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From ~~~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj - I Am That, Ch.73

Nisargadatta.:

The person may be conscious, 

but is not aware of being conscious. 

It is completely identified with what 

it thinks and feels and experiences. 

The darkness that is in it is of its own creation. 

When the darkness is questioned, it dissolves. 

The desire to question is planted by the Guru. 

In other words, the difference between 

the person and the witness is as 

between not knowing and knowing oneself. 

The world seen in consciousness 

is to be of the nature of consciousness, 

when there is harmony (sattva); 

but when activity and passivity (rajas and tamas) appear, 

they obscure and distort and you see the false as real.

~~~~~~

Distrust your mind and go beyond. Then you will find the direct experience of being, knowing and loving. 

There are many starting points - they all lead to the same goal. You may begin with selfless work, abandoning the fruits of action; you may then give up thinking and end in giving up all desires. 

Here, giving up is the operational factor. Or you may not bother about any thing you want, or think, or do, and just stay in the thought and feeling "I am", focusing "I am" firmly in your mind. All kinds of experience may come to you - remain unmoved in the knowledge that all perceivable is transient and only the "I am" endures.

- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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Awakening cannot take place so long as the idea persists that one is a seeker. Doing sadhana means assuming the existence of a phantom. The entity that you think you are is false. You ARE the Reality!

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It is fallacious to think that there is an individual self which functions through the body and the mind. The ‘me’ as an individual self is merely a mental modification, and there is no such thing as a mind apart from thought. When the source of thought is probed continuously as it arises, it is revealed that there is no such thing as mind or an individual behind it.

Ramesh Balsekar 

14 November