Nisargadatta On the Real World
You are all drenched for it is raining hard. In my world it is always fine weather. There is no night or day, no heat or cold. No worries beset me here, no regrets. My mind is free of thoughts, for there are no desires to slave for.
Your world is transient, changeful. My world is perfect, changeless. You can tell me what you like about your world — I shall listen carefully, even with interest; yet not for a moment shall I forget that your world is not, that you are dreaming.
My world has no characteristics by which it can be identified. You can say nothing about it. I am my world. My world is myself. It is complete and perfect. Every impression is erased, every experience rejected. I need nothing, not even myself, for myself I cannot lose.
All these ideas and distinctions exist in your world; in mine there is nothing of the kind. My world is single and very simple. Whatever happens in your world, only there does it have validity, and evokes response. In my world nothing happens.
Your words do not reach me. Mine is a non-verbal world. In your world the unspoken has no existence. In mine, the words and their contents have no being. In your world nothing stays; in mine, nothing changes. My world is real, while yours is made of dreams.
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 here.
How can you say, "alone or not alone," when words do not apply? Of course I am alone for I am all. What is coming and going to me? These again are words. I am. Whence am I to come from and where to go?
You should consider more closely your own world, examine it critically, and suddenly, one day you will find yourself in mine. You gain nothing. You leave behind what is not your own and find what you have never lost — your own being.
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.
In your world I appear [to have a name and shape, display consciousness and activity]. In mine I have being only. Nothing else. You people are rich with your ideas of possession, quantity and quality. I am completely without ideas.
Do as you please. You are free to leave your world for mine. 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 proof of earnestness.
In your world I would be most miserable. To wake up, to eat, to talk, to sleep again — what a bother! 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!
[My world] is real, yours is of the mind.
Which world do you have in mind? Are you sure we live in the same world? I do not mean nature, the sea and the land, plants and animals. They are not the problem; nor the endless space, the infinite time, the inexhaustible power. Do not be misled by my eating and smoking, reading and talking. My mind is not here; my life is not here. Your world of desires and their fulfillments, of fears and their escapes is definitely not my world. I do not even perceive it except through what you tell me about it. It is your private dream world and my only reaction to it is to ask you to stop dreaming.
[A dream cannot be shared] nor can the waking state. All the three states — waking, dreaming and sleeping — are subjective, personal, intimate. They all happen to and are contained within the little bubble in consciousness called "I". The real world lies beyond the [personal] self.
[Goodness prevails] in my real world. In my world even what you call evil is the servant of the good and therefore necessary. It is like boils and fevers that clear the body of impurities. Disease is painful, even dangerous, but if dealt with rightly it heals. This problem of things, good and evil in themselves do not exist in my world. The needful is good and the needless is evil. In your world the pleasant is good, and the painful is evil.
All these attributes — being, consciousness, love and beauty are reflections of the real in the world. No real — no reflection.
Stay with the idea that you are not the body nor the mind, not even their witness, but altogether beyond, and your mind will grow in clarity, your desires in purity, your actions in charity and that inner distillation will take you to another world, a world of truth and fearless love. Resist your old habits of feeling and thinking; keep on telling yourself: "No, not so, it cannot be so; I am not like this, I do not need it, I do not want it;" and a day will surely come when the entire structure of error and despair will collapse and the ground will be free for a new life. After all, you must remember that all your preoccupations with yourself are only in your waking hours and partly in your dreams; in sleep all is put aside and forgotten. It shows how little important is your waking life, even to yourself, that merely lying down and closing the eyes can end it.
I am not bound by your dreamlike world. In my world the seeds of suffering, desire and fear are not sown, and suffering does not grow. My world is free from opposites, of mutually distinctive discrepancies; harmony pervades; its peace is rock-like; this peace and silence are my body.
The world does not yield to changing. By its very nature it is painful and transient. See it as it is and divest yourself of all desire and fear. When the world does not hold and bind you, it becomes an abode of joy and beauty. You can be happy in the world only when you are free of it.
In my world love is the only law. I do not ask for love, I give it. Such is my nature.
My world is absolutely free; everything in it is self-determined. Therefore I keep on saying that all happens by itself. There is order in my world too, but it is not imposed from outside. It comes spontaneously and immediately, because of its timelessness. Perfection is not in the future. It is now.
Nisargadatta Maharaj from I AM THAT
PDF Book - Nisarga Yoga - Compiled by Stephen Wingate
