You are Beyond Space and Time – Nisargadatta

Questioner: You keep on saying that I was never born and will never die. If so, how is it that I see the world as one which has been born and will surely die?

Maharaj: You believe so because you have never questioned your belief that you are the body which, obviously, is born and dies. While alive, it attracts attention and fascinates so completely that rarely does one perceive one’s real nature. It is like seeing the surface of the ocean and completely forgetting the immensity beneath. The world is but the surface of the mind and the mind is infinite. What we call thoughts are just ripples in the mind. When the mind is quiet it reflects reality. When it is motionless through and through, it dissolves and only reality remains. This reality is so concrete, so actual, so much more tangible than mind and matter, that compared to it even diamond is soft like butter. This overwhelming actuality makes the world dream-like, misty, irrelevant.

Q: This world, with so much suffering in it, how can you see it as irrelevant. What callousness!

M: It is you who is callous, not me. If your world is so full of suffering, do something about it; don’t add to it through greed or indolence. I am not bound by your dreamlike world. In my world the seeds of suffering, desire and fear are not sown and suffering does not grow. My world is free from opposites, of mutually destructive discrepancies; harmony pervades; its peace is rock-like; this peace and silence are my body.

I Am That – Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Chapter: You are Beyond Space and Time – Item 94