Consciousness and the Absolute. The final Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Maharaj: People come here and stay for days, weeks, even months. The first few days what they have heard takes root, and that is when they should leave, so that what has taken root will have time to grow and blossom. As soon as the seed takes root, they must go. What has taken root must

bloom, must express itself within each heart.

Questioner: Maharaj has said, in this respect, that the teachings were his Gurus, but the understanding was his.

M: My Guru told me that consciousness alone is the Guru, all other developments sprouted within me. The fruit should grow on your own plant. I should not sow my understandings in you.

I have no use for traditions or traditional knowledge. If you do the slightest research on tradition you will see that it is all a concept.

I am concerned with only one fact.

Here I was in my wholeness, not even aware of my awareness, then suddenly this consciousness sprang up.

How did it come about?

That is the question which needs investigating.

One must understand how clever this fraud of Maya is; first it shows us our body and makes us believe that we are the body, but the body is nothing but a speck of fertilized sperm, and in that sperm the consciousness is latent.

You see what a fraud it is?

The essence of the body is the essence of the foodstuff, and this consciousness lies dormant in it from the very beginning. In that state of consciousness is the entire universe. Having seen this, whoever has understood is bound to be quiet, knowing that this is only a transient happening. An

enormous structure of concepts being taught to us as knowledge is based on the simple appearance of consciousness.