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  " Manuel V. Hernandez " <manuel1498>

Date:  Sun Mar 17, 2002  11:47 pm

Subject:  Pointers From Nisargadatta Maharaj - Chapter 36

 

 

 

No 'One' is Born:  No 'One " Dies

Pointers from Nisargadatta Maharaj

By Ramesh S. Balsekar

Chapter 36

Page 110

 

No 'One' is Born: No 'One' Dies   

 

    Maharaj must have bee thinking about the subject as he

climbed up the steps to his loft-room.  He started talking about it

as soon as he had taken his seat and settled himself.  This was

no unusual.

 

    He said people these days are so much enslaved by the

gross utilities of life that they hardly have the time to observe

themselves critically.  They wake up in the morning and

immediately start planning the day's activities.  For activity to

them is a virtue and contemplative thought a sort of dead fish.  If

such self-imposed pressure were avoided, they would find it

most interesting to watch the process of awakening.  They would

notice, for instance, that between the period of the deep sleep,

when they are not conscious of anything at all, and the time

when they are fully awake, there is an interregnum when

consciousness is just stirring and the mind weaves its fantasies

into a light dream that ends when they are fully awake.

 

    What is the first thing that happens when you are awake? 

Asked Maharaj.  Have you ever really experienced it?  And

observed it?  If you were asked, Maharaj continued, about the

first thing that happens when you are awake, you probably be

inclined to say that you see the objects in the room.  Every object

has a three-dimensional form, which is perceived by a 'you'. 

What is it that perceives the form of an object?  Whatever

perceives the form of the object must surely exist prior to the

object perceived.  You can perceive the various objects, including

parts of your own body, which are also object to whatever it is

that perceives.  Therefore, that which perceives is not the body,

which is only an object since it also can be perceived.  The

perceiver is the subject and thing perceived is the object.

 

    What is it that perceives?  It is the consciousness, the

being-ness, the I-am-ness, that is the perceiver.  As soon as you

wake up, if you were not in so much of a hurry to get up and go

about your daily routine, you would notice that waking in fact

means distinctively 'being present' i.e. conscious of being

present, not as a particular individual with such and such a

name, but conscious presence as such, which it is that gives

sentience to a sentient being and enables the various senses to

function.

 

    You would then realize that there are two notional, but distinct

centers.  There is this spot of consciousness on behalf of which

you instinctively say 'I', and there is the objective centre of the

psychosomatic apparatus which acts in the world, with which

you mistakenly identify yourself with a particular name.  One is

subjectively what-you-are as 'I', the other is a physical form which

is what-you-appear-to-be as 'me'.  Actually, there are no 'me's

and 'you's, only 'I'.

 

    Understand this profoundly ---- and be free; free of the

mistaken identity.

 

    Then there is the final step to be apprehended.  This

consciousness is the 'such-ness', the 'taste' of the essence of

food of which the body is made and by which it is sustained.  to

that extent, consciousness too is time-bound like the body. 

When the body 'dies', consciousness disappears like a flame

when the fuel is exhausted.  Indeed, consciousness is duration,

without which an object would not last long enough to be

manifested and perceived.  What then, are 'you'?  So long as the

body exists, you are this conscious presence within, the

perceiving principle; when the body dies, 'you' are the Absolute

Awareness into which the temporal consciousness merges. 

And then there is no longer the sense of being present. 

Remember, therefore, that no 'one' is born and no 'one dies,

because all the forms (that appear, remain for the duration and

then disappears,) are your expression, your mirrorization.

 

 

 

Excerpt from the book Pointers from Nisargadatta Maharaj 

 

Appendix 1 page 189

" What is it without which no one would be able to perceive

anything or do anything?

Without which you would not be able to ask any questions and I

would not be able to answer?

If you and I were not conscious, could we have had this

conversation?

What is 'consciousness'?

Is it not the sense of being present, being alive?

This sense of Conscious Presence does not really have

reference to any individual being present:  It is sense of

presence as such. "

 

 

 

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