Nonduality Presents
ASMI
Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT
compiled and edited by Miguel-Angel Carrasco
Numbers after quotations refer to pages of the edition by Chetana (P) Ltd, Bombay, 1992.
I am not this person, this body-mind or any thing
As I can't be what I perceive, I am not this body-mind or any thing that I am conscious of.
As body, you are in space. As
mind, you are in time. But are you a mere body with a mind in it?
Have you ever investigated? (252)
Why not investigate the very idea of body? Does the mind appear
in the body or the body in the mind? Surely there must be a mind
to conceive the "I-am-the-body" idea. A body without a
mind cannot be 'my body'. 'My body' is invariably absent when the
mind is in abeyance. It is also absent when the mind is deeply
engaged in thoughts and feelings. (434)
You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body
acting; the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what
you perceive. (2)
The perceived cannot be the perceiver. Whatever you see, hear or
think of, remember - you are not what happens, you are he to whom
it happens. (519)
Desire, fear, trouble, joy, they cannot appear unless you are
there to appear to. Yet, whatever happens points to your
existence as a perceiving centre. Disregard the pointers and be
aware of what they are pointing to. (220)
Realize that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is
seen or heard, touched or smelt, felt or thought, expected or
imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will
experience peace and freedom from fear. (201)
When you realize that the distinction between inner and outer is
in the mind only, you are no longer afraid. (464)
You are neither the body nor in the body. There is no such thing
as body. You have grievously misunderstood yourself. To
understand rightly, investigate. (253)
You are not in the body, the body is in you! The mind is in you.
They happen to you. They are there because you find them
interesting.
(212)
You only know that you react. Who reacts and to what, you do not
know. You know on contact that you exist: "I am". The
"I am this", "I
am that" are imaginary. (337)
To myself, I am neither perceivable nor conceivable; there is
nothing I can point out to and say: "this I am". You
identify yourself with everything so easily; I find it
impossible. The feeling "I am not this or that, nor is
anything mine" is so strong in me that as soon as a thing or
a thought appears, there comes at once the sense "this I am
not". (268)
Whatever you may hear, see or think of, I am not that. I am free
from being a percept or a concept. (152)
As you cannot see your face, but only its reflection in the
mirror, so you can know only your image reflected in the
stainless mirror of pure awareness. See the stains and remove
them. The nature of the perfect mirror is such that you cannot
see it. Whatever you can see is bound to be a stain. Turn away
from it, give it up, know it as unwanted. All perceivables are
stains. (126)
Having perfected the mirror so that it reflects correctly, truly,
you can turn the mirror round and see in it a reflection of
yourself -true as far as the mirror can reflect. But the
reflection is not yourself - you are the seer of the reflection.
Do understand it clearly - whatever you may perceive, you are not
what you perceive. You can see both the image and the mirror. You
are neither. (330)
Remember, nothing you perceive is your own. (510)
What is really your own, you are not conscious of. (445)
You are nothing that you are conscious of. (458)
As there must be something unchanging to register discontinuity, I am not this body-mind, which is neither continuous nor permanent.
The mind is discontinuous. Again
and again it blanks out, like in sleep or swoon or distraction.
There must be something continuous to register discontinuity.
Memory is always partial, unreliable and > evanescent. It does
not explain the strong sense of identity pervading consciousness,
the sense "I am". Find out what is at the root of it.
(307)
You cannot be conscious of what does not change. All
consciousness is consciousness of change. But the very perception
of change - does it not necessitate a changeless background?
(516)
Changes are inevitable in the changeful, but you are not subject
to them. You are the changeless background, against which changes
are perceived. (333)
The self based on memory is momentary. But such self demands
unbroken continuity behind it. You know from experience that
there are gaps when your self is forgotten. What brings it back
to life? What wakes you up in the morning? There must be some
constant factor bridging the gaps in consciousness. If you watch
carefully, you will find that even your daily consciousness is in
flashes, with gaps intervening all the time. What is in the gaps?
What can there be but your real being, that is timeless? Mind and
mindlessness are one to it. (333)
Realize that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream
of events; that while all happens, comes and goes, you alone are,
the changeless among the changeful, the self-evident among the
inferred. Separate the observed from the observer and abandon
false identifications. (215)
The succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time,
but the timeless reality of pure being is not in movement, for
all movement requires a motionless background. It is itself the
background. Once you have found it in yourself, you know that you
had never lost that independent being. (409)
What changes is not real, what is real does not change. Now, what
is it in you that does not change? As long as there is food,
there is body and mind. When the food is stopped, the body dies
and the mind dissolves. But does the observer perish? It is a
matter of actual experience that the self has being independent
of mind and body. It is being-awareness-bliss. Awareness of being
is bliss. (210)
You must realize yourself as the immovable behind and beyond the
movable, the silent witness of all that happens. (319)
As the person is a changing stream of mental objects that I as the subject take to be my body-mind, I cannot be a person. I am, but I can't be this or that.
Nothing is wrong with you, but the
ideas you have of yourself are altogether wrong. It is not you
who desires, fears and suffers, it is the person built on the
foundation of your body by circumstances and influences. You are
not that person. (424)
The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you
are not the person. (64)
Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time; you
imagine yourself to be at a certain point occupying a certain
volume; your personality is due to your self-identification with
the body.
(205)
How does personality come into being? By identifying the present
with the past and projecting it into the future. (206)
The body-mind is like a room. It is there, but I need not live in
it all the time. (153)
The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In
reality, there is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions
race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in
the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of
the watcher in the mind creates the sense of "I" and
the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In
reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself
with the "I" and the "mine". (343)
It is because the "I am" is false that it wants to
continue. Reality need not continue - knowing itself
indestructible, it is indifferent of forms and expressions. To
strengthen and stabilize the "I am", we do all sorts of
things - all in vain, for the "I am" is being rebuilt
from moment to moment. It is unceasing work, and the only radical
solution is to dissolve the separative sense of "I am such
and such
It is not the "I am" that is false, but what you take
yourself to be. I can see, beyond the least shadow of doubt, that
you are not what you believe yourself to be. (458)
What is really your own, you are not conscious of. What you are
conscious of is neither you nor yours. Yours is the power of
perception, not what you perceive. It is a mistake to take the
conscious to be the whole of man. Man is the unconscious, the
conscious and the superconscious, but you are not the man. Yours
is the cinema screen, the light as well as the seeing power, but
the picture is not you. (445)
As it is my presence, which is always here and now, that gives the quality of actual to any event, I must be beyond time and space. I was never born, nor will ever die.
Take the idea "I was
born". You may take it to be true. It is not. You were not
born, nor will you ever die. It is the idea that was born and
shall die, not you. By identifying yourself with it you became
mortal. (392)
Your mistake lies in your belief that you were born. You were
never born nor will you ever die. (83)
Between the remembered and the actual there is a basic difference
which can be observed from moment to moment. At no point of time
is the actual the remembered. Between the two there is a
difference in kind, not merely in intensity. The actual is
unmistakably so. By no effort of will or imagination can you
interchange the two. Now, what is it that gives this unique
quality to the actual? A moment back, the remembered was actual,
in a moment the actual will be the remembered. What makes the
actual unique?
Obviously, it is the sense of being present. In memory and
anticipation, there is a clear feeling that it is a mental state
under observation, while in the actual the feeling is primarily
of being present and aware. Wherever you go, the sense of here
and now you carry with you all the time. It means that you are
independent of space and time, that space and time are in you,
not you in them. It is your self-identification with the body,
which, of course, is limited in space and time, that gives you
the feeling of finiteness. In reality you are infinite and
eternal. (516)