self-identifications ... the cause of bondage

[Guest guest]

Maharaj: The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not

the person. You are always the Supreme which appears at a given point of time

and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and

the manifold consciousness of the person.

 

Questioner: When I look at myself, I find I am several persons fighting among

themselves for the use of the body.

 

M: They correspond to the various tendencies (samskara) of the mind.

 

Q: Can I make peace between them?

 

M: How can you? They are so contradictory! See them as they are -- mere habits

of thoughts and feelings, bundles of memories and urges.

 

Q: Yet they all say 'I am'.

 

M: It is only because you identify yourself with them. Once you realise that

whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say 'I am', you are

free of all your 'persons' and their demands. The sense 'I am' is your own. You

cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying: I am

young. I am rich etc. But such self-identifications are patently false and the

cause of bondage.

 

I Am That, Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj