Question:

When Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “My world is full of myself”. What does he actually mean by it? 

Answer:

Let me start with what it does not mean: 

‘I-the-body/mind’ have tremendous amounts of ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’. Borne out of my ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ are mental thoughts/ideas/imaginations.

• • I give energy to my thoughts of ‘likes’ by repeatedly hanging onto them, fantasizing about them, relishing them.
  • I give energy to my thoughts of ‘dislikes’ by repeatedly hanging onto the feeling of rejection and disdain, creating hatred-stories and fighting them.

Whatever I give maximum energy to gains shape and manifests as my world containing:

• • a person doing something that I like or dislike OR
  • a situation that I like or dislike
  • a thing that I like or dislike

When things manifest, I get troubled by them. I suffer not only from the unpleasant but I suffer from the pleasant as well as the pleasant is temporary and transient. I then wonder how the world is a place of suffering.

The above is not what Maharaj is saying about his own world. He is saying the above for your world. Your world is created out of the story-creation tendency of your mind that has evolved from self-talk. There is no God sitting in the sky sending situations and people your way. You are doing it to yourself. That is the meaning of your world which is full of imaginings.

What does Nisargadatta actually mean: 

When he says his own world is full of himself, he is speaking from the Ajata Vada level. At that level, one truly realizes the highest truth ‘Brahman Satyam. Jagat Mithya – Only Consciousness is! The world as we conceive of it is an illusion’.

When someone like Nisargadatta Maharaj, Atmananda Krishna Menon, or other Advaita Vedanta Masters speak from that level, they do not recognize the world of ‘people, situations, things’ as anything more than dream-like appearances. They do not give undue importance to this ‘Jagrut Swapn – Waking dream’ because:

• • He is devoid of cravings/aversions so he does not have the story-creation tendency.
  • He is wary of story-creation as that only brings suffering, in short, he doesn’t create Karma.
  • He is very firm that he does not need any worldly things so he does not entertain worldly aspirations like other spiritual teachers seeking wealth, name, fame, followers, power.
  • He always says that he has eaten up the world. Only someone at the stature of Nisargadatta can have the courage to say that as he truly doesn’t seek anything in this dream.

What does his world consist of?

Only Pure Consciousness. Nisargadatta calls it Paramakash.

Does he not see people, situations, and things in his world? 

• • He does see them and hear them and interact with them outwardly but from his perspective, they are all simply images on a screen and nothing more than that.
  • He clearly knows that he himself is the screen of consciousness. He takes a stand as the consciousness that is peeping out through the body-mind of a man on the screen. This man is a dream-like character in the waking-dream.
  • He does not give importance to the dream-like character [body-mind-ego personality]. It is nothing more than a peephole for interacting with the creation.

As his world consists only of Consciousness, he says, “My world is full of myself”.

#Non-Duality