The
following quotes are taken from I
Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,
edited by Sudhaker S. Dikshit, translated by Maurice Frydman, Chetana, 2009.
You
are pure awareness
“I saw that in the ocean of pure awareness, on the surface of universal consciousness, the numberless waves of the phenomenal worlds arise and subside beginninglessly and endlessly… There is a mysterious power that looks after them. That power is awareness, Self, Life, God, whatever name you give it. It is the foundation, the ultimate support of all that is, just like gold is the basis for all gold jewellery.” (p.28)
“You may say it is a point in consciousness. Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of the paper, so is the supreme state in the very centre of consciousness, and yet beyond consciousness. It is as if there were an opening in the mind through which the mind is flooded with light.” (p.32)
“M: Just like a ray of light is never seen unless intercepted by specs of dust, so does the Supreme make everything known, itself remaining unknown.
Q: Does it mean that the Unknown is inaccessible?
M: Oh, no. The Supreme is the easiest to reach for it is your very being.” (p.62-3)
“As you watch your mind, you discover yourself as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover yourself as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there.” (p.180)
“The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way.” (p.190)
“I see as you see, hear as you hear, taste as you taste, eat as you eat. I also feel thirst and hunger and expect my food to be served on time. When starved or sick, my body and mind go weak. All this I perceive quite clearly, but somehow I am not in it, I feel myself as if floating over it, aloof and detached. Even not aloof and detached. There is aloofness and detachment as there is thirst and hunger; there is also the awareness of it all and a sense of immense distance, as if the body and the mind and all that happens to them were somewhere far out on the horizon. I am like a cinema screen – clear and empty – the pictures pass over it and disappear, leaving it as clear and empty as before.” (p.256)
“Have you felt the all-embracing emptiness in which the universe swims like a cloud in the blue sky?” (p.330)
“Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling. Unthinkable, it causes thought. Non-being, it gives birth to being. It is the immovable background of motion. Once you are there you are at home everywhere.” (p.364)
“True awareness (samvid) is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed. Your thoughts and feelings, words and actions may also be a part of the event; you watch all unconcerned in the full light of clarity and understanding… It may seem to be an attitude of cold aloofness, but it is not really so. Once you are in it, you will find that you love what you see, whatever may be its nature. This choiceless love is the touchstone of awareness.” (p.365)
“[A]ll names and forms are but transitory waves on the ocean of consciousness […].” (p.375)
Enlightenment
“The idea of enlightenment is of utmost importance. Just to know that there is such a possibility, changes one’s entire outlook. It acts like a burning match in a heap of saw dust.” (p.96)
“You must face the opposite, what you are not, to find Enlightenment.” (p.292)
“Q: Is there no way of making out who is realized and who is not?
M: Your only proof is in yourself. If you find that you turn to gold, it will be a sign that you have touched the philosopher’s stone.” (p.476)
“The search for reality is itself the movement of reality.” (p.214)
“If you try to understand the unmanifested with the mind, you at once go beyond the mind, like when you stir the fire with a wooden stick, you burn the stick.” (p.340)
“The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.” (p.346)
“Realization by itself is not an experience… It is the discovery of the timeless factor in every experience. It is awareness, which makes experience possible. Just like in all colours, light is the colourless factor, so in every experience awareness is present, yet it is not an experience.” (p.385)
“Resolutely reject what you are not, till the real Self emerges in its glorious nothingness, its not-a-thing-ness.” (p.503)
Meditate on “I am”
“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 like cleansing a mirror… The thought “I am” is the polishing cloth. Use it.” (p.27)
“‘I am’ is true, all else is inference.” (p.190)
“The sense ‘I am’ is the manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call Self, God, Reality or by any other name. The ‘I am’ is in the world; but it is the key which can open the door out of the world.” (p.191)
“To find water you do not dig small pits all over the place, but drill deep in one place only.” (p.194)
“Once you know yourself as pure being, the ecstasy of freedom is your own.” (p.497)
You are not in
the world, the world is in you
“In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them.” (p.196)
“Of course we live in one world. Only I see it as it is, while you don’t. You see yourself in the world, while I see the world in myself. To you, you get born and die, while to me, the world appears and disappears.” (p.253)
“Know the world as your own creation and be free.” (p.363)
“As the tiny point of a pencil can draw innumerable pictures, so does the dimensionless point of awareness draw the contents of the vast universe.” (p.372)
“Realize that all happens in consciousness and you are the root, the source, the foundation of consciousness. The world is but a succession of experiences and you are what makes them conscious, and yet remain beyond all experience.” (p.386)
“Go beyond the ‘I-am-the-body’ idea and you will find that space and time are in you and not you in space and time.” (p.455)
Liberation from the person
“To know that you are neither body nor mind, watch yourself steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof, as if you were dead.” (p.201)
“Q: If I am free, why am I in a body?
M: You are not in the body, the body is in you.” (p.203)
“You, as the person, imagine that the Guru is interested in you as a person. Not at all. To him you are a nuisance and a hindrance to be done away with. He actually aims at your elimination as a factor in consciousness.” (p.327)
“Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person… The person is but a shell imprisoning you. Break the shell.” (p.327-8)
“Having seen that you are a bundle of memories held together by attachment, step out and look from the outside… You cease to be a Mr-so-and-so, busy about his own affairs. You are at last at peace. You realize that nothing was ever wrong with the world – you alone were wrong and now it is all over. Never again will you be caught in the meshes of desire born of ignorance.” (p.373)
“Happiness is never your own, it is where the ‘I’ is not.” (p.419)
“Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment.” (p.444)
Give up
all and gain all
“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.” (p.32)
“The Supreme is the universal solvent, it corrodes every container, it burns through every obstacle. Without the absolute denial of everything the tyranny of things would be absolute.” (p.85)
“Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of profits. A man who no longer thinks in terms of loss and gain is the truly non-violent man, for he is beyond all conflict.” (p.139)
“Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can fulfil them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness. Desire is devotion.” (p.202)
“The Self is near and the way to it is easy. All you need do is do nothing.” (p.225)
“There is trouble only when you cling to something. When you hold on to nothing, no trouble arises. The relinquishing of the lesser is the gaining of the greater. Give up all and you gain all. Then life becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an inexhaustible source.” (p.246)
“The window is the absence of the wall and it gives air and light because it is empty. Be empty of all mental content, of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in.” (p.249)
“I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness – love; you may give it any name you like. Love says: ‘I am everything.’ Wisdom says: ‘I am nothing.’ Between the two my life flows.” (p.257)
“The ultimate value of the body is that it serves to discover the cosmic body, which is the universe in its entirety.” (p.263)
“To be free in the world you must be free of the world.” (p.340)
“If you know how to do it, you will not do it. Abandon every attempt, just be […].” (p.472)
“Q: Unless I am told what to do and how to do, I feel lost.
M: By all means do feel lost! As long as you feel competent and confident, reality is beyond your reach. Unless you accept inner adventure as a way of life, discovery will not come to you.
Q: Discovery of what?
M: Of the centre of your being, which is free of all directions, all means and ends.
Q: Be all, know all, have all?
M: Be nothing, know nothing, have nothing. This is the only life worth living, the only happiness worth having.” (p.477)
“You can be happy in the world only when you are free of it.” (p.482)
“To be, just be, is important. You need not ask anything, nor do anything. Such an apparently lazy way of spending time is highly regarded in India. It means that for the time being you are free from the obsession with ‘what next’. When you are not in a hurry and the mind is free from anxieties, it becomes quiet and in the silence something may be heard which is ordinarily too fine and subtle for perception. The mind must be open and quiet to see. What we are trying to do here is to bring our minds into the right state for understanding what is real.” (p.486)
“‘Nothing is me’ is the first step. ‘Everything is me’ is the next.” (p.496)
Let
the world-body-mind take care of itself
“Yes, I appear to hear and see and talk and act, but to me it just happens, as to you digestion or perspiration happens. The body-mind machine looks after it, but leaves me out of it. Just as you do not need to worry about growing hair, so I need not worry about words and actions. They just happen and leave me unconcerned, for in my world nothing ever goes wrong.” (p.16)
“When […] I realized my true being, I left behind my human nature to look after itself, until its destiny is exhausted.” (p.29)
“Q: I am asking you a question and you are answering. Are you conscious of the question and answer.
M: In reality I am neither hearing nor answering. In the world of events the question happens and the answer happens. Nothing happens to me. Everything just happens.” (p.33)
See the finite in the Infinite
“A part of the whole seen in relation to the whole is also complete. Only when seen in isolation it becomes deficient and thus a seat of pain.” (p.7)
“No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is.” (p.8-9)
-“Would people know that nothing can happen unless the entire universe makes it happen, they would but achieve much more with less expenditure of energy.” (p.9)
Ignorance, suffering, happiness, compassion
“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.” (p.27)
“To know itself the self must be faced with its opposite – the not-self. Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge – liberation. 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.” (p.64)
“[P]ain and pleasure are the crests and valleys of the waves in the ocean of bliss. Deep down there is utter fullness.” (p.158)
“Everyone creates a world for himself and lives in it, imprisoned by one’s ignorance. All we have to do is to deny reality to our prison.” (p.199)
“Pain is physical; suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering. Pain is merely a signal that the body is in danger and requires attention. Similarly, suffering warns us that the structure of memories and habits, which we call the person (vyakti), is threatened by loss or change. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.” (p.258-9)
“The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it will destroy the world in which you live.” (p.474)
“Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience: ‘I am the world, the world is myself’, you are free from desire and fear on one hand and become totally responsible for the world on the other.” (p.474)
“With the dissolution of the personal ‘I’, personal suffering disappears. What remains is the great sadness of compassion, the horror of unnecessary pain.” (p.474)
“Be nothing, know nothing, have nothing. This is the only life worth living, the only happiness worth having.” (p.477)
“To believe that you depend on things and people for happiness is due to ignorance of your true nature; to know that you need nothing to be happy, except self-knowledge, is wisdom.” (p.482)
Divine
play
“Q: I do not like this lila (play) idea. I would rather compare the world to a work-yard in which we are the builders.
M: You take it too seriously. What is wrong with play? You have a purpose only as long as you are not complete (purna); till then, completeness, perfection, is the purpose. But when you are complete in yourself, fully integrated within and without, then you enjoy the universe; you do not labour at it. To the disintegrated you may seem to be working hard, but that is their illusion. Sportsmen seem to make tremendous efforts: yet their sole motive is to play and display.
Q: Do you mean to say that God is just having fun, that he is engaged in purposeless action?
M: God is not only true and good, he is also beautiful (satyam-shivam-sundaram). He creates beauty – for the joy of it.
Q: Well, then beauty is his purpose!
M: Why do you introduce purpose? Purpose implies movement, change, a sense of imperfection. God does not aim at beauty – whatever he does is beautiful. Would you say that a flower is trying to be beautiful? It is beautiful by nature. Similarly God is perfection itself, not an effort at perfection.
Q: The purpose fulfils itself in beauty.
M: What is beautiful? Whatever is perceived blissfully is beautiful. Bliss is the essence of beauty.
Q: You speak of Sat-Chit-Ananda. That I am is obvious. That I know is obvious. That I am happy is not at all obvious. Where has my happiness gone?
M: Be fully aware of your own being and you will be in bliss consciously. Because you take your mind off yourself and make it dwell on what you are not, you lose your sense of well-being, of being well.” (p.91)
“I saw that in the ocean of pure awareness, on the surface of universal consciousness, the numberless waves of the phenomenal worlds arise and subside beginninglessly and endlessly… There is a mysterious power that looks after them. That power is awareness, Self, Life, God, whatever name you give it. It is the foundation, the ultimate support of all that is, just like gold is the basis for all gold jewellery.” (p.28)
“You may say it is a point in consciousness. Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of the paper, so is the supreme state in the very centre of consciousness, and yet beyond consciousness. It is as if there were an opening in the mind through which the mind is flooded with light.” (p.32)
“M: Just like a ray of light is never seen unless intercepted by specs of dust, so does the Supreme make everything known, itself remaining unknown.
Q: Does it mean that the Unknown is inaccessible?
M: Oh, no. The Supreme is the easiest to reach for it is your very being.” (p.62-3)
“As you watch your mind, you discover yourself as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover yourself as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there.” (p.180)
“The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way.” (p.190)
“I see as you see, hear as you hear, taste as you taste, eat as you eat. I also feel thirst and hunger and expect my food to be served on time. When starved or sick, my body and mind go weak. All this I perceive quite clearly, but somehow I am not in it, I feel myself as if floating over it, aloof and detached. Even not aloof and detached. There is aloofness and detachment as there is thirst and hunger; there is also the awareness of it all and a sense of immense distance, as if the body and the mind and all that happens to them were somewhere far out on the horizon. I am like a cinema screen – clear and empty – the pictures pass over it and disappear, leaving it as clear and empty as before.” (p.256)
“Have you felt the all-embracing emptiness in which the universe swims like a cloud in the blue sky?” (p.330)
“Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling. Unthinkable, it causes thought. Non-being, it gives birth to being. It is the immovable background of motion. Once you are there you are at home everywhere.” (p.364)
“True awareness (samvid) is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed. Your thoughts and feelings, words and actions may also be a part of the event; you watch all unconcerned in the full light of clarity and understanding… It may seem to be an attitude of cold aloofness, but it is not really so. Once you are in it, you will find that you love what you see, whatever may be its nature. This choiceless love is the touchstone of awareness.” (p.365)
“[A]ll names and forms are but transitory waves on the ocean of consciousness […].” (p.375)
“The idea of enlightenment is of utmost importance. Just to know that there is such a possibility, changes one’s entire outlook. It acts like a burning match in a heap of saw dust.” (p.96)
“You must face the opposite, what you are not, to find Enlightenment.” (p.292)
“Q: Is there no way of making out who is realized and who is not?
M: Your only proof is in yourself. If you find that you turn to gold, it will be a sign that you have touched the philosopher’s stone.” (p.476)
“The search for reality is itself the movement of reality.” (p.214)
“If you try to understand the unmanifested with the mind, you at once go beyond the mind, like when you stir the fire with a wooden stick, you burn the stick.” (p.340)
“The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.” (p.346)
“Realization by itself is not an experience… It is the discovery of the timeless factor in every experience. It is awareness, which makes experience possible. Just like in all colours, light is the colourless factor, so in every experience awareness is present, yet it is not an experience.” (p.385)
“Resolutely reject what you are not, till the real Self emerges in its glorious nothingness, its not-a-thing-ness.” (p.503)
Meditate on “I am”
“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 like cleansing a mirror… The thought “I am” is the polishing cloth. Use it.” (p.27)
“‘I am’ is true, all else is inference.” (p.190)
“The sense ‘I am’ is the manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call Self, God, Reality or by any other name. The ‘I am’ is in the world; but it is the key which can open the door out of the world.” (p.191)
“To find water you do not dig small pits all over the place, but drill deep in one place only.” (p.194)
“Once you know yourself as pure being, the ecstasy of freedom is your own.” (p.497)
“In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them.” (p.196)
“Of course we live in one world. Only I see it as it is, while you don’t. You see yourself in the world, while I see the world in myself. To you, you get born and die, while to me, the world appears and disappears.” (p.253)
“Know the world as your own creation and be free.” (p.363)
“As the tiny point of a pencil can draw innumerable pictures, so does the dimensionless point of awareness draw the contents of the vast universe.” (p.372)
“Realize that all happens in consciousness and you are the root, the source, the foundation of consciousness. The world is but a succession of experiences and you are what makes them conscious, and yet remain beyond all experience.” (p.386)
“Go beyond the ‘I-am-the-body’ idea and you will find that space and time are in you and not you in space and time.” (p.455)
Liberation from the person
“To know that you are neither body nor mind, watch yourself steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof, as if you were dead.” (p.201)
“Q: If I am free, why am I in a body?
M: You are not in the body, the body is in you.” (p.203)
“You, as the person, imagine that the Guru is interested in you as a person. Not at all. To him you are a nuisance and a hindrance to be done away with. He actually aims at your elimination as a factor in consciousness.” (p.327)
“Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person… The person is but a shell imprisoning you. Break the shell.” (p.327-8)
“Having seen that you are a bundle of memories held together by attachment, step out and look from the outside… You cease to be a Mr-so-and-so, busy about his own affairs. You are at last at peace. You realize that nothing was ever wrong with the world – you alone were wrong and now it is all over. Never again will you be caught in the meshes of desire born of ignorance.” (p.373)
“Happiness is never your own, it is where the ‘I’ is not.” (p.419)
“Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment.” (p.444)
“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.” (p.32)
“The Supreme is the universal solvent, it corrodes every container, it burns through every obstacle. Without the absolute denial of everything the tyranny of things would be absolute.” (p.85)
“Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of profits. A man who no longer thinks in terms of loss and gain is the truly non-violent man, for he is beyond all conflict.” (p.139)
“Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can fulfil them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness. Desire is devotion.” (p.202)
“The Self is near and the way to it is easy. All you need do is do nothing.” (p.225)
“There is trouble only when you cling to something. When you hold on to nothing, no trouble arises. The relinquishing of the lesser is the gaining of the greater. Give up all and you gain all. Then life becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an inexhaustible source.” (p.246)
“The window is the absence of the wall and it gives air and light because it is empty. Be empty of all mental content, of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in.” (p.249)
“I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness – love; you may give it any name you like. Love says: ‘I am everything.’ Wisdom says: ‘I am nothing.’ Between the two my life flows.” (p.257)
“The ultimate value of the body is that it serves to discover the cosmic body, which is the universe in its entirety.” (p.263)
“To be free in the world you must be free of the world.” (p.340)
“If you know how to do it, you will not do it. Abandon every attempt, just be […].” (p.472)
“Q: Unless I am told what to do and how to do, I feel lost.
M: By all means do feel lost! As long as you feel competent and confident, reality is beyond your reach. Unless you accept inner adventure as a way of life, discovery will not come to you.
Q: Discovery of what?
M: Of the centre of your being, which is free of all directions, all means and ends.
Q: Be all, know all, have all?
M: Be nothing, know nothing, have nothing. This is the only life worth living, the only happiness worth having.” (p.477)
“You can be happy in the world only when you are free of it.” (p.482)
“To be, just be, is important. You need not ask anything, nor do anything. Such an apparently lazy way of spending time is highly regarded in India. It means that for the time being you are free from the obsession with ‘what next’. When you are not in a hurry and the mind is free from anxieties, it becomes quiet and in the silence something may be heard which is ordinarily too fine and subtle for perception. The mind must be open and quiet to see. What we are trying to do here is to bring our minds into the right state for understanding what is real.” (p.486)
“‘Nothing is me’ is the first step. ‘Everything is me’ is the next.” (p.496)
“Yes, I appear to hear and see and talk and act, but to me it just happens, as to you digestion or perspiration happens. The body-mind machine looks after it, but leaves me out of it. Just as you do not need to worry about growing hair, so I need not worry about words and actions. They just happen and leave me unconcerned, for in my world nothing ever goes wrong.” (p.16)
“When […] I realized my true being, I left behind my human nature to look after itself, until its destiny is exhausted.” (p.29)
“Q: I am asking you a question and you are answering. Are you conscious of the question and answer.
M: In reality I am neither hearing nor answering. In the world of events the question happens and the answer happens. Nothing happens to me. Everything just happens.” (p.33)
See the finite in the Infinite
“A part of the whole seen in relation to the whole is also complete. Only when seen in isolation it becomes deficient and thus a seat of pain.” (p.7)
“No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is.” (p.8-9)
-“Would people know that nothing can happen unless the entire universe makes it happen, they would but achieve much more with less expenditure of energy.” (p.9)
Ignorance, suffering, happiness, compassion
“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.” (p.27)
“To know itself the self must be faced with its opposite – the not-self. Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge – liberation. 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.” (p.64)
“[P]ain and pleasure are the crests and valleys of the waves in the ocean of bliss. Deep down there is utter fullness.” (p.158)
“Everyone creates a world for himself and lives in it, imprisoned by one’s ignorance. All we have to do is to deny reality to our prison.” (p.199)
“Pain is physical; suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering. Pain is merely a signal that the body is in danger and requires attention. Similarly, suffering warns us that the structure of memories and habits, which we call the person (vyakti), is threatened by loss or change. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.” (p.258-9)
“The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it will destroy the world in which you live.” (p.474)
“Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience: ‘I am the world, the world is myself’, you are free from desire and fear on one hand and become totally responsible for the world on the other.” (p.474)
“With the dissolution of the personal ‘I’, personal suffering disappears. What remains is the great sadness of compassion, the horror of unnecessary pain.” (p.474)
“Be nothing, know nothing, have nothing. This is the only life worth living, the only happiness worth having.” (p.477)
“To believe that you depend on things and people for happiness is due to ignorance of your true nature; to know that you need nothing to be happy, except self-knowledge, is wisdom.” (p.482)
“Q: I do not like this lila (play) idea. I would rather compare the world to a work-yard in which we are the builders.
M: You take it too seriously. What is wrong with play? You have a purpose only as long as you are not complete (purna); till then, completeness, perfection, is the purpose. But when you are complete in yourself, fully integrated within and without, then you enjoy the universe; you do not labour at it. To the disintegrated you may seem to be working hard, but that is their illusion. Sportsmen seem to make tremendous efforts: yet their sole motive is to play and display.
Q: Do you mean to say that God is just having fun, that he is engaged in purposeless action?
M: God is not only true and good, he is also beautiful (satyam-shivam-sundaram). He creates beauty – for the joy of it.
Q: Well, then beauty is his purpose!
M: Why do you introduce purpose? Purpose implies movement, change, a sense of imperfection. God does not aim at beauty – whatever he does is beautiful. Would you say that a flower is trying to be beautiful? It is beautiful by nature. Similarly God is perfection itself, not an effort at perfection.
Q: The purpose fulfils itself in beauty.
M: What is beautiful? Whatever is perceived blissfully is beautiful. Bliss is the essence of beauty.
Q: You speak of Sat-Chit-Ananda. That I am is obvious. That I know is obvious. That I am happy is not at all obvious. Where has my happiness gone?
M: Be fully aware of your own being and you will be in bliss consciously. Because you take your mind off yourself and make it dwell on what you are not, you lose your sense of well-being, of being well.” (p.91)
Thank you! 🙏❤️❤️❤️❤️
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