Questioner: Why is it that we naturally seem to think of ourselves as separate individuals?

     

.

Maharaj: Your thoughts about individuality are really not your own thoughts; they are all collective thoughts. You think that you are the one who has the thoughts; in fact thoughts arise in consciousness.

As our spiritual knowledge grows, our identification with an individual body-mind diminishes, and our consciousness expands into universal consciousness. The life force continues to act, but its thoughts and actions are no longer limited to an individual. They become the total manifestation. It is like the action of the wind - the wind doesn't blow for any particular individual, but for the total manifestation.

... Cannot you see clearly that everything that appears to happen happens in consciousness? It is all imaginary, a temporary hallucination. Don't be led astray, none of it reflects your true state.

... The real is changeless. What changes is not real, what is real does not change.

... What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear, but not to be. The appearance may last very long on some scale of time, and very short on another, but ultimately it comes to the same. Whatever is time-bound is momentary and has no reality.

... Transiency is the best proof of unreality.

Know your Self to be the changeless witness of the changeful mind. 

That is enough.

—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

💗