The “I am” and the Absolute are not two. In the Absolute the “I amness” comes and then the experience takes place. Whatever is happening, from the Absolute standpoint, without the knowledge “I am”, is very profound, unlimited, and expansive.
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Tag: Prior to Consciousness
QUOTES OF NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ FROM ‘PRIOR TO CONSCIOUSNESS’ #23
The knowledge ‘I am’ is not a thought but observes thought. The innermost, subtlest principle is that gnawing principle ‘I am, I am’ without words, by which you know you are. It has no form or image; it is only beingness, the love to be.
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Quotes of Nisargadatta Maharaj from ‘Prior to Consciousness’ #22
This passing show maybe likened to the following situation: suppose I was well all along, then suddenly I was sick and the doctor gave me medicine. After three days my fever was gone. So this stage of fever for three days is the ‘I am’ consciousness. Exactly like that – a passing show, a time-bound state.
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Quotes of Nisargadatta Maharaj from ‘Prior to Consciousness’ #21
Most essential is that knowledge ‘I am’. Claim it, appropriate it as your own. If that is not there, nothing is. Knowledge of all stages will be obtained only with the aid of this knowledge ‘I am’ From the Absolute no-knowing state, spontaneously this consciousness ‘I am’ has appeared – no reason, no cause.
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Quotes of Nisargadatta Maharaj from ‘Prior to Consciousness’ #20
In this spiritual hierarchy, from the grossest to the subtlest, you are the subtlest. How can this be realized? The very base is that you don’t know you are, and suddenly the feeling of ‘I amness’ appears. The moment it appears you see space, mental space; that subtle sky-like space, stabilize there. You are that. When you are able to stabilize in that space, you are space only. When this space-like identity ‘I am’ disappears, the space will also disappear, there is no space. When that space-like ‘I am’ goes into oblivion, that is the eternal state, ‘nirguna’, no form, no beingness. Actually, what did happen there? This message ‘I am’ was no message. Dealing with this aspect, I cannot talk much because there is no scope to put it in words.
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Quotes of Nisargadatta Maharaj from ‘Prior to Consciousness’ #19
Any embodied person with the knowledge ‘I am’ carries on his activities in the world with the name only. That inner core, the ‘I am’ has no shackles. Once it is understood that I am that ‘I am’ only, and not this shackled form, then no liberation is called for, that itself is liberation.
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Quotes of Nisargadatta Maharaj from ‘Prior to Consciousness’ #18
Understand that it is not the individual that has consciousness; it is the consciousness which assumes innumerable forms. That something which is born or which will die is purely imaginary. It is the child of a barren woman. In the absence of this basic concept ‘I am’, there is no thought, there is no consciousness.
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Quotes of Nisargadatta Maharaj from ‘Prior to Consciousness’ #17
Whatever I am telling you is not the truth, because it has come out of this ‘I am’. The truth is beyond expression. I am taking you again and again to the source of the spring. Once you go to the source you will come to know there is no water, water is the news ‘I am’.
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Quotes of Nisargadatta Maharaj from ‘Prior to Consciousness’ #16
That ‘I am’ is a concept is to be understood while the concept is there. Once it merges in the original state, who (or what) is there who wants to know? The illusory entity has disappeared.
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Quotes of Nisargadatta Maharaj from ‘Prior to Consciousness’ #15
What is wrong is that you consider yourself to be limited to this body and shape. What knowledge I try to give is given to the knowledge ‘I am’ in each of you, which is the same. If you try to get the knowledge as an individual you will never get it.
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Quotes of Nisargadatta Maharaj 