YO SOY ESO

N: La paz que asegura haber encontrado es muy frgil; cualquier cosa puede romperla. Lo que usted llama paz es slo ausencia de disturbios. No merece el nombre de paz. La paz verdadera no puede ser perturbada. Puede usted hablar de una paz inexpugnable?

usted no debe pensar cuando se la tome en ningn mono... qu ocurre entonces?...

pues que el paciente

al tomar la medicina inevitablemente recordar que no debe acordarse de un mono...

lo cual anular por

completo la condicin sin la cual eso no ser eficaz...

Citado por Pedro Rodea en Absolutamente nada era

Conmigo

R: Primero usted crea un mundo, luego el "yo soy" se convierte en una persona, que no es feliz por diversas razones. Sale en busca de la felicidad y conoce un Gur que le dice: "usted no es una persona, averige quin es " Entonces lo hace y va ms all.

N: Nadie y todos. El mundo es lo que contiene y cada cosa influye en todas las dems. Todos matamos al nio y todos morimos con l. Cada suceso tiene innumerables causas y produce innumerables efectos. Es intil llevar la cuenta, pues nada es rastreable.

N: En realidad usted nunca naci ni nunca morir. Pero ahora imagina que es un cuerpo o que tiene un cuerpo y pregunta qu ha producido ese estado. Dentro de los lmites de la ilusin la respuesta es: El deseo nacido del recuerdo lo atrae a un cuerpo y le hace pensar que usted es uno con l. Pero esto slo es cierto desde el punto de vista relativo. De hecho, no hay un cuerpo ni un mundo que lo contenga, slo hay una situacin mental, un estado como de ensueo, fcil de disipar si se cuestiona su realidad.

Nisargadatta: Colectivamente nos llaman los "Nueve Maestros". La leyenda dice que nuestro primer maestro fue el Rishi Dattatreya, gran encarnacin de la Trinidad de Brahma, Vishnu y Shiva. Incluso los "Nueve Maestros" (Navnath Sampradaya) son mitolgicos.

N: Oh, no, no lo estamos. Aquellos que tienen pueden dar. Y los donantes son muchos. El propio mundo es un regalo supremo, mantenido por un amoroso sacrificio. Pero los receptores adecuados, sabios y humildes son muy pocos. "Pedid y se os dar" es la ley eterna. Ha aprendido usted y ha pronunciado demasiadas palabras. Lo conoce usted todo, pero no se conoce a s mismo. Puesto que el ser no es conocido mediante palabras: slo la percepcin directa lo revelar. Mire dentro de s mismo, busque en su interior.

M: How could I? How can I hurt something which is one with me. On the contrary, without thinking of the world, whatever I do will be of benefit to it. Just as the body sets itself right unconsciously, so am I ceaselessly active in setting the world right.

Q:When I see a tree, a face, a sunset, the picture is perfect. When I close my eyes, the image in my mind is faint and hazy. If it is my mind that projects the picture, why need I open my eyes to see a lovely flower and with eyes closed I see it vaguely?

Questioner: The Westerners who occasionally come to see you are faced with a peculiar difficulty. The very notion of a liberated man, a realised man, a self-knower, a God-knower, a man beyond the world, is unknown to them. All they have in their Christian culture is the idea of a saint: a pious man, law-abiding, God-fearing, fellow-loving, prayerful, sometimes prone to ecstasies and confirmed by a few miracles. The very idea of a jnani is foreign to Western culture, something exotic and rather unbelievable. Even when his existence is accepted, he is looked at with suspicion, as a case of self- induced euphoria caused by strange physical postures and mental attitudes. The very idea of a new dimension in consciousness seems to them implausible and improbable.

M: To divide and particularise is in the mind's very nature. There is no harm in dividing. But separation goes against fact. Things and people are different, but they are not separate. Nature is one, reality is one. There are opposites, but no opposition.

M: It does -- in my real world. In my world even what you call evil is the servant of the good and therefore necessary. It is like boils and fevers that clear the body of impurities. Disease is painful, even dangerous, but if dealt with rightly, it heals.

M: Of course. Awareness is dynamic, love is being. Awareness is love in action. By itself the mind can actualise any number of possibilities, but unless they are prompted by love, they are valueless. Love precedes creation. Without it there is only chaos.

You say you want to know your self. You are your self -- you cannot be anything but what you are. Is knowing separate from being? Whatever you can know with your mind is of the mind, not you; about yourself you can only say: 'I am, I am aware, I like It'.

M: All change affects the mind only. To be what you are, you must go beyond the mind, into your own being. It is immaterial what is the mind that you leave behind, provided you leave it behind for good. This again is not possible without self-realisation.

M: Time is endless, though limited, eternity is In the split moment of the now. We miss it because the mind is ever shuttling between the past and the future. It will not stop to focus the now. It can be done with comparative ease, if interest is aroused.

Q:What arouses interest?

M: Earnestness, the sign of maturity.

Q:And how does maturity come about?

M: By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life in full awareness of every moment as it happens, by examining and dissolving one's desires and fears as soon as they arise.

Q:Is such concentration at all possible?

M: Try. One step at a time is easy. Energy flows from earnestness.

Q:I find I am not earnest enough.

M: Self-betrayal is a grievous matter. It rots the mind like cancer. The remedy lies in clarity and integrity of thinking. Try to understand that you live in a world of illusions, examine them and uncover their roots. The very attempt to do so will make you earnest, for there is bliss in right

endeavour.

Q:Where will it lead me?

M: Where can it lead you if not to its own perfection? Once you are well-established in the now, you have nowhere else to go what you are timelessly, you express eternally.

Q:Are you one or many?

M: I am one, but appear as many.

Q:Why does one appear at all?

M: It is good to be, and to be conscious.

Q:Life is sad.

M: Ignorance causes sorrow. Happiness follows understanding.

Q:Why should ignorance be painful?

M: It is at the root of all desire and fear, which are painful states and the source of endless errors.

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

M: 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 jnani.

Q:I do not understand you.

M: The mind cannot understand, for the mind is trained for grasping and holding while the jnani is not-grasping and not holding.

Q:What am I holding on to, which you do not?

M: 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.

Q:An accident would destroy your equanimity.

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

Q:Even at the Moment of death?

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

Q:Don't you need it to contact the world?

M: I do not need the world. Nor am I in one. The world you think of is in your own mind. I can see it through your 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 now.

Q: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?

M: 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.

Q:You see love everywhere, while I see hatred and suffering. The history of humanity is the history of murder, individual and collective. No other living being so delights in killing.

M: If you go into the motives, you will find love, love of oneself and of one's own. People fight for what they imagine they love.

Q:Surely their love must be real enough when they are ready to die for it.

M: Love is boundless. What is limited to a few cannot be called love.

Q:Do you know such unlimited love?

M: Yes, l do.

Q:How does it feel?

M: All is loved and lovable. Nothing is excluded.

Q:Not even the ugly and the criminal?

M: All is within my consciousness; all is my own. It is madness to split oneself through likes and dislikes. I am beyond both. I am not alienated.

Q:To be free from like and dislike is a state of indifference.

M: It may look and feel so in the beginning. Persevere in such indifference and it will blossom into an all-pervading and all-embracing love.

Q:One has such moments when the mind becomes a flower and a flame, but they do not last and the life reverts to its daily greyness.

M: Discontinuity is the law, when you deal with the concrete: The continuous cannot be experienced, for it has no borders. Consciousness implies alterations, change followings change, when one thing or state comes to an end and another begins; that which has no borderline cannot be experienced in the common meaning of the word. One can only be it, without knowing, but one can know what it is not. It is definitely not the entire content of consciousness which is always on the move.

Q:If the immovable cannot be known, what is the meaning and purpose of its realisation?

M: To realise the immovable means to become immovable. And the purpose is the good of all that lives.

Q:Life is movement. Immobility is death. Of what use is death to life?

M: I am talking of immovability, not of immobility. You become immovable in reticence. You

become a power which gets all things right. It may or may not imply intense outward activity, but the mind remains deep and quiet.

Q:As I watch my mind I find it changing all the time, mood succeeding mood in infinite variety, while you seem to be perpetually in the same mood of cheerful benevolence.

M: Moods are in the mind and do not matter. Go within, go beyond. Cease being fascinated by the content of your consciousness. When you reach the deep layers of your true being, you will find that the mind's surface-play affects you very little.

Q:There will be play all the same?

M: A quiet mind is not a dead mind.

Q:Consciousness is always in movement -- it is an observable fact. Immovable consciousness is a contradiction. When you talk of a quiet mind, what is it? Is not mind the same as consciousness?

M: We must remember that words are used in many ways, according to the context. The fact is that there is little difference between the conscious and the unconscious --- they are essentially the same. The waking state differs from deep sleep in the presence of the witness. A ray of awareness illumines a part of our mind and that part becomes our dream or waking consciousness, while awareness appears as the witness. The witness usually knows only consciousness. Sadhana consists in the witness turning back first on his conscious, then upon himself in his own awareness. Self-awareness is Yoga.

Q:If awareness is all-pervading, then a blind man, once realised, can see?

M: You are mixing sensation with awareness. The jnani knows himself as he is. He is also aware of his body being crippled and his mind being deprived of a range of sensory perceptions. But he is

not affected by the availability of eyesight, nor by its absence.

Q:My question is more specific; when a blind man becomes a jnani will his eyesight be restored to him or not?

M: Unless his eyes and brain undergo a renovation, how can he see?

Q:But will they undergo a renovation?

M: They may or may not. It all depends on destiny and grace. But a jnani commands a mode of spontaneous, non-sensory perception, which makes him know things directly, without the intermediary of the senses. He is beyond the perceptual and the conceptual, beyond the categories of time and space, name and shape. He is neither the perceived nor the perceiver, but the simple and the universal factor that makes perceiving possible. Reality is within consciousness, but it is not consciousness nor any of its contents.

Q:What is false, the world, or my knowledge of it?

M: Is there a world outside your knowledge? Can you go beyond what you know? You may postulate a world beyond the

mind, but it will remain a concept, unproved and unprovable. Your experience is your proof, and it is valid for you only. Who else can have your experience, when the other person is only as real as he appears in your experience?

Q:Am I so hopelessly lonely?

M: You are. as a person. In your real being vow are the whole.

Q:Are you a part of the world which I have in consciousness, or are you independent?

M: What you see is yours and what I see is mine. The two have little in common.

Q:There must be some common factor which unites us.

M: To find the common factor you must abandon all distinctions. Only the universal is in common.

Q:What strikes me as exceedingly strange is that while you say that I am merely a product of my memories and woefully limited, I create a vast and rich world in which. everything is contained, including you and your teaching. How this vastness is created and contained in my smallness is what I find hard to understand. May be you are giving me the whole truth, but I am grasping only a small part of it.

M: Yet, it is a fact -- the small projects the whole, but it cannot contain the whole. However great and complete is your world it is self-contradictory and transitory and altogether illusory.

Q:It may be illusory yet it is marvellous. When I look and listen, touch, smell and taste, think and feel, remember and imagine, I cannot but be astonished at my miraculous creativity. I look through a microscope or telescope and see wonders, I follow the track of an atom and hear the whisper of the stars. If I am the sole creator of all this, then I am God indeed! But if I am God, why do I appear so small and helpless to myself?

M: You are God, but you do not know it.

Q:If I am God, then the world I create must be true.

M: It is true in essence, but not in appearance. Be free of desires and fears and at once your vision will clear and you shall see all things as they are. Or, you may say that the satoguna creates the world, the tamoguna obscures it and the rajoguna distorts.

Q:This does not tell me much, because if I ask what are the gunas, the answer will be: what creates -- what obscures -- what distorts. The fact remains -- something unbelievable happened to me, and I do not understand what has happened, how and why.

M: Well, wonder is the dawn of wisdom. To be steadily and consistently wondering is sadhana.

Q:I am in a world which I do not understand and therefore, I am afraid of it. This is everybody's experience.

M: You have separated yourself from the world, therefore it pains and frightens you. Discover your mistake and be free of fear.

Q:You are asking me to give up the world, while I want to be happy in the world.

M: If you ask for the impossible, who can help you? The limited is bound to be painful and pleasant in turns. If you seek real happiness, unassailable and unchangeable, you must leave the world with its pains and pleasures behind you.

Q:How is it done?

M: Mere physical renunciation is only a token of earnestness, but earnestness alone does not liberate. There must be understanding which comes with alert perceptivity, eager enquiry and deep investigation. You must work relentlessly for your salvation from sin and sorrow.

Q:What is sin?

M: All that binds you.

Appendix-1: Nisarga Yoga

In the humble abode of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, but for the electric lights and the noises of the street traffic, one would not know in which period of human history one dwells. There is an

atmosphere of timelessness about his tiny room; the subjects discussed are timeless -- valid for all times; the way they are expounded and examined is also timeless; the centuries, millennia and yugas fall off and one deals with matters immensely ancient and eternally new.

The discussions held and teachings given would have been the same ten thousand years ago and will be the same ten thousand years hence. There will always be conscious beings wondering about the fact of their being conscious and enquiring into its cause and aim. Whence am I? Who am I? Whither am I? Such questions have no beginning and no end. And it is crucial to know the answers, for without a full understanding of oneself, both in time and in timelessness, life is but a dream, imposed on us by powers we do not know, for purposes we cannot grasp.

Maharaj is not a learned. There is no erudition behind his homely Marathi; authorities he does not quote, scriptures are rarely mentioned; the astonishingly rich spiritual heritage of India is implicit in him rather than explicit. No rich Ashram was ever built around him and most of his followers are humble working people cherishing the opportunity of spending an hour with him from time to time.

Simplicity and humility are the keynotes of his life and teachings; physically and inwardly he never takes the higher seat; the essence of being on which he talks, he sees in others as clearly as he sees it in himself. He admits that while he is aware of it, others are not yet, but this difference is temporary and of little importance, except to the mind and its ever-changing content. When asked about his Yoga, he says he has none to offer, no system t propound, no theology, cosmology, psychology or philosophy. He knows the real nature -- his own and his listeners -- and he points it out. The listener cannot see it because he cannot see the obvious, simply and directly. All he knows, he knows with his mind, stimulated with the senses. That the mind is a sense in itself, he does not even suspect.

The Nisarga Yoga, the natural Yoga of Maharaj, is disconcertingly simple -- the mind, which is all- becoming, must recognise and penetrate its own being, not as being this or that, here or there, then or now, but just as timeless being.

This timeless being is the source of both life and consciousness. In terms of time, space and causation it is all-powerful, being the causeless cause; all-pervading, eternal, in the sense of being beginningless, endless and ever-present. Uncaused, it is free; all-pervading, it knows; undivided, it is happy. It lives, it loves, and it has endless fun, shaping and re-shaping the universe. Every man has it, every man is it, but not all know themselves as they are, and therefore identify themselves with the name and shape of their bodies and the contents of their consciousness.

To rectify this misunderstanding of ones reality, the only way is to take full cognisance of the ways of ones mind and to turn it into an instrument of self-discovery. The mind was originally a tool in the struggle for biological survival. It had to learn the laws and ways of Nature working hand-in-hand

can raise life to a higher level. But, in the process the mind acquired the art of symbolic thinking and communication, the art and skill of language. Words became important. Ideas and abstractions acquired an appearance of reality, the conceptual replaced the real, with the result that man now lives in a verbal world, crowded with words and dominated by words.

Obviously, for dealing with things and people words are exceedingly useful. But they make us live in a world totally symbolic and, therefore, unreal. To break out from this prison of the verbal mind into reality, one must be able to shift ones focus from the word to what it refers to, the thing itself.

The most commonly used word and most pregnant with feelings, and ideas is the word I. Mind tends to include in it anything and everything, the body as well as the Absolute. In practice it stands as a pointer to an experience which is direct, immediate and immensely significant. To be, and to know that one is, is most important. And to be of interest, a thing must be related to ones conscious existence, which is the focal point of every desire and fear. For, the ultimate aim of every desire is

to enhance and intensify this sense of existence, while all fear is, in its essence, the fear of self- extinction.

To delve into the sense of I -- so real and vital -- in order to reach its source is the core of Nisarga Yoga. Not being continuous, the sense of I must have a source from which it flows and to which it returns. This timeless source of conscious being is what Maharaj calls the self-nature, self-being, swarupa.

As to the methods of realising ones supreme identity with self-being, Maharaj is peculiarly non- committal. He says that each has his own way to reality, and that there can be no general rule. But, for all the gateway to reality, by whatever road one arrives to it, is the sense of I am. It is through grasping the full import of the I am, and going beyond it to its source, that one can realise the supreme state, which is also the primordial and the ultimate. The difference between the beginning and the end lies only in the mind. When the mind is dark or turbulent, the source is not perceived. When it is clear and luminous, it becomes a faithful reflection of the source. The source is always the same -- beyond darkness and light, beyond life and death, beyond the conscious and the unconscious.

This dwelling on the sense I am is the simple, easy and natural Yoga, the Nisarga Yoga. There is no secrecy in it and no dependence; no preparation is required and no initiation. Whoever is

puzzled by his very existence as a conscious being and earnestly wants to find his own source, can grasp the ever-present sense of I am and dwell on it assiduously and patiently, till the clouds obscuring the mind dissolve and the heart of being is seen in all its glory.

The Nisarga Yoga, when persevered in and brought to its fruition, results in one becoming conscious and active in what one always was unconsciously and passively. There is no difference in kind -- only in manner -- the difference between a lump of gold and a glorious ornament shaped out of it. Life goes on, but it is spontaneous and free, meaningful and happy.

Maharaj most lucidly describes this natural, spontaneous state, but as the man born blind cannot visualise light and colours, so is the unenlightened mind unable to give meaning to such descriptions. Expressions like dispassionate happiness, affectionate detachment, timelessness and causelessness of things and being -- they all sound strange and cause no response. Intuitively we feel they have a deep meaning, and they even create in us a strange longing for the ineffable, a forerunner of things to come, but that is all. As Maharaj puts it: words are pointers, they show the direction but they will not come along with us. Truth is the fruit of earnest action, words merely point the way.

Maurice Frydman

Appendix-2: Navnath Sampradaya

Hinduism comprises numerous sects, creeds and cults and the origin of most of them is lost in antiquity. The Nath Sampradaya, later known as the Navnath Sampradaya, is one of them. Some scholars are of the view that this sect originated with the teachings of the mythical Rishi Dattatreya, who is believed to be a combined incarnation of the holy trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. The unique spiritual attainments of this legendary figure are mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana, the Mahabharata and also in some later Upanishads. Others hold that it is an offshoot of the Hatha Yoga.

Whatever be its origin, the teachings of the Nath Sampradaya have, over the centuries, become labyrinthine in complexity and have assumed different forms in different parts of India. Some Gurus of the Sampradaya lay stress on bhakti, devotion; others on jnana, knowledge; still others on yoga, the union with the ultimate. In the fourteenth century we find Svatmarama Svami, the great Hathayogin, bemoaning the darkness arising out of multiplicity of opinions to displel which he lit the lamp of his famous work Hathayogapradipika.

According to some learned commentators, the Nath Gurus propound that the entire creation is born out of nada (sound), the divine principle, and bindu (light), the physical principle and the Supreme Reality from which these two principles emanate is Shiva. Liberation according to them is merging

of the soul into Shiva through the process of laya, dissolution of the human ego, the sense of I-ness.

In the day-to-day instructions to their devotees, however, the Nath Gurus seldom refer to the metaphysics discovered by the scholars in their teachings. In fact their approach is totally non- metaphysical, simple and direct. While the chanting of sacred hyms and devotional songs as well as the worship of the idols is a traditional feature of the sect, its teaching emphasises that the Supreme Reality can be realised only within the heart.

The Nath Sampradaya came to be known as Navnath Sampradaya when sometime in the remote past, the followers of the sect chose nine of their early Gurus as examplars of their creed. Bur there is no unanimity regarding the names of these nine Masters. The most widely accepted list however is as follows:

1.Matsyendranath

2.Gorakhnath

3.Jalandharnath

4.Kantinath

5.Gahininath

6.Bhartrinath

7.Revananath

8.Charpatnath

9.Naganath

Of these nine Masters, Gahaninath and Revananath had large followings in the southern part of India, including Maharashtra, the state to which Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj belongs. Revananath is said to have founded a sub-sect of his own and chose Kadasiddha as his chief disciple and successor. The latter initiated Lingajangam Maharaj and Bhausahib Maharaj and entrusted to their care his Ashram and the propagation of his teaching. Bhausahib Maharaj later established what came to be known as Inchegeri Sampradaya, a new movement within the traditional fold. Among his disciples were Amburao Maharaj, Girimalleshwar Maharaj, Siddharameshwar Maharaj and the noted philosopher Dr. R. D. Renade. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is the direct disciple and successor

of Siddharameshwar Maharaj.

It may be mentioned here that, though officially the current Guru of the Inchegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya, Sri Nisargadatta does not seem to attach much importance to sects, cults and creeds, including his own. In answer to a questioner whi wished to join the Navnath Sampradaya he said: "The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice. It does not denote a level of consciousness. If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya... Your belonging is a matter of your own feeling and conviction. After all it is all verbal and formal. In reality there is neither Guru nor disciple, neither theory nor practice, neither ignorance nor realisation. It all depends upon what you take yourself to be. Know yourself correctly. There is no substitute for self-knowledge"

The teaching of Nath Sampradaya offers the seeker the royal road to liberation, a road in which all the four by-lanes of bhakti, jnana, karma and dhyana of Lord Shiva, in his hagiography, entitled Nathlingamrita, claims that the path shown by the Nath sect is the best of all and it leads to direct liberation.