How a Jnani Sees the World

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

A lady visitor, taking advantage of the fact that it was the last day of her visit to Bombay, sought Maharaj's permission to ask what she called a 'silly' question.

M: All thoughts, desires, holy or unholy, come from the Self. They all depend upon the desire to be happy and therefore are based on the sense  I AM. Their quality will depend on one's psyche (antahkarana) and on the degrees at which the three Gunas prevail. Tamas produces restraint and perversions; rajas produces energy and passions; and sattva produces harmony and the urge to make others happy. Now what is your question?

V: All these days - which have unfortunately flown away all too quickly - whilst you were talking, and your words were emerging as if by themselves without any preparation behind them, I have been wondering how you look at the objects which your eyes see, including the persons sitting before you. As today is the last day of my present visit, I thought I would venture to ask this rather silly question.

M: What makes you think that I see you as objects at all? You assume that it is with a certain special significance that I see things, a significance which escapes you. But that is not really your question. Your question essentially seems to be: how are things perceived by a jnani who sees as seeing should be done?

Please remember, objects are really the perceiving of them. Conversely, therefore, the perceiving of them is what the objects are. Try to understand.

When an object is seen as an object, there would have to be a subject other than the object. As the jnani perceives, there is neither the subject that sees nor the object that is seen; only the 'seeing'. In other words, the jnani's perception is prior to any interpretation by the sensory faculties. Even if the normal process of objectification has taken place, the jnani, in his perspective, has taken note of this fact and seen the false as false. The jnani in his undivided vision, has perceived that physically both the seer and the seen are objects, and that the functioning of consciousness itself merely produces effects in consciousness. Both the producing and the perceiving are done in consciousness, in consciousness. Try to understand this.

In short, the jnani's seeing is the whole-seeing or in-seeing or intuitive seeing, seeing without any objective quality and that is freedom from bondage. That is what I mean when I say "I see but I do not see."

And this is the silly answer to your silly question.