By looking tirelessly, I became quite empty
and with that emptiness all came back to me except the mind.
I find I have lost the mind irretrievably.
I am neither conscious nor unconscious,
I am beyond the mind and its various states and conditions.
Distinctions are created by the mind and apply to the mind only.
I am pure Consciousness itself, unbroken awareness of all that is.
I am in a more real state than yours.
I am undistracted by the distinctions and separations which constitute a person.
As long as the body lasts, it has its needs like any other,
but my mental process has come to an end.
My thinking, like my digestion, is unconscious and purposeful.
I am not a person in your sense of the word,
though I may appear a person to you.
I am that infinite ocean of consciousness in which all happens.
I am also beyond all existence and cognition, pure bliss of being.
There is nothing I feel separate from, hence I am all.
No thing is me, so I am nothing.
Life will escape, the body will die, but it will not affect me in the least.
Beyond space and time I am, uncaused, uncausing, yet the very matrix of existence.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
with thanks to http://ashramof1.tumblr.com/
photo by Bea Garth
