I Am

yahooyoda · Post by **yahooyoda** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:28 pm

http://www.sankaracharya.org/i_am_that.php

"The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Give up all questions except one: "Who am I?" After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The "I am" is certain. The "I am this" is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all that you are not -- body, feelings thoughts, time, space, this or that -- nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realise that you are the limitless being".

- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Dan Rowden · Post by **Dan Rowden** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:34 pm

Indeed. Not sure what else to say to that.

mikiel · Post by **mikiel** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:29 am

Dan Rowden wrote:Indeed. Not sure what else to say to that.

Are you the same person who just told me, "There is no "I" that is conscious of anything -the "I" and all ideas about it are just more items of content in the overall awareness - i.e. set of appearances."??
mikiel

Dan Rowden · Post by **Dan Rowden** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 9:43 am

That's right. The point is consciousness doesn't abide in or arise from some particular place - like an inherently existent self or soul etc.

Diebert van Rhijn · Post by **Diebert van Rhijn** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 10:02 pm

Or in Sri's own words:

Nisargadatta wrote:To identify oneself with the particular is all the sin there is. The impersonal is real, the personal appears and disappears. "I am" is the impersonal Being. "I am this" is the person. The person is relative, and the pure Being fundamental.

Fundamental, absolute. The common mistake being that one introduces a personal element, a particular through the backdoor. Like a Witness, a feeling, a giant concept, a belief, a construct of some kind which gets mistaken for the real.

Nisargadatta wrote:The person comes into being when there is a basis for it, an organism, a body. In it, the absolute is reflected as awareness. Pure awareness becomes self-awareness. When there is a self, self- awareness is the witness. When there is no self to witness, there is no witnessing either

Or when he says: "Awareness, mind, matter - they are one reality in its two aspects as immovable and movable", comparable to the changing and unchanging [constant] aspects as touched upon in the Tao Te Ching.

Nisargadatta made quite a few striking observations with amazing clarity. At times he says things that I believe are based on some remaining delusions or perhaps just poor choice of words or translations. Never mind those, here are some of his highlights since I just went over them:

Nisargadatta wrote:Most of your experiences are unconscious. The conscious ones are very few. You are unaware of the fact because to you only the conscious ones count. Become aware of the unconscious. Desire and fear are the obscuring and distorting factors. When mind is free of them the unconscious becomes accessible

Nisargadatta wrote:You must find your own way. Unless you find it yourself, it will not be your own way and will take you nowhere. Earnestly live your truth as you have found it, act on the little you have understood. It is earnestness that will take you through, not cleverness - your own or another's.

Nisargadatta wrote:Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion. It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is to know your mind well. Not that the mind will help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind disabling you. You have to be alert, or else your mind will play false with you. It is like watching a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the same way, you give a lot of attention to the mind without expecting anything from it.

GENIUS FORUMS

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