Nisargadatta

I know! I've been reading you for years, and then one day... AHA!!

It's like gardening. 

Me too. I have a 'brown thumb.'

The Basic Truth....

The entire manifested universe is an appearance in consciousness. If you are not conscious the world does not exist for you, since then you cannot cognize anything. This consciousness in which you cognize the phenomenal universe is all that you are. As long as you are in the phenomenal world, you can perceive only that. You cannot be that which you are until you wake up from the dream of phenomenality and stop objectivizing and conceptualizing. This is the basic essential.

Noumenon is the substance, the phenomenon is mere reflection - they are not different. The next point to understand is this: In the phenomenal world when 'you' see 'him', both are objects seen by each other as appearances in consciousness. But, there is no subject that sees the other as an object. There is only seeing, functioning. This functioning takes place through the medium of the physical form which is itself only a manifestation and, therefore, also an aspect of noumenon, much like the shadow is of its substance.

So long as there is no question of an individual entity assuming choice of action, all phenomenal functioning takes place spontaneously and the question of bondage and liberation does not arise. But what happens is that with the consciousness (the 'I amness) having identified itself with the psychosomatic form, the form now gets bestowed with a spurious subjectivity as a separate entity.

Although the form itself is only a phenomenon, a reflection of the noumenon, an object in relativity, it, instead of the noumenon, appears to be the subject, cognizing everything perceivable to its senses as objects. Thus is created the pseudo-entity which appears to be born, to live and to die. This pseudo-entity also appears to have independent authority to choose and to decide; and with this authority it assumes responsibility for what happens to it, including its suffering, its sins and merits, and its consequent bondage and need for liberation. We see that what we are has mistakenly identified itself in relativity with what we are not, the pseudo-entity.

The concept of bondage arises from this mis-identification. The pseudo-entity suffers guilt and bondage and seeks liberation. The real 'I', the noumenon, pure subjectivity, cannot possibly suffer because it is not equipped with any instruments with which sensation could be experienced. Any experience, pleasant or unpleasant, could only be experienced by the phantom object.

In the case of the Jnani, the wise man, he has understood the basic illusion of the manifested universe and his apparent role as a phenomenon in the spontaneous functioning of the manifestation. He has adapted himself smoothly to whatever happens to the phenomenon as it goes through its allotted journey of life, and thereafter 'returns home'. He seems to be living his life like any other man, but the significant difference is that he has not identified himself with the body complex, and, therefore, there is no pseudo-entity that can experience suffering.

The ignorant person continues to go through the dream world thinking of himself as an independent entity with apparent volition. He involves himself in the notion of doership and causality and suffers the results, becoming bound by the concept of Karma, including the concept of rebirth. The Absolute noumenality manifests itself through millions of forms which are created and destroyed every moment, and in this spontaneous functioning there is no place at all for the notion of any entity. Therefore, any action taken based on the notion that you are an autonomous, independent entity seeking 'liberation' will only lock you further into 'bondage'.

When you analyze the situation you will discover that it is but consciousness seeking the unmanifested source of manifestation, and not finding it, because this consciousness, ever-moving, ever-active, is actually just seeking itself, in its serene, inactive, potential state. It is the seeker that is being sought. When this is deeply, intuitively perceived then the seeker will disappear and the Source will remain.

What you appear to be, what you are conditioned to think you are but are not, is temporal. But what you are is intemporality. What you think you are is some thing in time, a river of time flowing from infancy to old age, from birth to death, like any other manifested phenomenon, but what you subjectively are is timeless, here and now... where 'here' means the absence of space and 'now' means the absence of time. The past is only a memory and the future is only a hope; both past and future are conceptual, rooted in duality. But, the now, the present is intemporal, spontaneous and ever new, free of conceptualization, and that is what you are...

~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj