Chapter 1: What does Nisargadatta emphasize about personal demands?
Whatever demands you make I am not going to fulfill. I am not going to meet your demands. I am not going to give you whatever you want. I'm just going to tell you to emphasize what you are. You want to convert or transform yourself into something saying, I want to become this. I'm going to do that. But I am going to tell you what is the root of you, the innermost core, what you are.
I am not a sculptor, you see. I don't make images for you. so that you can become that image.
Chapter 2: How does Nisargadatta describe the concept of 'I am'?
The beginning and the end of this understanding is the knowledge, I am. The beginning of concept started with the primary concept, I am. having wandered through all the concepts and rejected them. You have to get rid of this last or the first concept. See this flame of the cigarette lighter? It has appeared. It has disappeared. It's just like that. Has it got any concept, this flame?
What is without concept is the most perfect, the most proper. I know what you are, what you were prior to your I am-ness.
I know you. I know your knowingness.
Understand consciousness and come to the conclusion that consciousness is not yourself. Give it a fair trial.
Chapter 3: What is the significance of being in your 'beingness'?
First, be yourself. Be in your beingness only. Start with, I am the imminent spirit I am. You have to be in that beingness without the body sense. You feel that you are the body now, but when you abide in that beingness, you will know then how you are without the body. But don't forget, at the same time, that body and vital breath are very necessary.
Once you understand these three entities correctly, body, vital breath, and the message, I am, then you are a part. The knower and whatever is known, both will eventually go. Nothing will remain stable or permanent. In the process of meditation, more knowledge will be awakened. will be realized by you. And in the same process you will understand that whatever you have understood you are not.
Don't talk.
Simply try to understand to see within.
Chapter 4: How does consciousness relate to the concept of self?
Just talking about eating will not fill your stomach. You have to actually eat. You will not get eternal peace with knowledge derived out of words. only by self-knowledge or self-realization. All these appearances are happening in sheer ignorance. In self-knowledge, there is no place for knowledge Even that of the knowledge I am. All of it gets washed out. Have you heard this anywhere?
For some spiritual teachers, consciousness is the upper limit. They say, You are not the body, but the dynamic consciousness. They do not go beyond consciousness. Even my guru told me, you are consciousness. What is beyond that, you have to find it yourself.
Chapter 5: What does Nisargadatta mean by the impermanence of consciousness?
The consciousness is godly, but it is not eternal. A jnani is an expression of the eternal in a bodily form. The jnani is not the form, they only appear to be so.
They are the absolute, the eternal.
The transient consciousness cannot accompany the jnani indefinitely. Ultimately, consciousness is temporary. Your true reality is prior to the senses, spaceless, timeless, without attributes. Consciousness is the temporary condition which has come upon the total, timeless, spaceless, changeless state. It is a happening which has come and which will disappear.
Don't arrogate to yourself the doership of anything. It is all just happening. The sense I am is the manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call self, God, reality, or by any other name, but it is beyond thoughts. There can be no knowledge of the unmanifested. The potential is unknowable.
Chapter 6: How is self-knowledge described in relation to duality?
Only the actual can be known. Nature will take its course. It is only to be observed and understood. Nothing is to be done. All manifestation is conceptual. The I am-ness, the primary concept, is the highest reality as far as this manifestation is concerned. but it has come in with time and will go out with time. In your original state, there is no awareness of awareness.
As the absolute, you are infinite, timeless, As infinity you express yourself as space. As timelessness you express yourself as time. Unless there is space and time you cannot be conscious of yourself. When space and time are present there is consciousness. You descend into this consciousness and express yourself in manifold ways, in innumerable forms.
Chapter 7: What insights does Nisargadatta provide about the nature of reality?
In that total manifestation, various phenomena come into being, but there is nothing separate. There is never an independent entity. There can be no separate individual. Eventually, the one who gets liberated is the consciousness. In spirituality, one attains a state of non-duality. There is neither I am nor others. Self-knowledge is profound and mysterious.
When you know the origin and cause of your consciousness, there will be no birth or death for you It is like catching the thief. The I am knowledge was absent. It has suddenly entered like a thief. The eternal never said I am. This thief which entered is saying I am. we must find out as to where from this thief entered.
Chapter 8: How does Nisargadatta conclude the discussion on awareness and existence?
You were in the state of non-duality in which the sense of being was absent. Due to this thief, the duality started with I am and the experience of the world. The cosmic spirit is the experience of silence in which there are no words. The appearance of a sense of being is the beginning of conflict. In its absence, there is peace.
and tranquility in the absence of a sense of being there were no needs including the craving to be or to exist the sense of being gives rise to all kinds of needs Other teachers will tell you how to achieve perfection. None will tell you that you are already perfect prior to doing anything.
The question is only of knowing it directly.
Awareness is primordial. It is the original state. Beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Awareness is absolute. Consciousness is relative to its content. Consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful. Awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. and it is the common matrix of every experience.
Awareness makes consciousness possible. There is awareness in every state of consciousness. Therefore the very consciousness of being conscious is already a movement in awareness. Interest in your stream of consciousness takes you to awareness. It is not a new state. It is at once recognized as the original basic existence, which is life itself, and also love and joy.
Thank you.
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