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Date Posted: 04:15:15 01/01/05 Sat
Author: r - 9 Dec 2004
Subject: Nisargadatta Maharaj


Read the entire copy of 'I am That' at http://www.geocities.com/advaitavedant/iamthat.htm


Q: What is the purpose of meditation?

Maharaj: We know the outer world of sensations and actions, but of our inner world of thoughts and feelings we know very little. The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness. Incidentally practice of medltation affects deeply our character. We are slaves to what we do not know; of what we know we are masters. Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover and understand its causes and its workings, we overcome it by the very knowing; the unconscious dissolves when brought into the conscious. The dissolution of the unconscious releases energy; the mind feels adequate and become quiet.

Q: What is the use of a quiet mind?

M: When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. The personality, based on self identification, on imagining oneself to be something: 'I am this, I am that', continues, but only as a part of the objective world. Its identification with the witness snaps. Meditation is a sattvic activity and aims at complete elimination of tamas (inertia) and rajas (motivity)..'Pure sattva (harmony) is perfect freedom from sloth and restlessness. When things are left to themselves, are not interfered with, not shunned, or wanted, or conceptualized, but just experienced in full awareness, such awareness itself is sattva. It does not make use of things and people -- it fulfils them.



Maharaj

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