I am unborn - Nisargadatta

 You go on pilgrimages so that good should happen to you as an individual. But you are not an individual, you are the manifest world.

That ‘you are’ means the entire world, whatever manifestation you enjoy is universal. 

This knowledge is for the few rare ones, but instead of that manifestation (‘you are’), you hang on to individuality. 

Whatever is observed in the manifest world is your own Self, The observer is ‘I am’, 

It is a receptacle of the five elements and three gunas. The entire universe is in activity because of the three gunas. The play of the entire world is based on the five elements and three gunas. But you cling to your body; the body is also a play of the five elements and three gunas. 

The whole universe is in full play, it is like urination. You are one drop if you consider yourself to be an individual. A drop of ocean is salty and the salty taste is the knowledge ‘I am’. Suppose that drop dries, the ocean does not care – a drop of ocean drying on the rock. 

Similarly in the five elemental play you are a drop, either survive or die, the elemental ocean is unconcerned. But how to understand this manifest nature? 

Be the taste, understand the taste. 

Millions of drops dry up but the ocean is unconcerned. Millions die but how the five elements are concerned? Because you limit yourself to the body, you suffer. 

The realized one can entertain no idea of good to himself, for him even if the entire world is destroyed, nothing happens. The realized one is, of course, no more a person.

~ I AM UNBORN

(Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Excerpt from Chapter 6: Unborn Children