Questioner: We were talking the other day about the ways of the modern Western mind and the difficulty it finds in submitting to the moral and intellectual discipline of the Vedanta. One of the obstacles lies in the young European's or American's preoccupation with the disastrous condition of the world and the urgent need of setting it right.
They have no patience with people like you who preach personal improvement as a pre-condition for the betterment of the world. They say it is neither possible nor necessary. Humanity is ready for a change of systems -- social, economic, political. A world-government, world-police, world-planning and the abolition of all physical and ideological barriers: this is enough, no personal transformation is needed. No doubt, people shape society, but society shapes people too. In a humane society people will be humane; besides, science provides the answer to many questions which formerly were in the domain of religion.
Maharaj:No doubt, striving for the improvement of the world is a most praiseworthy occupation. Done selflessly, it clarifies the mind and purifies the heart. But soon man will realise that he pursues a mirage. Local and temporary improvement is always possible and was achieved again and again under the influence of a great king or teacher; but it would soon come to an end, leaving humanity in a new cycle of misery. It is in the nature of all manifestation that the good and the bad follow each other and in equal measure. The true refuge is only in the unmanifested.

Questioner: Are you not advising escape?
Maharaj: On the contrary. The only way to renewal lies through destruction. You must melt down the old jewellery into formless gold before you can mould a new one. Only the people who have gone beyond the world can change the world. It never happened otherwise. The few whose impact was long lasting were all knowers of reality. Reach their level and then only talk of helping the world.

Questioner: It is not the rivers and mountains that we want to help, but the people
Maharaj: There is nothing wrong with the world, but for the people who make it bad. Go and ask them to behave.

Questioner: Desire and fear make them behave as they do.
Maharaj:Exactly. As long as human behaviour is dominated by desire and fear, there is not much hope.
And to know how to approach the people effectively, you must yourself be free of all desire and fear.

Questioner: Certain basic desires and fears are inevitable, such as are connected with food, sex and death.
Maharaj: These are needs and, as needs, they are easy to meet.

Questioner: Even death is a need?
Maharaj: Having lived a long and fruitful life you feel the need to die. Only when wrongly applied, desire and fear are destructive. By all means desire the right and fear the wrong. But when people desire what is wrong and fear what is right, they create chaos and despair.

Questioner: What is right and what is wrong?
Maharaj: Relatively, what causes suffering is wrong, what alleviates it is right. Absolutely, what brings you back to reality is right and what dims reality is wrong.

Questioner: When we talk of helping humanity, we mean a struggle against disorder and suffering.
Maharaj: You merely talk of helping. Have you ever helped, really helped, a single man? Have you ever put one soul beyond the need of further help? Can you give a man character, based on full realisation of his duties and opportunities at least, if not on the insight into his true being? When you do not know what is good for yourself, how can you know what is good for others?

Questioner: The adequate supply of means of livelihood is good for all. You may be God himself, but you need a well-fed body to talk to us.
Maharaj: It is you that need my body to talk to you. I am not my body, nor do I need it. I am the witness only. I have no shape of my own. You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realise that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.

Questioner: We are told there are many levels of existences. Do you exit and function on all the levels? While you are on earth, are you also in heaven (swarga)?
Maharaj: ! am nowhere to be found! I am not a thing to be given a place among other things. All things are in me, but I am not among things. You are telling me about the superstructure while I am concerned with the foundations. The superstructures rise and fall, but the foundations last. I am not interested in the transient, while you talk of nothing else.

Questioner: Forgive me a strange question. If somebody with a razor sharp sword would suddenly severe your head, what difference would it make to you?
Maharaj: None whatsoever. The body will lose its head, certain lines of communication will be cut, that is all. Two people talk to each other on the phone and the wire is cut. Nothing happens to the people, only they must look for some other means of communication. The Bhagavad Gita says: "the sword does not cut it". It is literally so. It is in the nature of consciousness to survive its vehicles. It is like fire. It burns up the fuel, but not itself. Just like a fire can outlast a mountain of fuel, so does consciousness survive innumerable bodies.

Questioner: The fuel affects the flame.
Maharaj:As long as it lasts. Change the nature of the fuel and the colour and appearance of the flame will change. Now we are talking to each other. For this presence is needed; unless we are present, we cannot talk. But presence by itself is not enough. There must also he the desire to talk.

Above all, we want to remain conscious. We shall bear every suffering and humiliation, but we shall rather remain conscious. Unless we revolt against this craving for experience and let go the manifested altogether, there can be no relief. We shall remain trapped.

Questioner: You say you are the silent witness and also you are beyond consciousness. Is there no contradiction in it? If you are beyond consciousness, what are you witnessing to?
Maharaj:I am conscious and unconscious, both conscious and unconscious, neither conscious nor unconscious -- to all this I am witness -- but really there is no witness, because there is nothing to be a witness to. I am perfectly empty of all mental formations, void of mind -- yet fully aware. This I try to express my saying that I am beyond the mind.

Questioner: How can I reach you then?
Maharaj: Be aware of being conscious and seek the source of consciousness. That is all. Very little can be conveyed in words. It is the doing as I tell you that will bring light, not my telling you. The means do not matter much; it is the desire, the urge, the earnestness that count.

Source: from book “I am That” By Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj