In Pure Awareness, Supreme is Contacted

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q:  According to the Theosophists and allied occultists, man consists of three aspects: personality, individuality and spirituality. Beyond spirituality lies divinity. The personality is strictly temporary and valid for one birth only. It begins with the birth of the body and ends with the birth of the next body. Once over, it is over for good; nothing remains of it except a few sweet or bitter lessons. The individuality begins with the animal-man and ends with the fully human. The split between the personality and individuality is characteristic of our present-day humanity. On one side the individuality with its longing for the true, the good and the beautiful; on the other side an ugly struggle between habit and ambition, fear and greed, passivity and violence. The spirituality aspect is still in abeyance. It cannot manifest itself in an atmosphere of duality. Only when the personality is reunited with the individuality and becomes a limited, perhaps, but true expression of it, that the light and love and beauty of the spiritual come into their own. You teach of the vyakti, vyakta, avyakta (observer, observed and ground of observation). Does it tally with the other view?

M: Yes, when the vyakti realizes its non-existence in separation from the vyakta, and the vyakta sees the vyakti as his own expression, then the peace and silence of the avyakta state come into being. In reality, the three are one: the vyakta and the avyakta are inseparable, while the vyakti is the sensing-feeling-thinking process, based on the body made of and fed by the five elements.

Q: What is the relation between the vyakta and the avyakta?

M: How can there be relation when they are one? All talk of separation and relation is due to the distorting and corrupting influence of the I-am-the-body idea. The outer self (vyakti) is merely a projection on the body-mind of the inner self (vyakta), which again is only an expression of the Supreme Self (avyakta) which is all and none.

Q:  There are teachers who will not talk of the higher self and lower self. They address the man as if only the lower self existed. Neither Buddha nor Christ ever mentioned a higher self. J. Krishnamurti too fights shy of any mention of the higher self. Why is it so?

M: How can there be two selves in one body? The I AM is one. There is no 'higher I AM' and 'lower I AM. All kinds of states of mind are presented to awareness and there is self-identification with them. The objects of observation are not what they appear to be and the attitudes they are met with are not what they need be. If you think that Buddha, Christ or Krishnamurti speak to the person, you are mistaken. They know well that the vyakti, the outer self, is but a shadow of the vyakta, the inner self, and they address and admonish the vyakta only. They tell him to give attention to the outer self, to guide and help it, to feel responsible for it; in short, to be fully aware if it. Awareness comes from the Supreme and pervades the inner self, the so-called outer self is only that part of one's being of which is not aware. One may be conscious, for every being is conscious, but one is not aware. What is included in awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner. You may put it differently: the body defines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness the Supreme is contacted.

Q: You said the body defines the outer self. Since you have a body, do you have also an outer self?

M:  I would, were I attached to the body and take it to be myself.

Q: But you are aware of it and attend to its needs.

M:  The contrary is nearer to truth - the body knows me and is aware of my needs. But neither is really so. This body appears in your mind; in my mind nothing is.