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Question: But the person does not want to be eliminated.

 

Nisargadatta: The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. There is in fact no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of "I" and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the "I" and the "mine". The teacher tells the watcher: you are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of "I am", which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. "I am this, I am that" is dream, while pure "I am" has the stamp of Reality on it. You have tasted so many things – all came to naught. Only the sense "I am" persisted – unchanged. Stay with the changeless among the changeful, until you are able to go beyond.

 

Question: When will it happen?

 

Nisargadatta: It will happen as soon as you remove the obstacles.

 

Question: Which obstacles?

 

Nisargadatta: Desire for the false and fear of the true. You, as the person, imagine that the Guru is interested in you as a person. Not at all. To him you are a nuisance and a hindrance to be done away with. He actually aims at your elimination as a factor in consciousness.

 

(I laughed out loud. :lol: )

 

Question: If I am eliminated, what will remain?

 

Nisargadatta: Nothing will remain, all will remain. The sense of identity will remain, but no longer identification with a particular body. Being awareness, love will shine in full splendour. Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person.

 

Question: And no trace remains of the person?

 

Nisargadatta: A vague memory remains, like the memory of a dream, or early childhood. After all, what is there to remember? A flow of events, mostly accidental and meaningless. A sequence of desires and fears and inane blunders. Is there anything worth remembering? The person is but a shell imprisoning you. Break the shell.

 

Question: Whom are you asking to break the shell? Who is to break the shell?

 

Nisargadatta: Break the bonds of memory and self-identification and the shell will break by itself. There is a centre that imparts reality to whatever it perceives. All you need is to understand that you are the source of Reality, that you give reality instead of getting it, that you need no support and no confirmation. Things are as they are, because you accept them as they are. Stop accepting them and they will dissolve. Whatever you think about with desire or fear appears before you as real. Look at it without desire or fear and it does lose substance. Pleasure and pain are momentary. It is simpler and easier to disregard them than to act on them.

 

Question: If all things come to an end, why did they appear at all?

 

Nisargadatta: Creation is in the very nature of consciousness. Consciousness causes appearances. Reality is beyond consciousness.

 

Question: While we are conscious of appearances, how is it that we are not conscious that these are mere appearances?

 

Nisargadatta: The mind covers up Reality, without knowing it. To know the nature of the mind, you need intelligence, the capacity to look at the mind in silent and dispassionate awareness.

 

Question: If I am of the nature of all-pervading consciousness, how could ignorance and illusion happen to me?

 

Nisargadatta: Neither ignorance nor illusion ever happened to you. Find the Self to which you ascribe ignorance and illusion and your question will be answered. You talk as if you know the Self and see it to be under the sway of ignorance and illusion. But, in fact, you do not know the Self, nor are you aware of ignorance. By all means become aware – this will bring you to the Self and you will realise that there is neither ignorance nor delusion in it. It is like saying: if there is sun, how can darkness be? As under a stone there will be darkness, however strong the sunlight, so in the shadow of the "I am the body" consciousness there must be ignorance and illusion.

..............

Question: I do not feel there are too many do-gooders among disciples. Most of those I met are too absorbed in their own petty conflicts. They have no heart for others.

 

Nisargadatta: Such self-centeredness is temporary. Be patient with such people. For so many years they gave attention to everything but themselves. Let them turn to themselves for a change.

 

Question: What are the fruits of self-awareness?

 

Nisargadatta: You grow more intelligent. In awareness you learn. In self-awareness you learn about yourself. Of course, you can only learn what you are not. To know what you are, you must go beyond the mind.

 

Question: Is not awareness beyond the mind?

 

Nisargadatta: Awareness is the point at which the mind reaches out beyond itself into Reality. In awareness you seek not what pleases, but what is true.

 

Question: I find that awareness brings about a state of inner silence, a state of psychic void.

 

Nisargadatta: It is all right as it goes, but it is not enough. Have you felt the all-embracing emptiness in which the universe swims like a cloud in the blue sky?

 

Question: Sir, let me first come to know well my own inner space.

 

Nisargadatta: Destroy the wall that separates, the "I am the body" idea and the inner and the outer will become one.

 

***Question: Am I to die?

 

***Nisargadatta: Physical destruction is meaningless. It is the clinging to sensate life that binds you. If you could experience the inner void fully, the explosion into the totality would be near.

 

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