Death of Mind = Dawn of Wisdom

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: When your body dies, you remain.

M: Nothing dies. The body is just imagined. There is no such thing.

Q: Before another century will pass, you will be dead to all around you. Your body will be covered with flowers, then burnt and the ashes scattered. That will be our experience. What will be yours?

M: Time will come to an end. This is called the Great Death (mahamrtyu), the death of time.

Q: Does it mean that the universe and its contents will come to an end?

M: The universe is your personal experience. How can it be affected? You might have been delivering a lecture for two hours; where has it gone when it is over? It has merged into silence in which the beginning, middle and end of the lecture are all together. Time has come to a stop, it was, but is no more. The silence after a life of talking and the silence after a life of silence is the same silence. Immortality is freedom from the feeling I AM. Yet it is not extinction. On the contrary, it is s state infinitely more real, aware and happy than you can possibly think of. Only self-consciousness is no more.

Q: Why does the Great Death of the mind coincide with the 'small death' of the body?

M: It does not! You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.

Q: The person goes and only the witness remains.

M: Who remains to say 'I am the witness'. When there is no I AM, where is the witness? In the timeless state there is no self to take refuge in.

The man who carries a parcel is anxious not to lose it - he is parcel-conscious. The man who cherishes the feeling I AM is self-conscious. The jnani holds on to nothing and cannot be said to be conscious. And yet he is not unconscious. He is the very heart of awareness. We call him digambara clothed in space, the Naked One, beyond all appearance. There is no name and shape under which he may be said to exist, yet he is the only one that truly is.

Q: I cannot grasp it.

M: Who can? The mind has its limits. It is enough to bring you to the very frontiers of knowledge and make you face the immensity of the unknown. To dive in it is up to you.