I am That (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
- Highlight on Page 402 | Loc. 6160-65 | Added on Sunday, February 12, 2012, 06:02 PM
Nisargadatta: You have a mind which is spread in time. One after another all things happen to you and the memory remains. There is nothing wrong in it. The problem arises only when the memory of past pains and pleasures – which are essential to all organic life – remains as a reflex, dominating behaviour. This reflex takes the shape of ‘I’ and uses the body and the mind for its purposes, which are invariably in search for pleasure or flight from pain. When you recognize the ‘I’ as it is, a bundle of desires and fears, and the sense of ‘mine’, as embracing all things and people needed for the purpose of avoiding pain and securing pleasure, you will see that the ‘I’ and the ‘mine’ are false ideas, having no foundation in reality. Created by the mind, they rule their creator as long as it takes them to be true; when questioned, they dissolve.
Nisargadatta: The ‘I’ and ‘mine’, having no existence in themselves, need a support which they find in the body. The body becomes their point of reference. When you talk of ‘my’ husband and ‘my’ children, you mean the body’s husband and the body’s children. Give up the idea of being the body and face the question: Who am I? At once a process will be set in motion which will bring back reality, or, rather, will take the mind to reality. Only, you must not be afraid.
Questioner: What am I to be afraid of?
N: For reality to be, the ideas of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ must go. They will go if you let them. Then your normal natural state reappears, in which you are neither the body nor the mind, neither the ‘me’ nor the ‘mine’, but in a different state of being altogether. It is pure awareness of being, without being this or that, without any self-identification with anything in particular, or in general. In that pure light of consciousness there is nothing, not even the idea of nothing. There is only light.
Q: There are people whom I love. Must I give them up?
N: You only let go your hold on them. The rest is up to them. They may lose interest in you, or may not.
Q: How could they? Are they not my own?
N: They are your body’s, not your own. Or, better, there is none who is not your own.
Q: And what about my possessions?
N: When the ‘mine’ is no more, where are your possessions?
Q: Please tell me, must I lose all by losing the ‘I’?
N: You may or you may not. It will be all the same to you. Your loss will be somebody’s gain. You will not mind.
Q: If I do not mind, I shall lose all!
N: Once you have nothing you have no problems.
Q: I am left with the problem of survival.
N: It is the body’s problem and it will solve it by eating, drinking and sleeping. There is enough for all, provided all share.
Q: Our society is based on grabbing, not on sharing.
N: By sharing you will change it.
Q: I do not feel like sharing. Anyhow, I am being taxed out of my possessions.
N: This is not the same as voluntary sharing. Society will not change by compulsion. It requires a change of heart. Understand that nothing is your own, that all belongs to all. Then only society will change.
Questioner: One man’s understanding will not take the world far.
Nisargadatta: The world in which you live will be affected deeply, it will be a healthy and happy world, which will radiate and communicate, increase and spread. The power of a true heart is immense.