We are consciousness
beyond 'I' and 'Mine' which are False Ideas
extract from chapter 77
from the book “I AmThat” of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Questioner: I am very much attached to my family and
possessions. How can I conquer this attachment?
Maharaj: This
attachment is born along with the sense of 'me' and 'mine'. Find the true
meaning of these words and you will be free of all bondage. You have a mind
which is spread in time. One after another all things happen to you and the
memory remains. There is nothing wrong in it.
The problem arises only when the memory of
past pains and pleasures -- which are essential to all organic life -- remains
as a reflex, dominating behaviour. This reflex takes the shape of 'I' and uses
the body and the mind for its purposes, which
are invariably in search for pleasure or flight from pain.
When you recognise the 'I' as it is, a bundle
of desires and fears, and the sense of 'mine', as embracing all things and
people needed for the purpose of avoiding pain and securing pleasure, you will
see that the 'I' and the 'mine' are false ideas, having no foundation in
reality. Created by the mind, they rule their creator as long as it takes them
to be true; when questioned, they dissolve.
The 'I' and
'mine', having no existence in themselves, need a support which they find in
the body. The body becomes their point of
reference. When you talk of 'my' husband and 'my' children, you mean the body's
husband and the body's children. Give up the idea of being the body and face
the question: Who am l? At once a process will be set in motion which will
bring back reality, or, rather, will take the mind to reality. Only, you must
not be afraid.
Q: What am I to
be afraid of?
M: For reality to be, the ideas of 'me' and
'mine' must go. They will go if you let them. Then your normal natural state
reappears, in which you are neither the body nor the mind, neither the 'me’ nor
the 'mine', but in a different state of being altogether. It is pure awareness of being, without being this or that, without any
self-identification with anything in particular, or in general. In that
pure light of consciousness there is nothing, not even the idea of nothing. There is only light.