Let
there be peace and love mong all beings of the universe. OM
Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.
"In
pure consciousness nothing ever
happens."
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UESTION : You
told me that I can be considered under three
aspects: the personal [vyakti], the
super-personal [vyakta] and the Impersonal
[Avyakta]. The Avyakta is the Universal and
real pure "I"; the vyakta is its reflection in
consciousness as "I am"; the vyakti is the totality
of physical and vital processes.
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Within the narrow
confines of the present moment, the super-personal
is aware of the person, both in space and time; not
only one person, but the long series of persons
strung together on the thread of karma. It is
essentially the witness as well as the residue of
the accumulated experiences, the seat of memory,
the connecting link [sutratma]. It is man's
character which life builds and shapes from birth
to birth. The universal is beyond all name and
shape, beyond consciousness and character, pure
unselfconscious being. Did I put down your views
rightly?
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Nisargadatta:
On the level of the mind, yes. Beyond the mental
level, not a word applies.
Question: I can understand that the person
is a mental construct, a collective noun for a set
of memories and habits. But, he to whom the person
happens, the witnessing centre, is it mental
too?
Nisargadatta: The personal needs a base, a
body to identify oneself with, just as a colour
needs a surface to appear on. The seeing of the
colour is independent of the colour – it is
the same whatever the colour. One needs an eye to
see a colour. The colours are many, the eye is
single. The personal is like the light in the
colour and also in the eye, yet simple, single,
indivisible and unperceivable, except in its
manifestations. Not unknowable, but unperceivable,
unobjectival, inseparable. Neither material nor
mental, neither objective nor subjective, it is the
root of matter and the source of consciousness.
Beyond mere living and dying, it is the
all-inclusive, all-exclusive Life, in which birth
is death and death is birth.
Question: The Absolute or Life you talk
about, is it real, or a mere theory to cover up our
ignorance?
Nisargadatta: Both. To the mind, a theory;
in itself – a Reality. It is Reality in its
spontaneous and total rejection of the false. Just
as light destroys darkness by its very presence, so
does the Absolute destroy imagination. To see that
all-knowledge is a form of ignorance is itself a
movement of Reality. The witness is not a person.
The person comes into being when there is a basis
for it, an organism, a body. In it the Absolute is
reflected as Awareness. Pure Awareness becomes
self-awareness. When there is a self,
self-awareness is the witness. When there is no
self to witness, there is no witnessing either. It
is all very simple; it is the presence of the
person that complicates. See that there is no such
thing as a permanently separate person and all
becomes clear. Awareness, mind, matter – they
are one Reality in its two aspects as immovable and
movable, and the three attributes of inertia,
energy and harmony.
Question: What comes first: consciousness or
Awareness?
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Nisargadatta:
Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an
object. The object changes all the time. In
consciousness there is movement; Awareness by
Itself is motionless and timeless, here and
now.
Question: There is suffering and bloodshed
in East Pakistan [Bangladesh] at the
present moment [1973]. How do you look at
it? How does it appear to you, how do you react to
it?
Nisargadatta: In pure consciousness nothing
ever happens.
Question: Please come down from these
metaphysical heights! Of what use is it to a
suffering man to be told that nobody is aware of
his suffering but himself? To relegate everything
to illusion is insult added to injury. The Bengali
of East Pakistan is a fact and his suffering is a
fact. Please, do not analyse them out of existence!
You are reading newspapers, you hear people talking
about it. You cannot plead ignorance. Now, what is
your attitude to what is happening?
Nisargadatta: No attitude. Nothing is
happening.
Question: Any day there may be a riot right
in front of you, perhaps people killing each other.
Surely you cannot say, "Nothing is happening", and
remain aloof.
Nisargadatta: I never talked of remaining
aloof. You could as well see me jumping into the
fray to save somebody and getting killed. Yet to me
nothing happened. Imagine a big building
collapsing. Some rooms are in ruins, some are
intact. But can you speak of the space as ruined or
intact? It is only the structure that suffered and
the people who happened to live in it. Nothing
happened to space itself. Similarly, nothing
happens to life when forms break down and names are
wiped out. The goldsmith melts down old ornaments
to make new. Sometimes a good piece goes with the
bad. He takes it in his stride, for he knows that
no gold is lost.
Question: It is not death that I rebel
against. It is the manner of dying.
Nisargadatta: Death is natural, the manner
of dying is man-made. Separateness causes fear and
aggression, which again cause violence. Do away
with man-made separations and all this horror of
people killing each other will surely end. But in
reality there is no killing and no dying. The real
does not die, the unreal never lived. Set your mind
right and all will be right. When you know that the
world is One, that humanity is One, you will act
accordingly. But first of all you must attend to
the way you feel, think and live. Unless there is
order in yourself, there can be no order in the
world.
In reality nothing happens. Onto the screen of the
mind destiny forever projects its pictures,
memories of former projections and thus illusion
constantly renews itself. The pictures come and go
– light intercepted by ignorance. See the
light and disregard the picture.
Question: What a callous way of looking at
things! People are killing and getting killed and
here you talk of pictures.
Nisargadatta: By all means go and get killed
yourself – if that is what you think you
should do. Or even go and kill, if you take it to
be your duty. But that is not the way to end the
evil. Evil is the stench of a mind that is
diseased. Heal your mind and it will cease to
project distorted, ugly pictures.
Question: What you say I understand, but
emotionally I cannot accept it. This merely
idealistic view of life repels me deeply. I just
cannot think myself to be permanently in a state of
dream.
Nisargadatta: How can anybody be permanently
in a state caused by an impermanent body? The
misunderstanding is based on your idea that you are
the body. Examine the idea, see its inherent
contradictions, realise that your present existence
is like a shower of sparks, each spark lasting a
second and the shower itself – a minute or
two. Surely a thing of which the beginning is the
end, can have no middle. Respect your terms.
Reality cannot be momentary. It is timeless, but
timelessness is not duration.
Question: I admit that the world in which I
live is not the real world. But there is a real
world, of which I see a distorted picture. The
distortion may be due to some blemish in my body or
mind. But when you say there is no real world, only
a dream world in my mind, I just cannot take it. I
wish I could believe that all horrors of existence
are due to my having a body. Suicide would be the
way out.
Nisargadatta: As long as you pay attention
to ideas, your own or of others, you will be in
trouble. But if you disregard all teachings, all
books, anything made out of words, and dive deeply
within yourself and find your Self, this alone will
solve all your problems and leave you in full
mastery of every situation, because you will not be
dominated by your ideas about the situation. Take
an example. You are in the company of an attractive
woman. You get ideas about her and this creates a
sexual situation. A problem is created and you
start looking for books on continence, or
enjoyment. Were you a baby, both of you could be
naked and together without any problem arising.
Just stop thinking you are the bodies and the
problems of love and sex will lose their meaning.
With all sense of limitation gone, fear, pain and
the search for pleasure – all cease. Only
Awareness remains.
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