As long as we imagine ourselves to be separate personalities,

one quite apart from another, we cannot grasp reality

which is essentially impersonal.

First, we must know ourselves as witnesses only,

dimensionless and timeless centers of observation,

and then realize that immense ocean of pure awareness,

which is both mind and matter and beyond both.

What do you know about yourself?

You can only be what you are in reality;

you can only appear what you are not.

You have never moved away from perfection.

All idea of self-improvement is conventional and verbal.

Yet the mind is nothing else but the self.

Just as a cloud obscures the sun without in any way affecting it,

so does assumption obscure reality without destroying it.

All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false.

All is one -- this is the ultimate solution of every

conflict.

How does personality, come into being?

By memory.

By identifying the present with the past and projecting it into the future.

Think of yourself as momentary,

without past and future and your

personality dissolves.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

from I am That