"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

Monday, June 8, 2015

Anything You Know - Not True

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

January 20, 1981


The Absolute is .. to give you an idea .. there is a place in India where you have never been; if a description were given it would still remain a description to you. The universal consciousness, the beingness, is anything that is seen. When the universal consciousness manifests itself as a phenomenon, the phenomenon is that limited form which thinks that it is independent but is not. The phenomenon is the manifestation of consciousness; when it is not manifested it is immanent in everything. If you think you have understood it is not so. Anything that you know is not the truth.

The body is made up of the five elements and each body behaves according to the proportion of the combination of the five elements. So long as one is identified with the essence of the five elements it is impossible to understand, because that which is trying to understand is psuedo entity. The biggest drawback to understanding is the concept that I am an entity and, secondly, that any concept I have is the truth.

It is only when it is understood with the greatest conviction that there is no entity, and what is happening is merely the program of the functioning of consciousness - there is merely the functioning, there is no entity who is causing it and there is no entity who is suffering - only then can the disidentification take place. Otherwise all kinds of misconceptions occur.

You have not understood until you have solved the riddle of the one who thinks he has understood. Do I identify myself with the dirt which I blow from my nose? The stuff of which this body has been created, is it any different? I am neither the material from which the body has been created nor the consciousness which is immanent in the material.

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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