with its

pains and pleasures.

Q: Must it be also painful?

M: What else? By its very nature pleasure is limited and transitory.

Out of pain desire is born, in pain it seeks fulfillment, and it ends

in the pain of frustration and despair. Pain is the background of

pleasure, all seeking of pleasure is born in pain and ends in pain.

Q: All you say is clear to me. But when some physical or mental

trouble comes, my mind goes dull and gray, or seeks frantically for

relief.

M: What does it matter? It is the mind that is dull or restless, not

you. Look, all kinds of things happen in the room. Do I cause them to

happen? They just happen. So it is with you - the roll of destiny

unfolds itself and actualizes the inevitable. You cannot change the

course of events, but you can change your attitude and what really

matters is the attitude and not the bare event. The world is the abode

of desires and fears. You cannot find peace in it. For peace you must

go beyond the world. The root cause of the world is self-love. Because

of it we seek pleasure and avoid pain. Replace self-love by love of

the Self and the picture changes. Brahma the creator is the sum total

of all desires. The world is the instrument for their fulfillment.

souls take whatever pleasure they desire and pay for them in tears.

Time squares all accounts. The law of balance reigns supreme.

Q: To be a superman one must be a man first. Manhood is the fruit of

innumerable experiences. Desire drives to experience. Hence, at its

own time and level, desire is right.

M: All this is true in a way. But a day comes when you have amassed

enough and must begin to build. The sorting out and discarding

(viveka-vairagya) are absolutely necessary. Everything must be

scrutinized and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed. Believe me,

there cannot be too much destruction. For in reality nothing is of

value. Be passionately dispassionate - that is all.