Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Questioner: When I look at myself, I find I am several persons fighting among themselves for the use of the body.
Maharaj: They correspond to the various tendencies (samskaras) of the mind.
Can I make peace between them?
How can you? They are so contradictory! See them as they are -- mere habits of thoughts and feelings, bundles of memories and urges.
Yet they all say 'I am'.
It is only because you identify yourself with them. Once you realize that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say 'I am', you are free of all your 'persons' and their demands. The sense 'I am' is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying: I am young, I am rich etc. But self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.
I can now understand that I am not the person, but that which, when reflected in the person, gives it a sense of being. Now, about the Supreme? In what way do I know myself as the Supreme?
The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realize that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the Source, the Inexhaustible Possibility.
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