Ultimate Reality

Only that stage is final where there is no seeing, where there is no time or space. There will be no seer,
seeing and no object to see. What exists then is only 'The Infinite Eye'.
Ramana Maharshi

Imagine a street scene in a movie. Searching for the ‘I’ is like a character in the movie searching up and
down the street for the screen. That is, the apparent ‘I’ (and all other apparent things) are already made out
of the very thing that the imaginary ‘I’ is seeking. In other words the apparent ‘I’ it does not find its source, it
dissolves in it. In other words, the apparent ‘I’ is already the real and only ‘I’ of Presence, but seemingly
veiled by the belief in being something other than Presence. So in fact the imaginary ‘I’ doesn’t even dissolve
in its source, because there is nothing there to begin with other than the real ‘I’ of Presence. When this is
seen clearly all attempts to find the real ‘I’ cease spontaneously and the apparent ‘I’ stands revealed as the
real and only ‘I’.
Rupert Spira

The question "Am I aware?" - or any similar question, such as, "Who or what am I?", "What is it that knows
or is aware of my experience?" , "From where do thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions arise?" or
"What element of my experience never disappears?" - is a unique question, because unlike questions that
take the mind on a journey of objective or "outward" exploration, it takes the mind on an objectless journey
in which the knowing with which the mind usually knows objective experience is drawn "inwards" or
"selfwards" towards its own essential uncoloured reality. As the mind travels inwards, its essential quality of
pure knowing gradually, in most cases, loses its colouring. Just as the slowly fading image seems to reveal
the screen, which was in fact always in plain view, so the mind's essential nature ceases to obscure itself in
the form of objective experience and is revealed to itself as pure, objectless, infinite awareness. The mind
recognizes it's own nature : original mind, pure consciousness, infinite awareness. The question "Am I
aware" or "Who am I" initiates access to the highest intelligence of which the mind is capable. It is the
ultimate thought. The mind can go no further than that ; it is the farthest shore of knowledge. It is for this
reason that Shantananda Saraswati, the former Shankaracharya of the north of India, said, "Real thinkers
don't think". That is, a mind wich pursues absolute truth or a heart that longs for unconditional love will
eventually bring itself to its own end. What it is that triggers such sacred question in each of our minds
varies from individual to individual, but sooner or later the quest for knowledge or love must lead to this
question. "Am I aware?" , or "Who am I?" , "What is the nature of the knowing with which experience is
known?" , "From what does the mind arise?" , "How do I know that I am aware?" -- any such question turns
the mind upon itself. These are all variations of the same sacred question, and it is in the form of this
question that the divergent disciplines of science and religion are united. The desire for knowledge and the
love of God are realised to be the same quest.
- Rupert Spira

Reverse your whole line of thinking, for you have been programmed in past lives, in this life. Science is
beginning to understand this perfectly, we are all programmed in our linear thinking.
If you put a bunch of flies into a bowl and cover the bowl, for a few hours and then you open the bowl, only a
couple will fly away. Most of them have been programmed to believe the bowl is closed and will not be able
to fly out. They will fly around inside of the bowl, flying around even if there is no cover.
That is how we're programmed, the same way. Think about some of your programming. See what you
believe. See how your belief system keeps you in prison of your own making. Think of something that you
really believe, how you're stuck somewhere, or something is wrong someplace, and you won't give it up,
you're holding onto it. They're simple things. As an example: You believe if you go out in the rain you'll catch
a cold. If you walk in the rain without shoes you'll catch a cold. This is not true, yet most of us believe this,
we've been programmed to believe it by our parents, our society.
Many of you see what I'm getting at. You believe you're human and that's all you are. You've been
programmed to believe this, that you're a human being, you're closed in. Where in truth you're all-
pervading, you're everywhere at the same time. In truth you are the universe. But even if I say this to you
some of you can't believe this and will not accept this, because of your programming. Think of the situations
and conditions bothering you right now. Something that upsets you. Some limitation you think you have. Do
you really have a limitation? Of course not. But as long as your programming says you do, then you do, and
nobody will be able to change until you give up the limitation, until you give up your programming. I tell you
that you are infinite beings, you are not what you appear to be. You are totally free, accept this. It is truth
about you.
Robert Adams

Just as a screen is intimately one with all images and, at the same time, free of them, so our true nature of
luminous, empty Knowing is one with all experiences and yet, at the same time, inherently free of them.
Rupert Spira

You are perfect, so abandon the idea of imperfection. There is nothing to be destroyed. Ego is not a real
thing. It is the mind which makes the effort, and the mind is not real. Just as it is not necessary to kill the
rope which one imagines to be a snake, so also there is no need to destroy the mind. Knowing the form of
the mind makes the mind disappear.
Ramana Maharshi

Consider this: if there were only one color, let us say blue, and the entire world and everything it is were
blue, then there would be no blue. There needs to be something that is not blue so that blue can be
recognized; otherwise, it would not “stand out”, would not exist.
In the same way, does it not require something that is not fleeting and impermanent for the fleetingness of
all thing to be recognized? In other words: if everything, including yourself, were impermanent, would you
even know it? Does the fact that you are aware of and can witness the short-lived nature of all forms,
including your own, not mean that there is something in you that is not subject to decay?
When you are twenty, you are aware of your body as strong and vigorous; sixty years later, you are aware
of your body as weakened and old. Your thinking too may have changed from when you were twenty, but
the awareness that knows your body is young or old or that your thinking has changed has undergone no
change. That awareness is the eternal in you – consciousness itself. It is the formless One Life. Can you lose
It? No, because you are It.
Eckhart Tolle, from Stillness Speaks

Awareness is of one block, homogeneous. Its reflection in the mind is love and understanding. There are
levels of clarity in understanding and intensity in love, but not in their source. The source is simple and
single, but its gifts are infinite. Only do not take the gifts for the source. Realise yourself as the source and
not as the river; that is all.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
You yourself impose limitations on your true nature of infinite being, and then weep that you are but a finite
creature. Then you take up this or that spiritual practice to transcend the non-existent limitations. But if your
spiritual practice itself assumes the existence of the limitations, how can it help you to transcend them?
Ramana Maharshi

I am the insect, I am the poet - in dream. But in reality I am neither. I am beyond all dreams. I am the light in
which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both inside and outside the dream. Just as a man having a
headache knows the ache and also knows that he is not the ache, so do I know the dream, myself dreaming
and myself not dreaming - all at the same time. I am what I am before, during and after the dream.
But what I see in dream, I am not.
Nisargadatta Maharaj

Thoughts and feelings have preferences, make choices, like and dislike, seek and resist, praise and blame,
hope and despair, judge and condemn, but our Self, Awareness, that which knows them, does not share their
prejudices. Awareness looks on all people and things alike, just as the sun shines on all objects equally.
Rupert Spira

Q: Surely, I am not the master of what happens. Its slave rather.

M: Be neither master, nor slave. Stand aloof.
Q: Does it imply avoidance of action?
M: You cannot avoid action. It happens, like everything else.
Q: My actions, surely, I can control.
M: Try. You will soon see that you do what you must.
Q: I can act according to my will.
M: You know your will only after you have acted.
Q: I remember my desires, the choices made, the decisions taken and act accordingly.
M: Then your memory decides, not you.
Q: Where do I come in?
M: You make it possible by giving it attention.
Q: Is there no such thing as free will? Am I not free to desire?
M: Oh no. You are compelled to desire. In Hinduism the very idea of free will is non-existent, so there is no
word for it. Will is commitment, fixation, bondage.
Q: I am free to choose my limitations.
M: You must be free first. To be free in the world you must be free of the world. Otherwise your past decides
for you and your future. Between what had happened and what must happen you are caught. Call it destiny
or karma, but never—freedom. First return to your true being and then act from the heart of love.
Q: Within the manifested what is the stamp of the unmanifested?
M: There is none. The moment you begin to look for the stamp of the unmanifested, the manifested
dissolves. If you try to understand the unmanifested wtih the mind, you at once go beyond the mind, like
when you stir the fire with a wooden stick, you burn the stick. Use the mind to investigate the manifested.
Be like the chick that pecks at the shell. Speculating about life outside the shell would have been of little use
to it, but pecking at the shell breaks the shell from within and liberates the chick. Similarly, break the mind
from within by investigation and exposure of its contradictions and absurdities.
Q: The longing to break the shell, where does it come from?
M: From the unmanifested.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
It is the full and correct knowledge of the known that takes you to the unknown. - Nisargadatta Maharaj

The final obstacle in meditation is ecstasy; you feel great bliss and happiness and want to stay in that
ecstasy. Do not yield to it but pass on to the next stage which is great calm. The calm is higher than ecstasy
and it merges into samadhi.
Ramana Maharshi

Treat people, animals, objects and the world, not as people, animals, objects or a world but as they truly are,
made out of pure Awareness alone, made out of your Self alone. Everyone and everything loves to be
treated as they truly are, so people, animals, objects and the world will all respond to you and let you know
that you are treating them properly! In what form will this response come? An intellectual understanding?
No! It comes in a far more convincing way. What would truly convince us that we are on the right track?
Obviously the realisation of the things we most value in life would be such a confirmation….and what is
that? Happiness, peace and love! That is how the universe responds to being treated as it truly is and that is
the confirmation that our ideas, feelings, perceptions, activities and relationships are in line with reality.
Rupert Spira

You cannot possibly say that you are what you think yourself to be! Your ideas about yourself change from
day to day and from moment to moment. Your self-image is the most changeful thing you have. It is utterly
vulnerable, at the mercy of a passerby. A bereavement, the loss of a job, an insult, and your image of
yourself, which you call your person, changes deeply. To know what you are, you must first investigate and
know what you are not. And to know what you are not, you must watch yourself carefully rejecting all that
does not necessarily go with the basic fact: ‘ I am’. The ideas: I am born at a given place, at a given time,
from my parents and now I am so- and-so, living at, married to, father of, employed by, and so on, are not
inherent in the sense ‘ I am’ . Our usual attitude is of ‘ I am this’. Separate consistently and perseveringly the
‘ I am’ from ‘this’ or’that’ and try to feel what it means to be, without being ‘this’ or ‘that’. All our habits go
against it and the task of fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding helps a lot. The
clearer you understand that on the level of the mind you can be described on negative terms only, the
quicker you will come to the end of your search and realize your limitless being.
Nisargadatta Maharaj

Normally we think that an object is existent and that it disappears into non-existence. In fact, an object, as
such, is non-existent and the apparent ‘non-existence’ into which we imagine the apparent object
disappears, is in fact Conscious Presence itself. Both ‘something,’ ‘nothing’ and, therefore, ‘everything’ are
illusions. Only Presence is. 👁
Rupert Spira

I am not indifferent – I am impartial. I give no preference to the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’. A basket of earth and a
basket of jewels are both unwanted. Life and death are all the same to me. On the contrary, compassion and
love are my very core. Void of all predilections, I am free to love.
Nisargadatta Mahara

Pay no attention to your thoughts. Don't fight them. Just do nothing about them, let them be, whatever they
are. Your very fighting them gives them life. Just disregard. Look through. Remember to remember:
"Whatever happens, happens because I am." All reminds you that "you are". Take full advantage of the fact
that to experience you must "be". You need not stop thinking. Just cease being interested. It is
disinterestedness that liberates. Don't hold on, that is all. The world is made of rings. The hooks are all
yours. Make straight your hooks and nothing can hold you. Give up your addictions. There is nothing else to
give up. Stop your routine of acquisitiveness, your habit of looking for results and the freedom of the
universe is yours. Be effortless.
Nisargadatta Maharaj

The understanding that only awareness is aware is one of the most challenging aspects of this approach
and, at the same time, the most important to grasp. If we start with the belief that it is ‘I, the body’ or ‘I, the
person’ that is aware, everything we subsequently know will be conditioned by that belief. I would suggest
that the reason contemporary science has so much difficulty fitting consciousness into its model of the
universe is precisely because the investigation is founded on the assumption that consciousness is the
property of the body. If we start with the assumption of a universe and try to fit consciousness into that
model, we end up with the classic panpsychist statement that all things have a degree of consciousness or,
more simply, that the universe is conscious. The belief that the universe is aware is simply an extension of
the materialist belief that the body is aware. Fleas are not aware; fish are not aware; dogs are not aware;
trees and rocks are not aware; human beings are not aware. Only awareness is aware! Only consciousness is
conscious. Mind repeatedly asserts the existence of a substance called matter that it has never experienced
in favour of the sole reality of its entire experience, consciousness itself. It is no coincidence that psychiatrists
have never found a discrete entity called mind, and physicists have yet to find matter. These substances will
never be found, for they do not exist in their own right. Their apparent existence is borrowed from infinite
consciousness.
Rupert Spira
The Nature of Consciousness

You say you want to pacify your mind. Is he, who wants to pacify the mind, himself peaceful?
Nisargadatta Maharaj

Awareness is of one block, homogeneous. Its reflection in the mind is love and understanding. There are
levels of clarity in understanding and intensity in love, but not in their source. The source is simple and
single, but its gifts are infinite. Only do not take the gifts for the source. Realise yourself as the source and
not as the river; that is all.
Nisargadatta Maharaj