Noumenon and Phenomena
It was one of those mornings, perhaps a Monday, when there were only a few of us, the regular
'addicts'. Maharaj sat with his eyes closed, still like a statue. After some time he suddenly started
speaking softly, so softly that we unconsciously moved nearer to him. He continued to sit with his
eyes closed, and went on speaking, or rather thinking aloud: People think that I am a Jnani. They
come to me from all over the world — from Canada to Australia and New Zealand, from England
to Japan. Most of them have read I Am That and come all the way to Bombay only to meet me.
With great difficulty they are able to locate this little old house of mine in a dirty, narrow street.
They climb up the stairs and find a small dark man in the simplest of clothing, sitting in a corner.
They think: This man doesn't look like a Jnani; he does not dress impressively, as someone known
as Nisargadatta Maharaj could be expected to do. Could he really be the one?
What can I say to these people? I tell them quite frankly that my education is up to the level
which can barely put me in the category of the literate; I have not read any of the great traditional
scriptures and the only language I know is my native Marathi. The only enquiry I have pursued, but
pursued it relentlessly — like a hunter pursues his quarry— is this: 'I know I am and I have a body.
How could this happen without my knowledge and consent? And what is this knowledge I am?'
This has been my life-long pursuit and I am fully satisfied with the answers I have reached. This is
my only Jnana, yet people believe I am a Jnani. My Guru told me: "You are Brahman, you are all
and everything. There is nothing other than you." I accepted my Guru's word as truth, and now, for
forty odd years I have been sitting in this very room doing nothing except talking about it. Why do
people come to me from distant lands? What a miracle!
After pursuing my enquiry to its logical conclusion what have I arrived at? The whole thing is
really simple, if only one sees the picture clearly. What is this 'me' that I am concerned with? The
immediate answer, of course, is — 'this me, this body'. But then the body is only a psychosomatic
apparatus. What is the most important element in this apparatus which qualifies it to be known as a
sentient being? It is undoubtedly the consciousness without which this apparatus, while perhaps
technically alive, would be useless as far its functioning is concerned. This consciousness obviously
needs a physical construct in which to manifest itself. So, consciousness depends upon the body.
But what is the body made of? How does the body come into existence? The body is merely a
growth in the woman's womb during a period of about nine months, the growth of what is
conceived by the union of the male and female sexual fluids. These fluids are the essence of the
food consumed by the parents. Basically, therefore, both consciousness and the body are made of,
and are sustained by food. Indeed, the body itself is food — one body being the food of some other
body. When the food-essence, the vital sexual fluids, grows from conception into a tiny body and is
delivered out of the mother's womb, it is called 'birth'. And when this food essence gets decayed due
to age or illness and the psychosomatic apparatus happens to get destroyed, it is called 'death'. This
is what happens all the time — the objective universe projecting and dissolving innumerable forms;
the picture keeps on changing all the time. But how am 'I' concerned with this? I am merely the
witness to all this happening. Whatever happens during the period of the happening, in each case,
affects only the psychosomatic apparatus, not the 'I' that I am.
This is the extent of my 'knowledge', basically. Once it is clear that whatever happens in the
manifested world is something apart from me, as the 'I', all other questions resolve themselves.
At what stage exactly did I come to have the knowledge of my 'existence'? What was I before
this knowledge 'I am' came to me? This knowledge 'I am' has been with me ever since I can
remember, perhaps a few months after this body was born. Therefore, memory itself must have
come with this knowledge 'I am', this consciousness. What was the position before that? The answer
is: I do not know. Therefore, whatever I know of anything has its beginning in consciousness,
including pain and pleasure, day and night, waking and sleeping — indeed the entire gamut of
dualities and opposites in which one cannot exist without the other. Again, what was the position
before consciousness arose? These interrelated opposites inevitably must have existed but only in
negation, in unicity, in wholeness. This must then be the answer. This unicity is what I am. But this
unicity, this identity, this wholeness cannot know itself because in it there exists no subject as
separate from an object—a position that is necessary for the process of seeing, or knowing, or
cognizing. In other words, in the original state of unicity, or wholeness, no medium or instrument
exists through which 'knowing' may take place.
Mind cannot be used to transcend the mind. The eye cannot see itself; taste cannot taste itself;
sound cannot hear itself. 'Phenomena' cannot be phenomena without 'noumenon'. The limit of
possible conceptualization — the abstract of mind — is noumenon, the infinity of the unknown.
Noumenon, the only subject, objectifies itself and perceives the universe, manifesting phenomenally
within itself, but apparently outside, in order to be a perceivable object. For the noumenon to
manifest itself objectively as the phenomenal universe, the concept of space-time comes into
operation because objects, in order to be cognizable, have to be extended in space by giving them
volume and must be stretched in duration or time because otherwise they could not be perceived.
So, now I have the whole picture: The sentient being is only a very small part within the
process of the apparent mirrorization of the noumenon into the phenomenal universe. It is only one
object in the total objectivization and, as such, 'we' can have no nature of our own. And yet — and
this is important— phenomena are not something separately created, or even projected, but are
indeed noumenon conceptualized or objectivized. In other words, the difference is purely notional.
Without the notion, they are ever inseparable, and there is no real duality between noumenon and
phenomena.
This identity — this inseparableness — is the key to the understanding, or rather the
apperceiving of our true nature, because if this basic unity between the noumenon and the
phenomenon is lost sight of, we would get bogged down in the quagmire of objectivization and
concepts. Once it is understood that the noumenon is all that we are, and that the phenomena are
what we appear to be as separate objects, it will also be understood that no entity can be involved
in what we are, and therefore, the concept of an entity needing 'liberation' will be seen as nonsense;
and 'liberation', if any, will be seen as liberation from the very concept of bondage and liberation.
When I think about what I was before I was 'born', I know that this concept of 'I am' was not
there. In the absence of consciousness, there is no conceptualizing; and whatever seeing takes place
is not what one — an entity — sees as a subject/object, but is seeing from within, from the source
of all seeing. And then, through this 'awakening', I realize that the all-enveloping wholeness of the
Absolute can not have even a touch of the relative imperfection; and so I must, relatively, live
through the allotted span of life until at the end of it, this relative 'knowledge' merges in the noknowing
state of the Absolute. This temporary condition of 'I-know' and 'I-know-that-I-know' then
merges into that eternal state of 'I-do-not-know' and 'I-do-not-know' that 'I-do-not-know. ••
