quiet, peaceful, benign shade

 

the deep, dark blue state

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Nisargadatta:  You must come to a firm decision. You must forget the thought that you are a body and be only the knowledge “I Am,” which has no form, no name. Just be. When you stabilize in that beingness it will give you all the knowledge and all the secrets to you, and when the secrets are given to you, you transcend the beingness, and you, the Absolute, will know that you are also not the consciousness. Having gained all this knowledge, having understood what is what, a kind of quietude prevails, a tranquility. Beingness is transcended, but beingness is available.

let “I am” do its thing

 

 

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June 29, 1980

Nisargadatta Maharaj: Whatever concept you have about yourself cannot be true. The “I Amness” is the prime concept, and it has to be satisfied by letting it do its normal work in the world. The important thing is the realization of the fact that it is a concept.

Questioner: In the world this concept is always trying to be at the top. Even to the children we say, “You must be first in the examination.” Is it wrong to push your personality and individuality on others?

M. What is wrong is that you consider yourself to be limited to this body and shape. What knowledge I try to give is given to the knowledge “I Am” in each of you, which is the same. If you try to get that knowledge as an individual you will never get it.

a small ripple appeared in the vastness ~ III – Nisargadatta

 

 

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Nisargadatta: When I talk to you, don’t try to understand from the body-mind identity. Your true state is always there; it has not gone anywhere. Although you did not know it was there, and now you know it is there, you have done nothing. It is always there.

On my true, whole, homogeneous state just a small ripple appeared, the news came, “I Am.” That news made all the difference, and I started knowing this; but now I have known my true state, so I understand my true state first, and then I understand that this ripple is coming and going on my true state. While, in your case, you take interest in the ripple and don’t take interest in your true state.

the meaning of suffering

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My Comment:

It took me years of reading and re-reading and contemplating the words to find my way more and more into what Nisargadatta is pointing to. Here in the second sentence he says: “Questions arise only to an entity.” Only consciousness that perceives itself as a center, as an entity separate from reality, can have questions. Consciousness can remain simply as “I Am” and then there are no questions. Also That, which is prior to consciousness, has no questions because questions can only arise in consciousness on the basis of the primary concept “I Am”. Moving away from simply Being, “I Am” then moves into I am this, I am that etc. Then questions arise. The primary question “Who am I?” is not one that requires or asks for an answer. To pose the question “Who am I?” is to turn the light of consciousness upon itself in order to follow the path of consciousness in the reverse and to recede into consciousness to its point of inception.

the primary dream

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Q: Is deep sleep and the state prior to the “I Am” one and the same?

a fear of darkness

Nisargadatta:

“Any thoughts or actions will be based on body-mind identity and
in order to see your true nature there must be abandonment of this identity
with the phenomenal center. This cannot come by any volitional action –
it happens without any special efforts. There is no question of doing
anything because there is no one to do anything.

the hallucination

 

From an enormous tank of water

you dip a tiny tumbler full and say,

‘This is me.’

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millions of forms

For your spiritual entertainment ~

~ Nisargadatta responding to questions

Nisargadatta:

Dream occurs in objective, material, manifestation, in the consciousness. It is not you, it is something other – objective, material.

What you call “I Am” and birth, you are not that, it is material.

Suppose that there is a Muslim boy that I have adopted; I have not sired that boy, but
I now claim him as “my” boy. Like that, this “I Amness” is not directly me, it is something other, something material, something Muslim (in this context), I am not that.

I, the Absolute, have nothing to do with that.

People are sometimes confused because they expect an answer which is based on their concepts. You ask someone to bring you a spoon, and instead he brings you a needle. Both are words, both are knowledge, but that is not what you want. What you will receive is the true knowledge, even if what you are asking for is not the true knowledge.

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Q: I must reach that level to be able to understand.

Nisargadatta:

There are millions of grains, made into millions of forms, but the seed is only one. All these millions of forms are because of some particular seed, but I am not that seed.

The Ultimate knowledge does not have any knowledge. This knowledge “I Am” has appeared spontaneously, as a result of the body.

See it as it is, understand it as it is.

When the waking state is gone, sleep begins, when sleep is gone, the waking state begins. When both are gone, I am at home. Why did they leave me? Because it was all foreign, it was not me.

Take this advice: better not to be trapped in the spiritual knowledge business; have a nice time, a good life, be of service to others, and in due course, when the time is ripe, you will die.

(source: Nisargadatta, Prior to Consciousness, PDF file p. 111)

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My Comment:

Nisargadatta uses the term knowledge to mean “to know something” and also to mean “the sense of being”, or also “the sense of ‘I Am'”. In this statement: “The Ultimate knowledge does not have any knowledge. This knowledge ‘I Am’ has appeared spontaneously, as a result of the body.” he is pointing us to the state of the Absolute which does not “know” Itself as a subject knows an object. That is why we have such difficulty realizing that our search is pointless as long as we are looking for something outside or other than ourselves.

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the sense of presence

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It is quite confusing: here we are with a body-mind and all that goes with it. We have the strong tendency to identify ourselves with what we do. We feel that ‘I’ am the one performing these actions. Then someone comes along and says:

entertainment

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For those who want to continue to follow Nisargadatta down the rabbit hole:

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