Maharaj

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Excerpt from " I Am That I Am " - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

 

Q: Then what am I?

 

M: It is enough to know what you are not. You need not know what you

are. For, as long as knowledge means description in terms of what is

already known, perceptual, or conceptual, there can be no such thing

as self-knowledge, for what you *are* cannot be described, except as

total negation. All you can say is: `I am not this, I am not that'.

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

sense. What you can point out as `this' or `that' cannot be yourself.

Surely, you cannot be `something' else. You are nothing perceivable,

or imaginable. Yet, without you there can be neither perception nor

imagination. You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the

body acting; the very act of perceiving shows you are not what you

perceive. Can there be perception, experience, without you? An

experience must `belong'. Somebody must come and declare it as his

own. Without an experiencer the experience is not real. It is the

experiencer that imparts reality to experience. An experience which

you cannot have, of what value is it to you?

 

Q: The sense of being an experiencer, the sense of `I am', is it not

also an experience?

 

M: Obviously, every thing experienced is an experience. And in every

experience there arises the experiencer of it. Memory creates the

illusion of continuity. In reality each experience has its own

experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at

the root of all experiencer-experience relations. Identity and

continuity are not the same. Just as each flower has its own colour,

but all colours are caused by the same light, so do many experiencers

appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in

memory, identical in essence. This essence is the root, the

foundation, the timeless and spaceless `possibility' of all

experience.

 

Q: How do I get at it?

 

M: You need not get at it, for you *are* it. It will get at you, if

you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the

real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining

yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are

the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come

great love which is not choice nor predilection, nor attachment, but

a power which makes all things love-worthy and loveable.

 

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, from " I Am That I Am "