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#3042 - Friday, January 11, 2007 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights: http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm
One of the most popular pages on Nonduality.com is called ASMI Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT, compiled and edited by Miguel-Angel Carrasco.
It is located at http://nonduality.com/asmi.htm
Regarding ASMI, a visitor to nonduality.com wrote the other day...
"These excerpts are put
together perfectly. It would be handy to have it in book
form . Is there consideration in doing this? Or does
copyright law prohibit? I guess I could print it out but
looks rathers voluminous to do so. Can you give an estimate
of the number of pages?
Thanks for any suggestions."
I have now made ASMI available as a single Word file. It can be downloaded at the link above. The length is 114 pages. I have included two extra compilations from I Am That, as well. A person could print out the entire work and take it to a print shop to be bound.
Regarding copyright, I wanted to include compilations of Nisargadatta's work in my book, One: Essential Writings on Nonduality, but getting permission was a huge hassle. I'll be writing in my blog -- http://nonduality.org -- about "getting permissions," and my experiences. Stay tuned. Let's just say that I spoke on the phone to very kind gentleman from North Carolina about permission to reprint, but never heard back from him. In the permissions game, you do your reasonable best to get permissions.
Here is an excerpt from the Word version of ASMI, Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT, compiled and edited by Miguel-Angel Carrasco:
3. The
World exists only as a dream in my Consciousness: Part One
As I only know the contents of my
consciousness, and an outside world is unprovable, all
perceivables are only in my mind.
You know only what is in your
consciousness. What you claim exists outside conscious experience
is inferred. (449)
Is there a world outside your knowledge? Can you go beyond what
you know? You may postulate a world beyond the mind, but it will
remain a concept, unproved and unprovable. Your experience is
your proof, and it is valid for you only. Who else can have your
experience, when the other person is only as real as he appears
in your experience? (533)
Whatever happens, happens to you, by you, through you; you are
the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive. (468)
You are the maker of the world in which you live, you alone can
change it, or unmake it. (380)
The world appears to you so overwhelmingly real because you think
of it all the time; cease thinking of it and it will dissolve
into thin mist. (505)
All perceivables are stains. The entire universe is a stain.
(126)
That you hear is a fact. What you hear is not. The fact can be
experienced, and in that sense the sound of the word and the
mental ripples it causes are experienced. There is no other
reality behind it. (450)
All happens in consciousness. The world is but a succession of
experiences. (404)
Your conviction that you are conscious of a world is the world.
The world you perceive is made of consciousness; what you call
matter is consciousness itself. (286)
As all waves are in the ocean, so are all things physical and
mental in awareness. Hence awareness itself is all-important, not
the content of it. (261)
There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for
the outer, and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take
to be outside you, and what is outside you take to be in you. The
mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate.
You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a
projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion. (240)
You have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination,
based on memories, on desires and fears, and you have imprisoned
yourself in it. Break the spell and be free. (200)
The idea of responsibility is in your mind. You think there must
be something or somebody solely responsible for all that happens.
There is a contradiction between a multiple universe and a single
cause. Either one or the other must be false. Or both. As I see
it, it is all day-dreaming. There is no reality in ideas. The
fact is that without you, neither the universe nor its cause
could have come into being. (502)
Before the world was, consciousness was. In consciousness it
comes into being, in consciousness it lasts and into pure
consciousness it dissolves. At the root of everything is the
feeling "I am". The state of mind "there is a
world" is secondary, for to be, I do not need the world, the
world needs me. (98)
The world comes into being only when you are born in a body. No
body - no world. (207)
All the universe of experience is born with the body and dies
with the body; it has its beginning and end in awareness, but
awareness knows no beginning, nor end. (262)
To be born means to create a world round yourself as the centre.
(208)
Your own little body too is full of mysteries and dangers, yet
you are not afraid of it, for you take it as your own. What you
do not know is that the entire universe is your body, and you
need not be afraid of it. You may say you have two bodies: the
personal and the universal. The personal comes and goes, the
universal is always with you. The entire creation is your
universal body. You are so blinded by what is personal, that you
do not see the universal. This blindness will not end by itself -
it must be undone skilfully and deliberately. When all illusions
are understood and abandoned, you reach the error-free and
perfect state in which all distinctions between the personal and
the universal are no more. (308)
Who was born first, you or the world? As long as you give first
place to the world, you are bound by it; once you realize, beyond
all trace of doubt, that the world is in you and not you in the
world, you are out of it. Of course your body remains in the
world and of the world, but you are not deluded by it. (207)
The pure mind sees things as they are - bubbles in consciousness.
These bubbles are appearing, disappearing and reappearing -
without having real being. Each bubble is a body and all these
bodies are mine. (138)
You see yourself in the world, while I see the world in myself.
To you, you get born and die, while to me the world appears and
disappears. Our world is real, but your view of it is not. There
is no wall between us, except the one built by you. There is
nothing wrong with the senses, it is your imagination that
misleads you. It covers up the world as it is with what you
imagine it to be - something existing independently of you and
yet closely following your inherited or acquired patterns. (264)
This must be well grasped: the world hangs on the thread of
consciousness. No consciousness, no world. (92)
You are the infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible possibility.
Because you are, all can be. The universe is but a partial
manifestation of your limitless capacity to become. (121)
Once you realize that the world is your own projection, you are
free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not
exist, except in your own imagination! However is the picture,
beautiful or ugly, you are painting it and you are not bound by
it. Realize that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is
due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real. See the
imaginary as imaginary and be free of fear. (200)
All scriptures say that before the world was, the Creator was.
Who knows the Creator? He alone who was before the Creator, your
own real being, the source of all the worlds with their creators.
(207)
ASMI, Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT, compiled and edited by Miguel-Angel Carrasco: http://nonduality.com/asmi.htm