Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj - I Am That
Questioner: As I listen to you, I find that it is useless to ask you questions. Whatever the question, you invariably turn it upon itself and bring me to the basic fact that I am living in an illusion of my own making and that reality is inexpressible in words. Words merely add to the confusion and the only wise course is the silent search within.
Maharaj: After all, it is the mind that creates illusion and it is the mind that gets free of it. Words may aggravate illusion; words may also help dispel it. There is nothing wrong in repeating the same truth again and again until it becomes reality. Mother’s work is not over with the birth of the child. She feeds it day after day, year after year until it needs her no longer. People need hearing words, until facts speak to them louder than words.
Q: So we are children to be fed on words?
M: As long as you give importance to words, you are children.
Q: All right, then be our mother.
M: Where was the child before it was born? Was it not with the mother? Because it was already with the mother it could be born.
Q: Surely, the mother did not carry the child when she was a child herself.
M: Potentially, she was the mother. Go beyond the illusion of time.
Q: Your answer is always the same. A kind of clockwork which strikes the same hours again and again.
M: It can not be helped. Just like the one sun is reflected in a billion dew drops, so is the timeless endlessly repeated. When l repeat: ‘I am, I am’, I merely assert and re-assert an ever-present fact. You get tired of my words because you do not see the living truth behind them. Contact it and you will find the full meaning of words and of silence — both.
Q: You say that the little girl is already the mother of her future child. Potentially — yes. Actually — no.
M: The potential becomes actual by thinking. The body and its affairs exist in the mind.
Q: And the mind is consciousness in motion and consciousness is the conditioned (saguna) aspect of the Self. The unconditioned (nirguna) is another aspect and beyond lies the abyss of the absolute (paramartha).
M: Quite right — you have put it beautifully.
Q: But these are mere words to me. Hearing and repeating them is not enough, they must be experienced.
M: Nothing stops you but preoccupation with the outer which prevents you from focusing the inner. It cannot be helped; you cannot skip your sadhana. You have to turn away from the world and go within, until the inner and the outer merge and you can go beyond the conditioned, whether inner or outer.
2087
amandla
dailybridgerton
kianamaiart
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
titsay
theartofmadeline
