Stop Searching, Cease Losing

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: Science explains a lot.

M: Science deals with names and shapes, quantities and qualities, patterns and laws; it is all right in its own place. But life is to be lived; there is no time for analysis. The response must be instantaneous - hence the importance of the spontaneous, the timeless. It is in the unknown that we live and move. The known is the past.

Q: I can take my stand on what I feel I am. I am an individual, a person among persons. Some people are integrated and harmonised, and some are not. Some live effortlessly, respond spontaneously to every situation correctly, doing full justice to the need of the moment, while others fumble, err and generally make a nuisance of themselves. The harmonised people may be called natural, ruled by law, while the disintegrated are chaotic and subject to accidents.

M: The very idea of chaos presupposes the sense of the orderly, the organic, the inter-related. Chaos and cosmos: are they not two aspects of the same state?

Q: But you seem to say that all is chaos, accidental, unpredictable.

M: Yes, int he sense that not all the laws of being are known and not all events are predictable. The more you are able to understand, the more universe becomes satisfactory, emotionally and mentally. Reality is good and beautiful; we create the chaos.

Q: If you mean to say that it is the free will of man that causes accidents, I would agree. But we have not yet discussed free will.

M: Your order is what gives you pleasure and disorder is what gives you pain.

Q: You may put it that way, but do not tell me that the two are one. Talk to me in my own language - the language of an individual in search of happiness. I do not want to be misled by non-dualistic talks.

M: What makes you believe that you are a separate individual?

Q: I behave as an individual. I function on my own. I consider myself primarily, and others only in relation to myself. In short, I am busy with myself.

M: Well, go on being busy with yourself. On what business have you come here?

Q: On my old business of making myself safe and happy. I confess I have not been too successful. I am neither safe nor happy. Therefore, you find me here. This place is new to me, but my reason for coming here is old: the search for safe happiness, happy safety. So far I did not find it. Can you help me?

M: What was never lost can never be found. Your very search for safety and joy keeps you away from them. Stop searching, cease losing. The disease is simple and the remedy equally simple. It is your mind only that makes you insecure and unhappy. Anticipation makes you insecure, memory - unhappy. Stop misusing your mind and all will be well with you. You need not set it right - it will set itself right, as soon as you give up all concern with the past and the future and live entirely in the NOW.