You Are The Source

 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: Are there levels of awareness?

M: There are levels in consciousness, but not in awareness. It is of one block, homogenous. Its reflection in the mind is love and understanding. There are levels of clarity in understanding and intensity in love, but not in their source. The source is simple and single, but its gifts are infinite. Only do not take the gifts for the source. Realize yourself as the source and not as the river, that is all.

Q: I am the river too.

M: Of course, you are. As an I AM you are the river, flowing between the banks of the body. But you are also the source and the ocean and the clouds in the sky. Wherever there is life and consciousness, you are. Smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest, you are, while all else appears.

Q: The sense of being and the sense of living - are they one and the same, or different?

M: The identity in space creates one, the continuity in time creates the other.

Q: You said once that the seer, seeing and the seen are one single thing, not three. To me the three are separate. I do not doubt your words, only I do not understand.

M: Look closely and you will see that the seer and the seen appear only when there is seeing. They are attributes of seeing. When you say 'I am seeing this', 'I am' and 'this' come with seeing, not before. You cannot have an unseen 'this' nor an unseeing 'I am'.

Q: I can say: 'I do not see'.

M: The 'I am seeing this' has become 'i am seeing my not seeing' or 'I am seeing darkness'. The seeing remains. In the triplicity: the known, the knowing and the knower, only the knowing is a fact. The 'I am' and 'this' are doubtful. Who knows? What is known? There is no certainty, except that there is knowing.

Q: Why am I so sure of knowing but not of the knower?

M: Knowing is a reflection of your true nature along with being and loving. The knower and the known are added by the mind. It is in the nature of the mind to create a subject-object duality, where there is none.