Q: You cannot save the world by preaching counsels of perfection. People are as they are. Must they suffer?
Nisargadatta Maharaj: As long as they are as they are, there is no escape from suffering. Remove the sense of separateness and there will be no conflict.
Q: A message in print may be paper and ink only. It is the text that matters. By analysing the world into elements and qualities we miss the most important -- its meaning. Your reduction of everything to dream disregards the difference between the dream of an insect and the dream of a poet. All is dream, granted. But not all are equal.
M: The dreams are not equal, but the dreamer is one. I am the insect. I am the poet -- in dream.
But in reality I am neither. I am beyond all dreams. I am the light in which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both inside and outside the dream. Just as a man having headache knows the ache and also knows that he is not the ache, so do I know the dream, myself dreaming and myself not dreaming -- all at the same time. I am what I am before, during and after the dream. But what I see in dream, l am not.
Q: It is all a matter of imagination. One imagines that one is dreaming, another imagines one is not dreaming. Are not both the same?
M: The same and not the same. Not dreaming, as an interval between two dreams, is of course, a Part of dreaming. Not dreaming as a steady hold on, and timeless abidance in reality has nothing to do with dreaming. In that sense I never dream, nor ever shall.
Q: If both dream and escape from dream are imaginings, what is the way out?
M: There is no need of a way out! Don't you see that a way out is also a part of the dream? All you have to do is to see the dream as dream.
Q: If I start the practice of dismissing everything as a dream where will it lead me?
M: Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory.
Why go anywhere? Just realise that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done.
Q: Is dreaming caused by thinking?
M: Everything is a play of ideas. In the state free from ideation ( nirvikalpa samadhi) nothing is perceived. The root idea is: 'I am'. It shatters the state of pure consciousness and is followed by the innumerable sensations and perceptions, feeling and ideas which in their totality constitute God and His world. The 'I am' remains as the witness, but it is by the will of God that everything happens.
Q: Why not by my will?
M: Again you have split yourself -- into God and witness. Both are one.
*
Q: But what can I do here and now?
M: You can be aware of your being -- here and now.
Q: That is all?
M: That is all. There is nothing more to it.
Q: All my waking and dreaming I am conscious of myself. It does not help me much.
M: You were aware of thinking, feeling, doing. You were not aware of your being.
Q: What is the new factor you want me to bring in?
M: The attitude of pure witnessing, of watching the events without taking part in them.
Q: What will it do to me?
M: Weak-mindedness is due to lack of intelligence, of understanding, which again is the result of non-awareness. By striving for awareness you bring your mind together and strengthen it.
Q: I may be fully aware of what is going on, and yet quite unable to influence it in any way.
M: You are mistaken. What is going on is a projection of your mind. A weak mind cannot control its own projections. Be aware, therefore, of your mind and its projections. You cannot control what you do not know. On the other hand, knowledge gives power. In practice it is very simple. To control yourself -- know yourself.
Q: Maybe, I can come to control myself, but shall I be able to deal with the chaos in the world?
M: There is no chaos in the world, except the chaos which your mind creates. It is self-created in the sense that at its very centre is the false idea of oneself as a thing different and separate from other things. In reality you are not a thing, nor separate. You are the infinite potentiality; the inexhaustible possibility. Because you are, all can be. The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become.
Q: I find that I am totally motivated by desire for pleasure and fear of pain.
*
M: The man who claims to be God and the man who doubts it -- both are deluded. They talk in their dream.
Q: If all is dreaming, what is waking?
M: How to describe the waking state in dreamland language? Words do not describe, they are only symbols.
*
Q: There can be no evidence of your state. All I know about it is what you say. All I see is a very interesting old man.
M: You are the interesting old man, not me! I was never born. How can I grow old? What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind. I am not concerned with it.
Q: Even as a dream you are a most unusual dream.
M: I am a dream that can wake you up. You will have the proof of it in your very waking up.
*
Q: There can be no evidence of your state. All I know about it is what you say. All I see is a very interesting old man.
M: You are the interesting old man, not me! I was never born. How can I grow old? What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind. I am not concerned with it.
Q: Even as a dream you are a most unusual dream.
M: I am a dream that can wake you up. You will have the proof of it in your very waking up.
*
Q: Which foolishness?
M: Of thinking that you were born and will die, that you are a body displaying a mind and all such nonsense. In my world nobody is born and nobody dies. Some people go on a journey and come back, some never leave. What difference does it make since they travel in dream lands, each wrapped up in his own dream. Only the waking up is important.
*
We wake and we sleep. After a day's work sleep comes. Now, do I go to sleep or does inadvertence -- characteristic of the sleeping state -- come to me? In other words --
we are awake because we are asleep. We do not wake up into a really waking state. In the waking state the world emerges due to ignorance and takes one into a waking-dream state. Both sleep and waking are misnomers. We are only dreaming. True waking and true sleeping only the jnani knows.
We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep. The three states are only varieties of the dream state. Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams,
you are their slave. By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you become a slave to the so-and-so. The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay; also see all as a dream and stay out of it.
*
M: Neither action, nor feeling, nor thought express reality. There is no such thing as an expression of reality. You are introducing a duality where there is none. Only reality is, there is nothing else.
The three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping are not me and I am not in them. When I die, the world will say -- 'Oh, Maharaj is dead!' But to me these are words without content; they have no meaning.
*
Nisargadatta Maharaj: As long as they are as they are, there is no escape from suffering. Remove the sense of separateness and there will be no conflict.
Q: A message in print may be paper and ink only. It is the text that matters. By analysing the world into elements and qualities we miss the most important -- its meaning. Your reduction of everything to dream disregards the difference between the dream of an insect and the dream of a poet. All is dream, granted. But not all are equal.
M: The dreams are not equal, but the dreamer is one. I am the insect. I am the poet -- in dream.
But in reality I am neither. I am beyond all dreams. I am the light in which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both inside and outside the dream. Just as a man having headache knows the ache and also knows that he is not the ache, so do I know the dream, myself dreaming and myself not dreaming -- all at the same time. I am what I am before, during and after the dream. But what I see in dream, l am not.
Q: It is all a matter of imagination. One imagines that one is dreaming, another imagines one is not dreaming. Are not both the same?
M: The same and not the same. Not dreaming, as an interval between two dreams, is of course, a Part of dreaming. Not dreaming as a steady hold on, and timeless abidance in reality has nothing to do with dreaming. In that sense I never dream, nor ever shall.
Q: If both dream and escape from dream are imaginings, what is the way out?
M: There is no need of a way out! Don't you see that a way out is also a part of the dream? All you have to do is to see the dream as dream.
Q: If I start the practice of dismissing everything as a dream where will it lead me?
M: Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory.
Why go anywhere? Just realise that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done.
Q: Is dreaming caused by thinking?
M: Everything is a play of ideas. In the state free from ideation ( nirvikalpa samadhi) nothing is perceived. The root idea is: 'I am'. It shatters the state of pure consciousness and is followed by the innumerable sensations and perceptions, feeling and ideas which in their totality constitute God and His world. The 'I am' remains as the witness, but it is by the will of God that everything happens.
Q: Why not by my will?
M: Again you have split yourself -- into God and witness. Both are one.
*
Q: But what can I do here and now?
M: You can be aware of your being -- here and now.
Q: That is all?
M: That is all. There is nothing more to it.
Q: All my waking and dreaming I am conscious of myself. It does not help me much.
M: You were aware of thinking, feeling, doing. You were not aware of your being.
Q: What is the new factor you want me to bring in?
M: The attitude of pure witnessing, of watching the events without taking part in them.
Q: What will it do to me?
M: Weak-mindedness is due to lack of intelligence, of understanding, which again is the result of non-awareness. By striving for awareness you bring your mind together and strengthen it.
Q: I may be fully aware of what is going on, and yet quite unable to influence it in any way.
M: You are mistaken. What is going on is a projection of your mind. A weak mind cannot control its own projections. Be aware, therefore, of your mind and its projections. You cannot control what you do not know. On the other hand, knowledge gives power. In practice it is very simple. To control yourself -- know yourself.
Q: Maybe, I can come to control myself, but shall I be able to deal with the chaos in the world?
M: There is no chaos in the world, except the chaos which your mind creates. It is self-created in the sense that at its very centre is the false idea of oneself as a thing different and separate from other things. In reality you are not a thing, nor separate. You are the infinite potentiality; the inexhaustible possibility. Because you are, all can be. The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become.
Q: I find that I am totally motivated by desire for pleasure and fear of pain.
*
M: The man who claims to be God and the man who doubts it -- both are deluded. They talk in their dream.
Q: If all is dreaming, what is waking?
M: How to describe the waking state in dreamland language? Words do not describe, they are only symbols.
*
Q: There can be no evidence of your state. All I know about it is what you say. All I see is a very interesting old man.
M: You are the interesting old man, not me! I was never born. How can I grow old? What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind. I am not concerned with it.
Q: Even as a dream you are a most unusual dream.
M: I am a dream that can wake you up. You will have the proof of it in your very waking up.
*
Q: There can be no evidence of your state. All I know about it is what you say. All I see is a very interesting old man.
M: You are the interesting old man, not me! I was never born. How can I grow old? What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind. I am not concerned with it.
Q: Even as a dream you are a most unusual dream.
M: I am a dream that can wake you up. You will have the proof of it in your very waking up.
*
Q: Which foolishness?
M: Of thinking that you were born and will die, that you are a body displaying a mind and all such nonsense. In my world nobody is born and nobody dies. Some people go on a journey and come back, some never leave. What difference does it make since they travel in dream lands, each wrapped up in his own dream. Only the waking up is important.
*
We wake and we sleep. After a day's work sleep comes. Now, do I go to sleep or does inadvertence -- characteristic of the sleeping state -- come to me? In other words --
we are awake because we are asleep. We do not wake up into a really waking state. In the waking state the world emerges due to ignorance and takes one into a waking-dream state. Both sleep and waking are misnomers. We are only dreaming. True waking and true sleeping only the jnani knows.
We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep. The three states are only varieties of the dream state. Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams,
you are their slave. By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you become a slave to the so-and-so. The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay; also see all as a dream and stay out of it.
*
M: Neither action, nor feeling, nor thought express reality. There is no such thing as an expression of reality. You are introducing a duality where there is none. Only reality is, there is nothing else.
The three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping are not me and I am not in them. When I die, the world will say -- 'Oh, Maharaj is dead!' But to me these are words without content; they have no meaning.
*
M: We consider memories, only when they come into the present The forgotten is not counted until one is reminded -- which implies, bringing into the now.
Q: Yes, I can see there is in the now some unknown factor that gives momentary reality to the transient actuality.
M: You need not say it is unknown, for you see it in constant operation. Since you were born, has it ever changed? Things and thoughts have been changing all the time. But the feeling that what is now is real has never changed, even in dream.
Q: In deep sleep there is no experience of the present reality.
M: The blankness of deep sleep is due entirely to the lack of specific memories. But a general memory of well-being is there. There is a difference in feeling when we say ‘I was deeply asleep’
from ‘I was absent’.
*
M: But its world picture is not affected. As long as the mind is there, your body and your world are there. Your world is mind-made, subjective, enclosed within the mind, fragmentary, temporary, personal, hanging on the thread of memory.
Q: So is yours?
M: Oh no. I live in a world of realities, while yours is of imagination. Your world is personal, private, unshareable, intimately your own. Nobody can enter it, see as you see, hear as you hear, feel your emotions and think your thoughts. In your world you are truly alone, enclosed in your ever-changing dream, which you take for life.
*
Maharaj: Which world are you enquiring about?
Q: The world of my perceptions, of course.
M: The world you can perceive is a very small world indeed. And it is entirely private. Take it to be a dream and be done with it.
Q: How can I take it to be a dream? A dream does not last.
M: How long will your own world last?
Q: After all, my little world is but a part of the total.
M: Is not the idea of a total world a part of your personal world? The universe does not come to tell you that you are a part of it. It is you who have invented a totality to contain you as a part. In fact all you know is your own private world, however well you have furnished it with your imaginations and expectations.
Q: Surely, perception is not imagination!
M: What else? Perception is recognition, is it not? Something entirely unfamiliar can be sensed, but cannot be perceived. Perception involves memory.
Q: Granted, but memory does not make it illusion.
M: Perception, imagination, expectation, anticipation, illusion -- all are based on memory. There are hardly any border lines between them. They just merge into each other. All are responses of memory.
*
Questioner: What do you do when asleep?
Maharaj: I am aware of being asleep.
Q: Is not sleep a state of unconsciousness?
M: Yes, I am aware of being unconscious.
Q: And when awake, or dreaming?
M: I am aware of being awake or dreaming.
Q: I do not catch you. What exactly do you mean? Let me make my terms clear: by being asleep I mean unconscious, by being awake I mean conscious, by dreaming I mean conscious of one’s mind, but not of the surroundings.
M: Well, it is about the same with me, Yet, there seems to be a difference. In each state you forget the other two, while to me, there is but one state of being, including and transcending the three mental states of waking, dreaming and sleeping.
Q: Do you see in the world a direction and a purpose?
M: The world is but a reflection of my imagination. Whatever I want to see, I can see. But why should I invent patterns of creation, evolution and destruction? I do not need them and have no desire to lock up the world in a mental picture.
Q: Coming back to sleep. Do you dream?
M: Of course.
Q: What are your dreams?
M: Echoes of the waking state.
Q: And your deep sleep?
M: The brain consciousness is suspended.
Q: Are you then unconscious?
M: Unconscious of my surroundings -- yes.
Q: Not quite unconscious?
M: I remain aware that I am unconscious.
Q: You use the words 'aware' and 'conscious'. Are they not the same?
M: Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience.
Q: How does one go beyond consciousness into awareness?
M: Since it is awareness that makes consciousness possible, there is awareness in every state of consciousness. Therefore the very consciousness of being conscious is already a movement in awareness. Interest in your stream of consciousness takes you to awareness. It is not a new state.
It is at once recognised as the original, basic existence, which is life itself, and also love and joy.
Q: Since reality is all the time with us, what does self-realisation consist of?
M: Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one’s self as unreal is ignorance. The cause of sorrow. To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face. The thought 'I am' is the polishing cloth. Use it.
*
M: Take an example. A venerable Yogi, a master in the art of longevity, himself over 1000 years old, comes to teach me his art. I fully respect and sincerely admire his achievements, yet all I can tell him is: of what use is longevity to me? I am beyond time. However long a life may be, it is but a moment and a dream. In the same way I am beyond all attributes. They appear and disappear in my light, but cannot describe me. The universe is all names and forms, based on qualities and their differences, while I am beyond. The world is there because I am, but I am not the world.
Q: But you are living in the world!
M: That's what you say! I know there is a world, which includes this body and this mind, but I do not consider them to be more “mine” than other minds and bodies. They are there, in time and space, but I am timeless and spaceless.
*
Consciousness is most differentiated in the waking state. Less so in dream. Still less in sleep. Homogeneous -- in the fourth state. Beyond is the inexpressible monolithic reality, the abode of the jnani.
*
Q: Righteousness will set me free.
M: Righteousness will undoubtedly make you and your world a comfortable, even happy place. But what is the use? There is no reality in it. It cannot last.
Q: God will help.
M: To help you God must know your existence. But you and your world are dream states. In dream you may suffer agonies. None knows them, and none can help you.
*
Q: Yes, I can see there is in the now some unknown factor that gives momentary reality to the transient actuality.
M: You need not say it is unknown, for you see it in constant operation. Since you were born, has it ever changed? Things and thoughts have been changing all the time. But the feeling that what is now is real has never changed, even in dream.
Q: In deep sleep there is no experience of the present reality.
M: The blankness of deep sleep is due entirely to the lack of specific memories. But a general memory of well-being is there. There is a difference in feeling when we say ‘I was deeply asleep’
from ‘I was absent’.
*
M: But its world picture is not affected. As long as the mind is there, your body and your world are there. Your world is mind-made, subjective, enclosed within the mind, fragmentary, temporary, personal, hanging on the thread of memory.
Q: So is yours?
M: Oh no. I live in a world of realities, while yours is of imagination. Your world is personal, private, unshareable, intimately your own. Nobody can enter it, see as you see, hear as you hear, feel your emotions and think your thoughts. In your world you are truly alone, enclosed in your ever-changing dream, which you take for life.
*
Maharaj: Which world are you enquiring about?
Q: The world of my perceptions, of course.
M: The world you can perceive is a very small world indeed. And it is entirely private. Take it to be a dream and be done with it.
Q: How can I take it to be a dream? A dream does not last.
M: How long will your own world last?
Q: After all, my little world is but a part of the total.
M: Is not the idea of a total world a part of your personal world? The universe does not come to tell you that you are a part of it. It is you who have invented a totality to contain you as a part. In fact all you know is your own private world, however well you have furnished it with your imaginations and expectations.
Q: Surely, perception is not imagination!
M: What else? Perception is recognition, is it not? Something entirely unfamiliar can be sensed, but cannot be perceived. Perception involves memory.
Q: Granted, but memory does not make it illusion.
M: Perception, imagination, expectation, anticipation, illusion -- all are based on memory. There are hardly any border lines between them. They just merge into each other. All are responses of memory.
*
Questioner: What do you do when asleep?
Maharaj: I am aware of being asleep.
Q: Is not sleep a state of unconsciousness?
M: Yes, I am aware of being unconscious.
Q: And when awake, or dreaming?
M: I am aware of being awake or dreaming.
Q: I do not catch you. What exactly do you mean? Let me make my terms clear: by being asleep I mean unconscious, by being awake I mean conscious, by dreaming I mean conscious of one’s mind, but not of the surroundings.
M: Well, it is about the same with me, Yet, there seems to be a difference. In each state you forget the other two, while to me, there is but one state of being, including and transcending the three mental states of waking, dreaming and sleeping.
Q: Do you see in the world a direction and a purpose?
M: The world is but a reflection of my imagination. Whatever I want to see, I can see. But why should I invent patterns of creation, evolution and destruction? I do not need them and have no desire to lock up the world in a mental picture.
Q: Coming back to sleep. Do you dream?
M: Of course.
Q: What are your dreams?
M: Echoes of the waking state.
Q: And your deep sleep?
M: The brain consciousness is suspended.
Q: Are you then unconscious?
M: Unconscious of my surroundings -- yes.
Q: Not quite unconscious?
M: I remain aware that I am unconscious.
Q: You use the words 'aware' and 'conscious'. Are they not the same?
M: Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience.
Q: How does one go beyond consciousness into awareness?
M: Since it is awareness that makes consciousness possible, there is awareness in every state of consciousness. Therefore the very consciousness of being conscious is already a movement in awareness. Interest in your stream of consciousness takes you to awareness. It is not a new state.
It is at once recognised as the original, basic existence, which is life itself, and also love and joy.
Q: Since reality is all the time with us, what does self-realisation consist of?
M: Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one’s self as unreal is ignorance. The cause of sorrow. To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face. The thought 'I am' is the polishing cloth. Use it.
*
M: Take an example. A venerable Yogi, a master in the art of longevity, himself over 1000 years old, comes to teach me his art. I fully respect and sincerely admire his achievements, yet all I can tell him is: of what use is longevity to me? I am beyond time. However long a life may be, it is but a moment and a dream. In the same way I am beyond all attributes. They appear and disappear in my light, but cannot describe me. The universe is all names and forms, based on qualities and their differences, while I am beyond. The world is there because I am, but I am not the world.
Q: But you are living in the world!
M: That's what you say! I know there is a world, which includes this body and this mind, but I do not consider them to be more “mine” than other minds and bodies. They are there, in time and space, but I am timeless and spaceless.
*
Consciousness is most differentiated in the waking state. Less so in dream. Still less in sleep. Homogeneous -- in the fourth state. Beyond is the inexpressible monolithic reality, the abode of the jnani.
*
Q: Righteousness will set me free.
M: Righteousness will undoubtedly make you and your world a comfortable, even happy place. But what is the use? There is no reality in it. It cannot last.
Q: God will help.
M: To help you God must know your existence. But you and your world are dream states. In dream you may suffer agonies. None knows them, and none can help you.
*
M: At least you know that you do not know! Since you pretend not to be conscious in the intervals between the waking hours, leave the intervals alone. Let us consider the waking hours only.
Q: I am the same person in my dreams.
M: Agreed. Let us consider them together waking and dreaming. The difference is merely in continuity. Were your dreams consistently continuous, bringing back night after night the same surroundings and the same people, you would be at a loss to know which is the waking and which is the dream. Henceforward, when we talk of the waking state, we shall include the dream state too.
Q: Agreed. I am a person in a conscious relation with a world.
M: Are the world and the conscious relation with it essential to your being a person?
Q: Even immersed in a cave, I remain a person.
M: It implies a body and a cave. And a world in which they can exist.
Q: Yes. I can see. The world and the consciousness of the world are essential to my existence as a person.
M: This makes the person a part and parcel of the world, or vice versa. The two are one.
Q: Consciousness stands alone. The person and the world appear in consciousness.
M: You said: appear. Could you add: disappear?
Q: No, I cannot. I can only be aware of my and my world's appearance. As a person, I cannot say:
'the world is not'. Without a world I would not be there to say it. Because there is a world, I am there to say: 'there is a world'.
M: Maybe it is the other way round. Because of you, there is a world.
Q: To me such statement appears meaningless.
M: Its meaninglessness may disappear on investigation.
Q: Where do we begin?
M: All I know is that whatever depends, is not real. The real is truly independent. Since the existence of the person depends on the existence of the world and it is circumscribed and defined by the world, it cannot be real.
Q: It cannot be a dream, surely.
M: Even a dream has existence, when it is cognised and enjoyed, or endured. Whatever you think and feel has being. But it may not be what you take it to be. What you think to be a person may be something quite different.
*
And what is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream.
*
M: A man who moves with the earth will necessarily experience days and nights. He who stays with the sun will know no darkness. My world is not yours. As I see it, you all are on a stage performing. There is no reality about your comings and goings. And your problems are so unreal!
Q: We may be sleep-walkers, or subject to nightmares. Is there nothing you can do?
M: I am doing: I did enter your dreamlike state to tell you -- "Stop hurting yourself and others, stop suffering, wake up".
Q: Why then don't we wake up?
M: You will. I shall not be thwarted. It may take some time. When you shall begin to question your dream, awakening will be not far away.
*
M: Your world is transient, changeful. My world is perfect, changeless. You can tell me what you like about your world -- I shall listen carefully, even with interest, yet not for a moment shall I forget that your world is not, that you are dreaming.
*
M: Take dream for an example. In a hospital there may be many patients, all sleeping, all dreaming, each dreaming his own private, personal dreams unrelated, unaffected, having one single factor in common -- illness. Similarly, we have divorced ourselves in our imagination from the real world of common experience and enclosed ourselves in a cloud of personal desire and fears, images and thoughts, ideas and concepts.
Q: This I can understand. But what could be the cause of the tremendous variety of the personal worlds?
M: The variety is not so great. All the dreams are superimposed over a common world. To some extent they shape and influence each other. The basic unity operates in spite of all. At the root of it all lies self-forgetfulness; not knowing who I am.
*
Q: How does it happen that each man creates his own world?
M: When a number of people are asleep, each dreams his own dream. Only on awakening the question of many different dreams arises and dissolves when they are all seen as dreams, as something imagined.
Q: Even dreams have a foundation.
M: In memory. Even then, what is remembered, is but another dream. The memory of the false cannot but give rise to the false. There is nothing wrong with memory as such. What is false is its content. Remember facts, forget opinions.
Q: What is a fact?
M: What is perceived in pure awareness, unaffected by desire.
*
All your discriminations and classifications are quite all right, but they do not exist in my case. As the description of a dream may be detailed and accurate, though without having any foundation, so does your pattern fit nothing but your own assumptions. You begin with an idea and you end with the same idea under a different garb.
*
M: You are dragging down reality to the level of experience. How can reality depend on experience, when it is the very ground ( adhar) of experience. Reality is in the very fact of experience, not in its nature. Experience is, after all, a state of mind, while being is definitely not a state of mind.
Q: Again I am confused! Is being separate from knowing?
M: The separation is an appearance. Just as the dream is not apart from the dreamer, so is knowing not apart from being. The dream is the dreamer, the knowledge is the knower, the distinction is merely verbal.
*
Q: Still, there is duality, there is sorrow, there is need of help. By denouncing it as mere dream nothing is achieved.
M: The only thing that can help is to wake up from the dream.
Q: An awakener is needed.
M: Who again is in the dream. The awakener signifies the beginning of the end. There are no eternal dreams.
Q: Even when it is beginningless?
M: Everything begins with you. What else is beginningless?
Q: I began at birth.
M: That is what you are told. Is it so? Did you see yourself beginning?
Q: I began just now. All else is memory.
M: Quite right. The beginningless begins forever. In the same way, I give eternally, because I have nothing. To be nothing, to have nothing, to keep nothing for oneself is the greatest gift, the highest generosity.
*
In the great mirror of consciousness images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material -- destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence -- vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion: 'I-am-so-and-so'
obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.
*
Q: I am the same person in my dreams.
M: Agreed. Let us consider them together waking and dreaming. The difference is merely in continuity. Were your dreams consistently continuous, bringing back night after night the same surroundings and the same people, you would be at a loss to know which is the waking and which is the dream. Henceforward, when we talk of the waking state, we shall include the dream state too.
Q: Agreed. I am a person in a conscious relation with a world.
M: Are the world and the conscious relation with it essential to your being a person?
Q: Even immersed in a cave, I remain a person.
M: It implies a body and a cave. And a world in which they can exist.
Q: Yes. I can see. The world and the consciousness of the world are essential to my existence as a person.
M: This makes the person a part and parcel of the world, or vice versa. The two are one.
Q: Consciousness stands alone. The person and the world appear in consciousness.
M: You said: appear. Could you add: disappear?
Q: No, I cannot. I can only be aware of my and my world's appearance. As a person, I cannot say:
'the world is not'. Without a world I would not be there to say it. Because there is a world, I am there to say: 'there is a world'.
M: Maybe it is the other way round. Because of you, there is a world.
Q: To me such statement appears meaningless.
M: Its meaninglessness may disappear on investigation.
Q: Where do we begin?
M: All I know is that whatever depends, is not real. The real is truly independent. Since the existence of the person depends on the existence of the world and it is circumscribed and defined by the world, it cannot be real.
Q: It cannot be a dream, surely.
M: Even a dream has existence, when it is cognised and enjoyed, or endured. Whatever you think and feel has being. But it may not be what you take it to be. What you think to be a person may be something quite different.
*
And what is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream.
*
M: A man who moves with the earth will necessarily experience days and nights. He who stays with the sun will know no darkness. My world is not yours. As I see it, you all are on a stage performing. There is no reality about your comings and goings. And your problems are so unreal!
Q: We may be sleep-walkers, or subject to nightmares. Is there nothing you can do?
M: I am doing: I did enter your dreamlike state to tell you -- "Stop hurting yourself and others, stop suffering, wake up".
Q: Why then don't we wake up?
M: You will. I shall not be thwarted. It may take some time. When you shall begin to question your dream, awakening will be not far away.
*
M: Your world is transient, changeful. My world is perfect, changeless. You can tell me what you like about your world -- I shall listen carefully, even with interest, yet not for a moment shall I forget that your world is not, that you are dreaming.
*
M: Take dream for an example. In a hospital there may be many patients, all sleeping, all dreaming, each dreaming his own private, personal dreams unrelated, unaffected, having one single factor in common -- illness. Similarly, we have divorced ourselves in our imagination from the real world of common experience and enclosed ourselves in a cloud of personal desire and fears, images and thoughts, ideas and concepts.
Q: This I can understand. But what could be the cause of the tremendous variety of the personal worlds?
M: The variety is not so great. All the dreams are superimposed over a common world. To some extent they shape and influence each other. The basic unity operates in spite of all. At the root of it all lies self-forgetfulness; not knowing who I am.
*
Q: How does it happen that each man creates his own world?
M: When a number of people are asleep, each dreams his own dream. Only on awakening the question of many different dreams arises and dissolves when they are all seen as dreams, as something imagined.
Q: Even dreams have a foundation.
M: In memory. Even then, what is remembered, is but another dream. The memory of the false cannot but give rise to the false. There is nothing wrong with memory as such. What is false is its content. Remember facts, forget opinions.
Q: What is a fact?
M: What is perceived in pure awareness, unaffected by desire.
*
All your discriminations and classifications are quite all right, but they do not exist in my case. As the description of a dream may be detailed and accurate, though without having any foundation, so does your pattern fit nothing but your own assumptions. You begin with an idea and you end with the same idea under a different garb.
*
M: You are dragging down reality to the level of experience. How can reality depend on experience, when it is the very ground ( adhar) of experience. Reality is in the very fact of experience, not in its nature. Experience is, after all, a state of mind, while being is definitely not a state of mind.
Q: Again I am confused! Is being separate from knowing?
M: The separation is an appearance. Just as the dream is not apart from the dreamer, so is knowing not apart from being. The dream is the dreamer, the knowledge is the knower, the distinction is merely verbal.
*
Q: Still, there is duality, there is sorrow, there is need of help. By denouncing it as mere dream nothing is achieved.
M: The only thing that can help is to wake up from the dream.
Q: An awakener is needed.
M: Who again is in the dream. The awakener signifies the beginning of the end. There are no eternal dreams.
Q: Even when it is beginningless?
M: Everything begins with you. What else is beginningless?
Q: I began at birth.
M: That is what you are told. Is it so? Did you see yourself beginning?
Q: I began just now. All else is memory.
M: Quite right. The beginningless begins forever. In the same way, I give eternally, because I have nothing. To be nothing, to have nothing, to keep nothing for oneself is the greatest gift, the highest generosity.
*
In the great mirror of consciousness images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material -- destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence -- vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion: 'I-am-so-and-so'
obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.
*
Q: What you say I understand, but emotionally I cannot accept it. This merely idealistic view of life repels me deeply. I just cannot think myself to be permanently in a state of dream.
M: How can anybody be permanently in a state caused by an impermanent body? The misunderstanding is based on your idea that you are the body. Examine the idea, see its inherent contradictions, realise that your present existence is like a shower of sparks, each spark lasting a second and the shower itself -- a minute or two.
M: How can anybody be permanently in a state caused by an impermanent body? The misunderstanding is based on your idea that you are the body. Examine the idea, see its inherent contradictions, realise that your present existence is like a shower of sparks, each spark lasting a second and the shower itself -- a minute or two.
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