In this article, the questioner asks Maharaj about the reality of the world. The questioner is under the illusion that his world and Maharaj’s world are the same, but it is not so. Let’s find out what Nisargadatta Maharaj has to say about it. The passages I read are from the book “I AM THAT”.
Good evening everybody, this is Jagjot from MindfulnessQuest, and in the discussion, we continue the teachings of Nisargadatta Maharaj.
The questioner is inquiring about the reality of the world. He asks Maharaj how his world is different from Maharaja’s world. And to that, Maharaj replies that his (the questioner) world exists in his own mind, including the discussion the questioner is having with Maharaja.
This concept is somehow troublesome for the questioner to accept because the identifications of the mind are strong in his case. The thing to understand here is that Maharaj says that your world is different from mine because my world is “full of myself.”
Now, this can be misunderstood. One can mistake this to be some sort-of self-obsession, but it is not like that. What Maharaj means is that his world is full of “impersonal awareness” that does not have a physical or mental boundary or any kind of limitation.
His world is in the “now.” It is not based on ideas, beliefs, and concepts. It is not based on what’s right or wrong, justice or injustice, humane or inhumane, etc.
His world is based on the moment’s reality or “now.” The way to establish this through logic is that his world exists in all three states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.
In the waking state, Maharaj has an appearance of his mind and body, which interacts with the world as we all do, and he sees it for what it is.
In the dream sleep, again, it is the same consciousness that creates the dream from the visual elements of the waking state. And in deep sleep, the pure awareness is there alone without any mental movement because the mind is also asleep and the senses inactive.
Therefore, Maharaj saying that his world is full of himself means that it does not have a boundary. Maharaj is trying to convey that identifications create the world of the individual. The personal world of concepts, ideas, and beliefs.
Such a world is based on the individual’s perception, which relies on memory but does not live in the reality of this moment. There is no individual if you are anchored in the moment’s reality. All there is is pure seeing, pure witnessing of the phenomena of the world of names and forms.
And that’s how Maharaj clarifies this point of the personal world and the impersonal existence. The world of the questioner is different because his world does not have continuity like that of Maharaj.
The questioner’s world is identified with concepts of right and wrong. His world is identified with the concepts of right and wrong.
The questioner is troubled. He is facing an emotional problem, and the Maharaj simply tells him to identify the sources causing the problem. Identify the layers built up on top of the reality causing the pain. What he identifies as pleasure is also pain.
Once you uncover the layers, and when I say uncover, I don’t imply that there’s a process to uncover the layer. What I mean is that once we learn to see our unconscious tendencies, once we see our identifications with ideas, beliefs, concepts, and all the religious and social beliefs that we have formed over the years, everything (what’s unreal) begins to break down.
You start distancing yourself from all the world of concepts and beliefs. Natural dispassion occurs, and one rests in a calm and collected state of mind, called stillness of the mind or what Maharaj refers to as the natural state – the ultimate glimpse to supreme reality …
Watch the full video above.
