Mr. Natural

[Guest guest]

Sri nisargadatta Maharaj:

 

Stop searching, and see -- it is here and now -- it is that 'I am' you know

so well.

 

You cannot meaningfully say 'this is what I am'. It just makes no sense.

 

'I am' is first-hand and needs no proofs. Stay with it.

 

Be content with what you are sure of. And the only thing you can be sure of

is 'I am'. Stay with it, and reject everything else. This is Yoga.

 

Go back to that state of pure being, where the 'I am' is still in its purity

before it got contaminated with 'this I am' or 'that I am'. Your burden is

of false self-identifications -- abandon them all.

 

Don't you see that it is your very search for happiness that makes you

miserable? Try the other way: indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither

asking nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which 'I am' is

timelessly present. Soon you will realize that peace and happiness are in

your very nature and it is only seeking them through some particular

channels, that disturbs.

 

Give your heart and mind to brooding over the 'I am', what is it, how is it,

what is its source, its life, its meaning. It is very much like digging a

well. You reject all that is not water, till you reach the life-giving

spring.

 

The 'I am' that pursues the pleasant and shuns the unpleasant is false; the

'I am' that sees pleasure and pain as inseparable sees rightly.

 

Those who practise the sadhana of focussing their minds on 'I am' may feel

related to others who have followed the same sadhana and succeeded.

 

You need not worry about your worries. Just be. Do not try to be quiet; do

not make 'being quiet' into a task to be performed. Don't be restless about

'being quiet', miserable about 'being happy'. Just be aware that you are and

remain aware -- don't say: 'yes, I am; what next?' There is not 'next' in 'I

am'. It is a timeless state.

 

Part Four

 

On waking up, was it not the sense 'I am' that came first?

 

The sense 'I am' is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of

things to it -- body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions, etc. All these

self-identifications are misleading. Because of them you take yourself to be

what you are not.

 

What is mine is mine and was mine even when God was not. Of course, it is a

very tiny little thing, a speck -- the sense 'I am', the fact of being.

 

The light by which you see the world, which is God, is the tiny little

spark: 'I am', apparently so small, yet the first and the last in every act

of knowing and loving.

 

Without the 'I am' there is nothing. All knowledge is about the 'I am'.

 

Outside the Self there is nothing. All is one and all is contained in 'I

am'.

 

Give it all up and be ready for the real to assert itself. This

self-assertion is best expressed in words: 'I am'. Nothing else has being.

Of this you are absolutely certain.

 

Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. When

you can see everything as it is, you will also see yourself as you are. It

is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it

is, will also show you your own face. The thought 'I am' is the polishing

cloth.

 

'I am' is ever afresh. You do not need to remember in order to be.  ... At

present your being is mixed up with experiencing. All you need is to unravel

being from the tangle of experiences. Once you have known pure being,

without being this or that, you will discern it among experiences and you

will no longer be misled by names and forms.

 

....the 'I am' in movement creates the world. The 'I am' at peace becomes the

Absolute.

 

In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that moves

rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, like

the pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. You are

that tiny point and by your movement the world is ever re-created. Stop

moving and there will be no world. Look within and you will find that the

point of light is the reflection of the immensity of light in the body, as

the sense 'I am'. There is only light, all else appears.

 

The 'I am' is at the root of all appearance and the permanent link in the

succession of events that we call life... .

 

Human beings die every second, the fear and the agony of dying hangs over

the world like a cloud. No wonder you too are afraid. But once you know that

the body alone dies and not the continuity of memory and the sense of 'I am'

reflected in it, you are afraid no longer.

 

People differ, but all are faced with the fact of their own existence. 'I

am' is the ultimate fact; 'Who am I?' is the ultimate question to which

everybody must find an answer.

 

Delve deeply into the sense 'I am' and you will surely discover that the

perceiving centre is universal, as universal as the light that illumines the

world. All that happens in the universe happens to you, the silent witness.

On the other hand, whatever is done, is done by you, the universal and

inexhaustible energy.

 

Before the mind -- I am. 'I am' is not a thought in the mind; the mind

happens to me, I do not happen to the mind. And since time and space are in

the mind, I am beyond time and space, eternal and omnipresent.

 

....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...