Nisargadatta Maharaj in conversation... (fwd)

[Shashikanth Hosur]

Hi,

        This is chapter 66 from "I am That" typed out verbatim. Excuse
        typos if any.


                All Search for Happiness is Misery

Questioner: I have come from England and I am on my way to Madras.
There I shall meet my father and we shall go by car overland to
London. I am to study psychology, but I do not yet know what I shall
do when I get my degree. I may try industrial psychology, or
psychotherapy. My father is a general physician, I may follow the
same line.

        But this does not exhaust my interests. There are certain
questions which do not change with time. I understand you have some
answers to such questions and this made me come to see you.

Maharaj: I wonder whether I am the right man to answer your questions.
I know little about things and people. I know only that I am, and that
much you also know. We are equals.

Q: Of course I know that I am. But I do not know what it means.

M: What you take to be the 'I' in the 'I am' is not you. To know that
you are is natural, to know what you are is the result of much
investigation. You will have to explore the entire field of
consciousness and go beyond it. For this you must find the right
teacher and create the conditions needed for discovery. Generally
speaking, there are two ways: external and internal. Either you
live with somebody who knows the Truth and submit yourself entirely
to his guiding and moulding influence, or you seek the inner guide
and follow the inner light wherever it takes you. In both cases your
personal desires and fears must be disregarded. You learn either
by proximity or by investigation, the passive or the active way.
You either let yourself be carried by the river of life and love
represented by your Guru, or you make your own efforts, guided
by your inner star. In both cases you must move on, you must be
earnest. Rare are the people who are lucky to find somebody worthy
of trust and love. Most of them must take the hard way, the way
of intelligence and understanding, of discrimination and
detachment (viveka-vairagya). This is the way open to all.

Q: I am lucky to have come here: though I am leaving tomorrow, one
talk with you may affect my entire life.

M: Yes, once you say 'I want to find Truth', all your life will be
deeply affected by it. All your mental and physical habits, feelings
and emotions, desires and fears, plans and decisions will undergo
a most radical transformation.

Q: Once I have made up my mind to find The Reality, what do I do
next?

M: It depends on your temperament. If you are earnest, whatever way
you choose will take you to your goal. It is the earnestness that is
the decisive factor.

Q: What is the source of earnestness?

M: It is the homing instinct, which makes the bird return to its nest
and the fish to the mountain stream where it was born. The seed
returns to the earth, when the fruit is ripe. Ripeness is all.

Q: And what will ripen me? Do I need experience?

M: You already have all the experience you need, othewise you would
not have come here. You need not gather any more, rather you must
go beyond experience. Whatever effort you make, whatever method
(sadhana) you follow, will merely generate more experience, but will
not take you beyond. Nor will reading books help you. They will
enrich your mind, but the person you are will remain intact. If you
expect any benefits from your search, material, mental or spiritual,
you have missed the point. Truth gives no advantage. It gives you
no higher status, no power over others; all you get is truth and
the freedom from the false.

Q: Surely truth gives you the power to help others.

M: This is mere imagination, however noble! In truth you do not
help others, because there are no others. You divide people into
noble and ignoble and you ask the noble to help the ignoble. You
separate, you evaluate, you judge and condemn - in the name of
truth you destroy it. Your very desire to formulate truth denies
it, because it cannot be contained in words. Truth can be
expressed only by the denial of the false - in action. For this
you must see the false as false (viveka) and reject it (vairagya).
Renunciation of the false is liberating and energizing. It lays
open the road to perfection.

Q: When do I know that I have discovered truth?

M: When the idea 'this is true', 'that is true' does not arise.
Truth does not assert itself, it is the seeing of the false as
false and rejecting it. It is useless to search for truth, when
the mind is blind to the false. It must be purged of the false
completely before truth can dawn on it.

Q: But what is false?

M: Surely, what has no being is false.

Q: What do you mean by having no being? The false is there, hard
as a nail.

M: What contradicts itself, has no being. Or it has only momentary
being, which comes to the same. For, what has a beginning and an
end has no middle. It is hollow. It has only the name and shape
given to it by the mind, but it has neither substance nor essence.

Q: If all that passes has no being, then the universe has no being
either.

M: Who ever denies it? Of course the universe has no being.

Q: What has?

M: That which does not depend for its existence, which does not
arise with the universe arising, nor set with the universe setting,
which does not need any proof, but imparts reality to all it touches.
It is the nature of the false that it appears real for a moment. One
could say that the true becomes the father of the false. But the
false is limited in time and space and is produced by circumstances.

Q: How am I to get rid of the false and secure the real?

M: To what purpose?

Q: In order to live a better, a more satisfactory life, integrated
and happy.

M: Whatever is conceived by the mind must be false, for it is bound
to be relative and limited. The real is inconceivable and cannot be
harnessed to a purpose. It must be wanted for its own sake.

Q: How can I want the inconceivable?

M: What else is there worth wanting? Granted, the real cannot be
wanted, as a thing is wanted. But you can see the unreal as unreal
and discard it. It is the discarding the false that opens the way
to the true.

Q: I understand, but how does it look in actual daily life?

M: Self-interest and self-concern are the focal points of the false.
Your daily life vibrates between desire and fear. Watch it intently
and you will see how the mind assumes innumerable names and shapes,
like a river foaming between the boulders. Trace every action to
its selfish motive and look at the motive intently till it dissolves.

Q: To live, one must look after oneself, one must earn money for
oneself.

M: You need not earn for yourself, but may have to - for a woman and
a child. You may have to keep on working for the sake of others. Even
just to keep alive can be a sacrifice. There is no need whatsoever
to be selfish. Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is
seen and you need not search for truth; truth will find you.

Q: There is a minimum of needs.

M: Were they not supplied since you were conceived? Give up the
bondage of self-concern and be what you are - intelligence and
love in action.

Q: But one must survive!

M: You can't help surviving! The real you is timeless and beyond
birth and death. And the body will survive as long as it is needed.
It is not important that it should live long. A full life is better
than a long life.

Q: Who is to say what is a full life? It depends on my cultural
background.

M: If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds,
of all culture, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the
idea of being a man or woman, or even human, should be discarded.
The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all
abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as
such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern,
worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every
desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind.
You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.

        It does not mean that you must be brainless and foolhardy,
improvident or indifferent; only the basic anxiety for oneself must
go. You need some food, clothing and shelter for you and yours, but
this will not create problems as long as greed is not taken for a
need. Live in tune with things as they are and not as they are
imagined.

Q: What am I if not human?

M: That which makes you think that you are a human is not human. It
is but a dimensionless point of consicousness, a conscious nothing;
all you can say about yourself is: 'I am.' You are pure being -
awareness - bliss. To realize that is the end of all seeking. You
come to it when you see all you think yourself to be as mere
imagination and stand aloof in pure awareness of the transient as
transient, imaginary as imaginary, unreal as unreal. It is not at
all difficult, but detachment is needed. It is the clinging to
the false that makes the true so difficult to see. Once you
understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false,
you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the now.
Eternity in time is mere repetitiveness, like the movement of a
clock. It flows from the past into the future endlessly, an empty
perpetuity. Reality is what makes the present so vital, so different
from the past and future, which are merely mental. If you need time
to achieve something, it must be false. The real is always with you;
you need not wait to be what you are. Only you must not allow your
mind to go out of yourself in search. When you want something,
ask yourself: do I really need it? and if the answer is no, then
just drop it.

Q: Must I not be happy? I may not need a thing, yet if it can make
me happy, should I not grasp it?

M: Nothing can make you happier than you are. All search for
happiness is misery and leads to more misery. The only happiness
worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.

Q: Don't I need a lot of experience before I can reach such high
level of awareness?

M: Experience leaves only memories behind and adds to the burden
which is heavy enough. You need no more experiences. The past
ones are sufficient. And if you feel you need more, look into
the hearts of people around you. You will find a variety of
experiences which you would not be able to go through in a
thousand years. Learn from the sorrows of others and save yourself
your own. It is not experience that you need, but the freedom
from all experience. Don't be greedy for experience; you need
none.

Q: Don't you pass through experiences yourself?

M: Things happen around me, but I take no part in them. An event
becomes an experience only when I am emotionally involved. I am
in a state which is complete, which seeks not to improve on
itself. Of what use is experience to me?

Q: One needs knowledge, education.

M: To deal with things knowledge of things is needed. To deal with
people, you need insight, sympathy. To deal with yourself you need
nothing. Be what you are: conscious being and don't stray away
from yourself.

Q: University education is most useful.

M: No doubt, it helps you to earn a living. But it does not teach
you how to live. You are a student of psychology. It may help you
in certain situations. But can you live by psychology? Life is
worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action. No
university will teach you how to live so that when the time of
dying comes, you can say: I lived well, I do not need to live
again. Most of us die wishing we could live again. So many
mistakes committed, so much left undone. Most of the people
vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and
enrich their memory. But experience is the denial of Reality,
which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body,
nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both.

Q: But experience is most useful. By experience you learn not
to touch a flame.

M: I have told you already that knowledge is most useful in
dealing with things. But it does not tell you how to deal with
people and yourself, how to live a life. We are not talking of
driving a car, or earning money. For this you need experience.
But for being a light unto yourself material knowledge will
not help you. You need something much more intimate and deeper
than mediate knowledge, to be your self in the true sense of
the word. Your outer life is unimportant. You can become a
night watchman and live happily. It is what you are inwardly
that matters. Your inner peace and joy you have to earn. It is
much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach
you to be yourself. The only way to learn is by practice. Right
away begin to be yourself. Discard all you are not and go ever
deeper. Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water,
until he reaches the water-bearing strata, so must you discard
what is not your own, till nothing is left which you can disown.
You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can
hook on to. You are not even a human being. You just are - a
point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond
both, the ultimate cause, itself uncaused. If you ask me: 'Who
are you?' My answer would be: 'Nothing in particular. Yet, I am'.

Q: If you are nothing in particular, then you must be the universal.

M: What is to be universal - not as a concept, but as a way of life?
Not to separate, not to oppose, but to understand and love whatever
contacts you, is living universally. To be able to say truly: I am
the world, the world is me, I am at home in the world, the world
is my own. Every existence is my existence, every consciousness is
my consciousness, every sorrow is my sorrow and every joy is my joy
- this is universal life. Yet my real being, and yours too, is
beyond the categories of the particular and the universal. It is
what it is, totally self-contained and independent.

Q: I find it hard to understand.

M: You must give yourself time to brood over these things. The
old grooves must be erased in your brain, without forming new
ones. You must realize yourself as the immovable, behind and
beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens.

Q: Does it mean that I must give up all idea of an active life?

M: Not at all. There will be marriage, there will be children,
there will be earning money to maintain a family; all this will
happen in the natural course of events, for destiny must fulfil
itself; you will go through it without resistence, facing tasks
as they come, attentive and thorough, both in small things and
big. But the general attitude will be of affectionate detachment,
enormous goodwill, without expectation of return, constant giving
without asking. In marriage you are neither the husband nor the
wife; you are the love between the two. You are the clarity and
kindness that makes everything orderly and happy. It may seem
vague to you, but if you think a little, you will find that the
mystical is most practical, for it makes your life creatively
happy. Your consciousness is raised to a higher dimension, from
which you see everything much clearer and with greater intensity.
You realize that the person you became at birth and will cease
to be at death is temporary and false. You are not the sensual,
emotional and intellectual person, gripped by desires and fears.
Find out your real being. What am I? is the fundamental question
of all philosophy and psychology. Go into it deeply.