Our True Nature

Nisargadatta Maharaj

on Seeing the False as False ....

"To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not.

"Seeing the false as false, is meditation. This must go on all the time."

The seeker is he who is in search of himself...

To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not.

The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. p.302

“See that you are not what you believe yourself to be.

It is useless to search for the truth, when the mind is blind to the false.

It must be purged of the false completely before truth can dawn on it.

What you see as false, dissolves.

It is the very nature of illusion to dissolve on investigation.

Investigate - that is all.

You cannot destroy the false, for you are creating it all the time.

Withdraw from it, ignore it, go beyond, and it will cease to be.

Look at yourself steadily – it is enough. The door that locks you in is also the door that lets you out.

The ‘I am’ is the door. Stay at it until it opens.

As a matter of fact, it is open, only you are not at it. You are waiting at the non-existent painted doors, which will never open.

To strengthen and stabilize the ‘I am’ we do all sorts of things – all in vain for the ‘I am’ is being rebuilt from moment to moment. No ambition is spiritual.

All ambitions are for the sake of ‘I am’.

If you want to make real progress you must give up all ideas of personal attainment.

All hangs on the idea ‘I am’. Examine it very thoroughly. It lies at the root of every trouble.

This ‘I am’ idea was not born with you. You could have lived very well without it.

It came later due to your self-identification with the body. It created an illusion of separation where there was none. It made you a stranger in your own world alien and inimical.

Without the sense of ‘I am’ life goes on.

There are moments when we are without the sense of ‘I am’, at peace and happy.

With the return of ‘I am’, trouble starts.

The sense of ‘I am’ is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying, I am young, I am rich, and so on.

But such self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.

It is not the "I am" that is false, but what you take yourself to be.

I can see, beyond the least shadow of doubt, that you are not what you believe yourself to be.

"There are many persons who have a great attachment to their own individuality.

They want first and foremost to remain as an individual and then search, for they are not prepared to lose that individuality.

While retaining their identity, they want to find out what is the truth.

But in this process, you must get rid of the identity itself.

If you really find out what you are, you will see that you are not an individual, you are not a person, you are not a body.

And people who cling to their body identity are not fit for this knowledge."

The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person.

The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding.

In reality, there is no such thing.