'To Help Is My Nature'

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: Here I am - in the present moment. What is real in it, and what is not? Now please don't tell me that my question is wrong. Questioning my questions leads me nowhere.

Your question is not wrong. It is unnecessary. You said, "Here and now I am". Stop there, this is real. Don't turn a fact into a question. There lies your mistake. You are neither knowing nor not-knowing, neither mind nor matter; don't attempt to describe yourself in terms of mind and matter.

Just now a boy came to you with a problem. You told him a few words and he went away. Did you help him?

Of course. 

How can you be so sure?

To help is my nature.

How did you come to know it?

No need to know. It operates by itself.

Still you have made a statement. On what is it based?

On what people tell me. But it is you who asks for proofs. I do not need them. Setting things right lies in my very nature, which is satyam, shivam, sundaram (the true, the good, the beautiful). 

When a man comes to you for advice and you give him advice, from where does it come and by what power does it help?

His own being affects his mind and induces a response.

And what is your role?

In me the man and his self come together.

Why does not the self help the man without you?

But I am the Self! You imagine me as separate, hence your question. there is no 'my self' and 'his self'. There is the Self, the only Self of all. Misled by the diversity of names and shapes, minds and bodies, you imagine multiple selves. We both are the self, but you seem to be unconvinced. This talk of personal self and universal self is the learner's state; go beyond, do be stuck in duality.