Break The Spell; Be Free!

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: Still the main point seems to escape me. l can admit that the world in which I live and move and have my being is of my own creation, a projection of myself, of my imagination, on the unknown world, the world as it is, the world of 'absolute matter', whatever this matter may be. The world of my own creation may be quite unlike the ultimate, the real world, just like the cinema screen is quite unlike the pictures projected onto it. Nevertheless, this absolute world exists, quite independent of myself.

M: Quite so, the world of Absolute reality, onto which your mind has projected a world of relative unreality is independent of yourself, for the very simple reason that it is yourself.

Is there no contradiction in terms? How can independence prove identity?

Examine the motion of change and you will see. What can change while you do not change, can be said to be independent of you. But what is changeless must be one with whatever else is changeless. For, duality implies interaction and interactions meats change. In other words, the absolutely material and the absolutely spiritual, the totally objective and the totally subjective are identical, both in substance and essence.

Like in a tri-dimensional picture, the light forms its own screen.

Any comparison will do. The main point to grasp is that you have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears, and that you have imprisoned yourself in it. Break the spell and be free.

How does one break the spell?

Assert your independence in thought and action. After all, all hangs on faith in yourself, on the conviction that what you see and hear, think and feel is real. Why not question your faith? No doubt, this world is painted by you on the screen of consciousness and is entirely your own private world. Only your sense I AM, though in the world, is not of the world. By no effort of logic or imagination can you change the I AM into I AM NOT. In the very denial of your being you assert it. Once you realize that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own imagination! However is the picture, beautiful or ugly, you are painting it and you are not bound by it. Realize that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real. See the imaginary as imaginary and be free of fear.

Just as the colors in this carpet are brought out by light but light is not the color, so is the world cause by you but you are not the world.

That which creates and sustains the world, you may call it God or Providence, but ultimately you are the proof that God exists, not the other way round. For, before any question about God can be put, you must be there to put it.