I Am That: from Ch 1, The Sense of 'I Am' - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

[Guest guest]

"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 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 that you are not what you perceive. "

For me, the significant thing about this particular teaching is that it brings the mind to silence. It leaves me asking the question, "Well, who am I then"? It is a question that the mind cannot answer and, if only briefly, it has nothing to say. And so, there is a need to keep coming back to this point, where the mind knows that it doesn't know and falls silent. There is great beauty and possibility in this silence. What do you all see in this teaching; what do you understand from it?

Grant