It is the pleasure of two that is the cause of this birth, this body and the result is lifelong suffering for someone. Only the rare one comes here. The Guru shows him the result of this pleasure. He shows him a mirror that reflects the true picture. For a Jnani, death is the highest pleasure.
As soon as Consciousness stirs, the mind creates the Universe. Creation is Prakriti. Purusha (Consciousness) and Prakriti (Nature) as such have no name or form. This body has a feeling that the end is coming. I know that the body is the essence of five elements. The five elements are always in flux in relation to one another. The body results from the essence of them.
The individual considers the body to be his own. We think that we see with our ear and eyes, but what really sees and hears is beingness. The five elements never die. If you identify with your body, you are sinning and you will suffer at the time of death. The centre of Consciousness is the crest of your head. The quintessence of the five elemental activity is Consciousness, and quintessence knows no death.
Beingness is not a personality. Understand beingness and death. Finally, you the Absolute are not the beingness. The five elements are constantly at war in you and everywhere. Conflict is incessant, space is at war with air, air with fire, fire with water, water with earth and so forth, and all these are expressed in the body.
The interaction of four elements results in their subsiding into the earth. Then we have vegetation and food species, we have individual formations. The elemental conflict is expressed in the human body and the human being says “My bad luck”. The four elemental interactions subside in the womb of the earth. Out of the juice of vegetation come the species but the forms embrace their identity. Thus we have 85 million species, that’s the story of this earth. One who cognizes this principle, what would be his quality? One who understands Consciousness will be beyond Consciousness, beyond the five elements. He, at death becomes an ocean of bliss. Others, who take themselves to be body-mind, will undergo a traumatic experience of suffering. Mind-body identification is the result of bliss of just a fraction of a second.
Contrast the Jnani’s pleasure to that of the pleasure of two. Saint Jnaneshwara wrote a commentary on the Bhagwad Gita (“Jnaneshwari”). Then he wrote ‘Amruta Anubhava” – Experience of Immortality– bottomless ocean of bliss. The five elements and three gunas are creating havoc in the universe. But how is a Jnani affected by all this?
Having recognized this elemental play, he has transcended it. This business of looking and the looked, observer and the observed will go and nothing will remain.
Excerpted from ‘I Am Unborn’. The 121st birth anniversary of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj will be observed on April 17
Nisargadatta Maharaj
