Question: There are strong habit patterns.
Nisargadatta Maharaj: Yes, and once you know their impermanence and that they are not true, why worry about the habit patterns? Remove the habit. Go beyond! If you cannot do so, then you cannot understand this, the whole final truth, yet. No path, no instruction, no method, no technique. You are full, you are all One. You feel you are two, so OK. Understand you are not two, advaita.
You were a child, and you have become a big boy now, a big man. Do you know anything about along which path you have come? And how you have grown? You don’t know anything about this? Then why do you want to ask which path to follow now?
I would like to know the path by which you have come into this life and have grown into this man. If you tell me, then I will tell you the path to go back.
These are all ideas, concepts! A grand idea that you were born and you are growing, and you have come this way, that way. There are people who told you this. So I want you to go back to the source from where you seem to have come. Stop there and find out. Look back, and see what is happening there. Don’t go with the current and then see what is what. You will never be able to find out, because your travel in the stream is only conditioned…with concepts. You have heard about things from people, you have read about it in books. That is why you are passing along the stream, is it not? Go back. Go to its source and find out whether there is anything. That is the beauty of my teaching. It takes you back to the source and does not allow you to leave that source at all. If you want to discuss anything regarding what happened to you after entering the stream, OK, then so many stories abound. All the scriptures of Hindu as well as other religions, are available to you. Go and read them. They are of no use. But I say you can go back. Go back to that point from where you seem to have come, and see if you have really come. That will require meditation, and you will have to constantly return to that point. You will have to have full attention on it and find out really and truly whether you are actually coming from there, whether you are really born. Until then, they are all stories which you hear in listening to people.