Who is seeking liberation? NIsargadatta Maharaj

[dwai]

Quote

Another morning, Maharaj sat half-reclined in his bed,
with his eyes closed.
Visitors had arrived one by one and had quietly taken their seats.
Seeing the Master resting,
they sat in meditation with their eyes closed.
It is astonishing how easy it is to go into the state of the 'fasting'
mind in the Master's presence.
Suddenly, Maharaj started speaking though in a very weak voice.

You people come here wanting something.
What you want may be knowledge with a capital 'K' -
the highest Truth - but nonetheless you do want something.

Most of you have been coming here for quite some time.
Why?
If there had been apperception of what I have been saying,
you should have stopped coming here long ago !
But what actually has been happening is that
you have been coming here day after day,
identified as individual beings, male or female,
with several persons and things you call 'mine'.

Also, you think you have been coming here,
of your own volition, to see another individual –
a Guru – who, you expect, will give you 'liberation'
from your 'bondage'.

Do you not see how ridiculous all this is?
Your coming here day after day only shows that you
are not prepared to accept my word
that there is no such thing as an 'individual';
that the 'individual'
is nothing but an appearance;
that an appearance cannot have any 'bondage' and,
therefore, there is no question of any 'liberation' for an appearance.

Do you even now realize that
if the very basis of your seeking is wrong,
what can you achieve?
Indeed, is there anything to be achieved?
By whom?
By an appearance?

This is not all.
Whatever I say is being tape-recorded by some people;
some others take down their own notes.
For what purpose?
To make the conditioning even more powerful?
Do you not realize that
there never has been any question of 'who'?
Whatever has happened (if at all anything has happened)
has been spontaneous.

There never has been any room for an individual
in the totality of manifestation;
all the functioning is at the level
of the conceptual physical space (Mahadakash),
which is contained in a conceptual speck of consciousness
the mental space of time,
perception and cognition (Chidakash).
This totality of the known finally merges in the infinite
potentiality that is the timeless, spaceless Reality (Paramakash).

In this conceptual manifestation,
innumerable forms get created and destroyed,
the Absolute being immanent in all phenomenal forms.
Where do the individuals figure as individuals?
Nowhere.

And yet everywhere, because we are the manifestation.
We are the functioning.
We are the life being lived.
We are the living of the dream. But not as individuals.
The apperception of this truth demolishes the individual seeker;
the seeker becomes the sought and the sought is the apperception.

~ Pointers from Nisargadatta Maharaj book

 

[neti neti]

Quote

What is our true identity? 

"In unmanifested, stillness, our identity is the Absolute Unicity, Pure Awareness not aware of itself; manifested, functioning in duality, our identity is consciousness seeking itself. One's true nature is ever-free awareness, as the source of, but distinct from, individual consciousness. 

 

It is only the I-am-this-body idea that keeps us from living from our "original essence", our Self. It is an essence that is pure, free, and unaffected by anything that occurs. It watches all events with impartiality. All that exists is the total functioning of the Absolute Reality operating through the infinite forms in manifestation. The interconnectedness of varying forces in the universe is so vast, that everything depends on everything else and that singular events, in and of themselves, are acausal.

 

On our original state of the timeless, changeless, Absolute Noumenality, the body and mind have appeared uncaused as part of the total functioning of the Impersonal Consciousness. Each phenomenal form acts during its allotted time and at the end of its life, it disappears as spontaneously as it appeared. Then consciousness, merges in Awareness. One is neither born nor dies. Only forms come and go.

 

The psychosomatic complex acts in accordance with its nature, and we are the witness of the actions. We are timeless being as the source of both life and consciousness. The most commonly used word is the word ‘I’. Delve into the sense of ‘I’ in order to reach its source. Discontinuous, this ‘I’ must have a source from which it flows and to which it returns and That is your true self-nature.

 

~The Essential Nisargadatta