The Advaita Teaching of
Nisargadatta Maharaj
    

  

Stay silent and attentive. Be earnest about it.

Just be aware of your being here and now.

Reality will find you.

Tirelessly I draw your attention to the one incontrovertible factor – that of being. Being needs no proofs – it proves itself. If only you go deep into the fact of being and discover the vastness and the glory, to which the ‘I am’ is the door, and cross the door and go beyond, your life will be full of happiness and light. Believe me; the effort needed is as nothing when compared with the discoveries arrived at.

Just live your life as it comes. Keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real nature of yourself. Perception is based on memory and is only imagination. The world can be said to appear but not to be. Only that which makes perception possible is real.

You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown. Give up all names and forms, and the Real is with you. Know yourself as you are. Distrust your mind and go beyond. Do not think of the Real in terms of consciousness and unconsciousness. It is utterly beyond both. It gives birth to consciousness. All else is in consciousness.

Nothing you can see, feel or think is so. Go beyond the personal and see. Stop imagining that you were born. You are utterly beyond all existence and non-existence, utterly beyond all that the mind conceives. Question yourself: Who am I? What is behind and beyond all this? Soon you will see that thinking yourself to be a person is mere habit built on memory. Inquire ceaselessly.

How can Reality depend on experience when it is the very ground, the very basis of experience, the very fact of experience? Just be aware of your being here and now. There is nothing more to it. In reality you are not a thing nor separate.

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. You are neither consciousness nor its content. You are the timeless Source. Find a foothold beyond mind and consciousness and all will be clear and easy.

Your difficulty stems from the idea that Reality is a state of consciousness. When you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected. You are beyond space and time, uncaused, the very matrix of existence, the Supreme Absolute. You are the all-pervading, all-transcending Reality. Behave accordingly.

The actual experience will dawn upon you in no time. No effort is needed. Have faith and act on it. All will happen by itself: You are the subtle cause of the entire universe. All is because you are. Grasp this point firmly and deeply and dwell on it repeatedly. To realize this as absolutely true is liberation. What you need will come to you.

Behave as what I say is true and judge by what actually happens. I know the Source of all experience. From moment to moment the little I need to know to live my life I somehow happen to know. The Supreme Absolute, the Self, is at the root of and utterly beyond all. You are That.

There is no effort in witnessing. You understand that you are the witness only, and understanding acts. If in the state of witnessing you ask “Who am I?” the answer comes at once, wordless and silent. You find yourself utterly beyond the subject and the object. Both exist in you, but you are neither. You, the Supreme Absolute, are the very source of reality. Collect your energies in one great longing. My words are true and they will do their work. Enlightenment is a certainty. It is your destiny.

Know life as pure radiation from the inexhaustible Source. There is nothing to practice. To know yourself, be yourself. Stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don’t disturb your mind with seeking. The very absence of obstacles will cause Reality to rush in. You will know the Light of Absolute Awareness in all its clarity and the world will fade out of your vision.

Investigate what you know to its very end and you reach the unknown layers of your being. Go further and the unexpected will explode in you and shatter all. The crucial question is: “Who am I?” Don’t be half-hearted. Believe me, you are the Supreme Reality.



Adapted from ‘I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’


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