𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈𝐬 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞? 𝐒𝐫𝐢 𝐍𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐌𝐚𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐣

Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj 

Excerpt from I Am That. Chapter 51

Questioner: Life is effort. There are so many things to do.

Maharaj: What needs doing, do it. Don’t resist. Your balance must be dynamic, based on doing just the right thing, from moment to moment. 

Don’t be a child unwilling to grow up. Stereotyped gestures and postures will not help you. Rely entirely on your clarity of thought, purity of motive and integrity of action. You cannot possibly go wrong. Go beyond and leave all behind.

Questioner: But can anything be left for good?

Maharaj: You want something like a round-the-clock ecstasy. Ecstasies come and go, necessarily, for the human brain cannot stand the tension for a long time. A prolonged ecstasy will burn out your brain, unless it is extremely pure and subtle. 

In nature nothing is at stand-still, everything pulsates, appears and disappears. Heart, breath, digestion, sleep and waking — birth and death everything comes and goes in waves. Rhythm, periodicity, harmonious alternation of extremes is the rule. 

No use rebelling against the very pattern of life. If you seek the Immutable, go beyond experience. 

When I say: remember ‘I am’ all the time, I mean: ‘come back to it repeatedly’. No particular thought can be mind’s natural state, only silence. Not the idea of silence, but silence itself. When the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience or, rather, every experience happens against the background of silence.

Now, what you have learnt here becomes the seed. You may forget it — apparently. But it will live and in due season sprout and grow and bring forth flowers and fruits. All will happen by itself. You need not do anything, only don’t prevent it.