I AM: If you miss it, you miss all

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Beyond the mind there is no such thing as experience. Experience is a dual state. You cannot talk of reality as an experience. Once this is understood, you will no longer look for being and becoming as separate and opposite. In reality they are one and inseparable, like roots and branches of the same tree. Both can exist only in the light of consciousness, which again, arises in the wake of the sense of 'I am'. This is the primary fact. If you miss it, you miss all.

Q. Is the sense of being a product of experience only? The great saying (mahavakya) tat-sat is it a mere mode of mentation?

M. Whatever is spoken is speech only. Whatever is thought is thought only. The real meaning is unexplainable, though experienceably. The mahavakya is true, but your ideas are false, for all ideas (kalpana) are false.

Q. Is the conviction 'I am That' false?

M. Of course. Conviction is a mental state. In 'That' there is no 'I am'. With the sense 'I am' emerging, 'That' is obscured, as with the sun rising the stars are wiped out. But as with the sun comes light, so with the sense of self comes bliss (chidananda). The cause of bliss is sought in the 'not I' and thus the bondage begins.