"The very first step in understanding what this is all about is giving up the concept of an active, volitional 'I' as a separate entity and accepting the passive role of perceiving and functioning as a process." - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

All Concepts To Be Thrown Away

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
December 7, 1980

Q: The desire for liberation is also a desire, isn't it?

M: Don't talk about liberation, talk about yourself, what you are. When you understand that, both knowledge and ignorance disappear. You only require knowledge so long as the ignorance is there.

A knowledgeable person can tell anything to an ignorant person to remove his ignorance. For that purpose he takes the aid of the so-called worldly knowledge, concepts, and both the worldly conceptual knowledge and the ignorance go simultaneously. A jnani will give you any concepts to remove your ignorance. This "I Amness" is the knowledge and you are embracing that. To remove that he gives you all these concepts; to understand that you are not this "I Amness" which is an outcome of the food essence product. Once you realize that, whatever concepts he has given you, together with this "I Amness", are to be thrown out. What remains is the Absolute.

This is the actual state of affairs. You can never say I am like this or that - you are without knowledge. Rarely will one understand this and transcend the domain of consciousness. 

After listening to my talks, you think it is all very simple, but it is not that easy.

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सर्वभूताधिवासं यद्भूतेषु च वसत्यपि।
सर्वानुग्राहकत्वेन तद्स्म्यहं वासुदेवः॥

That in whom reside all beings and who resides in all beings,
who is the giver of grace to all, the Supreme Soul of the universe, the limitless being:
I AM THAT. -- Amritabindu Upanishad