Nisargadatta..You are not the "I Am".

[Guest guest]

December 26, 1980

 

 

 

Maharaj: Out of what is the body created?

 

 

 

Q: It is an expression of consciousness.

 

 

 

M: It this body not composed of the five elements? You know that you exist;

does this knowledge depend on the five elements? The consciousness cannot be

known without the body. It depends on the form.

 

 

 

Q: Do you mean that without the body I do not know that I am?

 

 

 

M: That is correct. From your own experience, not what you have heard or

read; can you know that you exist without the body?

 

 

 

Q I exist without this body.

 

 

 

M: Forget what you have read. When you did not have the experience of this

body, did you have the experience of being?

 

 

 

Q: My English is not very good, I cannot express it, but I know " I AM."

 

 

 

M: Before you were born, could you have felt or sensed or known you exist?

A jnani is free because he sees that the body is made up of the five elements

and it works according to the nature of these elements. I see that body, but I

am not concerned with whatever that body does. There is nothing in it with

which I can identify. The essence of the combination of the five elements is the

sense of being, of existing. It has all come simultaneously; I have no part in

it. Feeling that I am present depends on having a body; I am neither the body

nor the conscious presence.

 

In this body is the subtle principle " I Am"; that principle witnesses all

this, they are not yours. Still further, you are not the "I Am".

 

 

 

Q: What am "I" then?

 

 

 

M: Who is asking?

 

 

 

Q: There is nothing here, no "I"?

 

 

 

M: Who is asking this?

 

 

 

Q: There is a sense of something; I don't know what it is?

 

 

 

M: If you feel that sense of something, can it be the truth? When this

consciousness goes into oblivion who is to say what that state is?

 

 

 

Q: I don't know.

 

 

 

M: Because your "I Amness" is not there, you do not know yourself. When

you began knowing that you are, you did a lot of mischief, but when the "I Am"

is not there, there is no question of mischief.

 

 

 

Q: Is the "I AM" there all the time, as long as my body is there?

 

 

 

M: The "I AM" is absent only in the state of samadhi, when the self merges

into the Self. Otherwise, it will be there. In the state of a realized person

the "I Am" is there; he just doesn't give much importance to it. A jnani is not

guided by a concept.

 

 

 

Q: Do we have a relationship, Maharaj, when I think I should be here with

you?

 

 

 

M: The very thought is the relationship.

 

 

 

Q: The intensity of my longing to be here made me wonder if Maharaj thinks

of his disciples?

 

 

 

M; I think of them more than you know.