The Quickest Way

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
March 11, 1981

Q: The body is born, the Self is not born.

M: If the Self is not there, can the body be born? What do you understand by the word birth? Are you born?

Q: As long as we identify with the body we are born.

M: I talk only to the consciousness about the consciousness, the common man will not understand.

Q: What is the way to understand? What is there to do? The quickest way?

M: Understanding and being in that true nature is the task. There is no other God than this sense of presence and I am this sense of presence. Understanding this with conviction is the quickest way. Understand that original state when there was none other. That is true knowledge, my true nature. Plenty of avatars have come and gone, but that space is there all the time.

Q: How does one overcome basic ignorance?

M: What is it that understands there is something like ignorance?

Q: Knowledge understands.

M: Understand that you are that knowledge and forget about ignorance. Any beautiful music, when it is heard, any dancing girl, when she dances - if by all this nobody is moved, he is either a jnani or a donkey. Here is a roomful of people who will not be moved by the beauty of anything. I am in that state where there is total absence of any concept of presence or absence. You are also in that state, but you don't know it. My consciousness is not very effective; there is no recognition now of anybody as an individual, a person. If you feel like sitting you are welcome; whenever you feel like going you can go.