Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Q: When you sleep, are you conscious or unconscious?
M: I remain conscious, but not conscious of being a particular person.
Q: Can you give us the taste of the experience of self-realization?
M: Take the whole of it! It is here for the asking. But you do not ask. Even when you ask, you do not take. Find out what prevents you from taking.
Q: I know what prevents - my ego.
M: Then get busy with your ego - leave me alone. As long as you are locked up within your mind, my state is beyond your grasp.
Q: I find I have no more questions to ask.
M: Were you really at war with your ego, you would have put many more questions. You are short of questions because you are not really interested. At present you are moved by the pleasure-pain principle which is the ego. You are going along with the ego, you are not fighting it. You are not even aware how totally you are swayed by personal considerations. A man should always revolt against himself, for the ego, like a crooked mirror, narrows down and distorts. It is the worst of all the tyrants, it dominates you absolutely.
Q: When there is no "I" who is free?
M: The world is free of a mighty nuisance. Good enough.
Q: Good for whom?
M: Good for everybody. It is like a rope stretched across the street, it snarls up the traffic. Roll up, it is there, as mere identity, useful when needed. Freedom from the self-ego is the fruit of self-enquiry.
Q: There was a time when I was most displeased with myself. Now I have met my Guru and I am at peace, after having surrendered myself to him completely.
M: If you watch your daily life you will see that you have surrendered nothing. You have merely added the word 'surrender' to your vocabulary and made your Guru into a peg to hang your problems on. Real surrender means doing nothing, unless prompted by your Guru. You step, so to say, aside and let your Guru live your life. You merely watch and wonder how easily he solves the problems which to you seemed insoluble.
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