Q: What is this big talk about elimination of the self? How can
the self eliminate itself? What kind of metaphysical acrobatics can lead
to the disappearance of the acrobat? In the end he will reappear,
mightily proud of his disappearing.
Nisargadatta Maharaj: You need not chase the ‘I am’ to kill it.
You cannot. All you need is a sincere longing for reality. We call it
atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme: or moksha-sankalpa, the
determination to be free from the false. Without love, and will inspired
by love, nothing can be done. Merely talking about Reality without
doing anything about it is self-defeating. There must be love
in the relation between the person who says ‘I am’ and the observer of
that ‘I am’. As long as the observer, the inner self, the ‘higher’ self,
considers himself apart from the observed, the ‘lower’ self, despises
it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless. It is only when the
observer (vyakta) accepts the person (vyakti) as a projection or
manifestation of himself, and, so to say, takes the self into the Self,
the duality of ‘I’ and ‘this’ goes and in the identity of the outer and
the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself.
This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes
conscious of himself as the seer, he is not merely interested in the
seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being interested,
giving attention to attention, aware of being aware. Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus.
No comments:
Post a Comment