Affectionate Awareness

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: Some forty years ago J. Krishnamurti said that there is life only and all talk of personalities and individualities has no foundation in reality. He did not attempt to describe life -- he merely said that while life need not and cannot be described, it can be fully experienced, if the obstacles to its being experienced are removed. The main hindrance lies in our idea of, and addiction to, time, in our habit of anticipating a future in the light of the past. The sum total of the past becomes the 'I was', the hoped for future becomes the 'I shall be' and life is a constant effort of crossing over from what 'I was' to what ‘I shall be'. The present moment, the. 'now' is lost sight of. Maharaj speaks of 'I am'. Is it an illusion, like 'I was' and 'I shall be', or is there something real about it? And if the ‘I am' too is an illusion, how does one free oneself from it? The very notion of I am free of 'I am' is an absurdity. Is there something real, something lasting about the 'I am' in distinction from the 'I was', or ‘I shall be', which change with time, as added memories create new expectations? 

M: The present I AM is as false as the 'I was' and 'I shall be'. It is merely an idea in the mind, an impression left by memory, and the separate identity it creates is false. This habit of referring to a false centre must be done away with, the notion 'I see', 'I feel', 'I do', must disappear from the field of consciousness; what remains when the false is no more, is real.

Q:  What is this big talk about elimination of the self? How can the self eliminate itself? What kind of metaphysical acrobatics can lead to the disappearance of the acrobat? In the end he will reappear, mightily proud of his disappearing.

M: You need not chase the  IAM to kill it. You cannot. All you need is a sincere longing for reality. We call it atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme: or moksha-sankalpa, the determination to be free from the false. Without love, and will inspired by love, nothing can be done. Merely talking about Reality without doing anything about it is self-defeating. There must be love in the relation between the person who says I AM and the observer of that I AM. As long as the observer, the inner self, the higher self, considers himself apart from the observed, the lower self despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless. It is only when the observer (vyakta) accepts the person (vyakti) as a projection or manifestation of himself, and, so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of 'I' and 'this' goes and in the identity of the outer and the inner, the Supreme Reality manifests itself.

This union of seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes conscious of himself as the seer, he is merely interested in the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware. Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus.