The last days

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj:

What a fantastic subject this is! The subject is elusive, the person who thinks he is listening is illusory, and yet nobody believes he does not exist! When you come here, I welcome you and extend my humble hospitality, but in doing so I am fully aware of the exact position: there is neither a speaker not a listener. Why is it that nobody can honestly say he does not exist? Because he knows he is present - or rather, there is that intuitive sense of presence - and, importantly, there is no entity who can say it does not exist. If an entity did assert that it did not exist, such an assertion itself would prove its existence!

However, the more important point, which is not so easy to grasp, is that the source of this phenomenal presence (which is the manifestation of the unmanifested) is noumenal absence. Further - I wonder how many of you will apprehend this - it means that whenever the mind is 'fasting', totally without any conceptualization, there is phenomenal absence, and this presence of phenomenal absence is noumenal.