Nothing to Gain, Nothing to Practise

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: There are affections in the dream which seem real and everlasting. Do they disappear on waking up?

M: In dream you love some and not others. On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all. Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds; love in freedom is love of all.

Q: People come and go. One loves whom one meets, one cannot love all.

M: When you are love itself, you are beyond time and numbers. In loving one you love all, in loving all, you love each. One and all are not exclusive.

Q: You say you are in a timeless state. Does it mean that past and future are open to you? Did you meet Vasishtha muni, Rama's guru?

M: The question is in time and about time. Again you are asking me about the contents of a dream. Timelessness is beyond the illusion of time, it is not an extension in time. He who called himself Vasishtha knew Vasishtha. I am beyond all names and shapes. Vasishtha is a dream in your dream. How can I know him? You are too much concerned with past and future. It is all due to your longing to continue, to protect yourself against extinction. And as you want to continue, you want others to keep you company, hence your concern with their survival. But what you call survival is but the survival of a dream. Death is preferable to it. There is a chance of waking up.

Q: You are aware of eternity, therefore you are not concerned with survival.

M: It is the other way round. Freedom from all desire is eternity. All attachment implies fear for all things are transient. And fear makes one a slave. This freedom from attachment does not come with practice; it is natural, when one knows one's true being. Love does not cling; clinging is not love.

Q: So there is no way to gain detachment?

M: There is nothing to gain. Abandon all imagining and know yourself as you are. Self-knowledge is detachment. All craving is due to a sense of insufficiency. When you know that you lack nothing, that all there is, is you and yours, desire ceases.

Q:   To know myself must I practise awareness?

M: There is nothing to practise. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature change. Don't disturb your mind with seeking.