Stay Put in Quietude

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

V: I have a question.

M: I have not heard anyone starting questions. I gave you special time for that but you did not speak up.

Whatever you have heard applies to you totally and exclusively. Accept that fully. The state you were in before you embraced the body as yourself, that state is the guru of all gurus. That is the Brahman - not even the Brahman, it is the Parabrahman only. Subsequently, you began to fall into grosser states and finally you embraced the body as yourself. Before you occurred to yourself as I AM, you were in the highest state - the guru of the gurus - the Parabrahman state. Later on you started filling up with all kinds of grosser matters and you came down to the body sense - I am the body. So all these impurities have to be removed. Until then, you have to stay put in quietude. 

Your fall started with the appearance of that beingness I AM. With the appearance of this knowingness I AM, the next fall was embracing the body as I AM. And then you gathered so many things onto yourself. Hold on to the state of knowing yourself as I AM as the truth. All the other things you have gathered to yourself are unreal.

[To a particular visitor] Presently, you are in quietude. Is it on this side of sleep or on the other side? You are only the consciousness feeling the consciousness. Consciousness touches the consciousness. You are heading for that experience, known as death, of which you have heard. And you have to realize how that death experience if unreal. With all our experience in the world, and not withstanding all our struggles there, we are heading only towards the inevitability of death. But that death is unreal. If death were real, then the death of one animal would signify the end of the entire species.

So long as the consciousness I AM is not stimulated into knowingness, there is no knowingness at all. That very stimulus, that I AM-ness, is the source of the entire manifest world of yours. In the absence of the awakening of this I AM-ness, where is the question of 'mine' and 'thine'? Only after the appearance of the I AM-ness, I and others come into play. Without this I AM-ness, there can be neither I AM nor others. If you investigate this aspect of spirituality, then there is no question of birth and death. But if you don't investigate this particular aspect, you remain involved in the cycle of birth and death.