26.
Personality, an Obstacle
Questioner:
As I can see, the world is a school of Yoga and life itself
is Yoga practice. Everybody
strives
for perfection and what is Yoga but striving. There is
nothing contemptible about the so-
called 'common' people and their 'common' lives. They strive
as hard and suffer as much as the
Yogi,
only they are not conscious of their true purpose.
Nisargadatta:
In what way are your common people -- Yogis?
Questioner:
Their ultimate goal is the same. What the Yogi secures by
renunciation (tyaga) the common man
realises
through experience (bhoga). The way of Bhoga is unconscious
and, therefore, repetitive
and
protracted, while the way of Yoga is deliberate and intense
and, therefore, can be more rapid.
Nisargadatta:
Maybe the periods of Yoga and Bhoga alternate. First Bhoga,
then Yoga, then again Bhoga, then
again
Yoga.
Questioner:
What may be the purpose?
Nisargadatta:
Weak desires can be removed by introspection and meditation,
but strong, deep-rooted ones
must
be fulfilled and their fruits, sweet or bitter, tasted.
Questioner:
Why then should we pay tribute to Yogis and speak
slightingly of Bhogis ? All are Yogis, in a way.
Nisargadatta:
On the human scale of values deliberate effort is considered
praiseworthy. In reality both the Yogi and
Bhogi
follow their own nature, according to circumstances and
opportunities. The Yogi's life is
governed
by a single desire -- to find the Truth; the Bhogi serves
many masters. But the Bhogi
becomes
a Yogi and the Yogi may get a rounding up in a bout of
Bhoga. The final result is the same.
Questioner:
Buddha is reported to have said that it is tremendously
important to have heard that there is
enlightenment,
a complete reversal and transformation in consciousness. The
good news is
compared
to a spark in a shipload of cotton; slowly but relentlessly
the whole of it will turn to ashes.
Similarly
the good news of enlightenment will, sooner or later, bring
about a transformation.
Nisargadatta:
Yes, first hearing (shravana), then remembering (smarana),
pondering (manana) and so on. We
are
on familiar ground. The man who heard the news becomes a
Yogi; while the rest continue in
their
Bhoga.
Questioner:
But you agree that living a life -- just living the humdrum
life of the world, being born to die and
dying
to be born -- advances man by its sheer volume, just like
the river finds its way to the sea by
the
sheer mass of the water it gathers.
Nisargadatta:
Before the world was, consciousness was. In consciousness it
comes into being, in
consciousness
it lasts and into pure consciousness it dissolves. At the
root of everything, is the
feeling
'I am'. The state of mind: 'there is a world' is secondary,
for to be, I do not need the world,
the
world needs me.
Questioner:
The desire to live is a tremendous thing.
Nisargadatta:
Still greater is the freedom from the urge to live.
Questioner:
The freedom of the stone?
Nisargadatta:
Yes, the freedom of the stone, and much more besides.
Freedom unlimited and conscious.
Questioner:
Is not personality required for gathering experience?
Nisargadatta:
As you are now, the personality is only an obstacle.
Self-identification with the body may be
good
for an infant, but true growing up depends on getting the
body out of the way. Normally, one
should
outgrow body-based desires early in life. Even the Bhogi,
who does not refuse enjoyments,
need
not hanker after the ones he has tasted. Habit, desire for
repetition frustrates both the
Yogi
and the Bhogi.
Questioner:
Why do you keep on dismissing the person (vyakti) as of no
importance? Personality is the
primary
fact of our existence. It occupies the entire stage.
Nisargadatta:
As long as you do not see that it is mere habit, built on
memory, prompted by desire, you will
think
yourself to be a person -- living, feeling, thinking,
active, passive, pleased or pained. Question
yourself,
ask yourself. 'Is it so?' 'Who am l'? 'What is behind and
beyond all this?' And soon you will
see
your mistake. And it is in the very nature of a mistake to
cease to be, when seen.
Questioner:
The Yoga of living, of life itself, we may call the Natural
Yoga (nisarga yoga). It reminds me of
the
Primal Yoga (adhi yoga), mentioned in the Rig-Veda which was
described as the marrying of life
with
mind.
Nisargadatta:
A life lived thoughtfully, in full awareness, is by itself
Nisarga Yoga.
Questioner:
What does the marriage of life and mind mean?
Nisargadatta:
Living in spontaneous awareness, consciousness of effortless
living, being fully interested in
one's
life -- all this is implied.
Questioner:
Sharada Devi, wife of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, used to
scold his disciples for too much
effort.
She compared them to mangoes on the tree which are being
plucked before they are ripe.
'Why
hurry?' she used to say. 'Wait till you are fully ripe,
mellow and sweet.'
Nisargadatta:
How right she was! There are so many who take the dawn for
the noon, a momentary
experience
for full realisation and destroy even the little they gain
by excess of pride. Humility and
silence
are essential for a sadhaka, however advanced. Only a fully
ripened jnani can allow himself
complete
spontaneity.
Questioner:
It seems there are schools of Yoga where the student, after
illumination, is obliged to keep
silent
for 7 or 12 or 15 or even 25 years. Even Bhagavan Sri Ramana
Maharshi imposed on himself
20
years of silence before he began to teach.
Nisargadatta:
Yes, the inner fruit must ripen. Until then the discipline,
the living in awareness, must go on.
Gradually
the practice becomes more and more subtle, until it becomes
altogether formless.
Questioner:
Krishnamurti too speaks of living in awareness.
Nisargadatta:
He always aims directly at the 'ultimate'. Yes, ultimately
all Yogas end in your adhi yoga, the
marriage
of consciousness (the bride) to life (the bridegroom).
Consciousness and being
(sad-chit)
meet in bliss (ananda). For bliss to arise there must be
meeting, contact, the
assertion of unity in duality.
Questioner:
Buddha too has said that for the attainment of nirvana one
must go to living beings.
Consciousness
needs life to grow.
Nisargadatta:
The world itself is contact -- the totality of all contacts
actualised in consciousness. The spirit
touches
matter and consciousness results. Such consciousness. when
tainted with memory and
expectation,
becomes bondage. Pure experience does not bind; experience
caught between desire
and
fear is impure and creates karma.
Questioner:
Can there be happiness in unity? Does not all happiness
imply necessarily contact, hence
duality?
Nisargadatta:
There is nothing wrong with duality as long as it does not
create conflict. Multiplicity and variety
without
strife is joy. In pure consciousness there is light. For
warmth, contact is needed. Above the
unity
of being is the union of love. Love is the meaning and
purpose of duality.
Questioner:
I am an adopted child. My own father I do not know. My
mother died when I was born. My
foster
father, to please my foster mother, who was childless,
adopted me -- almost by accident. He
is
a simple man -- a truck owner and driver. My mother keeps
the house. I am 24 years now. For
the
last two and a half years I am travelling, restless,
seeking. I want to live a good life, a holy life.
What
am I to do?
Nisargadatta:
Go home, take charge of your father's business, look after
your parents in their old age. Marry
the
girl who is waiting for you, be loyal, be simple, be humble.
Hide your virtue, live silently. The five
senses
and the three qualities (gunas) are your eight steps in
Yoga. And 'I am' is the Great
Reminder
(mahamantra). You can learn from them all you need to know.
Be attentive, enquire
ceaselessly.
That is all.
Questioner:
If just living one's life liberates, why are not all
liberated?
Nisargadatta:
All are being liberated. It is not what you live, but how
you live that matters. The idea of
enlightenment
is of utmost importance. Just to know that there is such
possibility, changes one's
entire
outlook. It acts like a burning match in a heap of saw dust.
All the great teachers did nothing
else.
A spark of truth can burn up a mountain of lies. The
opposite is also true; The sun of truth
remains
hidden behind the cloud of self-identification with the
body.
Questioner:
This spreading the good news of enlightenment seems very
important.
Nisargadatta:
The very hearing of it, is a promise of enlightenment. The
very meeting a Guru is the assurance
of
liberation. Perfection is life-giving and creative.
Questioner:
Does a realised man ever think: 'I am realised?' Is he not
astonished when people make much
of
him? Does he not take himself to be an ordinary human being?
Nisargadatta:
Neither ordinary, nor extra-ordinary. Just being aware and
affectionate -- intensely. He looks at
himself
without indulging in self-definitions and
self-identifications. He does not know himself as
anything
apart from the world. He is the world. He is completely rid
of himself, like a man who is
very
rich, but continually gives away his riches. He is not rich,
for he has nothing; he is not poor, for
he
gives abundantly. He is just propertyless. Similarly, the
realised man is egoless; he has lost the
capacity
of identifying himself with anything. He is without
location, placeless, beyond space and
time,
beyond the world. Beyond words and thoughts is he.
Questioner:
Well, it is deep mystery to me. I am a simple man.
Nisargadatta:
It is you who are deeply complex, mysterious, hard to
understand. I am simplicity itself,
compared
to you: I am what is -- without any distinction whatsoever
into inner and outer, mine and
yours,
good and bad. What the world is, I am; what I am the world
is.
Questioner:
How does it happen that each man creates his own world?
Nisargadatta:
When a number of people are asleep, each dreams his own
dream. Only on awakening the
question
of many different dreams arises and dissolves when they are
all seen as dreams, as
something
imagined.
Questioner:
Even dreams have a foundation.
Nisargadatta:
In memory. Even then, what is remembered, is but another
dream. The memory of the false
cannot
but give rise to the false. There is nothing wrong with
memory as such. What is false is its
content.
Remember facts, forget opinions.
Questioner:
What is a fact?
Nisargadatta:
What is perceived in pure awareness, unaffected by desire.