Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Q: Sir, were you to say: Nothing is true, all is relative, I would agree with you. But you maintain there is truth, reality, perfect knowledge, therefore I ask: What is it and how do you know? And what will make me say: Yes, Maharaj was right?
M: You are holding on to the need for a proof, a testimony, an authority. You still imagine that truth needs pointing at and telling you: 'Look, here is truth'. It is not so. Truth is not the result of an effort, the end of a road. It is here and now, in the very longing and the search for it. It is nearer than the mind and the body, nearer than the sense I AM. You do not see it because you look too far away from yourself, outside your innermost being. You have objectified truth and insist on your standard proofs and tests, which apply only to things and thoughts.
Q: All I can make out from what you say is that truth is beyond me and I am not qualified to talk about it.
M: You are not only qualified, but you are truth itself. Only you mistake the false for the true.
Q: You seem to say: Don't ask for proofs of truth. Concern yourself with untruth only.
M: The discovery of truth is in the discernment of the false, You can know what is not. What is - you can only be. Knowledge is relative to the known. In a way it is the counterpart of ignorance. Where ignorance is not, where is the need of knowledge? By themselves neither ignorance nor knowledge have being. They are only states of mind, which again is but an appearance of movement in consciousness which is in its essence immutable.
Q: Sir, were you to say: Nothing is true, all is relative, I would agree with you. But you maintain there is truth, reality, perfect knowledge, therefore I ask: What is it and how do you know? And what will make me say: Yes, Maharaj was right?
M: You are holding on to the need for a proof, a testimony, an authority. You still imagine that truth needs pointing at and telling you: 'Look, here is truth'. It is not so. Truth is not the result of an effort, the end of a road. It is here and now, in the very longing and the search for it. It is nearer than the mind and the body, nearer than the sense I AM. You do not see it because you look too far away from yourself, outside your innermost being. You have objectified truth and insist on your standard proofs and tests, which apply only to things and thoughts.
Q: All I can make out from what you say is that truth is beyond me and I am not qualified to talk about it.
M: You are not only qualified, but you are truth itself. Only you mistake the false for the true.
Q: You seem to say: Don't ask for proofs of truth. Concern yourself with untruth only.
M: The discovery of truth is in the discernment of the false, You can know what is not. What is - you can only be. Knowledge is relative to the known. In a way it is the counterpart of ignorance. Where ignorance is not, where is the need of knowledge? By themselves neither ignorance nor knowledge have being. They are only states of mind, which again is but an appearance of movement in consciousness which is in its essence immutable.
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