Individual Identity

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

August 1, 1980.

All your worldly and unworldly activities are based on the individual identification. You, as an individual, want to have liberation. You remain as an individual, that is the difficulty. 

However much you may think you ahve understood this knowledge, so long as you think that you, as an individual, have acquired that knowledge, the individual identity, is still there.

One who has made certain progress which gives him some tangible results is a yogi, but because his self identity is there he rests content with what he has achieved as an individual. 

You must understand both the aspects of this beingness, this lowly physical nature from which it has arrived, and that at the same time there is no end to what this consciousness can do although this state by nature is limited. How can he who is aware of his true nature and the total potential be satisfied with anything that this limited state can give him?

Further, the potential of his abiding in the Absolute is so great that people are not able to imagine how it could be in the Absolute, what it is like - therefore they can only think of him in his consciousnes state.