46.
Awareness of Being is Bliss
Questioner:
By profession I am a physician. I began with surgery, continued
with psychiatry and
also
wrote some books on mental health and healing by faith. I came to
you to learn the laws of
spiritual
health.
Nisargadatta:
When you are trying to cure a patient, what exactly are you trying
to cure? What is cure?
When
can you say that a man is cured?
Questioner:
I seek to cure the body as well as improve the link between the
body and the mind. I also seek
to
set right the mind.
Nisargadatta:
Did you investigate the connection between the mind and the body?
At what point are they
connected?
Questioner:
Between the body and the indwelling consciousness lies the mind.
Nisargadatta:
Is not the body made of food? And can there be a mind without
food?
Questioner:
The body is built and maintained by food. Without food the mind
usually goes weak. But the
mind
is not mere food. There is a transforming factor which creates a
mind in the body. What is that
transforming
factor?
Nisargadatta:
Just like the wood produces fire which is not wood, so does the
body produce the mind which is
not
the body. But to whom does the mind appear? Who is the perceiver
of the thoughts and feelings
which
you call the mind? There is wood, there is fire and there is the
enjoyer of the fire. Who enjoys
the
mind? Is the enjoyer also a result of food, or is it independent?
Questioner:
The perceiver is independent.
Nisargadatta:
How do you know? Speak from your own experience. You are not the
body nor the mind. You
say
so. How do you know?
Questioner:
I really do not know. I guess so.
Nisargadatta:
Truth is permanent. The real is changeless. What changes is not
real, what is real does not
change.
Now, what is it in you that does not change? As long as there is
food, there is body and
mind.
When the food is stopped, the body dies and the mind dissolves.
But does the observer
perish?
Questioner:
I guess it does not. But I have no proof.
Nisargadatta:
You yourself are the proof. You have not, nor can you have any
other proof. You are yourself,
you
know yourself, you love yourself. Whatever the mind does, it does
for the love of its own self.
The
very nature of the self is love. It is loved, loving and lovable.
It is the self that makes the body
and
the mind so interest-ing, so very dear. The very attention given
to them comes from the self.
Questioner:
If the self is not the body nor the mind, can it exist without the
body and the mind?
Nisargadatta:
Yes, it can. It is a matter of actual experience that the self has
being independent of mind and
body.
It is being -- awareness -- bliss. Awareness of being is bliss.
Questioner:
It may be a matter of actual experience to you, but it is not my
case. How can I come to the
same
experience? What practices to follow, what exercises to take up?
Nisargadatta:
To know that you are neither body nor mind, watch yourself
steadily and live unaffected by your
body
and mind, completely aloof, as if you were dead. It means you have
no vested interests, either
in
the body or in the mind.
Questioner:
Dangerous!
Nisargadatta:
I am not asking you to commit suicide. Nor can you. You can only
kill the body, you cannot stop
the
mental process, nor can you put an end to the person you think you
are. Just remain unaffected.
This
complete aloofness, unconcern with mind and body is the best proof
that at the core of your
being
you are neither mind nor body. What happens to the body and the
mind may not be within
your
power to change, but you can always put an end to your imagining
yourself to be body and
mind.
What-ever happens, remind yourself that only your body and mind
are affected, not yourself.
The
more earnest you are at remembering what needs to be remembered,
the sooner will you be
aware
of yourself as you are, for memory will become experience.
Earnestness reveals being. What
is
imagined and willed becomes actuality -- here lies the danger as
well as the way out.
Tell
me, what steps have you taken to separate your real self, that in
you which is changeless, from
your
body and mind?
Questioner:
I am a medical man, I have studied a lot, I imposed on myself a
strict discipline in the way of
exercises
and periodical fasts and I am a vegetarian.
Nisargadatta:
But in the depth of your heart what is it that you want?
Questioner:
I want to find reality.
Nisargadatta:
What price are you willing to pay for reality? Any price?
Questioner:
While in theory I am ready to pay any price, in actual life again
and again I am being prompted
to
behave in ways which come in between me and reality. Desire
carries me away.
Nisargadatta:
Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can
fulfil them. It is not desire that is
wrong,
but its narrowness and smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means
be devoted to the real,
the
infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love.
All you want is to be happy. All
your
desires, whatever they may be, are expressions of your longing for
happiness. Basically, you
wish
yourself well.
Questioner:
I know that I should not...
Nisargadatta:
Wait! Who told you that you should not? What is wrong with wanting
to be happy?
Questioner:
The self must go, l know.
Nisargadatta:
But the self is there. Your desires are there. Your longing to be
happy is there. Why? Because
you
love yourself. By all means love yourself -- wisely. What is wrong
is to love yourself stupidly, so
as
to make yourself suffer. Love yourself wisely. Both indulgence and
austerity have the same
purpose
in view -- to make you happy. Indulgence is the stupid way,
austerity is the wise way.
Questioner:
What is austerity?
Nisargadatta:
Once you have gone through an experience, not to go through it
again is austerity. To eschew
the
unnecessary is austerity. Not to anticipate pleasure or pain Is
austerity. Having things under
control
at all times is austerity. Desire by itself is not wrong. It is
life itself, the urge to grow in
knowledge
and experience.
It
is the choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some
little thing -- food. sex, power, fame
--
will make you happy is to deceive yourself. Only something as vast
and deep as your real self can
make
you truly and lastingly happy.
Questioner:
Since there is nothing basically wrong in desire as an expression
of love of self, how should
desire
be managed?
Nisargadatta:
Live your life intelligently, with the interests of your deepest
self always in mind. After all, what
do
you really want? Not perfection; you are already perfect. What you
seek is to express in action
what
you are. For this you have a body and a mind. Take them in hand
and make them serve you.
Questioner:
Who is the operator here? Who is to take the body-mind in hand?
Nisargadatta:
The purified mind is the faithful servant of the self. It takes
charge of the instruments, inner and
outer,
and makes them serve their purpose.
Questioner:
And what is their purpose?
Nisargadatta:
The self is universal and its aims are universal. There is nothing
personal about the self. Live an
orderly
life, but don't make it a goal by itself. It should be the
starting point for high adventure.
Questioner:
Do you advise me to come to India repeatedly?
Nisargadatta:
If you are earnest, you don't need moving about. You are yourself
wherever you are and you
create
your own climate. Locomotion and transportation will not give you
salvation. You are not the
body
and dragging the body from place to place will take you nowhere.
Your mind is free to roam
the
three worlds -- make full use of it.
Questioner:
If I am free, why am I in a body?
Nisargadatta:
you are not in the body, the body is in you! The mind is in you.
They happen to you. They are
there
because you find them interesting. Your very nature has the
infinite capacity to enjoy. It is full
of
zest and affection. It sheds its radiance on all that comes within
its focus of awareness and
nothing
is excluded. It does not know evil nor ugliness, it hopes, it
trusts, it loves. You people do not
know
how much you miss by not knowing your own true self. You are
neither the body nor the mind,
neither
the fuel nor the fire. They appear and disappear according to
their own laws.
That
which you are, your true self, you love it, and whatever you do,
you do for your own happiness.
To
find it, to know it, to cherish it is your basic urge. Since time
immemorial you loved yourself, but
never
wisely. Use your body and mind wisely in the service of the self,
that is all. Be true to your
own
self, love your self absolutely. Do not pretend that you love
others as yourself. Unless you have
realised
them as one with yourself, you cannot love them Don't pretend to
be what you are not,
don't
refuse to be what you are. Your love of others is the result of
self-knowledge, not its cause.
Without
self-realisation, no virtue is genuine. When you know beyond all
doubting that the same life
flows
through all that is and you are that life, you will love all
naturally and spontaneously. When
you
realise the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know
that every living being and the
entire
universe are included in your affection. But when you look at
anything as separate from you,
you
cannot love it for you are afraid of it. Alienation causes fear
and fear deepens alienation. It is a
vicious
circle. Only self-realisation can break it. Go for it resolutely.