What is Maitreyas view about who we are and where we come from?
A. Maitreya says that the Self alone matters. We are that Self, an immortal Being, and our difficulties, our suffering, come from identifying with that which is not the Self. His teaching is very simple, very subtle, and, I think, difficult to carry out, otherwise we would all be doing it. He says: Ask yourself: ‘Who am I?’ You will find that you identify with this physical body, its needs and desires. If that is the case you will not experience who you are, you will experience this body with its painful sufferings and desires, but that is not you. Or you will identify with your feelings, your emotions – your joys and fears and so on; none of that is you. Or you identify with the constructions of your mind, your beliefs, ideology, memory. That is still not identification with the Self, but simply with a vehicle that the Self uses to demonstrate at this level. We have to realize who we are. When we find out who we are we realize we are the Self. That is not something we can talk about,
