you know yourself only through the senses and the mind

 

 You know yourself only through the senses and the mind. 

You take yourself to be what they suggest;

 having no direct knowledge of yourself,

 you have mere ideas; all mediocre, 

second-hand, by hearsay.

Whatever you think you are you take it to be true; 

the habit of imagining yourself perceivable and

describable is very strong with you.

I see as you see, hear as you hear, taste as you taste,

 eat as you eat. 

I also feel thirst and hunger.

 When starved or sick,

 my body and mind go weak.

 All this I perceive quite clearly, but somehow I am not in it, 

I feel myself as if floating over it, aloof and detached.

 Even not aloof and detached. 

There is aloofness and detachment as there is thirst and

hunger; there is also the awareness of it all 

and a sense of Immense distance, 

as if the body and the mind and all that happens to them

 were somewhere far out on the horizon. 

I am like a cinema screen -- clear and empty -- 

the pictures pass over it and disappear, 

leaving it as clear and empty as before. 

In no way is the screen affected by the pictures, 

nor are the pictures affected by the screen. 

The screen intercepts and reflects the pictures,

 it does not shape them.

 It has nothing to do with the rolls of films.

 These are as they are, lumps of destiny (prarabdha),

 but not my destiny; the destinies of the people on the screen.

~ from I AM THAT

Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj