Golden words

𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐫: The Westerners who occasionally come to see you are faced with a peculiar difficulty. The very notion of a liberated man, a realised man, a self-knower, a God-knower, a man beyond the world, is unknown to them. All they have in their Christian culture, is the idea of a saint: a pious man, law-abiding, God-fearing, fellow-loving, prayerful, sometimes prone to ecstasies and confirmed by a few miracles. The very idea of a jnani is foreign to Western culture, something exotic and rather unbelievable. Even when his existence is accepted, he is looked at with suspicion, as a case of self-induced euphoria caused by strange physical postures and mental attitudes. The very idea of a new dimension in consciousness seems to them implausible and improbable. What will help them is the opportunity of hearing a Jñani relate his own experience of realisation, its causes and beginnings, its progress and attainments and its actual practice in daily life. Much of what he says may remain strange, even meaningless, yet there will remain a feeling of reality, an atmosphere of actual experiencing, ineffable, yet very real, a centre from which an exemplary life can be lived.

𝐌𝐚𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐣:  The experience may be incommunicable. Can one communicate an experience?

𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐫: Yes, if one is an artist. The essence of art is communication of feeling, of experience.

𝐌𝐚𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐣: To receive communication, you must be receptive.

𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐫: Receiver? Of course. There must be a receiver. But if the transmitter does not transmit, of what use is the receiver?

𝐌𝐚𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐣: The Jñani belongs to all. He gives himself tirelessly and completely to whoever comes to him. If he is not a giver, he is not a jnani. Whatever he has, he shares!

𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐫: But can he share what he is?

𝐌𝐚𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐣: You mean, can he make others into Jñanis? Yes and no. No, since Jñanis are not made, they realise themselves as such, when they return to their Source, their real nature.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj – I Am That – Chapter 38 – Pages 134 – 135