One who has merged into his true nature is a yogi. Prosperity or poverty does not affect him.

Do you take yourself to be different from your name?
The name is only the letters.
Are you those letters?
The name has been given to the body. At present, the body has become your identity and the name has become yourself. It has become a habit. That is the influence of maya. Can you tell me about yourself when you are not the body nor the name given to the body?

How would you look if you say, ‘I am not the name, nor am I the body’?
Then what name can be given to you?
And after all, what is consciousness?
Is it not love, or taste, or flavor, that remains after leaving out the body and the name? What would one want when he is like this? Consciousness is love itself.
That is the bliss unasked for in the feeling ‘I am’. It transcends the body. It is not of the form of the body.
Without consciousness is there God, or the world?
How do we look at ourselves while in the body?
It is pure luminosity. Its symbol is light. The light of consciousness means the light of Atman. It has no form. It has no divisions. It is without the body and the name. It is like space.

What comes first, space or your consciousness?
When there is no consciousness, there is no world.
How long does the world last?
As long as one is awake.
One who has realized the Self is a great yogi. God, Guru and consciousness are the same for him.

The sensation ‘I am’ is the beginning of time. First of all, consciousness arose and then the world was seen in it.
Did anyone do anything to create it?
When consciousness disappears, the world disappears at that very moment.
What happened to the big mountains?
Who swallowed them?
No one, because the world was false,
an illusion. With the birth of the knowledge ‘I am’, the world comes into existence. Both happen simultaneously.

Do not say you have understood. Be aware of what you have continuously heard. The use of the body is for consciousness through which we know ‘we are’. It is the essence of food. One who sees the dream has to be the originator of the dream.
Is it not so? To use consciousness means to convince us of this and behave
accordingly.

Only a Guru can give true advice. The rest give consolation with false concepts. Consciousness is universal.
God, Guru and ‘I’ are all its names. The common name is Brahman. It is there as long as there is the word (manifestation). Its characteristic is knowingness. This manifested, all-pervading Brahman merges into the Absolute. It has no identity of its own. It is timeless.

The foundation of our way of spirituality is self-attentiveness. The Sadguru is beyond time. He has no coming and going. Is it not so that one knows the Absolute and, also, is it not so that one does not know it?
(It is our true nature, but it has no duality.) The body is the food for consciousness. Prana eats that food, not the Self. Prana carries out all actions. One who clearly knows that he is not the body does not suffer from worldly gain or loss, pleasure or pain. The knower of prana is consciousness. It only witnesses.

Can you take a fistful of Bombay to your village? The same is true of God. From the point of view of the Paramatman, you are prior to the world. From the point of view of the jiva, the world is first and then you.
The jnani does not require any outside glory. Identification with the body and its name is ego. As long as the fear of death is there, you have not realized yourself. Dwell only on what you know before experiencing the
world. Think on the metaphor of the dream i mentioned earlier.

For a man the company of a woman means desire. Where there is desire, there is expectation. Where there is expectation, there is hope. Where there is hope, there is bondage. The cause of bondage is desire. Where there is ‘I’ and ‘you’, there is pure delusion. Where there is no ‘I’ and ‘you’, there is pure Brahman.

MEDITATIONS Nirupana 70
Thursday, November 2, 1978

Nisargadatta Maharaj