What you need will come to you, if you do not ask for what you do not need. Yet only few people reach this state of complete dispassion and detachment. It is a very high state, the very threshold of liberation.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

20th century Indian Advaita mystic

“The ‘I am’ is the sum total of everything you perceive.

It appears spontaneously and disappears, it has no dwelling place.
It is like a dream world.

Do not try to be something,
even a spiritual person.

You are the manifested.
The tree is already there in the seed.
Such is the ‘I am’.

Just see it as it is.”

~ Guru Nisargadatta Maharaj

The question of what one is comes only in manifestation,
in comparison with other phenomenon.
In my state there is no phenomenon;
my existence is prior to any manifestation.
There is no question of who or what I am.

~ Nisargadatta

THE KEY WORD : ABSOLUTE (rjs)
▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎
Q: Don’t we have to discard all knowledge?

Maharaj: You must have a thorough knowledge of this consciousness, and having known everything about the consciousness you come to the conclusion that it is all unreal, and then it should drop off. Having listened to these talks, sit and meditate, “That which I have heard, is it true or not?” Then you will understand that this is also to be discarded.

The principle which can pass judgment on whether the world is or is not, that principle antedates the world. That by which everything is known, whether it is or is not – who knows this? When I say Parabrahman, then you say that you understand. Names are merely an instrument for communicating. Do you understand what I am driving at?

Q: The jnani knows that this is all an illusion, that there is no path; but if from within the illusion, one is convinced that there is a path, and there’s somewhere to go, does it make sense to use techniques to get to that further illusion?

M: Illusion – is it a word or not?

Q: It’s a word that relates to a concept.

M: That is also a name only, is it not?

Q: Yes.

M: So what illusory word do you want that will satisfy you?

The final Talks with
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Consciousness and the Absolute.

Q: What does it mean to go beyond the mind?

M: You have gone beyond the body, haven’t you?
You do not closely follow your digestion, circulation or elimination. These
have become automatic.
In the same way the mind should work
automatically, without calling for attention.

This will not happen unless the mind works faultlessly. We are, most of our time, mind and body-conscious, because they constantly call for help. Pain and suffering are only the body and the mind screaming for attention. To go beyond the body you must be healthy: to go beyond the mind, you must have your mind in perfect order.
You cannot leave a mess behind and go beyond. — the mess will bog you up.
‘Pick up your rubbish’ seems to be the universal law. And a just law too.

Q: Am I permitted to ask you how did you go beyond the mind?
M: By the grace of my Guru.

Q: What shape his grace took?
M: He told me what is true.

Q: What did he tell you?
M: He told me I am the Supreme Reality.

Q: What did you do about it?
M: I trusted him and remembered it.

Q: Is that all?
M: Yes, I remembered him; I remembered what he said.

Q: You mean to say that this was enough?

M: What more needs be done?
It was quite a lot to remember the Guru and his words. My advice to you is even less difficult than this — just remember yourself. ‘I am’, is enough to heal your mind and take you beyond. Just have some trust.
I don’t mislead you. Why should I? Do I want anything from you? I wish you well — such is my nature. Why should I mislead you?
Commonsense too will tell you that to fulfil a desire you must keep your mind on it. If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed.

Q: Why should self-remembrance bring one to self-realization?

M: Because they are but two aspects of the same state. Self-remembrance is in the mind, self-realization is beyond the mind.
The image in the mirror is of the face beyond the mirror.

Q: Right. But do I need a Guru? What you tell me is simple and convincing. I shill remember it. This does not make you my
Guru.

M: It is not the worship of a person that is crucial, but the steadiness and depth of your devotion to the task.

Life itself is the Supreme Guru; be attentive to its lessons and obedient to its commands. Whey you personalize their source, you have an outer Guru; when you take them from life directly, the Guru is
within.

Remember, wonder, ponder, live with it, love it, grow into it, grow with it, make it your own — the word of your Guru, outer of inner.
Put in all and you will get all. I was doing it. All my time I was giving to my Guru and to what he told me.

• Excerpt from: I AM THAT.
  Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
  Chapter: LIFE IS THE SUPREME GURU

Questioner: Is the witness-consciousness permanent or not?

Maharaj: It is not permanent.
The knower rises and sets with the known. That in which both the knower and the known arise and set, is beyond time. The words permanent or eternal do not apply.

Q: In sleep there is neither the known, nor the knower. What keeps the body sensitive and receptive?

M: Surely you cannot say the knower was absent. The experience of things and thoughts was not there, that is all. But the
absence of experience too is experience. It is like entering a dark room and saying ‘I see nothing’. A man blind from birth knows not what darkness means. Similarly, only the knower knows that he does not know. Sleep is merely a lapse in memory. Life goes on.

Q: And what is death?
M: It is the change in the living process of a particular body. Integration ends and disintegration sets in.

Q: But what about the knower. With the disappearance of the body, does the knower disappear?
M: Just as the knower of the body appears at birth, so he disappears at death.

Q: And nothing remains?
M: Life remains. Consciousness needs a vehicle and an instrument for its manifestation. When life produces another body, another knower comes into being.

Q: Is there a causal link between the successive body- knowers, or body-minds?
M: Yes, there is something that may be called the memory body, or causal body, a record of all that was thought, wanted
and done. It is like a cloud of images held together.

Q: What is this sense of a separate existence?
M: It is a reflection in a separate body of the one reality. In this reflection the unlimited and the limited are confused and taken to be the same. To undo this confusion is the purpose of Yoga.

Q: Does not death undo this confusion?
M: In death only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not, reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after
death.

Q: But does one get reborn?
M: What was born must die. Only the unborn is deathless. Find what is it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of ‘I’.

Q: How am I to go about this finding out?
M: How do you go about finding anything? By keeping your mind and heart on it. Interest there must be and steady
remembrance. To remember what needs to be remembered is the secret of success. You come to it through earnestness.

Q: Do you mean to say that mere wanting to find out is enough? Surely, both qualifications and opportunities are needed.

M: These will come with earnestness. What is supremely important is to be free from contradictions: the goal and the way must not be on different levels; life and light must not quarrel; behaviour must not betray belief. Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you must not go back, undo, uproot, abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty in pursuit will bring you to your goal.

Q: Tenacity and honesty are endowments, surely! Not a trace of them I have.

M: All will come as you go on. Take the first step first. All blessings come from within. Turn within. ‘I am’ you know. Be with it
all the time you can spare, until you revert to it spontaneously.
There is no simpler and easier way.

• Excerpt from:I AM THAT
  Chapter 5. What is Born must Die
• Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The reward of Self Knowledge is freedom from the personal self.

Once you say,
“I want to find Truth,”
all your life will be deeply affected by it.
All your mental and physical habits, feelings and emotions, desires and fears, plans and decisions will undergo a most radical transformation.

If you are earnest, whatever way you choose will take you to your goal. It is the earnestness that is the decisive factor. Earnestness is the homing instinct which makes the bird return to its nest and the
fish to the mountain stream where it was born. The seed returns to the earth when the fruit is ripe.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

REALITY

Neither action, nor feeling, nor thought express reality.
There is no such thing as an expression of reality.
You are introducing a duality where there is none. Only reality is, there is nothing else.
………………………………..
Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space.

You cannot speak about it; you can only
lose your self in it. When you deny reality to anything, you come to a residue which cannot be denied.

• Nisarga Yoga: The Self Knowledge Teaching of Nisargadatta Maharaj