106 / Consciousness and the Absolute
Chidakash is that raw material by which you evaluate whatever you experience or whatever you observe. In the process of becoming more subtle, the external forms are dissolved into mahakash; no more names and forms. Simultaneously, the process of evaluation and mind functioning stops, dissolves itself into chidakash. When both mahakash and chidakash become still, it is space only and you are the space.
Because of the external body, the “I Amness” is felt. However, in the absence of the body, the “I Amness” is still there without feeling “I Am”. I am ever-prevailing.
June 23, 1981
Maharaj: Just as you are not the clothes that you wear, similarly you are not this body. This is the most important step. You will slowly realize you are just like space, because space is the beginning and the end of everything. Suppose you are sick: you want to know all about your sickness, the more serious the sickness, the more you would like to know about it. Similarly, this “I Amness” is also like a sickness. Now you must begin to collect knowledge about that.
Questioner: How do you begin?
M: Start with the body. From the body you get the knowledge of “I Am”. In this process you become more and more subtle. When you are in a position to witness the knowledge “I Am”, you have reached the highest. In this way you must try to understand, and the seeds of knowledge will sprout in you.
When you come to the end of material world-knowledge, at that stage you transcend the observer and the observed.
Talks of Nisargadatta Maharaj / 107
That means that you are in a true state of beingness. Thereafter you enter the state of transcending beingness, where the identities of the observer and observed disappear.
Suppose somebody abuses you and you find out who it is. Is it the body? It is not the body. Then what could it be? Finally you come to the conclusion that it is spontaneously happening out of whatever that body is. You will not attribute it to any individual. When your individuality is dissolved, you will not see individuals anywhere, it is just a functioning in consciousness. If it clicks in you, it is very easy to understand. If it does not, it is most difficult. It is very profound and very simple, if understood right. What I am saying is not the general run of common spiritual knowledge.
When you reach a state when body is transcended, mind is transcended and consciousness is also transcended; from then on all is merely happening out of consciousness, which is the outcome of the body, and there is no authority or doership. When a sound is emanating out of a body, it is not that somebody is talking, it is just words emanating, just happening, not doing. If you understand the basis thoroughly, it will lead you very far, deep into spirituality.
The Absolute alone prevails. There is nothing but the Absolute. The unmanifest manifested itself, that manifest state is Guru and it is universal.
Who is the one who recognizes this body-mind? This “I Amness” which recognizes the body-mind is without name and form, it is already there.
June 25, 1981
Maharaj: I am inspired to talk but I have no energy. But whatever I say will be so profound that very few people will