The Kingdom of God – Part Four

In this instalment, the 20th century Indian Sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj continues his dialogue about the state of mind of one who has attained the Kingdom of God, witnessed the Truth, overcome death, and is no longer bound by the limitations of matter, energy, space and time.

The Sage encompasses all consciousnesses and all worlds, and yet it is not limited by their content. The Sage experiences things just like other people experience them. The Sage feels and shares the thoughts and feelings of others as if they were his or her own experience. Yet the Sage remains beyond the reach of all experience. Thus being at the heart of all experience, the Sage is all-knowing.

Question:  “Do you know all you want to know?

Maharaj:  There is nothing I want to know. But what I need to know I come to know.

Question:  Does this knowledge come to you from within or from outside?

Maharaj:  It does not apply. My inner is outside and my outside is inside. I may get from you the knowledge needed at the moment, but you are not apart from me.”  1

Although the Sage does not actively seek information or outward knowledge, since all knowledge is predicated upon consciousness and change, the Sage spontaneously acquires whatever knowledge is needed at any moment.

“Once you are inwardly integrated, outer knowledge comes to you spontaneously. At every moment of your life you know what you need to know. In the ocean of the universal mind all knowledge is contained; it is yours on demand. Most of it you may never need to know – it is yours all the same. As with knowledge, so it is with power. Whatever you feel needs to be done happens unfailingly.”  2

Again and again we try to look into the mind of the Sage to see as he sees, and to try to grasp the action of his mind. What we fail to recognise is that the Sage is truly mindless, and does not evaluate the images of perception, which do not remain stuck in memory upon the screen of consciousness.

Question:  “As I sit here, I see the room, the people. I see you too. How does it look at your end? What do you see?

Maharaj:  Nothing. I look, but I do not see in the sense of creating images clothed with judgements. I do not describe nor evaluate. I look, I see you, but neither attitude nor opinion cloud my vision. And when I turn my eyes away, my mind does not allow memory to linger, but is at once free and fresh for the next impression.”  3

Because the Sage appears to inhabit a human body, and appears to function just as we do, we assume that the Sage is subject to the same interplay of thought and emotion and is bound by the same states of consciousness.

Question:  “Do you experience the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping just as we do, or otherwise?

Maharaj:  All the three states are sleep to me. My waking state is beyond them. As I look at you, you all seem asleep dreaming up worlds of your own. I am aware, for I imagine nothing. It is not samadhi (superconscious state), which is but a kind of sleep. It is just a state unaffected by the mind, free from past and future. In your case it is distorted by desire and fear, by memories and hopes; in mine it is as it is – normal. To be a person is to be asleep.”  4

Because our lives are bound by conditions and circumstances, we assume that the Sage is similarly bound. We inevitably transfer our own limitations to the Sage, believing that our own experiences in life must apply in equal fashion to the Sage.

Question:  “You may be God himself, but you need a well fed body to talk to us.

Maharaj:  It is you that need my body to talk to you. I am not my body nor do I need it. I am the witness only. I have no shape of my own. You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousnesses as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.

Question:  We are told that there are many levels of existence. Do you exist and function on all the levels? While you are on earth, are you also in heaven?

Maharaj:  I am nowhere to be found! I am not a thing to be found among other things. All things are in me, but I am not among things.”  5

Despite the Sage’s proclaimed victory over desire, the Sage continues to act as if he or she were responding to the ebb and flow of human emotion.

Question:  “I have seen people supposed to have realized, laughing and crying. Does it not show that they are not free of desire and fear?

Maharaj:  They may laugh and cry according to circumstances, but inwardly they are cool and clear, watching detachedly their own spontaneous reactions. Appearances are misleading and more so in the case of a Gnani (enlightened being).

Question:  I do not understand you.

Maharaj:  The mind cannot understand, for the mind is trained for grasping and holding while the Gnani is not grasping and not holding.

Question:  What am I holding on to which you are not?

Maharaj:  You are a creature of memories; at least you imagine yourself to be so. I am entirely unimagined. I am what I am, not identifiable with any physical or mental state.  6

Because we are creatures of memories, and because our world is filled with images which have form and events that change with time, we assume that the world of the Sage must be a variation, although perhaps more exalted, of these same images and events.

Question:  “What distinguishes your world from mine?

Maharaj:  My world has no characteristics by which it can be identified. You can say nothing about it. I am my world. My world is myself. It is complete and perfect. Every impression is erased, every experience rejected. I need nothing, not even myself, for myself I cannot lose.

Question:  Not even God?

Maharaj:  All these ideas and distinctions exist in your world; in mine there is nothing of the kind. My world is single and very simple.

Question:  Nothing happens there?

Maharaj:  Whatever happens in your world, there it has validity and evokes response. In my world nothing happens.

Question:  The very fact of experiencing your world implies duality inherent in all experience.

Maharaj:  Verbally – yes. But your words do not reach me. Mine is a non-verbal world. In your world the unspoken has no existence. In mine – the words and their content have no being. In your world nothing stays, in mine – nothing changes. My world is real, while yours is made of dreams.

Question:  Yet we are talking.

Maharaj:  The talk is in your world. In mine – there is eternal silence. My silence sings, my emptiness is full, I lack nothing. You cannot know my world until you are there.”  7

Our world is dependent on consciousness and vanishes when consciousness is lost. The process of death terminates our awareness of the world. We assume that death must similarly provoke a dramatic transformation in the experience of the Sage.

Question:  “Forgive me a strange question. If somebody with a razor-sharp sword would suddenly sever your head, what difference would it make to you?

Maharaj:  None whatsoever. The body will lose its head, certain lines of communication will be cut, that is all. Two people talk to each other on the phone and the wire is cut. Nothing happens to the people, only they must look for some other means of communication.”  8

We lead precarious lives, where the breath of life may be snuffed out at any moment. The Sage has broken the bonds of death, and being immortal, is unmoved by the presence or absence of manifested form.

Question:  “An accident would destroy your equanimity.

Maharaj:  The strange fact is that it does not. To my own surprise, I remain as I am – pure Awareness, alert to all that happens.

Question:  Even at the moment of death?

Maharaj:  What is it to me that the body dies?

Question:  Don’t you need it to contact the world?

Maharaj:  I do not need the world. The world you think of is in your own mind. I can see it through your own eyes and mind, but I am fully aware that it is a projection of memories, it is touched by the real only at the point of awareness, which can be only be now.

Question:  The only difference between us seems to be that while I keep on saying that I do not know my real self, you maintain that you know it well; is there any other difference between us?

Maharaj:  There is no difference between us; nor can I say that I know myself. I know that I am not describable nor definable; there is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind. That vastness is my home; that vastness is myself. And that vastness is also love.”  9

The Sage speaks from direct experience of the one Reality that is the foundation of all manifested life, but is itself untouched by shape and form. This experience does not, however, demand an experiencer, for it is the experiencer who dies at the moment of birth into the world of enlightenment.

Question:  “I hear you making statements about yourself like: ‘I am timeless, immutable beyond attributes,’ etc. How do you know these things? And what makes you say them?

Maharaj:  I am only trying to describe the state before the ‘I am’ arose, for the state itself, being beyond the mind and its language, is indescribable.

Question:  The ‘I am’ is the foundation of all experience. What you are trying to describe must also be an experience, limited and transitory. You speak of yourself as immutable. I hear the sound of the word, remember its dictionary meaning, but the experience of being immutable I do not have. How can I break through the barrier and know personally, intimately what it means to be immutable?

Maharaj:  The word itself is the bridge. Remember it, think of it, explore it, go round it, look at it from all directions, dive into it with earnest perseverance; endure all delays and disappointments till suddenly the mind turns round, away from the word, towards the reality beyond the word. It is like trying to find a person knowing his name only. A day comes when your enquiries bring you to him and the word becomes reality. Words are valuable, for between the word and its meaning there is a link and if one investigates the word assiduously, one crosses beyond the concept into the experience at the root of it. As a matter of fact, such repeated attempts to go beyond the words is called meditation. Sadhana (spiritual practice) is but a persistent attempt to cross over from the verbal to the non-verbal. The task seems hopeless until suddenly all becomes clear and simple and wonderfully easy. But as long as you are interested in your present way of living, you will shirk the final leap into the unknown.

Question:  Why should the unknown interest me? Of what use is the unknown?

Maharaj:  Of no use whatsoever. But it is worthwhile to know what keeps you within the narrow confines of the known. It is the full and correct knowledge of the known that takes you to the unknown. You cannot think of it in terms of uses and advantages; to be quiet and detached, beyond the reach of all self-concern, all selfish consideration, is an inescapable condition of liberation. You may call it death; to me it is living at its most meaningful and intense, for I am one with life in its totality and fullness – intensity, meaningfulness, harmony; what more do you want?

Question:  Nothing more is needed, of course. But you talk of the knowable.

Maharaj:  Of the unknowable only silence talks. The mind can talk only of what it knows. If you investigate diligently the knowable, it dissolves and only the unknowable remains. But with the first flicker of imagination and interest the unknowable is obscured and the known comes to the forefront. The known, the changing, is what you live with – the unchangeable is of no use to you. It is only when you are satiated with the changeable and long for the unchangeable, that you are ready for the turning around and stepping into what can be described, when seen from the level of the mind, as emptiness and darkness. For the mind craves for content and variety, while reality is to the mind, contentless and invariable.

Question:  It looks like death to me.

Maharaj:  It is. It is also all-pervading, all conquering, intense beyond words.”  10

References:

1  “I Am That“, Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman. Book II, Chetana, Bombay, 1973, p. 151.
2  Ibid, p. 141.
3  Ibid, p. 209.
4  Ibid, p. 218.
5  Ibid, pp. 73-74.
6  Ibid, p. 304.
7  “I Am That“, Book I, op.cit., pp. 91-92.
8  “I Am That“, Book II, op.cit., p. 74.
9  Ibid, pp. 304-305.
10  Ibid, pp. 198-199.

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