Nisargadatta Maharaj

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 <PERSON"

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)

I am the Self, the Witness of Consciousness,
pure Awareness.
I am only the Self , which is universal and
imagines itself to be the outer self, a person.
Somebody, anybody, will tell you that you are pure consciousness, not a body-mind. Accept it as a possibility and investigate earnestly. You may discover that it is not so, that you are not a person bound in space and time. Think of the difference it would make! (441-2)

The personality (vyakti) is but a product of imagination. The self (vyakta) is the victim of this imagination. It is the taking yourself to be what you are not that binds you. The person cannot be said to exist on its own rights; it is the self that believes there is a person and is conscious of being it. (143)

How can there be two selves in one body? The "I am" is one. There is no "higher I-am" and "lower I-am". All kinds of states of consciousness are presented to awareness and there is self-identification with them. The objects of observation are not what they appear to be, and the attitudes they are met with are not what they need to be. If you think that Buddha, Christ of Krishnamurti speak to the person, you are mistaken. They know well that the vyakti , the outer self, is but a shadow of the vyakta , the inner self, and they address and admonish the vyakta only. They tell him to give attention to the outer self, to guide it and help it, to feel responsible for it; in short, to be fully aware of it. Awareness comes from the Supreme and pervades the inner self; the so-called outer self is only that part of one's being of which one is not aware. One may be conscious, for every being is conscious, but one is not aware. What is included in awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner. (294)

The self you want to know, is it some second self? Are you made of several selves? Surely, there is only one self and you are that self. The self you are is the only self there is. Remove and abandon your wrong ideas about yourself and there it is, in all its glory. (516-7)

There is no second, or higher self to search for. You are the highest self, only give up the false ideas you have about your self. (517)

Your own self is your ultimate teacher (sadguru). The outer teacher (guru) is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher that will walk with you to the goal, for it is the goal. (51)

Yoga is the work of the inner self (vyakta) on the outer self (vyakti). All that the outer does is merely in response to the inner. It [the outer self] has some control over the body and can improve its posture and breathing. Over the mind's thoughts and feelings it has little mastery, for it is itself the mind. It is the inner that can control the outer. The outer will be wise to obey. The inner is the source of inspiration, the outer is moved by memory. The source is untraceable, while all memory begins somewhere. Thus the outer is always determined, while the inner cannot be held in words. The mistake of students consists in their imagining the inner to be something to get hold of, and forgetting that all perceivables are transient and therefore unreal. Only that which makes perception possible, call it Life or Brahman, or what you like, is real. (74-5)

The self by its nature knows itself only. For lack of experience whatever it perceives it takes to be itself. Battered, it learns to look out (viveka) and to live alone (vairagya). When right behaviour (uparati) becomes normal, a powerful inner urge (mukmukshutva) makes it seek its source. The candle of the body is lighted and all becomes clear and bright. (110)

You can observe the observation, but not the observer. You know you are the ultimate observer by direct insight, not by a logical process based on observation. You are what you are, but you know what you are not. The self is known as being, the not-self is known as transient. But in reality all is in the mind. The observed, observation and observer are mental constructs. The self alone is. (219)

The self is universal and its aims are universal. There is nothing personal about the self. (212)
I am not an object in Consciousness but its source,
its Witness, pure shapeless Awareness.
You are and I am. But only as points in consciousness; we are nothing apart from consciousness. (92)

You are not the body. You are the immensity and infinity of consciousness. (264)

The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realize that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the source, the inexhaustible Possibility. (65)

Discard all you are not and go ever deeper. Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water, until he reaches the water-bearing strata, so must you discard what is not your own, till nothing is left which you can disown. You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook on to. You are not even a human being. You just are - a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause, itself uncaused. If you ask me "Who are you?", my answer would be: "Nothing in particular. Yet, I am." (318)

I am not my body, nor do I need it. I am the witness only. I have no shape of my own. You are so accustomed to think of yourself as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether. (327)

Do realize that it is not you who moves from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you, and you are the immutable witness. No happening affects your real being - that is the absolute truth. (333)

The witness is not a person. The person comes into being when there is a basis for it, an organism, a body. In it, the absolute is reflected as awareness. Pure awareness becomes self-awareness. When there is a self, self-awareness is the witness. When there is no self to witness, there is no witnessing either. It is all very simple; it is the presence of the person that complicates. See that there is no such thing as a permanently separate person and all becomes clear. Awareness, mind, matter - they are one reality in its two aspects as immovable and movable, and the three attributes of inertia, energy and harmony. Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object. The object changes all the time. In consciousness there is movement; awareness by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now. (233)

The difference between the person and the witness is as between not knowing and knowing oneself. The person is in unrest and resistance to the very end. It is the witness that works on the person, on the totality of its illusions, past, present and future. (358)

[The person and the witness] both are modes of consciousness. In one, you desire and fear; in the other, you are unaffected by pleasure and pain, and are not ruffled by events. You let them come and go. (190)

The pleasure to be is the simplest form of self-love, which later grows into love of the self. Be like an infant with nothing standing between the body and the self. The constant noise of the psychic life is absent. In deep silence, the self contemplates the body. It is like the white paper on which nothing is written yet. Be like that infant, instead of trying to be this or that, be happy to be. You will be a fully awakened witness of the field of consciousness. But there should be no feelings and ideas to stand between you and the field. (216)
Only the feeling "I am", though in the World,
is not of the World nor can be denied.
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". The teacher tells the watcher: you are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of "I am", which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. "I am this, I am that" is dream, while pure "I am" has the stamp of reality on it. (343)

That which makes you think that you are a human is not human. It is but a dimensionless point of consciousness, a conscious nothing. All you can say about yourself is "I am". You are pure being-awareness-bliss. To realize that is the end of all seeking. You come to it when you see all you think yourself to be as mere imagination, and stand aloof in pure awareness of the transient as transient, imaginary as imaginary, unreal as unreal. (316)

Only your sense "I am", though in the world, is not of the world. By no effort of logic or imagination can you change the "I am" into "I am not". In the very denial of your being you assert it. (200)

It [the "I am"] is unreal when we say: "I am this, I am that". It is real when we mean "I am not this, nor that". (395)

To identify oneself with the particular is all the sin there is. The impersonal is real, the personal appears and disappears. "I am" is the impersonal Being. "I am this" is the person. The person is relative, and the pure Being fundamental. (71)

Wolinsky - Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Maharaj

...realization is explosive. It takes place spontaneously, or at the slightest hint. The quick is not better than the slow. Slow ripening and rapid flowering alternate. Both are natural and right. Yet, all this is so in the mind only. As I see it, there is really nothing of the kind. In the great mirror of consciousness images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material -- destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence -- vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion: 'I-am-so-and-so' obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.

Seeker

I was told that a realized person will never do anything unseemly. That they will behave in an exemplary way.

Maharaj

Who sets the example? Why should a liberated one necessarily follow conventions? The moment one becomes predictable, one cannot be free. Ones freedom lies in being free to fulfill the need of the moment, to obey the necessity of the situation. Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom.

Seeker

What about cause and effect?

Maharaj

Each moment contains the whole of the past and creates the whole of the future.

Seeker

But past and future exist?

Maharaj

In the mind only. Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only.

Seeker

A message in print may be paper and ink only. It is the text that matters. By analysing the world into elements and qualities we miss the most important -- its meaning. Your reduction of everything to dream disregards the difference between the dream of an insect and the dream of a poet. All is dream, granted. But not all are equal.

Maharaj

The dreams are not equal, but the dreamer is one. I am the insect. I am the poet -- in dream. But in reality I am neither. I am beyond all dreams. I am light in which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both inside and outside the dream. Just as a man having a headache knows the ache and also knows that he is not the ache, so do I know the dream, myself dreaming and myself not dreaming -- all at the same time. I am what I am before, during and after the dream. But what I see in dream, I am not."

Seeker

If both dream and escape from dream are imaginings, what is the way out?

Maharaj

There is no need of a way out! Don't you see that a way out is also part of the dream? All you have to do is to see the dream as dream.

Seeker

If I start the practice of dismissing everything as a dream, where will it lead me?

Maharaj

Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of the dream and not another. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done.
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)
Transient things only appear and have no substance.
What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear, but not to be. The appearance may last very long on some scale of time, and very short on another, but ultimately it comes to the same. Whatever is time-bound is momentary and has no reality. (16)

What contradicts itself has no being. Or it has only momentary being, which comes to the same. For what has a beginning and an end has no middle. It is hollow. It has only name and shape given to it by the mind, but it has neither substance nor essence. (314)

However great and complete is your world, it is self-contradictory and transitory and altogether illusory. (533)

Transiency is the best proof of unreality. (334)

The final answer is this: nothing is. All is a momentary appearance in the field of the universal consciousness. Continuity as name and form is a mental formation only, easy to dispel. (415)

Trace the world to its source and you will find that before the world was, you were, and when the world is no longer, you remain. (493)
What changes has no reality. Time and space are imagined, ways of thinking, modes of perception. Only timeless reality is,
and it is here and now.
Once you accept time and space as real, you will consider yourself minute and short-lived. But are they real? Do they depend on you, or you on them? (252)

There can be no continuity in existence. Continuity implies identity in past, present and future. No such identity is possible, for the very means of identification fluctuate and change. Continuity, permanency, these are illusions created by memory, mere mental projections of a pattern where no pattern can be. (467)

Don't talk to me about past and future. They exist only in your mind. (259)

Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. (115)

In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them. They are modes of perception, but they are not the only ones. Time and space are like words written on paper; the paper is real, the words merely a convention. (205)

Your body is short of time, not you. Time and space are in the mind only. You are not bound. Just understand yourself - that itself is eternity. (260)

The whole of it is [imagination]. Even space and time are imagined. All existence is imaginary. (355)

Existence and non-existence relate to something in space and time, here and now, there and then, which again are in the mind. (460)

Time is endless, though limited, eternity is in the split moment of the now. We miss it because the mind is ever shuttling between the past and the future. It will not stop to focus the now. It can be done with comparative ease, if interest is aroused. (528)

In your world everything must have a beginning and an end. If it does not, you call it eternal. In my view, there is no such thing as beginning and end - these are all related to time. Timeless being is entirely in the now. Being and not-being alternate and their reality is momentary. The immutable Reality lies beyond space and time. (454)

In reality nothing happens, there is no past nor future; all appears and nothing is. (406)

All depends on you. It is by your consent that the world exists. Withdraw your belief in its reality and it will dissolve like a dream. Time can bring down mountains; much more you, who are the timeless source of time. For without memory and expectation there can be no time. (452)

You are the space (akash) in which it moves, the time in which it lasts, the love that gives it life. (286)

"I am" is an ever present fact, while "I am created" is an idea. Neither God nor the universe have come to tell you that they have created you. The mind, obsessed by the idea of causality, invents creation and then wonders "who is the creator?" The mind itself is the creator. Even this is not quite true, for the created and its creator are one. The mind and the world are not separate. Do understand that what you think to be the world is your own mind. All space and time are in the mind. (502)

There is only imagination. It has absorbed you so completely that you just cannot grasp how far from reality you have wandered. No doubt imagination is richly creative. Universe upon universe are built on it. Yet they are all in space and time, past and future, which just don't exist. (288)

It is you who are in movement and not time. Stop moving and time will cease. Past and future will merge in the eternal now. (405)

I am nowhere to be found. I am not a thing to be given a place among other things. All things are in me, but I am not among things. (327)

In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only. (115)

Truly, all is in me and by me. There is nothing else. The very idea of "else" is a disaster and a calamity. (205)

The World exists only as a dream in my Consciousness: Part Two
Whatever has a form is only limitations imagined
in my consciousness.
By itself nothing has existence. Everything needs its own absence. To be is to be distinguishable, to be here and not there, to be now and not then, to be thus and not otherwise. Like water is shaped by the container, so is everything determined by conditions (gunas). (15)

Pure being, filling all and beyond all, is not existence, which is limited. All limitation is imaginary, only the unlimited is real. (355)
The World is but a show, a make-belief.
The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet it is not. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. It just happens when we are absent-minded. It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it, nor meaning. Only the onlooker is real, call him Self or Atma. To the Self, the world is but a colourful show, which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over. Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show. Without desire or fear, he enjoys it, as it happens. (178-9)

The universe is a stage on which a world drama is being played. The quality of the performance is all that matters; not what the actors say or do, but how they say and do it. Sportsmen seem to make tremendous efforts: yet their sole motive is to play and display. (95)

All happens as it needs, yet nothing happens. I do what seems to be necessary, but at the same time I know that nothing is necessary, that life itself is only a make-belief. (191)

You see me apparently functioning. In reality, I only look. Whatever is done, is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they all are real to the man in bondage; to me, they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself. I may perceive the world just like you, but you believe to be in it, while I see it as an iridescent drop in the vast expanse of consciousness. (179)

All that lives, works for protecting, perpetuating and expanding consciousness. This is the world's sole meaning and purpose. It is the very essence of Yoga - ever raising the level of consciousness, discovery of new dimensions, with their properties, qualities and powers. In that sense, the entire universe becomes a school of Yoga. (275)

Out of a lump of gold, you can make many ornaments - each will remain gold. Similarly, in whatever role I may appear and whatever function I may perform - I remain what I am: the "I am" immovable, unshakable, independent. What you call the universe, nature, is my spontaneous creativity. Whatever happens, happens. But such is my nature that all ends in joy. (138)
The World I perceive is entirely private, a dream.
The world you can perceive is a very small world indeed. And it is entirely private. Take it to be a dream and be done with it. Is not the idea of a total world a part of your personal world? The universe does not come to tell you that you are a part of it. It is you who have invented a totality to contain you as a part. In fact all you know is your own private world, however well you have furnished it with your imaginations and expectations. (23)

This world is painted by you on the screen of consciousness and is entirely your own private world. (200)

To know the picture as the play of light on the screen, gives freedom from the idea that the picture is real. (388)

Consider. The world in which you live, who else knows about it? Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He pleads with you to get out of it. You got into it by forgetting what you are, and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are. There is no reality in it. It cannot last. (45)

The world has no existence apart from you. At every moment it is but a reflection of yourself. You create it, you destroy it. Your personal universe does not exist by itself. It is merely a limited and distorted view of the real. (94)

You are not of the world, you are not even in the world. The world is not, you alone are. You create the world in your imagination like a dream. As you cannot separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself. You are independent, not the world. Don't be afraid of a world you yourself have created. (453)

Search and you shall discover the Universal Person, who is yourself and infinitely more. Anyhow, begin by realizing that the world is in you, not you in the world. Your personal body is a part in which the whole is wonderfully reflected. But you have also a universal body. You cannot even say that you do not know it, because you see and experience it all the time. Only you call it "the world" and are afraid of it. Both anatomy and astronomy describe you. You know the world exactly as you know your body - through your senses. It is your mind that has separated the world outside your skin from the world inside and put them in opposition. (309-10)

The world is but a reflection of my imagination. Whatever I want to see, I can see. But why should I invent patterns of creation, evolution and destruction? I do not need them. The world is in me, the world is myself. I am not afraid of it and have no desire to lock it up in a mental picture. (28)

Imagine a dense forest full of tigers and you in a strong steel cage. Knowing that you are well protected by the cage, you watch the tigers fearlessly. Next, you find the tigers in the cage and yourself roaming about in the jungle. Last, the cage disappears and you ride the tigers! (476-7)

What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind. I am a dream that can wake you up. You will have the proof of it in your very waking up. (181)

Give up all and you gain all. Then life becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an inexhaustible source. In that light the world appears dimly like a dream. (257)
Desire and fear come from seeing the World
as separate from my-Self.
As you think yourself to be, so you think the world to be. If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire or fear. (123)

There is no chaos in the world, except the chaos which your mind creates. It is self-created in the sense that at its very centre is the false idea of oneself as a thing different and separate from other things. In reality you are not a thing, nor separate. (121)
While I see the dream as real, I'll suffer being its slave.
Both sleep and waking are misnomers. We are only dreaming. True waking and true sleeping only the gnani knows. We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep. The three states are only varieties of the dream state. Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave. By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you become a slave of the so-and-so. The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay; so see all as a dream and stay out of it. (189)

To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation is the dawn of wisdom. (426)

The cause of suffering is in the identification of the perceiver with the perceived. Out of it desire is born, and with desire blind action, unmindful of results. Look around and you will see - suffering is a man-made thing. (381)

Nobody suffers in a play, unless one identifies himself with it. Don't identity yourself with the world and you will not suffer. (156)

While it lasts, the dream has temporary being. It is your desire to hold on to it, that creates the problem. Let go. Stop imagining that the dream is yours. (257)

Let the dream unroll itself to its very end. You cannot help it. But you can look at the dream as a dream, refuse it the stamp of reality. (258)

At present you are drifting, and therefore in danger, for to a drifter any moment anything may happen. It would be better to wake up and see your situation. That you are, you know. What you are, you don't know. Find out what you are. (474)

My intention to wake you up is the link [between our respective dreams]. My heart wants you awake. I see you suffer in your dream and I know that you must wake up to end your woes. When you see your dream as dream, you wake up. But in your dream itself I am not interested. Enough for me to know that you must wake up. You need not bring your dream to a definite conclusion, or make it noble, or happy, or beautiful; all you need is to realize that you are dreaming. Stop imagining, stop believing. See the contradictions, the incongruities, the falsehood and the sorrow of the human state, the need to go beyond. In dream you love some and not others. On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all. Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds; love in freedom is love of all. (258)

This is the heart of the matter: As long as you believe that only the outer world is real, you remain its slave. (424) Just understand that what you see is not what is. Appearances will dissolve on investigation, and the underlying reality will come to the surface. You need not burn the house to get out of it. You just walk out. It is only when you cannot come and go freely that the house becomes a jail. I move in and out of consciousness easily and naturally, and therefore to me the world is a home, not a prison. (479)
Nothing in the dream is done by me.
As long as you believe yourself to be a body, you will ascribe causes to everything. I do not say things have no causes. Each thing has innumerable causes. It is as it is, because the world is as it is. Every cause in its ramifications covers the universe. There are no causes, but your ignorance of your real being, which is perfect and beyond causation. For whatever happens, all the universe is responsible and you are the source of the universe. (347)

All that happens is the cause of all that happens. Causes are numberless; the idea of a sole cause is an illusion. (398)

Why do you talk of action? Are you acting ever? Some unknown power acts and you imagine that you are acting. You are merely watching what happens, without being able to influence it in any way. (238)

Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that, and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. (3)

The wise man counts nothing as his own. When at some time and place some miracle is attributed to some person, he will not establish any causal link between events and people, nor will he allow any conclusions to be drawn. All happened as it happened because it had to happen; everything happens as it does, because the universe is as it is. (270)

You imagine being and doing as identical. It is not so. The mind and the body move and change and cause other minds and bodies to move and change, and that is called doing, action. I see that it is in the nature of action to create further action, like fire that continues by burning. I neither act nor cause others to act; I am timelessly aware of what is going on. (398)

Nothing is done by me, everything just happens. I do not expect, I do not plan, I just watch events happening, knowing them to be unreal. (191)

It is just like your tape-recorder. It records, it reproduces - all by itself. You only listen. Similarly, I watch all that happens, including my talking to you. It is not me who talks, the words appear in my mind and then I hear them said. (433)

The deed is a fact, the doer a mere concept. Your very language shows that while the deed is certain, the doer is dubious; shifting responsibility is a game peculiarly human. Considering the endless list of factors required for anything to happen, one can only admit that everything is responsible for everything, however remote. Doership is a myth born from the illusion of "me" and "mine". I do not have the feeling that I am talking. There is talking going on, that is all. Do you [really talk]? You hear yourself talking and you say: I talk. I have no objections to the conventions of your language, but they distort and destroy reality. A more accurate way of saying would have been: "There is talking, working, coming, going". For anything to happen, the entire universe must coincide. It is wrong to believe that anything in particular can cause an event. Every cause is universal. Your very body would not exist without the entire universe contributing to its creation and survival. I am fully aware that things happen as they happen because the world is as it is. To affect the course of events, I must bring a new factor into the world and such factor can only be myself, the power of love and understanding focussed in me. (389)
There is only one dreamer, the one Self,
dreaming many dreams
In every body there is a dream, but the dreamer is the same, the
one Self, which reflects itself in each body as "I am".
To me all [persons] are equal. Differences in appearance and expression are there, but they do not matter. Just as the shape of a gold ornament does not affect the gold, so does man's essence remain unaffected. (301)

There is absolutely no difference between me and others, except in my knowing myself as I am. I know it for certain and you do not. The difference is only in the mind and temporary. I was like you, you will be like me. (123)

My self and your self are one. I know it, but you don't. That is all the difference - and it cannot last. (88)

This [helping people] is mere imagination. In truth you do not help others, because there are no others. (313)

In reality there are no others, and by helping yourself you help everybody else. (383)

I am the other person, the other person is myself; in name and shape we are different, but there is no separation. At the root of our being we are one. (511)

Where are the many points [of consciousness]? In you mind. You insist that your world is independent of your mind. How can it be? Your desire to know other people's minds is due to your not knowing your own mind. First know your own mind and you will find that the question of other minds does not arise at all, for there are no other people. You are the common factor, the only link between the minds. Being is consciousness. "I am" applies to all. (257)

The dreams are not equal, but the dreamer is one. I am the insect, I am the poet - in dream. But in reality I am neither. I am beyond all dreams. I am the light in which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both inside and outside the dream. Just as a man having a headache knows the ache and also knows that he is not the ache, so do I know the dream, myself dreaming and myself not dreaming - all at the same time. I am what I am before, during and after the dream. But what I see in dream, I am not. (117)

Ultimately nothing is mine or yours, everything is ours. Just be one with yourself and you will be one with all, at home in the entire universe. (462)

Even to talk of re-uniting the person with the self is not right, because there is no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by conviction. Nothing was divided and there is nothing to unite. (143)

There is no "my self" and "his self". There is the Self, the only Self of all. Misled by the diversity of names and shapes, minds and bodies, you imagine multiple selves. We both are the self. (137)

The one witness reflects itself in the countless bodies as "I am". As long as the bodies, however subtle, last, the "I am" appears as many. Beyond the body there is only the One. (157)

I am one, but appear as many. (529)

Delve deeply into the sense "I am" and you will surely discover that the perceiving centre is universal, as universal as the light that illumines the world. All that happens in the universe happens to you, the silent witness. On the other hand, whatever is done,is done by you, the universal and inexhaustible energy. (519)
All the dreams are of a common imaginary World
and influence each other.
The variety of personal worlds is not so great. All the dreams are superimposed over a common world. To some extent, they shape and influence each other. The basic unity operates in spite of all. At the root of it all lies self-forgetfulness; not knowing who I am. In a hospital there may be many patients, all sleeping, all dreaming, each dreaming his own private, personal dream, unrelated, unaffected, having one single factor in common - illness. Similarly, we have divorced ourselves in our imagination from the real world of common experience, and enclosed ourselves in a cloud of personal desires and fears, images and thoughts, ideas and concepts. (92-93)
Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity.
When all the false self-identifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love. (195)

To see myself in everybody, and everybody in myself, most certainly is love. (91)

The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love. (70)
I alone am, the One, the Supreme.
Not only the multiplicity of selves is false: even the duality I /
World, Subject / Object, Spirit / Matter is a transient appearance in
my Consciousness.
There can be no universe without the witness, there can be no witness without the universe. (351)

Look closely and you will see that the seer and the seen appear only when there is seeing. They are attributes of seeing. When you say "I am seeing this", "I am" and "this" come with the seeing, nor before. You cannot have an unseen "this" nor an unseeing "I am". Knowing is a reflection of your true nature along with being and loving. The knower and the known are added by the mind. It is in the nature of the mind to create a subject-object duality, where there is none. (404)

All thinking is in duality. In identity, no thought survives. (335)

The painter is in the picture. You separate the painter from the picture and look for him. Don't separate and don't put false questions. (416)

In reality there is only perception. The perceiver and the perceived are conceptual, the fact of perceiving is actual. The Absolute is the birthplace of perceiving. It makes perception possible. (340)

Even the experiencer is secondary. Primary is the infinite expanse of consciousness, the eternal possibility, the immeasurable potential of all that was, is and will be. (201)

The moment you say "I am", the entire universe comes into being along with its creator. (362)

There is no "I" apart from the body, nor the world. The three appear and disappear together. At the root is the sense "I am". Go beyond it. The idea "I am not the body" is merely an antidote to the idea "I am the body" which is false. What is that "I am"? Unless you know yourself, what else can you know? (295)

What you see is nothing but your self. Call it what you like, it does not change the fact. Through the film of destiny, your own light depicts pictures on the screen. You are the viewer, the light, the picture and the screen. Even the film of destiny (prarabdha) is self-selected and self-imposed. (480)

[Between vyakta and avyakta] there is no difference. It is like light and daylight. The universe is full of light which you do not see; but the same light you see as daylight. And what the daylight reveals is the vyakti. The person is always the object, the witness is the subject, and their relation of mutual dependence is the reflection of their absolute identity. You imagine that they are distinct and separate states. They are not. They are the same consciousness at rest and in movement, each state conscious of the other. In chit, man knows God and God knows man. In chit, the man shapes the world and the world shapes man. Chit is the link, the bridge between extremes, the balancing and uniting factor in every experience. The totality of the perceived is what you call matter. The totality of all perceivers
is what you call the universal mind. The identity of the two, manifesting itself as perceptibility and perceiving, harmony and intelligence, loveliness and loving, reasserts itself eternally.
(251)

You are [lonely] as a person. In your real being you are the whole. (533)

I have realized once and for good that I am neither object nor subject. (268)

There is only seeing; both the seer and the seen are contained in it. Don't create differences where there are none. (266)
There is only my-Self, Consciousness.
Who is there to be conscious of unconsciousness? As long as the window is open, there is sunlight in the room. With the windows shut, the sun remains, but does it see the darkness in the room? Is there anything like darkness to the sun? There is no such thing as unconsciousness, for unconsciousness is not experienceable. (263)

In reality there is only consciousness. All life is conscious, all consciousness -alive. Even the stones are conscious and alive. (47)

[My guru] told me: "You alone are, deny existence to everything except your self" and I did not doubt him. I was merely puzzling over it, until I realized that it is absolutely true. I found that I am conscious and happy absolutely, and only by mistake I thought I owed being-consciousness to the body and the world of bodies. (83-84)

Nothing exists by itself. All is the Self, all is myself. (91)

All is you and yours. There is nobody else. This is a fact. (161)

You, the self, being the root of all being, consciousness and joy, impart your reality to whatever you perceive. This imparting of reality takes place invariably in the now, at no other time, because past and future are only in the mind. "Being" applies to the now only. (528)

Outside the Self there is nothing. All is one and all is contained in "I am". In the waking and dream states it is the person. In deep sleep and turiya [samadhi] it is the Self. Beyond the alert intentness of turiya lies the great, silent peace of the Supreme. But in fact all is one in essence and related in appearance. In ignorance the seer becomes the seen, and in wisdom he is the seeing. (68)

One and all are the same to me. The same consciousness (chit) appears as being (sat) and as bliss (ananda): Chit in movement is Ananda; Chit motionless is Being. (104)
I am not even Consciousness, which is dual and perceivable:
I am the unkown Reality beyond.
Neither your body nor you mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself. (520)

The "I am" is at the root of all appearance and the permanent link in the succession of events that we call life; but I am beyond the "I am". (458)

Before the mind, I am. "I am" is not a thought in the mind; the mind happens to me, I do not happen to the mind. And since time and space are in the mind, I am beyond time and space, eternal and omnipresent. (525)

The outer self and the inner both are imagined. The obsession of being an "I" needs another obsession with a "super-I" to get cured, as one needs another thorn to remove a thorn, or another poison to neutralize a poison. All assertion calls for a denial, but this is the first step only. The next is to go beyond both. (374)

Go beyond. Neither consciousness nor the "I am" at the centre of it are you. Your true being is entirely unselfconscious, completely free from all self-identification with whatever it may be - gross, subtle or transcendental. (371)

Only reality is, there is nothing else. The three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping are not me, and I am not in them. (191)

As long as one is conscious, there will be pain and pleasure. You cannot fight pain and pleasure on the level of consciousness. To go beyond them, you must go beyond consciousness, which is possible only when you look at consciousness as something that happens to you, and not in you, as something external, alien, superimposed. Then, suddenly you are free of consciousness, really alone, with nothing to intrude. And that is your true state. Consciousness is an itching rash that makes you scratch. Of course, you cannot step out of consciousness, for the very stepping out is in consciousness. But if you learn to look at your consciousness as a sort of fever, personal and private, in which you are enclosed like a chick in its shell, out of this very attitude will come the crisis which will break the
shell. (382)

He [Buddha] must have meant that all consciousness is painful, which is obvious. (382)

I am conscious and unconscious, both conscious and unconscious, neither conscious nor unconscious - to all this I am witness, but really there is no witness, because there is nothing to be a witness to. I am perfectly empty of all mental formations, void of mind, yet fully aware. This I try to express by saying that I am beyond the mind. (328)

When you realize that all is in your mind and that you are beyond the mind, that you are truly alone, then all is you. (457)

Where there is a universe, there will also be its counterpart, which is God. But I am beyond both. (264)

Even faith in God is only a stage on the way. Ultimately, you abandon all, for you come to something so simple that there are no words to express it. (469-70)

Consciousness and life - both you may call God; but you are beyond both, beyond God, beyond being and not-being. (475)

You cannot know the knower, for you are the knower. The fact of knowing proves the knower. You need no other proof. The knower of the
known is not knowable. Just like the light is known in colours only, so is the knower known in knowledge. (360)

Before you can say "I am", you must be there to say it. Being need not be self-conscious. You need not know to be, but you must be to know. (452)

You need not know what you are. Enough to know what you are not. What you are you will never know, for every discovery reveals new
dimensions to conquer. The unknown has no limits. (372)

Do understand that you cannot ask a valid question about yourself, because you do not know whom you are asking about. (452)

The known is accidental, the unknown is the home of the real. To live in the known is bondage, to live in the unknown is liberation. (446)

Discontinuity is the law when you deal with the concrete. The continuous cannot be experienced, for it has no borders. Consciousness implies alterations, change following change, when one thing or state comes to an end and another begins; that which has no borderline cannot be experienced in the common meaning of the word. One can only be it, without knowing, but one can know what it is not. It is definitely not the entire content of consciousness which is always on the move. To realize the immovable means to become immovable. I am talking of immovability, not of immobility. You become immovable in righteousness. You become a power which gets all things right. It may or may not imply intense outward activity, but the mind remains deep and quiet. (531)

When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of non-duality, in which there is no cognition, only pure being, which may be as well called non-being, if by being you mean being something in particular.
(409)

Your true home is in nothingness, in emptiness of all content. (487)

[I can describe your supreme, natural state] only by negation, as uncaused, independent, unrelated, undivided, uncomposed, unshakable, unquestionable, unreachable by effort. Every positive definition is from memory and, therefore, inapplicable. And yet my state is supremely actual and, therefore, possible, realizable, attainable. (16)

How can I put it into words, except in negating them? Therefore, I use words like timeless, spaceless, causeless. These are words too, but as they are empty of meaning, they suit my purpose. Because you want words where no words apply. (458)
Though unknown and unkowable, my real being is concrete and solid like a rock.
[The supreme state] is not perceivable, because it is what makes perception possible. It is beyond being and not being. It is neither the mirror nor the image in the mirror. It is what is - the timeless reality, unbelievably hard and solid. (36)

The timeless knows the time, the time does not know the timeless. All consciousness is in time and to it the timeless appears as unconscious. Yet, it is what makes consciousness possible. Light shines in darkness. In light darkness is not visible. Or you can put it the other way: in the endless ocean of light, clouds of consciousness appear, dark and limited, perceivable by contrast. There are mere attempts to express in words something very simple, yet altogether inexpressible. (379-89)

Turn your mind inside out. Overlook the movable and you will find yourself to be the ever-present, changeless reality, inexpressible, but solid like a rock. (162)

When all distinctions and reactions are no more, what remains is reality, simple and solid. (410)

It is solid, steady, changeless, beginningless and endless, ever new, ever fresh. (63)

This reality is so concrete, so actual, so much more tangible than mind and matter, that compared to it even diamond is soft like butter. This overwhelming actuality makes the world dreamlike, misty, irrelevant. (484)

To me nothing ever happens. There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rock-like, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss. I am never our of it. Nothing can take me out of it, no torture, no calamity. (191)

My world is free from opposites, of mutually destructive discrepancies; harmony pervades; its peace is rocklike; this peace and silence are my body. (485)

[My condition is] absolutely steady. Whatever I may do, it stays like a rock - motionless. Once you have awakened into reality, you stay in it. It is self-evident and yet beyond description. (192)
I am the light that makes Consciousness possible, pure Awareness, the non-dual Self, the Supreme Reality, the Absolute, the Beingness of being, the Awareness of consciousness.
Who are you? Don't go by formulas. The answer is not in words. The nearest you can say in words is: I am what makes perception possible, the life beyond the experiencer and his experience. (330)

My feeling is that all that happens in space and time happens to me, that every experience is my experience, every form is my form. What I take myself to be becomes my body, and all that happens to that body becomes my mind. But at the root of the universe there is pure awareness, beyond space and time, here and now. Know it to be your real being and act accordingly. (484)

At the root of my being is pure awareness, a speck of intense light. This speck, by its very nature, radiates and creates pictures in space and events in time - effortlessly and spontaneously. As long as it is merely aware, there are no problems. But when the discriminative mind comes into being and creates distinctions, pleasure and pain arise. During sleep the mind is in abeyance and so are pain and pleasure. The process of creation continues, but no notice is taken. The mind is a form of consciousness, and
consciousness is an aspect of life. Life creates everything, but the Supreme is beyond all. (180-1)

"Nothing is me" is the first step. "Everything is me" is the next. Both hang on the idea "There is a world". When this too is given up, you remain what you are - the non-dual Self. You are it here and now, but your vision is obstructed by your false ideas about your self. (518)

[The Absolute] gives birth to consciousness. All else is in consciousness. (65)

The entire universe exists only in consciousness, while I have my stand in the Absolute. In pure being consciousness arises; in consciousness the world appears and disappears. All there is is me, all there is is mine. Before all beginnings, after all endings -I am. All has its being in me, in the "I am", that shines in every living being. Even not-being is unthinkable without me. Whatever happens, I must be there to witness it. (15)

I am beyond time. However long a life may be, it is but a moment and a dream. In the same way, I am beyond all attributes. They appear and disappear in my light, but cannot describe me. The universe is all names and forms, based on qualities and their differences, while I am beyond. The world is there because I am, but I am not the world. I know there is a world, which includes this body and this mind, but I do not consider them to be more "mine" than other minds and bodies. They are there, in time and space, but I am timeless and spaceless. (35)

You are the Supreme Reality beyond the world and its creator, beyond consciousness and its witness, beyond all assertions and denials. (425)

You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality. (240)

You are God, but you do not know it. (533)

You are always the Supreme, which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person. Once you realize that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say "I am", you are free of all your "persons" and their demands. The sense "I am" is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying: I am young. I am rich, etc. But such self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage. (64-5)

The Supreme is the universal dissolvent, it corrodes every container, it burns through every obstacle. Without the absolute denial of everything, the tyranny of things would be absolute. The Supreme is the great harmonizer, the guarantee of the ultimate and perfect balance -of life in freedom. It dissolves you and thus re-asserts your true being. (89)

As long as you deal in terms: real - unreal, awareness is the only reality that can be. But the Supreme is beyond all distinctions, and to it the tern "real" does not apply, for in it all is real and, therefore, need not be labelled as such. It is the very source of reality, it imparts reality to whatever it touches. It just cannot be understood through words. Even a direct experience, however sublime, merely bears testimony, nothing more. The Universal Mind (chidakash) makes and unmakes everything. The Supreme (paramakash) imparts reality to whatever comes into being. To say that it is the universal love may be the nearest we can come to it in words. Just like love, it makes everything real, beautiful, desirable. (303)

In reality only the Ultimate is. The rest is a matter of name and form. And as long as you cling to the idea that only what has a name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and shapeless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace -immersed in the deep silence of reality. (37)

The Supreme State is universal, here and now; everybody already shares in it. It is the state of being, knowing and liking. Who does not like to be, or does not know his own existence? But we take no advantage of this joy of being conscious, we do not go into it and purify it of all that is foreign to it. (231)

The real is simple, open, clear and kind, beautiful and joyous. It is completely free of contradictions. It is ever new, ever fresh, endlessly creative. Being and non-being, life and death, all distinctions merge in it. (340)

[It is] single, simple, indivisible and unperceivable, except in its manifestations. Not unkowable, but unperceivable, un-objectival, inseparable. Neither material nor mental, neither objective nor subjective, it is the root of matter and the source of consciousness. Beyond mere living and dying, it is the all-inclusive, all-exclusive Life, in which birh is death and death is birth. (232)

One thing is quite clear to me: all that is lives and moves and has its being in consciousness, and I am in and beyond that consciousness. I am in it as the witness. I am beyond it as Being. (92)

[You are] the impersonal and unqualified centre of being, love and bliss. (509)

Just like ice turns to water, and water to vapour, and vapour dissolves in air and disappears, so does the body dissolve into pure awareness (chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all existence and non-existence. (76-77)

Even the sense of "I am" is composed of the pure light and the sense of being. The "I" is there even without the "am". So is the pure light there, whether you say "I" or not. Become aware of the pure light and you will never lose it. The beingness in being, the awareness in consciousness, the interest in every experience - that is not describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else. (201)

I am what I am, neither with form nor formless, neither conscious nor unconscious. I am outside all these categories. You cannot find me by mere denial. I am as well everything as nothing. Nor both nor either. These distinctions apply to the Lord of the universe, not to me. I am complete and perfect. I am the beingness of being, the knowingness of knowing, the fulness of happiness. (321)