The Two Fundamental Questions:
Who am I?
What is this?
Who am I?; “Neti ...neti...neti” “not this...not this...not this” - Sri Yagnavalka
“The seeker is he who is in search of himself.
Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.
To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not.
Discover all that you are not - body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that - nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.
The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.” -Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Logical Possible Answers:
Dualism: me in here is real and you out there are real, there are real things out there
Non-dualism: no separation, no separate finite self, no-thing-ness out there.
Absolute is immanent: ultimate reality is contained with in the phenomena
Absolute is transcendent: ultimate reality is beyond sensory phenomena.
Absolute is both immanent and transcendent
Absolute is neither immanent or transcendent
Absolute is neither both immanent and transcendent, nor is it neither immanent and transcendent
Tat Tvam Asi
“Thou art That”
(Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7)
“In the Beginning there was only Being.
(In the beginning there was only One.)
One without second.
Out of himself, (out of the One,)
he brought forth the cosmos
and entered into everything in it.
There is nothing that does not come from the One, from him.
Of everything, he is the inmost Self. He resides in all.
He is the truth, he is the Supreme Self.
Tat Tvam Asi, Shevtaketu, Tat Tvam Asi.”
Tat or That, is defined as ‘one alone without a second’, ‘which existed before creation, as well as after creation,” ‘pure Existence alone.’
Tvam signifies the innermost essence of the student or the aspirant, which is transcendent to the intellect, mind, senses.
Asi means ‘are.’ The notion that Ultimate Reality or Quantum Reality is far away is a misconception. Transcendent does not mean the experience is remote. On the contrary, it is “nearer than near” it is within one’s own self. The source consciousness that is coming through the bodymind is the one and the same as Ultimate Reality.
“All I see is apart of Me.”