BOOKS BY ANANTA Welcome to Satsang with Ananta

The only thing in your way is the maha-mantra ‘What’s in it for ‘me’? How is this helping ‘me’?’ It is not. So, the Truth will not cater to your ego and will not become subject to your selfishness. If the Truth came and it gave something to the non-existent ‘me’ then it would be a slave to the non-existent one, a slave to the false, and how can Truth be like that?

So, when I say ‘Truth for Truth’s sake’ that’s what I mean. Don’t expect Truth to comply with some idealistic version of ‘me’ or your token idea of ‘me’ like ‘How to become an enlightened ‘me’? How to become a blissful ‘me’?’ How to become any version of me?’ If the Truth said ‘Yes, sir’ to this ‘me’ then what? Then the false would be the greater truth. No?

So, it is only this which gets in the way. Actually, what I’m saying is very simple. But because there is nothing in it for me, it can feel like ‘Come on. Am I getting to the point? When will I get this?’ So, our allegiance is still for this ‘me’. And then, this kind of stuff can seem very abstract, very complicated, very difficult.

All I’m saying is leave all concepts and perceptions aside.
That’s all I’m saying in many different ways.
Don’t go hunting for Truth there.

S: When we’ve realized that there’s nothing for ‘me’ then immediately the doubt is thrown up that ‘Did you see something real? There is nothing for me.’ That is also seen.

A: Yeah, the doubt will come. It will come in all shapes and sizes. ‘Did you really see?’ or ‘Can you hold on to this?’ Any form which brings this limited ‘me’ back is a doubt. Now, what to do with that doubt?

S: It’s just a concept.

A: It just comes and goes. See? So, this game, this play, is just about that. When these things come, are they just allowed to come and go? Or are they still grasped with the tongs of our belief?

Now, if you’re waiting to satisfy this mind hoping that one day the mind will say ‘I’m done, thank you. You did a very good job and you found the Truth and now, I’m done. Bye-bye.’ … that will keep pushing the button of negating doubt and negating doubt. If you have any sort of expectation with the mind that it should become like that, it will keep using that itself. So, don’t expect this one to change its spots. Let everything be as it is.

S: The thought just came that’s exactly like that. ‘What am I doing here? Can someone remind me why I came to this class?’ And I just started to laugh.

A: Yeah. When something like this is proposed by the mind (‘What am I doing here?’) we quickly start questioning the ‘doing here’ part. But we don’t question who is the ‘I’ you are talking about?’ The premise is the ‘I’ … the basis is the ‘I’ … but that is just quickly lost; that is just left presumed. But what is quickly looked into is that ‘doing here’ part. ‘Is it helping me? Am I getting something? Maybe this type of Satsang is not for me.’ So, we’re quick to buy into the presumption of the ‘me’, of the ‘I’, and still we start exploring that. And it’s funny because ‘I’ in this sentence was proposed before the ‘doing here’. So, ‘What am I doing here?’ We can go that way: ‘What am ‘I’… and then we’ll come to ‘doing here’. But we latch onto the suffix somehow. ‘Oh, the ‘I’ I just presume but the ‘doing here’ … let me explore that really.’ But why don’t we explore the ‘What am I’ first?

You see, these are all the same old tricks of the mind; the same old tricks of the mind. ‘What am I doing here?’

But what am I?

Q: That’s what I’m supposed to do here. [Laughter in the room]

A: See, even that. What ‘I’ am supposed to do here … [Laughing] We made a conclusion about the ‘do here’ part. We didn’t make a conclusion about the ‘I’.

So, this is question and answer. It becomes just about the suffix. ‘What am I doing here?’ … ‘Oh, I resolved the question.’ You did? You didn’t resolve the question because you didn’t resolve the ‘I’.

So, this is how it can play out. The constant aspect to every story is the ‘I’ but this ‘I’ gets left unexplored. The ‘I’ is the ‘who’. But the ‘why, what, when’ … all of these get called dominant.

This is a classic example, no? Like if somebody said ‘What am I doing here?’ what are you going to explore? You’re going to explore ‘Okay, what am I learning? Is this helping me?’ This kind of thing. But the first part of it is: What am I…? But what are you? Before you can conclude what you should be doing or not and where you should be doing that ‘doing’ … what are you?

So, what are you? Huh? [Chuckles]

Actually, it’s worthy to explore where you are. Where are you?

Where are you right now?
Are you sitting inside this head?
As what are you sitting inside the head?

Where are you?
Are you an object?
This body is an object and it can hold other objects.
So, to be inside this object, you must be an object.

What can hold a non-object in this world?

You may say ‘I am not an object.’ We all have this (at least in India, we have this) strong notion that ‘I am Atma’ … or something which is not an object.

Now, what object can hold a non-object?
Where in the world must you be if you are not an object?

Where are you watching this movie from?

So, even before you can explore ‘What am I doing here?’ you can explore ‘Are you here?’

And here means what?
Here is where?
Where are you?

‘But how does it help me?’ Huh?

If you talk to most people (it seems like it is this way) most people in the world, and they say ‘What do you do?’ then ‘What do you share in Satsang?’ and they hear ‘We’re just exploring who we are or who am I’ and their first question usually is: ‘So, does that help you?’ … ‘But I’m exploring who I am.’ [Chuckles] … ‘But will that give you peace?’ In the sense that ‘It’s okay to not know who you are, but I want to find out only if it will give me some peace or joy or bliss or something like that.’

Is it like that?

So, the self-enquiry is just really to bring light into it. What is it? Who am I? Because everything else is dependent on this. But am I okay to just presume this ‘me’?

We looked at a simple example like this: ‘What am I doing here?’ We presumed the ‘What am I’ part but the ‘doing here’ part you brought into your exploration. And this is the life of a spiritual seeker also; like just going from Satsang to Satsang, spiritual path to spiritual path, just saying ‘What am I doing here? What am I doing here? Is this helping me? Is this helping me?’

But who? Who are you talking about?
Who are you?
What is it that you consider yourself to be?

This is the enquiry.

[Reading from the chat]: “Dear Anantaji, one finds the very process of the recognition itself is weighing down on oneself. The process of the recognition itself is weighing down on oneself. Sort of disconnects oneself from the emptiness. Even this disconnects looks meaningless, after the previous sentence. Just wanted to share that the definition seems to interfere. Just try to keep calm and see how it unfolds.”

A: Yes. This is very good, if you just keep calm and allow it unfold. This is good.

A few years after I met Guruji [Sri Mooji] maybe three or four years after I met Guruji, it became very popular, these ‘Keep calm and …’ posters. What was the original one chosen in the British war?

S: Keep calm and carry on.

A: ‘Keep calm and carry on’ was the original one. They kept changing it. The ‘carry on, part two’ became very popular. So, then somebody had made one for me for a present. They had made me a poster which said ‘Keep calm and trust Mooji.’ [Sangha and Ananta Chuckle] So, for a while I even made it my Facebook profile photo or something like that. Later I just saw ‘Keep calm and trust the Master.’ Then is this simple.

Yeah, to keep calm and see how it unfolds. Because all of this weighs us down, this idea that something is happening. The idea that ‘I am doing this or not doing this’ or ‘This is happening enough or not happening enough’ … all of these weighs us down. And of course, all of it is notional. But there is a point where we don’t yet recognize how many notions we still carry. And when these come and play, then they feel like valid representations of reality. When some notions come, they still feel like valid representations of something real, of ‘What Is’. That’s why they seem to get our belief because they seem like they are valid.

As we are going through this ‘cleaning up, washing out’ it can seem like the notion of cleaning up, the notion of washing out itself is weighing us down also. It can feel like that, of course.

So, in these times, whatever brings us to peace, whatever helps us to remain calm is good. And if you find that it’s not working out, trying to be at peace, then fully let it dance around. [Hand gestures in the air] Like that. But this half-and-half can get into a struggle.

We keep falling in to those mind tricks. Then it can be like, this way is suffering, this way is suffering. How to escape suffering? It’s everywhere; there is limited identity, there is doer-ship; there is all of this desire to be rid of or to have.

So, what is this ego? It is a 3D- ego. 3D. I have taken this example after a long time. I used to say ‘The ego is 3D ego.’ One is ‘Duality’ firstly, because the idea of separation in inherent to it. And once you feel that you are separate, then obviously, you feel like ‘I am a limited object. If I had that object, then I will be better, something will be better.’ So that is called ‘Desire’ the second D. If I make myself into a limited object then I can feel like ‘I’m so small, I’m so incomplete; I need this, I need that.’ So, that is ‘Desire.’ And the minute we fall into the desire that ‘I wish I had this or I did not have this’ (‘What can I do to get it? Or what can I do to avoid something?) there is comes ‘doer-ship’. So, this ego is built around this construct; this 3D construct of duality, desire and doer-ship.

If you did not have any of these notions, if you had no distinctions at all, no duality, then what is there to desire or not desire? What is there to do or not do? And then we fall out of this game of placing blame or giving credit. For doer-ship, it is very popular to play that game. ‘I’m not the doer, he is. So, when he is doing good things to me, I’m like a happy servant. But when he is treating be badly, it’s like ‘Why me?’ But to be rid of doer-ship, actually is to be the rid of the idea that ‘There is doing.’ (Not to come to a conclusion about ‘who is doing’. Those, at best, are provisional.) It’s like the waves are moving on the ocean. We’re not saying ‘The ocean is doing it.’

So, we have made ‘doing’ out of movement or ‘doing’ out of activity. That is what gets us in trouble. Now, whether we ascribe that doing to a greater force that makes us temporarily feel better, before we start becoming victim … or we ascribe doer-ship to limited entity, which does not exist anyway so it is bound to be fraught with suffering. But that is not what is ultimately important. It may seem provisionally that ‘I’m moving this locus from an individual doer-ship to a doer-ship belonging to Consciousness or the Satguru’ … but then, it is the emptying of the notion of doer-ship itself. Because it is just this. [Makes hand gestures in air] Who is doing it? Nobody. The concept of doing does not apply. That’s why I say ‘Not applicable.’ That’s what I meant. It is not really about who is doing it; whether it is God doing it or the non-existent person is doing it. It’s not about that. It is actually that there is no such thing as ‘doing’. This ‘doing’ means ‘nothing.’

To give credit or blame to either this way or that way, then it is still to put it in the box of limitation.

S: I’m still experiencing the darshan of this realizing of my certainty, my spiritual concepts which I had very subtly replaced with non-spiritual concepts and this pointing to them.

A: You have replaced non-spiritual concepts with new spiritual concepts.

S: Yeah, yeah. You know, like this is what this journey to freedom looks like; there are some things that arise like great resistance and then there is an examination and then like this narrative. And now also this thing you said about ‘I don’t know what up is’ … that’s like some curtain has been pulled back over all these subtle certainties I had been operating with. And now it’s like I’m looking at things and I’m just a sort of observing how I don’t know anything at all. And then each time something is recognized as not certain, it seemed that there was ‘someone’ who was certain about it. You know, there was identity hiding under the rock of that belief that was never really observed. And it’s been really wonderful. And I think it’s different. I think at some point I may have been … if this had come (I don’t know if this is just conjecture, but) in the past, I might have felt too untethered and now I feel very relaxed in this total uncertainty of everything; which has been really wonderful. And I notice that even around this idea, there is still something; I can see the tendency to form a new concept around the uncertainty concept, you know.

A: Yes. The beauty of uncertainty.

S: Yeah, yeah. You know, the vision…

A: Yeah, well spotted, well spotted. Because yes, if you keep spotting like this, it is very good. Because the mind will want to participate in all of this as well and say ‘This is really nice. You must just keep this.’ It’s like we’re letting go of all uncertainty, all certainties … and then it can feel like we have become very certain about uncertainty.

S: Yeah.

A: But this is a beautiful report also because many Sages have called this ‘empty of whatever we thought we knew’ as tranquility. Some have called it ‘peace.’ Some have called it ‘shanti, shanti’ just like this, to let go. And actually, this is the beauty of right Now, Here and Now. We actually start every moment like this. So, it’s not even really that we dropped it (although we can say we drop it) … it’s not even really that we dropped it; even that is already done for us. Even the dropping is already done for us.

That is why I said ‘No prerequisite, no precondition; nothing has to happen or not happen.’
Then the spiritual templates that we make, that ‘first like this, then like that, then like that’ also then go for a toss because what template do I need to sit where I am sitting right Now? What road map is needed? What are the landmarks that you have to cross? You see?

What is Here Now, irrespective of what objects you may perceive or not?