The True Nature of Reality

Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. The fruition of your spirituality is to fully understand your own true nature, to stabilize in your true identity. Ultimately, everything merges in the Self. You will transcend that beingness, and you, the Absolute, will know that you are also not that beingness, that consciousness. Beingness is transcended, but beingness will still be available. In the deep sleep state the beingness, the 'I amness' goes into oblivion, you forget yourself. The 'I amness' comes and goes in the waking and deep sleep states, but the Absolute remains unaffected by that. The true state, which is whole, undifferentiated, is beyond birth and death. Be friendly with your undifferentiated state, your true Self. There was never any division, but you are under the delusion that you are not one with it. You are never bound by body and mind. You are limitless. You, the Absolute are aloof, you are beyond any experience. In the...

This series is a collection of pointers or teaching aphorisms by Nisargadatta Maharaj on resting in the sense “I Am” without attributes. Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. This knowledge is ancient ("Sanatan"), it has come from Eternity. From the eternal Absolute, which is ever there, a seed appears, that seed is the ‘I amness’. It appears spontaneously, its remnant is in us. This little seed (‘I am’) sprouts and the whole world is created.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj Notes on this preliminary stage can be found  here .

This series is a collection of pointers or teaching aphorisms by Nisargadatta Maharaj on resting in the sense “I Am” without attributes. Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. Go to the ‘I am’ level and dwell there. Because you are at the body level you revel in all these objective things. But if you were to go to the ‘I am’ and firmly abide in that, then all these external things will lose grip on you. –       Nisargadatta Maharaj Notes on this preliminary stage can be found  here .

This series is a collection of pointers or teaching aphorisms by Nisargadatta Maharaj on resting in the sense “I Am” without attributes. Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words. My guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I Am' and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed, I did not follow any particular course of breathing or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I Am'....Keep empty, keep available, resist not what comes uninvited. In the end you reach a state of non-grasping, of joyful non-attachment, of inner ease and freedom, indescribable, yet wonderfully real.  –       Nisargadatta Maharaj Notes on this preliminary stage can be found  here .

The most striking shift in Advaita Vedanta is from viewing the world out there from the perspective of the individual self to identifying with the True Reality that is prior to the manifestation of the world.  As Nisargadatta says: 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. However, this shift in vantage point, while seemly simple and effortless, has a requirement – giving up all identification with the personal self and the network of desires and fears that fuel the sense of self.  For the individually bound seeker, this price can seem too high: What about my position on the mountain? What about my relationship with the pebbles nearby to me? What about my smooth edges and unique colours? What if I...