Nisargadatta Maharaj

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I Am That Chapter 24

 

God is the All-doer, the Gnani a Non-doer

 

Q: Some Mahatmas (enlightened beings) maintain that the world is

neither an accident nor a play of God, but the result and expression

of a mighty plan of work aiming at awakening and developing

consciousness through out the universe. From lifelessness to life,

from unconsciousness to consciousness, from dullness to bright

intelligence, from misapprehension to clarity - that is the direction

in which the world moves ceaselessly and relentlessly. Of course,

there are moments of rest and apparent darkness, when the universe

seems to be dormant, but the rest comes to an end and the work on

consciousness is resumed. From our point of view the world is a vale

of tears, a place to escape from, as soon as possible and by every

possible means. To enlightened beings the world is good and it serves

a good purpose. They do not deny that the world is a mental structure.

What we call the will of God is not a capricious whim of a playful

deity, but the expression of an absolute necessity to grow in love

and wisdom and power, to actualized the infinite potentials of life

and consciousness.

 

Just as a gardener grows flowers from a tiny seed to glorious

perfection, so does God in His own garden grow, among other beings,

men to supermen, who know and love and work along with Him.

 

When God takes rest (pralaya), those whose growth was not completed,

become unconscious for a time, which the perfect ones, who have gone

beyond all forms and contents of consciousness, remain aware of the

universal silence. When the time comes for the emergence of a new

universe, the sleepers wake up and their work starts. The more

advanced wake up first and prepare the ground for the less advanced -

who thus find forms and patterns of behavior suitable for their

further growth.

 

Thus runs the story. The difference with your teaching is this: you

insist that the world is not good and should be shunned. They say the

distaste for the world is a passing stage, necessary, yet temporary,

and is soon replaced by an all-pervading love, and a steady will to

work with God.

 

M: All you say is right for the outgoing (pravritti) path. For the

path of return )nivritti) naughting oneself is necessary. my stand I

take where nothing (paramakash) is; worlds do not reach there, nor

thoughts. To the mind it is all darkness and silence. Then

consciousness begins to stir and wakes up the mind (chidakash), which

projects the world (mahadakash), built of memory and imagination. Once

the world comes into being, all you say may be so. It is in the nature

of the mind to imagine goals, to strive towards them, to seek out

means and ways, to display vision, energy and courage. These are

divine attributes and I do not deny them. But I take my stand where no

difference exists, where things are not, nor the mind that creates

them. There I am at home. Whatever happens, does not affect me -

things act on things, that is all. Free from memory and expectation, I

am fresh, innocent and wholehearted. Mind is the great worker

(mahakarta) and it needs rest. Needing nothing, I am unafraid. Whom to

be afraid of? There is no separation, we are not separate selves.

There is only on Self, the Supreme Reality, in which the personal and

the impersonal are one.

 

Q: All I want it to be able to help the world.

M: Who says you cannot help? You made up your mind about what help

means and needs and got your self into a conflict between what you

should and what you can, between necessity and ability.

 

Q: But why do we do so?

M: You mind projects a structure and you identify yourself with it. It

is in the nature of desire to prompt the mind to create and can set a

huge forest on fire, so does a desire light the fires of

manifestation. The very purpose of creation is the fulfillment of

desire. The desire my be noble, or ignoble, space (akash) is very

neutral - one can fill it with what one likes. You must be very

careful as to what you desire. And as to the people you want to help,

they are in their respective worlds for the sake of their desires;

there is no way of helping them except thorough their desires. You can

only teach them to have desires so that they may rise above them and

be free from the urge to create and re-create worlds and desires,

abodes of pain and pleasure.

 

Q: A day must come when the show is wound up; a man must die, a

universe comes to an end.

M: Just as a sleeping man forgets all and wakes up for another day, or

he dies and emerges into another life, so do the world of desire and

fear dissolve and disappear. But the universal witness, the Supreme

Self never sleeps and never dies. Eternally the great Heart beats and

at each beat a new universe comes into being.

 

Q: Is he conscious?

M: He is beyond all that the mind conceives, He is beyond being and

not being. He is the Yes and No to everything, beyond and within,

creating and destroying, unimaginable real.

Q: God and the Mahatma are they one or two?

M: They are one.

Q: There must be some difference.

M: God is the All-Doer, the gnani is a non-doer. God Himself does not

say: 'I am doing all.' To Him things happen by their own nature. To

the gnani all is done by God. He sees no difference between God and

nature. Both God and the gnani know themselves to be the immovable

center of the movable, the eternal witness of the transient. The

center is a point of void and the witness a point of pure awareness;

they know themselves to be as nothing, therefore nothing can resist them.

How does this look and feel in your personal experience?

M: Being nothing, I am all. Everything is me, everything is mine. Just

as my body moves by my mere thinking of movement, so do things happen

as I think of them. Mind you, I do nothing. I just see them happen.

Q: Do things happen as you want them to happen, or do you want them to

happen as they happen?

M: Both. I accept and am accepted. I am all and all is me. Being the

world I am not afraid of the world. Being all, what am I to be afraid

of? Water is not afraid of water, nor fire of fire. Also I am not

afraid because I am nothing that can experience fear, or can be in

danger. I have no shape, nor name. It is attachment to a name and

shape that breeds fear. I am not attached. I am nothing, and nothing

is afraid of no thing. On the contrary, everything is afraid of the

Nothing, for when a thing touches Nothing, it become nothing. It is

like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it disappears.

Q: Isn't God a person?

M: As long as you think yourself to be a person, He too is a person.

When you are all, you see Him as all.

Q: Can I change facts by changing attitude?

M: The attitude is the fact. Take anger. I may be furious, pacing up

and down the room; at the same time I know what I am, a center of

wisdom and love, and atom of pure existence. All subsides and the mind

merges into silence.

Q: Still, you are angry sometimes.

M: With whom am I to be angry and for what? Anger came and dissolved

on my remembering myself. It is all a play of gunas (qualities of

cosmic matter) When I identify myself with them, I am their slave.

When I stand apart, I am their master.

Q: Can you influence the world by your attitude? By separating

yourself from the world you lose all hope of helping it.

M: How can it be? All is myself - cant I help myself? I do not

identify myself with anybody in particular, for I am all - both the

particular and the universal.

Q: Can you then help me, the particular person?

M: But I do help you always - from within. My self and your self are

one. I know it, but you don't. There is all the difference - and it

cannot last.

Q: And how do you help the entire world?

M: Gandhi is dead, yet his mind pervades the earth. The thought of a

gnani pervades humanity and works ceaselessly for good. Being

anonymous, coming from within, it is the more powerful and compelling.

That is how the world improves - the inner aiding and blessing the

outer. When a gnani dies, he is no more, in the same sense in which a

river is no more when it merges in the sea; the name, the shape, are

no more, but the water remains and becomes one with the ocean. When a

gnani joins the universal mind, all his goodness and wisdom become the

heritage of humanity and uplift every human being.

Q: We are attached to our personality. Our individuality, our being

unlike others, we value very much. You seem to denounce

both as useless. Your unmanifested, of what use it it to us?

M: Unmanifested, manifested, individuality, personality (nirguna,

saguna, vyakta, vyakti); all these are mere words, points of view,

mental attitudes. There is no reality in them. The real is experienced

in silence. You cling to personality - but you are conscious of being

a person only when you are in trouble - when you are not in trouble

you do not think of yourself.

Q You did not tell me the uses of the Unmanifested.

M: Surely, you much sleep in order to wake up. You must die in order

to live, you must melt down to shape anew. You must destroy to build,

annihilate before creation. The Supreme is the universal solvent, it

corrodes every container, it burns through every obstacle. Without the

absolute denial of everything the tyranny of things would be absolute.

The Supreme is the great harmonizer, the guarantee of the ultimate and

perfect balance - of life in freedom. It dissolves you and thus

re-asserts your true being.

Q: It is all well on its own level. But how does it work in daily life?

M: The daily life is a life of action. Whether you like it or not, you

must function. Whatever you do for your own sake accumulates and

becomes explosive, one day it goes off and plays havoc with you and

your world. When you deceive yourself that you work for the good of

all, it makes matters worse, for you should not be guided by your own

ideas of what is good for other. A man who claims to know what is good

for others, is dangerous.

Q: How is one to work then?

M: Neither for yourself nor for others, but for the work's own sake. A

thing worth doing is its own purpose and meaning. Make nothing a means

to something else. Bind not. God does not create one thing to serve

another. Each is made for its own sake. Because it is made for itself,

it does not interfere. You are using things and people for purposes

alien to them and you play havoc with the world and yourself.

Q: Our real being is all the time with us, you say. How is it that we

do not notice it?

M: Yes, you are always the Supreme. But your attention is fixed on

things, physical or mental. When your attention is off a thing and not

yet fixed on another, in that interval you are pure being. When

through the practice of discrimination and detachment

(viveka-vairagya} you lose sight of sensory and mental states, pure

being emerges as the natural state.

Q: How does one bring to and end this sense of separateness?

M: By focusing the mind on 'I am', on the sense of being, 'I am' so

and-so' dissolves, 'am a witness only' remains and that too submerges

in 'I am all'. Then the all becomes the One and the One - yourself,

not to be separate from me. Abandon the idea of a separate 'I' and the

question of whose experience? will not arise.

Q: You speak from you own experience. How can I make it mine?

M: You speak of my experience as different from your experience,

because you believe we are separate. But we are not. On a deeper

level my experience is your experience. Dive deep within yourself

and you will find it easily and simply. Go in the direction of 'I am'.