There is no becoming

How can anybody tell you what you shall become when there is no becoming? You merely discover what you are. Think neither of the past nor of the future. Just be.

Extract from I am That

Nisargadatta Maharaj an extract from I AM THAT Maharaj ...realization is explosive. It takes place spontaneously, or at the slightest hint. The quick is not better than the slow. Slow ripening and rapid flowering alternate. Both are natural and right. Yet, all this is so in the mind only. As I see it, there is really nothing of the kind. In the great mirror of consciousness images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material -- destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence -- vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion: 'I-am-so-and-so' obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die. Seeker I was told that a realized person will never do anything unseemly. That they will behave in an exemplary way. Maharaj Who sets the example? Why should a liberated one necessarily follow conventions? The moment one becomes predictable, one cannot be free. Ones freedom lies in being free to fulfill the need of the moment, to obey the necessity of the situation. Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom. Seeker What about cause and effect? Maharaj Each moment contains the whole of the past and creates the whole of the future. Seeker But past and future exist? Maharaj In the mind only. Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only. Seeker A message in print may be paper and ink only. It is the text that matters. By analysing the world into elements and qualities we miss the most important -- its meaning. Your reduction of everything to dream disregards the difference between the dream of an insect and the dream of a poet. All is dream, granted. But not all are equal. Maharaj The dreams are not equal, but the dreamer is one. I am the insect. I am the poet -- in dream. But in reality I am neither. I am beyond all dreams. I am light in which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both inside and outside the dream. Just as a man having a headache knows the ache and also knows that he is not the ache, so do I know the dream, myself dreaming and myself not dreaming -- all at the same time. I am what I am before, during and after the dream. But what I see in dream, I am not." Seeker If both dream and escape from dream are imaginings, what is the way out? Maharaj There is no need of a way out! Don't you see that a way out is also part of the dream? All you have to do is to see the dream as dream. Seeker If I start the practice of dismissing everything as a dream, where will it lead me? Maharaj Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of the dream and not another. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done.

Ramesh Balsekar on Maharaj.

Ramesh Balsekar on Maharaj The core of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's teaching is the knowledge of one's own identity. This knowledge is indeed the pivotal point around which moves everything. It is the crucial truth. And the apperception of this truth arisesonly from intense personal experience, not from a study of religious texts, which according to Maharaj, are nothing but 'hearsay.' Taking his stand on the bedrock of incontrovertible facts and totally discarding all assumptions and speculations, he often address a new visitor in the following words: "You are sitting there, I am sitting here, and there is the world outside -- and, for the moment, we may assume that there must be a creator, let us say God. These three/four items are facts or experience, not 'hearsay.' Let us confine our conversation to these items only." This basis automatically excludes along with the 'hearsay' the traditional texts too, and therefore there is always an exhilarating sense of freshness and freedom to Maharaj's talks. His words need no support from someone else's words or experiences which, after all, is all that the traditional texts can mean. This approach completely disarms those 'educated' people who come to impress the other visitors with their learning, and at the same time hope to get a certificate from Maharaj about their own highly evolved state. At the same time it greatly encourages the genuine seeker who would prefer to start from scratch. ...Maharaj tells the visitors that it is only about this consciousness or I-am-ness that he always talks. "Pointers from Nisargadatta Maharaj" By Ramesh Balsekar Acorn Press, 1982

Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Questioner: My own feeling is that my spiritual development is not in my hands. Making one's own plans and carrying them out leads nowhere. I just run in circles round myself. When God considers the fruit to be ripe, He will pluck it and eat it. Whichever fruit seems green to Him will remain on the world's tree for another day. Maharaj: You think God knows you? Even the world He does not know. Q: Yours is a different God. Mine is different. Mine is merciful. Hesuffers along with us. M: You pray to save one, while thousands die. And if all stop dying, there will be no space on earth. Q: I am not afraid of death. My concern is with sorrow and suffering. My God is a simple God and rather helpless. He has no power to compel us to be wise. He can only stand and wait. M: If you and your God are both helpless, does it not imply that the world is accidental? And if it is, the only thing you can do is to go beyond it. Questioner: Without God's power nothing can be done. Even you would not be sitting here and talking to us without Him. Maharaj: All is His doing, no doubt. What is it to me, since I want nothing? What can God give me, or take away from me?What is mine is mine and was mine even when God was not. Of course, it is avery tiny little thing, a speck the sense 'I am',the fact of being. This is my own place, nobody gave it to me. The earth is mine: what grows on it is God's. Q: Did God take the earth on rent from you? M: God is my devotee and did all this for me. Q: Is there no God apart from you? M: How can there be? 'I am' is the root, God is the tree. Whom am I to worship, and what for? Q: Are you the devotee or the object of devotion? M: Am neither, I am devotion itself. Q: There is not enough devotion in the world. M: You are always after the improvement of the world. Do you really believe that the world is waiting for you to be saved? Q: I just do not know how much I can do for the world. All I can do, is to try. Is there anything else you would like me to do? M: Without you is there a world? You know all about the world, but about yourself you know nothing. You yourself are the tools of your work, you have no other tools. Why don't you take care of the tools before you think of the work? Q: I can wait, while the world cannot. M: By not enquiring you keep the world waiting. Q: Waiting for what? M: For somebody who can save it. Q: God runs the world, God will save it. M: That's what you say! Did God come and tell you that the world is His creation and concern and not yours? Q: Why should it be my sole concern? M: Consider. The world in which you live, who else knows about it? Q: You know. Everybody knows. M: Did anybody come from outside of your world to tell you? Myself and everybody else appear and disappear in your world. We are all at your mercy. Q: It cannot be so bad! I exist in your world as you exist in mine. M: You have no evidence of my world. You are completely wrapped up in the world of your own making. Q: I see. Completely, but hopelessly? M: Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way by which you got into it. You got into it by forgetting what you are and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are. Q: In what way does it affect the world? M: When you are free of the world, you can do something about it. As long as you are a prisoner of it, you are helpless to change it. On the contrary, whatever you do will aggravate the situation. Q: Righteousness will set me free. M: Righteousness will undoubtedly make you and your world a comfortable, even happy place. But what is the use? There is no reality in it. It cannot last. Q: God will help. M: To help you God must know your existence. But you and your world are dream states. In dream you may suffer agonies. None knows them, and none can help you. Q: So all my questions, my search and study are of no use? M: These are but the stirrings of a man who is tired of sleeping. They are not the causes of awakening, but it's early signs. But, you must not ask idle questions, to which you already know the answers.