Find Out What You Are Not - 2

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Continued from here.

Q. How am I to make out?

M. Consider. Do you remember every second of yesterday?
Of course not.

Were you then unconscious?

Of course not.

So you are conscious and yet you do not remember?

Yes.

Maybe you were conscious in sleep and just do not remember.

No I was not conscious. I was asleep. I did not behave like a conscious person.

Again how do you know?

I was told so by those who saw me sleep.

All they can testify to is that they saw you lying quietly with closed eyes and breathing regularly. They could not make out whether you were conscious or not. Your only proof is your own memory. A very uncertain proof it is!

Yes, I admit on my own terms I am a person only during my waking hours. What I am in between, I do not know.

At least you know that you do not know! Since you pretend not to be conscious in the intervals between the waking hours, leave the intervals alone. Let us consider the waking hours only.

I am the same person in dreams.

Agreed. Let us consider them together waking and dreaming. The difference is merely in continuity. Were your dreams consistently continuous, bringing back night after night the same surroundings and the same people, you would be at a loss to know which is the waking and which is the dream. Henceforward, when we talk of the waking state, we shall include the dream state too.

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