Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
December 7, 1980
Q: I want direct experience of the Ultimate.
M: The Absolute cannot be experienced. It is not an objective affair. When I am unicity then that is pure awareness which is not aware of its awareness, and there can be no subject and object - therefore there can be no witnessing. Any manifestation, any functioning, any witnessing, can only take place in duality. There has to be a subject and an object, they are two, but they are not two, they are two ends of the same thing. When consciousness stirs, duality arises. There are millions of objects, but each object, when it sees another, assumes the subjectivity of the Absolute, although it is an object. I, as an object, perceive and interpret all the other objects, and I assume that I am the subject, and the witnessing takes place.
Q: Why does this consciousness stir? What is the cause?
M: Without any cause, spontaneously, it happens; there is no reason. That consciousness is universal - there is no individuality. But when the consciousness stirs in a particular form which has also arisen spontaneously, and starts functioning in that form, that form assumes that it is an individual and what is unlimited limits itself to a particular form and the trouble starts.
Let us say that someone has become a jnani, but what was it to begin with? It was that sour, bitter principle, that secretion because of which consciousness has taken place. That very principle, the knowledge "I AM", has developed, grown, and become sweet; it matures and becomes the manifest jnani's state; but what is that? It is the product of the five elemental food essence. When that goes, what remains? The Absolute which does not know Itself.
December 7, 1980
Q: I want direct experience of the Ultimate.
M: The Absolute cannot be experienced. It is not an objective affair. When I am unicity then that is pure awareness which is not aware of its awareness, and there can be no subject and object - therefore there can be no witnessing. Any manifestation, any functioning, any witnessing, can only take place in duality. There has to be a subject and an object, they are two, but they are not two, they are two ends of the same thing. When consciousness stirs, duality arises. There are millions of objects, but each object, when it sees another, assumes the subjectivity of the Absolute, although it is an object. I, as an object, perceive and interpret all the other objects, and I assume that I am the subject, and the witnessing takes place.
Q: Why does this consciousness stir? What is the cause?
M: Without any cause, spontaneously, it happens; there is no reason. That consciousness is universal - there is no individuality. But when the consciousness stirs in a particular form which has also arisen spontaneously, and starts functioning in that form, that form assumes that it is an individual and what is unlimited limits itself to a particular form and the trouble starts.
Let us say that someone has become a jnani, but what was it to begin with? It was that sour, bitter principle, that secretion because of which consciousness has taken place. That very principle, the knowledge "I AM", has developed, grown, and become sweet; it matures and becomes the manifest jnani's state; but what is that? It is the product of the five elemental food essence. When that goes, what remains? The Absolute which does not know Itself.
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