Conflict Not Possible Between What Is and What Is Not

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: I have noticed a new self emerging in me, independent of the old self. They somehow co-exist. The old self goes on its habitual ways; the new lets the old be, but does not identify itself with it.

M: What is the main difference between the old and the new self?

The old self wants everything defined and explained. It wants things to fit each other verbally. The new does not care for verbal explanations -- it accepts things as they are and does not seek to relate them to things remembered.

Are you fully and constantly aware of the difference between the habitual and the spiritual? What is the attitude of the new self to the old?

The new just looks at the old. It is neither friendly nor inimical. It just accepts the old self along with everything else. It does not deny its being, but does not accept its value and validity.

The new is the total denial of the old. The permissive new is not really new. It is but a new attitude of the old. The really new obliterates the old completely. The two cannot be together. Is there a process of self-denudation, a constant refusal to accept the old ideas and values, or is there just a mutual tolerance? What is their relation?

There is no particular relation. They just co-exist.

When you talk of the old and the new self, whom do you have in mind? As there is continuity in memory between the two, each remembering the other, how can you speak of two selves?

One is a slave to habits, the other is not. One conceptualizes, the other is free from all ideas.

Why two selves? Between the bound and the free, there can be no relationship. The very fact of co-existence proves their basic unity. There is but one self - it is always now. What you call the other self - old or new - is but a modality, another aspect of the one self. The self is single. You are that self and you have ideas of what you have been or will be. But an idea is not the self. Just now, as you are sitting in front of me, which self are you? The old or the new?

The two are in conflict.

How can there be conflict between what is and what is not? Conflict is the characteristic of the old. When the new emerges, the old is no longer. You cannot speak of the new and the conflict in the same breath. Even the effort of striving for the new self is of the old. Wherever there is conflict, effort, struggle, striving, longing for a change, the new is not. To what extent are you free from the habitual tendency to create and perpetuate conflicts?

(To be continued)