SIDDHARAMESHWAR MAHARAJ

Non-Action

Many people feel that they should do something to acquire true spiritual knowledge. Then what remedy does the master prescribe to the disciple to acquire knowledge? If a man is healthy and he asks the doctor to cure his disease, what can he reply? Then he asks the same question to the chief of the village and to a lawyer, and they tell him, "You have become stout." Then he thinks, "What could be the reason that I have become stout?" He asks the doctor. The doctor feels his pulse and thinks, "What can I say to him, he has no disease? It can't be diagnosed." Then someone wise tells him, "You are affected by a terrible disease! What else can I say?

Pursuing absolute truth is similar to the example given above. People do so many things to attain Truth because they feel they must act. People tell them, “You have become an individual being (jiva).” Just brush it all aside, saying “Nothing has happened. Surely, nothing has happened.” Let your understanding be this, and thus become completely free. Can there be any talk about that which never existed? When you say “I”, the notions of “mine” and “yours” arise simultaneously, and this is the main problem.

There is one and only one truth. When you say, “My hand is paining me”, you know that you are not your hand. Knowledge is for learning what you have heard. One should know God as he is, then there is nothing left to achieve. When you understand the true meaning, then nothing is left to be done. So to understand truth, all that is illusory must be destroyed. People make all kinds of efforts to conquer the illusion, but the illusion is very tricky. It still resides in the one who says he has to conquer the illusion. So how should it be tackled? And what has to be done after one realises the truth. If you ask this, the answer is – “you have to do nothing regarding the body, your household, etc… let them be as they are.”

Suppose while you are asleep you had a dream that you met a bear while walking on the road. You wrestled with it, sat on its chest and finally killed it. The moment you awoke there was no bear to be seen. There was nothing. Similarly, to feel that, “I am realised”, “I am a saint”, “I am an aspirant”, or “I am after spiritual knowledge” is delusion. To feel that God “comes” and “goes away” is an illusion. Your illusionary concepts play the role of the bear – when you wrestle with them, sometimes they make you fall and at other times you make them fall. The master’s advice is, “Why do you meddle in this? All this chaos is the chaos of illusion.” Let the objects be wherever they are. If you try to manage affairs, you will forget the primordial Supreme. Doership is the illusion and non-doership is Self.

The aspirants always think of that which is untrue. They ask, "What shall I do, Maharaj?" The Guru asks him not to sniff tobacco, and the disciple immediate reacts by putting his nose into the box containing tobacco! Or he may say, "You say that all this is false, yet you yourself also indulge in it." There are only two things in the world: worldly existence and Reality. To take interest in what has happened is to get involved in worldly affairs. If you abandon all these things, true knowledge will dawn. This is why a man gets caught in bondage. Individuality is to involve the mind in the objective world, and Godhood is to do nothing. God is in the temple while there are rocks lying outside. Why should God value rocks? For this God [your own Self], to live among stones is called "individuality" or "ignorance". Saint Tukaram says, "God is quite ancient." God is prior to everything. A jnani has understood that the Supreme being [Paramatman], which is prior to all, is silently sitting in his heart. Leaving this God alone, people think of doing good or bad. That is the illusion for the individual being. The illusion makes man knowledgeable, makes him a narrator of the Vedas, and makes him play this worldly game. If a thing is good, it is good; if it is bad, it is bad; if one is wealthy, he is wealthy; and if one is poor, he is poor. Who is the real aspirant? He is the one who has understood the illusion is nothing. However much you may have wrestled with the bear in a dream, it is still all false. But the illusion does not allow the aspirant to be victorious. The concept of "I" and "you" is a delusion, as is the concept of "aspirant". Even the idea "I am God" is a delusion. This world itself is rooted in delusion. If I and you are God, then why should there be any supposition? As told before, "Abandon everything!" Ignorant people start beating cymbals for worship. This knowledge is actually ignorance. Hence, even this knowledge has no true value. Only knowledge of the Self destroys ignorance. The individual "I" is the one who dabbles in the illusion. So just do nothing. The aspirant is tortured by those who tell him, "You must do this and you must do that." All this is to fool him. The illusion has long horns on his head. If you supersedes him, he gores you, and if you fall behind, he kicks you. Thus, the key to transcending the illusion lies in doing nothing. All happiness, misery, worry and anxiety are inherent in the illusion. You have to do nothing, you have to abandon nothing. In Dasbodh, Saint Ramdas says, "Action and non-action are illusion." So those who have not understood this illusion may dance wild. The illusion is dreamlike. If you wrestle with a bear in a dream, your victory or defeat is irrelevant. So it is said that the illusion is unconquerable, even for Lord Brahma, Vishnu, Harihera, etc., since they all take it to be true. Vishnu said, "I shall protect them", so he became a four-handed God. This is an illusion, yet all are engrossed in it. Suppose a barren woman's son said that he had held a torch at Maruti's [an eternal celibate] wedding. This world in the form of illusion is just as fictitious. So those who say they have conquered the illusion are thoroughly deceived. The devotee of God does not experience the happiness or misery arising from the illusion. His glory is small, but higher than that of the gods Hari and Hara. The reason is that he takes everything as untrue and knows that there is no action, cause or doer. Wherever there is a feeling of cause and effect, it is due to the feeling "I am not Reality." This feeling is the effect and the "I" is the cause. When you feel that you are not Reality, you become an individual "I". When you feel that you are neither an "I" nor Shiva, you become Final Reality. "I", "good", "bad, etc., all these are signs of delusion rising up from the material world. All this is a game of "blind man"s bluff". Reality is the one who covers the players eyes, and hence, he is not part of the game. He blindfolds the participants only once. Knowledge and ignorance are the material cause of the world [prakriti]. This itself is delusion. Who expounds the scriptures and who conveys knowledge? Chanting, penance, methods, study, etc., are all the mesmeric activities of the illusion. You cross over the material world only when you are free from all "duties". These are all matters at this initial stage. So long as there is knowledge, there is delusion. Reject whatever you suppose you are. "Reject" means do not dabble in anything whatsoever. Continue your worship: "I am the Self, I am Reality, I am not the body, I am not the name." The one who is speaking inside is "I", is God. Just be convinced of that. There was a princess who wanted to find a lazy man to marry. Accordingly, an announcement was made in every village. Prospective suitors claiming to be lazy soon arrived at the palace. The princess wanted to assure the validity of their claims. One man pretended to be so lazy by arriving on the shoulders of someone else. Another feigned silence in support of his claim, and another refrained from using his hands to eat food. There were as many pretensions of laziness as there were suitors. The princess rejected them all. But there was one shrewd fellow who simply informed the princess that he had come to get married to her. She asked him, "How can you prove that you are lazy?" He replied, "All the others are merely pretending. They are only actors and are not lazy at all." Maintaining silence, not walking, and not eating with the hands – these are all external actions meant to deceive. These qualities are not of the nature of a really lazy person. Similarly, for a jnani, it is absolutely evident that he is Reality. The true mark of a saint is taking the world to be untrue. If it is not understood that it is in the nature of the material world to be false, then one cannot get "married to the princess." Laziness does not mean abandoning outward actions. The individual "I" has the habit of engaging itself in constant activity. To do something is in the nature of the body consciousness. What has to be done, and for whose sake? Illusion implies "my idea". There is a proverb: "He started worshipping God when he got tired of doing things." If you reject all that is untrue, then you become God Reality. The illusion is believing that "I ought to first do this and that, manage this and that, become rich, and then afterwards I will become a saint and start acting differently." So leave things exactly as they are. If you meddle in things, your body consciousness will get enhanced and you will constantly feel that you ought to be doing something. This is the obstruction for attaining Final Reality. When you are not the body, then it is useless to think about wealth or poverty. All is untrue. Then why this unnecessary query? Godhood is "not to do anything." We say, "Remain quiet, like God", but in actuality we indulge ourselves in body consciousness. To not worry about anything and to be at peace is called "OM Shanti". This is my blessing to you all.

https://www.inner-quest.org/Siddharameshwar_Non-Action.htm