Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

Dear Ed

I have studied I Am That daily and almost exclusively for about ayear. I want to go deeper in my understanding of this teaching. It ishow I discovered your site. Trying to think of a question to makecontact with you and your web offering, what comes up is the naggingquestion about Nisargadata's smoking and, as I learn from your site,his and Jean Dunn's death by smoking. In spite of the "I am not mybody" and "I am not my mind" consciousness, I find it difficult toreconcile their teachings with this enslavement and bondage and surelyan unnecessarily painful death

Thank you,DKK

Dear DKK,

Feel free to ask away anytime. I am here.
Re Maharaj and Jean's smoking.

You do understand. You have nothing to do with your body or its pain. All bodies are going to die, painful or not.

To a Jnani, the body is no more than an image on a movie screen. Would he care whether a character smoked or not, or died of throat cancer? The Jnani knows he is not the body. He does not care. If his body rejects smoking for health reasons, that's fine with him. If his body chooses to smoke. It is fine with him.

You are making his non-problem into your problem. Only go backwards into yourself and see who you are. Then you will see it is all a joke and that only you are.

Follow the sense of I to the deepest part of your being.

Ed