Mind cannot interpret You

Maharaj: The One who knows (has no attributes) is Parabrahman

Visitor: Does light appear when one knows Brahman?

M: Prior to seeing light you might be there.

V: What is the quality of the gunas? Is it Sattva – witnessing, Rajas – activity, Tamas – ‘I have done the activity’?

M: All are names of Sattva, because of it, you are. Sattva is the ‘I am’, Rajas the tendencies towards activity or work and Tamas is to take account of or say ‘I have done this’, all three have no form they are formless.
Throughout you have considered yourself to be as something or the other, but it did not last, name and form will go. You are that entity which is going to leave the body; you are not the body, whatever you take yourself to be you are not that.

V: The ‘I am’ is time bound while what we really are, is eternal.

M: Your beingness is the flame, no gas, no flame. The Knowledge ‘I am’ is because of food, ‘I am like this’ or ‘like that’ (in appearance etc.) nothing is going to be with you; even your memory will fail. What are you then?
Whatever you presently consider yourself to be, you are not that. Taking yourself as something should give you permanent happiness, like being a young man, you try to sustain it, but just you cannot! Beingness is the result of Sattva, but when you are old, Sattva too disappears.

V: The ‘I am’ is time bound, it creates time. Is there a difference between
chronological and psychological time?

M: The ‘I am’ or beingness, is equated with time, the Sun, they are one.
Beingness is the Sun of knowledge, it itself is time or Sun.

V: Chronological time and psychological time (as ‘I am’) is it one?

M: There’s no difference. You have memory of the body, I don’t. ‘I am the body’ that is your memory. Body memory is the sugar coating of happiness, which ultimately proves to be painful.

V: the difference between chronological and psychological time, as I see it, is it correct?

M: If you are not, where is the Sun and the time derived from it? Realize that this entire Universe or manifestation is the skin and hide of your beingness, the skin of your illumination; all manifestation is your
expression, ‘you are’.

V: The truth of what is, is distorted by past memory.

M: What do you mean by past memory?

V: if you are, then there is the question of the past.

M: Between you (‘I amness’) and the consciousness, what is the relationship?

V: The ‘I am’ varies from time to time, feeling good, bad and so forth.

M: There is no difference in the types of ‘I amness’, I experience fatigue now, good health earlier, but the common factor is beingness which has not changed. All is illusion, the ‘I am’ is knowledge, but it’s also an illusion, say what you like, nothing prevails, except the knowledge ‘you are’. You presume that the world has existed without your beingness, your world is with your arrival, not prior to it, if you are not, your world is not.

A Jnani is satisfied in eternity.
Beingness is the seed of manifestation the
ignorant one thinks that the world was and I am a fragment in it, but the Jnani knows that it is a creation of the beingness. Your manifest world means ‘you are’ and ‘you are’ means your manifest world. Beingness means the self-knowledge ‘I am’, no mane, no lion. The world cannot be prior to your beingness, when your own beingness manifests, there is the world.
You try to interpret my exposition; you don’t assimilate what I say. Become manifest, you receive so many inclinations but rarely somebody stays put in message ‘I am’, all get carried away by the mind.

V: This is human nature

M: The primary message or Vritti (mind-inclination) is the ‘I am’, the flow of words is inside is mind, a movement in the head.

V: One gets carried away.

M: Take a firm stand that the mind cannot interpret you. What the mind says is not you, don’t be dictated by the mind, you are not the mind. The mind takes you for a ride, you feel you are going for a ride, your mind-
inclinations want to enjoy; you say I want to enjoy.

V: The mind being the servant will work as ‘I am’?

M: Where is the necessity of the mind for you?
V: To be my servant.

M: When in deep sleep, do you require the mind?

V: What is it to be awake?

M: Means ‘not to be awake’, is to be truly awake. Is there real and unreal waking?

V: By waking, I mean as you are – the Absolute

M: Without effort whatever you are, you are. With effort, you cause a stirring, that’s why you are not your natural ‘you are’.

V: Is there difference between observing and analyzing?

M: The talk about myself is the talk about yourself. Let any worthy one reach to any heights, anywhere, but it is time-bound. Any height! It is just a passage of time. Time means the Sun – the world is because of it – beingness. The sum total means ‘you are’, beingness only, when the knowledge ‘I am’ sets, the world is liquidated, Nivritti – no message ‘I am’.

By nature, originally and primarily your state is of no-being, incidentally, there is beingness. When you don’t dwell in beingness, then you are in body-mind. Presently whatever ideas occur will be your knowledge, there is no necessity for learning more skills, whatever is, let it be, just dwell in that beingness. Whatever I say relates to me, not society or people, the knowledge is for me, if you want to share it, you are welcome, provided you can endure
it. Right now, you just listen, you may not assimilate at once, so, just be.
Despite of all this you like to roam about and please your mind inclinations. The trouble is that you have made the hunger of the mind, your hunger, you claim it as yours; understand it and the mind will keep quiet. The mind is itching to see new countries and towns; you are habituated to go by the mind. But from now onwards, whatever the mind says does not relate to me, form this new habit the mind will be quiet and then you would want to be by yourself. Then thoughts occur and you go wool-gathering, tell your mind to go away. Even while taking food you are thinking of others, you may consume delicacies and you wouldn’t know.
Many sit for meditation, but ideas come and they try to fights these. It happens because you firmly identify with your mind-body.

V: Then what should I do? Remind myself that I have no body-mind?

M: Is it necessary to remind yourself that you are sitting here? Make it a practice; gradually develop it, no body, no mind.

• I AM UNBORN. Chapter 14.
  Mind cannot interpret You
  24th December 1979
  Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

It’s about healing and is very much in keeping with Joel. Also Rupert’s be aware of being aware came from this talk of Nisargadatta. It’s absolutely critical that we stop the thinking thinking thinking thinking! This impedes our being aware of the fact that we are not that person who we are aware of. we are not Flesh and blood material mortals. We are the only self that there is. This self is God. This wasn’t quoting him per se but it was alluded to very strongly and wonderfully! We can get the mind to quiet down and stop the thinking by observing the thoughts without any interest in them whatsoever. After a while they will give up and we will be free. Remember the world including the body can’t give us any pain suffering or even good things, that is, anything at all. The world can’t deliver that to us if we are not there. That is the key – to not be there!!!

“I Am is in the world but it is the key that can open the door out of the world.”

CHAP 41-50 Nothing can appear to you, no sickness no disease, no good, no bad, no nothing, if you are not there to receive it. In other words if you were so tuned in to your real self this stuff couldn’t appear to you – good or bad. A lot like JSG. Also like Rupert he says “be aware of being aware”.

I know that it is in the nature of awareness to set things right. let consciousness do its thing. I am not strange I’m normal I see things the way they are.

THE ‘NOT-KNOWING’ … THAT ‘YOU ARE’

Nisargadatta Maharaj:
“Is there anything further you are seeking?”

Visitor:
Just to have all the false attachments, and false identification fall off.

Nisargadatta Maharaj:
That is the whole trouble, one thinks that certain misconceptions have come to him.

All those concepts are ‘Movements In Consciousness’; and once the Consciousness itself disappears – the movements that have come with it, also disappear.

You are already in That State!
… There is nothing to acquire.

Now you know this, and – for you, all this is useless.

Visitor: Right!
I would like Maharaj to explain about ‘The Brahma-Randhra’. I am familiar with the Yoga teaching on it, but Maharaj’s is slightly different.

Nisargadatta Maharaj:
There are two things: the world, and one’s Presence; the feeling of Presence – that is, ‘The Consciousness’, ‘The Beingness’. That is ‘Brahma’ – ‘I Am Present’; ‘Randhra’ means ‘the tiniest of apertures’, and in that aperture is ‘The Silent, Primordial Sound’, which gives you the impression that you ARE – but you really, ARE NOT. This sound – in that aperture gives you the feeling that ‘You ARE’, but be sure that You ARE NOT.”

Visitor: Very good!

Nisargadatta Maharaj:
I take my stand in ‘The Original State’, where I was ‘Not Aware that I AM’. This body and The Beingness have come, but knowing ITs Nature, I do not expect anything from IT. When a Yogi is totally absorbed in his meditation – or Yoga, ‘This Soundless Sound’ – so fills him, that he becomes drunk with IT for a while, and then IT subsides. When the body dies, this Individual Consciousness will merge with ‘The Total Consciousness’ – but even so, that ‘Total Consciousness’ knows that ‘IT IS’, and so long as one knows that ‘IT IS’, IT is in ‘a state of duality’.”

Visitor: Why did this Consciousness arise?
Maharaj:” You are both the question and the answer. All your questions come from your identification with the body. How can any questions relating to that which was prior to the body and Consciousness be answered? There are yogis who have sat in meditation for many, many years seeking answers to this question, but even they haven’t understood it. And yet you are complaining?”
Visitor: It is a great mystery.
Maharaj:” It’s a mystery only to the ignorant. To the one not identified with the body, it is no longer a mystery.”
Visitor: Maharaj cannot convey it to us?
Maharaj:” I keep telling you but you don’t listen.”
Visitor: Does Maharaj see us as individuals?
Maharaj:” There are no individuals; there are only food bodies with the knowledge ‘ I Am’. There is no difference between an ant, a human Being, and Isvara; they are of the same quality. The body of an ant is small, an elephant is large. The strength is different, because of size, but the life-force is the same. For knowledge, the body is necessary.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

I have no individuality. I have assumed no pose as a person. Whatever happens in the manifest Consciousness happens.
People identify me with their concepts and they do what their concepts tell them. It is Consciousness which is manifest, nothing else. Who is talking, who is walking, who is sitting? These are the expressions of that chemical ‘ I Am’. Are you that chemical? You talk about heaven and hell, this Mahatma or that one, but how about you? Who are you?
In meditation, one sees a lot of visions. They are in the chemical, the realm of your Consciousness, are they not? All these things are connected only to that birth-chemical. You are not this chemical ‘ I Am’.
Spiritual knowledge should not be studied; it is knowledge derived from listening. When the listener hears it and accepts it, something clicks in him.
This ‘ I Amness’ is otherness; it is an expression of duality.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Visitor: Why did this Consciousness arise?
Maharaj:” You are both the question and the answer. All your questions come from your identification with the body. How can any questions relating to that which was prior to the body and Consciousness be answered? There are yogis who have sat in meditation for many, many years seeking answers to this question, but even they haven’t understood it. And yet you are complaining?”
Visitor: It is a great mystery.
Maharaj:” It’s a mystery only to the ignorant. To the one not identified with the body, it is no longer a mystery.”
Visitor: Maharaj cannot convey it to us?
Maharaj:” I keep telling you but you don’t listen.”
Visitor: Does Maharaj see us as individuals?
Maharaj:” There are no individuals; there are only food bodies with the knowledge ‘ I Am’. There is no difference between an ant, a human Being, and Isvara; they are of the same quality. The body of an ant is small, an elephant is large. The strength is different, because of size, but the life-force is the same. For knowledge, the body is necessary.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj

One who has merged into his true nature is a yogi. Prosperity or poverty does not affect him.

Do you take yourself to be different from your name?
The name is only the letters.
Are you those letters?
The name has been given to the body. At present, the body has become your identity and the name has become yourself. It has become a habit. That is the influence of maya. Can you tell me about yourself when you are not the body nor the name given to the body?

How would you look if you say, ‘I am not the name, nor am I the body’?
Then what name can be given to you?
And after all, what is consciousness?
Is it not love, or taste, or flavor, that remains after leaving out the body and the name? What would one want when he is like this? Consciousness is love itself.
That is the bliss unasked for in the feeling ‘I am’. It transcends the body. It is not of the form of the body.
Without consciousness is there God, or the world?
How do we look at ourselves while in the body?
It is pure luminosity. Its symbol is light. The light of consciousness means the light of Atman. It has no form. It has no divisions. It is without the body and the name. It is like space.

What comes first, space or your consciousness?
When there is no consciousness, there is no world.
How long does the world last?
As long as one is awake.
One who has realized the Self is a great yogi. God, Guru and consciousness are the same for him.

The sensation ‘I am’ is the beginning of time. First of all, consciousness arose and then the world was seen in it.
Did anyone do anything to create it?
When consciousness disappears, the world disappears at that very moment.
What happened to the big mountains?
Who swallowed them?
No one, because the world was false,
an illusion. With the birth of the knowledge ‘I am’, the world comes into existence. Both happen simultaneously.

Do not say you have understood. Be aware of what you have continuously heard. The use of the body is for consciousness through which we know ‘we are’. It is the essence of food. One who sees the dream has to be the originator of the dream.
Is it not so? To use consciousness means to convince us of this and behave
accordingly.

Only a Guru can give true advice. The rest give consolation with false concepts. Consciousness is universal.
God, Guru and ‘I’ are all its names. The common name is Brahman. It is there as long as there is the word (manifestation). Its characteristic is knowingness. This manifested, all-pervading Brahman merges into the Absolute. It has no identity of its own. It is timeless.

The foundation of our way of spirituality is self-attentiveness. The Sadguru is beyond time. He has no coming and going. Is it not so that one knows the Absolute and, also, is it not so that one does not know it?
(It is our true nature, but it has no duality.) The body is the food for consciousness. Prana eats that food, not the Self. Prana carries out all actions. One who clearly knows that he is not the body does not suffer from worldly gain or loss, pleasure or pain. The knower of prana is consciousness. It only witnesses.

Can you take a fistful of Bombay to your village? The same is true of God. From the point of view of the Paramatman, you are prior to the world. From the point of view of the jiva, the world is first and then you.
The jnani does not require any outside glory. Identification with the body and its name is ego. As long as the fear of death is there, you have not realized yourself. Dwell only on what you know before experiencing the
world. Think on the metaphor of the dream i mentioned earlier.

For a man the company of a woman means desire. Where there is desire, there is expectation. Where there is expectation, there is hope. Where there is hope, there is bondage. The cause of bondage is desire. Where there is ‘I’ and ‘you’, there is pure delusion. Where there is no ‘I’ and ‘you’, there is pure Brahman.

MEDITATIONS Nirupana 70
Thursday, November 2, 1978

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Book is in my file

Questioner: From what you told us it appears that you are not quite conscious of your surroundings. To us you seem extremely alert and active. We cannot possibly believe that you are in a kind of hypnotic state, which leaves no memory behind. On the contrary, your memory seems excellent. How are we to understand your statement that the world and all it includes does not exist, as far as you are concerned.

Maharaj: It is all a matter of focus. Your mind is focussed in the world, mine is focussed in reality. It is like the moon in daylight — when the sun shines, the moon is hardly visible. Or, watch how you take your food. As long as it is in your mouth, you are conscious of it; once swallowed, it does not concern you any longer. It would be troublesome to have it constantly in mind until it is eliminated. The mind should be normally in abeyance — incessant activity is a morbid state. The universe works by itself — that I know. What else do I need to know?

Q: So a jnani knows what he is doing only when he turns his mind to it; otherwise he just acts, without being concerned.

M: The average man is not conscious of his body as such. He is conscious of his sensations, feelings and thoughts. Even these, once detachment sets in, move away from the centre of consciousness and happen spontaneously and effortlessly.

Q: What then is in the centre of consciousness?

M: That which cannot be given name and form, for it is without quality and beyond consciousness. You may say it is a point in consciousness, which is beyond consciousness. Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of paper, so is the supreme state in the very centre of consciousness, and yet beyond consciousness. It is as if an opening in the mind through which the mind is flooded with light. The opening is not even the light. It is just an opening.

Q: An opening is just void, absence.

M: Quite so. From the mind’s point of view, it is but an opening for the light of awareness to enter the mental space. By itself the light can only be compared to a solid, dense, rocklike, homogeneous and changeless mass of pure awareness, free from the mental patterns of name and shape.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Except from “I AM THAT”, Chapter 13

CHAP 21-30

QUESTIONER is a woman for a change.