40.
Only the Self is Real
Nisarghadatta:
The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet is
not. It is there as long as I
want
to see it and take part in it. When I cease caring, it
dissolves. It has no cause and serves no
purpose.
It just happens when we are absent-minded. It appears exactly as
it looks, but there is no
depth
in it, nor meaning. Only the onlooker is real. Call him Self or
Atma. To the Self the world is but
a
colourful show, which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets
when it is over. Whatever happens
on
the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, yet
all the time he is aware that it is
but
a show. Without desire or fear he enjoys it, as it happens.
Questioner:
The person immersed in the world has a life of many flavours. He
weeps, he laughs,
loves
and hates, desires and fears, suffers and rejoices. The
desireless and fearless jnani , what life
has
he? Is he not left high and dry in his aloofness?
Nisargadata:
His state is not so desolate. It tastes of the pure, uncaused,
undiluted bliss. He is happy and
fully
aware that happiness is his very nature and that he need not do
anything, nor strive for
anything
to secure it. It follows him, more real than the body, nearer
than the mind itself. You
imagine
that without cause there can be no happiness. To me dependence
on anything for
happiness
is utter misery. Pleasure and pain have causes, while my state
is my own, totally
uncaused,
independent, unassailable.
Questioner:
Like a play on the stage?
Nisargadata:
The play was written, planned and rehearsed. The world just
spouts into being out of nothing
and
returns to nothing.
Questioner:
Is there no creator? Was not the world in the mind of Brahma ,
before it was created?
Nisargadata:
As long as you are outside my state, you will have Creators,
Preservers and Destroyers, but
once
with me you will know the Self only and see yourself in all.
Questioner:
You function nevertheless.
Nisargadata:
When you are giddy, you see the world running circles round you.
Obsessed with the idea of
means
and end, of work and purpose, you see me apparently functioning.
In reality I only look.
Whatever
is done, is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow life and death,
they all are real to the man
in
bondage; to me they are all in the show, as unreal as the show
itself.
I
may perceive the world just like you, but you believe to be in
it, while I see it as an iridescent drop
in
the vast expanse of consciousness.
Questioner:
We are all getting old. Old age is not pleasant -- all aches and
pains, weakness and the
approaching end. How does a jnani feel as an old man? How does
his inner self look at his own
senility.
Nisargadata:
As he gets older he grows more and more happy and peaceful.
After all, he is going home. Like
a
traveller nearing his destination and collecting his luggage, he
leaves the train without regret.
Questioner:
Surely there is a contradiction. We are told the jnani is beyond
all change. His happiness
neither
grows nor wanes. How can he grow happier because older, and that
in spite of physical
weakness
and so on?
Nisargadata:
There is no contradiction. The reel of destiny is coming to its
end -- the mind is happy. The mist
of
bodily existence is lifting -- the burden of the body is growing
less from day to day.
Questioner:
Let us say, the jnani is ill. He has caught some flu and every
joint aches and burns. What is his
state
of mind?
Nisargadata:
Every sensation is contemplated in perfect equanimity. There is
no desire for it, nor refusal. It is
as
it is and then he looks at it with a smile of affectionate
detachment.
Questioner:
He may be detached from his own suffering, but still it is
there.
Nisargadata:
It is there, but it does not matter. Whatever state I am in, I
see it as a state of mind to be
accepted
as it is.
Questioner:
Pain is pain. You experience It all the same.
Nisargadata:
He who experiences the body, experiences its pains and
pleasures. I am neither the body, nor
the
experiencer of the body.
Questioner:
Let us say you are twenty-five years old. Your marriage is
arranged and performed, and the
household
duties crowd upon you. How would you feel?
Nisargadata:
Just as I feel now. You keep on insisting that my inner state is
moulded by outer events. It is just
not
so. Whatever happens, I remain. At the root of my being is pure
awareness, a speck of intense
light.
This speck, by its very nature, radiates and creates pictures in
space and events in time --
effortlessly
and spontaneously. As long as it is merely aware there are no
problems. But when the
discriminative
mind comes into being and creates distinctions, pleasure and
pain arise. During sleep
the
mind is in abeyance and so are pain and pleasure. The process
of, creation continues, but no
notice
is taken. The mind is a form of consciousness, and consciousness
is an aspect of life. Life
creates
everything but the Supreme is beyond all.
Questioner:
The Supreme is the master and consciousness -- his servant.
Nisargadata:
The master is in consciousness, not beyond it. In terms of
consciousness the Supreme is both
creation
and dissolution, concretion and abstraction, the focal and the
universal. It is also neither.
Words
do not reach there, nor mind.
Questioner:
The jnani seems to be a very lonely being, all by himself.
Nisargadata:
He is alone, but he is all. He is not even a being. He is the
beingness of all beings. Not even
that.
No words apply. He is what he is, the ground from which all
grows.
Questioner:
Are you not afraid to die?
Nisargadata:
I shall tell you how my Guru's Guru died. After announcing that
his end was nearing, he stopped
eating,
without changing the routine of his daily life. On the eleventh
day, at prayer time he was
singing
and clapping vigorously and suddenly died! Just like that,
between two movements, like a
blown
out candle. Everybody dies as he lives. I am not afraid of
death, because I am not afraid of
life.
I live a happy life and shall die a happy death. Misery is to be
born, not to die. All depends how
you
look at it.
Questioner:
There can be no evidence of your state. All I know about it is
what you say. All I see is a very
interesting
old man.
Nisargadata:
You are the interesting old man, not me! I was never born. How
can I grow old? What I appear
to
be to you exists only in your mind. I am not concerned with it.
Questioner:
Even as a dream you are a most unusual dream.
Nisargadata:
I am a dream that can wake you up. You will have the proof of it
in your very waking up.
Questioner:
Imagine, news reach you that I have died. Somebody tells you:
'You know so-and-so? He died'.
What
would be your reaction?
Nisargadata:
I would be very happy to have you back home. Really glad to see
you out of this foolishness.
Questioner:
Which foolishness?
Nisargadata:
Of thinking that you were born and will die, that you are a body
displaying a mind and all such
nonsense.
In my world nobody is born and nobody dies. Some people go on a
journey and come
back,
some never leave. What difference does it make since they travel
in dream lands, each
wrapped
up in his own dream. Only the waking up is important. It is
enough to know the 'I am' as
reality
and also love.
Questioner:
My approach is not so absolute, hence my question. Throughout
the West people are in search
of
something real. They turn to science, which tells them a lot
about matter, a little about the mind
and
nothing about the nature and purpose of consciousness. To them
reality is objective, outside
the
observable and describable, directly or by inference; about the
subjective aspect of reality they
know
nothing. It is extremely important to let them know that there
is reality and it is to be found in
the
freedom of consciousness from matter and its limitations and
distortions. Most of the people in
the
world just do not know that there is reality which can be found
and experienced in
consciousness.
It seems very important that they should hear the good news from
somebody who
has
actually experienced. Such witnesses have always existed and
their testimony is precious.
Nisargadata:
Of course. The gospel of self-realisation, once heard, will
never be forgotten. Like a seed left in
the
ground, it will wait for the right season and sprout and grow
into a mighty tree.