Life: A Make-Belief

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: Would you say that reality expresses itself in action rather than in knowledge? Or is it a feeling of sorts?

Neither action, nor feeling nor thought express reality. There is no such thing as an expression of reality. You are introducing a duality where there is none. Only reality is, there is nothing else. The three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping are not me and I am not in them. When I die, the world will say, 'Oh maharaj is dead!' But to me these are words without content, they have no meaning. When the worship is done before the image of the Guru, all takes place as if he wakes and bathes and eats and rests, and goes for a stroll and returns, blesses all and goes to sleep. All is attended to in minutest details and yet there is a sense of unreality about it all. So is the case with me. All happens as it needs, yet nothing happens. I do what seems to be necessary, but at the same time I know that nothing is necessary, that life itself is only a make-belief.

Q: Why then live at all? Why all this unnecessary coming and going, waking and sleeping, eating and digesting?

Nothing is done by me, everything just happens. I do not expect, I do not plan, I just watch events happening, knowing them to be unreal.

Q: Were you always like this from the first moment of enlightenment?

The three states rotate as usual - there is waking and sleeping and waking again, but they do not happen to me. They just happen. To me nothing ever happens. There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rocklike, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss. I am never out of it. Nothing can take me out of it, no torture, no calamity.

Q: Yet, you are conscious.

Yes and no. There is peace - deep, immense, unshakeable. Events are registered in memory, but are of no importance. I am hardly aware of them.

Q: If I understand you right, this state did not come by cultivation.

There was no coming. It was so always. There was discovery and it was sudden. Just as at birth you discover the world suddenly, as suddenly I discovered my real being.

Q: Was it clouded over and your sadhana dissolved in the mist? When your true state became clear to you, did it remain clear, or did it get obscured again? Is your condition permanent or intermittent?

Absolutely steady. Whatever I may do, it stays like a rock - motionless. Once you have awakened into reality, you stay in it. A child does not return to the womb. It is a simple state, smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest. It is self-evident and yet beyond description.

Q: Is there a way to it?

Everything can become a way, provided you are interested. Just puzzling over my words and trying to grasp their full meaning is a sadhana quite sufficient for breaking down the wall. Nothing troubles me. I offer no resistance to trouble - therefore it does not stay with me. On your side there is so much trouble. On mine there is no trouble at all. Come to my side. You are trouble-prone. I am immune. Anything may happen. What is needed is sincere interest. Earnestness does it.

Q: Can I do it?

Of course, you are quite capable of crossing over. Only be sincere.