Criticism
Nisargadatta is a mystic in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta. To understand his point of view we must clearly see that Vedanta was a reaction against the strong formalistic ritualism of Vedic Hinduism. Before Vedanta reformulated the basic tenets of Hinduism, religion in India had deteriorated to a large extent into ritualism. People misinterpreted the Veda's. They thought that if they'd followsome prescribed method or ritual, that it would automatically lead to the redemption and liberation of their souls, moksha. But this absent minded murmuring of prayers and dumb-headed bringing of offers didn't lead to anything. Only to more stupidity.
Vedanta protested against this ritualism. They thought it was an insult at religion. Vedanta said that moksha could only be ensured if we would gain a deep insight into the Truth (as summarized above). We have to really understand, right to the deepest layers of our soul, what we truly are and what the world is. Without this deep insight, which is more like an intuition of the soul than mere mental knowledge, we cannot realize the deepest truth in our lives and become liberated. This path of insight and understanding was called jnana-yoga. A full accomplished yogi in this tradition was called a jnani.
But in my view Vedanta is an antithesis and not a synthesis. It overstates its case in depreciating and writing off all methods and paths for reaching enlightenment. Most Vedantists teach us that there is no path, that there is no method to follow, because every person is already enlightened and has always been so. But this leads to some frustration, because this 'being already enlightened' is only true from an enlightened perspective, from an absolute stance, ex specie aeternitatis. But if we ask any average person in the street if he feels enlightened, he will answer 'far from'.
So what happened was this: people flocked in thousands to the tenement apartment of Nisargadatta in Mumbai and got the Vedantic message that there really was no method to reach anything. For the 'I' who wants to reach for enlightenment is imaginary in the first place. Just get rid of this false 'I'. But then people said that they would gladly accept the truth and deep wisdom of his philosophy and feel it them selves all the time. But how do we get rid of this false 'I', which is bugging us from early in the morning till late at night? How can I be like you, so full of love and deep wisdom? But then he would answer 'who wants to get rid of what?' And then the debate got frustrated into vicious circles.
For what Nisargadatta failed to tell his audience was that we can only see our true identity with the help of our relative consciousness. This relative consciousness of ours is closely connected to the body. Body and consciousness are mutually dependent and influence each others condition. So if the body is tensed and all stressed up, then our mind is also full of negative and stressed thoughts. Also vice versa: if we think from memory about bad events in the past, then our body becomes stressed, anxious and painful. So thoughts and emotions are conditioned by the state our body is in and the way our body feels is conditioned by the thoughts and emotions we have.
Now when someone for the first time goes on a search for liberation, to put an end to all of his sufferings, he is bound to be in the worst psychological and physiological shape possible. Otherwise there would not be need for him to find a solution to his problems. So his body and his physical nervous system suffer from the stress of a life time. In this shape it is impossible to see our true identity. We might assent to it intellectually. Our intuition might probably see the deep truth of the spiritual words of Nisargadatta, but we fail to realize it. The shape of our nervous system is conditioning our consciousness. Every time it becomes all covered up with dust and stains, even if we've cleaned it for a couple of minutes or so. In this condition we will never be able to have an adequate reflection of our true identity.
So the body and the mind first have to cool down and become silent and peaceful. This cannot happen in a split second, as many Vedantists want us to believe. Why not? This is because our body is in time. The body needs time to destress itself first. It cannot be released of its tensions in a fortnight. We are here talking about tensions built up in years. So it will take some time, sometimes even considerable years. And apart from intellectual and intuitive insight into the truth, meditation must do the job, because meditation is a physical technique to make the nervous system healthy and relaxed again. Then, with a healthy and peaceful body, are we finally able to realize our true identity (though we may see it on forehand). I have written more elaborately about this topic in the physical aspects of enlightenment.
So other mystical traditions talk of stages of mystical development, as for instant Christian mysticism. I think these traditions are right. Before we can reach to the peak of Nisargadatta's non-duality, we first have to climb some lower mountains. No mountaineer has begun his career with conquering the Mount Everest. The cleaning of the mirror is a process and it requires training. We have to follow some paths to be able to do it. On the via purgativa (see the Mystic Life) we have to encounter the Dark Night of the soul first. Before we can reach the non-dual stage of no-self, we first have to have the unio mystica of the via unitiva. All these stages have been mapped out by the mystics and I think they were right. For the loss of self is a process that spreads itself out over the years. It is the spiritual growth of a life time. Intellectual understanding is not enough.
But given this criticism we must never forget that Nisargadatta truly was a Mount Everest among men. He spoke to us from the highest non-dual and absolute position a human being can ever attain. His mirror was so cleaned that he purely reflected the love and wisdom of the god/Brahman. To be accurate, due to constant identification with our real I, his right mirror had almost vanished completely. He was one of those few people who already in this life realized what most of us only realize after death. With this attainment he had become one of the gods among men.
http://home.wxs.nl/~brouw724/Nisargadatta.html
Vedanta protested against this ritualism. They thought it was an insult at religion. Vedanta said that moksha could only be ensured if we would gain a deep insight into the Truth (as summarized above). We have to really understand, right to the deepest layers of our soul, what we truly are and what the world is. Without this deep insight, which is more like an intuition of the soul than mere mental knowledge, we cannot realize the deepest truth in our lives and become liberated. This path of insight and understanding was called jnana-yoga. A full accomplished yogi in this tradition was called a jnani.
But in my view Vedanta is an antithesis and not a synthesis. It overstates its case in depreciating and writing off all methods and paths for reaching enlightenment. Most Vedantists teach us that there is no path, that there is no method to follow, because every person is already enlightened and has always been so. But this leads to some frustration, because this 'being already enlightened' is only true from an enlightened perspective, from an absolute stance, ex specie aeternitatis. But if we ask any average person in the street if he feels enlightened, he will answer 'far from'.
So what happened was this: people flocked in thousands to the tenement apartment of Nisargadatta in Mumbai and got the Vedantic message that there really was no method to reach anything. For the 'I' who wants to reach for enlightenment is imaginary in the first place. Just get rid of this false 'I'. But then people said that they would gladly accept the truth and deep wisdom of his philosophy and feel it them selves all the time. But how do we get rid of this false 'I', which is bugging us from early in the morning till late at night? How can I be like you, so full of love and deep wisdom? But then he would answer 'who wants to get rid of what?' And then the debate got frustrated into vicious circles.
For what Nisargadatta failed to tell his audience was that we can only see our true identity with the help of our relative consciousness. This relative consciousness of ours is closely connected to the body. Body and consciousness are mutually dependent and influence each others condition. So if the body is tensed and all stressed up, then our mind is also full of negative and stressed thoughts. Also vice versa: if we think from memory about bad events in the past, then our body becomes stressed, anxious and painful. So thoughts and emotions are conditioned by the state our body is in and the way our body feels is conditioned by the thoughts and emotions we have.
Now when someone for the first time goes on a search for liberation, to put an end to all of his sufferings, he is bound to be in the worst psychological and physiological shape possible. Otherwise there would not be need for him to find a solution to his problems. So his body and his physical nervous system suffer from the stress of a life time. In this shape it is impossible to see our true identity. We might assent to it intellectually. Our intuition might probably see the deep truth of the spiritual words of Nisargadatta, but we fail to realize it. The shape of our nervous system is conditioning our consciousness. Every time it becomes all covered up with dust and stains, even if we've cleaned it for a couple of minutes or so. In this condition we will never be able to have an adequate reflection of our true identity.
So the body and the mind first have to cool down and become silent and peaceful. This cannot happen in a split second, as many Vedantists want us to believe. Why not? This is because our body is in time. The body needs time to destress itself first. It cannot be released of its tensions in a fortnight. We are here talking about tensions built up in years. So it will take some time, sometimes even considerable years. And apart from intellectual and intuitive insight into the truth, meditation must do the job, because meditation is a physical technique to make the nervous system healthy and relaxed again. Then, with a healthy and peaceful body, are we finally able to realize our true identity (though we may see it on forehand). I have written more elaborately about this topic in the physical aspects of enlightenment.
So other mystical traditions talk of stages of mystical development, as for instant Christian mysticism. I think these traditions are right. Before we can reach to the peak of Nisargadatta's non-duality, we first have to climb some lower mountains. No mountaineer has begun his career with conquering the Mount Everest. The cleaning of the mirror is a process and it requires training. We have to follow some paths to be able to do it. On the via purgativa (see the Mystic Life) we have to encounter the Dark Night of the soul first. Before we can reach the non-dual stage of no-self, we first have to have the unio mystica of the via unitiva. All these stages have been mapped out by the mystics and I think they were right. For the loss of self is a process that spreads itself out over the years. It is the spiritual growth of a life time. Intellectual understanding is not enough.
But given this criticism we must never forget that Nisargadatta truly was a Mount Everest among men. He spoke to us from the highest non-dual and absolute position a human being can ever attain. His mirror was so cleaned that he purely reflected the love and wisdom of the god/Brahman. To be accurate, due to constant identification with our real I, his right mirror had almost vanished completely. He was one of those few people who already in this life realized what most of us only realize after death. With this attainment he had become one of the gods among men.
http://home.wxs.nl/~brouw724/Nisargadatta.html
