Nisargadatta Maharaj says A Quiet Mind is All we Need

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Questioner: I am not well. I feel rather weak. What am I to do?

 

Maharaj: Who is unwell, you or the body?

 

Q: My body, of course.

 

M: Yesterday you felt well. What felt well?

 

Q: The body.

 

M: You were glad when the body was well and you are sad when the body is

unwell. Who is glad one day and sad the next?

 

Q: The mind.

 

M: And who knows the variable mind?

 

Q: The mind.

 

M: The mind is the knower. Who knows the knower?

 

Q: Does not the knower know itself?

 

M: The mind is discontinuous. Again and again it blanks out, like in sleep

or swoon, or distraction. There must be something continuous to register

discontinuity.

 

Q: The mind remembers. This stands for continuity.

 

M: Memory is always partial, unreliable and evanescent. It does not explain

the strong sense of identity pervading consciousness, the sense 'I am'. Find

out what is at the root of it.

 

Q: However deeply I look, I find only the mind. Your words 'beyond the mind'

give me no clue.

 

M: While looking with the mind, you cannot go beyond it. To go beyond, you

must look away from the mind and its contents.

 

Q: Where does it all lead me?

 

M: When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If

you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated

with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognise it at

once as your own nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you

will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and

obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return, provided the effort is

sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and

attachments end and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present.

 

Q: The very words 'I' and 'universal' are contradictory. One excludes the

other.

 

M: They don't. The sense of identity pervades the universal. Search and you

shall discover the Universal Person, who is yourself and infinitely more.

Anyhow, begin by realising that the world is in you, not you in the world.

 

Q: To know perfectly I need a perfect mind.

 

M: A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your

mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does

self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady

self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort

on your part.

 

Source: I am That Book By Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

--

Om namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya

Prashant Jalasutram