18.
To Know What you Are, Find What you Are Not
Questioner:
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 of
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 while 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 too 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
focalised,
centred, individualised, 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 in every movement of
life. Consciousness implies
a
conscious being, an 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:
Why don't you enquire how real are the world and the person?
Questioner:
Oh, no! I need not enquire. Enough if the person is not less
real than the world in which the
person
exists.
Nisargadatta:
Then what is the question?
Questioner:
Are persons real, and universals conceptual, or are universals
real and persons imaginary?
Nisargadatta:
Neither are real.
Questioner:
Surely, I am real enough to merit your reply and I am a
person.
Nisargadatta:
Not when asleep.
Questioner:
Submergence is not absence. Even though asleep, I am.
Nisargadatta:
To be a person you must be self-conscious. Are you so always?
Questioner:
Not when I sleep, of course, nor when I am in a swoon, or
drugged.
Nisargadatta:
During your waking hours are you continually self-conscious?
Questioner:
No, Sometimes I am absent-minded, or just absorbed.
Nisargadatta:
Are you a person during the gaps in self-consciousness?
Questioner:
Of course I am the same person throughout. I remember myself
as I was yesterday and yester
year
-- definitely, I am the same person.
Nisargadatta:
So, to be a person, you need memory?
Questioner:
Of course.
Nisargadatta:
And without memory, what are you?
Questioner:
Incomplete memory entails incomplete personality. Without
memory I cannot exist as a person.
Nisargadatta:
Surely you can exist without memory. You do so -- in sleep.
Questioner:
Only in the sense of remaining alive. Not as a person.
Nisargadatta:
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?
Questioner:
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.
Nisargadatta:
Shall we call it impersonal existence?
Questioner:
I would call it rather unconscious existence; I am, but I do
not know that I am.
Nisargadatta:
You have said just now: 'I am, but I do not know that I am'.
Could you possibly say it about your
being
in an unconscious state?
Questioner:
No, I could not.
Nisargadatta:
You can only describe it in the past tense: 'I did not know. I
was unconscious', in the sense of
not
remembering.
Questioner:
Having been unconscious, how could I remember and what?
Nisargadatta:
Were you really unconscious, or you just do not remember?
Questioner:
How am I to make out?
Nisargadatta:
Consider. Do you remember every second of yesterday?
Questioner:
Of course, not.
Nisargadatta:
Were you then unconscious?
Questioner:
Of course, not.
Nisargadatta:
So, you are conscious and yet you do not remember?
Questioner:
Yes.
Nisargadatta:
Maybe you were conscious in sleep and just do not remember.
Questioner:
No, I was not conscious. I was asleep. I did not behave like a
conscious person.
Nisargadatta:
Again, how do you know?
Questioner:
I was told so by those who saw me asleep.
Nisargadatta:
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. Your
only proof is your own memory.
A
very uncertain proof it is!
Questioner:
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.
Nisargadatta:
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.
Questioner:
I am the same person in my dreams.
Nisargadatta:
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. Henceforward, when we talk of the waking state, we
shall include the dream state too.
Questioner:
Agreed. I am a person in a conscious relation with a world.
Nisargadatta:
Are the world and the conscious relation with it essential to
your being a person?
Questioner:
Even immersed in a cave, I remain a person.
Nisargadatta:
It implies a body and a cave. And a world in which they can
exist.
Questioner:
Yes. I can see. The world and the consciousness of the world
are essential to my existence as
a
person.
Nisargadatta:
This makes the person a part and parcel of the world, or vice
versa. The two are one.
Questioner:
Consciousness stands alone. The person and the world appear in
consciousness.
Nisargadatta:
You said: appear. Could you add: disappear?
Questioner:
No, I cannot. I can only be aware of my and my world's
appearance. As a person, I cannot say:
'the
world is not'. Without a world I would not be there to say it.
Because there is a world, I am there
to
say: 'there is a world'.
Nisargadatta:
Maybe it is the other way round. Because of you, there is a
world.
Questioner:
To me such statement appears meaningless.
Nisargadatta:
Its meaninglessness may disappear on investigation.
Questioner:
Where do we begin?
Nisargadatta:
All 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.
Questioner:
It cannot be a dream, surely.
Nisargadatta:
Even a dream has existence, when it is cognised and enjoyed,
or endured. Whatever you think
and
feel has being. But it may not be what you take it to be. What
you think to be a person may be
something
quite different.
Questioner:
I am what I know myself to be.
Nisargadatta:
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 passer by. A
bereavement, the loss of a job, an
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 parents
and now I am so-and-so, living
at,
married to, father of, employed by, and so on, 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 level of the mind you can be described
in negative terms only, the
quicker
you will come to the end of your search and realise your
limitless being.