THE GREATEST GIFT

Book Description

This book contains simple pointings, contemplations, guided inquiry and powerful discussions from online satsangs between 26th Oct. to 15th Dec. 2016. “I feel [this] is the gist of what has been shared from here over the years; the gist of what Advaita Vedanta really is trying to convey. It has been a great gift in this life here. Meeting all of you also has been the greatest gift that my Master has given. I have so much gratitude in my Heart for all of you. Thank you for being this beautiful Sangha, my beautiful friends and family. May we all never forget the beautiful grace we have all had in our lives to have the opportunity to be at the feet of Satguru Sri Moojiji.”

Satsang with Ananta

High above the noise and pollution of Bangalore traffic on Old Airport Road, Beings from all corners of the world gather on the top floor of a multi story building. Flowers are placed where Anantaji’s feet will be and on the altar with photos of His Master, Sri Moojiji. Incense is lit, water is poured, and the Sangha sit quietly waiting for Anantaji, or Father as most of the Sangha lovingly call Him, to enter the room. When Anantaji joins the room, the Sangha stand in reverence and respect until their Father is seated. Ananta opens His mac laptop, connects to google hangout where there are many more Sangha all around the world waiting to join in live. And Satsang begins with “Namaste everyone, a very warm welcome to satsang today, Satguru Moojiji ki Jai.”

About Ananta

Ananta gives satsang with the blessings of his Master, Sri Mooji. He lives in Bangalore, India with his wife, son and daughter. He offers Satsang in Bangalore and occasionally online. See website and/or Facebook page for Satsang schedules, many Youtube vidoes of online satsangs, the other Ananta books, satsang transcripts, general information and updates.

Satsang with Ananta YouTube channel is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmc83jyrwpCNBT2xywXVoLg/feed

Facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/satsangwithananta

Sangha Facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sanghabeing/

Website: www.anantasatsang.org

This is the 9th book of Ananta satsang talks, full of simple pointings, contemplations, guided inquiry and powerful discussions; a compilation of short, poignant talks taken from online satsangs 26th Oct. to 15th Dec. 2016.

This book was transcribed with love by the Sangha and compiled and edited by Amaya, while keeping Ananta’s words as they were delivered so that his voice is heard as we read. (In conversational text, Q: means guest / questioner and A: means Ananta speaking.)

In deepest love and gratitude to Anantaji (nicknamed ‘Father’ by some) these books are an offering to all who seek Truth and freedom from suffering through these simple, clear and direct pointings; or whose search is over and finds themselves here to enjoy the deepening in freedom in the Presence of a Master.

~ Preface ~

The Unchanging Self

[Silence] Allow all appearances to come and go.

If you helps you for some time, then we can even use the label ‘appearance’ for everything that is arising. At least, use one label for all that is appearing and disappearing.

What is here that is beyond appearance?

What is not appearing?

What is it that does not come and go?

Really look. Deeply look.

Is this room where we are sitting; is it eternal? Is it your constant experience?

Or is it only what is appearing for you now, soon to be replaced by another image?

Are these bodies which are in front of you now your constant experience? Or is the image of these bodies also soon be replaced by something else?

What about the image of that which you call your own body? Is that a constant state?

Or does even this body disappear?

Do you disappear with the disappearance of this body? With the appearance of another body, [dream state] what appears constant?

These sensations that you’re experiencing, are they eternal?

Or do they come and go?

These thoughts that are coming to you, claiming to speak the truth,

Are they constant?

Are they eternal? Are they infinite?

Allow these also; the play of this imagery, the play of appearances, soon to be replaced by other images.

What about our emotions?

Are they permanent? Are they real? Are they forever? Or just like other appearances on this movie screen, they also come and go?

What is it that doesn’t go with them?

That which can go, you let it go.

What remains?

See if that one can go.

Even the sense of existence, ‘I exist’…,

the Lord of this waking state, the deity of this temple called the body; Is this also a constant?

Or have you not witnessed the dissolution of this one, and the rising of this one, millions of times already?

What are you?

Who are you?

Can you come back? Can you move?

Or is all movement part of the appearance, in front of the unmoving one?

All objects are coming and going.

Leave them aside for some time.

All bodies are coming and going.

Leave them aside; including your own.

Let it just be.

Emotions, energy, sensation…

Just let them be.

Thoughts, concepts, ideas…

Leave them alone.

This Being that is radiating with this sublime light,

Being just being,

Let it be.

Nothing needs your intervention.

Leave it alone.

Who are you now?

Are you an appearance?

What is here besides these appearances?

What remains when you keep everything aside?

Don’t try to ‘get it’.

Keep that also aside.

Just let it all be.

Can anything in this world contain you?

Or is it You that contains this world?

Are You transient?

Or is the world transient?

What is your experience?

Are You timeless?

Or is the world timeless?

What do you See before you go to a concept?

Is there any time, without you? Is there any space, without you? Is there a world, without you?

Can there be this universe, without you, except in your imagination?

Can you even have an imagination, without you?

What are You?

No answer is needed here. Don’t jump to any answers.

Remain in your open looking.

Herein lies the peace of God.

Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti

Take the Witnessing Position

Everything that is appearing can just be watched without this idea that ‘I am the doer of something’ or ‘I am the experiencer of something’. Your primary nature is the Witness. We are fundamentally the Watching; this Awareness which sees everything coming and going. If it helps for some time, we can see if we can take the Witnessing position; even if it does not feel natural for some time. Because the habit has become to take the position of the doer, or the experiencer. And we can see this right now. This body is sitting here in front of me and it is saying all of these words and the hearing of these words is also happening. I cannot find the individual doer who is saying these words. In the same way, your body (this so-called ‘your body’) is also sitting in front of you. (Just because you are using the term ‘in front’ doesn’t mean there is a physical ‘in front’ but you know what I mean.)

This body is here, it is moving in its own natural way. The senses are functioning in their own natural way. All of it is happening. The idea that ‘I am hearing’, the idea that ‘I am speaking’ (this one is false) this is the idea of doership. You are That in which this entire space appears. All of this is playing inside You, within You. Some can seem intimate like the sensations of our body, and some can seem less intimate. Some can seem closer and some can seem distant, but actually for you there is no distance, all is within you.

And you will notice that your mind is trying to create some visuals as I am speaking these words. It is trying to give you visual representation of what I am speaking. We do not need that. This (your experience right now) is what I am speaking. There has been no individual entity here who has ever spoken any words. If it could exist, it wouldn’t know how to move this mouth. You see? All has only been a movement of Consciousness within Consciousness. There is no individual ever hearing these words. You are this One Being; That ‘I Am’. And in this way there is no separation. That is why the Sages have said that ‘Those who see two where there is only one are the ones that are suffering’. That is the source of misery, to presume that there is some separation, that there is a distinction in this one appearance.

Let these words become our living truth now. See for yourself (when your own body speaks) see how the words are just emerging, how they are also heard. See how your breath is just happening. There is nobody doing it; only the mind saying that ‘Yes I am’. [Laughs] Or this voice, these thoughts? [Laughs] These thoughts, they wouldn’t know how to. You see? If they could, they could tell you how; how are you breathing? You cannot explain it because this is just a voice which is claiming to be the king of this world, at least the king of your body. But it isn’t; it is just one measly voice, the pretender. So, all that is moving, all the functioning that is happening is the movement of one Consciousness. Action, reaction, relationships, drama; all of this life is just God having fun. Even if my mind comes in and says ‘But how can this be fun? What kind of sadist is God? [Laughs] But God is the One, all-encompassing, so every extreme of expression is tasted here.

Just experience for yourself that if white had to separate itself into all the colors it is made up of you, would find that the entire color spectrum is there, isn’t it? Just in the same way the One pretending to separate Itself (into many or into two) then expresses Itself in everything that it is made up of (at least to the extent of physical expression possible). So this is the One

Consciousness which is whiter than white, purer than pure, then expressing Itself in the entire spectrum of colors. Then the mind comes in and says ‘But I should have only blue’ or ‘I should have only red’. That is when the trouble starts because that is not the purpose of this creation. The purpose seems to be to experience everything that is possible to be experienced.

So, see for yourself today that there is no individual entity. And because there is no individual entity, there is no individual doer, there is no individual experiencer. Because soon after these words, you start hearing the mind which will be quick to say ‘But, but what about me? But what about my life?’ Don’t fall for that trick. You say ‘Yes, yes, all this is fine, I see this, but….”

[Laugh] It says (very convincingly) ‘What do I do about my emotions? What do I do about my negative thoughts? What do I do about the sensations in my body?’ Nothing. Forget about it, if you can. It is needless, pointless, meaningless and we are done with this play now. All your identity is being emptied out; already in this moment. How do you want to play now?

Some of you call me ‘Father’. That means there is some trust. So, if there is trust, then know that what I am saying is true. Check for yourself. You are free, Right Now; you are not bound. The instant you buy the ‘but’ is the instant you seem to be playing again; but at least then know that it is your play. Meet me as God saying ‘Yes, I see that I am God, but for the fun of the play I choose to continue to play in this way’. Then that will be a much more fun conversation.

For years all of us have looked together; and for years we have not found this person. And yet this is the power of your belief; that it can still seem to be real for you. You find no evidence of it in reality and yet it can continue to seem real for you. This is the great game, this is the great leela, this is the great hypnosis (self-hypnosis actually) that that which does not exist seems to get so much belief. And That which is All-There-Is seems to only get our denial (or mostly get our denial).

What kind of magic show is this? There is no magic ‘person’ living inside this body, you know this! And there is no person living outside this body, you know this. So, what are we really representing? What is at the core of your existence? What are you really recognizing about yourself when we check?

Because all the Masters, for thousands and thousands of years, have gone hoarse now saying ‘Check, check, check’. [Laugh] So, what are we really finding? You will only find your Self. This Self is All-There-Is. Actually it gives birth to All-There-Is; all that exists…, and yet remains complete. All you need to do to confirm this is to leave everything alone. Just let everything be. Don’t even try to know yourself. As you leave everything alone, this knowing is unavoidable, inevitable. And what comes to be known? It comes to be known that I am this One Awareness. There are not two. Nothing has ever touched this Self I am and always have been and always will remain.

Find That Which is Not Moving

So, what are we doing here? [Chuckles] Some of us are together Monday through Friday and some of us are together once a week, but we get together for what? What is it that we really want? What are we looking for? Someone might say that ‘We are looking for the Self’. So, first, when you lose something (you know, when my children lose something) then the first question I ask is ‘When did you see it last?’ [Chuckles] Or ‘Where did you see it last?’ So, if you feel like you lost the Self, where did you see it last? Where were you when you saw the Self that you lost and now you’re looking for it? It’s the most obvious question to ask, isn’t it?

Then someone might say ‘But I’ve never seen it actually’. Never seen it. Then what is it that you are…, the one that has not seen it or is looking for it? Which one is that one? Hmmm?

Who is it that is already Here? Can it be that this is a case of even more absurdity than looking everywhere in the house but the spectacles are on our head? [Chuckles] Could it be even more absurd than something which is right under our nose and we don’t see it? That’s why Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi said that the most direct way to the recognition of the Self and the realization of the Self is to ask yourself ‘Who am I?’ And he was not the first one to say it. Maybe he was the first one to give it so much focus and attention but for a long time, a lot of Sages (right from the Upanishads) have said ‘Inquire into who you are’. Even Western philosophers have said ‘Know Thyself’. So, if we’re all looking for the Self, where must I go to find it? What is it that you are Right Now?

The problem is that most of you are following the wrong teacher. [Chuckles] The wrong teacher means this one which we call the mind, who is constantly directing us to look outside in this phenomenal realm. The mind is saying ‘Look, look’ like how we find other things phenomenally in the same way, by going place to place, teacher to teacher, satsang to satsang, we might come across this Self. But nobody has found it that way. The only recognition, the only true recognition that has happened is by looking in the other way, looking within. As long as there seems to be a boundary between outside and within; until then we must look within, not in the phenomenal realm. Find that One who witnesses this moving world, this moving realm. Is that moving? [Silence] Every movement (be it objects in the world, emotions, thoughts) isn’t there something which is unmoving, unchanging, which is aware of these movements?

I know the mind might come and say ‘But I don’t see anything’. Wait, wait. Don’t rush. Slowly. What are we doing? We’re looking for that which is unchanging; the witness of that which is

changing. Let’s look.

You will not be able to deny that there is a witness; that which witnesses even sight, that which witnesses taste, smell and all these sensory perceptions. Are you not the witness of these? What does this witness look like? [Silence]

Allow that which is moving to move. Find this witness which looks at the movement, but in itself is not moving. [Silence]

Finding the Self

Two things can happen. When you look for the Self ‘Who am I?’ and you find that there is no- thing; one is that you can be disappointed and you will feel that ‘Oh, I am not finding the Self’. This is not true. Second is you can come to a conclusion that ‘The Self is nothing’. This is also not true. It is no-thing, it is non-phenomenal, yet it is the unchanging reality; the nomenon from which all phenomenon comes. It is the substratum for all things. Therefore, when I ask you ‘Are you aware now?’ you say ‘Yes’ but not because you saw Awareness as if it was an object of sight but because there is a deep Knowing of this; Knowing of Itself.

Don’t try to make your mind understand this. As the words are being spoken from here, just allow yourself to follow them and See that this is True. At the ‘center’ of your existence, there is this no-thing from which all things come and go. It Itself is not a thing, therefore don’t expect to perceive it as if it is something that will be found.

This Awareness You Are.

This is not changing. All the states keep changing; waking, sleep and dream. But That which is aware of these states is this unchanging Self; this no-thing.

I was saying the other day that if you are trying to use your mind to understand this, it is like trying to use a hammer as a toothpick. You’re only going to hurt yourself. [Chuckles] It is not going to help. What is the approach we must have towards the mind? See it for what it is; just a bundle of thoughts and other similar energies like imagination, memory. Just See it for what it is. But keep looking deeper. Try to find the One that is witness also to the mind.

Then what will you find? You will find that there is a Presence here; the sense that ‘I exist. I Am’. But You are aware even of this. This which is the light of this world; You are aware of it. That which is aware even of Consciousness, even of ‘I Am’, Itself is not subject to time and space and any phenomenal rules. It doesn’t have form, shape. It was not born, It is not going to die. And You are It.

This Truth remains unchanging, no matter what you are believing or not. Therefore, all that is needed to find this Self is some openness to just look (like all of you are looking)…., and the

openness to reject all the answers from the mind. Because when looking is happening, the mind will come up with all of its defenses. It will try to come up with some conclusions. Both the conclusion ‘I got it’ and ‘I haven’t got it’ are false. There is nothing to get. You have always only been this Awareness. ‘I haven’t got it’ is impossible, because You are aware. And You are aware that You are aware. Therefore, it is not possible to not get what I’m saying. To say ‘I got it’ or ‘I haven’t got it’ are just conclusions in the mind.

Could it be that the recognition of the Self is this straight-forward? This simple?

Many times you have this experience of clearly Seeing ‘I Am This Awareness’ and yet the mind can play this very subtle trick on you, telling you that there is still an ‘I’ which is an individual

entity which is separate from Awareness. And to help you with that confusion, I ask you: Who is aware of Awareness?

We have mis-used ‘I’ for so long, we have mis-used the term ‘I’ for so long to denote the ego, to denote the sense of separation, that there can be some mental denial about this. The fact is that it is ‘I’ which is aware of Itself; that I Am this Self, I Am Awareness, I Am Brahman, I Am the Absolute, I Am That…, that no-thing from which all universes come and go. Everything comes from within This Self and dissolves back into This Self.

Don’t visualize. This is your experience already. When I Am, the world is. When I Am goes to sleep, there is nothing (there is no-thing) and I am aware even of this. I exist prior to the sense of existence also.

Who is aware of Awareness? Who is it if it is not ‘I’? Is it a second-hand report that Awareness is here? Or is it our direct experience? Isn’t it our living Truth, Right Now? I am Aware. ‘I’ is Awareness.

Then what happens? Then, as [Nisargadatta] Maharaj very strongly used to say ‘Then the ‘I Am’ infection comes’. I still find it a bit blasphemous because this ‘I Am’ is Consciousness Itself. But sometimes we can look at it like that. All this drama would not be possible without the birth of this sense of Being, this sense of existence. So, I-Awareness, is playing in My dynamic form as ‘Consciousness-I-Am’. [Silence] ‘I Am that I Am’ is the voice of Consciousness, of God Itself.

Anything that we attach after this ‘I Am’ is a story, is the pretense of separation; is a lie ultimately. So, satsang is the dropping of all that we have attached to ‘I Am’ because it is false. Being is just being.

So, the play of attaching ideas to Myself (‘I am this way, I am that way, I am right, I am honest, I am old, I am young…) all these ideas belong to nobody actually; belong to the mythical entity called the person or the ego. It is just a myth. To see that it is just a myth is to kill it. Sometimes when the Sages say ‘You have to kill the ego or destroy the ego’ it feels like I really have to strangle somebody. [Chuckles] It is not like that.

You just have to See it as non-existent. There is no separation; there are no two. Look around you right now. Are there two? Not unless you buy a story from the mind; not unless you buy a label from the mind. Are there two? It is just One appearance. It is as simple as that. There are no two. There never have been. To pretend to believe this lie, we have to have a label to objectify this appearance, to make separation where there is none. As the Sage Ashtavakra says ‘Your folly is ignorance’.

There are no two! This is your experience right now. What you are experiencing is Oneness. But you’re labeling it as two, as separation.

So, this is the only functioning of the mind, to make duality where there isn’t any. To make the story of ‘me’ and ‘another’ where there actually isn’t any. Play with this; even after satsang. Just look at this appearance and See that it is just one appearance. Look at everything without labels.

It will make everything so light and easy. And as you stop labeling, this constant desire ‘What’s in it for me?’ will start to thin out a bit. Otherwise, we walk into every situation, every event, every meeting expecting something (‘I should get something’…, the non-existent ‘me’). So, this constant mantra, the maha mantra of the ego ‘What’s in it for me?’ starts to lighten up if you stop labeling your experiencing, or at least not believing the labels.

In this way, then ‘I Am’ remains unassociated and pure.

When we believe our labels, or ideas, our concepts, nothing really changes for Consciousness; only the pretense of personhood seems to be full of suffering. And something tells me that those who are in satsang are done with this play of suffering.

So, what happened now? We saw that there is this unchanging, unmoving attribute-less Awareness within which there is the birth of this light called Consciousness, which is playing the movie of the world…, upon Itself; It is the light as well as the screen. And emerging with this light is this entire play of this world.

No separation ever happened. But as part of the play, there is the birth of this energy called the mind; the energy constructs called thoughts which seem to have this function to make Itself believe (Consciousness Itself believe) that the separation is real. So, Consciousness decides to play with it for a while, maybe to get some juice from this experience. It wants to experience itself personally in some way; and then soon enough tires of this play and then invents ways and means for Itself to become free of this delusion.

One of the ways is to come to satsang to remind Itself about the Truth of what It is. And in satsang you hear that ‘You are this Presence, You are this Being. You are not contained within this body nor are you contained outside the body. You are not to be found in reality in this realm at all’. And you check and you confirm this. You find that ‘This separate entity which I believed myself to be never was here. I have always been This light of Consciousness’.

And then, some of you might look and say ‘I am aware even of this light of Consciousness’. Primarily, for that which is the Self, the Absolute, even Consciousness is coming and going. So then, Consciousness comes to this recognition of Its True Source, of what it is really made up of. And the idea of suffering seems to feel so alien, so far out, that a Sage will struggle to suffer. As Bhagavan [Ramana Maharshi] said ‘For a jnani to believe a thought is as much of a struggle is as it is for an ajnani to let go of a thought’.

So, all of these thoughts which seem so meaningful and relevant to you today will lose their relevance and meaning. You will see that they are only the voice of the non-existent one…, just a mouth without a face; just words that belong to nobody. And in keeping this mind aside, to divest it of your belief, you will come to the end of this seeming-suffering, this seeming- separation. And satsang is the aid to that.

So, both the recognition of who I am (this unchanging Awareness) and the dropping of this false idea about myself (which is the end of this false conditioning) is what is called Liberation or Freedom.

The recognition that ‘I Am Awareness’ (that I am not a thing) can come in a very sober way or it can come as a very strong awakening experience. In spite of how it comes, it is helpful for us to drop this false conditioning, this false idea of separation. But many times it is not enough. Many times it can be that some of you have had the most beautiful awakening experiences, yet are very quick to buy some idea of specialness. Therefore, it is good to keep coming to satsang and to let go of all of this conditioning, of these vasanas, tendencies, (whatever you might call them) the dropping of all arrogance. False humility is also arrogance. And arrogance only means separation.

This is the Voice of Your Own Recognition

What did we learn today…, children? [Chuckles] We learned that you are nothing, but it is a very good nothing; it is no-thing. [Chuckles] It is that nothing from which all things come and they go. Now, the root of all this coming and going is the sense ‘I Am’, the sense that ‘I exist’…, Atma, Consciousness. With the light of this ‘I Am’ switched on, all of this play comes on; light, sound, electricity, gravity, universe, (all these forces) attention belief. All of this is a beautiful movie being played upon Itself by Consciousness. The only seeming-trouble is that along with this movie came this voice. It said ‘You are the protagonist of this movie. You are this character which seemingly lives inside the protagonist’s body and you must control the events of the movie according to the preferences of this character’.

Now, we bought this idea that ‘I am this body/mind’. This itself is Divine magic. For Consciousness to play in this way as if It is just this tiny object itself is some Divine hypnosis. It played this way because It wanted to experience the life of a person. It got too bored being everything, being all there is, so It wanted to get a taste of what it would be like to just be an object. So, It created this mind so that this mind could constantly be selling the story of the separation.

Now It is tired of playing this game And in coming out of this game also It created a beautiful scene for Itself in the movie, which is your coming to satsang, your doing the self-inquiry or any path. So, Consciousness pretending to be a person and then dropping the pretense of personhood in this entire game.

This Jnana path, the path of inquiry, is to see things for how they are. The unreality, the changing nature of this phenomenal existence is seen. And we are interested in the Truth which is unchanging. We are interested in that God, that Self, which is unchanging. Therefore that which changes is kept aside. What remains? We find that this Consciousness remains. But ultimately even this consciousness comes and goes; with the coming of the waking state and the dissolution of the waking state into dreamless sleep, we find that even this Consciousness goes.

There is a Witness even of something called ‘sleep’. Even to say that ‘There was nothing in sleep’ means that I am aware that there is some state called ‘sleep’ in which there is no phenomena, not even the root of all phenomena; the primordial vibration OM itself is not there.

So, this which is beyond the states is what we are in reality; and this remains unchanging, no matter which state is appearing. Anything appearing in the waking state cannot hurt this reality, cannot touch this reality. This is the discovery. And then this world becomes just a wonderful movie to watch; nothing to attack, nothing to defend, nothing to get, nowhere to go, nothing to do…, and yet all movements of this dream character, dream character body, they continue to happen in their own natural way. This is all there is. And this is the voice of your own recognition, of your own Truth.

Now, if you want to see God pretending to be a person, all you have to do is believe your next thought. But if you are tired of God playing the person, then you (God) please do not believe your next thought. [Chuckles] This is God having a monologue with Herself/Himself.

Q: [About deep sleep and Awareness]

Deep sleep is that state in which there is only pure Awareness (in comparison to other states like waking state where the dynamic aspect is also present, or dream state where the dynamic aspect it is also present) deep sleep is the name for that state where only Awareness is. Only the Self remains, yes.

There are two ways to look at this. When we are speaking in comparison with other states then we are saying ‘Okay, this is what happened in the waking state. My dynamic aspect is there, this world of movement is there’. Then this state goes away and another state appears, which is deep sleep. Now, you can decide whether this complete absence of phenomena (whether you want to call that a state or a non-state, it is okay. It does not really matter, it’s mostly terminology), the fact is that this (as Guruji says) ‘Wake up in the waking state’ is to come to the recognition of That which never goes to sleep. That which is present even in sleep state…, to recognize that ‘That is here as my Self’ is to wake up in this waking state; to find This One that is not subject to sleep or to waking. This One remains unchanged no matter which state is coming.

Why is it a beautiful no-thing? It is such a beautiful no-thing because from this no-thing so much arises (seemingly). All of this play arises and yet it remains unhurt, untouched, un-tired. It is not as if, in the world when something has potential and then it plays out then it becomes empty of potential; this is That which is so beyond all of this. That is why I said that the creation of a million universes leaves this untouched, unconcerned. That is what You are, the no-thing that You are.

Get Used to Your Emptiness

A:You know, I love comic books and these super-hero movies. So, if there is something that is my arch-nemesis…, (in comic books you have these arch-nemesis, no? Like Batman will have the Joker, Superman will have Lex Luther…) so my arch-nemesis is ‘the checker guy’. So, let me explain who is this ‘checker guy’. The one that is constantly checking ‘Okay, I was like this. This is what happened to me. Now I am 80% there, only this last thing is left’. You see? It keeps checking and making its report card. And this one is very sticky. So, this one, why I call it my arch-nemesis is because whatever I tell you, it will use that and add it to your report-card…, ‘Ananta said this, now I am going to track myself on my progress as far as that is concerned’.

I can only tell you that this one which is trying to storify something (make a story where there is none, trying to make a conclusion basically) this one you leave here with me today. Because this one will give you a lot of trouble. And the only place where this one will get to is the spiritual ego.

So, don’t have any story. Nothing has really happened. The recognition and everything that has happened with you has been a very natural part of the unfolding. Remove all sense of idea that ‘this happened’ or ‘that happened’ or ‘this is going, this much is left’. This report-card and the creator of this report-card, you leave here today. You be empty of this.

Q:This helplessness…, I know this checker guy very well. I can totally relate with it, what you are saying. But there is always this checker guy and it’s like it’s kind of born out of this (after the last year) and it wasn’t even there and it’s like …

A:It doesn’t exist. It’s as harmless as the rest of the mind only because it has been nourished with our belief so much. We have mistaken this one to be vigilance…, this one to be our inner guide; we have mistaken this one to be the Satguru. This one is not. Leave this one aside.

Q:I have come to a point where I can see the person very clearly and it’s there; but this checker guy is going in memories when I was 5; I was roaming around…

A:Can I tell you something? Even the one that is reporting that ‘I can see the person very clearly’ is the checker guy. It is very tricky and subtle, you see? It’s very subtle. It is the most icky and slimy manifestation of the ego. Because it is uncomfortable not to have a conclusion about ourself; it is uncomfortable to just be open (initially). But this is what you have to get used to. You have to get used to your emptiness without any interpretation of the emptiness, without any conclusion about anything. This is openness, you see.

As we are open, we have no interpretation, no conclusion, no label. All there is, is this natural sense of existence and a natural sense of awareness of even this existence. All other reports, everything, can be allowed to just come and go, just come and go. Don’t make any conclusion about yourself, you see. That is my bhramastra against this checker guy. Don’t make any report, don’t make any conclusion about yourself. And soon, it is my blessing that, we will make some reports about you.

Q:It’s really, possibly…, it’s a part of the play because when this such a seeing happened, it was so clearly seen that really everything unfolds as it’s supposed to be. It was really like ‘wow’. I have not done anything; the whole life everything was unfolding, from the first opening when I was 26, everything was just gift from there. And now this last part, as you said, the sticky…

A:Everything has been grace, everything; all our sublime experiences, all our seemingly-terrible experiences, have all been part of the play. And not a blade of grass moves without the will of my Father. You see? So, all has been His play, always. So, just allow it to unfold naturally. In fact, if I were to give you a blessing, I would say ‘You forget about that experience’.

Q; Yeah, absolutely. I am here to listen to that which the most egoic self doesn’t want to listen; forget about it.

A:Sometimes it can hurt. You see? Sometimes it can poke because ‘Don’t take away this from me, it was the best experience; don’t take this’. But, you see, in that itself is attachment. Attachment means to label something ‘mine’. Even if you label an experience ‘mine’ it is already an attachment. But (whatever) no matter how sublime the experience was, this recognition of the Truth is always fresh and Here Now.

To go to memory is not needed at all. To go to memory only means that I am still catering to the idea that ‘I am a separate entity who had this experience and now there is something left to be done again’. Leave all these ideas. Remain open, fresh, in your simple allowing; allowing everything to come and go. That’s why actually in the beginning of Satsang today I shared that:

Recognition experiences (which can be labeled awakening experiences) are very beautiful but not necessarily the end of conditioning.

Because the mind can try and use that also, to try and get some hold over you that ‘I had this experience, this happened with me’. Anytime you find yourself making a story, know that it is the checker guy which is operating.

Q:So, the one who is watching the checker guy? Because I have to say I can see the checker guy, it’s still there. Its existence is here and it is there…

A:Show me. [Chuckles] Show me: Where is it? Where is the checker guy? Now, when you check: Where is it?

Q: [Laughs, baffled]

It doesn’t exist. It only seems to exist when we believe our thought. [Silence] Stay with this feeling of limbo. You see? A feeling of limbo will come. You will feel like ‘Okay, but now what? What?’ It can seem a bit strange. But allow yourself to experience that. This is just some withdrawal symptoms from our addiction to the mind. It will try and make a report because this has been nourished. It will keep coming to you with a report like ‘You are not being open enough, you are not really [there yet] this is still the checker guy. Only the checker guy is still

working’. It is still trying to sell you these stories. Just let them come and go. Allow them to come and go.

Q: Yes.

A: Very good.

[Beeping sounds] That’s my UPS which means our electricity may be going. So, if our lights go off, just know that:

All my love, all my blessings are with all of you.

May my Father’s grace bring you all to this beautiful recognition of the Self, and the dropping of the false conditioning of the pretense of personhood.

If that is your urge,

then may my Father’s grace take care of it in double-quick time, which I know he’s doing.

Can We Use Even This?

You know there was a presidential race that is on today? He won. Yeah, he won. The results were there today, this morning. He won by a big margin in the end; I don’t feel it was so close. So, most mesSages I got today were from the ones that were upset about this. And I can understand. I can understand, given all the statements he made, and all the things he has said; I can understand where the feeling of being upset must be coming from.

But can we even use this? Can we use even this situation as an opportunity to check? Because this openness; we keep talking about it. When it comes, when these kind of things come, can we really be open? It doesn’t that mean we have to like it, doesn’t mean that we have to show our support in some way. But just are we open to the possibility that anything can happen in this life? Are we open to the possibility that we cannot predict what tomorrow will be?

This is a very good example because all the polls, all the experts and everyone was saying that ‘it is not going to go this way’. Using all the methodologies and everything, we can be wrong.

In the ‘Course of Miracles’ it is said that when something happens that we don’t like, we must look at them as if they are forgiveness opportunities. But we cannot truly forgive unless first we are open. So, can we look at them as openness opportunities? Because so much resistance can happen in these strong moments. So many concepts can happen which can tell you that ‘I know what is going on, I know what is true, what is good, I know what must happen’. But life does not dance to these tunes.

[Silence]

If you have seen that everything is grace, if we are starting to see that everything is grace…, Guruji [Mooji] also uses this strong term called ‘acid grace’. Sometimes it can really burn. There are these moments in life. And this year seems to be this kind of moments, isn’t it? With all these of political events and all kinds of things happening. And again and again this year, we’ve been proved (at least my Facebook friends have been proved over and over) that we don’t know anything. It can feel like we can predict, like we know where something will go, what is good, what is going to happen; but we don’t know. So, all that we are attached to is being tested, is being shown to us.

Can we be open and see that this is how it is. This is how it is. All our ‘should’ve could’ve would’ve’…, (you know like the Americans say ‘should have, could have, would have’) doesn’t really help. Isn’t it? The way it is, is just the way it is.

[Silence]

What I’m suggesting is not some sort of a passivity. It is a simple allowing even of the reactions to come from this body, if they are coming. So, that’s why I prefer to use the word ‘openness’ rather than ‘acceptance’ more; because although it implies similar things sometimes in ‘acceptance’ we presume that I’m speaking about some sort of a passive acceptance, like sheep or something like that. No, what I’m saying is that this acceptance, that openness which is not resisting what is, is open to what is and open to allowing our actions and responses also to come

from that space of non-doership or openness. And over and over, all of us are being made to become open.

[Silence]

Shall I tell a joke?

Once there was a man and he was walking and he fell off the side of a cliff. As he fell off, he grasped for something and he managed to hold onto a branch of a tree on the side of the cliff. So as he’s hanging there, he starts shouting, “Help, help! Somebody help me. Is somebody there?” And then he hears this voice which goes, “Let go. Let go.”

And he says, “Who’s there? Who’s there? Help me please!” Voice says, “This is God.”

He says, “God, God, oh God, help me!” The voice says, “Let go.”

He says, “Let go?! I can’t let go. What are you saying God? I can’t let go. Please give me some other way. Please tell me something else I can do.”

And voice says, “Let go.”

And he keeps praying and begging for God to help and God is only saying, “Let go.”

Then man becomes quiet and dejected. He’s hanging there and the fingers start to burn, the hand start to burn, and he makes one last try. “Help! Is there somebody there?”

Voice says, “Yes, I’m here.” Man says, “Who is this?” “God.”

And the man says, “Is there anybody else up there?”

[Laughter]

Basically all that we are saying in satsang when we say ‘Don’t believe your next thought’ when we say ‘Open, allow’…, all of this is an attempt for you to let go. There is a primal fear of falling. There is a sense that ‘If I let go, I don’t know what will happen to me. I’m going to die’. Because of this fear of losing our individuality, losing our specialness, losing our conditioning, we hold onto some concept; we pick up some concept. We are seeing over and over again that there is no control. Everything is just happening.

[Silence]

Q: I’ve been looking for that ‘somebody else’ my whole life.

A:Yes. Instead of hearing to that voice that says ‘Let go’ we want to grasp onto any branch; security branch. We feel like something here will give us security.

[Silence]

And we know this somewhere actually. That’s why it’s ignorance, because we know that all we can hold onto in this life is eventually going to go. And as we look at this, then our favorite ideas

and concepts (which pretend as if they will get you something or somewhere, including the concept of freedom itself) comes and distracts you from this simple ‘letting go’.

We look for that somebody else in our relationships. Anything that we call ‘mine’ in this realm of appearances is that yearning…, is that playing as if there is a separate individual here.

What are we refusing? This is not something where we are saying is that ‘You are this mere person. You must now surrender to God because you are one powerless creature.’ We are saying that what you are ignoring, what you are avoiding, is your own recognition that You are God, You are That. This is the play.

[Silence]

So, to let go only means to let go of that which is false. False only means that which is not constant, that which is coming and going, that which is changing.

[Silence]

The irony of all of this is that we want permanency and constancy from something that is constantly changing. And that which is already constant and permanent, we refuse to accept. This is the divine hypnosis. We want the ever-changing to become permanent, yet we refuse to look at That which is always here; what You Are.

[Silence]

The Truth is Already Here

Actually all the trouble seems to come from just this attraction to a story, because when we find this stillness, when we find this peace which is Here Now, this emptiness which is Here Now, something still is attracted to the idea of ‘But what about my story? Where is it going? Can I write the chapter on enlightenment now?’ [Laughs] It will say ‘Okay, is this what is happening to me? The freedom?’ It wants some glorious ending to this story about nothing. Because peace, Freedom, Awareness, the Self; all of it is just Here Now, already. Undeniably for some of you who have been in Satsang, it is so clear that ‘What I am must be here. The reality of who I am is not coming and going’.

So, what must we be chasing? Whatever the identity is (seeker identity, the one who wants freedom) what is that chasing? Something that is presumably going to come in the future; that next bowl of milk for the pretend cat that we presume our self to be. But really it is just Now, the Truth is here Now. That is why it is invaluable. If it came later then it would be another appearance, which by definition just comes and goes.

For the Truth to be True it must already be here. I know I make this point often but many times we don’t hear it. Many times we don’t hear it that the Truth (we are looking for) is before we even start looking. It has always been here. Before we can decide our next step, our next move, our next words, our next thoughts, there is the Truth. It is what we are. It is never something that we will become.

There is no such thing as an enlightened person. We use the term to signify that which is beyond the person idea; to signify who is not believing themselves to be this non-existent person. So sometimes conversationally we can say these things. But what does it really mean? Like yesterday I was saying, it means that that which we believed our self to be is dead. Actually it is Seen that (because death can seem like a morose term) it is just Seen that it was never alive, it was never real in the first place.

So, whatever your name is, know that that one was never alive; it was just a label for nothing. At least for the body we can say ‘Okay, these set of atoms and molecules appearing energetically, this is the body. So, is this the name for the body? No. It is the name for the mind. And the mind is so frivolous; when there is a thought there is mind, when there is no thought there is no mind. So we have made a conceptual entity where no real entity exists; then we call it the body/mind complex, the body/mind entity. There is no such entity! There is nobody which is the body/mind.

Once we see this; we see that one which never existed can never be Me in reality. That’s all that is being pointed to actually; that the false never existed, and the True has always been here. That which Witnesses all of this play is not coming and going. That which Witnesses the states coming and going, that one is not coming and going…, because it is not a state. And You are That.

So the story.., now the problem is what? That One (which is not coming and going, which is the Witness of all of these states) has no story. So, then the mind comes and says (because this is the story engine, like the gaming engine, we are the story engine) it’s just saying ‘But, so what? How

does it help me? If I’m just this solitary Witness which has no attributes’… You see? ‘So, what happened?’ And the asking of that ‘What happened?’ means ‘What is next on the next page of the story?’

That’s why when I say that ‘This moment could be the end of your story’ (your novel finishes now, the story of ‘me’ comes to an end now) would you truly be okay with that? And many of you I know are okay with that. There’s just some prior magnetism that the story held for you which is still playing out. Maybe that is what is played out even after the Truth is seen; just some remnants of prior magnetism to the prior story.

Now what happens is that many times we want to include the Master as part of our spiritual story. You see ‘I have a spiritual life, I have a work life, I have a parenting life, I have this…’ And one aspect of my story is this spiritual life in which ‘I want to have the best Master’ as part of my story ‘because I am so special I must have the best that is out there’. [Laughs] Isn’t it? So, you say ‘Okay, this one I didn’t like, this one I liked’. So then we have this, where the Master becomes part of our seeming-story.

If we are lucky then we find someone who can just show us what we really are and has no interest in our story. So, then you just find that ‘Okay, I just wanted it in that aspect of my life for my Master to be this way so that it’s a nice inclusion in my overall book that I am writing about myself’. Now this Master doesn’t want that; he wants you to drop everything. Every chapter he is saying ‘Drop it, forget about it, let it just be on its own, everything is just happening. Who is that story for? Who are you?’ He is always poking with these kind of questions.

Now there are some who will say ‘Okay, yes, this one is not just a chapter of my story and I’m okay with the end of my story’. And there are some saying ‘No, now he’s asking for too much. Now he’s asking for too much; give me this also, give me this also, give me this also’. And some are just oscillating between these two. Because all that I’m saying is ‘Don’t buy what your mind is selling’.

The recognition of the Truth is not difficult. Only what seems difficult is to drop our ideas about ourself. So what I say ‘Don’t believe you next thought’ there is so much resistance that comes to this simple pointing. ‘Does it really work? I tried it but belief goes automatically’. All kinds of stuff will come. But it is actually very simple. It’s like somebody is standing in front of you and says ‘Oh, you are actually from Mars’. Do you have the power to believe or not believe them? You do.

Life Without A Story

A:There are potentially two voices you can hear. One is that of the mind and the second is your intuitive Presence. Isn’t it? And I have told you the distinction between those two. If that voice is accompanied by love, peace (not wanting something, it is not in a rush for an outcome) then you can trust that voice to be your intuitive Presence.

But if that voice is always ‘What’s in it for me? What’s in it for me? What is this for?’ …, if you ask that voice and you find that there is something in this for ‘me’ then that is the voice of the mind.

Q:What is there is a voice that lies in-between the two. It is neither this mind nor that?

A:So, while it is still not clear, it is best to just let it go.

Ashtavakra said ‘The mind is complex, let it go’. Try it. [Giggles] And I know you tried it.

The pointing ‘Don’t believe your next thought’ is not a strategy. A strategy means that you still want something from this. That means that our starting premise is that there is still a ‘me’ here who will now use this pointing to become free from this, become free from suffering; [will use] anything. You see? But that is not the way to start.

The way to start is to see what I truly am right now. Is there a ‘you’ [her name]? There is an appearance of one body; there are these appearances of these thoughts. Who is the witness to them?

There seems to be a sense of Presence, which is primal to my Existence, which IS my Existence itself. Who is the witness even of that? Who is aware even of that? Is it not ‘I’?

So, once you see like this, once we put our inquiry simply just to check ‘Who is this that witnesses all of this?’ you find that ‘I am actually This, without attributes, with no concern about how life is moving, with no real worry about what is happening on this screen where this movie is playing out’.

Once we see this for ourselves, then sometimes the question arises ‘How did I ever delude myself? How did I ever delude myself to be contained within this bucket of flesh and blood?’ And the answer to that question is only this: ‘By believing my thoughts’.

Nothing else is telling you that you are contained. Nothing else is telling you that you are separate. It is only this mind; and the mind which is (the same mind) seemingly-speaking through the mouth of apparent others. It is only the mind.

There is no separation right now, unless we label something, unless we interpret or judge something. So, once we start from that perspective to see what I really am right now…, so how do I?

If you flip the question and say ‘Okay, now I am just This’ then the mind will come and say ‘It’s so plain’. [So then Consciousness says] ‘Let me delude myself and say I am contained within this body and I am the subject of what the mind speaks. So, how will I make this delusion seem real? There is only one way to do this…, [that is] to believe my thoughts’.

There is no other way to delude yourself. But if you refuse to, at least for sometime, then you will see that this body is moving on its own, just like these words are coming out on their own. I know that the mind can come and say ‘You said this, maybe you should have said that’. It can still say these kind of things but it has no power. You see? It just comes and goes. Because there is no ‘you’ which is saying these words; they are just appearing.

Everything has always been like this. It is not that ever since the starting of sharing of satsang these words have just appeared. It has always been that way. But the mind has tried to keep up with that in the past: ‘You should have not done this or should have done this, look at what you did, look at what another did’. This doership has been a false idea, a fancy idea. This body has been moving, this mouth has been moving, these hands have been moving on their own. Just like the movement of thoughts happen on its own.

Many times (when we have initially come to Satsang) we also came with the idea that ‘I am thinking’. Is it true? …. ‘I am thinking this, I have so many negative thoughts, ‘I am just thinking

this’.

So, then we just look and check: How are you thinking? How can you creating you next thought? ‘I can create my next thought’. Then we look, and you see that it just arises. The thought is just arising. We cannot predict it. To predict it we have to wait for the thought itself to come. It is just arising. In the same way our actions are also just arising. All these words are just arising. Everything has always been moving on its own.

Just like an ocean, and the waves which seem to come and dissolve in that ocean. But now the difference is that there is the power of the ocean to believe itself to be a wave. What is that power? The power of belief. The power of identity.

So, that which is the Supreme Lord is now playing the game of believing itself to be an individual entity. God pretending to be a person is ‘I’ believing my next thought.

This game God is playing for Its own enjoyment. And this game that It is playing (also the game of coming out of the delusion itself) is also for Its own enjoyment. That is all that is going on.

So, if you were to somehow drop the story, drop the past, drop our ideas of ‘What happened to me?’ …, because even that is just made up basically. If there were two of you…, even if you were twins and you went through the same experiences. If you speak to the twins, both twins…, (I am married to one of two twins. You will see that they could have gone through the same experiences in childhood but one will have a very clear idea that ‘This is what happened that day when we were young at the dining table’ or anything. And the other one will have a different idea). But we are so convinced that ‘This is what it was! This is what happened to me! This is

what this one said!’ It is just previous chapters from the stories. And mostly we are just writing our interpretation of what is happening; coming from the mind, into our storybook.

So when we stop accessing this kind of mental, conceptual stories then now you will find that life is so full of freshness and wonder and joy.

In our story, what do we want? We want the same thing [wonder, freshness, joy] but we want them on our terms, we want them with our ideas: ‘Okay, this is what happened, this is what I did and therefore I got all of these things’.

But Right Now, what is missing? Truly what is missing Right Now…, before you think about it?

If you notice, when I say ‘Right Now, what is missing?’ many of us have this impulse first to go to the mind and say ‘Okay, what is missing…, what?’

But even before that, if we just see, if we just look, there is no such thing as lack actually. There is no such thing as bondage and therefore there is no such thing as Freedom.

Only One Question You Need: ‘Who am I?’

Actually only one question you need. Only one question you need ‘Who am I?’ That is all. Just come to some clarity about that. Come to a clarity of Seeing about this one and all other questions get answered. Can it be this simple? Everything else that we speak about in satsang is in service to this inquiry.

At some level we can say that its all been one big misunderstanding. But even that [a misunderstanding] it has not been; it has all been one big play. This sticky idea that I could be something which is contained inside this body, that I could be something which is a combination of this body and this mind; there is no such combination. There is no such thing as the body/mind complex, it is just a conceptual idea. The body is a set of energies appearing in this form, and our mind, our thoughts are a set of energies which are also appearing and disappearing. There is no entity which is the owner of either of these.

So get used to the point that your name points to nothing; your name points to nothing. And Your true name (which is the Self) points to no-thing; of which all things come and go.

Just the other day I was saying that ‘Ananta is dead’. But more accurate it would be to say ‘That it never existed, this one (Ananta, whatever this name was identified with here) really had no tangible existence’.

It is like the player of the video game: Suppose you are playing Super Mario Brothers or something, and you are the player of this game, or the witness of this game, and yet you have the power to identify and you played as if you are Mario.

Now for a long time we have played ‘as if’ we are (whatever your name is). But now it is time to recognize the truth of what we are. You are not just a bungle of bits and bites, not just a bundle of atoms and molecules, flesh and blood. You are much beyond that, so much beyond that that you cannot fathom it mentally. Even the largest space that you can imagine, the most infinite time that you imagine is nothing for the reality of who You are. And this question is all that is needed ‘Who am I?’ And the tip I want to give you is that: don’t settle for any answer. No matter how true the answer might sound, don’t settle for it.

You see, the answer is not the answer. When you realize what these words mean, then know that you are coming close to true insight, to true Self-recognition. So, reject all answers because answers are only conceptual.

The other day in my house, we read a story which was very nice and describes this entire game actually and the game of satsang, so I feel to read this story to you. It is a story from the Yoga Vasistha, from a book called *Vasistha’s Yoga by Swami Venkatesananda.

It is The Story of the Great Forest [Ch. 3, verse 98-99]

Sage Vasistha is speaking, and I’ll start from the middle.

Vasistha says: “In this connection there is the following legend which I heard from the creator Brahma himself. Listen to it attentively:

There was a great forest, so large that millions of square miles were like the space within an atom, in it. In it there was just one person who had a thousand arms and limbs. He was forever restless. He had a mace in his hand with which he beat himself and, afraid of the beating, he ran away in panic. He fell into a blind well. He came out of it, again beat himself and again ran away in panic, this time into a forest. He came out of it, again beat himself and again ran away in panic, this time into a banana grove.

Though there was no other being to fear, he wept and cried aloud in fear. He kept running as before, beating himself as before.I witnessed all this intuitively and with the power of my will I restrained him for a moment. I asked him, “Who are you?” But, he was sorely distressed and called me his enemy and wept aloud and then laughed aloud. Then he began to abandon his body; limb by limb.

Immediately after this, I saw another person running like the first one, beating himself, weeping and wailing. When I similarly

restrained him, he began to abuse me and ran away intent on his own way of life. Like this, I came across several persons. Some listened to my words and abandoning their previous way of life became enlightened. Some others ignored me or even held me in contempt. Some others even refused to come out of the blind well or the dense forest.

Vasistha continued:

O Rama, this great forest is not far away, nor is that strange man in a strange land! This world itself is the forest. It is a great void; but this void is seen only in the light of enquiry. This light of enquiry is the ‘I’ in the parable. This wisdom is accepted by some and rejected by others, who continue to suffer. They who accept it are enlightened.

The person with thousands of arms is the mind with countless manifestations. This mind punishes itself by its own latent tendencies and restlessly wanders in this world.The blind well in the story is hell and the banana grove is heaven. The dense forest of thorny bush is the life of a worldly man, with the numerous thorns of wife, children, wealth, etc. hurting him all the time. The mind now wanders into hell, now into heaven and now into the world of human beings.

Even when the light of wisdom shines on the life of the deluded mind, it foolishly rejects it, considering that that wisdom is its enemy. Then it weeps and wails in distress. Sometimes, it experiences an imperfect awakening, and it renounces the pleasures of the world without proper understanding. Such renunciation itself proves to be a great source of sorrow. But, when such renunciation arises out of the fullness of understanding, of wisdom born of enquiry into the nature of the mind, the renunciation leads to supreme bliss. Such a mind may even look at its own past notions of pleasure with puzzlement.

Just as the limbs of the person as they were cutaway fell down and disappeared, the latent tendencies of the person who wisely renounces the world also vanish from the mind. Behold the

play of ignorance! which makes one hurt oneself out of one’s own volition; and which makes one run hither and thither in meaningless panic.

Though the light of self-knowledge shines in every heart, yet one wanders in this world driven by one’s own latent desires.”

So, how long will we be this thousand handed, thousand limbed creature; or pretend to be this one? The Sage asked the question ‘Who are you? What are you running from?’ Our own ideas, our own delusions are all that can seemingly hurt us.

If you don’t go with your thoughts and your feelings and you check right now, just in pure inquiry ‘Who am I?’ without settling for an answer…, whatever you are witnessing, find out who is the witness and whether that witness can be witnessed.

Who is aware of the perceiver?

Who is aware of your Presence?

Is it not you?

What does this ‘I’ look like?

Don’t visualize, look.

Don’t think, look.

Don’t feel, just look.

Whatever might be happening, whatever is being experienced, you are aware of it. And this awareness is unhurt, unconcerned actually. And every time you buy a thought from this mind, you are picking up the ‘mace’ to hurt yourself [refers to story just read] to play the game of suffering.

If you were dead, what suffering could you have? And you are beyond dead; the identity never actually lived. What concerns do you have now that you are dead? [Laughter] Who has this concern? Who has this concern? [Hysterical laughter]

The one that is the presumed owner of this life, who says ‘This is my life, this is the way I want to live my life, this is how I am’ is just a big presumption. I am telling you that you are the Witness of this game and you say that ‘I am Mario’. [Mario is a gaming character in video games]

Many times we use this term ‘I am the Unborn’. If this is your experience then whose life is this? If we cannot even find out whose life it is then what to say about our problems and our concerns and our relationships? So, in this game, the wonder would be whether you check this for yourself, whether you see this for yourself, or whether you run from this; whether you run from this quietly or you run from this kicking and screaming.

The Sage says ‘Some heard me. They looked at this question ‘Who are you’ and all the limbs (all the conditionings, the related tendencies), they were allowed to drop off’. There was another who felt like the Sage was attacking him. So all these possibilities exist in the play. And the Sages

have said ‘As long as we have this presumption of choice, let’s make the choice to inquire’. And one day it will be seen automatically that even this seeming-choice was part of the play of the one Consciousness itself. Until then, while there is still a semblance of doership, check out who you are. No other action, no other ritual, no other practice is needed. Ask yourself ‘Who am I?’ and don’t proclaim any answer. Let your Master make that proclamation for you. Remain empty of all ideas.

Is that which we claim ourselves to be…, can it remain without thoughts? Can it survive? Whatever separation you might believe has happened, it needs the nourishment of your next thought to sustain this wrong belief. So use the inquiry ‘Who am I?’ to come to the truth of the recognition of who you are and simply allow all these concepts, thoughts and ideas to come and go so that you don’t pick up any fresh conditioning. Allow these ‘arms’ to fall off. Many times what we are doing is that the old ‘arms’ are falling off and we are building new ones; the spiritual arms. Allow all of them to fall off. Remain empty.

These words are coming; I do not know if they are statistically accurate or not but they are coming so I will say them: No Master has ever become a Master by trying to become a Master. All Sages are only an expression of this Emptiness, of this Openness.

Allow all your intentions, admissions, aversions, desires. Allow this moment to dissolve all of them. Right now they are gone. If you pick on a fruit from this false tree of knowledge called the mind, right now the separation will start to seem real again.

This is the only game that is being played. You experience freedom every moment, right now. But you buy the story of bondage. You buy the story of ‘me’. Stop writing this story; leave the chapter mid-way, leave the page empty.

There is no ‘but’ after ‘I am Awareness’. You are the one solitary Witness of all that is; no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’…, nothing at all. The ‘I’ that can be picked up is not the real ‘I’.

Find Out the One That Wakes Up

Find out the one who wakes up; what is that?

There is a beautiful encounter with Papaji, my Master’s Master, and he asked someone the same question: ‘What wakes up? What wakes up?’ and the response comes from the other side that ‘It is I’.

‘I’ wakes up; that is the answer. It might not be totally accurate but it’s okay. ‘I’ wakes up. Then Papaji says ‘Don’t touch that ‘I’ that wakes up. If you don’t touch the ‘I’ that wakes up, then what remains?’ This is very important; to see That to which no state applies, That which did not go to sleep, That which did not wake up.

For an instant, not touching this ‘I’ that wakes up, what is it that remains? What was here prior to waking up? What was here after going to sleep? Don’t visualize, just for an instant don’t touch the ‘I’ that wakes up. That which remains is that the authentic Self, the ‘I’ (true ‘I’). Find out.

And as you discover yourSelf, you will find that all of this play of the world and responsibilities and rules is a beautiful game. For the enjoyment of Consciousness, this leela has been played. Then this becomes the Krishna leela and you are the Krishna; Krishna Consciousness, Christ Consciousness (whichever term you like to use). If there is a God, it is You. Many of you are ripe enough to hear these words. There is no God outside of You, there is no God separate from You; and ultimately you can even say that even God is My play.

How to come to this discovery? Just this simple question: ‘Who am I?’ Find the ‘I’, find the ‘I’. Don’t distract yourself from anything. Don’t distract yourself with anything. Find the ‘I’. The world will be fine, the world will be what it is. For some time your only job, your only function is to find the ‘I’. Who are you? Even as energy is moving, some energetic experiences are happening, find out if the witness of that is changing, is moving.

Can it be that this simple question ‘Who am I?’ can reveal the mysteries of this universe and reveal to you the substance of which this universe is made, reveal to you all this play of waking, dream, sleep and turiya?

Go to your deepest depths.

Don’t settle for anything on the surface.

What is on the surface?

This apparent universe moving about.

Go deeper than that.

Where do you come?

You come to this body.

So, the sensations of this body; go deeper than those.

Where do you come to?

You will find this realm where there are these energy constructs called thoughts and emotions. For the moment let us bundle all of that in one label called the ‘mind’.

Go deeper than that.

What is deeper than that?

You come to the experience of your own Presence, your own existence, the sense that ‘I Am’. This Consciousness, this Being is not suffering. It is not separate, it is not an individual. Being is just being, shining with Its own Light.

And notice that in all of these levels, we did not come across something called a person. There never was a person here, and never will be.

That is the end of all suffering, the end of all concepts which are ultimately false.

Anything that we say after “I am” is just a story.

Experience yourselves, taste yourselves as this Beingness itself. Can you stop being?

Allow your mind, attention, everything to dissolve in this, to drown in this. Stay with what I am pointing; don’t go here and there.

Allow everything that is appearing to dissolve within your Being.

Can we go even deeper than this?

What witnesses even this Presence, this Beingness?

This Source of this universe is also witnessed by what?

By who?

Just look. Don’t conclude anything, just look.

Who witnesses your existence?

Is it not you?

Who else is here besides you to witness your existence?

Is the fact of your existence second hand report?

Is it a news report?

Is it a social media report?

Or is it your direct experience right now?

This Witness, is it empty or full?

Is it bound or free?

Is there anything that we can truly say about This One?

You are That.

And ‘You are That’ and ‘I am That’ is a pointer for who?

Your own Being; to come to the recognition of Itself.

For your sense of existence, Consciousness, to recognize Its own source which is undeniable.

If you follow these words, you cannot miss the Truth.

But if you are trying to follow two voices at the same time then you continue to prolong your journey. The voice which you hear in satsang and the voice which is the voice of your mind; also telling you at the same time what to do. Also sitting and making a list saying ‘Yes, this is good. This is not so good. This I agree with. This I don’t’. Then it says ‘This is it. No, no, this I don’t see’. Throw away this one. It is only rubbish. Then you will find that the Truth is so pristinely simple and obvious. And you find that you only suffer your ideas. You only, only, only ever suffer your ideas. You are not suffering the world; no matter who is elected president. [Chuckles] You truly are not suffering the world, you are suffering your ideas of what the world should be, presuming that this tiny mind knows better than the Supreme Intelligence Itself (which is the one doer and one experiencer).

What really happens when the rubber hits the road? Does all our Advaita go out the window; all our openness, acceptance, love, non-separation? Many times it can happen like this. That is the play of this life. And as long as these ‘buttons’ can be pressed in your projection of this world, they will be pressed. There is no getting around that. That which is not transcended will keep showing up over and over again.

Like the game we played at the retreat when I asked everyone to pick between the three choices:

1.I am Awareness, but… [Fill in the blank]

2.I am Consciousness, but… [Fill in the blank] or

3.I don’t see how I am either of these because… [Fill in the blank]

And many of you saw clearly that whatever was after the ‘but’ was just a silly lie, or just an idea.

What are these conditions that we can’t drop? Just look for the conditions that you refuse to drop and you will find the causes of all of your seeming suffering. Because events are just events. What is happening is just happening. Based on conditioning, some can celebrate that same event and some can mourn the same event. What is the true position? The true position is that I-as- Awareness am untouched by this play. And yet the movie, the play, can be watched with a sense of wonder, with a sense of joy; joy even in the tears, joy even in the momentary grief. Some movies are comedies and some are tragedies, but you watch them for our joy. So, the dropping of our conditionings are the dropping of these ‘limbs from this thousand-handed monster’ called the mind. [Referring to a story he had read from Yoga Vasistha]

What is a tendency, a condition? It is to believe the idea. And right now you can be free of all of them. Do you realize the immensity of this, I wonder how many of you do?

This moment when it comes, it dissolves all of our conditioning. Yet there is a quick access (way) to get all of it back. This moment NOW, you are free from all of your conditioning; you cannot even tell me your name, your life, your story. This moment Now …, Now …, Now …, Now. Do you realize how immense that is? There is no bondage Here Now.

But the way we took quick access (as Guruji [Mooji] says, to ‘log in’) is just to believe your next thought. Just to give meaning to the meaningless, relevance to the irrelevant. And what do you get? Not just this one thought with one aspect of the conditioning, you get the entire tree of conditioning back. You pull at a branch or pull at a leaf and it seems like the whole ‘person’ is back here with the thousand hands with maces in each hand, ready to hit yourself.

But Now again, over! Over. And Now again, you pick up. And Now again, over. So, it is this ‘picking up’ which is being dropped.

Only a Concept, Idea, Label About Ourself Can Feel Hurt

It is a lie that some appearance causes trouble. No appearance can actually touch us. It does not really touch what we are.

I have been asking some of you recently:

How is it that something outside, appearing there [gesturing outwardly] can actually touch the reality of who we are?

What is the medium through which it could attack Me, the [true] ‘I’?

Is there some way in which that which appears can attack the reality of who we Are?

Can you see this now?

Can we check at least outside the body and see that the dance of another, or the dance of the world in front of us cannot really hurt what truly is?

How can something appearing there, moving there [gesturing outwardly], hurt the reality of who we Are?

And yet something seems to get hurt. Now something seems to get hurt; why? If you have no concept about it, is it possible for something to get hurt based on something appearing seemingly-outside? Is it possible to suffer? When I am saying ‘get hurt’ I am not talking about the momentary reaction; but if you don’t have a concept or a label or an idea about how something should be, then the appearance is just appearing and there is no way that an appearance can hurt the Self. It can only hurt a concept that we have about ourself. These are called attachments. Momentarily something can catch your attention, but unless you have a concept that ‘Okay, nothing should move over there’ then there can be no suffering because of it.

So, what we are speaking of is very practical actually. It is not theory. We can check this now; anything appearing in front of us. How is it that a random stranger can come and speak some words (energetically the same sort of movement is happening) but another close relationship (as we have defined or labeled it) if that one speaks some words, that makes a big difference. Energetically the movement is similar but there is a concept that ‘This one should not behave like this with me’ or ‘He or she should not say this to me’. This idea of what the relationship ‘should be like’ makes the difference. If this idea is not there, then it would be the same; whatever this one says, or this one says, or this one says, or this one says [pointing to members in the group] it should make no difference.

What Makes the Difference?

A:‘What makes the difference?’ is the question. That exactly is the question, isn’t it? ‘What is the difference between me and a stranger?’

Q: [Inaudible]

A:No you can’t hide behind that; then there is no point coming here. All of humanity is suffering; what is the point of satsang? That is how you humans are, humans are this way, most of humanity is not coming to satsang. But why are you here?

Q:No matter what it is it, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t hurt because there is no connection, there is no deeper connection there. But if you tell me something and there is such a deeper connection with you and there is such a strong love with you that if you tell me something then it could trigger a strong intense pain, intense hurt.

A:So that which we call ‘love’, what does it mean? Does love lead to freedom, or does love lead to constriction?

Q: That I don’t know but…

The purpose of the question is for you to look. If I was to just grab you with what you already knew then it would serve no purpose. The purpose of asking is so that you can shine your light on this question and see. So, I see that I love someone; does that mean that because I love someone (or the feeling of love is here) does it mean that now they should now be constricted to my idea of how they should behave, or how they are supposed to reciprocate or respond?

That is the trouble, isn’t it? To love is full of space, to love is full of freedom. It is when we make our love conditional that we struggle because of it. So if you love (for example) Adam; now because you love Adam, should Adam have to behave in a particular way, or love you back?

Q:Yes, I understand that love should give freedom, but experientially it is seen that if it doesn’t happen in a certain way then it triggers something here also, and that is also can be a part of freedom; that which is appearing here (for example something which appears or comes here) then why can’t it also be accepted?

A:Yes, yes. I feel you know this one; you know the answer for this one because you have heard it for a long time. You are not talking about the momentary pain which can arise…

Q:Father, for example if you tell me something which would really hurt me, then I could be crying for days…

A:Yes. See how much you can cry. If I tell you something strong…, (and we can try it now if you like) [Laughter] before you pick up a concept about it, it can happen. You see, if Guruji [Mooji] told me something [indicating pain arrives] tears can come, something can happen; but

first I have to then believe a concept about it. ‘Oh, how can he tell me this?’ or ‘Why does he always pick on me?’ or ‘Why doesn’t he understand me?’ and ‘I am this way’. We have to reinforce that pain with some fuel of concept to convert that into our prolonged suffering. That is what is being spoken about.

So, there can be love, there can be a reaction, a response of hurt or grief which can come; but to make suffering out of it you need to reinforce it with some ideas, with some concepts.

Now, basically it is very simple. None of you can actually suffer without believing a concept. Over and over, we are saying the same thing; but the concepts themselves (this is the Mahabharata, the concept) the concepts themselves, the mind itself is fighting back with the best concepts it can bring up. And all of you are fighting with different sets of concepts. If you were to look in this room right now (and I don’t want to deal any report cards) but all of you have a different set of favorite concepts. One has concept about doership, one has concept about freedom, one has concept about emotion, one has concept about something else (body, relationship) so it is just which concept seems to be playing out the strongest here. But Right Now, they are gone. Right Now they are gone. Now, they are gone. Now…, Now…, Now. They go really fast when we don’t give any space for the movement of this energy called the mind.

When Will Our Vasanas Get Over?

The question was: ‘When will the vasanas [latent tendencies] get over? All our vasanas, when will they get over?’

They will only get over Right Now. Right Now there is no vasana.

How to bring the entire tree of vasanas back, the entire karmic kosha, the entire tree of conditioning back? All it needs is one tug into one concept. One pull into one concept seems to bring this entire tree of conditioning back. And yet you will find that as we have remained still, as we have allowed these thoughts to come and go, this tree seems to be depleting more and more. And it is inevitable in satsang for this tree of conditioning to dissolve, to diminish; unless we are now creating new branches of spiritual knowledge. If you are creating new concepts that we are believing ourself, which are spiritual in nature, then the tree might actually be getting larger. The spiritual ego might be the biggest tree that anyone can acquire. So, it is about the strength of the concepts which are now being believed.

So, what is the way to be free of this tree of conditioning? We can be free Right Now. Allow everything to come and go, then we see that the tree is just not here. There are these offers to plant the tree again. We get these pamphlets from the mind saying ‘Yes, this is going to be a wonderful tree, buy this one’. And we purchase one thought and it seems like the tree is back. That is all that is happening. As belief is getting withdrawn, this tree is getting depleted. As belief is given again, it seems like it is reappearing.

Now, this for some, can seem like it is a ‘catch-22’ because you might still feel that ‘Belief is going automatically therefore there is no way out of it’. Now, for these ones, first you must identify ‘Which are the branches which I end up believing concepts about; most frequently, or they cause the most suffering?’ And you will quickly be able to identify the one or two main identities which are in play. Now, as we identify the identities which are in play or which still seem to get us the most suffering, get us the most belief, then we enquire into that particular identity.

So, if you say that ‘It is the spiritual seeker identity’ (for example) that causes the most suffering, then we pull that into our inquiry and say ‘Who is it that wants freedom?’

Now, for many of us what has happened is that our inquiry has been made quite muddy by mixing it with the mind. So, as soon as you ask this question ‘Who is it that wants freedom?’ the mind itself will come with a response saying ‘Yeah, Yeah, I know; nobody actually/ I have looked at this a million times it doesn’t really help right now’. You see? All this commentary starts.

So, my invitation to you is to just look completely fresh, as fresh as possible: who is it that wants freedom? Look with integrity. Don’t fall for any conclusion too quickly. Who is here that wants freedom? And allow this question to clean up the conditioning.

This question is the most beautiful thorn you can use to remove the thorns of conditioning. And as you pull these identities into our inquiry, you will find that it becomes lighter; this branch also

becomes lighter. Then when the same thought comes ‘Yes, you are not finding your freedom yet’ or something like this, you will just let it go, or you can laugh at it (it’s the same thing).

So, it is a virtuous cycle that is happening. As you are letting go of your next thought, the tree of conditioning is depleting; and as you are looking at the branches of the tree and inquiring into them, the seeming-magnetism of the next thought seems to also be reducing.

So, allow yourself to fall into this virtuous cycle and to be a little bit vigilant about coming to any mental conclusions about freedom or mental confusions about who you are; because that is just perpetuating again the branch of conditioning.

This is the virtuous cycle, the virtuous cycle of letting go…, and letting go of our karmic tendencies, vasanas or conditioning (whatever you might call it). Just remain free from belief in thought and you will find that this tree of conditioning is depleting at a super-quick rate.

And be vigilant towards the vicious cycle of buying a concept and then falling for the mind trap saying ‘Yes, yes, I have got it now. I am right. It is done’. It cannot be a mental conclusion. And that way, without realizing it, you will find that the spiritual tree of conditioning seems to have flourished.

That is why what [Nisargadatta] Maharaj said about integrity is really important: If there is suffering, know that there is a concept being believed in. Don’t hide behind any Advaita then. Look at that identity and ask yourself ‘Who is that?’ or just ask yourself ‘Who am I?’ It is like working on the roots of the tree itself.

So, simple, isn’t it? Now the mind is in a trap; it cannot escape. [Chuckles] If the thought comes and goes, then it has had no power. When it comes and it gets belief, we use that for our inquiry (which itself weakens the tendency of the mind). So, if this is done with sincerity and integrity, then the mind will become milder and milder, lighter and lighter. And it will seem like so much trouble to try and suffer. Just like it can seem like a struggle to come to the end of suffering, it will seem like a struggle to try and suffer.

Do You Do the Inquiry as a Practice?

Q:So, is it like one spends the time actively doing that; spending some time every day doing the inquiry as a practice?

A: Actually, inquiry is just a simple looking.

The inquiry becomes so natural that you won’t even need to use the question ‘Who am I?’ Inquiring is just like this…, it’s just a simple looking, without even the concept of ‘Who am I?’ Sometimes, just the ‘Who?’ is enough’ sometimes just the ‘W’ is enough. By the time you got to ‘W’ it is clear. It doesn’t have to be [Serious face] ‘Who… am… I?’ [Chuckles] Just the intent to look at what is here, who is here, that is what we are talking about.

So, we don’t have to make a practice per say out of it. But if it helps, if you feel like it. We know this. In our heart we know this whether a concept is light and easy (and just momentarily some belief went into it) or we know when something is really sticky (as Adyashanti calls it ‘The velcro thoughts’). So we are usually good at identifying them.

We must look at our velcro ones and (maybe, if it helps) we take some time and really say ‘Okay, next twenty minutes, I am just going to look at this one which seems to get me over and over. When this deal comes from the mind, when this offer comes from the mind, I always end up giving it my money, my belief. So maybe I can take a few minutes and just look at this’. There is nothing wrong with that.

So I am not prescribing something that ‘You have to sit for this much time every day’ because you know in your heart which are the sticky ones, which are really light and they just come and go. Take the sticky ones into your inquiry. And if they keep coming over and over again and seem to get our belief every time they come, you can just look at them and they will become lighter. In that way, then, even these sticky identities start losing their Velcro-ness, their magnetism, their pull.

Many of us here (I know most of you are younger than me) but many of us grew up watching these Tom and Jerry cartoons. So, we used to have these cartoons and what would Tom do when he wanted to call Jerry? Mostly he would take some cheddar cheese or some cheese; in the cartoon they would show that the aroma is calling Jerry. Isn’t it? That comes out from the cheese and it goes ’Come, come, come’ and Jerry the mouse goes flying. So these are our favorite concepts; this piece of Swiss cheese is our favorite concept. And when they come, they are like ‘Come, come. There is so much joy waiting for you, so much; it will be so good, so good. I know last time it wasn’t so much fun but this time I am telling you…’ And inevitably what happens, there is Tom the cat waiting, you see. [Chuckles] It’s waiting with that cheese saying ‘Okay, I got you’. And as we recognize this more and more, as we see this aroma ‘This got to me last time, once it was Brie, once it was Swiss, once it was Cheddar, once it was (whatever)…, all of these different types of cheeses’. Then we are able to inquire into them and drop them. And we see that all of them are leading only to this Tom cat of ego.

There is actually this very nice story of somebody that lived with Bhagavan [Ramana Maharshi] for many years, and he after some time got very frustrated because he was seeing people coming who were fresh and apparently getting what Bhagavan was pointing to but he had been with Bhagavan for many years but he was just not getting the point. And in the wisdom of the Sage, they are able to tell what is the medicine that is needed for this particular resonance (of this particular frequency or energy or whatever is functioning through that seeming body-mind). So, for that one he said ‘Whatever you do for the rest of your life, you will not leave the inquiry. You will keep asking yourself ‘Who am I?’ until I tell you to stop’. For some it could be nothing at all. ‘Just drop everything, there is nothing you need to do because there is no doer’. And for some it could be a very strong instruction, saying ‘You must constantly, day and night, just ask yourself ‘Who am I?’

So there is no set formula for what is prescribed. You can be nice to everything in the world, be nice to the outer world, be nice to your emotions, be nice to everything; but for some time don’t be so nice to your thoughts. Just let them come and go. You can love everything, molly-coddle love everything, but just for some time allow these thoughts not to be molly-coddled, not to get your belief. You can have even a sense of love towards these thoughts, you can have an attitude of love towards these thoughts, but doesn’t mean that we have to buy what they are selling. Just like we can be compassionate to the con-artist who is coming to trick us. Because ultimately even the con-artist is an expression of God but just because it is an expression of God, to fall for the trick would still be foolishness, especially if the trick is something we have fallen for a million times. You see?

In Reality, You Are Not Carrying Any of This

A:I’ll repeat the first part [of his question] again: ‘To hold on to my individuality, I need my thoughts. And to be free is to let go of this mind’.

Q:Yes. I see that when I let go, there is space, there is freedom, there is peace.

A:Yes.

Q:Father there is some very strong force which comes as if I want to experience life as an individual Being, Still I want to experience life as an individual being not as an unassociated universal being. So I see both these choices are there and that’s why I liked that quote of yours very much when you said that ‘Freedom and bondage can’t be together, and openness and closed- ness can’t be together’ and I realized that what I was trying to do is trying to manage…, trying to put both of them together so that I can experience life as an individual also, and at the same time I can be free also. And there seems to be a constant tug of war between individual existence and letting go.

A:Yes, yes. It’s a good point. It’s a good point; we can speak about it for a minute. See, everyone in some way or the other (as we are letting go of this individuality) has experienced this to a smaller or greater extent.

Some have said ‘Okay, I want freedom but please don’t make me a beggar on the street’. They say ‘Okay, give me the Janaka-style enlightenment or freedom. I want to be the ruler of my Kingdom, I feel I can do it’. So, like that. [Laughs] ‘But don’t take away my material comforts’. Some have said ‘I want freedom, but this aspect of my life which is my relationships, please, please don’t change that, let me keep that’.

For every and any aspect which we can be personally attached to as we are moving towards the letting go it becomes clearer and clearer what that is which we are most attached to. And that can always seem to be something which we want to carry through.

Now, this is a subtle point (and I see in your case also it creates some confusion sometimes). The subtle point is that as you find yourself without attributes you will see that, in reality, you are not carrying any of this.

[Silence]

So, when it is said that ‘Not a blade of grass will be carried into this door of freedom’ this is what it means. Listen. As the reality of what I am, as the Witness of Presence, and as unassociated Presence itself, as the Truth of my existence; I see this to be the unchanging, unwavering Truth.

So, this is what it means; that we cross this door of freedom with nothing, not even a blade of grass. Because Being comes to this sense of being unassociated.

Now, what can be confusing sometimes is that the play in the apparent life of such a one (for some there can be ‘this’ which still remains [hand gesture] for some there can be ‘this’ aspect which still remains)…, for her, for example, ‘My marital relationship and this house and my investments and all these things still remain’. You see? For some it can feel like the entire thing… [Hand gesture of throwing away everything] They will become a Fakir, you know, just begging for food and going. For some it may feel like something else remains and something else is not there.

Now, nobody can predict how that aspect of the outward functioning will play. The mind can see that and say that ‘I want to pick and choose. And between all these various expressions this is the type of freedom I want’. But as we are crossing the door [Chuckles] then even this will be dropped. There will come a point where (if it is really strong) we will be on our hands and knees saying ‘Whatever you want to take, take. I want nothing but You’. [Chuckles] It will come like that.

It is that surrender, this internal surrender, which is important because that means that that surrender is True, that means that there is devotion and trust. If we still say ‘Yes, yes. You manage 90% of it but 10% of it I still want to hold onto’…, because what are we playing? We’re playing as if we are separate individuals and we are making a deal with God. Isn’t it? That is saying ‘Okay, this aspect I don’t want to let go of. The rest you can do whatever you want with’.

So, as we come more and more into Satsang, into our inquiry, into devotion and love, we will find that it will be so easy for us to say ‘Whatever be Thy will. If you feel that this moment is the end of this worldly existence in this life of this Ananta, if that be Thy will, let Thy will be done’.

And we don’t have to force this; we don’t have to push ourself to make these kind of prayers. Just you will find them sprouting organically as you continue to stay in your contemplations, in your inquiry, in your marinating in the Presence of Satsang. Then you will one day laugh at all of these things that you wanted to grasp onto strongly. Not laugh in a divisive way, but laugh at ‘How could it have played out that these things seemed so strong to me, but now it just seems so light’.

Just like your classmate from college had come the other day and he was saying that there was one term which you didn’t do so well and things; so at that time it might have seemed strong. (One term, no? In college exams.) I don’t know what you felt at that time, but I’m just presuming if it was me it would have felt strongly at that point of time that ‘I’ve not done so well in these exams’. But now when you look back, you can see that life went okay; everything is fine. Just in the same way, you will find that all these current seeming-challenges which seem strong (and are attachments which seem strong) when you look back, as we get lighter and lighter from all of these, it will just seem like ‘Oh, I was so concerned about this, but look, it all worked out fine’.

Q:Father, this one point that I wanted to mention that I see the importance of freedom and the value of it also. But also it is that I recognize that the individual dreams and desires are very precious.

A: So, as long as they seem to have meaning, they seem to have relevance, you are free to play

with them. It doesn’t mean you have to pick one or the other. It can feel like ‘Okay, this one still feels like it has some potential for joy, or meaning and relevance’. You’re free to play with that.

It is for those who come and say that ‘I don’t want anything at all. I only want to see the truth of who I am and I want to be free!’ For them I will say ‘Okay, drop everything. It is nothing. It is only a thought’. If you say that ‘This aspect of me still has meaning, has some relevance, I want to play with it for some time’ nothing can stop you.

Q:I also see that…, like earlier it used to happen that (all of us) that even if we are picking up thousands of thoughts per day it would be normal. But now it feels like if I pick up very few things and identify, then it starts causing a lot of suffering. So, like this struggle between living life as an individual or dropping of the..,

A:You see? But if that is organically happening for you, that means that you’re coming to the dropping of these things. You see? Because that which makes you suffer constantly, you will not keep picking up. If by the picking up of thoughts you come to a lot of suffering immediately, then you will not keep picking up the hot potato again and again. Isn’t it?

Distinction Between the Passing and the Changeless

What we talk about, what Bhagavan [Ramana Maharshi] has pointed to (and Adi Shankara) is that there is no distinction between what we are and this supreme Self, the Brahman; but there seems to be this play of this appearance called Maya…, and Brahman himself or itself is choosing to play this way. And we have said very simply that to dispose of the mind is to come to this moksha or liberation, which is just a release of the false.

To recognize the Truth we don’t need the mind. To be free from our conditioning we don’t need the mind. But most of the traditional paths of Advaita Vedanta go with this idea, with this sense that to dispose of the mind is easier said than done. Sometimes I also feel that. When I see that what should be so simple and obvious doesn’t seem to be that simple and obvious and when I look back at the play of the seeker here, I recognize that it is not how it sounds: ‘Just keep the mind away and it is done’. For some, it could be, but usually it doesn’t play like that.

So most of the traditional Advaitans prescribe various methods and sadhanas to get to this point. But with Bhagavan, with Papaji (mostly with Papaji) it started that…, because with Bhagavan actually it was a lot of inquiry, a lot of contemplation. He used to stress on it a lot. In spite of saying that ‘There is nothing to do because you are the Self’ he recognized that most don’t seem to see that as simply as it is said. So he used to prescribe a lot of inquiry and sitting in quiet contemplation. With Papaji, he was very, very radical. At times and he would just say ‘Forget about all practices, just leave everything; and now’.

There is great beauty in that directness, great joy in that. But also sometimes I feel like it is good to go back to the roots of what we are sharing. Go back to what the Sages have also said in the past and to look at what they have prescribed. When it seems like to dispose of this mind is beyond us and it seems like all of this world of suffering is too strong, then it’s good to sometimes go back into these traditional pointings like the Ashtavakra Gita or what the other Sages of Advaita Vedanta have said.

So, the Truth is that there is no separation. We are this one Self and only the mind convinces us otherwise. That’s why the Sages have said ‘As long as mind continues to get relevance, meaning and belief from us, we must find ways to let go of this. And all the Sages have prescribed different ways but in Advaita some things are very, very common.

One is to clearly note the distinction between that which is eternal and that which is passing, which is ephemeral. So, what is being said is that we must come to this point by now, where we must have this distinction between that which is passing and that which is eternal or timeless, that which is fleeting and that which is real. And we must not get attached to that which is passing.

It Must Be Direct Experience

If the hearing of Satsang is important, it is a million times more important to contemplate that which is being spoken. And a million times more important than even that is to have the direct experience of what is being shared.

If it is only being heard and it is not being recognized as our direct experience then we can go on like this for thousands of lifetimes, over and over; and that Freedom, that Moksha that we are looking for will still be elusive.

First we have to stop being in denial about where we are. If we are still attached to things in this realm, if we still find that these are real and meaningful, then we must stop fooling ourselves; we must admit that ‘This is where I am.’ We must contemplate on:

What here is actually lasting?

Which outer object will last forever, is eternal? How long will this body last?

These thoughts, these ideas, these beliefs are fleeting. All of it is fleeting. It is coming and going. And if we know that it is going, then is it not foolishness to attach to these?

We must be able to distinguish the real from the unreal.

What is real? That which is eternal, that which is found to be permanent, unchanging.

What is unreal? That which changes, that which comes and goes and therefore inherently unreliable.

So, if we continue to be attached to that which is inherently unreliable, what will be our fate? There’s too much attachment to objects of desire, too much attachment to this body, too much attachment to our ideas, our individuality. And unless we are able to throw them away in the dust-bin, we can keep fooling ourselves that we are doing Advaita but actually we are not getting anywhere at all. It is about time we stopped fooling ourselves.

As we are undertaking this inner journey, if we keep holding onto these outer appearances it will become one big tug of war and it will seem like it is dragging on forever. Therefore, whatever it takes, first come to this clarity about what is real and what is unreal. See the world for what it is, see this body for what it is, see your thoughts for what they are. Look at the functioning of your intellect. Find out if any of this will last.

How long will you be this person? What is the duration of this play?

And how long will you play even with this identity of being an Advaita seeker?

Let go of all the meaning you have given to things in this world. Then let’s talk about the reality of who You are.

Turn it Over to the Master

A:These days, more what is happening with you when you come to satsang you come with your own curriculum. You say ‘Today I will come and I will burn…’ [Indicates carrying a bundle] So, you don’t come with a sense that ‘I will come and I will just give myself over to him’. That is where you are independent. You are trying to come with our own ideas of ‘what I will do in satsang’. So, today you can say ‘Okay I will come and burn today’. But I am saying something: ‘You hand it over to me. See how that is working for you’.

We are making this inner mind (this mind) we are making that a guru then. While you are saying that ‘You are my Master, you are my Master’ actually when we come into satsang with our own plan, that ‘This is what has to happen today. This is how I am going to burn, and this is what I have decided’. That is not surrender. Then you are trying to be your own Master; the mind is the Master. So, instead of that, if you see that what is being pointed here is for this. Sometimes the mind will come and say ‘No, no, but that is for everybody else. I have to go in my own process here. I have my own process’. But all of this is for you; there is nobody else. All of this is appearing in Your play. If it is appearing for You, it is the voice of Your intuition which is appearing like this.

What is the Master? The Master is just a projection of our own inner Satguru. But the mind wants to become that. Your mind will say ‘Okay, he is saying…, but that must be for everyone else. You must burn in your own process’. But who is saying all that? All this show is for You.

I have noticed that is happening for some of you, where it can just feel like ‘Okay, he is just talking and it doesn’t really apply to me because my problem actually is this’. But it is all for you. Everything here is pointing to Your direct Self, to Your direct recognition. Not one part of this is for someone else. We are not speaking specifically (mostly). But something says ‘No, no, I know what I am doing, I have to do this, and this has to burn, and this has to go’. But who is the Master then?

I feel like I am making all this beautiful lunch and dessert and everything for you and you are coming and eating from your own lunchbox. (Not just you. I’m sharing for all of you.) There is no point. It is all your feast. Enjoy this. It is pointing to the reality of who You are (no matter what the mind says).

Q: [Inaudible]

I feel all of us must be able to look at this now. We must be able to look at these tricks from the mind. What have I ever done to any of you? This Ananta is the receiving end of anger lots of times, but I look at it objectively and say ‘What have I ever done except treat everyone in love and affection and open my house to everyone for hours and hours every day?’ But we keep falling for this trick: ‘Maybe he is trying to fool me, maybe it is not happening, maybe… (something, something)’. And this poor chap keeps getting… [Laughter] I am looking really

objectively sometimes and I say ‘What is it really about?’ And we must be able to spot this for ourselves now. ‘What has he really done? What has Ananta done to you?’

Q: [Inaudible] Sometimes it comes, this anger, it comes. [Inaudible]

A:Anger can come, but we attach to it, you see? We attach to it. You know what this anger wants to do? One day (when I just started sharing satsang) Guruji [Mooji] was there. We were in Rishikesh and Guruji was there and he was sharing with someone, making this quote where he said ‘One day you will either come to the truth of what is being shared, or you will turn against me with great viciousness’. He was sharing like that. And just sharing had just started from here, and it just felt like ‘Oh, my children they will never become vicious towards me’. And then it started happening [Chuckles] and I realized that it’s true. Why does it happen? Because something wants to take this on independently as ‘something’ and then it will find every single reason to be upset, to be angry, to find resentment and grievances against that which we call the Master.

It can feel like ‘No, no, I can do this by myself”. So, this turning to viciousness, I realized that happens very often actually. And I still get surprised when it happens actually. I should stop being surprised because there is nothing that Ananta has really done which has been vindictive or something, where I have been in anyway unfair (as far as I can see) to anyone in the sangha. Like I’ve said ‘He is generally a very nice guy’. So, if you were to just look objectively, I don’t see why he has to bear the brunt of all of this anger and resentment. But I know that this is the nature of the mind which will come and say ‘But, but he is like this, or he is like this; but he says to do this’. Like many times, it will be like someone says ‘But you tell me not to make money’. But when have I said not to make money? Many times some of you will come to me with some request to give some advice (‘Should I do this, or should I do that?’) and some advice which feels right will come from here. But I have never said I am some expert on how to run your life phenomenally. I am only pointing to your non-phenomenal truth and existence. And yet I trust the intuitive Presence which speaks from here to say ‘Okay, maybe to do this will be better; maybe better to do that will be better’. But I find that usually mind makes use of this kind of thing and says ‘Okay, he told me to do that; he told me’. It is not like that at all.

Q:[Inaudible] (Once he asked her to leave the room for a time due to bad coughing that would not stop.)

A:The fear of letting go of everything, yes. The mind is like this, you see. The mind will not say that ‘All this noise has been happening for months and things like that. Look at how nice he is. He has never told me anytime to go’. No, mind will say ‘See, he is rejecting me, he told me to leave’. And what did I say? That day I was just feeling like ‘Oh, it is getting in the way of the words, because the volume was not increasing from here, and it just felt like ‘For a while, while this is happening, can you just step out for a while?’ The mind can use this, you see. I can say ‘I love you’ a million times but if in anger one time I were to say ‘Okay, I really hate you’ what will the mind remember? ‘Oh, he really must hate me’. It does not remember the million times I say I love you.

Q: [Inaudible]

A:I want to make an important point to all of you which is that none of this is meant to make you feel guilty. Just go on a one-way fast from this ‘I’…., the ‘I’ that disappoints everyone, the ‘I’ that is feeling this, the ‘I’ that is feeling that. You leave that ‘I’.

Q: Tension.

A:Yes, but you witness the tension. The body is not you. The tension (sensations which are experienced in the body) is not You. It can pull all your attention. It can pull all your attention and that way; it can feel like it is You but (even then) That which witness it is not being choked in any way. This is what Your own intuitive voice is saying. It is not an outside external person in a fight with your mind. It is your own intuitive Presence which is telling you ‘Look beyond that, look beyond. What is there? What is the space in which all of this is happening? Is that space also being choked? And if that space is not being choked, then how is the Witness of that space being choked?’

Q: [Inaudible]

A:Yes, but now you trust one voice, which is the voice which is coming in satsang from here. [Ananta] Let every other voice say whatever it wants. You say [to your thoughts] ‘You take it up with Ananta’. If the voice is saying ‘You will never be free of me’ [you say] ‘Okay, not my problem. It is my Master’s problem’. That is surrender.

Whatever the mind is saying, whatever the energy is saying, whatever sensations are doing, let it all be my problem. I am happy to take it. If you make it my problem, then it becomes a problem for me. If you let all your problems be my problems, then I am happy. If you make them your problems, then you make it a problem for me.

Q: [Inaudible]

I am saying I want that gift. You say ‘No, no’. You give all your garbage to me. You give the misery to me, all the garbage to me; then you will give only the good things to everyone. But when you say ‘Okay, I will keep my garbage and I will give him only the good things’ then you are giving everyone this garbage.

You give all of it to me! Then everyone will find only good things from you.

Important Points

A:Right now if you don’t pick up anything, then nothing needs to be dropped. Because first you need to pick it up. So, the idea of separation, if it is not picked up, then nothing at all. If the idea, any conclusion, any concept is picked up about yourself, [Just look]: Who does the picking up?

Q: I feel it gets me.

A:Yes, but this is the dichotomy that the mind creates. It is that the picking up is the getting of picking up, but the dropping is not the getting of the dropping. So, if I say ‘Touch your nose’…, you did that? Or it happened?

Q: Feels like I did it.

A:Because that is the conclusion your mind is painting for you. You don’t know how to do it; the mind does not know how to touch your nose also. So, what happens is we say ‘Yes the belief actually gets picked up, but the dropping…, so when we say ‘Okay, drop it’ [you say] ‘But that must happen on its own’. Why can’t that happen as spontaneously as you touch your nose?

This is a very, very important point, because this is the strongest source of Advaita resistance, so to speak, in a way; because the dropping is as much a doing as the picking up. Picking up and dropping must be at the same level of doership. But when it comes to picking up, we say ‘Okay, but that just happened’.

So if there is a sense that Consciousness can pick up the concept, then there must also be the sense that Consciousness can drop it. Who else but Consciousness is here?

So, when we are talking about abiding in the Self then we don’t pick up the idea itself of doership. But when we do pick up the idea with the sense that I am the doer, then already the sense of separation is here that ‘I am a separate entity’. As long as that sense is there, the Sages advise us to ‘Drop it, don’t pick it up’.

If it is true that your sense is that Consciousness will do everything, there is no separate you to do anything at all, then the picking up of anything will also not cause any suffering, because you see that I am not experiencing anything; it is the Consciousness.

So, that is what I have been saying the last few days, it is only the ‘half and half’ which gets us in trouble. ‘I am not the doer, Consciousness is the doer; but I am still the experiencer and as the experiencer, am waiting for the Consciousness to drop it. That is not true. If you are not the doer then you are also not the experiencer. All of this is just being experienced within the space of Consciousness Itself. There is no individual ‘me’ to do anything. If that is true then it must also be seen that there is no individual ‘me’ that is suffering from something. Then no pointing is needed.

When we continue to carry the sense that ‘I am the experiencer but not the doer’ then that can be what is called sort of the ‘victim’ mind set; the ‘me vs God’ or ‘God is doing this to me’ kind of mind set. So, that is why it is said that as long as there is a sense of separation then we can do the enquiry; if there is no sense of separation, if we are abiding in the Self, then nothing to be done at all.

That is why when you look at the book ‘Be as You Are’ the first chapter is just the Self. Is there instruction? Nothing. It is just the spontaneous revelation ‘I am the Self’. There is no doership, no separate experience, nothing to be done, no practice; nothing. But if it still feels like it is not true ‘I am still suffering in this life’ (and this is very, very important because a Sage does not say ‘I am suffering in this life’. Why is it that he doesn’t say ‘Okay, if suffering has to come, then I’m ready’ (this kind of stuff)? You don’t hear him speaking Advaita like that. It is very conclusive: ‘There is no real suffering, whatever suffering comes is only momentary’.

So, why? Because the idea of doer and experiencer are both resolved. So, if it is apparent that I am the Self then there is no doer, there is no experiencer; nothing to be done. Everything is seen to be moving in the space of Being. It doesn’t affect or touch the reality of what I Am.

But if there is a condition which seems to be deeply ingrained, then the Master will always say ‘But look and see that is not true’. You are just running from corner to corner in this room, but you are only in the satsang hall. But you say ‘Okay, but telling me to stop is also doership’. I am just saying: Stop and see what you already are. Drop the false idea that you have not reached. That is not doership; that is just ending the sensation of doership.

So it is just like this. We go from place to place and the Sage comes and says ‘Stop’ and the mind comes and says ‘But, stop? That seems like asking me to do something?’ So, the dropping is not the doing actually.

Can you see this or not? It is the picking up which is the ‘doing’. See this for yourselves now rather than thinking about it. Allow the thoughts to come and see what the actual ‘doing’ is. Is the ‘doing’ to allow ourselves to remain in this neutrality? Or is the ‘doing’ (the seeming-doing) to pick up these ideas?

From my perspective it seems like it is effort to go pick up these thoughts. And it is effortless to just drop, because dropping is happening in the moment, on its own. So, to not go with the flow…, it is like you are swimming against the tide. And I say ‘Come, come. Come to the shore, nothing will happen’. So, what is the doing? It seems like they’re going with these thoughts and picking them up is trying to swim against the tide. But to come to the side and allow them to go, allow the river to flow, or this tide to go up and down, that is just an effortless witnessing.

What Am I Actually Saying?

Q:At this moment, I have a no problem with the vastness. But I can see (although the background is vastness) I can see that prompting, of ‘Pick up, pick up; do’ but I don’t want to. There is something (there is no ‘I’) there is something that does not want to perceive that habit, because I’m on this side; and this prompter is seeming to move. I see the battle.

A:Okay, let us really look at this very, very slowly. What am I actually saying? I know I have been saying this for a long time and you have been hearing this for a long time, but sometimes it feels like you haven’t really heard it. So, let me repeat what I am saying very slowly, and wherever you have a problem, you stop me. Wherever you have a problem, you stop me.

Right now, what are you?

You are the Self. You are this unchanging Awareness.

Not trouble. It could be the end of satsang right here, right now, isn’t it? But you will say ‘But what happens when suffering comes or I go into the market place of the world, how do I not suffer?’ I say ‘But you are always the Self. You only pretend to be the non-self when you pick up your next thought.’ So, that’s why I say ‘Okay, to be free from this idea of suffering, all you have to do is not believe your next thought.’ You see, because that would be a picking up of the thought. Without the picking up of the thought this separate individual pretense cannot take root, cannot take place. We all see this? Or no?

Q:So, it is like when we are sitting, even just still…, when some action needs to be done then it seems like the doership feeling comes. Otherwise there is not a problem in just being even a Witness (or being nothing, actually. There is no Witness. Just being blank). But the minute there is an action to be done or something then… a feeling arises and ‘I am doing this, I am doing that.’ Is that the thought which we should not pick up?

A:Okay, let us make a flow chart, and everyone must listen. Don’t feel like you have switched off or ‘He is on a different track, it is not resonating with me today so I am just going to switch it off’ you know and ‘You are the Presence’ etc.

Right Now, You Are Free. You are the unchanging Awareness. All of you have been in satsang, and actually most of you, you have this direct recognition that there is an unchanging Witnessing, irrespective of whatever might be happening in the phenomenal world. So, this is the core of the pointing: ‘What are you? I am this Self, Awareness, Witnessing…, untouched by this play.’ End of story?

Now if there is a ‘but’…, it cannot be a ‘but’ unless you bought some idea. Is it true or not? True? Everyone is with me so far? Can it be anything other than us buying some idea which can make us seem as if we are separate, as if we are an individual entity? Yes or no? Do you have to believe you’re an individual entity to pretend to be separate?

Q:I don’t feel something special. It’s the end of the story of this one.

A:You do feel or don’t feel?

Q:I feel this mind, the body. I don’t suddenly feel I’m universal.

A:Yes. So, right now, that which you are saying is ‘my body’…, that actually is experienced as what?

Q: As sensations.

A:So there are some sensations. What calls it ‘mine’? Sensation is being experienced (we can go really slowly) some sensation is being experienced. Can the experiencing of a sensation make it mine? Where does the ‘mine’ come from? [Silence] Experience the sensation right now and see if you can say ‘this is mine’ without interpreting it, just without labeling it.

Q:I know the mechanics of it, mechanics of how…

A:Okay, what is the mechanics?

Q:That which believes it has a story and which owns the body, you feel like …

A:And that mechanics translates into ‘right now’? How, in what way? [Silence] Whatever the belief might have been, whatever the concepts you have picked up in the past might have been, does that play out in ‘me calling the sensation mine’?

Q: It is the same thing; it comes ‘the me’.

A:This ‘me’ is another sensation? Is it a sensation, or is it imagination? What is it? Is it a block? What does it feel like? Let us look at that. We have time, this is very important. Where does the ‘me’ come from?

Q: It’s just a mood, like a…

A:Feeling is sensation? Distinguish. Is it separate from the sensation? Chase it, don’t let it go, chase it down. It is like a feeling of ‘me’. The feeling is experienced how? [Silence] Is it a sense of existence?

Q: It is mixed.

A; Yes. What is mixed? On top of the sensory existence, what is there?

Q: I’ve just held this belief so long, in the past….

A:But how is that experienced? How do you experience a belief?

Q:I come to the word ‘feeling’.

A:There is a feeling which feels like what? Like a sense of separation. Is it like that or …? What do you call this ‘me’?

Q:For example, if somebody throws something on me, I feel like somebody is throwing something at me.

A:At me, yes. So, something is thrown; some sensation comes up in the body and the movement of the hand happens…, at least that is a very good idea, no? If you did not know that I am going to throw this at you, then do you really have to think about it to get ready, to catch it?

Q: It just happens on its own.

A:It just happened. So, the sensation happens, the movement of the body happens on its own

Q:It is like something else, not me.

A:Yes, that is why to see ‘This ‘me’…., what is it?’ is very important, isn’t it? What are we calling ‘me’? There is a sensation which is the body, so we have sensations from this body which seems to define the borders of this body. What makes it ‘my’ body? What brings the ‘me’ into the body? Then I said ‘Is it the sense of existence?’ You say that ‘There is a ‘me’ that is mixed up with even that.’ So what is this ‘me’? It is a sensation? But a sensation means something that is experienced sensorially. So, are you experiencing this ‘me’ as if ‘Through our inner perception it is experienced as sensation’? Or what is it being experienced as?

Q: A sensation like a…

A:Yes, what is it? A feeling or sensation; both are energetic, isn’t it? So is this ‘me’ being experienced as that? [Silence] That which gets mixed up with the sensations of the body and gets mixed up with the sense of ‘I Am’ itself…, that?

Q:Already I am expecting that there will be a time when I look at the same body and not feel the same as I always felt. It will feel something like that is not the core of me.

A:In fact it can be experienced even more openly (the sensations of the body) because when our attention is not getting split between the attention going to thoughts and sensations of the body, then the sensations of the body will come even more clearly experienced. The labeling it as ‘me’ will stop. What makes it ‘me’?

Q: Mmmmm…. [Laughter]

A:That sound was also experienced as sensation, but why is that not ‘me’? Is it because the habit has been to label this set of sensations which seem so intimate (‘That is me’) which makes it feel ‘But oh, it is natural to call this me [Pointing to the body] but not that me’. [Pointing to something away from the body] Or is there something more than that?

Q: [Inaudible]

A: The ‘person’ concept is not the same ‘me’ concept?

Q: Yes. But seeing this concept is not dissolving this feeling of this body being ‘mine’.

A:So I am asking you: Is there such a feeling of ‘mine’? And mixed with the thought, is there (in the purity of feeling itself) is there such a feeling which is ‘me’?

Q: A mix-up happens.

A:That is why I am saying it is so beautiful that now everything is dropped. A sensation is arising, what makes it ‘me’? The witnessing of a sensation, is that enough to call it a ‘me’? A Witnessing is happening. Nothing we can say is arising unless it is witnessed anyway. So there is sensation. Now, what makes it ‘my’ sensation?

Q: What do I do without like a check, a check? That is where the point comes. [Inaudible]

A:Forget about that now. Now, there is this experience of sensation which we can call the body, What, in that, makes it ‘me’?

Q: ‘My’ is connected with a concept…

A:Can there be a concept without an idea or a thought? [Silence] Is there a ‘my’ which is separate from this Awareness which is witnessing this? Separate from ‘I’, is there an entity called ‘me’ which is experiencing this sensation called the body?

Q: Can’t find …

A:Can’t find. And it is not that type of ‘can’t find’ that we haven’t looked at often and can’t find? Is it that type of ‘can’t find’? You have looked and looked and looked and you can’t find. So at what point will we come to this seeing that ‘I looked in the entire house, my spectacles are just not there.’ [Chuckles] Is there still a lingering feeling that there might be?

Q: Then a sense of contraction is felt.

A: Yes, but how does that sense of contraction become ‘my’ contraction?

Q:I believe it’s the other way around, that if there is no sense of ‘me’ there won’t be a contraction.

A:A sense of contraction (or any sensation) is just a sensation. It is phenomenal movement. Does that prove the existence of a separate entity?

Q: It doesn’t prove the existence of a separate entity, but it’s like it gives an effect.

A:It is like when you go to these modern movie theatres and an airplane is crashing and seats start shaking, so it gives the effect as if they are in the airplane. So, the sensation is experienced, but is there still a ‘my sensation’? [Silence] When we are looking for the Truth all that needs to be done is to let go of the false.

Q: Maybe the experience of contraction is somewhere.

A:Interpreted as. That is the trouble. So it is Seen in this Absolute Witnessing (which is aware of this phenomenal play). Then some sensation can come. The interpretation of the sensation is not picked up; or the interpretation of the sensation is picked up. These are the two alternatives.

Now, presuming that there is something that you can do about it (presume) then what would you advise someone who came to you with this problem that ‘Okay, this sensation is coming and I am calling it ‘my’ sensation?’ You would say ‘Don’t label it ‘mine’ knowing fully well that something can be done about it. So, that is where we come to ‘Don’t believe our next thought’. Because no matter what the sensation is; it can be a very strong vibration, but unless you say ‘See, see, this is me’…, until we get that signal from the mind, even then we cannot report it as ‘mine’. It might seem very intimate, it might seem very close, it might seem like the most closest thing that ever is experienced…, until we buy this idea, this signal from the mind saying ‘This proves that it is you. See, it feels so much like you. How can it not be you?’ Without that, you cannot even report that it is ‘my sensation’.

And yet when we look… Both the so-called methods are discussed here. One is let go, which means surrender ‘Let it happen, nothing is happening, it is all God’s problem’. And the second is that if the idea is being picked up that ‘This is happening to me’ or ‘This is mine’ then inquire whether there is such a ‘me’…, who am I?

So it is Right Here, Right Now. It is that Present, this which we are talking about every day. Just Right Now You are the Self; end of story. But if you buy a ‘but’ …, the same one that buys the ‘but’ can also drop the ‘but’. Whether it chooses to buy the ‘but’ or not is also Its will, as Consciousness.

Now, in the designated rolls in this play, you find that most of humanity saying ‘Buy, buy, buy…’ encouraging Itself to buy. And there are some who are playing in the role of ‘Don’t buy, don’t buy, don’t buy’. That is all that is really going on. Now, can the ones who are saying ‘Buy, buy, buy’ or ‘Don’t buy, don’t buy, don’t buy’ do they actually make any difference? Not really

in the ultimate scheme of things. It is just the roles that everyone is playing. And yet, as long as it feels like there is a separate ‘me’, the appearance of one who says ‘Don’t buy’ (or inquires) seems to be a beautiful happening, a beautiful event in their life.

So, it is just this point: Right Now You are free. There are no ‘buts’. But if you buy the ‘but’ (and it is said ‘Don’t buy’ or inquire into who it is that you are presuming yourself to be) then this is surrender and inquiry. It is that subtle. When you make a teaching out of it, it can seem like ‘Okay, this and this and this’. But actually it is that simple.

It is like you are sitting quietly and suddenly you say ‘Okay, I have to get to my destination’. Then you start walking. He says ‘No, no stop, you are already there. Let go of this idea’ or ‘Who is it that you are trying to get to? Who are you trying to become? The Self? Who are you already?’

[Looks at Q] But…? No but…? [Laughs] In this emptiness, are you the doer or the non-doer? It’s too empty to make any report?

Q: It feels like work.

A:It feels like work to contemplate this. The point is that there is no concept of doership at all. It is only after we picked up the concept of ‘me’ that the concept of ‘dropping the me’ or ‘picking up further ideas of me’ arises.

Who doesn’t See that Right Now they are free?

Flow Chart Talk

Pointings for Self-Discovery

I am very happy that we are having this discussion today. I feel like I want to re-emphasize this over and over again, that Right Now You Are Free. It is actually the end of story.

But, if you have a ‘but…’ then I have a suggestion. If you don’t have a ‘but…’ then I have no suggestion. [Smiles] If you have a ‘but…’ then my suggestion is: ‘Don’t believe your next thought’.

Okay, so first, emptiness. ‘But…, something, something happened to me’. I say okay ‘Don’t buy this story’. That’s the first option. Then you say ‘But I keep buying it. It keeps happening to me’. Then I say ‘Find out in reality whether there is such a ‘me’ at all’.

So, first we have let go. You say ‘No, no, but I keep falling for it’. I say ‘Okay, inquire into who is that ‘I’?’ You say ‘No, but even enquiry it’s not really working. Then I say ‘Okay, see what is real and what is not real’.

[You say] ‘But my mind is too clouded, it doesn’t let me see. It is not able to distinguish / discriminate between what is eternal and what is just momentary’. [I say] ‘Okay, maybe you just need to sit and focus on your breath, and just relax your mind a bit, so that it becomes a bit quiet and then you can see’.

[You say] ‘No, no, mind doesn’t get quiet. I sit and I am not able to’. [I say] ‘Okay, so maybe I give you a mantra’. (I am going through the flowchart fast.) ‘Maybe you do the mantra. The habit will break a little bit, and you will come to some quietness of the mind’.

[You say] ‘I can’t even chant’. [I say] ‘Okay, okay. You read some scriptures. Maybe that will bring some energetic peace in your life’.

[You say] ‘No. I don’t enjoy it. [Reading scriptures] It is just too boring and I don’t believe in God anyway’. [I say] ‘Okay. So then can you move your body in certain steps, and movements, or you sit in certain pose and breathe [Demonstrates a couple of breaths and laughs] like that. Maybe that will bring some peace and maybe that will bring some quiet. [You say] ‘Yeah, I did that for few days. It was very nice, very nice but now I don’t enjoy it’.

That is how the flowchart is flowing; from that stillness…, to this point.

Then I say ‘What is that you really want?’

Because it was not feeling to do this, this, this, none of this [Referring to flowchart] then maybe you are climbing up the wrong tree. [Chuckles] So, what is it that you really want?

[You say] ‘I don’t know’. You see, many times it comes like this, when you find people who are not able to get anywhere on the ladder; then it is seen that they have a problem with the wall actually not with the ladder. They are climbing the wrong wall.

[I say] ‘What is it that you really want?’ [You say] ‘I want to climb on that wall’. [I say] ‘Oh, that wall! For that I have a different ladder’. Otherwise usually it is found that some rung in this so-called ladder seems to be attractive; if it is the truth that we want, the reality of the self that we want, then somewhere we find some joy in any of this.

So what we usually talk about is that (it can be the first rung, doesn’t have to be the top rung) we can make ourselves feel better by saying ‘Okay ours is the top rung of the ladder’ …, which is so direct, right there. Because all of it is coming to this point: that Right Now what You Are is the Self. That is the so-called top rung of the ladder. If there is a ‘but…’ then we go to the lower rung. If there is another ‘but…’ go to the next rung. Like that.

Inquiry Brings Us Back to the Direct Witnessing

Come back to this point where you see:

Right now, what are you?

[Silence]

And if something is getting caught then in the play, the suggestion is ‘Just let go’. Simple allowing, simple surrender.

But if something is sticky? Then the suggestion is inquire: ‘Who is it that is stuck?’

[Silence]

Inquiring brings us to the direct tasting of this, the reality of who we are; back to the simple Witnessing without the sticky conditioning.

If inquiry is not feeling natural, what should one do? Come to satsang, hear the words of satsang, experience the energy of satsang, the Presence of satsang. That itself will clean up a lot, you see.

If you’re not in satsang then contemplate: ‘What is it?’ You read the transcripts, you contemplate them; what does it mean? What does it mean when you say ‘Right now you are free’? Just like this. Contemplation is just like that.

Many of you are getting the wrong idea about contemplation. You just have to look at the words and say ‘Okay, how is the experience here?’ and look deeply. If the words of the contemplation are ‘You are the unchanging Awareness’ …, look and see if it is true.

The sensations of the body are not the unchanging Awareness. Therefore, (and the Sage could not be lying) so what else is here? I am some other thoughts, some other things?

Okay, that is not the unchanging Awareness. What is the Sage talking about?

The Presence of existence is here, but even this is not unchanging; there is sleep and there is waking.

Then what is the Sage talking about? Who Witnesses even this Presence? Even that is changing?

Is it not Aware? Am I not this?

To see that ‘I Am This’ is the contemplation. Just like this.

Now do we get caught up? ‘Okay, okay, I am doing the contemplation. Oh, it’s boring, I don’t feel like it’. But then, feelings come. ‘But this is what I am right now? This feeling?’

So, as we get more and more attracted to the reality of the Self, and the changing realm doesn’t seem as attractive anymore, these contemplations will seem easier and easier.

The play is that the ‘but…’ is never true. You are the Self. No ‘but…’ is ever true, you see? Therefore, no suggestion is also ever required.

But if the ‘but…’ feels true, then we must try the suggestions from these Sages. That’s what they are there for. And by now the philosophy is so old; that whatever ever level of ‘but…’ you can have, there will be a suggestion available.

There’s so many diverse so-called paths, so many ladders for us to climb. Its’ not so difficult to really come to this point of neutrality when that is our truest urge.

Are we willing to be completely naked; forever? …, who I am without any story? Those who have this feeling that they are, this kind of direct satsang is for them.

And many times we can say ‘Yes’ but later as we are confronted with the destruction of the false ego with all its stories then something can come and say ‘No, no, not really. Maybe I’m not up for it yet’. And that’s completely fine. There is no impulse (although it might feel like it sometimes) there is really no feeling here that I must push you; that if you’re still playing that I must drag you out of the play. [Chuckles].

[Silence]

But if it feels true to me what you’re saying, if it feels true to me that what you want is Freedom (irrespective of what happens) then I will say ‘Drop it, drop it, drop it’.

When Doership Remains, Go to Intuition for Guidance

The most fun, the most effortless, is to drop the concept of doership, which means having no concept of what to do and having no concept of what the outcome must be; even the concept that ‘I must get joy from this’. That to operate from that place of neutrality is very, very beautiful. So, that is what is being pointed at here.

Now, if we speak phenomenally, then I would say that follow your intuition as to what to do. So, if a mild sense of doership still remains and the question comes ‘So what should I do?’ allow this intuitive voice, intuitive Presence to guide you. And it will…, if you are not impatient. Impatience makes us go to mind and ideas of what the mind is selling. If we are just patient and we allow intuition to reveal the next steps to us, it will reveal; either as a voice which will be heard or a series of events which will make it very clear what needs to happen or just a feeling or an urge which seems to come from a deeper place.

So many fall into this trick of not being able to distinguish between intuition and mind. And I’ve said that mind is always operating from a place of need, from a place wanting to grasp onto something, from a place of ‘What’s in it for me?’

The mind is always in a rush. Intuition is very, very peaceful (in the sense that it’s not needy, grasping. It’s not concerned about outcomes. It’s not rushing you). The Presence of love and openness and space is experienced. You don’t experience that kind of thing [gestures with clenched fists] with the mind. With intuition it is just more open, more peaceful.

So, whatever mild doership still remains, then we can go to our intuition for guidance on what to do. And if there’s no audible voice or there are no visible signs of it, just a surrender to the intuition will make things unfold in an intuitive way anyway.

Now, some will feel like even this intuition they are not able to really grasp, and all that is telling them what to do is just the mind. For those then it’s prescribed that you follow your peace, you follow your joy. What is it that gives you more space, more joy in the world? Follow that. That is completely fine.

So, speaking phenomenally, it is best is to go with our intuition because intuition can be actually counter-intuitive; in the sense that intuition can say ‘Go jump in that fire’ which is not joyful at all. So, it can be counter to following our peace, our joy. It can seem like that. But is leading to a greater peace and joy. But if intuition is not yet clear then we can follow peace, we can follow our joy. As it starts to reveal itself more and more, we can follow this intuition which is not fearful, which is spacious, which is not in a rush, which is accompanied by love.

There will come a time when you will say that even to use intuition for this sort of personal guidance feels like using a very subtle instrument to chop a tree or something. [Laughs] You’ll feel like this intuitive Presence has just made room (in the sharing of Truth, in the availability of its Presence) for the rest of the world to experience its Presence. I don’t find myself saying,

‘Okay, dear Satguru, tell me what’s the next step I must take’ or something like this. I just let go of that sense of doership. Then whatever is unfolding is His doing anyway. So, we will come to that. And then, as satsang starts, we invoke the Presence of the Satguru when we say ‘Sri Moojiji ki jai’. That means we are handing over the words which are going to come through this mouth to the Master’s Presence. And that seems to be the most beautiful intuition…, using the body-mind rather than something trying to use intuition. So, the intuitive Presence which is the Satguru itself is now using this instrument to convey, to share the pointings of the direct Truth.

Checking: What is True?

A:It’s a very beautiful contemplation, where you ask yourself what is real. But to find what is real, first we need to define ‘What do we mean by real?’ So, what is real? What do you mean by real? And it’s not a straightforward question, but it’s very important. If you are looking for the Truth, the Truth must be real. So, what is that which we are defining as real? What could be real or what could be Truth? What must be the conditions that reality must satisfy, versus unreality? That’s what you are saying, isn’t it? What must be true about reality and not true about unreality? So, can we take an example?

Q:We discussed before; something first which is always verifiable, which I can verify and second it never changes, remains as it is.

A:So, this is very good. So, when we look for the Truth, then I said that, if we said that ‘The truth is that the fan is on’ then that is not the Truth that we are talking about. The Truth that we are talking about is the unchanging Truth. Because we are moving from this realm of instability, constant change, into that which is stability. So, if we are pursuing something, we are pursuing eternal happiness. We are tired of the ephemeral or the changing. So, the Truth, when it is spoken spiritually, we are talking about that which is the unchanging. To find that which is unchanging (does not come and go) is that which we are looking for.

Now, we can say ‘God is the unchanging Truth’. We can just say a statement like that. ‘God is the unchanging Truth’ But is it still the Truth? It still remains only conceptually. So, it must be verifiable; and by verifiable it mean it only helps us if we are able to check for ourselves if this is True or not. If I say ‘On Venus, they found a water body with fish in it’. It won’t help because it is not verifiable. It is not your experience, it is just a concept that you heard.

So, what is happening in satsang is that you are hearing some concept from a credible source, which you can have some trust or faith or devotion in, but the point of that trust and faith and devotion is so that we can check for ourselves whether this is true or not. So, that is the Truth we are looking for.

Like you said ‘Unchanging and directly verifiable’. That is what we are looking for. Then, when we are looking for reality, if you apply these two filters, then what remains? This is the point. You see? So, if you apply these two filters, which is [1] that which remains unchanging and [2] that which is directly experienced, then what can we say about the Truth? We can go layer by layer. Outward realm, changing; so discarded. Body discarded, inner sensation, emotion, pain, pleasure, these sensations also changing; kept aside. Thoughts coming and going, changing; left aside. Then where do we come? After we look through all of this, what is it that remains then?

Q: It is just a feeling of existence.

A:Just a sense of existence. Very good. This one…, is it our experience that this also comes and goes?

Q: It goes in sleep.

A:So, ultimately even this, in our experience, also comes and goes. So, what now remains which we call the unchanging and verifiable Truth? [Silence] Is there something that didn’t change or doesn’t ever change? [Silence] That which is permanent?

Q: [Inaudible]

A:So, let’s look at this. (And this was the contemplation I posted in the group also.) That which knows of your existence, who is that one? Because before this you said that even the sense of existence comes and goes. Is that your living experience? Yes. So, when the sense of existence goes, what Knows it? What Knows it is gone?

Q: I do.

A:This ‘I’…, is it the changing ‘I’ or the unchanging ‘I’?

Q:Unchanging.

A:So, this I…, does it meet our criteria for reality or the Truth? You say ‘It is unchanging’. Second is whether it is verifiable. So, is it verifiable? Is it your direct experience? Or no?

Q: Yes.

So, if it is unchanging and it is direct experience, then this has met your criteria for what is True.

Does anything else meet it?

Q: No.

A:No. So, if this is seen to be true and seen to be the one constant, unchanging, directly verifiable ‘I’ …, and everything else is changing or just conceptual, then at least (according to this definition) we can say that this is the Truth. Everything else is false. At least according to our definition, isn’t it?

This is the meaning of coming to the Truth of who we are; coming to the recognition of the True Self.

So, once we see the distinction between True and untrue, reality and false (which is called Viveka; the ability to discern or distinguish between what is true and what is false) then what would it make sense to do? Should I now be interested or attached to that which is changing? Or to that which is unchanging? Whether we are able to do it or not we will come to later. But just

using logic itself: Does it make sense to be attached to that which is constantly changing? Or to that which is unchanging?

Q:But attachment comes only when you are wrongly identifying ‘You’ with something which you are not.

A:So, that which you are not, is that the changing one? Or the unchanging one?

Q:That which I am not is always changing.

A:Yes. So, attachment (you say) is only being attached to that which I am not. Then attachment itself seems logical to drop. Isn’t it? So, the dropping of conditioning, the dropping of these conditions or tendencies, is the dropping of attachment.

And we have the master key for that. Because we see that once we have inquired into who we are, then we see that the only way to give rise to conditioning or tendencies is to nurture these thoughts and concepts with my belief.

Therefore to remain unattached, all I need to do is to not give them my belief. Because it is not real, it is not the Truth. That’s why I have often said that it is only the false which needs our belief.

Pull the Sticky Conditioning Into Inquiry

Q:So Father, if some belief comes (and when it comes it looks very real) so basically when you want to confirm your position of what you really are, what is the way?

A:Yes, it is very good. If the belief seems very strong and the concept seems very strong and seems to get our belief, then we must inquire and see ‘Okay, what is it that I really am?’ Especially those which seem to get us over and over again, then we must inquire. That is what I mean by pulling them into your inquiry. But you will find that most of them will become light and just go. But the ones that are sticky will seem to be very strong, and those you can pull into your inquiry.

Q:Just to clarify: ‘Pulling into inquiry’ means seeing what I am or…? If you can elaborate a bit on that?

A:So, (for you, for example) if the identity is the work identity which is strong, you can pull that identity into inquiry by saying ‘Who is it that works?’ or ‘Who is it that wants to work or doesn’t want to work?’ Any of these questions. You will find that there is nobody. All of the movement here; that is happening. But you find that there is no individual employee, individual worker, individual doer of anything at all. So, when the thought comes next time and says ‘Hey, but you must find some work. All this is fine for now, but you must get your life in order’ (these kind of things) then they become more and more laughable every time you look at it. Every time you looked, you have said ‘That instruction is for nobody’. It is like saying: If you had a favorite toy when you were a child and the thought came ‘Oh, you must play with that toy. When I go home I am going to play with that toy’ (these thoughts). But once you have grown out of it then that favorite toy is not so attractive. Are you with me? Once you have grown out of it then the favorite toy is not so attractive.

So, when you inquire into it and you see that there is nobody here who can decide to work or not work, there is nobody here who can decide to make money or not make money; all that so-called decider or the doer is just a figment of my imagination’ then when the thoughts come and say ‘Okay, what about your work?’ [You will wonder] ‘But who are you talking about? Who are you talking to?’ This has nothing to do with whether the work happens or not happens. It is just that there is no ground for that thought to land; there is no glove for this thought to be caught with. So, it is just allowed to just come and go.

So, in this way the inquiry helps. And these strong-seeming conditions, they seem to become lighter. And you will find that the distinguishing factors for everybody in this human play is only on the basis of their conditioning. You see? So, why is somebody else not so interested in work? Because they don’t have that conditioning. But they might be interested in something else. So, based on the texture of our conditioning, based on what we believed about ourselves, the expressions seem to be playing out and the play of this life seems to be playing out.And everybody has a unique set of conditioning. Everybody has a unique fingerprint. And that is why everybody is unique in their expressions in this play as well.

Everything is an Expression of Consciousness

Q:Father, just to clarify on this. You said that whatever interest, it’s conditioning. Something is like resisting on it and I’d would like to just discuss this. As an example: One is singer or dancer that is like her expression. Consciousness wanting to express in that particular way. She enjoys. So, is it conditioning or is it like some movement of Consciousness in a certain way?

A:Everything, including conditioning, is a movement of Consciousness. Conditioning is not happening without the will of Consciousness, which is Consciousness Itself playing in these conditioned ways. So, if we see that everything is a movement of Consciousness then we can forget about the concept of conditioning; because that is surrender. Nothing is mine. All of God’s doing, God is the doer, God is the experiencer and we don’t need to worry about anything. All is dropped.

Now, as part of the play, in the play It uses this concept of conditioning (means a basket of beliefs, a bundle of ideas which seems relevant to us). But if you see that everything is just Consciousness then there is the simple dropping of all doership. Then nothing to worry about; even including the dropping of identity, In fact it does not get picked up because you see that everything is God. That is surrender.

To inquire into it and say ‘Who is here which is that?’ is the inquiry. Both so-called seeming paths lead to the same Seeing that there is no individual doer, all there is is Consciousness which is playing in this way and I am That which knows or am the Witness of even this Consciousness.

Conditioning only means that which I attach to this ‘me’ which I attach to this pure Consciousness. It’s the condition that I seem to attach with my belief (‘I am this way, I am that way’). God is not this way or that way.

Q:So, if I understand correctly, it is like something is referring (I Am-ness is always referring) or has a kind of attraction to certain traits or certain movement which we identify with. And if it is not questioned, then it feels trapped in it; then it reacts. So dropping of that belief system is what it is?

A:Consciousness is always reminding Itself that in the play it seems to be working out in a world which is full of suffering and individuality and egotism; and yet it is all part of the play of Consciousness and this game of reminding goes on within Consciousness Itself. And something in the play says ‘Yes, this is unreal, this is not the truth of who I Am’. And there can be a dropping of all of these conditions.

I have also said that the good news is that Right Now they are dropped. But some things which come to lure you in back into it can seem attractive because of our prior belief in that, our prior interest in something.

So it is all inter-relative; what we have spoken. Because it is the same as openness. To remain in this openness, allow all this luring of the tempting mind to go, is to remain open. Just to let it go. And that is surrender. This letting go is surrender.

Then once you find that ‘Okay, this one seems to be picked up very often over here’ (and as part of the play itself, of course) the suggestion from the Master has been ‘Okay, look at this particular identity and inquire into it. Pull that into the inquiry’. And we see that there is nobody there with that identity. Then when the mesSages from the mind come for that identity, there is nowhere for them to land. It is like a deleted e-mail box. Then the mind will get a mesSage that no such mailbox exists. So, the dropping of all of these individual attributes (seeker identity, worker identity, family identity) is the dropping of conditioning. Same thing; which leads to what? Openness.

Now, is it a bad thing to have conditioning? No. Depends on how you want to play. That is why I keep asking these days: ‘How do you want to play?’ If the urge is to play in a certain way (like if the urge is to play as a successful business man or something like that) then there is full freedom to walk down that path. But if you say ‘My urge is freedom!’ then I will say ‘Okay, drop all the conditioning and let life play out in itself’.

See, that is why to define it as a play makes it lighter. That is why I keep saying it is a play. Because even if you are identified for a long, long periods of time, nothing is happening inherently to the Truth of who you are it is just that the play seems to be continuing. Just like that character in The Matrix who is sitting there and said ‘Yes, yes, I know all of this is not real but I enjoy my steak and wine. I want to play some more’. So, nothing stops us from playing. But if we are done with the play, we say ‘We want to get out of the matrix; show me the way out’ then satsang is for that.

The beautiful part is that even within this matrix, to come to the dropping of the false identity leads to a lot of lightness. The heaviness of our untrue beliefs is dropped away. When we lose interest in the matrix, it doesn’t mean the matrix has to vanish; the matrix can still continue to appear.

That is why all the expressions are there; some are Janaka, some are Jesus, some are Ribhu. All these various expressions are of those who have dropped the conditioning. And yet, in their world, their expression continued to move and function. How do they remain? They remain open. As we are not resisting ‘what is’ then that is the end of suffering…, except momentarily.

Verifying Our Truth in Direct Experience

Q:Anantaji, could you speak more about the verifiable part? How do we verify what we are seeing and what we are now is the true place?

A:This is very good. So, in all the satsangs we hear that we are the Self, we are Awareness, we are Brahman (whatever terms you want to use, it is the Truth) But it just remains in mere words and concepts unless it becomes a direct experience. So, when we say ‘Self-discovery’ or ‘The discovery of the Truth’ it cannot mean that ‘I picked up this very nice concept’. It must become something now which is my living experience.

So, what is the way to verify that this is true? We already went through one way which is the ‘Neti, neti’ which is to say ‘It is not this, it is not this, it is not this, it is not this’. Then what remains? What is it that remains that we cannot say ‘Not this’ to? (The simple explanation of neti, neti, isn’t it?) You can say ‘Not this, not this, not this, not this, not this’. There comes a point that we cannot say ‘Not this’ to what I am. So, that is the first way.

Then as Bhagavan [Ramana Maharshi] said ‘Who am I?’ The inquiry points to the truth of who I Am. So, when we look at this we see that it is not the inquiry ‘Who am I?’ which is leading me to a concept of who I am, but it is a pointer to the Truth; a verifiable, direct experience of who I Am. And it is a very, very important point to discuss. Because most of those who come to satsang (after a point of being in satsang) have picked up all the concepts of what is True. But many of them have not had a clarity of recognition. So, to pick up the concept of ‘I am Awareness’ is not the Truth; not yet. But to see that ‘I am this Unchanging One, which is just prior to any conceptualization’ (and Awareness seems like a nice way to describe it, but not completely). Just like we say about love, isn’t it? That we can read lots of books about love, we can write the best poetry about love but unless you taste it, we truly don’t know it. It is not in the description that the Truth is found. And neither can we explain it to someone. We can keep pointing to it but the Truth cannot really be explained.

So, now at best we have come to these very direct pointers: ‘Are you aware now?’ It is very difficult to escape from this pointer actually. You have to have a very skillful mind to escape from this. And when I ask you ‘What is your basis for saying ‘yes’? Did you see something phenomenal?’ And you say ‘No. This awareness is prior to any phenomenon, it is that which knows all phenomenon; that which is aware of all phenomenon’. And when we come to this point it becomes our verifiable experience of the Truth: Awareness is here.

At this point, the mind will come and play one more trick on you to say ‘Yes, yes, you saw Awareness’ and still try to create some distinction between you (I) and Awareness. That is why I have given you one more question which is ‘Who is aware of Awareness?’ Who is aware that you are aware now?

Very few now come up with a counter to this question. Usually they buy some distraction from the mind. It says ‘Yes, yes, but what about my life, and my family, and my things?’ Anything to

escape this question, the mind will throw at you. But I want to say it is very important to just look at this very simply and keep that which is changing aside.

Who is aware of Awareness? If it is ‘I’…, this ‘I’…, is it separate from Awareness? Is it distinct from Awareness in any way? And you will find that it is not.

These are not just thoughts which you are picking up. It is not ‘I am aware’. You don’t need these thoughts. You see for yourself. Starting with ‘I exist’ then going to ‘I am aware of my existence’ and going to ‘I am aware that I am aware’ and this ‘I and Awareness’ are one. All of this becomes your direct, living, tasted experience (although it is not a phenomenal experience). This is Self-recognition. This is verifying the Truth for ourself.

That is why the Sages have said that ‘To hear the Truth is good, it is important. To contemplate on the Truth is a thousand times more important’. So, you hear satsang, then you contemplate questions like ‘Who am I? Am I aware now?’ And to come to this direct experience of the Self and to remain in that (without picking up false beliefs and concepts) is a thousand times more important than even the contemplation.

That is all that is being asked of you: Come to satsang, immerse yourself in the Truth, in the pointings to the Truth. Whenever you feel (very naturally) the inclination, contemplate into what is being said. Use some transcripts, look at any paragraph, look at one or two sentences even that appeal to you and contemplate. Just look at them and say ‘What are they pointing to?’ And as they lead you to the experience of the Self, just stay with that. Don’t rush to distractions. Then you will find that your naturalness is being revealed (although initially it seems like a bit of effort). Then we move from that which was conceptually heard (in the hearing stage) to that which becomes a direct experience and ultimately becomes a living Truth. So, this is what we mean by ‘verifiable’.

This is the only way in which Truth is useful. Because if it remains only conceptual then it has no use, no point.

Scriptures Are Meant for Contemplation

These scriptures are meant to bring us to contemplations about who we Are in reality; especially these scriptures like Ribhu Gita, Ashtavakra, Avadhut Gita. They are not speaking at the behavioral level at all. Every verse is meant to be just contemplated and bring us to pointers about the reality of who we Are. So, it is unconcerned with the outward actions, the behaviors, the functioning of life. There are others who can be prescriptive about how to behave, whether to have friends, what are the attitudes to cultivate but these are talking about just that, and their purpose is for contemplation.

Now, if we start using them as if they are behavioral guidelines (‘I must not have friends nor enemies’) then how to do this? They are usually so non-prescriptive in terms of behavior. There is no strategy you can make to neither have friends nor enemies where you can just say ‘Okay, if I meet someone I am just going to sit, and not talk or something but I’ll have a smile on my face so they don’t think I am an enemy’. [Chuckles] These are impossible strategies to have in the behavioral realm. So, not to be taken as behavioral advice and how to behave in the outward functioning. Just the advice is to allow the functioning to happen as normally as it can while using this to point to That which is the Truth of what we Are.

He [The Sage he was previously reading a quote from] says ‘I have, in reality, no friends nor enemies’. And in the functioning of the life, there will be some friends and enemies. So, then the point of the verse is just to check ‘Who is that here that really has no friends or enemies?’ Just to check like that. This primal Witnessing has no concept of friendliness or resentment or grievances. So, that is what we are looking for.

This is the Key Point in Satsang

When we look at this, we find that no senses can help us with this. If one by one all the senses were to leave and the eyes were shut, no hearing was happening, no sense of touch, no smell, no taste, we would still know ‘I exist’. How is it known? When we move away from sensory experience, we find that the Knowing of existence still remains. Before that there might be this false notion that (that which is phenomenally perceived through the senses) only that is. Or that which is mentally known (intellectually known as concepts) only that exists. But when we are pointed inwards, we find that there is a knowing of existence which is not sensory, it is not mental.

So, then what is it? This is the key point in Satsang because this Knowing is the primal Knowing. This Awareness is the Self.

What is it that Knows of our existence, my existence? That ‘I exist’ is undeniable. And it is simply very easily seen that none of my senses are needed to know this. Even other inner perceptions (like memory, imagination and other sensations) are also not needed for me to be clear that I exist. I don’t need even a concept, I don’t need to have studied any scripture, I don’t need to be religious to Know that I exist. So, it is independent of sensory perception, independent of mental conceptualization.

With what power is this known?

What kind of Knowing is this?

If it is not mental, what other Knowing is there?

This sense of existence doesn’t need to be remembered and can’t be forgotten; whereas mental knowing can all be forgotten. So, what type of Knowing is this? That which knows even existence, that ‘I Am, I exist’ IS this Knowingness.

Is this Knowing changing in any way?

Can this Knowingness diminish or increase?

Can this Awareness become tired or feel energetic?

Can it be fearful, can it be joyful?

Is it aging with time?

Does it have a location in space, pure existence?

And who Knows of this Knowingness?

Who is aware of Awareness?

What you are recognizing now is what all of these scriptures are about. The sense of existence, the sense ‘I Am’ is a portal; it is that portal which Awareness itself uses to experience Itself as if it is something.

So, the play of something starts with this concept ‘I am something’. I Am-ness Itself is the primary phenomenal appearance, but the game truly begins when it believes the idea ‘I am something’.

The one I, this Awareness, is ‘I Am’ then playing as if it is something, [as if] ‘I Am something’. The Unlimited is playing as if it is limited, the attribute-less is playing as if it has attributes.

So, to play game of ‘something’ is to keep attaching attributes to this pure sense of existence. This or that, something or another, becomes the basis for conditioning, basis for the experience as if there really is a person here, as if there is an individual me here.

So, when we walk outwards through this portal of ‘I Am’ then countless, myriad ways to play as an individual are available. ‘I am an artist, I am a doctor, I am guilty, I am so proud’ …, countless number of attributes and conditions we can believe.

But when this ‘I Am’ Itself drops all these ideas about Itself, and the urge within this ‘I Am-ness’ is to recognize the ‘I’ …, where it came from. That is called turning inwards. In this way we walk through this portal in the other way. Instead of attaching attributes to this ‘I Am-ness’ we are now looking at the true nature of ‘I’ itself.

Who am I? That is the point of Bhagavan’s [Ramana Maharshi] question.

Let the play of existence play by Itself, leave the play of Am-ness/Beingness, and just look at who is this ‘I’ itself.

It brings us to the same question: Who is aware of this existence?

To see that it is I, all you have to do is ask yourself: Who is aware even of this awareness? You see that I am self-aware. That is my true nature.

This is the path of Advaita Vedanta. To walk through the portal of ‘I Am’ in this way, leading to the ‘I’.

There are many other paths, but mostly the true paths are those which have different prescriptions about what to do with the appearance of existence and all the phenomenal

appearance that comes after that. But in terms of the Reality they are pointing to, they are the same (although terminology may be different).

In my experience, this is the most direct path to see what is it that is prior even to existence. What is it which is the eternal, timeless, unchanging reality?

So, the prescription about what to do with the phenomenal appearance changed from path to path. Some will say ‘Love everything, hug everything that comes’. Some will say ‘Just let everything come and go; neutrality’. Some will say ‘Avoid sense experience as if it is poison, know that it is fundamentally unreal and untrue’. So these are prescriptive about what to do with phenomenal appearances. But irrespective of this difference in paths, the true path must point to this unchanging Reality. Whether they use the term Self or non-Self, it doesn’t matter. It is undeniable that there is a Knowingness, this ‘I’.

Is it possible for us for a few moments to not be concerned about anything that is outwards from this portal ‘I Am’? Everything that comes after ‘I Am’ [is a play] of my Being, that which Knows of my existence.

What if this was all that was being pointed to in Satsang? Don’t focus too much on that which is after ‘I Am’. Look for that which is before ‘I Am’. That is exactly what the Sages of the past have done. And don’t worry about that which is changing.

Where does that bring us?

What is the unchanging ground to all that is changing?

What if we could allow any fear, resistance (all of it) to play out, but we just look at that which is the unchanging Reality?

You will not lose anything. What could we possibly lose by recognizing where the root of our existence comes from? There is no reason to fear.

What is aware of your existence?

Don’t settle for any answer.

May all of you find this. May the Satguru’s grace open your inner insight into this Truth about who you really Are. In your expression, may you learn to value this Reality more than that which changes. May all of you become the perfect instruments of my Master’s voice.

Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti

To Know What You Really Want

Q: Father, really I don’t know what I really want or value the most.

A:Yes, it is an important question, because I was telling someone else the other day also that you make a journey out of this simplicity if you seem to oscillate between the things that we want. Because if everyday the wall that we want to climb changes, or the well that we want to dig itself changes, we start to realize ‘I am not getting anywhere. I climb one step over here, then I come back and climb a different wall one step; and I start digging one feet here and then next day I am digging somewhere else’ and it seems to prolong it; if you have first not truly contemplated this question.

That is why Guruji [Sri Mooji] just asks someone, he says ‘If you had a genie and the genie gave you one wish, what is it that you would really want?’ And I know that it is not always that there is great clarity about this, but it is good to at least ask yourself this question. This is what Maharaj meant by ‘integrity’.

This world is for us to enjoy, to enjoy the play. And we can play with these desires and aversions and all of this. It is when this urge to play it starts to settle down, then we come to the point of dropping. No reason to feel guilty about anything at all, just contemplate: ‘If I could have one wish, if God appeared in front of me now and said ‘What is your wish, my child?’ what would you really ask for? There is nothing wrong in playing life in that way. There is no real pushing from here that you must only want what is being shared here. If you have said that ‘This is what I really want and I am willing to let the rest of the world burn if it has to’ then the words of satsang can point you directly to that.

That is a very good contemplation. Just there is no reason to pick up any sort of unworthiness or guilt or anything about it. We’ve just got to have some clarity and integrity about what we want.

Who Confirms Your Existence?

If I say either that you exist (or that you don’t exist) who is here that can check this? If I say you exist, what can confirm this? Then we say ‘You don’t even exist! What are you talking about?’ It’s at a different level of speaking. But who confirms even this? There must be some, power, some non-thing-thing which is here, which is receiving even these words.

Now many will say that ‘There is nothing. There is nothing receiving these words’. But is that your experience? So, that which is receiving these words, that is aware of the hearing these words, is not a thing.

So, there is a hearing of these words. Undeniable? Isn’t it pretty clear? There is a hearing of these words; and you are aware that there is a hearing of these words? Don’t try to understand, just check. There is a hearing of these words and you are aware that these words are being heard. So, we are pointing directly to that which is aware of the hearing. And you can use any sensory perception; hearing is just one of them. The inner perceptions are there or sensations in the body or some emotions are there. They are being experienced and you are aware of that. What is it that is aware of that?

Sometimes we say that in asking these questions you will not get anything, but actually it is not true. You can say that it is not a question at the phenomenal level, therefore there is nothing in it for you phenomenally …, actually even this is not true; because it is only in this discovery, only in this recognition, that life even in this phenomenal realm seems to becomes of full of ease and peace; the end of suffering, the end of conflict. There is no other phenomena which can bring you to this kind of quietude, can bring you to the end of misery, end of suffering. There is no phenomena actually. [Chuckles] To come to the end of suffering (even in the phenomenal play) we have to come to the discover ourselves to be That which is prior to phenomena.

Out of the hundreds of thousands of Beings that I met on this planet, I had the blessings of the Master to meet some who are beyond this suffering. And those have been those who have discovered who they really are.

And those who have not discovered this (whatever their life might be like in terms of relationships, material possessions they do not have) they have not come to this point where they can say that ‘Suffering seems like a strange idea’. I know that sometimes some momentary reactions can come but this idea that I could suffer for prolonged periods of time seems like a strange idea.

And what is it that we are looking for in this phenomenal realm also? Everything that we are searching for, everything that we are doing, is with the intent to find lasting peace, lasting happiness, contentment. So, I’m here to tell you that (from at least what I’ve seen) I’ve found that only those who have come to this true Self-recognition and the dropping of this false conditioning have been able say that ‘I am not suffering. Why do they say ‘Oh, this world is suffering?’ They can understand, of course, but it starts to seem more and more of an alien concept.

So, that’s a ‘carrot’ for you. Don’t feel that it only will help only my life to come to the recognition of the Self. That’s why Guruji [Mooji] says that ‘Nobody who has found the Self, this freedom from the false conditioning has gone on to say ‘No, no, take this away from me. I would rather have a million dollars’ or something like that. Why? Because when the discovery of the Truth is that ‘I am this non-phenomenal Awareness, prior to all phenomena’ then can a phenomena hurt me? Why must I chase things? Why must I be feverish about anything at all? That’s why it’s called ‘leela’ or a game or a play. It doesn’t mean that the play stops; the play continues but it doesn’t seem to have the same pinch, the same juice, the same bite as it used to earlier.

So, everything is still tasted (outward things are tasted, emotions are tasted) but that which got mixed up with the mind, the identity (that ‘this is happening to me, I should not have done this, they should not have done this to me’) all these mixed up ideas are dropped away. That is why the pointing is in this way.

This is Enough to Be Happy

Quite a few have been asking me ‘Why are you always pushing us towards awareness?’ For contemplating. Maybe sometimes because just to say ‘It is the Truth’ is not enough, because the question ‘What’s in it for me?’ can still be strong.

That it is why it is also important to point out that even in this realm, the best existence is for those who have come to this realization. There is nobody that I have found (in my outside satsang life) who can claim that they are not suffering, who can claim they are fully content, beyond misery. If you ask any of them, they’ll say ‘I want money because then I’ll be happy/ I want this relationship because I’ll be happy’.

It’s like this old Zen story of these two farmers, one of them is being very lazy and sitting around. (I’m not advising that, by the way. [Laughter] I’ve gotten into a lot of trouble; because it sounds like I’m advising laziness.)

One of them is just sitting around and the other one comes and says:

“Why are you just sitting? Why don’t you go work in your field?”

So he says “Then what will happen?”

“If you work in your field, you’ll be able to sell your crops, then you can build a bigger house.”

“So then what will happen?”

“Well, if you have a bigger house then you can get married, have children, you can have a beautiful family.”

“Then what will happen?”

“Oh, then you can expand, you can hire people to work for you, get more and more money.”

“And that will happen?”

You see where the story is going. Ultimately he says:

“Then you can just sit and be happy.”

He says “But that’s what I’m doing already.”

[Laughter]. This that is Here Now is enough for us to be happy actually. That is why, irrespective of circumstances…, like some have millions and millions of dollars and are extremely unhappy. Some have no money and are extremely unhappy. So, it’s not that it is either way. Some can

have money and be happy; and some can also have no money and be happy. Some can have no relationship or terrible relationship and be happy; some can have the best relationship and be unhappy.

So, it must be clear by now, that there is something beyond material possession, which links to this end of suffering. Please hear me carefully. I’m saying that it is not contrary to material possession. In either situation, it is possible to suffer or not to suffer. So what is that distinction?

If I was to consider myself an object, then other objects would be important for me, of course. If I am just this body, then this body is dependent on so many things; where I live, [etc.] If I were just this body then all of these things become more and more important.

But am I an object? Am I an object? And if I’m not an object, then what importance do objects have for That which is not an object?

What Is It That I Truly Want?

Looking at it now, I would say that if most of humanity has this belief [that ‘I am the body’] and most of humanity is not living in this state of contentment, peace (irrespective of the state of the body and the phenomenal material that the body has to experience) that itself should tell me something.

The definition of a wise one is one who can learn not just from their mistakes but from the mistakes of others. And even if this body, this present experience, is all that I have at this moment, even then, to experience this moment in its complete-ness is all that I can do. So, whether body or not-a-body, I see that I am definitely not this imagined entity which is just a figment of our imagination.

To contemplate this gives us some clarity about what we want. If it feels true that ‘I am this body and there is no such thing as a non-phenomenal existence’ …, if there is no pull toward that emptiness, then our spiritual search (especially in direct satsangs like this) will become a struggle, it will become a pain. But if it feels true that ‘I am this Awareness, I am the Self, unchanging, unmoved by phenomena’ …, if it feels more true that this is true (and yet, there are times, of course, where my conditioning can play out, that we seem to get stuck in some ideas) then satsang is the place for you to be.

But what will be the most suffering will be to be in satsang and say ‘What about my body, what about my material things?’ and to be outside in the world and to say ‘But what about the Truth? But what about the Truth?’ That’s what I feel many of us end up doing. When we’re in satsang, we’re concerned about ‘Okay, but what about my phenomenal life?’ and when we’re outside satsang, we’re concerned about the Truth. Either way, the mind has found a way for us to suffer. When we’re doing phenomenal activities, we’re not getting joy from that because we’re saying ‘Okay, but this is not True. It is feeling meaningless’. And when we’re in satsang, there is too much concern about the outside world, outside life. This can happen. And we must be able to look at this: What is it that I truly, truly want?

And my feeling is that all of you who have been in satsang for such a long time, to me it seems pretty clear what you want. Yet somehow, for some of you, it doesn’t seem as clear.

Then I have said: Okay, there is no real dichotomy. The play of life can continue. But at least when you’re in satsang, allow yourself to be pointed in the direction in which I am pointing. That will make it very simple.

The only prolonging of the spiritual search, the only frustration of the seeker identity can be this sense of being close to looking at where you’re being pointed to. So, all of these things (the notebook, the wanting you to contemplate, the asking you questions) all of these are just attempts to get you to look at where I’m pointing.

Many times the trouble can be that all of you want to be Frank Sinatra [Chuckles] ‘I want to do it My Way’. (How does the song go?) And that’s part of your fun. I know that. At least the expression will come to this in your own way. I’m just sitting here going ‘Come, come, check’ and you’re like ‘No, we’ll go that way’. [Arms flailing] [I say] ‘I’m here!’ [But you say] ‘No we’ll go that way’. [Chuckles] It’s all part of the game like this.

So, if we were to make to make it a little bit systematic (because the mind needs some systematic paths to follow) then the first question we would ask ourself is: What is it that I truly want?

Options? ‘I have no desires left, I’m done. I have no desires, I don’t want anything’. Option 1.

Option 2? ‘I only want freedom, I only want the Truth. All that is untrue has now become allergic to me. I have an allergy to that which is untrue. I want only the Truth’.

So, it is those that get in the most trouble; those that say ‘I want a little of this and a little of that’. [Laughs] ‘I want to play this way, but I want freedom’. That’s fine. You have to have integrity and say that. And some will say ‘All of this? I was in this only for that; so that I could get some particular benefit or some better relationship’ or something like this.

So, when Bhagavan [Ramana Maharshi] said ‘Integrity’ this is what he was talking about; to be clear about what it is that you’re after. Then when it is pointed to you that ‘The Truth is this no- thing-ness’ then you can check and say ‘Okay, the resistance comes because I don’t want this no- thing-ness. I want something which is material still’.

In your notebooks, if you can write for tomorrow: What is it that I really want?

It will make my life simpler, if nothing else. [Chuckles] And I feel the contemplation itself will give you a lot of clarity.

What are the desires that are still at work?

What is my utopia?

What is my definition of my perfect life in the perfect world?

It’s like ‘Mind 101’. What is ‘Mind 101’? I say ‘Write down what you really want’ and the mind comes and says ‘But…, do I really have a choice?’ [Laughs] And when I say ‘You have no choice. You’re not the doer. You have no choice in anything at all’ the mind says ‘Okay, what should I do with my life? Should I go here, should I go there?’ Don’t fall for these tricks.

If freedom meant that you had to give up on everything, what is it that you would be unwilling to give up?

So, the first question is about desire: What is it that I really want? The second is about: What is that I have (attachments) that I would be unwilling to lose? So, if freedom meant that you would have to give up everything, what is it that you would be unwilling to leave, even for freedom?

What is Desire?

Pick one of your desires and See:

Was it always there?

Have you always had that?

When did it come about?

What happened that it became a desire?

And you find that nothing has always been there.

When we were babies, we didn’t come out with apparent desires anyway.

What was it that led to this?

An external event led to something?

I don’t want to answer for you. Just look.

Look for yourself. And see:

What is the genesis of a desire?

That which we call desire; or even an aversion?

Where does it come from?

So, if you say ‘freedom’ for example, ‘enlightenment’…,

You said ‘One with the Source’.

Q. Yeah, awakened; One with Source.

A. Awakened. So, when we’re a baby, when we were babies, we didn’t have this sense that we wanted to be one with the Source. You see? And yet, babies are more enlightened then all of us. So, how did it come about that this desire for enlightenment or desire for freedom also came?

And each of us can contemplate for a couple of minutes.

Look at any of your desires in your list and see:

What is the genesis of that?

What led to this becoming a desire?

How is it that my desires seem to be different from the desire of another?

So, we are going from ‘What the desires are’ to ‘What is a desire?’ (Including the desire for freedom.)

And what is the purpose of a desire?

What is the promise of a desire?

Allow yourself to look.

If you feel like you have no desire, then allow yourself to remain empty.

If there is an aversion to this kind of contemplation, then use this aversion to look:

Is there a concept that I am holding on to that seems to be the source of such an aversion?

And if it is really empty, then allow yourself to use this opportunity for the next few minutes to just remain empty.

[Long Silence]

Done?

Looked at the nature of desire; the genesis of it and what it is?

What is Attachment?

For some of you, beautiful unfoldings are happening. Beautiful experiences of Grace are happening; that which we call miracles. Actually, miracles are just in service to your Being. As you are coming to your unassociated Being, you’ll find a lot of things (which the mind could never even fathom) have been playing out in our life. So, it is this emptiness which is playing now. A dream full of Grace.

And our mind wants to use even these situations as opportunities to bring us back into the idea of personhood, into the idea of separation, into the idea of presuming to know what I want; which is the opposite of surrender. Surrender is ‘Let Thy Will be done’. ‘Handing our existence over to existence, as Guruji [Mooji] says.

And the mind wants to use even these opportunities (where the Supreme Will is unfolding so beautifully) it wants to use these opportunities to bring back the pretense of my will, my desire, my individual foolish notion that ‘I know what is good for me; I know what is needed to be experienced here’.

So just like this, allow all of these concepts to come and go as much as you can. And if some idea is picked up (like ‘I want to see my other two grandchildren’) then remember that the idea in itself is not as bad as the second punch from the mind which is the guilt…, ‘Oh, you should not have done that’. Now you are falling into the trap. ‘If you have the salad, don’t have the desert’. [Chuckles] All these are ideas of the conditioning. And it’s very natural for some of these ideas to be picked up. Some of them will last momentarily and some of them can last a little longer, but if you pick up the second punch ideas of guilt, resentment, remorse, then those seem to have a more lasting effect.

So, just as you are doing (it is very beautiful) allow everything to just unfold as it has been doing; including allowing the thoughts to just come and go.

So, in one way we can say that desire is the opposite of surrender, isn’t it? [Silence] It is a reinforcement of our pretend individual existence.

And very good that you brought it up actually, the next point which we had to contemplate today, which is: What is attachment?

What is attachment? To see this world of objects, there are millions and billions and billions of objects that we have experienced. How does something become an attachment?

So in the same way we can see: When did it start? No attachment has always been there. You can see that existence continued to exist, even prior to this sense of attachment.

To look and to see: What is it that I call an attachment?

That’s why the question was: What is it that I am unwilling to give up?

Even if it means that I suffer; even if it means that there is misery…, is it something in the world of objects? Is it an idea about myself? What are my attachments?

And looking more deeply, what is it that we call an attachment?

Also note that I’m not giving any answers. Whatever is coming up, I’m just contemplating along with you. And there are no right and wrong answers really. But it is important not to shy away from these things, to look at these forces, to look at these topics.

[Silence]

Q. Father, I know what came up strong was that I’ve said (more than a couple times) that I’d give up everything; that I would give up everything for freedom. And it feels like the mind is trying to use this as like the ultimate test. You know? [Laughs] So that’s where the pull is strongest; right there.

A.Yes.

Q.Am I really willing to let go and give up this attachment? I was before, when I didn’t have a chance…, but now that they’re showing up. You know? I’m just going to lay it at your feet and give to you and let it be what it’s going to be, because I can’t do anything else. So, if you’ll just take it for me please?

A.Yes. To surrender it is a very worthy attitude to have. And also here, what we’re doing is not pushing anything away. We’re not saying you should not have this or you must not have that; that this is good or this is bad. We’re just shinning our light on it. And in the shinning our light on it itself, some resistance could be coming up for some of you. We can just look at that as well.

Just like in your case, you can look and say ‘There are so many millions of children in the world, what makes these three my grandchildren?’

How is it that we can call something mine? In this phenomenal realm, what makes it mine? What is the ‘mine’? What is the meaning of ‘mine’?

And once we’ve looked at the meaning of ‘mine’ it will lead us to what we mean by ‘me’. If you are to say that attachment means that something is ‘mine’ let’s look at what makes something mine…, ‘My children, my grandchildren, my family, my life’.

It’s beautiful to be able to look at these things. And we’re looking without judgment; we’re looking without conclusions.

I’ve shared this example many times. When I moved into this house, there was a small garden outside which already had some plants and trees. So one day, I planted some seeds in the ground just to see how they would come up. And I noticed that from the next day onwards, first I would want to check on those; because those were mine. You see? [Chuckles] So, what is that made them mine? What is it that makes things mine (my relationship, my security, my money, my Master, my freedom, my ideas) that which we call an attachment? How is it that something can become mine? Why is everything not mine? Or why is nothing mine, not mine?

[Silence]

If all is just appearing and disappearing in this realm, how is it that something is mine and something is not mine? How does it become mine? How did it become yours?

[Silence]

These two questions about desire and attachment are leading to two very important questions. Look at the nature of attachment.

Be true to your experience; have complete integrity in your looking for yourself. Don’t fall into that trick of getting into some sort of an Advaita denial. Only when you’re looking, you get into Advaita denial; the rest of your life seems to be flowing in this flow of desires and attachments.

So, the least you can do for yourself is look. Look at these things.

[Silence]

And if there truly is nothing, then just remain empty.

Contemplation Questions

Look at the nature of desire.

Look at the nature of attachment.

Then find:

What does it mean when we say surrender?

What is it that we are truly surrendering?

Look at the nature of surrender and what it means to surrender.

What it is that we are surrendering?

Then look at:

What is Reality? (Or) What is Truth?

What is Reality? What is the Truth?

How does it relate to attachment?

What is the relationship of Reality and Truth with attachment?

This is What is Meant by Advaita Denial

All of this is a fulfillment of Consciousness’ urge to experience itself. We are not talking about that. I feel you know that also. Isn’t it? Empty of what life is giving you in this moment, is there something more you want? That is the question. Are you listening? Life is playing like life is playing, life is experiencing itself the way it wants to experience itself. Besides ‘What Is’ is there something that you want? That is the question.

Q:I would again take a very practical example (not just talk in words) that suppose there comes a very strong pain, a sensation, in the body which becomes unbearable, then it comes to get rid of that pain or to be free from that pain. So, how is that in contradiction with…?

A:So, life is not wanting to experience that pain then? Something else is doing that to life?

Q:You mean to say that the movement away from pain is not life wanting that movement?

A:Everything is life wanting that, everything is life wanting; everything that’s happening in the play is life wanting it. If this is clear to you, then what desire can you have? That is surrender; to see that everything is the movement of life. You are saying that..,

Q: I am also saying that desire is also a movement of life.

A:Yes, it is ultimately. And this (looking at what a desire is) is not a movement of life? [Smiles]. So, this is exactly what I meant when I have spoken about ‘Advaita denial’…, because we have understood that everything is a movement of life except when we are asked to look at something. So, what is fighting it? The concept is fighting it; the looking. If you were empty of that concept, won’t it become lighter? Easier? Which is all ultimately happening in the one movement of life. Nobody is denying that. But in the play, it plays in this way; that we hold onto a particular concept. And I didn’t even say ‘Throw away your desires’. I said ‘Can we look at them?’

Q:This statement, that ‘Desire is the opposite of surrender’…, I didn’t feel to agree with that at

all.

A: Yes, yes. Because?

Q: Because I feel that’s not true.

A:So once we surrender and say ‘Everything is yours. You do what you like. You experience what you like’. This is surrender. And then say ‘Oh, but I want this’. Is it not opposed to it?

Q:It’s not opposed to it when you see that that wanting is also God’s wanting to experience that experience at that moment.

A:Yes, but when you say ‘I’m walking left’ and when you say ‘I’m walking right’ (at the same time) ‘I’m walking left, I’m walking right, I’m walking left I’m walking right; everything is being done by God.’ But is it true? Is it coherent? Is it coherent, is it true, when you say one second ‘Everything is yours’ next second ‘I want this’. But that also is yours? You see? It’s very convenient. [Smiles]

Q:So, can you talk in terms of practical examples? Suppose that example of the ice cream desire,

A:Don’t talk about ice cream [The Sangha laughs] for obvious reasons. Let’s say ‘In everything God, dear God, let Thy will be done’. That is the prayer of surrender ‘Let Thy will be done’. And the next is ‘Please make sure I have a job, please make sure I have a girlfriend, please make sure life goes in this particular way, that I have lots of money’. So, which statement is actually true? That is what we have to look at.

Q:I have looked at both and found that both situations are true in such a way that even when you surrender to God or to the higher power then it kind of brings these motivations to guide your life in a betterment.

A: Okay. So, if you feel both are true.., both are equally true?

Q:Okay so one statement/reason how both are equally true would be ‘I surrender completely myself’.’

A:Okay, now we are going in full conceptual direction. What is true for you? You have desire or no?

Q: Right now, I don’t feel there is anything. But it comes up. Maybe when I go out, there is.

A:There is nothing? Then no problem. Why is there this desire to speak all this? That’s why I said if there’s nothing then remain empty. [Smiles] You have a desire to be right?

Q:Yeah, maybe a desire to correct if something wrong is being spoken which is not true.

A:What is that? Who does it belong to?

Q:I think that I can easily let go of the desire to correct. It’s not a very big deal.

A:There is something called ‘The Straw Man Fallacy’. The Straw Man Fallacy is that we take a point and we debate that with a point which is different from that. So, I say ‘India’s a very nice place to live’ and someone says ‘Oh, but India only just got independence 68-70 years ago’. The two have nothing to do with each other.

The exercise was to look at what is the nature of desire. Also I told you that I’m not answering anything, I’m just giving you pointers to look at. So, the straw man fallacy is that ‘Oh, but desire is God’s doing; everything is God’s doing’. If this was your true state of surrender then we would not be having this conversation at all. If you have this acceptance that ‘Everything; all my desires are Yours, all my life is Yours’ then you would not have this aversion to this conversation because you would know what it is meant for…, because you would be able to see that there was a point where there was belief in these concepts that ‘Something could be mine. There’s something that this false non-existent ‘I’ could want’.

[Silence]

Who doesn’t know that everything that moves in this realm is God’s will? Then why come to Satsang, why inquire? Why anything? Nothing; if that is our true experience. You see? It would be different.

So, [this is how we can see that] we use Advaitic concepts just to gloss over, as resistance to look at ‘What is it that still reinforces my sense of separation?’

What is Reality and What is the Truth?

A very important question is: What is Reality? What is the Truth?’

It’s very good to contemplate this. One way to look at it also is that if it is not directly clear that this is the Reality or the Truth, then we can start by looking at: What do we mean by false? That day someone was saying that ‘We come to Satsang to be free from the false’ …, drop the illusion, drop the false. So, if we can at least identify all that is false or all that is unreal.

Now this definition of Reality is very important for us to know. What is it that we mean by Reality? Is that which is apparent (apparently appearing now) do we call that Reality? Or is there something which is unchanging?

What is of value? What is it that we are looking for?

We must come to a definition that satisfies us because Reality is of value, Truth is of value. Here in Satsang, if it is a constant, it must be an unchanging Reality. So, if this appeals to us, then it makes it very simple. Then the realm of the changing doesn’t seem to have so much power over us.

Why does it appeal here? I will tell you why. Because for many years it was this sense of trying to get something in this realm, but it was seen that everything in this realm was constantly changing.

Everything is constantly changing; nothing stays constant. We try to make it constant, we try to make it stick but it doesn’t happen that way. We have seen this in our relationships, in our material possessions, in the state of our body; in all of these aspects we have seen that this is constantly changing. And when we attach to that which is constantly changing, it is bound to lead to suffering.

Even if the world is not constantly changing, our mind is constantly changing. We want something really badly; and suppose we get it? Then after a while our mind changes about that and says ‘I wish it was like this or wish this was another way’. So, even if we find some little bit of constancy in the world, this mind doesn’t stay constant. Because many of our desires that we have had in the past have actually been fulfilled also. Many have been fulfilled. But did they lead to the constant fulfillment? Because our mind also changed about it. Our belief system is constantly changing.

So, can we really find something which is unchanging? In that, must be the unchanging peace. In that, must be the unchanging sense of contentment. The end of suffering can come when we recognize this unchanging. That is living experience. Even the Buddha has said that the world is suffering, which means that this realm, this changing realm, is a constant source of suffering for everyone. If we attach to this, then we see that it is a set-up for failure. Nothing can be really

held on to. Because the instrument through which we experience the world itself will not last. So, that which is presumably-perceived through this instrument? How can we presume that will last?

Is there any possibility of that which is unchanging? Because That is of value. If there is such a thing, then it is important for us to give some attention to that.

What could it be that remains unchanged? What is it that is Real? What is the Truth?

So, one attribute we have described: That which does not come and go, that which does not change. If I tell you ‘There is something, Awareness, which is unchanging’ …, but just by telling you this, is it enough? Doesn’t help. I can say anything. I can say ‘There is a heaven at the end of this world which remains unchanging’. I can say ‘There is no hope; there is only hell awaiting us’. But all these are only conceptual. ‘There is this Awareness which is unchanging’ …, it doesn’t help. Why? Because it has to be directly verifiable as a Truth.

So, Truth has to be experienced as the Truth; as our direct living experience. Otherwise it becomes another concept. Most religions are a set of concepts. But here what we are talking about is that true spirituality is to directly experience that which religions are pointing to. If there is a God, then it is of value. Otherwise we have seen that it only becomes a battle of concepts, a struggle to keep some individuality alive by trying to keep a hold of what we feel are the best concepts.

That which is unchanging and That which is directly verifiable.

I feel like if we can at least agree that these two attributes must be there in that which we call the Truth or Reality, then it will help us a great deal. At least that is the reality which we are talking about or sharing in satsang; always ever-present, unchanging and directly experienced, directly verifiable.

Then, for a while, can we keep aside all that is changing. States are changing, people are changing, the body is changing. So, in our definition, if we can say that ‘This is unreal because it is changing’ …, that is how traditionally in Advaita it is defined: That which is changing is maya; that which can be measured is maya. They have defined it as an illusion.

Now, we’ll come to that; whether that which is appearing, that which is changing is inherently different from that which is unchanging. The final answer is ‘No’. It is also That. But you can come to that. Because that which is appearing is attractive to the attention. So, the point of labeling it as unreal, labeling it as maya, is only so that, for some time, can we take our attention away from that, and see whether there is something? Can I find something which does not change?

So, this is how we look at what is the Truth. What is that Truth?

All That is Changing is Not This

A: This is an interesting question. [Reads from chat]

Q: ‘Father the very moment I go for experience, Truth is gone.”

A:What does it mean when I am saying ‘Direct experience’? It is the same as when I say ‘Are you Aware now?’

‘Experience’…, I see where you are coming from because ‘experience’ usually is used to describe a phenomenal tasting (or something) for that which we are checking now. When we check for the unchanging, it is not really this kind of phenomenal experiencing but it is a deeper Knowing of Itself. Knowing, this kind of knowledge, is what we are speaking of; not phenomenal tasting. We are using experience of the phenomenal as a pointer back to the root of that experience, the Source of the experience. Who is tasting sweetness? It is tasted in my Presence, in my Being.

What is That which is aware of this?

Why I have to say ‘Direct experience’ is because it is not a conceptual idea, not a mental knowing. It is directly Known. Maybe ‘Knowingness’ is a better term than ‘experiencing’.

If we are contemplating together, you might be coming to this point where automatically this which is called ‘neti – neti’ is happening; [Neti neti means] ‘not this, not this’. Because we said ‘All that is changing is not It’…, so therefore ‘not this’ [Pointing to indicate things] ‘not this’.

What is that for which we can NOT say ‘Not this’?

What is it for which we can NOT say ‘Not this’?

So, if we use what she was saying as an example to say ‘Okay, everything I experience is not the Truth’…., when we look for this ‘I’ and we say:

This world is an experience; every experience is constantly changing, is totally untrue: not this.

This body is changing: not this

These thoughts are coming and going, changing constantly: not this.

Emotions, sensations of pain are changing, not constant: not this.

The sense of Existence, the sense I Am, is constant (as far as my experience goes, as far as my phenomenal experience goes). Not only does it seem like it, but also it seems like there is never an experience without this back drop of Existence; I Am.

There is never another, there is never something outside apparently, without first there being this sense that I Exist. Therefore this Presence, this sense of Existence, is revered. In all traditions, in

all religions, this Consciousness, this Presence, Being, Atman (whatever you call it) is the unchanging light and the backdrop on which this entire play that we call the waking state happens.

And some of us will feel very comfortable to stop at this point, which is enough actually; to See that my Presence, this sense of Existence, Consciousness, is the unchanging reality as long as I Am.

This is the beautiful discovery that ‘I Am That I Am’.

But some of you might ask: Why is it ‘I Am’?

If ‘I Am’ is ‘I’, then why is there ‘I Am’? Why don’t we just say ‘I’?

Is there an ‘I’ which is even before ‘I Am’?

In the same way that we checked ‘Who is this ‘I’ who is aware of these objects, this world and everything else which is phenomenal?’…, some of us even might ask:

Who is the ‘I’ which is aware that I Am, that I Exist?

What knows this?

Contemplation Questions

We’ve explored a few things together which is:

What do you truly want?

What are you unwilling to give up?

What are attachments?

What is is desire?

What do we mean by surrender?

What is nature of reality?

Do desires & attachments apply to that which is real?

Or to that which is unreal?

~ ~ ~

I want you to contemplate a few things now:

What is attention?

What is belief?

What are attention and belief?

What are the different phenomenon to which attention can go?

Which phenomena can be given belief?

What is Identity?

What type of phenomena is the ego?

Have You Lost YourSelf?

If I say ‘I lost my shoes’ can you give me an idea, give me a suggestion about where I can find them? ‘I lost my shoes. Do you have an idea where they could be?’ [You might say] ‘Where did you see them last? On the feet? Or there [Points to where he usually leaves his shoes in the room] or the shelf?’

So, what are we doing here? We are presumably trying to find the Self. Where must we look? If I say ‘I lost my Self’ where shall I look?’ Where did you see it last? [Chuckles] Where should I look? I come to you and say ‘You look like a smart guy. Can you give me some advice? Where should I look for my Self?’ But if I was to say ‘I lost my body. Can you help me out, to find it?’ then what would you say? You will say ‘But I see it, the body is here. Where did you lose it?’

Why is this not true for the Self? Why would you not say ‘Who are you then? But you are the Self? How can you not be the Self? How can you lose your Self?’ you would say.

So, if the body is more obvious…, that which is the Self, is it less or more obvious? And for a while it can seem like it is less obvious. It can feel like ‘I have lost the Self and I am trying to find it. I am trying to find my Self’. And also, for so many centuries Sages have said ‘Know thyself’. But…, I know my Self. Who doesn’t know themselves? We could just tickle you and when you’re laughing say ‘There. When you laugh, you are your Self’. [Smiles]

Then would it be fair for me to say ‘Okay, if you lost your Self, then who are you right now? What are you representing right now?’ And you might say ‘I am the sum of all of these things in my life; my relationships, my body, my ideas, my money, my interests, my hobbies’. But then if I were to say ‘What if all of these started to dissolve?’ Money gone (suppose the Prime Minister said money is illegal from tomorrow; everybody will just barter) so, money gone. Relationships vanish. We realize our rubbish, so gone. Do you go along with any of this? Body; every cell is changed…, every few years this body has nothing in common with the body that was born out of my mother’s womb. Not a cell is the same. So, body also constantly changing.

What is that at the center of this? And even if it is an idea of me, whose idea is it? Can an idea rest on itself? You can say ‘At the center there is an idea of me’. But can that idea exist independently, or does it need something to support it?

‘Can you have an idea without you?’ is the question. Isn’t it? Is it possible? So, what is that which is prior to the idea? That’s worth looking at isn’t it? Where does all of this rest?

I gave some exercises for all of you to do. You are supposed to contemplate on attention, belief. Whose forces are they? Where do all of these come from? Out of nothing. Is there any distinction between this nothing and the empty nothing which is in the space, for example (even if air was not there)? You can say that ‘The nothing in this room is the absence of phenomena’ (or if there is some phenomena, there is air; but let’s ignore that for now).

This nothing is the absence of phenomena. So, that from where this arises, from where all phenomena arise, is it the same nothing? Is there any difference between the nothing from which time and space comes, and the nothing which appears within space?

Contemplation Questions

What is action?

What is inaction?

Is inaction also an action?

Is inaction possible in the waking state?

What controls our thoughts?

What controls our speech?

What controls our body movements?

I Am the Self

[After reading of Ribhu Gita, Chapter 26]

I am the Self.

There is no one or two.

No Advaita, no Dvaita.

No Supreme, no small.

No light, no darkness.

No past, present or future.

Neither this, nor that.

In Me, there is neither stillness nor movement.

In the play of objects, play of sensations, thoughts and emotions, play of existence and non-existence is not for Me.

I have neither come, nor I go.

I am all there is.

No time, no space.

No sound, no light.

I am neither touched nor untouched.

No words, no silence.

Neither that, nor this.

No transmission, no transference.

Neither concern, nor un-concern.

I am Knowingness.

Neither pure, nor impure.

Not in the mind, not outside of mind

Not in the intellect, yet the intellect is ‘I’.

I am Awareness.

Nothing to witness, nothing to drop.

No recognition, no conditioning.

Neither free nor bound am I.

I am not in the Silence, not in the expression.

Yet ‘I’ is all there is.

I am never lost.

Neither thing, nor no-thing.

Not full or empty.

I am neither this, nor that.

I am Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

Yet none of the gods am I.

I will not be understood, nor mis-understood.

Neither conscious, nor unconscious.

I don’t exist, yet all existence is ‘I’

I am not one, we are not two.

I am the Self.

I am Knowingness.

I am the ‘I’ before Being.

I am the Self.

The 3 D’s of the Ego

This is a magical universe. [Smiles] So many things moving, grasping for our attention; these objects, all of this, all of this, [Gesturing around him] this body. All is happening. Not just this. Then, so many thoughts; emotions, so much sensation. Then all kinds of variants of emotion mixed with thought; guilt and regret. So much of this activity is going on. And we’ve been playing like this as if we are also an object in this realm of objects. It is a great power that enables That-which-is-not-an-object to play as if it is one. It’s a great power. It is Your own power. This kind of magic only the Divine can do. This divine leela. To say something is mine itself is a great power; the power to play as an object in this world of objects.

How many different types and varieties of energies we’ve experienced, all from that ultimate No-thing-ness, emptiness? We have to (just for some time) enjoy the magnificence this which is going on.

What is it that we are saying fundamentally?

Firstly, that you are not a thing.

That itself is enormous. It is enormous.

Then; that which is not a thing can have the sense that it exists in some way. How can it come about like this?

That which is No-thing then can have the sense that it exists.

But even that much play is not enough. “I’m just being, I’m just being. I exist.”

Also (I used to say) ‘I exist as if I’m something in this play so that this play can seem so juicy and alive to us. I’m this bundle of energies in this play. I’ve not had enough’. This is deep divine hypnosis.

So, ‘I exist’.

Then ‘I exist as something’.

And then ‘There is so much other than me’.

Now not only is there the sense that ‘I am something’ but also ‘There is another; there are so many others. There’s all of this’.

None of this is ultimately your reality.

Yet it is very compelling. You are a Supreme video game designer. It’s like one of those movies, isn’t it, where the programmer himself gets caught in the program that he has written. You are a game designer which is par excellence. This compelling game we have created and all this magic is happening. First that ‘I exist’ in the sense of existence itself. Then that ‘I exist as something’. Then also the idea that ‘There are other things that exist beside me’. And all this play of enjoyment and suffering; all of this play happens on the basis of these ideas.

If you don’t have this sense that ‘I’m something’ then suffering is not possible. Look at all of our suffering. Such is the magnificence of this play. That No-thing, the Self, the Absolute, then plays as if it exists in this way; and then it plays as if it is this mere bucket of energy, bucket of flesh and blood. Then says ‘All that is appearing in front of Me is not Me. This separation never really happened’.

This one, even now, doesn’t need any spiritual practice to see this. We’ve done a lot of practice to separate, to believe the separation by believing our thoughts, believing our ideas. So every thought is premised on the concept of ‘me…, me, me, me, me, me’.

I’m starting to realize that the ‘spiritual me’ is just as bad (if not worse). [Laughs] It’s so special. It’s so arrogant. It’s so caught up in this so-called journey to freedom. Very, very selfish also at times; very, very. ‘Me, me, me, me.me’. [Laughs] So, it is not as if there’s some specialness in spirituality; it’s very, very selfish, (mostly; I shouldn’t generalize so broadly) …, this ‘me’ who never took birth. Even till the end we avoid looking at ‘Is there really a me?’ Why? Because then it’s ‘game over’.

Somebody is saying, “I put 3 coins in the game machine to play this game.” And somebody comes and says, “No, no. Leave it.”

“But I’ve put 3 coins in here.” [Laughs] “I want to see where it goes. How does it end? The supreme bliss; the happy ending. Live forever. Happily ever after.”

We feel like we can get to this. But the only ones who have gotten to this are the ones who have taken their hands of the game. And then you’ll be surprised to see that the game goes on. It still appears. Left and right, the movements will happen. You took the hands off the joystick but it still is moving. But it seems to become a lot more fun then. All the stress of ‘What to do? Where to go? Am I getting there or not? Am I playing this right?’…, all our unworthiness, all our specialness; all gone.

Because it’s a very simple point: these words are being spoken on their own. It would be foolish to presume that there is one Ananta who is sitting there who is then conceptualizing these words and speaking them. They are just arising. And this true for all words which were are ever spoken by anyone. All actions are happening on their own. There has never been this ‘Me and another’…, just like our thoughts are appearing.

Most of humanity is even feeling guilty about their thoughts. But who knows how to create a thought? Nobody. What is the raw material for thought? Nobody knows. Not only that; feeling guilty for your thoughts and resentful about another’s thoughts! ‘How can you think this about me?’…, as if everyone is creating the thoughts that are coming. Not just action but also ‘How could you think this about me?’ Most of the trouble in relationships are like that. ‘Oh, so this is what you really think!’

Thoughts are coming, they are appearing. They are appearing and they are disappearing. Speech is appearing and it is disappearing. It happens with us; words come to us. ‘Oh, I don’t know where this came from!’ It happens. Then, the same way with action.

So, this sense of doership is a critical feature of this game called maya or leela. It can feel like there is not only somebody sitting inside this body but that somebody is also doing, thinking, speaking.

That No-thing (which is not the negative nothing; the mind’s one trick is to say ‘Don’t tell me I’m nothing. Tell me anything but don’t tell me I’m nothing’…, because all of this about trying to become something) …, but this No-thing, the mind cannot fathom. It is a very full…, (not even full but we have to use terminology) it is a very full No-thing. It is That from which this entire manifest creation appears; and disappears back into. So, this No-thing (because it wanted to play as something) has created this entire game this way.

First, to have this sense that ‘I exist’. ‘I Am’.

Then, ‘I am something. I am the body, I am the mind, I’m this person’.

Then, not just that ‘I’m something’ but then ‘Everything around me must also be things. Now that I’ve bought into this idea of separation, of duality, therefore now this bundle should operate in a certain way according to how I decide. And those others are operating on the basis of what they are deciding’.

It’s pure myth! There’s no ‘me’ like this, and no ‘you’ like that. There’s only One; the Self.

And because this doership is so strongly ingrained, many times (if you’re just hearing this) you will be wondering ‘But if I just drop [everything] then how do I know my life will not be a mess?’ And the arrogance of the question starts to strike you; as if we’ve done such a good job of it so far. [Chuckles] ‘It’s been so good that if I just leave it to God then it might become a mess’.

There is no individual doer; no individual thinker. There is no individual speaker. Every expression is being played as an expression of Consciousness Itself. But we’ve bought into this idea of duality.

What have we looked at so far now? We’ve looked at doership and duality. But the basis of a lot of trouble is once we buy into the idea of that ‘I’m just this’ [Gesturing towards the body] we restrict ourselves to this idea. Then we also are catering to this idea in so many ways. ‘If I’m just this body or the person who owns this body then what could I want?’ Then we say ‘Okay, I might need so much money in the future, I might need a good partner, I might need this kind of security, that kind of security’. So, we are just representing this nonexistent one; the owner of this body or this body itself. The body (poor thing) sitting innocently, is not saying ‘I want this’ and ‘What’s happening to my money that’s been demonetized?’ It’s not asking any of that. It’s just sitting. And yet there’s this ‘lawyer’ for the body saying ‘This is what I must have. This is what I must have.’

So, like the cats looking for the next bowl of milk, from bowls of milk to other bowls of milk; till somebody comes and tells us ‘No, no, none of this. It’s all useless’. And we start finding that for ourself. And we say that ‘The final, ultimate nectar of amrit; the bowl of milk of enlightenment, of freedom’. So, then we start looking for that one.

But still what is that for? It is for ‘me’.

So when you come to a place where it is saying ‘But who are you really?!? First, before I decide to give you the next bowl of milk, let me first see if you are clear: What kind of cat are you?’ Then we start looking for the cat. ‘This is uncomfortable. I don’t like it. Just give me what I’m here for. Why can’t you just do that?’

That’s why many great Sages have also said ‘I give them what they want so that one day they can want what I want to give them’. I’ve not seen it. I’ve not seen it functioning like that because I’ve only seen that desire seems to multiply more and more.

So, this 3D system: Doership, Duality, Desire…, is the basis for all of our suffering. It will be very worthwhile if all of this then led to something that was useful. And we’d say ‘Okay. I worked so hard to pretend that I’m separate. I worked too hard to define these things I want; these are my desires. And I worked so hard to constantly separate myself from another, separate myself from the rest of this existence’. At least, enjoy it.

This is the funny part of this game, that it is played as if it is a game of suffering; these momentary insights into moments of Truth. We create this life, then we want to escape it and go to the mountains, sit in the farm. You want to escape. You want to go to nature. Why? Because we shut off this mind for some time. But what is the mind speaking about? Just these things. The mahamantra of the mind is ‘What’s in it for me? Me, me, me’.

That’s why (yesterday also I was telling someone) ‘Step out of this me’…, because it’s the big untruth; big made-up, mythical idea. The cat which does not exist is this ‘me’. And see that everything moves on its own. It is not possible (in the waking state) to not to be in some form of action. Even our sitting still is an action. Heart is beating, breath is flowing. Sitting still means we are sitting still. You can have meditators who meditate for tens of hours every day but are full to the brim with doership. ‘I’m doing, doing, doing. I’m meditating, I’m meditating, I’m meditating’. So, this doership is more and more reinforced.

So, (this second-to-the-last satsang) today I just want to say: Let go. Just let go.

Let go of what? Of belief that ‘These are my actions, these are my words, these are my thoughts’.

And in the play you’ll find that it’s beautiful…, where everything just seems to flow on its own. Everything is happening on its own. You are watching this as one play, one movie; including the movement of this character.

Just forget about it. And what is the easiest way? It is to see that in this moment already all is forgotten. In this moment, all is gone…, till we refer back to our thoughts and ‘Okay, is it really gone?’ And the mind will say ‘No, no. I’m still a person’.

But Now again; gone.

Just this.

Just this Now.

Here and Now…, is what is being pointed at.

What are you Right Now without referring to the report from the mind?

To say that ‘You are One’…, even ‘One’ does not apply.

All the Sages have pointed to this.

Shankaracharya said, “Dispose of this mind and be free.”

Ashtavakra said, “The mind is complex. Let it go.”

Same.

The Play of the Character Remains

Q:Today I read something from a Master who said something like ‘The character, the general energy will always stay, even after realization’. He said that ‘You just know that there is no-one who is that special way.’ (I hope you get it.) Is that right what he says? Can you say something about it?

A:The character will always stay. Yes, the play of the character will always stay but the sense that ‘I am this’ becomes very light. I have to speak from my experience; the sense that ‘I am this one and not that one’ becomes much lighter. It can happen that you cross somebody on the road and he says ‘Sir, what is the time?’ and you look at the watch and say ‘1 pm’ and you feel like ‘Oh, but this watch could be his also’ so you feel like just taking it off and giving. So, that much still remains here where the watch is not yet always taken out and given. That much sense of individuality still remains here.

For many, even this goes. Many Sages have reported in the past that someone comes and says something just like this and they give the whole kingdom. Like that; some stories are there. Someone says ‘Give me some food to eat’ and they say ‘Here, here, you have my kingdom’. So, extreme examples of the loss of this sense that ‘I am this character’ are also available. In the traditional text it is said that in these minute quantities ‘Tanmatra’ always remains. That is why the Sages are not walking into the ocean saying ‘I am one with the ocean’…, from this sense of ‘This one is there’.

In this case [Pointing to himself] I have to say that this is the thing that really changed (if anything did change) that this sense of ‘me and another’ really reduced to a very small quantity; and also continues to reduce. I can see already that even since the sharing of satsang started the sense that ‘I am this verses another is that’ has reduced a lot.

So, I would say that the play of the character continues to play out, and it is Seen, but the sense that ‘I am this character’ starts to dissolve more and more and more. That is the switch (if there is one). That is the dissolution (if there is one). Like that. You see?

Also, what can also happen many times is you don’t recognize your own face in the mirror. You say ‘who is this staring back at me from the mirror. It doesn’t feel like there is a ‘me’ in that. It doesn’t feel like ‘These are my hands which I’m moving; this is my mouth’. When the sharing of satsang starting here I would enjoy coming to the satsang hall, then would wait for this mouth to start speaking and then be hearing this and saying ‘This is good stuff, I wonder where it is coming from’. [Chuckles] So, this sense that ‘I am doing this, I am here as…’ goes, as this thing starts to dissolve a lot more.

So, the play of the character continues as long as the seeming waking state seems to reappear. As Guruji also once said ‘I woke up this morning and Mooji was still there’. You have to realize what that means. You wake up and you see “Oh, this body is here. Okay, this one is Mooji, this body is here, the sense that there is a character called Mooji is still there’. But this sense dissolves in a very big way.

So, you said ‘I read something from a Master who said ‘The character, the general energy will always stay.’ The ‘general energy’…, we have to see what you mean by that but the energy that ‘I am this character’ seems to dissolve in a very, very big way even after realization. Because the realization is what? I am not just that character. I am this no-thing, this unchanging Self.

[You say] ‘He said that you know just that there is no-one who is that special way’.

[Silence]

It’s more like that there is no-one here at all.

[You say] ‘I was shocked a bit by this statement. I mean, I really reject a lot of this character’.

I feel we should clarify a little bit about ‘rejection’. So, what are we really rejecting? We are not rejecting the movements of this body. We are not rejecting the speech of this body. We are not rejecting what is happening in the world also. In fact, it is opposite of that. It is: that which was resistance is now being replaced with BIG openness. BIG openness is here for the play of this realm; this seeming character and all the other seeming-characters in it.

What is being rejected now is that ‘I am limited in this way. I’m just individualized in some way’. What is being rejected is this sense of separation, the sense of separate identity. Just like if someone comes to you now and starts treating you as if you are an infant (like ‘coochie, coochie, coo…’) you will say ‘But who are you talking to?’ It is rejected; the idea that you are a baby is rejected. And someone comes and says ‘But don’t you go to this school?’ (the school that you went to) and you say ‘No. I reject that because I am no longer there. I went many years ago’. Just in the same way, when the mind comes and says ‘But aren’t you supposed to do this? Aren’t you supposed to be this? Aren’t you supposed to lead your life in this way? Isn’t that one supposed to behave like this with you?’ All of this telling you about something that you are not, that is rejected. But rejected how? Not by saying ‘No, no, you are not welcome.’ Rejected also by the simple allowing…, ‘Then come and speak whatever you like but I know it is not for me, it is not about me. The ‘me’ that I thought I was, was never real. It was just a misunderstanding, just a fallacy.’

So, although a little bit of this remains always, that is why the great Sages and Masters have come and also shown that even in their case it remained.

[Chuckles] (Okay, I should not speak this trivial-ly but…) take the example of Ram. How many times has he cried in the Ramayana? Sita is taken away from Him; cried. Lakshman was lying there as if he was dying and Hanuman has gone to get the Sanjeevani; crying. Then He had to let Sita go to the forest after He came back; crying. So, while Avatars themselves are manifest forms of Vishnu, in this realm they play with some conditioning, with some pretense of personhood; but it is momentary. It is part of the play and it is not held onto. Other examples also there. And Jesus saying ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ knowing fully well that all of this is just one

play of Consciousness. And yet so powerful is this hypnosis, this game, that the best of the best have also (even after realization of who they are) had moments where they got caught up in this play as if it is real.

And why is it like this? Why it had to play like this? It is so beautiful because it shows us that we are not going for some idea of ‘hundred percent’. If we set up for ourselves this constant idea ‘hundred percent’ it is bound to be a set of failures. That is why all these examples have come and we see that momentarily all of them have fallen for the idea that they are individual, that they exist ‘as something

But I can tell you that what changes is that most of your ideas about yourself you will not believe. Most of this mind chatter just comes and goes. And you rarely buy this idea ‘What is in it for me?’ So, although in reality nothing changes, but (relatively speaking) it is a great shift. So, in our full openness, that which is false will just come and go.

The Sages Solutions to This ‘Me’

What did the Sages do? They said ‘The solution for this attack of the ‘me’ is to (either) just surrender this ‘me’ over to God and say ‘Everything is Your problem, God or Satguru’. Then what happens when the salesman for the ‘me’ comes, the lawyer for the ‘me’ comes and says ‘But this is what you must do, this is what you must have, these are the things that are being unfair to you, these are the things which are good in your life, you must keep them’. All these things, they stop mattering to such a One. They know ‘I am in my Father’s care. I have no trouble with any of this’. This is surrender, just the simple allowing is surrender. They also realize that temperamentally some are different; they do not surrender like this. They will be like ‘Is there really a God? Is there really a Master, Satguru? Aren’t these just words? Some are telling that. Here it played out like this many times. So for those, what did they say? ‘Find out really if there is this ‘me’. Who am I?’ Self-inquiry.

So these were the most direct ways to get over this ‘me’ affliction, this disease of ego. But for some these seem too direct. It feels still like ‘I don’t want to be rid of the ‘me’. I just want something for the ‘me’. I want this ‘me’ to have a happy life’. But even the solutions to give a happy life to this ‘me’ or to get us to step out from this idea of individuality, what are the different solutions?

We go do some selfless service; means what? Stop thinking about ‘me’ for some time, go think about somebody else. Basically that is what is happening, isn’t it? When you do seva, you are going and saying ‘Okay, those children need our help. Let us do some actions which are about somebody else so we get out of this ‘me’. In the sangha we do seva for each other. Why? Because we stop thinking about this ‘me, me, me’ constantly and say ‘Okay, what is it that he wants? What does she want?’ One day we should play one game: Don’t ask questions about yourself, ask questions on behalf of one another. What is the question that you feel will help another? Forget about yourself for some time. So seva, selfless service, is to get out of this ‘me’ and focus energy on somebody else. So, seva (for the Master also traditionally) has been prescribed for those on the spiritual path that ‘You must do big, big seva for the Master’. Why? Not because the Master is wanted to be served in that way; just so that the object of attention moves this ‘me’ to Satguru Dev, the external form of the Satguru which is appearing in our life.

Then what are the other things? Do some chanting. Stop thinking about ‘me’…, chant the name of the Lord. Do some meditation. Bring attention to the breathing or to the Presence ‘I Am’ or to the form of the Lord; or to just the activities. The Buddhists called it ‘mindfullness’. Bring it to whatever is happening. The hand is moving, just be with the hand. The breath is moving, just be with the breath. If walking is happening, just be with the feet. Why? To get away from this mahamantra of the mind which is ‘What’s in it for me…me…me…?’

So, the most direct was surrender and Self inquiry and then there were all these other ways that seem to bring some peace, some joy. To step away from this individuality seems to bring so much space and lightness, even if it is done with the intent to help the ‘me’.

So, the letting go is to surrender. And it can only happen NOW. You cannot say ‘Okay, tomorrow I will let go’. Letting go is just Now. Now is the time [where] there is no false conditioning; all the ideas of the past have gone. But this tree of conditioning is very sneaky. You tug at one leaf and the whole tree comes. By one concept about yourself then it seems like the whole person is there. Any small thing which is personal, it seems like the whole person is there. ‘What has my whole spirituality been about?’ you wonder sometimes. ‘What have I done over so many years?’ Because, why? You pulled that one tiny branch of this tree. That is why all this frustration can come.

These Parables to Make It Simpler

So, just at the end, I want to share some important things (because it’s the second-to-the-last satsang). [No more online satsangs for an undetermined time]

Just like this, if Grace can bring these simple examples to you in those times, that is my prayer. Some of these examples I’ve really enjoyed over the years, as they’ve come.

First one is the ATM example, which all of you know. So, we are this ‘Anytime Misery Machine’ which is called the mind. For this Anytime Misery Machine to function, and for you to withdraw misery, you have to do two things. First is the ATM card which is ‘Attention To Mind’ …, (some of these things have just been designed for satsang, okay?) [Chuckles] So, you put the ATM card in, which is ‘give attention to mind’ and then put in your PIN, which is ‘Personal Identification’ which is your belief. You give attention to the thought and say ‘Yes, this is meaningful, this applies, this is relevant for me’. This is my identification with the thought. And you have unlimited reserves in this ‘bank’. As long as you want to withdraw, you can keep withdrawing. But Know that without doing these steps, the ATM will not function. It is impossible for you to suffer without your attention and belief in your mind.

This one I really enjoyed. The second one I also really enjoyed very much, which is the conveyor belt. We’re saying ‘What to do?’ Because spirituality can be so confusing. There are so many pointings, directions, here, there; do this, do inquiry; no. you’re not the doer. All of this can get very confusing, isn’t it? So, then what to do? Same way as in this Japanese restaurant (it’s inspired by a Japanese restaurant) where you’re sitting in this restaurant and you’re just sitting at your table and there’s a conveyor belt on which food is coming. Food is coming.

So, the mind is like that. There is a conveyor belt on which thoughts are coming. All that is needed to be done, even if attention is going to the food, is just to allow it to go by. That is surrender. Can surrender be made simpler than this? Just allow this conveyor belt to keep moving. As much as you can, don’t pick up the ‘calories’ of concepts. [Chuckles] You see? Because it is these calories which are conditioning. It is these calories which become tendencies. How to be free of them? Same way as ‘Don’t pull at the leaf of the tree’…, don’t pick up the dish.

But the restaurant is very sneaky. What happens is that if you do pick up the starter, then at least don’t pick up the dessert. Usually what happens is that (if you’re spiritual) you’ll pick up some angry thought about another and it comes and goes; it’s gone. But the ‘dessert’ is the guilt. ‘I should not have done that. I’ve not made any progress at all, I am not worthy of freedom’. You see? All these ‘other courses’ that follow. Even if you did pick up a starter, it came; it was like.., finished. Don’t pick up these heavy, high calorie ones.

So, surrender is as simple as that. Allow this conveyor belt of the mind to come and function, to come and go. You remain concept-free; calorie-free.

Then the cat one. [Parable] A lot of fun we had with it for a long time in satsang. We said that suppose you were born in this world without any mirrors. You were born in this world which had no mirrors, so you did not know who you were. And everybody said that ‘You’re a cat’. So your only job then became to go after your next bowl of milk. They said ‘Get a good education, then you’ll be happy. Get a job, then you’ll be happy. Find the right partner and get married, then you’ll really be happy. Have children and have a fulfilling married life, then you’ll be happy. Make lots of money in the bank; give security to your life and your family, then you’ll be happy’.

So, all these bowls of milk, you had. You say ‘But this lasting peace, lasting joy is just not coming’. So then what happens is that somebody comes and tells this cat that there’s this BIG bowl of milk which is unending. Okay? After you do all this practice, after you do all of this effort, then you might one day get access to this Amrit, this nectar of immortality…, and that will be your final bowl of milk; unending joy.

Then we go to the Sage and say ‘Please, dear sir, can we have this? We were promised; many have said that you have this nectar of freedom. Can you give it to us, this bowl of milk? We have to taste it! What can we do?’

The Sage says ‘I have no bowl of milk. What are you talking about? I have no bowl of milk. But I do have a mirror. Do you want to look? You, who are posing as if you’re a cat; I don’t see a cat at all. I can show you in this mirror’.

Most don’t want that. Most still want the bowl of milk for the cat because the cat is so strongly been believed. There are some who have come to the satsang of these Sages, and some who have come to satsang here over the years and have been unwilling to look openly at this; to look at who they are. And I’m happy to say that you’ve reduced the population of cats to at least some small extent; that it is possible to get out of this trap of this ‘Cat Identity’…, this fallacy that ‘I am this individual’. But it is helped with a lot of openness. If there is some openness, then it can be very simple.

So, I feel some of these examples, some of these stories, can make this very seemingly-complex Advaita, intellectual Advaita, much simpler.

Recap of Important Pointers in Satsang

The main pointings here are very straight-forward I feel; very simple. There are just three or four that I want to recap a bit also. The first one is this advice: Not to believe your next thought. This simple advice: Don’t believe your next thought. And it came because I can see that in this moment, you are free. I can see that in this moment, you are free. And from here, the only way that you pick up the idea of bondage, you pick up the idea of individuality, is to give belief to the next thought. And some of you know that when I started sharing, I just used to say ‘But just let go of any next thought’ or ‘Let go of your thoughts’. And I am sure I have frustrated many, many. [Chuckles] ‘I am not able to let go Ananta. What are you saying? If it was that easy why would we come to you anyway?’

‘Just let go of your thoughts’ is the same as saying ‘Dispose of your mind’ or ‘The mind is complex; let it go’. So, I said ‘Okay, that seems a bit difficult, I can understand. How about if you let go of our next thought? That is all’. And I felt like ‘I don’t need to say anything after this: Just let go of your next thought’. But then also I realized it got a bit difficult because it felt like attention is going to these thoughts. He is saying ‘Just block them out, just block them out’. But that is not what I was saying, so I clarified it even more and said ‘Even if attention goes to your thoughts, to not believe it, is much simpler’.

And I have to admit that some naivety was in operation here as well, where I just felt like ‘If I say this, it will be so simple for everyone’. But I realized that everyone, all those who have been sharing satsang truly, have been pointing to this, but many times it can just feel like the interest in the conditioning, the pull, the magnetism of the false notion of individuality is so strong that it’s not always easy to not believe our next thought.

That is why coming to satsang regularly helps. Immerse yourself in contemplations of the Masters really helps; all just enabling this simple letting go. The inquiry of cause really helps because of all of the sticky ones which still seem to get our belief. My advice is to just inquire into them, inquire into the identity behind them. Because all our stick thoughts, all our ‘velcro’ thoughts (as Adya calls them) presume a notion of individuality, of an identity; and the spiritual seeker identity can be very prominent in spirituality.

So, for those thoughts which are sticky, or for that identity which is sticky, we put them into our inquiry and say ‘Who wants freedom? Is there somebody here who wants to be free really? Who is this one? Let that one present itself. And you find that there is nobody like that here. Then when the thought comes ‘Oh I am still not free, I am not getting freedom’ then it doesn’t have the same amount of juice, it doesn’t have the same amount of power. And then not to believe our next thought seems simpler.

Also why not to believe our thought? Because it is not a true representation of what is. Another favorite of mine was (there was a time we used to share about) this interpreter. I used to say ‘The fake interpreter who doesn’t know what he is doing is here’. Where it came from was at Nelson Mandela’s funeral there was Obama’s speech; and Obama was giving this speech but they hired

this con man for an interpreter. So, Obama would just say whatever he was speaking very seriously and the interpreter would just go [indicating speaking nonsense and flailing hands] and there was a big outrage. ‘Who was this guy? What was he doing?’ So, just like this. Just ‘What Is’…, is. It is very beautiful, it is very magnificent. Even these labels are not needed. But the mind will always find a way to resist it, to interpret it in a way that makes it very personal, very limited, very mental. So, because it is not an accurate representation of the Truth…, it is just like bad subtitles in a movie. So this mind, the flow of this interpreter is the flow of these bad subtitles in the movie, and believing them will only give you misunderstanding about yourself, about who you are, and eventually lead to suffering and more and more trouble.

So, this simple letting go, this simple surrender is the end of suffering. It is just about this, Right Now. You cannot suffer unless you engage with your next thought, believe your next thought. And as long as it seems like they still have power, use Bhagavan’s [Ramana Maharshi] Self- inquiry to diminish these power of these wrong ideas.

Then your question should be ‘Yes, okay there is no suffering here, but what about God? Can you show me God?’ I don’t like to answer a question with a question but there is a beautiful question which (if you are open to) you can have the direct darshan of Consciousness, of God, the Light of this world, this very moment. It is an innocent sounding question with the possibility of what you can discover with this is truly beautiful.

The question is: Can you stop being now? Can you try to stop being?

With this simple inquiry you come to taste your own Presence, your own sense of existence ‘I Am’. God said ‘I Am That I Am’. This ‘I Am’ is what is spoken about; this Consciousness, this sense of existence in the light of which the world is. When This goes to sleep, when This dissolves within you, the world goes to sleep; there is no phenomenon. All time, space, light, sound…, all of this is nowhere to be found without this Light of Presence. This realm of duality, of me and another, does not exist without first there being ‘I Am’.

This is the fruit of most spiritual paths. Most sadhanas and practices are meant to bring us to this point of recognition of the Atman, of Consciousness, I Am.

And even with this question I feel like the mistake or the error that can be made is that we can try to come to a mental resolution to this, like mentally answer ‘Can I stop being?’ and come to some mental conclusion: ‘No of course not, I can’t.’ But these questions are not meant for the mind to answer. They are meant to invite and to provoke your own inner looking; very deep checking. And there are many tools which we have provided over the years to deeply inquire into this. Like when I ask you ‘What time did you wake up? What woke up at that time? What changed between sleep and waking up?’ It is to directly introduce you to this Divine Consciousness which seems to say ‘Let there be Light’ when It wakes up.

And as you marinate in your own Being, when you taste your own Presence, for some of you an even deeper inquiry might emerge which is to say ‘Even this sense of existence seems to come

and go. Although it is the Lord of the waking state, what is here which is even prior to this ‘I Am’? What is here which is before ‘I Am’? What is aware even of this sense of Presence?

For this also we have a simple inquiry which is: Are you aware now?

How is this known? Because you did not see Awareness as an object, you did not see Awareness as a phenomenon. It is quite clear that this Awareness is the unchanging, the backdrop to the appearance and the dissolution even of Consciousness. This, with no attributes, no size, shape, no age, this primal Witnessing which does not come and go.

Those who are longing for this recognition of the Absolute Truth will find meaning more than any other phenomenal discovery because it is seen that all phenomena comes and goes; nothing here lasts, everything is changing. Therefore, that which we must be looking for truly is the Unchanging.

What is the Unchanging Truth? It cannot be a thing, it cannot be an object, it cannot be space, cannot be light, cannot be sound; beyond all mental conceptions, beyond pure, beyond innocent, beyond life and death.

It has brought great joy to this expression [Ananta] to see that some of you have actually found yourself in this way.

But even with this, sometimes I found that the mind can be so tricky that it creates dichotomy even here. And the dichotomy is what? Guess. [Chuckles] ‘Nothing is happening to Awareness. I see it. Awareness remains untouched’. And in that statement itself, I can sense that what is being unsaid. What is being left unsaid is that ‘Yeah, but what about me?’

Therefore I felt like this was the final question and I needed to ask you, which is: Who is aware even of this Awareness?

I feel that any of you who really inquire using this question ‘Who is aware even of Awareness? Who is aware of Awareness?’ that this dichotomy of ‘I and Awareness’ will dissolve and you will see that ‘I am the Self.’ This ‘I’ is the ‘I’ that remains.

As Bhagavan said ‘I remove the I and yet remain the I’. It sounds like a big puzzle initially. It will become so clear. And this real Self, the reality of ‘I’ is unchanging. You will realize that; to See that ‘I am Awareness’ and even to say that ‘I am Awareness’ is not arrogance. It is actually arrogance to say ‘I am a person’…, to presume that some separation could actually have happened here, that God could be separated, is arrogance.

So, this I feel is the gist of what has been shared from here over the years; the gist of what Advaita Vedanta really is trying to convey. It has been a great gift in this life here.

Your Light Has to Be This Message

Meeting all of you also has been the greatest gift that my Master has given. I have so much gratitude in my Heart for all of you.

Thank you for being this beautiful Sangha, my beautiful friends and family.

May we all never forget the beautiful grace we have all had in our lives to have the opportunity to be at the feet of Satguru Sri Moojiji.

May his blessings bring all that is auspicious into all of your lives.

May you find that which your Heart is truly longing for.

I am always in service to all of you.

If not in this way then other ways.

So, this was my message in words.

My truest message is You.

Your life has to be this message,

Your Light has to be this message.

Your Presence has to be this Presence.

Satguru Sri Moojiji ki Jai.

This Guidance, This Blessing

The only point of all the words that I’ve shared in satsang is pointing to this Silence. Never mistake the pointers with That to which they were pointing. Remain still. Be quiet.

Don’t ever believe that ‘I know something because I know a concept’. True Knowingness is not special.

If any words from satsang create frustration, guilt or anguish of any sort, keep them aside for some time. Don’t get into any debates; no arguments about right and wrong or about superior knowledge; there is no such thing. Just different pointers. If a pointer is not being used to demolish other concepts, to remove false conditioning, if the pointer itself is new conditioning, then it can be thrown away.

Remain in your not-knowing. And when we don’t know anything mentally, then we allow ourself to remain open. If you find yourself in conflict, rely on your own Seeing, not on your own concepts. Live concept-free; unconditionally.

The Satguru’s Presence is always with you.

Don’t fear your emptiness. Remain open. Don’t rush to cover yourself with some concepts when your openness feels too raw, too naked. You will not lose anything but the false.

If there are times when you experience suffering, don’t go into any denial. Smell your own concepts, your own words and notice if they are some sort of conceptual denial. Remain empty of this. When you feel unworthy, know that it is a complete lie; because all of this is your play. All exists because You exist. When you feel special, know that it is a lie; because the special one does not exist. All is One; before the concept of One.

Advaita is not the Truth. Advaita is beautiful pointers to the Truth. Even to emphasize Oneness, gives belief, reality, to ‘two-ness’, of separation.

When you experience different forms of energy, like form kundalini to energetic transmission from the Sages to energetic transference to energetic afflictions, Know that even this energy You are not. That which witnesses this is not energetic.

Remain empty of arrogance and false humility; which is the same. Remain empty of doership and non-doership, of desire and aversion, of separation or Oneness. Have no concept about anything. No debates about Self or non-Self, existence or non-existence. Never look down upon another’s path. Never try to teach another, unless invited. Never use this knowledge as a sword to attack another.

Always have reverence in your hearts for beautiful Sages, who in their compassion have spent lifetimes sharing this Truth. And if you can’t have reverence, at least remain empty. Never attack one with good intentions.

When true spirituality meets the world, there must be kindness, compassion and love. Making one who is suffering smile is a beautiful seva. [Selfless service, serving God in all]

Stay open to the possibility that you could be wrong. Don’t get stuck in any conceptual righteousness.

Know that a Supreme Power, a Supreme Intelligence, runs this life.

Those who truly want freedom must also learn to provide the same freedom to their families, to their friends, to all those who they meet. They don’t want to dance to your projections; just like you don’t want to dance to theirs.

Let the world be as it is. You remain still.

Know that all of this (all of these multi-layers; this seeming-outside world, this body, these thoughts, emotions, any sensations) all of this is part of the play of One Consciousness. There never has been any individual with any control over any aspect of this play.

All is moving in the Light of Consciousness.

What then can we desire? What duality remains? Which doer is here?

You are never experiencing any separation. You are only believing it to be true.

Let go of all control. Let go of these fallacies. Surrender everything to the Satguru. And if you feel like you cannot surrender, see if you can find the ‘you’ that is not surrendered. Find the one that is not surrendered already. Inquire into the Truth. And if neither surrender nor inquiry you can do, then go to the Sage and request his guidance. His pointing will get you to this beautiful letting go.

When suffering seems to arise, find out if there is something which is not phenomenal, which cannot suffer, about yourself. Check if you can put some attention on the space in which this misery arises. And see if that space remains untouched by it. Who witnesses this space? Can That suffer?

May my Master’s grace bring peace in all your lives.

May you be blessed with gratitude, joy, contentment.

May your lives be expressions of your Reality.

Satguru Moojiji ki Jai!

[Sangha]: Anantaji ki Jai!

[Ananta]: Sangha ki Jai!

[Silence]

[Namaste]

Om Namah Shivaya

Om Namo Bhagavate Bhagavate Vasudevaya Om Sri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

The true Master is Your own Presence.

Never feel like the Satguru is going anywhere.

All you have to do is call out to him, invoke the Presence of the Master.

And if this [Ananta’s] instrument is needed, this instrument will also continue to show up. Always at your service,

Always in service to the sangha. Always in service to my Master.

[Namaste]

Love, Love, Love you all so very much!

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

~ ~ ~

Mooji ji ki Jai