An Argument in 4 Parts from I Am That

Part 1: The Acuteness of Suffering

Nisargadatta replies: “Suffering has made you dull, unable to see its enormity. Your first task is to see the sorrow in you and around you; your next to long intensely for liberation.”

1. You must begin with herculean earnestness: if you’re not really being honest with yourself, then you’re not really coming to grips with the acuteness of your suffering as well as the acuteness of the sorrows of those around you. 

Are you leveling up? Are you checking yourself before you wreck yourself?  

Once you really face up to the fact that there is heartbreaking sorrow inside as well as around you, you can’t but long for liberation. 

Part 2: Longing for Liberation

2. Did you catch that second point? “[Y]our next [task] is to long intensely for liberation.” You can’t long intensely for liberation unless you’ve come to grips with sorrows–yours and those of others. And when you really do, then liberation, lest you indulge in nihilistic despair, is the only option.

Part 3: Hindrances

A questioner states, “I find myself suffering, but not enough. Life is unpleasant, but bearable. My little pleasures compensate me for my small pains and on the whole I am better off than most of the people I know. I know that my condition is precarious, that a calamity can overtake me any moment. Must I wait for a crisis to put me on my way to truth?”

3. How are you playing small? Where are you trying to find escapes? What compensations and negotiations are you making? “Oh, I’m not a Ukrainian.” See this as ego evasion.

4. If you try to play down your disappointments, melancholy, moments of hopelessness, then you’re only kidding yourself. Remember the first point.

5. Indeed, look very closely at what’s served up for you, at what’s right here. Doing so is like putting on a jet pack: it hurls or thrusts you into the longing for liberation. 

Part 4: The Means (or One Means Anyway)

Nisargadatta advises: “Now, go within, into a state which you may compare to a state of waking sleep, in which you are aware of yourself, but not of the world.” 

6. Be so interested in the I alone that you allow all objects to subside. This I alone is (for now) “I Am.” And “I Am” is like a state of waking sleep.

7. With such intensity and earnestness let go of the world (turning outward) and embrace the I alone (the deep dive within). Let the rest take care of itself.