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Nisargadatta:
The talk is in your world. In mine – there is
eternal silence. My silence sings, my emptiness is
full, I lack nothing. You cannot know my world
until you are there.
Question: It seems as if you alone are in
your world.
Nisargadatta: How can you say alone or not
alone, when words do not apply? Of course, I am
alone for I am all.
Question: Are you ever coming into our
world?
Nisargadatta: What is coming and going to
me? These again are words. I am. Whence am I to
come from and where to go?
Question: Of what use is your world to
me?
Nisargadatta: You should consider more
closely your own world, examine it critically and,
suddenly, one day you will find yourself in
mine.
Question: What do we gain by it?
Nisargadatta: You gain nothing. You leave
behind what is not your own and find what you have
never lost – your own Being.
Question: Who is the ruler of your
world?
Nisargadatta: There are no ruler and ruled
here. There is no duality whatsoever. You are
merely projecting your own ideas. Your Scriptures
and your gods have no meaning here.
Question: Still you have a name and shape,
display consciousness and activity.
Nisargadatta: In your world I appear so. In
mine I have Being only. Nothing else. You people
are rich with your ideas of possession, of quantity
and quality. I am completely without ideas.
Question: In my world there is disturbance,
distress and despair. You seem to be living on some
hidden income, while I must slave for a living.
Nisargadatta: Do as you please. You are free
to leave your world for mine.
Question: How is the crossing done?
Nisargadatta: See your world as it is, not
as you imagine it to be. Discrimination will lead
to detachment; detachment will ensure right action;
right action will build the inner bridge to your
real Being. Action is a proof of earnestness. Do
what you are told diligently and faithfully and all
obstacles will dissolve.
Question: Are you happy?
Nisargadatta: In your world I would be most
miserable. To wake up, to eat, to talk, to sleep
again – what a bother!
Question: So you do not want to live
even?
Nisargadatta: To live, to die – what
meaningless words are these! When you see me alive,
I am dead. When you think me dead, I am alive. How
muddled up you are!
Question: How indifferent you are? All the
sorrows of our world are as nothing to you.
Nisargadatta: I am quite conscious of your
troubles.
Question: Then what are you doing about
them?
Nisargadatta: There is nothing I need doing.
They come and go.
Question: Do they go by the very act of your
giving them attention?
Nisargadatta: Yes. The difficulty may be
physical, emotional or mental; but it is always
individual. Large scale calamities are the sum of
numberless individual destinies and take time to
settle. But death is never a calamity.
Question: Even when a man is killed?
Nisargadatta: The calamity is of the
killer.
Question: Still, it seems there are two
worlds, mine and yours.
Nisargadatta: Mine is real, yours is of the
mind.
Question: Imagine a rock and a hole in the
rock and a frog in the hole. The frog may spend its
life in perfect bliss, undistracted, undisturbed.
Outside the rock the world goes on. If the frog in
the hole were told about the outside world, he
would say, "There is no such thing. My world is of
peace and bliss. Your world is a word structure
only, it has no existence." It is the same with
you. When you tell us that our world simply does
not exist, there is no common ground for
discussion. Or, take another example. I go to a
doctor and complain of stomach ache. He examines me
and says, "You are all right". "But it pains" I
say. "Your pain is mental" he asserts. I say "It
does not help me to know that my pain is mental.
You are a doctor, cure me of my pain. If you cannot
cure me, you are not my doctor."
Nisargadatta: Quite right.
Question: You have built the railroad, but
for lack of a bridge no train can pass. Build the
bridge.
Nisargadatta: There is no need of a
bridge.
Question: There must be some link between
your world and mine.
Nisargadatta: There is no need of a link
between a real world and an imaginary world, for
there cannot be any.
Question: So what are we to do?
Nisargadatta: Investigate your world, apply
your mind to it, examine it critically, scrutinise
every idea about it; that will do.
Question: The world is too big for
investigation. All I know is that I am the world
is, the world troubles me and I trouble the
world.
Nisargadatta: My experience is that
everything is bliss. But the desire for bliss
creates pain. Thus bliss becomes the seed of pain.
The entire universe of pain is born of desire. Give
up the desire for pleasure and you will not even
know what is pain.
Question: Why should pleasure be the seed of
pain?
Nisargadatta: Because for the sake of
pleasure you are committing many sins. And the
fruits of sin are suffering and death.
Question: You say the world is of no use to
us – only a tribulation. I feel it cannot be
so. God is not such a fool. The world seems to me a
big enterprise for bringing the potential into
actual, matter into life, the unconscious into full
awareness. To realise the Supreme we need the
experience of the opposites. Just as for building a
temple we need stone and mortar, wood and iron,
glass and tiles, so for making a man into a divine
sage, a master of life and death, one needs the
material of every experience. As a woman goes to
the market, buys provisions of every sort, comes
home, cooks, bakes and feeds her lord, so we bake
ourselves nicely in the fire of life and feed our
God.
Nisargadatta: Well, if you think so, act on
it. Feed your God, by all means.
Question: A child goes to school and learns
many things, which will be of no use to it later.
But in the course of learning it grows. So do we
pass through experiences without number and forget
them all, but in the meantime we grow all the time.
And what is a jnani but a man with a genius for
Reality! This world of mine cannot be an accident.
It makes sense, there must be a plan behind it. My
God has a plan.
Nisargadatta: If the world is false, then
the plan and its creator are also false.
Question: Again, you deny the world. There
is no bridge between us.
Nisargadatta: There is no need of a bridge.
Your mistake lies in your belief that you are born.
You were never born nor will you ever die, but you
believe that you were born at a certain date and
place and that a particular body is your own.
Question: The world is, I am. These are
facts.
Nisargadatta: Why do you worry about the
world before taking care of yourself? You want to
save the world, don't you? Can you save the world
before saving yourself? And what means being saved?
Saved from what? From illusion. Salvation is to see
things as they are. I really do not see myself
related to anybody and anything. Not even to a
self, whatever that self may be. I remain forever
– undefined. I am – within and beyond
– intimate and unapproachable.
Question: How did you come to it?
Nisargadatta: By my trust in my Guru. He
told me "You alone are", and I did not doubt him. I
was merely puzzling over it, until I realised that
it is absolutely true.
Question: Conviction by repetition?
Nisargadatta: By Self-realisation. I found
that I am conscious and happy absolutely and only
by mistake I thought I owed
being-consciousness-bliss to the body and the world
of bodies.
Question: You are not a learned man. You
have not read much and what you read, or heard did
perhaps not contradict itself. I am fairly well
educated and have read a lot and I found that books
and teachers contradict each other hopelessly.
Hence whatever I read or hear, I take it in a state
of doubt. "It may be so, it may not be so" is my
first reaction. And as my mind is unable to decide
what is true and what is not, I am left high and
dry with my doubts. In Yoga a doubting mind is at a
tremendous disadvantage.
Nisargadatta: I am glad to hear it; but my
Guru too taught me to doubt – everything and
absolutely. He said, "Deny existence to everything
except your own Being." Through desire you have
created the world with its pains and pleasures.
Question: Must it be also painful?
Nisargadatta: What else? By its very nature
pleasure is limited and transitory. Out of pain
desire is born, in pain it seeks fulfilment, and it
ends in the pain of frustration and despair. Pain
is the background of pleasure, all seeking of
pleasure is born in pain and ends in pain.
Question: All you say is clear to me. But
when some physical or mental trouble comes, my mind
goes dull and grey, or seeks frantically for
relief.
Nisargadatta: What does it matter? It is the
mind that is dull or restless, not you. Look, all
kinds of things happen in this room. Do I cause
them to happen? They just happen. So it is with you
– the roll of destiny unfolds itself and
actualises the inevitable. You cannot change the
course of events, but you can change your attitude
and what really matters is the attitude and not the
bare event. The world is the abode of desires and
fears. You cannot find peace in it. For peace you
must go beyond the world. The rootcause of the
world is self-love. Because of it we seek pleasure
and avoid pain. Replace self-love by love of the
Self and the picture changes. Brahma the creator is
the sum total of all desires. The world is the
instrument for their fulfilment. Souls take
whatever pleasure they desire and pay for them in
tears. Time squares all accounts. The law of
balance reigns supreme.
Question: To be a superman one must be a man
first. Manhood is the fruit of innumerable
experiences: desire drives to experience. Hence at
its own time and level desire is right.
Nisargadatta: All this is true in a way. But
a day comes when you have amassed enough and must
begin to build. Then sorting out and discarding are
absolutely necessary. Everything must be
scrutinised and the unnecessary ruthlessly
destroyed. Believe me, there cannot be too much
destruction. For in reality nothing is of value. Be
passionately dispassionate – that is all.
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