FREEDOM FROM SUFFERING - PART 12

Most seekers embark on the search through the desire is be free of suffering and abide in the freedom of the natural state. At the initial stages, when identified with the person, the desire may be at a personal level -- to become enlightened, change the world, become a successful and famous spiritual teacher, to be free from the problems of the relative. In other words, the desire is to gain something at a personal level. 


When the seeker is ripe or ready, these personal desires drop away. Instead, there is simply the burning and earnest desire to know the Self and be free of suffering. This series will offer the direct path pointers on how to be free from suffering -- permanently.

We speak of three 'I's': 
  1. There is the absolute, unmanifested, impersonal 'I', pure Awareness, beyond all sensory perception, aware of itself only when manifestation arises. 
  2. There is the super-personal, manifested 'I', the conscious presence which is the reflection of the Absolute appearing as 'I am'. 
  3. And there is the individual, personal 'I', appearing to be separate, the apparent doer and enjoyer and sufferer of actions, but which really is just an imaginary construct of the psychosomatic apparatus into which consciousness has manifested itself, and with which it has mistakenly identified itself.
This third 'I' is totally false; it has no existence except in the imagination, in ignorance. And the second 'I' , the manifested, in actuality is one with and indistinguishable from the first 'I', the unmanifested, in which it is but an appearance, a reflection. The first 'I' is the Reality, the one basis on which the manifested 'I' appears as a movement.


 –        Nisargadatta Maharaj



Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words.

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