Ican never forget the first time I read a short sentence, in a book of transcriptions, from talks of Nisargadatta Maharaj.
The sentence in question read;
"Undeceive
yourself and be free. You are not a person."
At the time when I first stumbled across
this, it just knocked all the wind out of my sails.
At one moment I had been riding the high
seas, all sails aloft and bloated, full of the winds of living and full of
'myself,' doing the living. The next moment 'I' was a drift on a sea of glass,
no wind, and no sails, no 'I'...
"Undeceive
yourself and be free. You are not a person."
This is not a new idea by any means, I
had already delved quite deeply, or so I thought, into the writings of Zen,
Dzogchen and Advaita Masters and in such writings one often comes across this
teaching. But for me, this was one of those; 'when the penny drops' moments.
When I read this passage I was in the
loft of my little 'tin palace' which is situated in a patch of forest about an
hour from the hill station of Darjeeling in the north-east of India.
I have no idea how long I sat gazing out
into space. It was not that the words began a whole stream of thoughts that lead
to a moment of 'reckoning.' It was rather that those few words cut the mind off
completely at the root; at least for a while. They hold that kind of potential,
they have that kind of power.
In truth these are words of power. They were uttered by a Master who had gone completely
beyond the 'little self' and had been immersed in the 'absolute self,' despite
his having lived in the midst of a huge city.
Read on in Never Not Ever Here Now
Volume Four in the Series; Shades of Awareness
Yes...this from Nisargadatta has also taken off my head. Would you know by any chance exactly where this quote came from. I read I Am That in its entirety some years ago...but I have no clue where this particular quote came from. I actually would like to know exactly where in his original Marathi recordings/transcripts it came from, as I would love to hear him (or really any Marathi speaker) actually voice them. I want to use select phrases, including this one, in the original Marathi, for meditation purposes.
ReplyDeleteHi Eric, i should know this but i am not currently with my books around me as i am in the South of India just now. However if you can be patient i will try to find out. I know someone who was close to both Maharaj and Maurice Freydman who authored "I Am That" and he has a very good memory and will surely know. It may well have been in one of Jean Dunns transcriptions of Maharaj's talks. Will get back to you shortly.
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