You Are the Supreme Reality

Photo credit: Tamara Hanson

Adapted from ‘I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’ Maurice Frydman, 1973

Stay silent and attentive. Be earnest about it.

Just be aware of your being here and now.

 Reality will find you.

Just live your life as it comes. Keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real  nature of yourself. Perception is based on memory and is only imagination. The  world can be said to appear but not to be. Only that which makes perception  possible is real.

You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.  Give up all names and forms, and the Real is with you. Know yourself as you are.  Distrust your mind and go beyond. Do not think of the Real in terms of  consciousness and unconsciousness. It is utterly beyond both. It gives birth to  consciousness. All else is in consciousness.

 Nothing you can see, feel or think is so. Go beyond the personal and see. Stop  imagining that you were born. You are utterly beyond all existence and  non-existence, utterly beyond all that the mind conceives. Question yourself:  Who am I? What is behind and beyond all this? Soon you will see that thinking  yourself to be a person is mere habit built on memory. Inquire ceaselessly.

 How can Reality depend on experience when it is the very ground, the very basis  of experience, the very fact of experience? Just be aware of your being here and  now. There is nothing more to it. In reality you are not a thing nor separate.

You are the infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible possibility. Because you  are, all can be. The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless  capacity to become. You are neither consciousness nor its content. You are the  timeless Source. Disassociate yourself from mind and consciousness. Find a  foothold beyond and all will be clear and easy.

You are the Supreme Reality - all there is. Just trust and remember that. Wisdom  lies in never forgetting the Self, the Supreme Absolute as the ever-present  Source of both the experiencer and the experience. I am beyond consciousness and  so in consciousness I cannot say what I am. Yet I am. The question “Who am I?”  has no answer in consciousness and therefore helps to go beyond consciousness.  Remember there is no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by  conviction. All you need to do is to cease taking yourself to be within the  field of consciousness.

You are free of being a percept or a concept. Abandon all conceptualization and  stay silent and attentive. Be earnest about it and all will be well with you.  Give up the idea of being what you think yourself to be. Let go of the idea that  you are not aware of yourself as the ever-present, changeless inexpressible  Reality. Just let go.

Your difficulty stems from the idea that Reality is a state of consciousness.  Essence is independent of consciousness. Self-knowledge is a new dimension  altogether. Pure, concentrated longing will take you speedily to your goal. If  you could keep in mind what you do not know, it would reveal to you its secrets.

When you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the Supreme State will  come to you uninvited and unexpected. Stop making use of your mind and see what  happens. Do this one thing thoroughly. That is all. Your weakness is due to your  conviction that you were born into the world. In reality the world is ever  recreated by you and in you. Once you realize that the world is your own  projection you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does  not exist except in your own imagination!

Realize that you are the Eternal Source. There is no reality but That. So how  could you be “other?” And accept all as your own. Such acceptance is true love.  Don’t try to understand! Don’t rely on your mind for liberation. Go beyond it  altogether. Be aware of being aware. Broaden and deepen the field of awareness.  You are beyond space and time, uncaused, the very matrix of existence, the  Supreme Absolute, the Noumenon- not unknowable, but unperceivable, un-objectival,  inseparable, neither material nor mental, neither objective nor subjective- the  Source of being, life and consciousness.

You are the all-pervading, all-transcending Reality. Behave accordingly. The  actual experience will dawn upon you in no time. No effort is needed. Have faith  and act on it.

All will happen by itself: You are the subtle cause of the entire  universe. All is because you are. Grasp this point firmly and deeply and dwell  on it repeatedly. To realize this as absolutely true is liberation. What you  need will come to you.

Whatever you come across, go beyond. Paramakash, your Self, is the timeless and  spaceless Reality, mindless, undifferentiated, the infinite potentiality, the  source and origin, the substance and the essence, both matter and consciousness,  yet utterly beyond both. It cannot be perceived, but can be experienced as ever  witnessing the witness, perceiving the perceiver, the origin and the end of all  manifestation, the root of time and space, the prime cause in every chain of  causation.

Your idea that you were born and that you will die is absurd: Both logic and  experience contradict it.

Behave as what I say is true and judge by what  actually happens. I know the Source of all experience. From moment to moment the  little I need to know to live my life I somehow happen to know. The Supreme  Absolute, the Self, is at the root of and utterly beyond all. You are That.  Don’t you see that the Self, your Self, the Supreme Reality, is what makes  everything possible?

Know life as pure radiation from the inexhaustible Source. There is nothing to  practice. To know yourself, be yourself. Stop imagining yourself to be this or  that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge.
Don’t disturb your mind with  seeking. The very absence of obstacles will cause Reality to rush in. You will  know the Light of Absolute Awareness in all its clarity and the world will fade  out of your vision.

Awareness takes the place of consciousness. In consciousness there is the “I”  who is conscious, while awareness is undivided. Awareness is aware of Itself.  The “I am” is a thought, while awareness is not a thought. There is no  “I-am-aware” in awareness. Awareness is not an attribute. One can be aware of  being conscious , but not conscious of awareness. Awareness is not a form of  consciousness.

One who is aware is beyond every experience, utterly beyond awareness itself.  The fundamental Reality is beyond awareness, beyond becoming, beyond being and  not-being. Give up all idea of the person , of personal attainment. Find out  what you are.

There is no effort in witnessing. You understand that you are the witness only,  and understanding acts. If in the state of witnessing you ask “Who am I?” the  answer comes at once, wordless and silent. You find yourself utterly beyond the  subject and the object. Both exist in you, but you are neither. You, the Supreme  Absolute, are the very source of reality. Collect your energies in one great  longing. My words are true and they will do their work. Enlightenment is a  certainty. It is your destiny.

Discard every self-seeking motive and Reality will find you. Who am I? Go into  it deeply. Find out your real being. You are the beingness of being, utterly  beyond the universal even. You are the non-dimensional Source of all dimensions.  As you keep on giving up, you grow spontaneously in intelligence and power and  inexhaustible love and joy. The Absolute can be reached by absolute devotion  only. Don’t be half-hearted.

The “person” is a shell imprisoning you. Break the shell. There is nothing you  need. Nothing perceivable is real. Even space and time are imagined. All  existence is imaginary. Only the Unlimited is real. Question the limits. Go  beyond. Set yourself tasks apparently impossible. This is the way. Look at  consciousness as something alien, superimposed. Then suddenly you are free of  consciousness. Whatever you feel needs to be done happens unfailingly. Selfless  and intelligent, all the powers of the universe are for you to command: You are  the Source Absolute. This is your natural state. Believe me, you are the Supreme  Reality. You are the fullness of perfection here and now.

Investigate what you know to its very end and you reach the unknown layers of  your being. Go further and the unexpected will explode in you and shatter all.  The crucial question is: “Who am I?”

 Just see the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world perceived  within consciousness; and look at consciousness from the outside; for you are  not the consciousness. You, the Supreme Reality, are utterly beyond.