The Conscious Presence

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Jan 27, 1981

M: Where are you from and who directed you here?

Q: I have been studying in a monastery in Thailand and the Abbot suggested I read the books of Maharaj's teachings. When I decided to come to India several friends, who had been to see Maharaj, told me to come here.

M: Do you have questions?

Q: Will Maharaj explain what is the practice he recommends?

M: There is no practice or discipline to be followed. Merely listen to me and accept what I tell you with firm conviction.

Q: What about the importance of meditation?

M: The only thing which anyone has is the conviction that one exists, the conscious presence. Meditation is only on that sense of presence, nothing else.

Q: During the meditation period one just sits and thinks of one's presence.

M: Not as an individual sitting, but the sense of presence without words. Meditate on that which knows you are sitting here. Your feeling that your body is here is identification with the body, but that which knows that this body is sitting here is the expression of the Absolute.

Q: Is this known with the mind?

M: Mind is the nature of the material; you are not the material, you are that which understands the material. That sense of presence will explain anything that is necessary to understand. Your effort will not do it, but that sense of presence, with which you become one, will do it.

Q: Should I develop this sense of presence throughout the day, in all my activities?

M: It is not necessary for you to concentrate on it, it is always there. Whatever you do, the essence of it is the body-mind. Let the body-mind do its work but understand that what is doing the work is not you, you are the sense of presence.

Whatever efforts you make, either physically or intellectually, will be essentially the effort of the body-mind. There is nothing for you to do. Whatever happens will happen by itself, with your conviction that you are totally apart from body and mind.

Q: That sounds easy, but it must be very hard.

M: Whatever you think, easy or hard, you stick to one conviction, that you are that sense of presence and not the body-mind. That which you are has no shape or color.