Upon returning to our apartment after its recent renovation one of the first things we did was put valued books onto new bookshelves. One such book is I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Slipping the book from the shelf a couple of days ago, I opened it to this short statement: “Life has no ambition”, a beautiful reminder that all our hopes, dreams and ambitions are mere constructions of an assumed I-centre, a thinker, a one who fears. Life itself is unfolding without the merest touch of such notions.
There is gestating, flowering, growing, withering, shining, decaying. Without an overlay that would name a future state. Such a relief, we are making up all else.
More quotes from Nisargadatta, from around the web:
The whole manifestation of this world is an expression of the same Consciousness that you are. You should not love anything other than your true nature, Consciousness. Deep desires, deep expectations: How can that be love? Your body identity is attracted to objects. It creates desires and you treat them as high priorities. Understanding yourself should be your only priority. Your body desires will lead you nowhere.
If you don’t understand the “I Am” how can you understand the rest?
To abide in consciousness is the true religion. The human brain creates religions.
How can words explain that from which words originate?
Without food there is death and the idea “I am” vanishes. Consciousness is beyond any idea.
You can only watch events happen. You can’t use Consciousness to do or undo anything.
Your body identity is like a very tight screw. Your idea of being an individual, is a screw. You must loosen it up. Let go of your personal identity and the screw will open as much as needed.
If you wish to use your intellect dwell on your nine months in the womb. What is in the womb is not different from what is happening now.
Anything that can show you what you are is actually pointing out what you are not.
Grasp the knowingness principle and move ahead in life. Like a swimmer caught in a vortex has to dive to the bottom of the river, then has to swim to the surface, outside of the vortex, and only then he is free.
We live like worms in hot sand, always needing help, but I am not a worm. I am the manifested and the unmanifested.
