The Reality is You Nisargadatta Maharaj

Nisargadatta Maharaj

The Reality is You , be it...!

 What brings you here to me is that you want to 'reach reality'. Who is this 'I' that wants to reach reality? Is it this body complex, this psychosomatic apparatus? And are you sure that reality will accept you? And how will you reach it, is it by taking a high jump or perhaps by a rocket or through a mental leap? And where exactly out there is this reality, and what will it do for you, that you are so anxious to reach it? Don't you realize how funny all this is?

The truth is that this entity which you think you are, based on this body complex and consciousness is totally false. When you see the false as false, then what remains is true. That which was prior to this body and consciousness, that
which is ever-present... that is your true identity... that is reality. It is here and now. It is what you really are... the relative absence, the absolute presence.

Where is the question of reaching it? You are the reality. Be it. The desire for freedom, which arises in the heart of the seeker in the initial stages gradually disappears when he realizes that he himself is what he has been seeking.

But if this desire continues to persist then it implies two blocks. It assumes the presence and continuance of an entity wanting 'freedom', whereas for a phenomenal object there can be no question of freedom because it has no independent existence, and so can never be separated from the total functioning of the manifestation. And it also assumes that reality can somehow be captured at the mind-level, trying to capture the unknown and unknowable within the parameters of the known. But that is impossible.

When the impersonal consciousness personalized itself by identification with the sentient object, thinking of it as 'I', the effect was to transform the 'I', which was essentially the subject, into an object. It is this objectivizing of pure subjectivity, this false identifying of the unlimited with the limited, which can be called bondage. It is from this entity-fication that freedom is sought.

Liberation, therefore, can be nothing other than the immediate understanding that self-identification is false. The situation can be likened to a five-year old girl who has been decked out in fine clothes and lovely ornaments. The same child three years earlier would have either ignored the fine clothes or would have accepted them as a nuisance forced on her by the doting parents. But now, after the conditioning that she has received, the child cannot wait until she can go out and gloat over the envy of her little friends who don't possess such fineries. What has happened between infancy and childhood is exactly that which is the obstacle to your seeing your true nature. The infant, unlike the child, still retains its subjective personality and identity. Before the conditioning, it refers to itself by its name, not as 'me', functions naturally as part of the total functioning without seeing itself as a separate personal entity, an object posing as a subject?

Personal entity and enlightenment cannot go together; indeed there is neither entity nor enlightenment... understanding this deeply is itself enlightenment. Freedom is the unshakeable knowledge of your real nature; it is the total negation of entity-ness.

Once it is understood that an entity is merely a conceptual notion, then what follows is a reintegration into universality. Then you just watch life 'being lived', realizing that relatively speaking, you as manifestation are but a puppet being manipulated in a dream-world.

When you apperceive this intuitively, spontaneously, thoughtlessly, then this itself will be the awakening from this Maya-dream. Having understood that there can never be any individual entity with independent choice of action, then how could 'you' entertain any intentions? And in the absence of intentions how could there be any involvement with Karma? Then, you become perfectly aligned with whatever happens, accepting events without any feeling either of achievement or frustration.

Such living would then be non-volitional living, an absence of doing and deliberate non-doing, going through your allotted span of life wanting nothing and avoiding nothing, free of conceptualizing and objectivizing. Then, when this phenomenal life disappears in due course it leaves you in absolute presence.....

Sri Nisargadatta maharaj.

from face book page