"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

Friday, February 12, 2016

You Are That Eternally

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
February 28, 1981

M: When the body was formed you did not bring any information with you. Later on you collected information externally, and on that basis you are full of pride and conduct your dealings. Did you bring any information with you, right from the beginning?

Q: No, I had no information.

M: If you had no information, who is the customer for all this now? You have the primary information that you are which sprouted spontaneously in you - that was your primary capital and all this further mischief is because of that primary information. Is it not so?

Q: That is true, yes.

M: Do you understand what it is, to have your own being, to be?

Q: I do not clearly understand.

M: It is not to be understood through words. Whatever knowledge you derive out of words is ignorance only. To be in not to be understood, it is.

Q: Is it just a feeling?

M: Who knows the consciousness?

Q: Consciousness knows itself.

M: Consciousness understanding consciousness  - by this method you will not have emancipation. You have to ask yourself, "Who knows this beingness?" If I know that I am, at a particular point, then it means that prior to that point I did not know that I am. That which was not aware of Its existence became aware of Its existence when the consciousness  came, and this consciousness is only the nature of the physical body - it is made of material and is therefore temporary.

Q: There is no knowledge in the Absolute?

M: All knowledge is only in the grasp of the five senses and words. Suppose these three, the waking state, deep sleep and the knowledge I AM are not there - what are you?

Q: Just knowingness, consciousness ?

M: Is this knowingness, consciousness , in your association continuously, forever?

Q: No.

M: Then give it up. Why do you lean on that which will not be in your association eternally? All scriptures say that only the Parabrahman is the truth, nothing else is, and you are That eternally.

Q: Why did I separate myself from That?

M: When nothing else but That prevails, how can you be separate from It?

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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