Nisarga Yoga
by Maurice Frydman
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; 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 inquiring 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 man. 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 round him and most
of his followers are humble working people cherishing the opportunity of
spending an hour with him.
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 to propound, no theology, cosmogony,
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 by the senses. That the mind is a sense in itself,
he does not even suspect.
The Nisarga Yoga (nisarga: natural state, innate
disposition), the 'natural' Yoga of Maharaj, is disconcertingly simple—the
mind, which is all-becoming, must recognize and penetrate its own being,
not as being this or that, here or there, then or now, but just 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 cause
less 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 reshaping 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 one's reality, the only way is to
take full cognizance of the ways of one's 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 in order to conquer it. That it did, and is doing, for mind and
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 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 unreal. To
break out from this prison of the verbal mind into reality, one must be
able to shift one's focus from the word to what it refers to.
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 one's 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 the 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 methods of realizing one's supreme identity with the self-being,
Maharaj is peculiarly noncommittal. He says that each has his own way to
reality. 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
realize the ultimate, supreme state. 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 or initiation is required. 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 visualize light and colors, 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 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.
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