"The very first step in understanding what this is all about is giving up the concept of an active, volitional 'I' as a separate entity and accepting the passive role of perceiving and functioning as a process." - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Friday, September 20, 2013

All Ideas Belong To Waking State

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: A Tibetan yogi wrote that God creates the world for a purpose and runs it according to a plan. The purpose is good and the plan is most wise.
M: All this is temporary, while I am dealing with the eternal. Gods and their universes come and go, avatars follow each other in endless succession, and in the end we are back at the source. I talk only of the timeless source of all gods with all their universes, past, present and future.

Q: Do you know them all? Do you remember them?
M: When a few boys stage a play for fun, what is there to see and to remember?

Q: Why is half humanity male and half female?
M: For their happiness. The impersonal (avyakta) becomes the personal (vyakta) for the sake of happiness in relationship. By the grace of my Guru I can look with equal eye on the impersonal as well as the personal. Both are one to me. In life the personal merges in the impersonal.

Q: How does the personal emerge from the impersonal?
M: The two are but aspects of one Reality. It is not correct to talk of one preceding the other. All these ideas belong to the waking state.

Q: What brings in the waking state?
M: At the root of all creation lies desire. Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other. The fourth state (turiya) is a state of pure witnessing, detached awareness, passionless and wordless. It is like space, unaffected by whatever it contains. Bodily and mental troubles do not reach it - they are outside, 'there', while the witness is always 'here'.

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सर्वभूताधिवासं यद्भूतेषु च वसत्यपि।
सर्वानुग्राहकत्वेन तद्स्म्यहं वासुदेवः॥

That in whom reside all beings and who resides in all beings,
who is the giver of grace to all, the Supreme Soul of the universe, the limitless being:
I AM THAT. -- Amritabindu Upanishad