Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Q: You say that whatever you see is yourself. You also admit that you see the world as we see it. Here is today's newspaper with All the horrors going on. Since the world is yourself, how can you explain such misbehaviour?
M: Which world do you have in mind?
Q: Our common world, in which we live.
M: Are you sure we live in the same world? I do not mean nature, the sea and the land, plants and animals. They are not the problem, nor the endless space, the infinite time, the inexhaustible power. Do not be misled by my eating and smoking, reading and talking. My mind is not here, my life is not here. Your world, of desires and their fulfilments, of fears and their escapes, is definitely not my world. I do not even perceive it, except through what you tell me about it. It is your private dream world and my only reaction to it is to ask you to stop dreaming.
Q: Surely, wars and revolutions are not dreams. Sick mothers and starving children are not dreams. Wealth, ill-gotten and misused, is not a dream.
M: What else?
Q: A dream cannot be shared.
M: Nor can the waking state. All the three states - of waking, dreaming and sleeping - are subjective, personal intimate. They all happen to and are contained within the little bubble in consciousness, called 'I'. The real world lies beyond the self.
Q: Self or no self, facts are real.
M: Of course facts are real! I live among them. But you live with fancies, not with facts. Facts never clash, while your life and world are full of contradictions. Contradiction is the mark of the false; the real never contradicts itself. For instance, you complain that people are abjectly poor. Yet you do not share your rices with them. You mind the war next door, but you hardly give it a thought when it is in some far off country. The shifting fortunes of your ego determine your values; 'I think, I want, I must' are made into absolutes.
Q: Nevertheless the evil is real.
M: Not more real than you are. Evil is in the wrong approach to problems created by misunderstanding and misuse. It is a vicious circle.
Q: Can the circle be broken?
M: A false circle need not be broken. It is enough to see it as it is - non-existent.
Q: But, real enough to make us submit to and inflict indignities and atrocities.
M: Insanity is universal. Sanity is rare. Yet there is hope, because the moment we perceive our insanity, we are on the way to sanity. This is the function of the Guru - to make us see the madness of our daily living. Life makes you conscious, but the teacher makes you aware.
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