The
Nisargadatta Song of Beyond I Am: Selections from I Am That
...you are not
this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point
of 'I am' ... . 'I am this, I am that' is dream, while pure 'I
am' has the stamp of reality on it. You have tasted so many
things -- all came to naught. Only the sense 'I am' persisted --
unchanged. Stay with the changeless among the changeful, until
you are able to go beyond.
When the 'I am
myself' goes, the 'I am all' comes. When the 'I am all' goes, 'I
am' comes. When even 'I am' goes, reality alone is...
By knowing what you
are not, you come to know your Self. The way back to your Self is
through refusal and rejection. One thing is certain: the real is
not imaginary, it is not a product of the mind. Even the sense 'I
am' is not continuous, though it is a useful pointer; it shows
where to seek, but not what to seek. Just have a good look at it.
Once you are convinced that you cannot truthfully say anything
except 'I am', and that nothing that can be pointed at, can be
your Self, the need for the 'I am' is over -- you are no longer
intent on verbalizing what you are. All you need is to get rid of
the tendency to define yourself. All definitions apply to your
body only and to its expressions. Once this obsession with the
body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously
and effortlessly. ... . We discover it by being earnest, by
searching, enquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving
one's life to this discovery.
That in which
consciousness happens, the universal consciousness or mind, we
call the ether of consciousness. All the objects of consciousness
form the universe. What is beyond both, supporting both, is the
supreme state, a state of utter stillness and silence. Whoever
goes there, disappears. It is unreachable by words, or mind. You
may call it God, or Parabrahman, or Supreme Reality, but these
are names given by the mind. It is the nameless, contentless,
effortless and spontaneous state, beyond being and non-being.
Perfection is a
state of the mind, when it is pure. I am beyond the mind,
whatever its state, pure or impure. Awareness is my nature;
ultimately I am beyond being and non-being.
The idea -- 'I am
the witness only' will purify the body and the mind and open the
eye of wisdom. Then man goes beyond illusion and his heart is
free of all desires. Just like ice turns to water, and water to
vapour, and vapour dissolves in air and disappears in space, so
does the body dissolve into pure awareness (chidakash), then into
pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all existence and
non-existence.
One thing is quite
clear to me: all that is, lives and moves and has its being in
consciousness; and I am in and beyond that consciousness. I am in
it as the witness. I am beyond it as Being.
To be a living
being is not the ultimate state; there is something beyond, much
more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being, neither
living nor non-living. It is a state of pure awareness, beyond
the limitations of space and time. Once the illusion that the
body-mind is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it
becomes a part of living.
The witness only
registers events. In the abeyance of the mind even the sense 'I
am' dissolves. There is no 'I am' without the mind.
You live, you feel,
you think. By giving attention to your living, feeling and
thinking, you free yourself from them and go beyond them. Your
personality dissolves and only the witness remains. Then you go
beyond the witness. Do not ask how it happens. Just search within
yourself.
All I can say truly
is: 'I am', all else is inference. But the inference has become a
habit. Destroy all habits of thinking and seeing. The sense 'I
am' is the manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call
Self, God, Reality or by any other name. The 'I am' is in the
world; but it is the key which can open the door out of the
world. The moon dancing on the water is seen in the water, but it
is caused by the moon in the sky and not by the water.
As long as we
imagine ourselves to be separate personalities, one quite apart
from another, we cannot grasp reality which is essentially
impersonal. First we must know ourselves as witnesses only,
dimensionless and timeless centres of observation, and then
realize that immense ocean of pure awareness, which is both mind
and matter and beyond both.
Have you felt the
all-embracing emptiness in which the universe swims like a cloud
in the blue sky?
This 'I am' is an
announcement: it is not the real. It has come out of something
else. What the real is, I am not telling you, because words
negate that. Whatever I am telling you is not the truth, because
it has come out of that 'I am'. The fact is, I cannot describe
reality to you, I cannot explain it, because it is beyond
expression.
When you pursue the
spiritual path, the path of self-knowing, all your desires, all
your attachments, will just drop away, provided you investigate
and hold on to that with which you are trying to understand the
self. Then what happens? Your 'I-am-ness' is the state 'to be'.
You are 'to be' and attached to that state. You love to be. Now,
as I said, ... your desires drop off. And what is the primary
desire? To be. When you stay put in that beingness for some time,
that desire also will drop off. This is very important. When this
is dropped off, you are in the Absolute -- a most essential
state.
When you are in
consciousness, you understand the nature of consciousness and you
recede. Your progress continues. This consciousness is slowly
extinguishing itself; knowingly it is disappearing. But nothing
affects You, because that is the Absolute. Just like when the
flame is gone, the smoke is gone, the sky remains.
Take one sentence
of what has been said here, and stay with it. That is enough;
that will lead you to your source.
The
Nisargadatta Song of Beyond I Am: Selections from "The
Wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj", by Robert Powell
Spiritual maturity is being ready to let go everything. Giving up is a first step, but real giving-up is the insight that there's nothing to be given up, since nothing is your property.
When you know thoughts and their wonderful powers, and liberate them from what has poisoned them - the idea of an own, separate person -, you just let them alone, such that they can perform their appropriate work. Letting the thoughts do their own work at their own place is freedom.
When you don't require anything from the world and nothing from God, when you don't desire anything, when you don't strive for anything, don't expect anything, the divine will enter you, unasked and unex-pected.
The wish for truth is the best of all wishes, but it's still a wish. All wishes must be given up, that the truth can enter your life.
When you encounter sorrow and suffering, remain with it and don't try to escape from it. Don't throw yourself into blind activity. Neither learning nor acting can really help. Be with the presence of sorrow and uncover their roots - help with insight is real help.
Understanding confusion means becoming free of it.
The world and the thinking are states of being. The divine is not a state, it penetrates all states, but is no state of anything else.
Nothing extraordinary can happen to a consciousness knowing exactly what it wants.
Delayed reaction is wrong reaction. Thinking, feeling and action must be a unity and happen together with the situation requiring them.
What is the worth of a happiness for which you must strive and work? Real happiness is spontaneous and effortless.
In my view, everything happens by itself, quite spontaneously. But humans think they would work for a win, towards a purpose.
There's nothing from which the world could profit more than from giving up profit. A man who's no longer thinking in terms of winning and loosing is truly non-violent man, since he's above all conflicts.
It's the nature of thinking to differentiate things and specialize itself. There's no harm to that, but it isn't true when one thinks of oneself as separate from things. Things and humans are different, but not separate. Nature is one, reality is one. There are opposites, but no contradictions.
You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what you do not need.
There's no state in which one is seeing reality. WHO is seeing WHAT? You can only BE real. (And that you are always.) The problem exists only in thinking. Let all false ideas go, that's all. There's no need for true ideas. (Since there are none.)
Suffering is exclusively the result of attachment or resistance, it is a sign of lacking readiness to go on, to flow with life.
Spiritual maturity is being ready to let go everything. Giving up is a first step, but real giving-up is the insight that there's nothing to be given up, since nothing is your property.
When you know thoughts and their wonderful powers, and liberate them from what has poisoned them - the idea of an own, separate person -, you just let them alone, such that they can perform their appropriate work. Letting the thoughts do their own work at their own place is freedom.
When you don't require anything from the world and nothing from God, when you don't desire anything, when you don't strive for anything, don't expect anything, the divine will enter you, unasked and unex-pected.
The wish for truth is the best of all wishes, but it's still a wish. All wishes must be given up, that the truth can enter your life.
When you encounter sorrow and suffering, remain with it and don't try to escape from it. Don't throw yourself into blind activity. Neither learning nor acting can really help. Be with the presence of sorrow and uncover their roots - help with insight is real help.
Understanding confusion means becoming free of it.
The world and the thinking are states of being. The divine is not a state, it penetrates all states, but is no state of anything else.
Nothing extraordinary can happen to a consciousness knowing exactly what it wants.
Delayed reaction is wrong reaction. Thinking, feeling and action must be a unity and happen together with the situation requiring them.
What is the worth of a happiness for which you must strive and work? Real happiness is spontaneous and effortless.
In my view, everything happens by itself, quite spontaneously. But humans think they would work for a win, towards a purpose.
There's nothing from which the world could profit more than from giving up profit. A man who's no longer thinking in terms of winning and loosing is truly non-violent man, since he's above all conflicts.
It's the nature of thinking to differentiate things and specialize itself. There's no harm to that, but it isn't true when one thinks of oneself as separate from things. Things and humans are different, but not separate. Nature is one, reality is one. There are opposites, but no contradictions.
You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what you do not need.
There's no state in which one is seeing reality. WHO is seeing WHAT? You can only BE real. (And that you are always.) The problem exists only in thinking. Let all false ideas go, that's all. There's no need for true ideas. (Since there are none.)
Suffering is exclusively the result of attachment or resistance, it is a sign of lacking readiness to go on, to flow with life.
edited by Jerry Katz
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