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Post by Reefs on Jun 11, 2019 4:46:58 GMT -5
Meditation
Q: All teachers advise to meditate. What is the purpose of meditation?
M: We know the outer world of sensations and actions, but of our inner world of thoughts and feelings we know very little. The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness.
Incidentally practice of meditation affects deeply our character. We are slaves to what we do not know; of what we know we are masters. Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover and understand its causes and its workings, we overcome it by the very knowing; the unconscious dissolves when brought into the conscious. The dissolution of the unconscious releases energy; the mind feels adequate and becomes quiet.
Q: What is the use of a quiet mind?
M: When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be something: 'I am this, I am that', continues, but only as a part of the objective world. Its identification with the witness snaps.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 6
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Post by Reefs on Jun 11, 2019 4:52:00 GMT -5
The Mind
M: The entire universe (mahadakash) exists only in consciousness (chidakash), while I have my stand in the Absolute (paramakash). In pure being, consciousness arises; in consciousness, the world appears and disappears. All there is, is me; all there is, is mine. Before all beginnings, after all endings — I am. All has its being in me, in the ‘I am’, that shines in every living being. Even not-being is unthinkable without me. Whatever happens, I must be there to witness it.
Q: Why do you deny being to the word?
M: I do not negate the world. I see it as appearing in consciousness, which is the totality of the known in the immensity of the unknown. What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear, but not to be. Whatever is time bound is momentary and has no reality.
Q: Surely, you see the actual world as it surrounds you. You seem to behave quite normally!
M: That is how it appears to you. What in your case occupies the entire field of consciousness is a mere speck in mine.
Q: Are you not immersed timelessly in an abstraction?
M: Abstraction is mental and verbal and disappears in sleep, or swoon; it reappears in time; I am in my own state (swarupa) timelessly in the now. Past and future are in mind only - I am now.
Q: The world too is now.
M: Which world?
Q: The world around us.
M: It is your world you have in mind, not mine. What do you know of me, when even my talk with you is in your world only? You have no reason to believe that my world is identical with yours. My world is real, true, as it is perceived, while yours appears and disappears, according to the state of your mind… As long as the mind is there, your body and your world are there. Your world is mind-made, subjective, enclosed within the mind, fragmentary, temporary, personal, hanging on the thread of memory.
Q: So is yours?
M: Oh no. I live in a world of realities, while yours is of imagination. Your world is personal, private, unshareable, intimately your own. Nobody can enter it, see as you see, hear as you hear, feel your emotions and think your thoughts. In your world you are truly alone, enclosed in your ever-changing dream, which you take for life. My world is an open world, common to all, accessible to all. In my world there is community, insight, love, real quality; the individual is the total, the totality - in the individual. All are one and the One is all.
Q: Is your world full of things and people as is mine?
M: No, it is full of myself.
Q: But do you see and hear as we do?
M: Yes, I appear to hear and see and talk and act, but to me it just happens, as to you digestion or perspiration happens. The body-mind machine looks after it, but leaves me out of it. Just as you do not need to worry about growing hair, so I need not worry about words and actions. They just happen and leave me unconcerned, for in my world nothing ever goes wrong.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 7
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Post by Reefs on Jun 12, 2019 1:58:49 GMT -5
The Self Stands Beyond Mind
Q: I want happiness.
M: True happiness cannot be found in things that change and pass away. Pleasure and pain alternate inexorably. Happiness comes from the Self and can be found in the Self only. Find your real self (swarupa) and all else will come with it.
Q: If my real self is peace and love, why is it so restless?
M: It is not your real being that is restless, but its reflection in the mind appears restless because the mind is restless. It is just like the reflection of the moon in the water stirred by the wind. The wind of desire stirs the mind and the ‘me’, which is but a reflection of the Self in the mind, appears changeful. But these ideas of movement, of restlessness, of pleasure and pain are all in the mind. The Self stands beyond the mind, aware, but unconcerned.
Q: How to reach it?
M: You are the Self, here and now. Leave the mind alone, stand aware and unconcerned and you will realize that to stand alert but detached, watching events come and go, is an aspect of your real nature.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 8
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Post by Reefs on Jun 12, 2019 2:03:05 GMT -5
Responses of Memory
Q: Some say the universe was created. Others say that it always existed and is forever undergoing transformations. Some say it is subject to eternal laws. Others deny even causality. Some say the world is real. Others — that it has no being whatsoever.
M: Which world are you enquiring about?
Q: The world of my perceptions, of course.
M: The world you can perceive is a very small world indeed. And it is entirely private. Take it to be a dream and be done with it.
Q: How can I take it to be a dream? A dream does not last.
M: How long will your own little world last?
Q: After all, my little world is but a part of the total.
M: Is not the idea of a total world a part of your personal world? The universe does not come to tell you that you are a part of it. It is you who have invented a totality to contain you as a part. In fact all you know is your own private world, however well you have furnished it with your imaginations and expectations.
Q: Surely, perception is not imagination!
M: What else? Perception is recognition, is it not? Something entirely unfamiliar can be sensed, but cannot be perceived. Perception involves memory.
Q: Granted, but memory does not make it illusion.
M: Perception, imagination, expectation, anticipation, illusion — all are based on memory. There are hardly any border lines between them. They just merge into each other. All are responses of memory.
Q: Admitted that the world in which I live is subjective and partial. What about you? In what kind of world do you live?
M: My world is just like yours. I see, I hear, I feel, I think, I speak and act in a world I perceive, just like you. But with you it is all, with me it is almost nothing.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 9
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Post by Reefs on Jun 12, 2019 2:06:11 GMT -5
Witnessing
Q: What does it mean to know myself? By knowing myself what exactly do I come to know?
M: All that you are not.
Q: And not what I am?
M: What you are, you already are. By knowing what you are not, you are free of it and remain in your own natural state. It all happens quite spontaneously and effortlessly.
Q: And what do I discover?
M: You discover that there is nothing to discover. You are what you are and that is all.
Q: But ultimately what am I?
M: The ultimate denial of all you are not.
Q: The witnessing — is it not my real nature?
M: For witnessing, there must be something else to witness. We are still in duality!
Q: What about witnessing the witness? Awareness of awareness?
M: Putting words together will not take you far. Go within and discover what you are not. Nothing else matters.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 10
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Post by Reefs on Jun 12, 2019 5:33:02 GMT -5
Awareness and Consciousness
Q: You use the words ‘aware’ and ‘conscious’. Are they not the same?
M: Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 11
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Post by Reefs on Jun 12, 2019 11:15:30 GMT -5
The Supreme, the Mind and the Body
Q: What is in the center of consciousness?
M: That which cannot be given name and form, for it is without quality and beyond consciousness. You may say it is a point in consciousness, which is beyond consciousness. Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of paper, so is the supreme state in the very center of consciousness, and yet beyond consciousness… That in which consciousness happens, the universal consciousness or mind, we call the ether of consciousness. All the objects of consciousness form the universe. What is beyond both, supporting both, is the supreme state, a state of utter stillness and silence. Whoever goes there, disappears. It is unreachable by words, or mind. You may call it God, or Parabrahman, or Supreme Reality, but these are names given by the mind. It is the nameless, contentless, effortless and spontaneous state, beyond being and not being.
Q: The gnani — is he the witness or the Supreme?
M: He is the Supreme, of course, but he can also be viewed as the universal witness.
Q: But he remains a person?
M: When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realization the person ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself. The person has no being in itself; it is a reflection in the mind of the witness, the ‘I am’, which again is a mode of being.
Q: Is the Supreme conscious?
M: Neither conscious nor unconscious, I am telling you from experience.
Q: I have cut my hand. It healed. By what power did it heal?
M: By the power of life.
Q: What is that power?
M: It is consciousness. All is conscious.
Q: What is the source of consciousness?
M: Consciousness itself is the source of everything.
Q: Can there be life without consciousness?
M: No, nor consciousness without life. They are both one. But in reality only the Ultimate is. The rest is a matter of name and form. And as long as you cling to the idea that only what has name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace — immersed in the deep silence of reality.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 13
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Post by Reefs on Jun 13, 2019 0:07:42 GMT -5
Appearances and Reality
Q: Repeatedly you have been saying that events are causeless, a thing just happens and no cause can be assigned to it. Surely everything has a cause, or several causes. How am I to understand the causelessness of things?
M: From the highest point of view the world has no cause.
Q: The world is governed by causality. Everything is inter-linked.
M: Of course, everything is inter-linked. And therefore everything has numberless causes. The entire universe contributes to the least thing. A thing is as it is, because the world is as it is. You see, you deal in gold ornaments and I — in gold. Between the different ornaments there is no causal relation. When you re-melt an ornament to make another, there is no causal relation between the two. The common factor is the gold. But you cannot say gold is the cause. It cannot be called a cause, for it causes nothing by itself. It is reflected in the mind as ‘I am’, as the ornament’s particular name and shape. Yet all is only gold. In the same way reality makes everything possible and yet nothing that makes a thing what it is, its name and form, comes from reality…
You are confused, because you believe that you are in the world, not the world in you. Who came first — you or your parents? You imagine that you were born at a certain time and place, that you have a father and a mother, a body and a name. This is your sin and your calamity! ...To take appearance for reality is a grievous sin and the cause of all calamities. You are the all-pervading, eternal and infinitely creative awareness — consciousness. All else is local and temporary. Don’t forget what you are.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 14
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Post by Reefs on Jun 13, 2019 0:12:44 GMT -5
The Gnani
M: Consider: The world in which you live, who else knows about it?
Q: You know. Everybody knows.
M: Did anybody come from outside of your world to tell you? Myself and everybody else appear and disappear in your world. We are all at your mercy.
Q: I exist in your world as you exist in mine.
M: You have no evidence of my world. You are completely wrapped up in the world of your own making.
Q: I see. Completely, but — hopelessly?
M: Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way by which you got into it. You got into it by forgetting what you are and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are… You and your world are dream states. In dream you may suffer agonies. None knows them, and none can help you…
Q: What about the person?
M: The person is a very small thing. Actually it is a composite, it cannot be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there. It is but the shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure being is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is known takes the shape of a person, based on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a projection of the knower onto the screen of the mind.
Q: The mirror is there, the reflection is there. But where is the sun?
M: The supreme is the sun.
Q: It must be conscious.
M: It is neither conscious nor unconscious. Don’t think of it in terms of consciousness or unconsciousness. It is the life, which contains birth and is beyond both.
Q: Life is so intelligent. How can it be unconscious?
M: You talk of the unconscious when there is a lapse in memory. In reality there is only consciousness. All life is conscious, all consciousness — alive.
Q: Even stones?
M: Even stones are conscious and alive.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 15
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Post by Reefs on Jun 13, 2019 22:51:13 GMT -5
Who Am I?
Q: How to find the way to one’s own being?
M: Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I’? After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality… To identify oneself with the particular is all the sin there is. The impersonal is real, the personal appears and disappears. ‘I am’ is the impersonal Being. ‘I am this’ is the person. The person is relative and pure Being — fundamental.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 22
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Post by Reefs on Jun 13, 2019 22:54:30 GMT -5
Discrimination Leads to Detachment
Q: Are there two worlds?
M: Your world is transient, changeful. My world is perfect, changeless. You can tell me what you like about your world — I shall listen carefully, even with interest, yet not for a moment shall I forget that your world is not, that you are dreaming.
Q: What distinguishes your world from mine?
M: My world has no characteristics by which it can be identified. You can say nothing about it. I am my world. My world is myself. It is complete and perfect. Every impression is erased, every experience — rejected. I need nothing, not even myself, for myself I cannot lose…In your world nothing stays, in mine — nothing changes. My world is real, while yours is made of dreams.
Q: Yet we are talking.
M: The talk is in your world. In mine — there is eternal silence. My silence sings, my emptiness is full, I lack nothing. You cannot know my world until you are there.
Q: Still you have a name and shape, display consciousness and activity.
M: In your world I appear so. In mine I have being only. Nothing else. You people are rich with your ideas of possession, of quantity and quality. I am completely without ideas…. [my world] is real, yours is of the mind.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 23
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Post by Reefs on Jun 13, 2019 23:01:56 GMT -5
God Is The All-Doer, The Gnani A Non-Doer
Q: How does one bring to an end this sense of separateness?
M: By focusing the mind on ‘I am’, on the sense of being, ‘I am so-and-so’ dissolves; ‘I am a witness only’ remains and that too submerges in ‘I am all’. Then the all becomes the One and the One — yourself, not to be separate from me. Abandon the idea of a separate ‘I’ and the question of ‘whose experience?’ will not arise.
Q: You speak from your own experience. How can I make it mine?
M: You speak of my experience as different from your experience, because you believe we are separate. But we are not. On a deeper level my experience is your experience. Dive deep within yourself and you will find it easily and simply. Go in the direction of ‘I am’.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 24
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Post by Reefs on Jun 15, 2019 4:50:45 GMT -5
Hold onto ‘I am’
Q: When I see something pleasant, I want it. Who exactly wants it? The self or the mind?
M: The question is wrongly put. There is no ‘who’. There is desire, fear, anger, and the mind says — this is me, this is mine. There is no thing which could be called ‘me’ or ‘mine’. Desire is a state of the mind, perceived and named by the mind. Without the mind perceiving and naming, where is desire?
Q: But is there such a thing as perceiving without naming?
M: Of course. Naming cannot go beyond the mind, while perceiving is consciousness itself.
Q: Do I exist in your world, as you exist in mine?
M: Of course, you are and I am. But only as points in consciousness; we are nothing apart from consciousness. This must be well grasped: the world hangs on the thread of consciousness; no consciousness, no world.
Q: There are many points in consciousness; are there as many worlds?
M: Take dream for example. In a hospital there may be many patients, all sleeping, all dreaming, each dreaming his own private, personal dream, unrelated, unaffected, having one single factor in common — illness. Similarly, we have divorced ourselves in our imagination from the real world of common experience and enclosed ourselves is a cloud of personal desires and fears, images and thoughts, ideas and concepts.
Q: This I can understand. But what could be the cause of the tremendous variety of the personal worlds?
M: The variety is not so great. All the dreams are superimposed over a common world. To some extent they shape and influence each other. The basic unity operates in spite of all. At the root of it all lies self-forgetfulness; not knowing who I am.
Q: What is the cause of self-forgetting?
M: There is no cause, because there is no forgetting. Mental states succeed one another, and each obliterates the previous one. Self-remembering is a mental state and self-forgetting is another. They alternate like day and night. Reality is beyond both.
Q: Surely there must be a difference between forgetting and not knowing. Not knowing needs no cause. Forgetting presupposes previous knowledge and also the tendency or ability to forget. I admit I cannot enquire into the reason for not-knowing; but forgetting must have some ground.
M: There is no such thing as not-knowing. There is only forgetting. What is wrong with forgetting? It is as simple to forget as to remember.
Q: You say at the root of the world is self-forgetfulness. To forget I must remember: What did I forget to remember? I have not forgotten that I am.
M: This ‘I am’ too may be a part of the illusion.
Q: How can it be? You cannot prove to me that I am not. Even when convinced that I am not — I am.
M: Reality can neither be proved nor disproved. Within the mind you cannot, beyond the mind you need not. In the real, the question ‘what is real?’ does not arise. The manifested (saguna) and unmanifested (nirguna) are not different.
Q: In that case all is real.
M: I am all. As myself all is real. Apart from me, nothing is real.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 25
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Post by Reefs on Jun 15, 2019 6:02:17 GMT -5
I'm about 1/3 thru the book 'I Am That' and I have to say it's been fascinating to read it again after so many years, especially in light of recent discussions. Based on what I've read so far, I think that Niz has been grossly misrepresented by some members here, especially recently in these endless debates re: the nature of appearances. I had to revise some of my own opinions about Niz as well. Just a few notes on the quotes posted so far:
1) The Niz in 'I Am That' is actually quite the neo-advaitist already. He isn't showing much interest in discussing paths to SR and he rather prefers to look at every topic from the largest context only. What distinguishes him from the typical neo-advaitist is the fact that he is willing to engage the seeker on their own level of understanding for a while and quite often even answers questions on that level. But he usually steers the conversation back to the largest context, and rather quickly.
2) The argument has been made that Niz isn't really all that consistent with his vocabulary and contradicting himself a lot, to the degree that one could use his quotes from one and the same book to support exactly opposite points of view. I don't really find that to be the case. He is rather consistent and also exceptionally clear, especially when we translate his vocabulary (which at times is not so elegant) into our established vocabulary here on the forum. I think the confusion to what Niz is actually saying mostly comes from posting out of context quotes by people who search his dialogs for certain key words only, instead of actually reading the entire dialog or the entire book.
3) And based on those numerous out of context quotes floating around on the forum, it even seemed at times that Niz might have been the original solipsist in the advaita tradition. That is definitely not the case. In no way could the Niz in 'I Am That' pass as a solipsist or his teaching supporting solipsism. Quite the opposite. And as for the infamous aliveness debate, Niz, too, sees everything as being conscious and alive, even rocks. To me, he always seemed to imply that somehow, but I didn't remember him saying that outright. So that was actually a nice surprise.
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Post by Reefs on Jun 16, 2019 8:04:40 GMT -5
Personality, An Obstacle
Q: Does a realized man ever think: ‘I am realized?’ Is he not astonished when people make much of him? Does he not take himself to be an ordinary human being?
M: Neither ordinary, nor extraordinary. Just being aware and affectionate — intensely. He looks at himself without indulging in self-definitions and self-identifications. He does not know himself as anything apart from the world. He is the world… The realized man is egoless; he has lost the capacity of identifying himself with anything. He is without location, placeless, beyond space and time, beyond the world. Beyond words and thoughts is he.
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chapter 26
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