All Fraudulent

Sri Nisargadatta  Maharaj

March 28, 1981

Q: What is the relation between consciousness and the intellect?

M: Intellect is the expression of consciousness.

Q: We understand and apperceive everything thought the intellect only.

M: Things to be done must be done, things to be understood must be understood. Things to be done are normally your present worldly life and these you must carry out. In spirituality you have to understand there is no question of doing. In spirituality there is no name and form. Name and form are necessary for your practical worldly life. The one who understands that name and form are not his identity is in spirituality. Presently you are still drawn towards name and form. Your identity in the phenomenal world as name and form is temporary, a passing show, and anything relating to name and form is not going to remain.

One who understands spirituality through various concepts will be caught up in a vicious cycle. If you are caught up in concepts, you will be caught up in the circle of concepts .. birth, reincarnation, these are all concepts. If you are caught up in these concepts, you are bound to have them. Out of concepts, the forms are created, such as buildings etc.  Originally you make a plan, you have a concept, the concept is born out of you, and you give it a concrete shape, but it remains a concept.

With the experience of so-called birth you are caught up in the cycle like the picture on the TV screen. All this life-happening is something like a cinema.

You must have observed daily that situations are constantly changing - that is the quality or expression of your identity with the body-mind. It is the consciousnesses that is playing about, and in that manifest consciousness all these various faces and bodies are playing about. You are not these faces and bodies you are the consciousness out of which the words are now flowing.

Just as the play you see on the TV or cinema screen is not real, similarly this play is also not real. For a jnani all the play is unreal.

I am not going to give you solutions to your family problems, I am telling you how this worldly life is not. After listening to these talks you still want to gain some profit for yourself; that is a pity. How astonishing it is .. in spite of my discouraging you from coming here, still you come here, how does it happen?

Without making demands we see the dream. Why do we see the dream? Because in deep sleep the consciousness wakes up, spontaneously, and because it woke up, it manifests itself in certain visions. Just like that, this also, your visiting this place.

I am not talking to you for my advantage, nor are you listening for your advantage - all this language is sprouting spontaneously in a dreamlike state.

I  always try to direct you towards the truth but you come here with a bundle of conceptual sticks and stones, and instead of listening to what I say, you play with the sticks and stones - on me.

Right now, think of that last moment when the body will go - at that time with what identity are you going to quit? 

This is a fraud, everything is fraudulent, just like a dream world.