Chaos Only in Mind

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: But the NOW has no dimension. I shall become a nobody, a nothing!

M: Exactly. As nothing and nobody you are safe and happy. You can have the experience for the asking. Just ask. But let us go back to what is accidental and what is spontaneous, or natural. You said nature is orderly while accident is a sign of chaos. I denied the difference and said that we can call an event accidental when its causes are untraceable. There is no place for chaos in nature. Only in the mind of man there is chaos. The mind does not grasp the whole - its focus is very narrow. It sees fragments only and fails to perceive the picture. Just as a man who hears sounds, but does not understand the language, may accuse the speaker of meaningless jabbering, and be altogether wrong. What to one is a chaotic dream of sounds is a beautiful poem to another.

King Janaka once dreamt that he was a beggar. On waking up he asked his Guru: Am I a king dreaming of being a beggar, or a beggar dreaming of being a king? 

The Guru answered: You are neither, you are both. You are, and yet you are not what you think yourself to be. You are because you behave accordingly; you are not because it does not last. Can you be a king or a beggar forever? All must change. You are what does not change. What are you? 

Janaka said: Yes, I am neither king nor beggar. I am the dispassionate witness. 

The Guru said: This is your last illusion that you are a jnani, that you are different from, and superior to, the common man. Again you identify with your mind, in this case a well-behaved and in every way an exemplary mind. As long as you see the least difference, you are a stranger to reality. You are on the level of the mind. When the I am myself goes, the I am all comes. When the I am all goes, I am comes. When even I am goes, reality alone is and in it every I am is preserved and glorified. Diversity without separateness is the Ultimate that the mind can touch. Beyond that all activity ceases, because in it all goals are reached and all purposes fulfilled.

Q: Once the Supreme state is reached, can it be shared with others?

M: The Supreme state is universal: here and now. Everybody already shares in it. It is the state of being - knowing and liking. Who does not like to be, or does not know his own existence? But we take no advantage of this joy of being conscious, we do not go into it and purify it of all that is foreign to it. This work of mental self-purification, the cleansing of the psyche, is essential. Just as a speck in the eye, by causing inflammation, may wipe out the world, so the mistaken idea: I am the body-mind causes the self-concern, which obscures the universe. It is useless to fight the sense of being a limited and separate person unless the roots of it are laid bare. Selfishness is rooted in the mistaken ideas of oneself. Clarification of the mind is Yoga.