Peace and Silence, Silence and Peace

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Questioner: Once I had a strange experience. I was not, nor was the world, there was only light -- within and without - and immense peace. This lasted for four days and then I returned to the every-day consciousness.

Now I have a feeling that all I know is merely a scaffolding, covering and hiding the building under construction. The architect, the design, the plans, the purpose - nothing I know; some activity is going on, things are happening; that is all I can say. I am that scaffolding, some thing very flimsy and short-lived; when the building is ready, the scaffolding will be dismantled and removed. The ‘I am’ and the ‘What am I’ are of no importance, because once the building is ready, the ‘I’ will go as a matter of course, leaving no 

Maharaj: Are you not aware of all this? Is not the fact of awareness the constant factor?

Q: My sense of permanency and identity is due to memory, which is so evanescent and unreliable. How little I remember, even of the recent past! I have lived a life-time, and now what is left with me? A bundle of events, at best a short story.

M: All this takes place within your consciousness.

Q: Within and without. In daytime - within; in the night - without. Consciousness is not all. So many things happen beyond its reach. To say that what I am not conscious of does not exist, is altogether wrong.

M: What you say is logical, but actually you know only what is in your consciousness. What you claim exists outside conscious experience is inferred.

Q: It may be inferred and yet it is more real than sensory.

M: Be careful. The moment you start talking you create a verbal universe, a universe of words, ideas, concepts and abstractions, interwoven and inter-dependent, most wonderfully generating, supporting and explaining each other and yet all without essence or substance, mere creations of the mind. Words create words, reality is silent.

Q: When you talk, I hear you. Is it not a fact?

M: That you hear is a fact. What you hear is not. The fact can be experienced, and in that sense the sound of the word and the mental ripples it causes are experienced. There is no other reality behind it. Its meaning is purely conventional, to be remembered; a language can easily be forgotten, unless practiced.

Q: If words have no reality in them why talk at all?

M: They serve their limited purpose of inter-personal communication. Words do not convey facts, they signal them. Once you are beyond the person, you need no words.

Q: What can take me beyond the person? How to go beyond consciousness?

M: Words and questions come from the mind and hold you there. To go beyond the mind, you must be silent and quiet. Peace and silence, silence and peace - this is the way beyond. Stop asking questions.

Q: Once I give up asking questions, what am I to do?

M: What can you do but wait and watch?

Q: What am I to wait for?

M: For the centre of your being to emerge into consciousness. The three states - sleeping, dreaming and waking are all in consciousness, the manifested; what you call unconsciousness will also be manifested - in time; beyond consciousness altogether lies the unmanifested. And beyond all, and pervading all, is the heart of being which beats steadily - manifested-unmanifested; manifested-unmanifested (saguna-nirguna).