Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
March 23, 1981
I am That which represents the absence of what is seen. If you try to accommodate what I say within this concept that you are a human being, it cannot be done. In spite of listening to all I have said, most of you will continue to identify yourself as a body, and you will look on me as an individual, but I am not that. My real presence is the absence of the phenomena that you see.
My sleep is not the kind you have, it is pure consciousness. When I sleep there is awareness of total manifestation and also the Unmanifest. There is no distinction between an individual and the total universe.
You think that I am ill but that is because you identify me with the body. I consider this illness as an extraordinary state which comes to the lot of a rare one so long as the individuality exists in the form of a body - but the importance of that is impossible to describe. That state is full of suffering; nevertheless, it is full of significance and it comes to a rare one.
The question of what one is comes only in manifestation, in comparison with other phenomena. In my state there is no phenomenon; my existence is prior to any manifestation. There is no question of who or what I am.
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