Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Q: How can you say you do nothing? Are you not talking to me?
M: I do not have the feeling that I am talking. There is talking going on, that is all.
Q: I talk.
M: Do you? You hear yourself talking and you say: I talk
Q: Everybody says: 'I work, I come, I go'.
M: I have no objection to the conventions of your language, but they distort and destroy reality. A more accurate way of saying would have been: 'There is talking, working, coming, going'. For anything to happen, the entire universe must coincide. It is wrong to believe that anything in particular can cause an event. Every cause is universal. Your very body would not exist without the entire universe contributing to its creation and survival. I am fully aware that things happen as they happen because the world is as it is. To affect the course of events I must bring a new factor into the world and such factor can only be myself, the power of love and understanding focused in me.
When the body is born, all kinds of things happen to it and you take part in them, because you take yourself to be the body. You are like the man in the cinema house, laughing and crying with the picture, though knowing fully well that he is all the time in his seat and the picture is but the play of light. It is enough to shift attention from the screen to oneself to break the spell. When the body dies, the kind of life you live now - succession of physical and mental events - comes to an end. It can end even now - without waiting for the death of the body - it is enough to shift attention to the Self and keep it there. All happens as if there is a mysterious power that creates and moves everything. Realize that you are not the mover, only the observer, and you will be at peace.
Q: Is that power separate from me?
M: Of course not. But you must begin by being the dispassionate observer. Then only will you realize your full being as the universal lover and actor. As long as you are enmeshed in the tribulations of a particular personality, you can see nothing beyond it. But ultimately you will come to see that you are neither the particular nor the universal, you are beyond both. As the tiny point of a pencil can draw innumerable pictures, so does the dimensionless point of awareness draw the contents of the vast universe. Find that point and be free.
Q: How can you say you do nothing? Are you not talking to me?
M: I do not have the feeling that I am talking. There is talking going on, that is all.
Q: I talk.
M: Do you? You hear yourself talking and you say: I talk
Q: Everybody says: 'I work, I come, I go'.
M: I have no objection to the conventions of your language, but they distort and destroy reality. A more accurate way of saying would have been: 'There is talking, working, coming, going'. For anything to happen, the entire universe must coincide. It is wrong to believe that anything in particular can cause an event. Every cause is universal. Your very body would not exist without the entire universe contributing to its creation and survival. I am fully aware that things happen as they happen because the world is as it is. To affect the course of events I must bring a new factor into the world and such factor can only be myself, the power of love and understanding focused in me.
When the body is born, all kinds of things happen to it and you take part in them, because you take yourself to be the body. You are like the man in the cinema house, laughing and crying with the picture, though knowing fully well that he is all the time in his seat and the picture is but the play of light. It is enough to shift attention from the screen to oneself to break the spell. When the body dies, the kind of life you live now - succession of physical and mental events - comes to an end. It can end even now - without waiting for the death of the body - it is enough to shift attention to the Self and keep it there. All happens as if there is a mysterious power that creates and moves everything. Realize that you are not the mover, only the observer, and you will be at peace.
Q: Is that power separate from me?
M: Of course not. But you must begin by being the dispassionate observer. Then only will you realize your full being as the universal lover and actor. As long as you are enmeshed in the tribulations of a particular personality, you can see nothing beyond it. But ultimately you will come to see that you are neither the particular nor the universal, you are beyond both. As the tiny point of a pencil can draw innumerable pictures, so does the dimensionless point of awareness draw the contents of the vast universe. Find that point and be free.
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