Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Q: There may be a God for all I know, but to me he is a concept projected by the human mind. He may be a reality to you, but to me society is more real than God, for I am both its creature and its prisoner. Your values are wisdom and compassion; society's sagacious selfishness. I live in a world quite different from yours.
None compels.
Q: None compels you, but I am compelled. My world is an evil world, full of tears, toil and pain. To explain it away by the intellectualizing, by putting forth theories of evolution and karma is merely adding insult to injury. The God of an evil world is a cruel God.
You are the god of your own world and you are both stupid and cruel. Let God be a concept - your own creation. Find out who you are, how did you come to live, longing for truth, goodness and beauty in a world full of evil. Of what use is your arguing for or against God when you just do not know who is God and what you are talking about? The God born of fear and hope, shaped by desire and imagination, cannot be the Power That is, the Mind and the Heart of the universe.
Q: I agree that the world I live in and the God I believe in are both creatures of imagination. But in what way are they created by desire? Why do I imagine a world so painful and a God so indifferent? What is wrong with me that I should torture myself so cruelly? The enlightened man comes and tells me: 'it is but a dream to put an end to', but is he not himself a part of the dream? I find myself trapped and see no way out. You say you are free. Of what are you free? For heaven's sake, don't feed me on words, enlighten me, help me to wake up, since it is you who sees me tossing in my sleep.
When I say I am free, I merely state a fact. If you are an adult, you are free from infancy. I am free from all description and identification. Whatever you may hear, see or think of, I am not that. I am free from being a percept or a concept.
Q: Still you have a body and you depend on it.
Again you assume that your point of view is the only correct one. I repeat: I was not, am not, shall not be a body. To me this is a fact. I too was under the illusion of having been born, but my Guru made me see that birth and death are mere ideas - birth is merely the idea 'I have a body' and death, 'I have lost my body'. Now, when I know I am not a body, the body may be there or may not - what difference does it make? The body-mind is like a room. It is there, but I need not live in it all the time.
Q: Yet there is a body and you do take care of it.
The power that created the body takes care of it.
Q: We are jumping from level to level all the time.
There are two levels to consider - the physical - of facts, and mental - of ideas. I am beyond both. Neither your facts nor ideas are mine. What I see is beyond. Cross over to my side and see with me.
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