Questions & Answers

Questions put to Sri Nisargadata Maharaj- (Author of I Am That)

Question; I am a medical man, I have studied a lot, I have imposed on myself a strict discipline in the way of exercises and periodical fasts and I am a vegetarian.

Maharaj: But in the depth of your heart what do you want?

Q: I want to find reality.
M: What price are you willing to pay for reality? Any price?

Q: While in theory I am ready to pay any price, in actual life again and again I am being prompted to behave in ways which come between me and reality. Desires carry me way.

M: 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. By all means be devoted to the real, the infinite, the internal heart of being. Transform desire into love. All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically you wish yourself well.

Q: I know that I should not....
M: Wait! Who told you that you should not? What is wrong with wanting to be happy?

Q: The self must go, I know…….

M: But the self is there. Your desires are there. Your longing to be happy is there.Why? Because you love yourself. By all means love yourself- wisely.
What is wrong is to love yourself stupidly, so as to make yourself suffer. Love yourself wisely. Both indulgence and austerity have the same purpose in view- to make you happy. Indulgence is the stupid way, austerity is the wise way.

Q; What is austerity?

M: Once you have gone through an experience, not to go through it again is austerity. Not to anticipate pleasure or pain is austerity. Desire by itself is not wrong. It is life itself, the urge to grow in knowledge and experience.
It is the choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some little thing -food, sex, power, fame- will make you happy is to deceive yourself. Only something as vast and as deep as you’re real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.

Q: Since there is nothing basically wrong with desire as an expression of love of self, how should desires be managed?

M: Live your life intelligently, with the interests of your deeper self always in mind. After all, what do you really want? Not perfection; you are already perfect. What you seek is to express in action what you are. For this you have a body and a mind. Take them in hand and make them serve you.

Q: Who is the operator here? Who is to take the body-mind in hand?

M: The purified mind is the faithful servant of the self. It takes charge of the instruments, inner and outer, and makes them serve its purpose.

Q: And what is their purpose?

M: The self is universal and its aims are universal. There is nothing personal about the self. Live an orderly life, but don’t make it a goal by itself. It should be the starting point for high adventure.

Q: Do you advise me to come to India repeatedly?

M: If you are earnest you don’t need to be repeatedly moving about. You are yourself wherever you are and you create your own climate. Locomotion and transportation will not give you salvation. You are not the body and dragging the body from place to place will take you nowhere. Your mind is free to roam the three worlds-make full use of it.

Q: If I am free, why am I in a body?

M: You are not in a body, the body is in you! The mind is in you. They happen to you. They are there because you find them interesting. Your very nature has the infinite capacity to enjoy. It is full of zest and affection. It sheds its radiance on all that comes within its focus of awareness and nothing is excluded. It does not know evil or ugliness, it hopes, it trusts, it loves. You people do not know how much you miss by not knowing your true self. You are neither the body nor the mind, neither the fuel nor the fire. They appear and disappear according to their own laws.

That which you are, your true self, you love it, and whatever you do; you do for your own happiness. To find it, to know it, to cherish it is your basic urge. Since time immemorial you loved yourself, but never wisely. Use your body and mind wisely in the service of the self, which is all. Be true to your own self, love yourself absolutely. Do not pretend that you love others as yourself. Unless you have realized them as one with yourself, you cannot love them.

Don't pretend to be what you are not, don’t refuse to be what you are.

Your love of others is the result of self knowledge, not its cause.
Without self –realization, no virtue is genuine. When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection.
But when you look at anything as separate from you, you cannot love it for you are afraid of it. Alienation causes fear and fear deepens alienation. It is a viscous circle. Only self-realization can break it .Go for it resolutely