Higher Consciousness
I have already written on my website about Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981). See “A Tribute to my Major Spiritual Teachers.” Lately, though, a particular characteristic about the consciousness of this man has been reoccurring to me. Quotations below are taken from I AM THAT, published in 1973, which is the best-known collection of Nisargadatta’s talks.
Nisargadatta experienced profound realization at 37 years of age. At this point he lost all sense of himself as a separate person and entered “the supreme state.” He remarks, “Whoever goes there, disappears.” Putting it another way, he says, “At the moment of realization, the person ceases.”
Prior to his realization, Nisargadatta was a shopkeeper in Bombay, India (renamed Mumbai in 1995). After realization, he wandered around India adjusting to his experience, and after a short time returned to Bombay and began teaching in a room that accommodated only about 20 visitors. Now and then he was asked about his own state of mind, and he generously complied.
He says,
Yes, I appear to hear and see and talk and act, but to me
it just happens, as to you digestion or perspiration happens.
The body-mind machine looks after it, but leaves me out
of it. Just as you do not need to worry about growing hair,
so I need not worry about words and actions. They just
happen and leave me unconcerned. . . .
Nisargadatta spoke about this self-abstraction in various ways. He said at another point, “I find myself talking to people, or doing things quite correctly and appropriately, without being very much conscious of them. It looks like I live my physical, waking life automatically, reacting spontaneously and accurately.” And another, “Why not admit that one’s entire personal life may sink largely below the threshold of consciousness and yet proceed sanely and smoothly?”
Besides this self-abstraction, Nisargadatta said that upon realization “will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable.” He lived a loving life.
Since the purpose of zazen is to reduce the influence of personal self in one’s life, a practitioner may eventually approximate Nisargadatta’s state of mind. Nisargadatta mentioned about himself, “Occasionally an old reaction, emotional or mental, happens in the mind, but it is at once noticed and discarded. After all, so long as one is burdened with a person, one is exposed to its idiosyncrasies and habits.” A practitioner may come to a condition of only the occasional resurgence of self, and that is certainly worth getting to.