M:There is in the body a current of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and energizes the body. Discover that current and stay with it. Of course, all these are manners of speaking. Words are as much a barrier. as a bridge. Find the spark of life that weaves the tissues of your body and be with it. It is the only reality the body has.

Q: What happens to that spark of life after death?

M: It is beyond time. Birth and death are but points in time. Life weaves eternally its many webs. The weaving is in time, but life itself IS timeless. Whatever name and shape you give to its expressions, it is like the ocean never changing, ever changing.

Q: All you say sounds beautifully convincing. yet my teeling of being JUST a person in a world strange and alien, often inimical and dangerous, does not cease. Being a person, limited in space and time, how can I possibly realize myself as the opposite; a de-personalized, universalized awareness of nothing in particular?

M: You assert yourself to be what you are not and deny yourself to be what you are. You omit the element of pure cognition, of awareness free from all personal distortions. Unless you admit the reality of chit, you will never know yourself.

Q: What am I to do? I do not see myself as you see me. Maybe you are right and I am wrong, but how can I cease to be what I feel I am?

M: A prince who believes himself to be a beggar can be convinced conclusively in one way only: he must behave as a prince and see what happens. Behave as if what I say is true and judge by what actually happens. All I ask is the little faith needed for making the first step. With experience will come confidence and you will not need me any more. I know what you are and I am telling you. Trust me for a while.

Q: To be here and now, I need my body and its senses. To understand, I need a mind.

M: The body and the mind are only symptoms of ignorance, of misapprehension. Behave as if vou were pure awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when' and 'how'. Dwell on it, think of it, learn to accept its reality. Don't oppose it and deny it all the time. Keep an open mind at least. Yoga is bending the outer to the inner. Make your mind and body express the real which is all and beyond all. By doing you succeed, not by arguing.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That