Hold On To Consciousness

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

If it is now, why am I not aware of it?

Because you hold onto the idea that you are not aware of it. Let go the idea.

It does not make me aware.

Wait. You want to be on both sides of the wall at the same time. You can, but you must remove the wall. Or realize that the wall and both sides of it are one single space, to which no idea like here or there applies.

Similies prove nothing. My only complaint is this - why do I not see what you see, why your words do not sound true in my mind. Let me know this much; all else can wait. You are wise and I am stupid; you see, I don't. Where and how shall I find my wisdom?

If you know yourself to be stupid, you are not stupid at all.

Just as knowing myself sick does not make me well, so knowing myself foolish cannot make me wise.

To know that you are must you not be well initially?

Oh no. I know by comparison. If I am blind from birth and you tell me that you know things without touching them, while I must touch to know. I am aware that I am blind without knowing what does it mean to see. Similarly, I know that I am lacking something when you assert things which I cannot grasp. You are telling me such wonderful things about myself; according to you I am eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, supremely happy, creator, preserver and destroyer of all there is, the source of all life, the heart of being, the lord and the beloved of every creature. You equate me with the Ultimate Reality, the source and the goal of all existence. I just blink, for I know myself to be a tiny little bundle of desires and fears, a bubble of suffering, a transient flash of consciousness in an ocean of darkness.

Before pain was, you were. After pain had gone, you remained. Pain is transient, you are not.

I am sorry, but I don't see what you see. From the day I was born till the day I die, pain and pleasure will weave the pattern of my life. Of being before birth and after death, I know nothing. I neither accept nor deny you. I hear what you say, but I do not know it.

Now you are conscious, are you not?

Please do not ask me about before and after. I just know only what is now.

Good enough. You are conscious. Hold on to it. There are states when you are not conscious. Call it unconscious being.

Being unconscious?

Consciousness and unconsciousness do not apply here. Existence is in consciousness, essence is independent of consciousness.

Is it void? Is it silence?

Why elaborate? Being pervades and transcends consciousness. Objective consciousness is a part of pure consciousness, not beyond it.

(to be continued)