A Quiet Mind

This interview with Nisargadatta Maharaj is from the book I Am That, and is my all-time favorite.

Maharaj: Realize yourself as the ocean of consciousness in which all happens. This is not difficult. A little attentiveness, close observation of oneself, and you will see that no event is outside your consciousness.

Questioner. The world is full of events which do not appear in my consciousness. 

M. Even your body is full of events which do not appear in your consciousness. This does not prevent you from claiming your body to be your own. You know the world exactly as you know your body—through your senses. It is your mind that has separated the world outside your skin from the world inside and you put them in opposition. This has created fear and hatred and all the miseries of living.

Q. What I do not follow is what you say about going beyond consciousness. I understand the words, but cannot visualize the experience. After all, you yourself have said that all experience is in consciousness. 

M. You are right – there can be no experience beyond consciousness. Yet there is the experience of just being. There is a state beyond consciousness which is not unconsciousness. It is pure awareness, free from the subject-object nexus. … Consciousness is intermittent, full of gaps. Yet there is continuity of identity. What is this sense of identity due to, if not something beyond consciousness?

Q. If I am beyond the mind, how can I change myself?

M. Where is the need of changing anything? The mind is changing all the time anyhow. Look at your mind dispassionately; this is enough to calm it. When it is quiet, you can go beyond it. Do not keep it busy all the time. Stop it—and just be. If you give it a rest it will settle down and recover its purity and strength. Constant thinking makes it decay. 

Q. If my true being is always with me, how is it that I am ignorant of it?

M. Because it is very subtle and your own mind is gross, full of gross thoughts and feelings. Calm and clarify your self and you will know yourself as you are.

Q. To know perfectly I need a perfect mind.

M. A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly once your mind is quiet. As the sun upon rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part.