Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

The following is the preface from the book Prior to Consciousness by one of my two main teachers, Jean Dunn, describing Nisargadatta’s teaching style.  It makes abundantly clear that Maharaj did not teach a systematic philosophy, for example, as found in traditional Advaita scriptures, such as the Tripura Rahasa or the Ribu Gita.  He taught freedom.  He taught freedom from concepts and beliefs, including attacking the fundamental misconception that most everyone has, that we, consciousness, are the body that consciousness acts through. 


Actually, it is quite easy to reach the understanding that we are not the body, and instead the consciousness that witnesses the body and the world.  As a concept is understood, it is so easy to accept the concept that we are consciousness itself and not the witnessed body or mind.


However, self-investigation carefully done continuously reveals that we have literally hundreds of interrelated concepts that support that primary concept that we are our bodies. Until these concepts are uprooted and transcended, we really do not have any freedom, only a new concept that we are not the body.  That old network of thought stills keeps the identity alive that we are the body, and when the body dies, we die.


This is why Maharaj’s teacher, Siddharameshwar, used a different method than Maharaj.  He told a story, a fairy tale, of different levels of consciousness in a systematic philosophy, to wean his students slowly of all identification with the body by having them investigate their various experiences to find out that identification too was a story, an older story than his, which was not a story of freedom, but of death.


Robert Adams did similarly. Once in a while he would give a long lecture, entitled variously, the Four Principles, the Three Freedoms, or something like that, and talk for 30 minutes on these concepts. At the end, he’d pause and say forget all he just said.  He just made it up!  Everyone would laugh but really few got the point that he was trying to have us unlearn everything and just dwell within ourselves.


Still, both Siddharameshwar and Nisargadatta told stories, just as Robert told stories, stories of freedom through liberation from concepts, and a final disidentification with the body.


Yet, they still were stories of existence and knowledge, of phenomena and noumena, of knowing and unknowing which themselves, at some point had to be dropped so that one could rest in one’s own flowing beingness, without knowledge or certainty, free from the web of knowing, even knowing of the absolute. This Is why Nisargadatta would often attack or contradict even the concepts he had espoused a day or a week ago. He wanted to tear us from attachment to ideas and all identifications of the mind so that we could live from the heart directly feeling the apparent environment.


Thus even all of the wonderful samadhis, voids, bliss states, ecstasies, love, etc., encountered in the inward search as seen to be no more than transient experiences on the way to freedom, which, like concepts, even concepts about parabrahman and the non-identification with the body, need to be forgotten.


The only purpose of all these lofty concepts was to free us from more mundane concepts and identifications. All spiritual experiences served the same purpose, to destroy our old worldview of being human beings encased in bodies.  All the bliss states, the ecstatic love, the energies and movements felt around the guru and through self-inquiry, were only part of the awakening process of reinvigorating the mind and body, thus sweeping away lethargy and depression, and to drive our self-inquiry with a revitalized energy.


What is left is who we are in the most primitive way.  Daily we operate not from principles and knowledge, but spontaneously from whatever is left of our beingness.  The mind no longer checks to see what is the right thing to do.  No longer hounded by concepts of right living, we thoughtlessly, guiltlessly live from freedom and an unconscious morality grounded in love and caring.


PREFACE TO PRIOR TO CONSCIOUSNESS, BY JEAN DUNN:


In one way the core of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's teaching is easy to grasp, and extremely difficult in another. It is easy if we are willing to be completely honest with ourselves, to look at the concepts of others with which we have built our own prisons. To investigate for one's self can be extremely difficult because we are very attached to our concepts - we don't want to give them up. But if the desire to KNOW is a burning desire, then we will set forth on our course. We can only know who or what we are by personal experience, not from books or others.

Maharaj urged us to find out what this "I" is. He was like a surgeon with a sharp scalpel, cutting away all inessential things. His questions often left one out in "left field," not knowing what to say. His answers, were never what was expected. He would not allow any quoting of scrip­tures - only personal experience - and he could get quite angry about this. Once when someone quoted Dakshinamurti, a Hindu deity, Maharaj responded: "Hang Dakshinamurti! What about you? What is your experience?"

Most of us identify ourself with the body-mind and so he insisted that we find out what this body-mind is. Did it not come from the sperm of the father and the ovum of the mother? The body then is a product of the food consumed and is sustained by food, which is the essence of the five elements. Can we be this? Without consciousness the body is dead material. When consciousness leaves the body there is no individual, no world, and no God. Consciousness can only be conscious of itself when it has manifested in a physical form. Consciousness is latent in every grain of food, in all the five elements - it is universal, non-personal, all-pervading. Everything is consciousness, and that is what we are, presently. Consciousness acts through the forms according to the com­bination of the gunas, satwa (being-light-purity), tamas (inertia­ passivity-darkness), rajas (activity-passion-energy), and to the condi­tioning received. What happens when one of these forms "dies?" The form again becomes part of the five elements and the consciousness merges with the universal consciousness. This is all a process happen­ing, the play of consciousness.

Before this form came - what was I? That is what one truly is. That Absolute Parabrahman - these are only words which we have invented to name the Unmanifest, Unnameable. The eternal "I," absolutely un­conditioned, timeless, spaceless Being, not aware of being (because there is no other). I am as I Am, as I always was, as I ever will be, eter­nally.

During the last two years of his life Maharaj did not entertain any questions pertaining to this worldly life and its improvement. He taught only the highest truth, and due to the weakened condition of his body, on some days there was very little discussion. But even one sentence of his was like an Upanishad. He was very blunt and sharp in his answers and did not cater to anyone's ego - in fact, his stated purpose was to destroy this "psuedo-entity." To be in his presence was to feel the vibrant truth, impossible to describe. He was amazing to watch: that "personality" could be happy, angry, sad, gay, sarcastic, or gentle, and a variety of emotion played through that "bundle" like sunlight on water. There was never any attempt to change any of it ... let it do its thing, it was not him. Suffering there was in abundance, due to the cancer, but in this human picture I have never seen anyone braver. Never did a whimper leave his lips. That body carried on when it seemed impossible that it could do so. One could only gaze at him in total love and awe. Although there was no doubt that the form of Sri Maharaj was suffering from cancer, he carried on just as usual with the daily routine of bhajans four times a day, question and answer periods twice daily, although as the body grew weaker these periods were often cut short. It was enough to be in his presence. It was only toward the end that he rarely spoke.

The repetitions in the text are necessary, as Maharaj hammered continuously at our concepts, each time bringing us back to the root when we tried to stray to the leaves and branches. When we tried to hang on to words, even words which he had used, he shot them right out from under us. As someone once said, "I am tremendously grateful to Maharaj. What is most different is that, regardless of anything, he answers what is most helpful and right, but people want to make the teachings into a system, which ultimately ruins them. But Maharaj doesn't worry. He just says on Wednesday that red is black, and on Fri­day that red is white, but the answer is correct at the time, because it changes the orientation of the questioner. It is tremendously valuable and unique." The reader should take only a few pages at a time and ponder and meditate over them.

If you read this book it is assumed that you have, as Maharaj said, "Done your homework." If you are ready to give up your identity with this pseudo-entity, read on and happy journey.