Nothing Happens

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: By the grace of God and your teacher's you lost all desire and fear and reached the immovable state. My question is simple -- how do you know that your state is immovable?

M: Only the changeable can be thought of and talked about. The unchangeable can only be realized in silence. Once realized, it will deeply affect the changeable, itself remaining unaffected.

Q: How do you know that you are the witness?

M: I do not know, I am. I am, because to be everything must be witnessed.

Q: Existence can also be accepted on hearsay.

M: Still, finally you come to the need of a direct witness. Witnessing, if not personal and actual, must at least be possible and feasible. Direct experience is the final proof.

Q: Experience may be faulty and misleading.

M: Quite, but not the fact of an experience. Whatever may be the experience, true or false, the fact of an experience taking place cannot be denied. It is its own proof. Watch yourself closely and you will see that whatever be the content of consciousness, the witnessing of it does not depend on the content. Awareness is itself and does not change with the event. The event may be pleasant or unpleasant, minor or important, awareness is the same. Take note of the peculiar nature of pure awareness, its natural self-identity, without the least trace of self-consciousness, and go to the root of it and you will soon realize that awareness is your true nature and nothing you may be aware of, you can call your own.

Q: Is not consciousness and its content one and the same?

M: Consciousness is like a cloud in the sky and the water drops are the content. The cloud needs the sun to become visible, and consciousness needs being focused in awareness.

Q: Is not awareness a form of consciousness?

M: When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness. But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness. Reflected awareness, the sense of 'I am aware' is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality. Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is the reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself. Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross.

Q: Does it not depend on the way you look at it? The mind says there is a difference. The heart says there is none.

M: Of course there is no difference. The real sees the real in the unreal. It is the mind that creates the unreal and it is the mind that sees the false as false.

Q: I understood the experience of the real follows the seeing the false as false.

M: There is no such thing as the experience of the real. The real is beyond experience. All experience is in the mind. You know the real by being real.

Q: If the real is beyond words and mind, why do we talk so much about it?

M: For the joy of it, of course. The real is bliss supreme. Even to talk of it is happiness.

Q: I hear you talking of the unshakable and blissful. What is in your mind when you use these words?

M: There is nothing in my mind. As you hear the words, so do I hear them. The power that makes everything happen makes them also happen.

Q: But you are speaking, not me.

M: That is how it appears to you. As I see it, two body-minds exchange symbolic noises, In reality nothing happens.