Life Answers: A Complete Audiobook Reading of Sri Nisargadatta Maharajah's I AM THAT – Details, episodes & analysis

Is Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj a kind of "father to the soul" of his followers? Is he a father to your soul? In what way? [Comments welcome!]

“Who am I, finally, when I’m not playing? A poor orphan left out in the cold among sensations, shivering on the street corners of Reality, forced to sleep on the steps of Sadness and to eat the bread offered by Fantasy. I was told that my father, whom I never knew, is called God, but the name means nothing to me. Sometimes at night, when I’m feeling lonely, I call out to him with tears and form an idea of him I can love. But then it occurs to me that I don’t know him, that perhaps he’s not how I imagine, that perhaps this figure has never been the father of my soul…”

-Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)

“An episode chiefly inspired by a 10 second piece of animation by Alyssa ⁠on her YouTube channel⁠.

Check out the full TWELVE SECOND video (plot-twist?)⁠ ⁠here⁠⁠.

Also, if you enjoyed the vid version of this on Spotify, please consider subscribing to my new YouTube Channel Living The Book of Disquiet, for more of these 🙏🏼

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This episode is also inspired by the following quote from fragment 32 of Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet:

Underlying everything, the hushed night was the tomb of God (and my soul felt sorry for God).”

OTHER TOPICS THAT CROP UP: 

-Lucid Dreaming: Rob’s experiences with lucid dreaming and the techniques he used to achieve it (counting backwards, repeating a phrase while falling asleep).

-Finding Beauty in the Mundane: the concept of cultivating a "waking dream" mentality, where one finds wonder and beauty in everyday experiences. Cf. Eckhart Tolle/Nisargadatta.

The Yearning for Connection: Lost loves, and the desire to recapture those feelings of connection and shared experiences. The possibility of finding a similar connection through lucid dreaming.

-Techniques for Lucid Dreaming: dream journaling, sensory deprivation, and meditation.

Life as a Waking Dream: living one’s life as a lucid dream state, rather than feeling trapped in our waking nightmares.

-In The Forest of Estrangement: A text written in 1912 and forming the initial foundations for TBOD according to a letter to João de Lebre e Lima, in which FP talks about his new project. Read both the letter, as well as In The Forest of Estrangement ⁠here⁠.

We're back! Massive thanks to Marc for agreeing to co-read and talk about this super-poetic and rich dialogue with me.

Imagine you're playing a video game where you can switch between different characters: one character is the "Person," another is the "Witness," and the ultimate level is becoming the "Absolute."

1. Person: This is like your character in the game. It's what you control and move around with, dealing with all the game's challenges. In real life, this refers to you with your body, thoughts, and feelings.

2. Witness: Imagine this as the camera following your character around in the game. It sees everything your character does but isn't actually doing any of it. The Witness is like a part of you that watches everything you do, think, or feel but doesn't get involved.

3. Absolute: Now, think of this as the entire game itself—the world, the rules, everything. It's the big picture that includes all the characters, the witnesses, and even things you can't see or haven't discovered yet. The Absolute is reality at its most fundamental, beyond time and space, and it's what everything else comes from.

Maharaj talks about three kinds of "spaces" to help us understand how everything is connected:

- Mahadakash: This is like the physical world in the game—the maps, the landscapes, everything you can see and interact with.

- Chidakash: This represents the mental space, like the game's storyline, the quests, and the decisions you make. It's all about perception and cognition.

- Paramakash: This is the ultimate level of the game—the code and logic that make up the game's universe. It's beyond the physical and mental, the source of everything.

The dialogue also touches on how we often confuse the "Person" (us playing the game) with the "Witness" (the camera/viewer) and the "Absolute" (the entire game). We get so caught up in our roles and stories that we forget they're all part of a bigger picture.

Maharaj encourages us to explore beyond our character in the game (our body and mind) and realize we're more like the game itself—vast, interconnected, and part of a larger reality. He suggests that understanding this can change how we see the world and ourselves, helping us to find true happiness and freedom from suffering.

It's a bit like realizing you're not just playing the game, but you're also the one watching it and, on an even deeper level, the one who created it. This shift in perspective is where the liberation occurs, making life's challenges feel less personal and overwhelming.

Glossary:

1. Person (Vyakti): Refers to the individual human being, characterized by physical and subtle bodies, perceived through the lens of personal identity.

2. Witness (Vyakta): The aspect of consciousness that observes or witnesses the phenomena of existence without being affected by them.

3. Absolute (Avyakta): The ultimate reality that is beyond time, space, and perception; the source of all existence and consciousness.

4. Mahadakash: The physical space or the "great space" that encompasses nature and all physical existences.

5. Chidakash: The "space of consciousness" or mental space where time, perception, and cognition occur.

6. Paramakash: The supreme or ultimate space that is beyond physical and mental realms, representing the infinite potentiality and essence of reality.

7. Vyakta and Avyakta: Manifest and unmanifest; used to describe the visible aspects of reality (vyakta) and the invisible, underlying essence (avyakta).

8. Chit: Pure consciousness or awareness, the fundamental essence of existence that knows and is known.

9. Gunas: Qualities or modes of nature in Indian philosophy, namely sattva (purity, harmony), rajas (activity, passion), and tamas (inertia, ignorance) that influence the behavior of all beings.

10. Viveka-Vairagya: Discrimination and dispassion; spiritual practices of discerning the real from the unreal and detachment from the non-essential.

TRANSCRIPT

"Don't be anxious about your future - be quiet now and all will fall into place. The unexpected is bound to happen, while the anticipated may never come. Don't tell me you cannot control your nature. You need not control it. Throw it overboard. Have no nature to fight, or submit to. No experience will hurt you, provided you don't make it into a habit. Of the entire universe you are the subtle cause. All is because you are. Grasp this point firmly and deeply and dwell on it repeatedly. To realize this as absolutely true, is liberation."

Life: In your search for love what exactly are you searching for?

Questioner: Simply this: to love and to be loved.

“Watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic. People come and go; you register without response. It may not be easy in the beginning, but with some practice you will find that your mind can function on many levels at the same time and you can be aware of them all. It is only when you have a vested interest in any particular level, that your attention gets caught in it and you black out on other levels. Even then the work on the blacked out levels goes on, outside the field of consciousness. Do not struggle with your memories and thoughts; try only to include in your field of attention the other, more important questions, like 'Who am l?' 'How did I happen to be born?' 'Whence this universe around me?'. 'What is real and what is momentary?' 

"No memory will persist, if you lose interest in it, it is the emotional link that perpetuates the bondage. You are always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, always after happiness and peace. Don't you see that it is your very search for happiness that makes you feel miserable? Try the other way: indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither asking, nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which 'I am' is timelessly present. Soon you will realise that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it is only seeking them through some particular channels, that disturbs. Avoid the disturbance, that is all. To seek there is no need; you would not seek what you already have. You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality. To begin with, trust me, trust the Teacher. It enables you to make the first step — and then your trust is justified by your own experience. In every walk of life initial trust is essential; without it little can be done. Every undertaking is an act of faith. Even your daily bread you eat on trust! By remembering what I told you you will achieve everything. I am telling you again: You are the all-pervading, all transcending reality. Behave accordingly: think, feel and act in harmony with the whole and the actual experience of what I say will dawn upon you in no time. No effort is needed. Have faith and act on it. Please see that I want nothing from you. It is in your own interest that l speak, because above all you love yourself, you want yourself secure and happy. Don't be ashamed of it, don't deny it. It is natural and good to love oneself. Only you should know what exactly do you love. It is not the body that you love, it is Life —perceiving, feeling, thinking, doing, loving, striving, creating. It is that Life you love, which is you, which is all. realise it in its totality, beyond all divisions and limitations, and all your desires will merge in it, for the greater contains the smaller. Therefore find yourself, for in finding that you find all. Everybody is glad to be. But few know the fullness of it. You come to know by dwelling in your mind on 'I am', 'I know', 'I love' — with the will of reaching the deepest meaning of these words.”

You say: You tell us that we can be considered under three aspects, and you then use three sanskrit terms for these aspects which, as far as I can tell, comes from a root verb meaning to smear (as in pigment or make-up). So when smeared around a self, we get a personal, or identity-focused human consciousness (vyakti). Another mode of being is that of the non-personal (vyakta): the smear suggesting that which the senses perceive as some thing, or object, or some kind of boundary. Finally there is a smear that doesn’t define or contain any one distinct entity, the Ultimate Smear, the Universal, the Real, pure I. The non-personal is the Ultimate Smear’s reflection in consciousness as ‘I am'. The personal is also the totality of physical and vital processes. Within the narrow confines of the present moment, person-focused states of consciousness are aware of themselves both in space and time; not only as individual people, but as a long series of people strung together on the thread of karma. The personal is a witnessing consciousness as well as the residue of these accumulated experiences, the seat of memory, the connecting link. It is part of our character which life builds and shapes from birth to birth. The Universal, however, the Ultimate Smear, is beyond all name and shape, other than what it imparts to consciousness as an echo. But it is ultimately beyond consciousness and character: pure unselfconscious being. Have I summarised your views as you see them? Life answers: On the level of the mind — yes. Beyond the mental level not a word applies. You say: I can understand that the person is a mental construct, a collective noun for a set of memories and habits. But, this consciousness to whom “the person” happens, the witnessing centre, is it mental too? Life answers:The personalised being needs a base, a body to identify itself with, just as a colour needs a surface to appear on. The seeing of the colour is independent of the colour — it is the same whatever the colour. One needs an eye to see a colour. The colours are many, the eye is single. The personalised being is like the light in the colour and also in the eye, yet simple, single, indivisible and unperceivable, except in its manifestations. Not unknowable, but unperceivable, un-objectival, inseparable. Neither material nor mental, neither objective nor subjective, it is the root of matter and the source of consciousness. Beyond mere living and dying, it is the all-inclusive, all-exclusive Life, in which birth is death and death is birth. You say: The Absolute or Life you talk about, is it real, or a mere theory to cover up our ignorance? Life answers:Both. To the mind, a theory; in itself — a reality. It is reality in its spontaneous and total rejection of the false. Just as light destroys darkness by its very presence, so does the absolute destroy imagination. To see that all knowledge is a form of ignorance is itself a movement of reality. The witness is not a person. The person comes into being when there is a basis for it, an organism, a body. In it the absolute is reflected as awareness. Pure awareness becomes self-awareness. When there is a self, self-awareness is the witness. When there is no self to witness, there is no witnessing either. It is all very simple; it is the presence of the person that complicates matters. See that there is no such thing as a permanently separate person and all becomes clear. Awareness — mind — matter — they are one reality in its two aspects, immovable and movable, with three attributes of inertia, energy and harmony. You say: What comes first: consciousness or awareness? Life answers:Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object. The object changes all the time. In consciousness there is movement; awareness by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now. You say: There is suffering and bloodshed in Ukraine at the present moment. How do you look at it? How does it appear to you, how do y

"But when the part of us that say 'I am me, I am myself' leaves us be, what follows is often an 'I am all'. And again: when the 'I am all' goes, then we might experience the 'I am'. And when even an 'I am' consciousness goes, reality alone is and in it every 'I am' is preserved held dear. Diversity without separateness is the Ultimate that the mind can touch. Beyond that all activity ceases, because in it all goals are reached and all purposes fulfilled."

Hello! Very excited to share a new episode of this podcast with you, and another chapter of "I Am That". 

In forthcoming episodes, Vimla Gulabani has kindly agreed to read the other part of the dialogue with me, as well as chat a bit about the text together. 

Also check out Vimla's podcast Coaching Confidential if that sounds like something that might interest you.

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This is the next episode in my/our here-and-now, complete audiobook reading of Sri Nisargadatta Maharajah’s “I Am That”

Info about this project: http://stevewasserman.co.uk/life-answers-a-complete-audiobook-reading-of-sri-nisargadatta-maharajahs-i-am-that/

This is the next episode in my here-and-now, complete audiobook reading of Sri Nisargadatta Maharajah’s “I Am That”

Info about this project: http://stevewasserman.co.uk/life-answers-a-complete-audiobook-reading-of-sri-nisargadatta-maharajahs-i-am-that/