Find Out Why You Are

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Visitor: There arises a feeling of sadness when one hears from Maharaj that I will have to return again and again so long as I have not attained that state of joy, of realization.

M: It is just like that flame: you can quit this cycle of travail when understand that you are not that flame. You are not this composite. So long as you entertain the notion of being a name and a form, you are bound to be enmeshed in your own concepts.

V: Why does the flame appear?

M: That is its very nature.

V: If my nature is in the lighter, why does a flame appear?

M: This is not a relevant question. Why does the rain fall? Why should the sun shine? There  is no cause for the world experience. For your experience there is no use, but you presume that parents are the cause of your existence. Because you respect your parents, you accept they are the cause of your existence. Otherwise, you spontaneously came into existence.

V: All the knowledge that science and technology have give us is because of inquiring: why does it rain, why does that move - the whys and wherefores of everything. Does Maharaj want us to quit all this science and technology, and well in our inner being through withdrawal? That is a way, but how to balance things? After all, we have to live and work.

M: Science may eventually combine different kinds of juices and create a human being, but it is not going to contribute to the general well being and peace. The peace will go to pieces! There is only one solution: that is to find our why you are. What is the cause of your being, I AM?

Actually, you had no knowledge that you are or you were. But at this moment, you know you are. Why is that? Understand its cause You alone know why you are; why it is offered to you that you are, you alone know. Don't ask anyone else about it, but inquire by yourself. Don't bother about others; worry only about your own self. That knowledge "I am" is the product of what, is due to what? How and why? Inquire only into this matter.

Nine months ago the child was not there. Now just three days back, the child was born. And he is crying. What is the child's crying? What is this child? How does he happen to be? That child is crying, due to what, the product of what?

The world is manifest and expansive. Don't get lost lost there; just inquire as to why you are, how you are, how you happen to be. You were not there earlier. At present you are; how has this confluence taken place, from the "you are not" state...