BOOKS BY ANANTA Welcome to Satsang with Ananta

Q: Thank you. There’s some confusion over here because I was listening to some Rupert Spira and he was saying that the question, the phrase ‘Who Am I?’ is over-used. And he uses the term ‘Are you aware?’ He thinks that one is even more pristine and clear. So there’s confusion over here because I want to believe everything you say, [Laughs] and I want you to be right [Laughter]. I want you to be the final authority. [Laughs] And I also really like Rupert Spira and I find him very easy to listen to and very soothing.

A: Reminded me of, (sorry, just to pause for a second), it reminded me that in satsang one time it just came up here: Ask yourself ‘Are you aware now?’ And then I said ‘I feel that this question ‘Are you aware now?’ is the most profound words which have come from this mouth.

Then very soon after that, (maybe Amaya or), somebody sent me a video where Rupert was also asking ‘Are you aware?’ And I said that this is some sort of Divine coincidence.

Q: [Laughter] Oh, good. It came out of your mouth. Oh, good.

A: It’s not ‘Who said it first’ or something; it’s not about that. I’m just saying just I found that this came, and I found it was so profound. And also then somebody else sent these videos about also starting to ask this; maybe even before it came from here, (maybe long before, I’m not sure what the date of the video was). But there was a beautiful Seeing as to how this question was playing out.

And I would like to say that ‘Am I aware now?’…, ‘Are you aware now?’ is the most direct way in which you can find the reality of what you are.

It might just be that for the last couple of months we have not focused so much on this question. So what happened here is that there were these pointers which were coming in order like this. I would say that:

If you want to come to the end of suffering, (which is what most people who come to satsang would want), then I have a simple key for you, which is:

Don’t believe your next thought.

Then, what is the question that remains for many in satsang? They will come and say ‘Yes. I cannot suffer without believing my thought, and there is so much more ease here, so much less suffering here, but what about God? Can you show me God? And I say that, yes, I can show you God, by asking this question:

Can you Stop Being now?’

This Being which cannot be stopped, this Consciousness, is God, I Am, I Am that I Am, as God said.

And some of you, after that, might also say ‘Yes. But what about that which is supposed to be the Absolute? What is before I Am?’ (as Guruji [Mooji’s] book ‘Before I Am’.) ‘What is that Absolute?’ And I say that for this, I also have a very simple question for you:

Are you aware now?

You find that the answer just is ‘Yes’.

Did you have a phenomenal experience to confirm your awareness? No. You just Know that you are aware. There is a knowing of this Knowingness. There is an awareness of this Awareness. As Guruji says, it is the only non-phenomenal experience.

So, ‘Am I aware now?’ I continue to feel that it is the most powerful pointing that has emerged from here. And I find no dichotomy.

Q: I had a question for you and it is that I’ve been doing Self Inquiry for a little while now and I noticed that there’s a lot of spaciousness in my heart. And I also went to see Mooji Baba recently in Zmar the first time, and it was very beautiful. And since then I’ve also noticed that I’m definitely in a space where I can be behind the camera lens and be more identified with the Witness than in front. But there’s also periods where I get in front of the lens and I’m lost. And then I have to ask the questions. ‘Who is making future plans?’ or ‘Who is having conversations with people in his head?’ Those kind of questions, to bring it back behind the lens. And my question is: How can you tell that that voice that’s helping you ask the questions can be trusted?

A: You mean the voice of the Self inquiry itself?

Q: Yeah right, right; that voice that is sort  helping bring you back in the place of the Witness and the voice that is saying ‘Just stay as the emptiness and observe the emptiness’, or you know ‘Stay as the Awareness and be empty’. How can you tell if that’s the right voice? [Laughter]

A: It’s very good; this question is very good. So if we were to drop all allegiance to this voice, all belief in this voice, then what remains? So, suppose even this voice which is saying ‘Now you just stay as the Self, stay behind the camera, stay as the Witness, who are you now?’…, this one, if we drop all allegiance to this one, if all belief is withdrawn from this voice also, then what remains?

Q: Then just nothing, sort of nothing remains.

A: Yes, is it a bad ‘nothing’?

Q: No, it’s a good ‘nothing’ but it goes away quickly. Because then thoughts come up and then there’s attraction…, but then again, when you can bring it back to the Nothing, it’s a very good Nothing.

A: So the thoughts are also this voice, isn’t it? You see? So, what we can say is that, if we drop everything that this mind is saying, then allow these concepts: ‘Who am I? Am I Aware now?’ Those ones that are bringing you, are pointing you to your True position. Allow them to be dropped last. Because the mind is so tricky, it can say ‘But these pointers are also the mind’. You see? Which they are ultimately, Bhagavan [Ramana Maharishi] said that ‘These are just thorns that we are using to remove other thorns from our finger and then both the thorns are thrown away’. So even ‘Who am I?’ is a concept. ‘Don’t believe your next thought’ is a concept. But these are just concepts which are removing. There are very few concepts which can be used in this way; to help us come to our True Nature, to our reality of what we Are. So then after they’re done with their use, once we have removed the thorns from our finger we don’t need to hold onto this thorn anymore; even this is thrown away.

So either we say that ‘This entire voice of the mind is now not going to be believed’ as we drop the allegiance to the mind; then we see that what I Am is this Awareness which is Aware of the Presence of my Being. I don’t need a thought for that, a crutch for that, a tool for that anymore. You see? But if you drop the inquiry thoughts, but still believe other thoughts, then we better pick up the inquiry thoughts again quickly. [Chuckles].

Q: Okay that makes…, I understand that, okay. But sometimes these thorns that I’m using to remove the other thorns, sometimes they get very pro-active. [Laughter].

A: Yes. [Laughter] I was saying a little earlier also that the mind tries to come in and now pretends to be your ally, your ally in the search for the Self. But even this will be dropped. So if it is coming pro-actively and saying ‘Who am I?’ then mostly it can used like this as a pointer to check on who you are. But this also, you are absolutely right, it is taken too far because I find people who are not using ‘Who am I?’ as an inquiry. Or they are just going ‘Who am I, who am I, who am I?’ like a mantra or something, you see so…,

Q: Yeah, yeah, and that happens. And sometimes when the mind comes really strong and it’s really hard to disentangle, I almost have to use it as a mantra for a little bit before I can start sinking into the depth of the question, you know what I mean?

A: Yes. One thing we can inquire into together here right now is that the ‘I’ which wants to sink into the depth of the question…, is which one? Which is the inquiry itself, isn’t it? So we’re inquiring ‘Who am I?’ and then there’s an ‘I’ which is coming and saying ‘I need to use the ‘Who am I?’ to inquire into the depth of who I am’. So, who is this ‘I’ that is trying to use ‘Who am I’?

Q: Yeah, that ‘I’ can also be observed. It’s in front of the lens.

A: [Chuckles] As what?

Q: It’s observable so it’s an object right? So it’s not really me.

A: Did you find this object?

Q: No, not physically.

A: Because this person idea is not even found like atoms and molecules, it is not even found like the body. I can point to the body and say ‘Okay this body is a person’. But is it really? The body doesn’t want freedom, the body doesn’t want better relationships, the body doesn’t want money, you see? So all of these are personal. That is why I say the person is a second level delusion. Actually, we can’t even find it in this phenomenal realm. Even our imagination of it is not very clear. And that is the whole mystery; how something which is not even here, we don’t even have a clear picture of it, seems to get so much of our belief that ‘I must be that’.

Q: Ah, yeah.

A: And it’s very sneaky because all that we find of this person is the representative voice. This lawyer seems to be in our head saying ‘I must do this’ or ‘I must not do this, now I must do it like this, I am doing like this’. You see? So we are still buying into this idea that ‘I am a separate entity’ without actually being able to find the separate entity. Therefore Bhagavan’s question ‘Who am I?’ is so pristine because not only does it wipe away the belief in this false one, it also points us to what is really here. So now even this idea that ‘I am using the inquiry’, (although relative to all other ideas we can say it is quite auspicious), but even this idea can be used; even this idea can be used for our inquiry itself: ‘Who is the one that is using the inquiry?’

Q: Nice, yeah, yeah I [Inaudible] …, because there is some ‘I’ roaming around, the person is doing the inquiry now.

A: Yes.

Q: And it’s like a good cop, you know?

A: Yes.

Q: There’s somebody that gets it kind of and he’s going to use the inquiry. Okay, thank you so much.

A: Very welcome, very welcome my dear. You reminded me of this story that I used to share very often but I haven’t shared for a few months, so maybe I can share now again. Suppose that we were born into this world which had no mirrors, so we could not see who we are and everyone around us starting from our parents told us that ‘You are a cat’. They said ‘You’re a cat, you’re a cat’. Then even this mind came and it said ‘You’re a cat, and what you have to do is get the next bowl of milk’. So the entirety of our life became about this belief that ‘I am a cat and what is my next bowl of milk, how do I get this next bowl of milk?’

So then various bowls of milk came; relationships came, relationships went, money came, money went, health of the body came, health of the body went, all of these bowls of milk came and they went and something still did not feel satisfied, could not find the eternal sense of peace and joy. Then someone comes and says that ‘There is one ultimate bowl of milk, which is Freedom. You get that nectar, you know? The nectarine milk; the bowl of milk which is never-ending nectar, and then you will be full of peace and joy’.

Then you went to various places trying to get this bowl of milk. ‘I want freedom’. The cat wants this bowl of milk. It said ‘This is the ultimate bowl of milk, the never-ending Nectarine milk: ‘Now I only want Freedom’. And you try various, various things to get it but even this Freedom seems so elusive; the cat trying to get to Freedom wants to become a Free cat. Then you come to a Sage like Guruji [Mooji] who says ‘You’re not a cat. Can you show me the cat?’ And initially for many there can be resistance which says ‘No, no, I came for my bowl of milk, because I am clear I’m a cat. So give me my joy and bliss which is promised. Don’t ask me if I’m a cat or not’.

So, many will leave from satsang, you see, because it is only the Sage which is carrying a mirror now and he’s showing you. ‘I’m showing you the mirror, can you show me the cat?’ So this question ‘Who am I’ …, this inquiry ‘Who am I?’ is actually the mirror which is helping you to see that there is no person here. So, many times, even the inquiry, even the greatest pointings of the Sages, the cat itself takes it on, hoping it will lead to some bowl of milk at the end. But Freedom is not coming to becoming a free cat. It is Freedom from the identity of being the cat.

So notice that the mind will come in and say ‘See now if you’re doing the inquiry properly. Now you have found your way. Now do the inquiry properly, just do it like this’.  It’s just the cat trying to become Free, you see? So when you see that there is no cat here, there is no doer, there’s nobody here who can become Free, then that is Freedom. Freedom from the false belief that ‘I exist as a person’.

Q: That’s a great story, thank you.

A: I find it very helpful.

Q: That’s exactly what I’m doing, I’m the cat that’s trying to find my Freedom bowl of milk. [Laughter]

A: And then the cat says ‘Okay now you have taken even this away from me; now what am I supposed to do?’ [Laughter] So, that’s why I say that as long as we are not buying our next thought…, ‘Don’t believe your next thought’ is Freedom now. Because there is no cat, we only pull up the ‘cat conditioning’ when we believe our next thought. When we tug at this tree of conditioning through our belief in thoughts, only then can we pretend to be a cat that even wants Freedom.

Although it must be said that amongst all endeavors, I would still say that the endeavor for Freedom is still…, can be called auspicious. But sometimes what happens is that this cat either ends up being a very frustrated cat (because there is no Freedom for a cat) or it becomes a very spiritual egoistic cat. ‘I got it, I found it, I made it, I’m the best inquirer ever’. You see? So like this, to see; it’s very useful even to see ‘Who is the one that’s saying ‘I am using the inquiry now’. Who is this ‘I’?  And to See that even this is the non-existent one

And by the way this does not mean that we are to drop the inquiry, because the dropping of the inquiry prematurely is also a conclusion which comes from the mind. So for a while it can seem very wobbly because ‘I had a path and now he’s taken the path also away from me, I don’t know what to do; but he said also said don’t drop the inquiry’. It can seem completely frustrating and confusing to the mind. But you can just stay with this and see what is happening now.

The dropping of this mental knowing of ‘What I must do’ is surrender. As you surrender to this not-knowing, not buying the content of our thoughts; continuing very naturally to inquire into ‘Who am I?’…, ‘Who is aware of even these words Who am I? …, ‘Who is aware of the thoughts which are coming in response to these words?’

So inquiry can be very, very pristine in this way, just a sincere asking ‘Who am I?’ Not as a practice but as a genuine questioning, sincere questioning. ‘I don’t know who I am but I am here. Who knows even that I am here?’ And with this kind of openness, this kind of wobbliness, some fear can come; the not knowing what to do next, this kind of fear. Just as you continue to remain in satsang, you find very quickly that these words which are pointing you to what you are, these pointers seem more and more clear. And you’ve not make a practitioner of yourself, you’ve not made a career-seeker out of yourself. You don’t know what is going to happen next.

So I’d be very happy actually next time when we speak if you can say what is your finding when you ask ‘Who am I?’ What is your discovery about who you are? What is your seeing about who you are? Not just how it moves your attention back away from the mind and away from the content of the world; the question was ‘Who am I?  And although all the beautiful by-products can be there, the root of the question still remains: ‘Who are you?’

So if you sincerely ask this question ‘Who am I?’ including asking yourself ‘Who is asking the question, Who am I?’ Who am I? It just becomes so strong like this ‘Who am I?’ Not even taking on the perspective of the one who is using now this ‘Who am I?’

Q: Right now when I ask the question, all I get is just silence and it’s a peaceful silence. But then the silence gets disrupted with thoughts after a little bit and then that’s where it sort of ends. And I have to ask other questions about ‘Who is thinking those thoughts?’ And come back to the ‘Who am I?’ question. So, that’s where I’m at right now.

A: This is very good, this is very good. So, as you continue with this inquiry, we can also look together. We can do the inquiry also together to see whether we can come to the discovery of who you are, the recognition of who you are. Because often I say that there are two things which are happening in satsang. The first is the simpler thing, we can say, which is the recognition of who you are. And the second is the dropping of the false conditioning, the false beliefs that we carried about ourself. So my feeling is that very quickly, in a few satsangs as we look together, we will come to the recognition of who we are. And then it is just the old garbage which remains which needs to be thrown out; which will happen automatically as you remain in satsang.

Thank you so much for this beautiful interaction and welcome, welcome to satsang.

Q: Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. Thank you, love you, thank you.

Q: I was wondering about the silence. Does it morf into other things, does it spill into other things or does it always stay as silence?

A: Actually, silence also needs to be defined before we can share more about it, because ‘silence’ the word is understood by many to be different things. So let’s get the clarity of the definition of silence and then we can explore more about it together.

One is this phenomenal outward silence which is ‘I don’t feel like speaking, I don’t feel like interacting with anyone’. That is the verbal silence. Let’s call it that.

Second is this quieting down of the mind. It’s the quieting down and the powerlessness of the mind. Sometimes it can be that the number of thoughts themselves, they reduce. And sometimes it is that the power that the words seem to have of the mind, that itself seems to reduce. And sometimes it can be both. So then it feels so quiet. This silence is one more silence. ‘Oh, the mind has become so quiet’. So like that.

And the third silence is the discovery of the Silence that is Awareness itself, which is unmoving, no phenomenon, deeply silent, empty of all energetic constructs. This is the ultimate Silence. So, this Silence, which is your truest nature, this one does not move. This one does not morf into anything else.

Although we can say that the appearance of Consciousness is like the morfing of an aspect of it. But the mental silence, it can sometimes become mental noise again. The verbal silence can also become verbal speaking again. So these phenomenal experiences of silence are also coming and going, as all other phenomena is coming and going. But the Silence which is an attribute of your truest nature, the reality of what You Are, that Silence is unchanging.

Q: The experience over here is…, I don’t think it’s the third one yet, but it’s the mind; it’s really been quieting down. And the silence is really loud. Like, really loud. It’s like ‘Ahhhh! It’s so loud, the silence!’ I don’t know, maybe that’s the third kind of silence.

A: And you don’t have to worry so much about the distinguishing of which. I just wanted to define so that the potential for future confusion is not there.

So as you’re coming more and more in satsang, you’ll find more and more naturalness in the second silence. It’s like you had this one imaginary friend who pretended to be your best friend, and always chatting, always making interpretations and judgments about everything. Now it has gone quiet. You have lost your interest in listening to it so much, so it seems to have gotten a lot quieter. Sometimes it feels a bit strange. ‘This is just too quiet’. [Laughs] ‘Say something’. It could be like this.

But we get used to this more and more; more and more to this sense of mental quietness, mental peace. And even if a lot of thoughts come, since they don’t have that power over you, mostly they will not disturb your silence. This silence will become more of the default state. But there is openness for mental noise to come. We’re not resisting the mind in any way.

Q: Okay, thank you.

There’s a very beautiful passage which I shared from Wu Hsin. (I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing his name right). I feel in this one passage is encapsulated the entirety of, or at least most of what we speak about in satsang. Maybe I can read it. And then if something comes up for some of you, you can also share about it.

The Principle which is in you,

is talking to you through this Wu Hsin.

Nothing can subjugate you to which you have not assigned value.

Be like space.

Regardless of what appears in it, it isn’t affected.

Existence is one without any second.

Only in becoming apparent,

It is obliged to divide into an apparent seer & an apparently seen.

In that way, Being is the beginning of duality,

space and time, limited and temporary.

To see that everything simply arises in Consciousness

is a liberating disposition.

When you identify with the body, its problems become yours.

The farther one moves away from the self-referential point of view,

the closer one comes to reality.

Differences in appearance and expression may be there,

but they do not matter.

Finally, it is discerned that one is always Knowing,

never the known.

There is only the Greatness, appearing as everything.

This is enlightenment,

the realization of the is-ness of What Is,

the where of What Is,

and the when of What Is.

Wu Hsin

A: “The Principle which is in you, is talking to you, through this Wu Hsin.”

Sangha: I feel it is like I am pretending to be a certain level of development of Consciousness or something in the play and a part of play is there are other forms which are also playing as more wisdom or more clarity. So I am speaking or encouraging myself to expand.

A: “The Principle which is in you, is talking to you, through this Wu Hsin.”

So, it’s very familiar. Actually, it’s your own Presence, your own Satguru which is talking through the body of the Master; your own Consciousness.

“Nothing can subjugate you to which you have not assigned value.”

Sangha: If you don’t believe your next thought, it cannot lead you into idea of separation. So this is basically saying that ‘Don’t believe what the mind is saying or don’t assign any value to this idea of separation’.

A: “Nothing can subjugate you to which you have not assigned value.”

So, to what can we assign value?

Sangha: To either thoughts or interpretation about what is happening,

A: And even the interpretation is what?

Sangha: The thoughts itself. And the one who is assigning value is nothing but Consciousness,

A: Yes, so it says “Nothing can subjugate you to which you have not assigned value.”

Therefore, if we don’t assign this meaning, this belief, this value to the next thought, to the interpretation of ‘What Is’ like he said very beautifully, then nothing can subjugate us. This is very beautiful, because first he said that the Guru is your own Presence which is speaking through this construct called Wu Hsin at the moment. Then straight he gets to the end of suffering, saying “Nothing can subjugate you to which you have not assigned value.” So, therefore nothing can make you suffer without your belief.

Very beautiful. Then he says:

“Be like space.

Regardless of what appears in it, it isn’t affected.

Existence is one without any second”.

A: How to be like space?

Sangha: Don’t touch anything that appears or don’t hold anything that appears.

A: What does that mean?

Sangha: Not to identify with anything that appears.

A: How not to identify?

Sangha: By not believing yourself to be anything that you can see.

A: So in the appearance, when we start to call it ‘me’ or ‘mine’, when we attach to it in this way, (my life, my family, my Sangha, my Satsang), we start putting this ‘my’ or ‘me’ to it, that is the attachment. But even this attachment is impossible without belief in thought. The only way to identify…, we cannot identify with something without our belief in it.

So ‘Be like space’ is actually not a doing. We cannot be doing the ‘I am just being like space’. You are like space unless you are believing otherwise.

“Regardless of what appears in It.”

So whatever appears, whatever comes and goes, we don’t say ‘me, mine’. We don’t give it meaning of ‘This should not be, this should be more like this’. We are not judging it, we are not interpreting it; not believing the interpretation.

Then automatically it is so. It is like this.

Sangha: [Inaudible]

A: “Existence is one without any second.”

When we are not labeling, when we are not taking the interpretations of these thoughts then there is only Oneness. We cannot separate something without first labeling it, or interpreting it.

“Only in becoming apparent,

It is obliged to divide into an apparent seer & an apparently seen.

In that way, Being is the beginning of duality,

space and time, limited and temporary.”

A: What does it mean ‘only in becoming apparent’?

Sangha: [Quoting Nisargadatta Maharaj] “For the concept of Unity to exist, first there must be duality.” So it’s like, as it is, we are so home. So the idea of coming home doesn’t even arise. [Inaudible] In truth there is not even Unity because there is no separation.

“To see that everything simply arises in Consciousness

is a liberating disposition.”

A: So that’s why when we check: What are the boundaries of our Being?

Everything is experienced within this Being.

Is anything outside of You-as-Consciousness? Once we see that, everything is in this One Consciousness, One Being. It says “To see that everything simply arises in Consciousness is a liberating disposition.” Because then the sense of separation is not there, then the interpretation is not believed. To see that everything simply arises in Consciousness is a liberating disposition.

“When you identify with the body, its problems become yours.

The farther one moves away from the self referential point of view,

the closer one comes to reality.”

A: Now terminology there can be a bit confusing, because in traditional Advaita we refer to the Self as Reality. But in Buddhism, maybe even in Zen, when they say ‘self-referential’ in this way they are referring to some ‘appearance’ as ‘my self’. When we move away from this perspective, either the body or the mind, it is no longer referred to as self; the closer we come to the reality of the Being.

“Differences in appearance and expression may be there,

but they do not matter.”

It is funny that just in previous sentence there is a difference in expression. ‘The self’ is referred to differently. But ultimately that does not matter. Also at another level it could mean that it could have different ‘appearances’ and expressions appearing and disappearing but they do not matter.

“Finally, it is discerned that one is always Knowing,

never the known.

There is only the Greatness, appearing as everything.”

Sangha: Its like even this entire Universe and this realm within which it expresses itself and any other realm which could express any other form, Consciousness, any other dimension, any other level of expression or experience is absolutely no use unless we know it. Actually the only thing we can say exists is the knowing of it. Because if we are not here to know it then it does not exist, no matter how grand or spectacular it is.

A: It is always Knowing, never the known. This is very important. Just the other day maybe we had a satsang that was titled ‘If it can be known, then it is not You’.

So it is the Knowingness Itself that knows even Presence. Only from that point can we say something like ‘Being is the beginning of duality’. Not from a personal perspective, not even from the perspective of Being itself, not even as God ‘I Am that I Am’ can we say that Being is the beginning of Duality.

Only from the perspective of this Knowingness itself. Never the object that is known, including the knowing of Being itself.

“It is discerned that one is always Knowing.”

… that I am always this Knowing, prior to even ‘I Am’…, I am the Knowing, never the known.

“There is only the Greatness, appearing as everything.”

This Knowingness itself is appearing as everything, including Consciousness.

“This is enlightenment,

the realization of the is-ness of What Is,

the where of What Is,

and the when of What Is.”

A: It is very nice, isn’t it?

Sangha: Can it also be interpreted as ‘No object can ever be truly known, can ever be truly touched. It is only the Knowing that can touch’? Can it be interpreted like this?

A: Yes, but even if it is not this line, I feel great beauty in what you are say. Because everything is known as the Knowing itself.

Q: Father there’s a feeling of complete breakdown over here. Yeah I do, I try to isolate myself from the rest of the world and I don’t feel like going out. I just don’t like interacting with people. I’m not pursuing any hobby.

A: Yes. So, all of this is happening. If you don’t label it ‘breakdown’ then it’s just a simple dropping away of some activities, some socialization; and sometimes it’s very natural for this to happen. As all the prior conditioning is being released then, mostly in the outward appearance of what is appearing and what is not appearing in this life seems to change. Nothing wrong with that. The only thing we have to check is that ‘Who is this ‘I’ that I continually refer to myself as? I don’t feel like this, I don’t want to do this’. Does that have any reality; this ‘I’?

[Silence]

Is there an ‘I’ which is breaking down? Is there an ‘I’ which is breaking down?

Q: But Father, I can’t go on like this, I mean… [Chuckles]

A: Who can’t go on like this? [Laughter] Okay, you have two options. One option is to tell me who the ‘I’ is. Second option is that instead of using the word ‘I’ use the word God. So God can’t go on like this? I feel this is now a very good thing. Until we get to where the ‘I’ is pointing, let’s replace ‘I’ with God.

Q: Father, I have some doubts, like…,

A: Are there any? God has some doubts?

Q: Okay, okay, God has some doubts, [Laughter] whether God would really realize the Truth or whether I have to remain frustrated like this.

A: So, this Truth that we are looking for, the Truth that we are looking for is the reality of the ‘I’. You see, it is not an object to be found outside. Because we have found many objects and all objects only give us momentary pleasure, momentary happiness, momentary joy. So it cannot be the search for an object. The Truth must be something which I am.

The mind will resist this question it will say ‘But what about my peace? What about my frustration? This is not helping’. [Chuckles] Until we come to clarity about who you are. So that is why satsang is different from most other interactions, most other spaces in this world. Because for most other spaces in this world there is something to be offered to this ‘I’. You go to school, and the idea of ‘you’ learns something at school, you go to relationships so that you, (the idea that you have about yourself), feels a sense of companionship, experiences some pleasure; all of these things. You need some money so that the idea you have about yourself feels a sense of security. It is only in satsang like this where we are not offering anything to this idea of ‘you’. I can’t even offer you the end of your frustration, you see? I can only offer you this mirror; who wants the end of frustration? If you can look for this one, then I can tell you that those who have found the Truth about who they are have rarely ever said ‘I’m frustrated’…, only as a joke, only sometimes.

I’ve not seen anyone come to the end of their frustrations without discovering what they are. Who is witnessing the mind’s response to what I am saying? Is that also the mind? Are you that one which is speaking the words of the mind? Or are you that one which is witnessing the words of the mind?

[Silence]

What’s happening now?

Q: Witnessing.

A: Okay, so if you’re Witnessing, is Witnessing also frustrated? Is the Witnessing breaking down? Is the Witnessing frustrated? Is the Witnessing worried about what is happening to your life?

Q: It’s the image which is getting frustrated.

A: Yes, yes, yes. This image is dancing in front of you; sometimes happy, sometimes frustrated, sometimes worried, sometimes…, all kinds of things. But you are not this image. You are that which Sees this image. Once you recognize the stability of this Witnessing, the unchanging-ness of this Awareness, then there is not so much concern about how the image is dancing around.

Q: Father, it’s difficult.

A: Who is saying this?

Q: It’s the ego.

A: Yes. The ego is what? The ego is this belief in the separation that ‘I exist as a Prachi’. But are you the ego? So the ego has a name called Prachi which pretends to have a form like this body. But are you the ego? Who is aware even of the ego?

[Silence]

Then mind will come with all kinds of resistance: ‘It’s too difficult, I’m not getting it, what’s the point of all this? How will this help me? Will I become enlightened if I do this?’ [Chuckles] All kinds of things it will say, but you can allow them to come and go. The moment you say ‘It is the ego’ that means you are already saying that ‘I’m not the ego. I am aware that something is the ego’. So keep the ego also aside. What is left?

[Silence]

Are you just the ego or is there something else also? If you have no idea about yourself, and you never had a name, if you did not believe that this is your form, the body, would you Be? Would you still exist or not? Without a name, without any sense that ‘This is my body’ is there anything more to you than this?

Every cell of this body is changing every few years, so where are You in the body?  Every cell is being replaced. Right now, if I take away some cells, will you go along with those cells or will you still remain? At which point would You go? What is it that You are?

If I had some future technology which could replace all…, everything that is in the body; one by one, limb by limb we exchange this body for a new one, then what remains here? Although the body is brand new now, what is it that remains? Would You go along with the old body?

Everything; brain, heart, everything been changed. One by one we are replacing everything, okay? Everything is changing to a new one. Did You go along with that which has been thrown away and discarded? Or are you still here in this new body? Where in the body are You?

Q: Don’t know actually.

A: Yes, so ‘Don’t know’ is very good, at least. ‘Don’t know’ means ‘I don’t know whether I am the body, I don’t know whether I am Prachi’. Then don’t refer to yourself as that. At least while we don’t know, let’s not refer to ourselves as that. And this period of ‘Don’t know’ can seem like a bit of a struggle for the mind because can come to the conclusion that ‘I am the body/mind’ .You say ‘I cannot be these organs of the body, these limbs of the body. I cannot be these thoughts which are coming and going. Who I am…, that is aware of the coming and going of thoughts? Thought comes, we say ‘The mind is there’. Thought goes. There is no thought, we say ‘It is the no mind’. Who is aware of mind and no mind? When no attention is on my ear, then no ear exists; when attention goes to the ear then the ear exists. Am I in the ear?

Q: Father, whatever is understood is being understood by the…,

A: By the?

Q: Ego.

A: How is the ego understanding? Who is the ego? Who is the one that is understanding? Okay, let’s see. Who is the one that is understanding? What is your definition of ego?

Q: It’s the image.

A: Yes. So this image, like a painting, can it understand something? Can a painting understand something?

[Silence]

The mind is saying ‘I’m not getting it. What’s happening?’ [Chuckles] So what I was saying is that don’t draw any conclusions yet. Remain in the not-knowing and speak from what you See, directly from what you See, not from what the mind is saying.

It is this direct Seeing of what You Are. It is the direct allowing of thoughts to come and go which will help you when difficult situations arise. Because even in the most difficult situation, unless we are believing our thoughts it cannot cause suffering. Even in the most difficult situations if we remain in the clarity of who we are we cannot suffer. So actually I understand what you meant when you said ‘It is the ego which is understanding’. So we don’t want that kind of understanding, which means only that it is the mind which is picking up these concepts more and more.

Here what is happening now; all concepts from the mind are being taken away from it actually. And we are left with the True understand which is not mental; the True Knowing which is not mental, the True Seeing which is Here Now. You are witnessing this entire world as Witnessing Itself. You are aware of the play of existence as Awareness itself.

So okay, now I have told you this, that you are That which is aware of this world and you don’t exist as a person. Now you have to prove me wrong. Find some evidence that this is not true.

Will you look into this? I have said that ‘You are Awareness, that is aware even of existence, that is aware of every phenomena coming and going. All you have to do now is prove me wrong. So next time that we speak, just tell me how this is not true. Don’t try to find the truth. Presume that what I’m sharing is not True, and find out how it is not True. Sometimes we have to flip the game around.

Tell me how you are not Awareness but you are actually a person. After looking for a while, after inquiring deeply into it, tell me. Tell me how you are ego or a person and are not Awareness.

Actually over here we have Lionel who was not physically not feeling very well, his body was not feeling well over the last few days. And he said something very beautiful. He said that when this was happening that all this, Awareness, Consciousness, all of this was nonsense.

He said I only remembered one thing that you said ‘When life hits you, no concept helps. All conceptual knowledge is completely worthless’. It doesn’t help. You can keep repeating to yourself  ‘I am just the witness, I am just the witness’. It doesn’t help. ‘I am only Awareness, I am the Being in which all of this is happening’. It’s just conceptual knowledge.

And I know this first hand. That was the story I was sharing that; conceptually what was needed to be known was known many years ago even here. Even some glimpses of what was true was experienced. But not until I came to Moojiji’s feet did I realize the permanence of the Self, the temporary nature of the ego. So if you had asked me even before I had met him, all the words could have possibly been similar but they would just be coming mostly from a mental place.

Even some of you know this story, that for a few years there was a struggle to find this ‘I Am-ness’. Because [Nisargadatta Maharaj’s book] ‘I Am That’ had such a strong influence here; mostly strong because I knew that something sensed that it is true, what is being shared. But also very frustrating because I could never fathom what is this ‘I Am’. In every Satsang inevitably Maharaj would talk about the sense I Am.

So then what happened is that in being fully frustrated about this ‘What is this I Am? What is this I Am?’ one day when that question just dropped and I was sitting in an auto rickshaw without doing anything, without any inquiry, it was naturally so clear that this Being has always been here.

And the mind, (the trickster that it is) comes and says ‘How could you miss this so long? How could you miss this?’

But even this sense, this sense of Being, the sense of existence was handed over to the mind most likely; so that even if you were to ask me then ‘So, who are you in reality?’ I would have most likely said that ‘I am that Awareness that is even aware of Being’. But it was not digested food, til I met Guruji and I saw that this is reality: that I am the Self and the movements of this body/mind mechanism are just Appearances appearing in my own Being

That is why very often we say, (even I say), that ‘Let’s not be in a rush to share’. Even with true insight you find me not responding to sharing which is fresh. Because this is the critical time, you can say. And if everybody starts indulging you right now, very easily that can become the spiritual ego without even realizing. Very easily you can take on this idea that ‘I got it’. Then it becomes next to impossible to get through to this play which plays like this. One of the most difficult ideas to dislodge verbally is the idea that ‘I got it’. Then only suffering has to come and dislodge it.

And before meeting Guruji actually in 2009, I have said ‘I got it’ many times. And after meeting him, I have never said…, I don’t recall saying ‘I got it’. Because truly there is nothing that ‘I got’. Maybe at best what we can say is that ‘I lost it’.

What did we lose? The false idea that I am a person. The concept of being a separate ego was lost. So did we really get it, did we get anything? Was it an additive process in anyway? It is only a destructive process, which destroys the non-existent. So don’t allow this idea that ‘I got it. I got the pinnacle of the truth’ or something like that to set in.

A better proclamation is that ‘I cannot find this sense of separation’. There can be great disbelief that it even existed here.

I find great wonder in this presumption. You find great wonder when you look around in this world and say ‘It was so prevalent and it was so prevalent here’…, this idea that ‘I am a separate individual, an entity that exists, an entity that own this body, that owns my relationship, that owns my bank account,  that owns my future plans’…, that constant [search for] freedom, or is not finding freedom. Who is this one?

The question ‘Who am I?’ is one of the most beautiful gifts in this world. Because not only does it wipe away all the false but it is also a beautiful pointer to the true recognition of what we are.

In this moment everything from the past has already been thrown away. Don’t try to even throw away anything. It is already gone. But very quickly, for most of you, the invitation will come from the mind to come and dance with it, with any of its ideas. Just allow this invitation to come and go. It will take many shapes and sizes, it will even say ‘I can’t do this’. It will go ‘Oh, he said I am not the doer, so how can I do this?’ Just allow it to come and go.

Just keep the intention to allow it to go; it is enough. If you feel like there is a power you have called ‘intention’ then just keep the intention to allow it to come and go. It is enough.

Become used to this allowing.

You are not trying to become the witness.

Witnessing is happening naturally.

You are not even trying to control you attention.

Attention can also be allowed to move around.

Allow everything. Drop any sense of control.

This simple allowing, this simple openness is the end of suffering.

No mental understanding is enough. When the rubber hits the road, when the body becomes sick, or our relationship is going to pieces or we are out of money, when we realize that this entire seeking is a sham, not getting us anywhere; when these things happen if you only have a concept of who we are, if we only have an idea about it, if we are still victim to the mind, we still feel tormented by our thoughts then that is not the end of suffering.

Today let’s not talk about freedom! [Laughs] Today let’s not talk about freedom, maybe we can taste our freedom instead. [Smiles]

Just like this. [Silence] Enough talk!

There can come some fear. There can come some fear about not believing our thoughts. Just allow it to come! Allow all thoughts to come and go, all emotions to come and go. Don’t give words to anything at all unless they come from the Satguru within you. Otherwise satsang itself we will use to perpetuate our stories, to perpetuate our special-ness.

Just like this, can we allow all thoughts to come and go? And if there is fear about this, instead of running and hiding behind these thoughts, can we face this wobbliness? Can we see how long it will last?

Taste your freedom Now!

And don’t be in a rush to speak about it.

Don’t be in a rush to be seen as free.

Let go of this world!

Let go of this body!

Let go of your thoughts, emotions!

Let go of your attention!

Give up your beliefs!

You are free, here and now!

[Silence]

Don’t accept any conclusions, questions, doubts, ideas, utterances from the mind!

Allow them to come and go.

Let me not hear you as a person any more. Let me hear you only as my Satguru!

Let me not see you posing as a mouth for this ego.

Let me see you shining as the light of Presence!

May you no longer believe that which is not original to You!

May you forget all your ideas!

It doesn’t matter who I am.

It only matters who you are!

There is no need to post-mortem this world of appearances, which is born and dead inside you already.

Who are you?

When were you born?

How will you die?

Who will know your death, except yourself?

Don’t give any energy to this mind. Don’t activate this mind.

Hand over this body to existence!

Hand over your words to your being!

Let go of all trivial pursuits!

Stop running around looking for the Self, which is ever-present!

Don’t try to become something.

The ‘something’ will never be greater than God!

So this week, at least [Laughs], I am not going to accept any reports, any testimonies, any ideas [Silence] and neither should you. That’s more important actually! Enough talking, talking, talking. We’ll keep going like this for 100 years, Monday to Friday. [Laughs]

Let me show you the possibility, the ease, with which you can let go of this mind!

You are being introduced to your God-Presence,

which doesn’t want to be seen,

which is in no rush to be heard,

is not being humble,

is not proclaiming anything!

As we let go of our minds, we will come to this Seeing, of undeniable intuitive Presence, which will then use your words, your mouth.

[Silence]

So, if I understand your question, what you say is that there is a ‘me’ that wants to find freedom. Now should I follow the instruction to get to freedom or should I just not do anything to get to freedom? This is the essence of the question I am understanding. Because you say that ‘The master is saying this, this, and this but somewhere inside something is saying no-no not this, just nothing’. But how will this ‘me’ come to the freedom? If I tell you that this ‘me’ does not exist. Because what is happening otherwise is that the ‘me’ takes on the concept of doer ship and non-doer-ship and says ‘But even this is doing. I don’t want to do’.

Q: [Inaudible]

Yes, but this I is who? [Silence] Which one is the I? You say that ‘I see the sense of me’. So what else does this I want? This I has a problem with anything? Does it want freedom? The one that Sees the sense of ‘me’, is there something missing for that one? Is it affected if some feeling of depression is there? Is it depressed, the I? Is it asking ‘What should I do or not do?’ Not asking?

So this one, which is wondering whether it is hiding, which is wondering whether it is hiding, it is escaping, you being lazy by avoiding any instruction; this one doesn’t exist. If it exists, you show me. Where is it? Who is there that could be hiding?

[Silence]

The mind is very smart. You see, the mind says ‘I am not the doer; yet all the pointing is telling me to do something. But you are not the doer’. So the mind has got you into this loop, where like Amba was saying, the deeper urge is for self-discovery, but the concept of non-doer-ship has been taken up by the mind. So it says ‘No, to find myself back why must I do something?’ It’s true so right now, don’t do anything and tell me who you are.

Q: Nothing.

Nothing. But is it a nothing where something is missing; that nothing? No missing, nothing.

Now from this place, can you say if you are hiding or not hiding? Is there some fear about this? In this nothingness, what is happening? Fear came. So did the nothing become something? Fear came, so because fear came, did the nothing become something?

Q: Nothing.

Nothing. So who wants the fear to go? Who wants it to go?

Q: [Inaudible]

Fear is coming, then what happens? Something wants to be active, wants to react. OK, who is that one? Just some energies are playing out. In this play of energies, who are you? Did you go from nothing to becoming something now? Then, who could be hiding in this? Who could be hiding? Is there someone who could be hiding?

Q: No.

Now, this nothing; does it need any thoughts to be nothing? Do you need to believe a thought to be nothing? So, when you believe a thought, that is the doing actually. What is the doing? What is the doing? When the thought says ‘I am not free yet’ and we give it our belief. Nothing really happened, but we pretend as if ‘I am an entity which is not free’. You see? Even when we say ‘I am free’ it is the same thing. So if it was just conceptual, then it is talking about an entity that does not exist.

Q: [Inaudible]

Who must do effort? To come back means that you left. If you leave, then you come back. You go back to Tiru and you say ‘I come back’. So what left, that has come back? Who left? Leave and show, how you leave it. Create some distance. Let’s see.

[Silence]. Can you leave?

Q: [Inaudible]

Why is it not easy? Yes, even if the concept comes, have You left? Then what do you have to do to come back? If you cannot leave, what do you have to do to come back? To pretend to leave is the doing. How would you pretend to leave? By leaving with a thought. Is there any other way to pretend? You put your attention there, there, there, anywhere; have you left?

To be able to pretend to leave ourSelf and pretend to be a person, is the power of belief.

Q: [Inaudible]

You are actively ‘doing’ the non-doing. You are ‘doing’ the not-doing, which is as good as doing. You see? You see what I am saying? I can repeat. Because for the mind it is ‘doing’ or ‘not-doing’. Both are actually doing. You are doing the not doing. You see? So if you neither ‘do’ nor ‘not-do’ and remain neutral, then attention is moving on itself.

Q: [Inaudible]

It’s created a fear behind the movement of attention. So now it is making you do the not-doing. Are you with me? It’s like saying that ‘I am sitting on my bed all day’. That is also a doing. I am sitting on the bed all day. You see. So when I am ‘not-doing’ in this way, I am ‘doing’ the ‘not-doing’. So don’t ‘do’ the ‘not-doing’…, or ‘do’ the ‘doing’. Just remain neutral and allow everything to come and go. Because instantly what is happening is that I am saying…, I am giving you a pointing, but the mind is saying ‘But I don’t want to do’. You see? I don’t want to do.

Yeah something, some resistance is coming which is saying ‘You can’t do’. Okay. But when we say that ‘I should not do’, then we are ‘doing’ the ‘not- doing’. Actually the master’s pointing…, He doesn’t want you to ‘do’ anything. You see? And He doesn’t want you to ‘not-do’ anything. This is neutrality.

So it is impossible for us to understand like this. You just have to see it. Hands are moving, am I doing it? No, it’s just moving. But if I say ‘I should not be doing anything’ then I keep like this. Then I am ‘doing’ the ‘not-moving’. Allowing everything to flow naturally, neither trying to do nor trying not to do. You see? Just a happening. That’s why the trouble with the concept of non-doer-ship is that the mind wants to become…, or this resistive energy wants to become the non-doer. Because you say ‘I heard from the teacher that you are not the doer, therefore I will not do’. That is doing the not doing.

It can become so subtle…

So, because the pointer to not believe your next thought, or the pointer to inquire who am I, is not a doing. We don’t have to do anything unnatural.

But that which is resisting the inquiry, that which is resisting the teacher’s pointing, is also not natural. You see? It’s trying to keep itself alive as the resistance, by giving you some subtle meaning. ‘I don’t want to do. I just want to sit quiet’. That’s also a doing. Then don’t ‘do’ sit quiet also. Why you want to sit quiet? Don’t do that also. In this way then it is neither this nor that. Then nothing. It all falls, you see. So don’t do the pointings and don’t not-do them also. Because both are doing.

You don’t know. When the pointing comes, you don’t know. Whether you look in the direction of the pointing or not, you don’t know. Allow it to not-know. Come to that state of not-knowing. Don’t know. Something is saying something…, something, something, something. Don’t know. Whether it knows or doesn’t know; don’t know. That is true non-doer-ship. That is true openness, true allowing, true acceptance. When we try to say that ‘I will not do because I am the non-doer and I want to sit quietly’…, that is also doer-ship. Not knowing in the next moment whether speaking will happen or sitting quiet will happen, that is fresh. Any plan is not God’s plan.

So if some subtle energy comes and it gives you some whisper in your ear: ‘Now you just be quiet, now you do this, now you do that’…, just let it also come and go. Say ‘I don’t know. I am surrendered to God, I don’t know’. If you have something to say, say it to God. That is surrender.

The substance of what has been shared here has not changed:

We are not this ‘person’.
We are not enclosed in the body/mind.
The Presence of Being Here is undeniable.
and
You are That who is Aware of even this Being.
and
That which is Awareness cannot be bound in any way.

All of this is a play of Consciousness:
believing itself to be a person,
or
recognizing Itself, Its Source to be Awareness Itself.

So, the question to Consciousness is: Which way do you want to play?

Spiritual seeker, spiritual finder, mere person?
You are none of this.
~ ~ ~
What we are discovering is such a giant leap for the mind that it tries to box it in, in some way. It tries to make it more worldly in a sense. Because what we are discovering about ourself is that we are truly out of this world. So in our attempt to understand it, many times we just, with our spiritual concepts then again put this spiritual box around ourselves, the spiritual identity about ourselves. Because in reality, we are not located here; we’re not to be found here, in this realm of time and space. It is not where we are. And the mind can only understand this realm, or at least pretend to understand this realm. So, like this, as if one day it will show itself to be an objective appearance, but it is bound to be disappointed.

And I don’t know, (I have to say I don’t know), what it is that allows us to leave this mind behind and just look at what we are. That’s why Bhagavan called it Grace. Because if there was a specific recipe, then it would be so simple; we’d just publish the recipe for freedom. Anyone can do just this, then do this, then do this. So the best we can do is keep pointing, using some arrows to say ‘this way, this way’…, knowing fully well that it cannot be located in a particular direction.

What is it that be-fools us to not give up this mind? How many tries does it take using the mind; does it take for us to ultimately give up? Nobody knows this number. What happens is that we have this sense of carrying this seeker identity on our backs, this mind on our backs, and we want to sneak into the gate of freedom.

‘What can I do to not go with the mind?’ This is the common objective. This mind just doesn’t go. But we never said it will go. We never said the mind will go. What is going to happen is that the mind doesn’t stop. So what is it that should happen?

It only becomes irrelevant.

So the trouble with this is that it is the energy that has been given towards this. Now that has to become irrelevant. Anything that it is saying, it comes to a point of irrelevance. So, when that point comes, nobody knows. I can keep saying til the end of the world ‘Don’t believe your next thought, don’t believe your next thought’ but when that will actually happen, nobody knows.

We keep pointing to Consciousness, to Awareness, but when it is recognized that I Am This, and I can be nothing else…

It’s just like saying ‘When is the time, our children; when will the child drop their belief in the imaginary friend?’ Nobody can predict. So when is it that we will drop our belief and say ‘Must be Now, must be Now’. [Inaudible]

But the fact is that even with any pointing, including ‘Don’t believe your next thought’…, we very quickly believe that ‘I must do this now’. We pick up the one who is not believing thought, the idea of someone who is not believing their thoughts.

So as long as we are looking for some mental solution to this conundrum, it is not put out yet. And there are times when it doesn’t appear. [Inaudible]

It is this giving up on the mind, saying ‘Okay, say whatever you want, I don’t care!’ That’s going to be the end of conditioning, end of [the effects of] conditioning.

But we keep using the mind. The mind says ‘Well, this is what I feel about this, this is what I feel about that’. We’re just play-acting non-stop.

I don’t feel that in 10 years the substance of what will be shared from here can really change. Only this. The hair …, [will change]. [Laughter] But the substance of what has been said…, although the expression has changed over the last 3 years also, but the substance of what has been shared is not changing.

What is it fundamentally? That:

We are not this ‘person’.
We are not enclosed in the body/mind.
The Presence of Being Here is undeniable.
and
You are That who is Aware of even this Being.
and
That which is Awareness cannot be bound in any way.

All of this is a play of Consciousness:
believing itself to be a person,
or
recognizing Itself, Its Source to be Awareness Itself.

So, the question to Consciousness is: Which way do you want to play?

Spiritual seeker, spiritual finder, mere person?
You are none of this.

I don’t feel that the recognition should be trouble, using the simple pointers: ‘Can you stop being? Are you aware now?’ Those of you who have been in satsang for a while are not finding the recognition to be trouble. When checking, I feel the recognition is very clear. It is just that this conditioning still seems to hold sway.

Ultimately, you relax.
Those who have been in satsang for some time, I’m quite sure they would testify and say that ‘When I check, I know that this is true, what you say’.

Then what is it that is not done? What is still left to be done? And what could actually help to get that done?

If God wants to play as name and form, as spiritual seeker, as enlightened person, as student, as teacher, then God will play as all of that. In His game, in this realm alone, seemingly He is playing as 7 billion different expressions…, every expression unique; the different ideas about themselves. 7 billion unique expressions of the One Being…, with everyone mostly believing ‘This happened to me, this is my story, this is my life, this is my plan’. Some of us also have plans for freedom.

But God is just Here.

If you keep all knowledge aside it seems like, at the moment, I don’t know who I am. And you were saying, ‘Who is this I that doesn’t know?’ That’s exactly what we’re looking at.

So it can be that, for a while, this inquiry can seem like it is an attack actually, in some way. Because some resistance, some mind will come and say ‘But, but, but…, sure I know all of this stuff.  Don’t presume that I don’t know!’ It’s not a presumption at all actually. It’s just that we’re looking at something together. Both starting from the perspective that ‘I don’t know what’s going on’. Fresh. Completely fresh right now. So it is not a conversation of a teacher and a student. It is just one contemplation together, which is fresh, when we’re starting from this unknowingness to see if something can be reported from this ‘unknown’.

So, what do we find? We find that the appearance of various sensations, some sounds, all of that is here. These are perceived. But the perceiver, we don’t know. There is a perceiving, but who is the perceiver? We don’t know. So all of this. All these different appearances are perceived. Sounds, sensations of the body, some sense of emotions, some hunger, some thoughts.

Is that all that is perceived? No. There’s also Presence, this sense that I exist, I Am. This Presence is also perceived. And as I contemplate this Presence, as I continue to perceive this Presence, I find that although it seems to emanate from this physical location called the heart, I don’t find that it is restricted to any physical location. Can I look and see where it ends…, the sense that ‘I exist’ or ‘I am Presence’?

As I am looking, I see that all that is experienced is sensed within the same Presence, same Being. All sounds, all visuals, everything is here. Nothing is ‘there’. Even the sense of ‘something there’ is being perceived only here within this Being. And I find no boundaries of This. It needs no thought to confirm what It is. It is just present as Presence itself and everything which is experienced seems to appear in the same space of Being; This that I Am.

Right now, as I see this, I find no way to make this go away. I cannot stop Being, which is just Presence. And yet, there is the memory of a time where even this was not, and then I woke up and ‘this’ woke up. Even this memory is arising within this Being.

Now That which is perceiving even this Presence, That which knows that even this Presence is here; what is the separation between That and myself? There is awareness of this Presence. And, there is awareness of this Awareness. I am aware of this Presence. Does this Awareness belong to an entity? I find no entity here. I find nothing here with any attributes. I find no start or end to this Seeing, this Awareness. I see now that I Am This, prior to the sense of Being.

This is what remains. Here I find no up or down, no in-front-of or behind. I find no movement of time. And the light of Consciousness seems to be nothing except a tiny light, flickering. How is it that That, which seems so limitless, that which encompasses the entire universe, now seems like nothing but a tiny light?

I am aware…, as nothing but Awareness itself. As this I, I remain. And yet, now there is a flow of attention towards the sensations, which do not touch me at all. There’s attention towards these thoughts, which are not speaking about me. There’s attention towards the sounds in this room which are heard, but I do not find myself in this room. I remain prior to all of this. Attention can come back to this Presence, and I see that I witness even this.

I know that I am and I know that I know.

I am aware of this sense of existence and I am aware that I am aware.

What would this mind, which is only used to reporting about objects within the existence, say about Me? Where inside this bundle of flesh and blood will I be found, when I Am That which is prior to the light of God? Did I forget who I was? That can never be. That which has only been ‘This’: there is no forgetting or remembering here. And yet, in the play of this ‘I-Am-ness’, in the play that ‘I exist’…, I see this play of forgetting and remembering.

The creation and dissolution of this entire universe is only dependent on the presence or absence of My Presence. Even if a million such universes were to come and go, I remain untouched by them.

Q: There has been an experience since Zmar [Silent retreat online with Sri Mooji] of the Presence here; and then the life is out here in front of me. And there is a sense of getting sucked into the life but then observing that and then coming back into Presence. Which has been really nice, very lovely. I am feeling very light. And I noticed that now it is nighttime and I am tired and it is harder to do that. So I wondered if you have words about that.

A: The simple pointer that I have often used is the question: Can you stop Being now? And actually when I ask it is an invitation to try and stop Being.

Q: Yes, I can’t stop Being. I notice that the body is tired and the Being is present

A: Yes, yes. So if Being is present, is it present with some effort?

Q: No, no, the Being is not efforting. The Body is efforting to staying awake but the Being is present.

A: So it is effortlessly present, this Presence.

Q: Yes, it is just Being here.

A: Exactly. Now is there any other entity or persona or something which is really present, except as an idea?

Q: No, not at all. They are all ideas and I can see them almost like a screen in front of me. Like there is this whole force field in front of me that isn’t me, that is ‘my life’.

A: But this ‘me’ is which one? Is it the Presence or is it a separate entity?

Q: [Laughter, Loud Laughter, Clapping of Hands]

A: We say that ‘This Presence is effortlessly present, Being is effortlessly here. Then we say that there is nobody else present, this one is only here. And then we say that there is a ‘me’…, ‘This is happening to me’. Which ‘me’ is this? [Laughter]

Q: Okay, so the me is out there. The me isn’t me! The me isn’t me! [Laughter] The me is not the ‘I Am’. The ‘I Am’ is able to see the me. [Laughter] It’s all effortless except for that stuff out here that I look at. That I call ‘Lucia’ and it’s called ‘Lucia’s life’ and that I have been holding up for all these years.

A: And the funny thing is that we cannot see this ‘me’ even like we can see a computer or we see a table, yet that gets so much of our belief. We cannot even find it at the molecular level.

Q: But there is an imagination of it. I mean I can see….

A: So what? Even the imagination is not very clear. It’s just like a blur.

Q: No, it’s not.

A: Like we can imagine an orange quite clearly. You are in California so you can imagine an orange quite clearly.

Now, this one, as long as we keep putting our ‘I’ over there, and we say that ‘I need to fix something for this ‘me’ (by either doing this or doing that or any practice), then it is bound to fail. Because a practice, (you can call it ‘Staying with the I Am’ or even the sense of not believing our next thought), is not an instruction for this non-existent entity. Because that which does not exist, what could it actually do?

Q: I don’t know. It makes up movies. It has a little movie projector and it’s just making these little videos. It is pressing these little buttons from all these little videos, from maybe in the past or the future. It is a little film director.

A: We get caught up in these movies because this mind is so much of a soap opera queen. It makes a tele-novella out of our life.

Q: Just been going on for years. It’s on re-runs. [Laughter]

A: It’s just these poor re-runs, poor re-runs; partner, money, health of the body and freedom.

Q: Yup, yup, that’s it. When you put it like that earlier I thought ‘You. That’s it, that’s it, there is nothing else’. Maybe family; relationships go with partners. So now I am seeing, (or it is being seen that), [Laughter] the Being is just Being. The body is still tired and you know what? Big deal.

A: Yes. Because like we just said, the body is very intricate when we start to look at it that way. And is running on some supreme intelligence which is way beyond this idea of ‘me’…, way beyond what this ‘me’ can handle or the mind can handle. So it doesn’t help. The thought that the body is tired does not help the body in any way.

Q: No, in fact I think it makes it worse.

A: Yes. If it does something at all, it would make it worse. Because some energy goes into that thought and the belief in that thought.

Q: From this perspective, right this minute, it feels possible to always be here. And to experience being here.

A: You cannot ever leave this actually.

Q: I knew you were going to say that.

A: I have become too predictable. [Chuckles] Because the subtle message which can come from the mind is that ‘Now that you see this, you must just be here’. This is not needed because you cannot leave this actually. At some point that instruction is useful. But at some point we come to the Seeing that ‘I am trying to be that which is already just Being’. I am trying to be that which is already just Being. So all that needs to stop is the ‘trying’. Because Being is just Being.

Q: I noticed that sometime during the silent retreat that when I was ‘trying’ to be the Presence or be aware of Presence or be aware of Consciousness or whatever you want to call it, that my attention…, I would direct my attention back about two inches; so as if I was looking from farther back in my head.

A: Yes, it can seem like that, yes.

Q: And sometime during Zmar I dropped that. And I don’t know how I did it but something shifted and I did not have to move even two inches. So now talking to you, I am just talking to you from somewhere inside of my head.

A: Ha, you are? [Laughter]. From where inside your head? Let’s call a surgeon in and see where you are sitting inside your head.

Q: Actually, you know what? I am not even sitting inside the head, I am somewhere behind the head.

A: But behind the head is the wall.

Q: That’s true behind the head is the wall. [Laughs] Right. I don’t know, I don’t know. I am just here.

A: Okay, let me confuse you some more. You are not in this realm at all. You are not in this realm at all. You are not watching from within this realm.

Q: I am not this realm at all. That’s a relief!

A: Because you don’t exist as a phenomenal entity inside this world. This world exists inside of You. And it is simple, it is simpler that its sounds. Because when we look for ourselves inside this realm we don’t find it. And yet there is a Looking, there is an Awareness…, (from) out of this world.

Q: It is a little like Guruji’s picture [example]. The black and white picture of the two faces looking at each other, and they become the vase, then they become the face then they become the vase. You know that one? When you were talking I had that sense. I had the sense of being in the room and being outside the room; then seeing the room from outside and then being in the room and looking out as if I can see the structure of the room. Like sitting in the house that doesn’t have any walls but just the structure of it.

A: And as we start having these insights, then the sense of inside or outside also starts to dissolve.

Q: Oh goody! It’s like the matrix is dissolving. I had this strong fear today that I was going to die very soon. And I almost felt like I have to hold on to my body and say ‘No, not yet!’

A: I liked what you wrote also, because I found it beautiful. You said that you were reminded then of Bhagavan. He had this feeling that death is coming and he said that ‘If it is going to come I want to see what it is like. What will die? What will remain?’ Very beautiful contemplation.

Q: Yes, and I ended up just crying in this joy. I was sitting on my desk trying to do some work [Laughter], trying to do some work, you know? ‘I really should do this work and get it over with so I don’t have to think about it for 3- 4 days’. And I managed to get it done but I had to really push myself to do it. And I was watching myself push. Because I was also very aware of this beauty and this love and bliss; ahhh. As if ‘Okay, so if I am going to die in 6 hours from right now, everything is just incredible. It’s amazing’. I look around and go ‘Oh my god, this is so beautiful, my apartment is so beautiful and my curtains are beautiful and you are so beautiful and everyone is so beautiful, I am beautiful and it’s all beautiful; my water is beautiful and everything is enough, there is nothing lacking at all’. Thank you.

A: One of the teachers I used to go to earlier said something very beautiful once. He said that ‘Most of us, for most of our lives we live as if we are never going to die and most of us die as if we never lived’.  Because when the sense comes that ‘This might be the end of all experiencing’ then the experiencing starts to seem very beautiful. And yet for most, this appearance of humanity, it seems like they are suffering what they are experiencing. Because they are believing themselves to be something that they are not.

So it is not that the experience has to change. It is the idea of who the experiencer is that needs to be clarified. So as long as it seems like there is a person here experiencing life, then for the person-idea it can seem very scary because nothing is predictable, anything can happen.

For the person, for the idea of an entity, this unpredictability of life is extremely scary. It would like to make itself secure. And yet is knows it never can; death is coming ultimately.

But to that which is just witnessing this entire play like a movie, it is this unpredictability that is a joy because you don’t know what is coming next. You don’t even know when it started and when it is going to end.

So when the perspective changes, it becomes clear that the experiencer is not an entity. The experiencer is Presence itself.

And that which is aware of this Presence itself remains untouched no matter what the experience might be. Then it goes from being a horror movie to just being an adventure fantasy or something like that.

Q: [Laughter] I am realizing that I have this strong attachment to an idea that I can’t die before my mother. As I said, she will be 98 years old in 2 weeks. She is doing great, she is just fine. She writes her own bills, pays her own checks.

A: [Laughter] I know you don’t mean it like what it is sounding like right now.

Q: [Laughter] How is it sounding?

A: You said that [Laughter] ‘Not dying before my mother; she is 98 right now but she is doing quite well.’ [Lots of laughter]

Q: That means I have to be sure to live past her, way past her. At this rate she may very well go past a 100 or something. But as soon as she goes, I am free. Then there is something which says ‘I am free, I am free’…, to whatever, I don’t know, move to Bangalore, kill myself, move to Bangalore. [Laughter]

A: Very nice that we can have a sense of humor about these things because it makes this so-called journey very light. Many times we just take ourselves too seriously; and then as we become lighter and lighter then we also have this sense of everything is so funny. We laugh at the movements which are appearing through this body and the words that are coming. Everything seems so entertaining actually. So usually I don’t give any ideas about signs of spiritual progress or something. I feel that, if there was a sign of spiritual progress, then it would be this ability to laugh at life and at what we have considered ourselves to be, and all appearances and especially to laugh at the mind.

Q: It is pretty funny.

A: Yes, so funny. Everything the mind says is actually funny.

Q: Even the horror stuff?

A: Yes, because it is talking about horror for the pink elephant.

Q: Right and it doesn’t exist. That’s the funny thing.

A: Yes.

Q: There was a beautiful sense today with my client of just being with them and being grounded in the Presence and being thankful for all this drama in front of me. I sat for most of the session saying, inside of me, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you’. And things were unfolding for people, and I am like ‘Oh my goodness’…, in interesting, really interesting, ways. I thought of you. I thought of one of my very first conversations when I talked about being afraid to let it all go and you were laughing at me being afraid to let God be there with my clients.

A: Because ‘God will make a mess out of it!’

Q: Oh a terrible mess; horrible, just horrible. [Laughter]

A: ‘Because God is not a psychotherapist. [Laughter] He is just going to…, [Laughter] I need to get Lucia into this. God can’t do this!’

Q: Right. Oh boy!

A: And I remember next day, for the first time in your long career you were late. And God did make a mess out of it. [Laughter]

Q: Oh, my God. Yes, and God did make a mess about it. Which actually turned out fine. I am still seeing that person and she is getting better and all that stuff. And actually in the middle of Zmar, I had to see clients. I had not planned to do the silent retreat at all. It was totally spontaneous, totally just like ‘Ah I am doing it’. So on Monday I had clients and one client just attacked me in such a way that no one has ever attacked me as a therapist. It was one of the worst things, you know? Not physical but, you know, honing into question all my skills. And so the therapist identity was really attacked. And I am laughing at it today. ‘Oh, my God, there it is again. What is it about this psychotherapist identity?’ And I suddenly had this memory of this really dramatic event that happened right after I got my degree back in 1985 where I was like ‘Oh now I am this therapist, I am this Guru. And my girlfriend at that time saying that ‘Now you are a Guru’. And we ended up having this terrible relationship and we had to split up and there was physical violence between us and oh, my god, it was horrible. It was such a contrast. And all that came up in the Satsang energy of Zmar; and something just got healed around it. And now I am just saying thank you to that person.

A: Very good, very good.

Q: So I am thinking that I don’t know what is going to happen to that psychotherapist identity, because it is certainly getting thrown by the way side. [Laughter]

A: As you know we have a few psychotherapists [in the sangha]. And the challenge that mostly they are having is that when a client is sharing some problem, some story, they are finding they are unable to give much importance to the stories. And something there wants to jump into the inquiry but they know that there is not that openness yet in the clients mostly, that come in the traditional ways to look at this question. It is like a bit of work for them to pretend to be involved in the story and you know empathize with the story. This is one of the common reports that I get from the psychotherapists in Satsang. Because they have an inclination to say ‘Why don’t you just look at who you are? You don’t exist in that way’.

Q: Yes, you can’t say that to people. They have to be in a certain place, there has to be certain maturity before you can ask the question ‘Who Am I’?

A: Yes, some openness has to be there to this.

Q: Very good.

A: Thank you, my dear. Very beautiful as always.

Q: Thank you, too. Namaste.

If this was the end of everything, the end of the story, would there be something wrong? If nothing more was to happen, if you would not be any more enlightened than you are now, [chuckles], what would be wrong with that? What is missing right now?

I should speak fast because it doesn’t give your mind a chance to think about it. [Chuckles] In the silence is very beautiful but sometimes we just sense…, in the pause you start to think about it. Like now you can definitely come up with something that’s missing.

So, in the Now, Now, Now…

(We’re hearing this cat meow and wondering where it’s coming from. Q: It’s looking for the next bowl of milk. A: [Laughs] I haven’t used the cat example in a while, so it must be upset.)

There is nobody inside this body, and there is nobody outside this body. It’s just a belief that I exist somewhere, either inside this body or outside this body. It’s just an idea that I have a location. But nobody has found a location for this ‘I Am’ because all locations actually are in Me. And any time in this appearance, if we say it is ‘mine’, if we say it is ‘me’ it is bound to lead to trouble. My life. My wife. My parents. My Master. My sangha. My children. If everything is about ‘my’ then can we at least find this ‘me’?

I often take this example that when we moved into this house, then this house already had a small garden outside on the terrace. There were lots of plants and grass which is growing. But one day I felt like I wanted to plant some seeds. I planted some seeds and they started to sprout. So what would happen is that the first thing I would do when I would go outside is check on the status of these sprouts. There are so many other plants which were also appearing but there was an attachment to ‘mine’. And you notice these things. And you see that ‘Why is it that first the impulse is to check on what I had planted? What is the difference between these sprouts and the rest of the garden?’

So if all our stories depend on this ‘me’ …, , so this sense…, we hear these words every day ‘You’re not a person. Consciousness. Awareness’. We keep hearing these terms. Sometimes because they are so often repeated we lose the sense of magnificence around it. That’s why the feeling from here the last few days has been to push you towards just digesting this first: You cannot find a person. You cannot find an individual entity. It is not ‘your’ life in that way. You never existed personally except as a myth. And the myth is energized only with our belief.

Take any myth; would it have any power without your belief? For those who believe in the Loch Ness monster, the Loch Ness monster seems real. And for those who don’t believe in it, it is nothing at all.

Notice how it exists like this; the idea that I exist as a separate entity who can say ‘This is my life, and this is what is happening to me’ is as much a myth as the Loch Ness monster. At least with the Loch Ness monster, some have reported some sightings, no? [Chuckles] Some have even taken some photographs and put them up. [Laughs] But when we search for this ‘person’ all that we come up with is the body. We say ‘This is the body’…., ‘This is the Loch Ness monster! What do you mean it is not real?’

It doesn’t stand 2 minutes of scrutiny, open scrutiny, this idea. Because most of what you want has nothing to do with the body. Most of what is bothering you, the body is not concerned about at all. Is the body concerned whether our relationships are going well or not? Is the body concerned about money in the bank?

[Video cuts out and resumes moments later with the answering of a question.]

Q: So Father, I think you answered most of my questions, but I would like to share some; my direct experience, like contemplations. So Father, if I drop everything, whatever I learned, everything, there is only the Knowingness is there. There is a Knowingness which knows there is a body; learned it somewhere like there is a body. There is Knowingness which learned that there is a mind. There is a Knowingness which learned about this world, about the relationships, like everything is just talking to the Knowingness.

A: Just pause for one second. So, this Knowingness, is it that it learned about these things? Because when we learn about something it means that there is this computer which is seen; but I learned that it is called a computer. You see? So.is this the learning that you are talking about, that ‘I see it, then I put a label on it, then I know it’? Or which knowingness are you talking about? The mental knowing, as conceptual knowing, or that which Knows what is appearing and disappearing without the need for any labeling?

Q: Yes Father. Like all those experiences, like whatever it is which is Knowing everything. So, what I found is that all this here, all the thoughts are coming to the person. And when I check ‘What is the person’ it takes into account the whole physical appearance along with everything which has experienced so far; with relationships, whatever, all those problems and everything. But when I was asking…, because the person who is suffering is actually…, it’s not that the body is suffering, as you mentioned. Nothing is…, it doesn’t affect the body; it doesn’t affect anything. Only that the knowingness which is experiencing, that is only kind of suffering or has questions or doubts or everything, that is only the (like what I would say), it is only the code material. (I’m just using those words). But that is only the thing which is telling ‘This body is having’ or ‘That is having’. But when I was having the kind of drilling down, I found it, Father. This knowingness just knows and everything is just changing (all the experiences and everything, all the thoughts, moment by moment), everything is changing. Then what it is referring to as constant and what it is saying ‘me, me’ then? I found out that it is always referring to the sense of existence and taking that as a person actually. And always referring to that sense of existence as a person. But when I was kind of closing my eyes and I was sitting and I was looking, the sense of existence, the thought is always referring to that as a person, but the sense of existence is also experienced. It is also kind of known by Knowingness or something. And when I go back it kind of puts that infinite loop, and then the mind jumps and says ‘It is my knowingness, my awareness, my…’

A: Wait, wait [Inaudible] So, you said that there is a knowing even of this sense of existence, the sense I Am, the sense of Being. And then, very rightly you said the mind tries to convince you that this sense of existence itself is personal. This that I call God, ‘I Am’, actually is pretending to play as if it is a person by believing thoughts which are referring to it as if it is a person. You say that ‘All of this is seen now, that this existence is not personal; it has no personal needs desires, plans, ambitions, aversions, resentments, regrets. It is just Being. Being is just Being. Very beautiful. Then you say that ‘Even this is known. There is a knowing even of this Being’.

Now, from what I gathered from what you said is that this is a very pristine discovery. ‘I am aware of my Being. Awareness is aware even of Being-ness’. And many times I hear this report that this becomes an infinite loop. But it’s not a loop. It’s very clear actually. Being is here and also Being is known. I know that I Am; not mentally, not conceptually, but directly. There is awareness of Being. You see? All different ways of saying the same thing. Now where is the loop?

Q: So Father, mind says ‘What next?’ It seems like I’m handing over whatever is that relation to the mind finally… and…

A: So, don’t. Don’t.

Q: Mind…

A: So don’t hand it over to the mind because it will only…, you know, I often take this example that I bake a chocolate cake for you and if you give it to the mind it’s only going to mix mud in it. So you’re coming to very beautiful, very pristine realization. Don’t wait for your mind’s interpretation of this. Because the mind will always say things like ‘Oh, but then this becomes like two mirrors facing each other, it’s an endless loop’. No, it’s very clear. You know that you exist. It’s straight forward; full-stop. There’s no loop! [Chuckles] But if you give it to the mind, I know it can happen like this. The mind says ‘So now, is it done? What next? But this Being then, is it not knowing?’ It’s all…, it tries to confuse you. Because it can no longer convince you, it tries to confuse you.

Q: I guess Father, it was like I got a little kind of anxiety as if I am stuck there because after that kind of relation, I could not take out my focus or attention to anything because everything is just changing, and I found that place, it’s kind of like an axis. At least the mind can hold to that. It was so restless, and I found this sense of existence is the constant and everything else is…, even it is Consciousness, even if everything is One…, but still I see that everything is just changing. And that is the only resting place of my mind. And I could not come out of it, and later on I got a little anxiety, a fear, as if I am trying to cling to that one. And then, honestly, I tried to search with Mooji’s saying something on the ‘I Am’. And then I found he mentioned, exactly he said that ‘Mind will be asking what next, what next. Stay there’. So Father, it’s a direct experience because I have juggled with so many frames, models, concepts, and everything and none of them worked for me because for everything I have to imagine something and something. So this is when I realized ‘What it is? Everything is changing. What it is that is constant? What …, (I forgot all those words; Awareness and everything. But I found that the sense of existence is always there. And that keeps the continuity of the life actually. That makes this feel that this person, whatever, this; and this is continuing this life. But sometimes this mind takes over and says ‘Okay, you found it’. Sometimes the mind says ‘You did a good job, you found it’. And sometimes it scares me: ‘You’re stuck’. Because I can’t do anything else. People are thinking I’m losing interest in everything. My family thinks I’m getting lethargic; no more interest in anything. And now the next anxiety is the India trip. I’m scared because I can’t talk, socialize with people anymore as I used to. Because I can’t talk anything else about jewelry, shopping, and all those, because… It’s sometimes, I feel it’s a little bit hard; how to talk, how to prepare myself to talk with my family? Because they will be thinking ‘Is she going under depression?’ or ‘What is that?’ or ‘What is she behaving?’ Because I told my dad a little bit about satsang and attending. He told…, I mean all family members say like ‘Oh, you can’t be Ramana [Maharshi], you can’t be Nisargadatta. They are blessed souls. They are only made specifically for sainthood and all that’. So, you know, Father, I don’t want to debate, I don’t want to be kind of…, but I’m kind of feeling helpless.

A: So, what happens is that you’re getting this beautiful discovery, this beautiful recognition. And you say that ‘I Am is the only constant, and even this is known’. Now, after this, when we give this also to the mind, it starts putting conditions. ‘I am scared, I am lethargic, I am losing it, I am depressed’. Either you are putting the conditions or those minds around you which seem to appear are putting conditions into the mind; which is trying to put some condition into this pure sense of existence ‘I Am’. But a condition can only, only, only be added if you give it some belief.

Part of this switching over from person-idea to just handing over to existence, it is very commonly seen that this play of losing interest happens; and this sense that other family members come and say ‘You are depressed’ happened here. It happened with…, everyone. Actually, I remember the time where my family would come and say ‘But you’re losing all interest. Are you depressed? What happened to you?’ It was the happiest time. There was so much emergence of joy. Then I would go to the mirror and see. ‘How am I looking actually? What is this face showing?’ And then what happened is that after this phase also went, then I found that most of the time there was this big smile stuck on my face. There was just this big satsang grin which was just constantly stuck. Now even that has settled down, so the inward smiles continues but the face is not constantly grinning. I remember my jaws used to pain almost every day. It was just stuck over there. If you would have felt, okay, that you wanted it to show outward the way that you’re feeling inwardly, here you go. So if you see some photos of mine from three, four, maybe five years ago, you’ll see that there was this constant satsang grin. And now I notice that even that has settled down. It’s more relaxed, it’s more not showing outwardly so much.

So all of this is a natural flow of these things. You just don’t attach anything to this ‘I Am’. Don’t even attach ‘I am Free’. Nothing…, don’t believe anything about yourself. Let all of this flow natural as it is doing. In fact, I’m very happy; I saw where you said you’ll be in satsang soon in Bangalore. Very happy. I’m waiting for you to come.

So it’s flowing so beautifully, even outwardly. So don’t attach any conditions, don’t believe any concepts about yourself and this ‘I Am-ness’ Itself is coming to the recognition of Its Source and coming to the true discovery of what It Is. So It knows that there is really no you and you are losing interest in all ideas about Purvi anyway. Because it was fun to play with for a while; just like when we were children, for girls maybe it’s fun to play with dolls and it’s giving a doll some dresses and some personality and seeming-attributes, but after a while that game is done. If someone comes to you and says ‘Let’s play with this doll’ you will say ‘I’m beyond that now’. Just in the same way now, the play with Purvi, the play with the Purvi identity is dissolving and interest in that is going. As interest in that is going, it can seem to the world that you’re disinterested in life, which is not the life. This is not the case. There is great joy, great wonder that you are finding in life more and more. Every moment is fresh and beautiful. And it will start to reflect even on your face, even in your expressions. So there is no rush to get there.

Q: So, Father, honestly I don’t feel that joyousness. I would be honest in that. One thing I would like to share, like I wrote in the altar [Heart Altar sharing group] is that when I came across [Nisargadatta] Maharaj’s quotations, one of his, he wrote it like: ‘I left my mind and my body to their destiny and I just stay’. So I thought I should not be paying attention to my crazy thoughts, which is causing me suffering, because the suffering was the one that got me to this line. So that was my first intention, that I should not be paying attention to the thoughts. And then I started ignoring those thoughts. And later, other thoughts came. So spent months just ignoring, ignoring, ignoring; just like trying to kill the mosquitos. Just it was continuing forever. Because I could not grasp what he was mentioning or what he was pointing to. But then I found ‘Let it happen, whatever is happening. Let me hold to this, let this mind hold to this constant factor, the sense of existence. Let everything…, I don’t care. I mean, I don’t care; whatever is happening, I don’t have any control over it actually’. Because that’s what I found. If I try to work on some thought, some other will come, so it didn’t work actually. Whatever the tool, whatever those yogas, it didn’t work actually. I just tried to have a temporary band aids for them. One day I will be happen, then again the next day I will have those; it will come up. So, it was like preparing myself for the war, every time. So I thought ‘I would rather be without weapon. Just holding to what is constant. Be safe there’. So, is that, Father, like what Maharaj says? Or am I interpreting from my mind. I just listen from you to find out what…

A: When [Nisargadatta] Maharaj was saying that ‘I just remain as I am, and I leave my worldly existence to unfold as it is unfolding’ he is speaking of the perspective of Awareness or of Beingness. Now, usually what happens is, there’s a sense that ‘I am a person who is now hanging onto the Presence now for dear life. As life is unfolding unto Itself, I am hanging onto the Presence’. So, as you are now hanging on to the Presence, you will find that the one that his hanging onto the Presence was never really there. It was just Being. It’s just Being.

So the dissolution of the identity, in your case, is happening in this way where it seems like Purvi at once point decided that what she is going to do is hang onto the Presence and ignore everything else which is going by. Then it seems like the distinction, the seeming-distinction between Presence and Purvi is dissolving and only Presence remains. Then even the sense of trying to hold onto it tight, as a lifeboat, this goes. Because you see that there is no Purvi here who is drowning. And just Presence is Here. And all of these appearances are just movements of the waves in the ocean. Then you see if there’s anything to hold onto in the ocean. It is the waves that are arising and falling within You-as-Presence.

So, it started with the sense ‘I-Purvi’ am holding onto the Presence that I Am…, goes to ‘I Am that I Am’…, and then ultimately to ‘I Know that I Am’.

So that which Knows ‘I Am’ … Sees that ‘I Am’ just remains as ‘I Am’ and the worldly existence is unfolding just on its own. There is nothing to be done about it. There is no individual doer thereof. So in this very natural way, your sense of individual identity, your ‘I am something’ …, the ‘I Am-ness-Something-ness’ will dissolve.

Q: Thank you, Father.

Q: Earlier you asked that ‘How is it that the mind…, the content of mind, can contribute…, can have any contribution to the immediate reaction’? So like one thing I can think of is …,

A: Yes.

Q: The determination, future ambition and these kind of things comes like…, it appears to come from the mind and it influences a lot the movement of the body. For example, if you have very strong energies and these kind of things, then the actions are very dynamic, and a lot of movement. And when the content of the mind is very relaxed and peaceful then there’s not…, like she was saying that she’s just sitting on the couch all day and only the Awareness sees the movement. What needs to happens, happens. So in this way the mind has influence on the…,

A: It’s not actually like that. I’ll tell you what you said actually reminded me of a story. Many years ago I used to run this foundation called the Kushal Foundation where we would provide underprivileged children in the slums of Bangalore with health care services. And then one day I went to the clinic and over there these volunteers showed me some booklets. We used to maintain health booklets for all the kids.

They said ‘Today Bill Gates came. Bill Gates came’. I said ‘Bill Gates came?’ Because I knew that he ran the foundation. So I said ‘Oh Bill Gates came’. You know? And then I realized that they were talking about this kid whose name was Bill Gates. And I said ‘Is this a joke? Were they just fooling around and filling this?’ They said ‘It is because the father asked ‘So who is the richest man in the world?’ and somebody told him ‘Bill Gates’. He said ‘My child is going to be the richest man in the world’. And that’s why his name is Bill Gates.

Then like this, I started noticing that in the urban slums, it’s a pattern like this; that there are kids who are called George Bush, Bill Gates. [Laughter] Yes! They have health records and I’ve met the parents. There are kids who are called these names because ‘My child should be the most powerful one’. So who’s the most powerful, maybe at that time, maybe it was George Bush. Who’s the richest one? Bill Gates, you see.

So with that, with this conditioning, with this ambition, with this; it would translate into a lot of fire and energy in this, you see? But you could be called Bill gates, you could have all the Bill Gates thoughts, but you could still be sitting on your couch. If it was just about these thoughts then everyone has very fancy thoughts. [Laughter] He says ‘From tomorrow onward I’m just going to crack it’. [Laughter] And yet it doesn’t move. Why? Just because a cloud is shaped as if it is the Indra (the God of Thunder), it doesn’t mean it’s going to necessarily rain like that. But there are times where a cloud could be shaped like that and it rains like that, and the mind comes and says ‘See? Because you had these thoughts you were able to do it’. And many times you also must have noticed that without any ambition/thought/goal, you were very productive at work. You have done all your work faster than if you were full of saying ‘Yes today I’m going to just finish it so fast so I can finish everything and I can go to satsang in the evening’. And it just doesn’t seem to move.

The most simple program has a bug which is not being spotted at all. So this is the same. Yoga Vasista’s example; the bird comes and lands on the branch of the coconut tree, and the coconut falls. The mind says ‘Because the bird came and landed’. If it was all about the content of our ambition, the content of our thoughts and our beliefs, then everybody would be super rich; nobody wants to not be.

Q: It’s just like the thought of over ambition or achievement, inspiration, comes in the form of thought. And then if the belief happens for that thought, then it brings the movement. For example: ‘Forget satsang, now let’s make some money’. [Laughter]

A: Yes

Q: So, like, if you believe that thought, then of course there will be some changes in the…

A: It can seem like that. That’s why I’m saying it’s a ‘seeming’. But many have believed these thoughts and still show up in satsang the next day. And many have not, so in this.., there’s a book called ‘Fooled By Randomness’. Even mathematically, the play of this world is very statistically accurate. To a random set of same, say, golf balls you have this mathematical studies on these things, right? So if you take seven billion golf balls one will land up over here, one will go over there, one will go here, just mathematically. You see? And the book ‘Fooled By Randomness’ is about this, how we take just what is aligned completely with statistical probability and we assign very good stories to that, and say ‘It is because of this kind of vision or this kind of strategy’…, or this kind of’ whatever.

It is very aligned with what you were saying about choice-less-ness or non-doership, because this whole world is working with some mathematical probability. And the mind comes and says ‘Because you said this, because you did this, that’s why’. It’s very quick to assign these kinds of stories. There are many biases that come also because of this; for example things like success bias. If you read the papers, you only read about successes til last year. This year, you hear about a lot of people years of …, [Inaudible] …, that ambition. Every start up entrepreneur, (I know we’re going a little away from satsang but), every start up entrepreneur that I have met had a lot of fire, a lot of ambition, but it doesn’t always translate into action, doesn’t always translate into success.

Q: For example let’s say suppose it’s just like this; like a thousand people come to satsang it doesn’t mean like a thousand people will get realization of the Truth in the same way like a thousand people were working for their successes. It doesn’t mean that a thousand people would achieve their success….,

A: Why not? If it was about that ambition, them thinking they should be, no?

Q: No success has a contribution of these things but there are a lot of other factors.

A: Like?

Q: Luck.

A: Luck is what?

Q: Gods Will.

A: [Laughter] Okay. You see, so what you’re saying is that God plays a part, a part as well. Now this You, you cannot find. Isn’t it that the route of, say, luck or God’s will? It plays a part but it cannot be without you playing a part?

Now this You is who? Like we were saying that day, how do you move your hand? Like, in this moment, I don’t know which hand is also going to move. ‘Okay, I’m going to move the right hand’ and the right hand seems to move. [Silence] How did I…, how was it done? How was that decision actually moving the hand? Do we know how to do it?

Q: So, like, you mean to say there is no difference at all between voluntary and involuntary actions?

A: Yes because [Chuckles] whose? Who is volunteering for the action or not? [Silence]

And who knew my right hand will move actually. Could it just been as a joke my left hand could move. God joke. [Laughter] You see? So, just like the thought came to move the hand, the same way the action came, (the movement of the hand), I did not create that thought…, because I do not know which thought is going to come next. Why did I say ‘Move the hand and not move the leg?’ I don’t know.

We do not know the next thought. Post facto the thought comes and says ‘See? We decided to move the hand, and it moved’. If it is thought-based, then thought is controlled by who? Who is creating your next thought? When you say ‘It is just an appearance from nothing; it goes back into nothing’.

Q: Can I say it is also like the breath, which if you let go, it has a natural reciprocation?

A: Yes.

Q: But there it is also Freedom to direct in a certain way, for example the Pranayam, the different kind of Yogis…,

A: Yes

Q: So in the same way there are thoughts…

A: How do you control the breath flow? How do you move those nerves?

Q: Like we used to do, for instance, in Kriya.

A: Yes I know, but ‘How did I do it?’

Q: How?

A: You see it’s an illusory idea that because the thought comes that ‘Okay, now I’m going to control my breath’ therefore this ‘I’ (who we cannot even find) then finds a way to constrict the breathing. Who is actually playing like this? [Silence]

The thought ‘We decided that this is going to be’. The thought came to you ‘What about breath?’ What did you do to create that thought? What are the ingredients you used to create the thought? Did you collect some energy from somewhere and put it together; as a thought it came? Who is this one who did that? Thought arose ‘What about breath?’ You see? And the action arose. Both are just arising within this play of Consciousness. Who is the thought speaking to? Who are these two?

Q: But can’t I say it in this way that; just like in this space of ‘I Am’? Like this, the [Inaudible]

A: Yes.

Q: The body exists in the same way, and this body’s like a phenomenal tool to experience this realm. In the same way I exist and..,

A: I exist as what? (I slipped that in very subtly). The body exists, okay, in this realm. Then…

Q: So I exist as that which knows the body.

A: Okay, that which knows the body. Okay, very good, yes. Now?

Q: Or if I could give it some attribute, then I would say that this space…, like ‘I Am’ in which the body is appearing.

A: You exist as ‘I Am’. Is that what you…? [Chuckles] I’m just clarifying what you say. [Laughter] He’s looking very disappointed in my response.

Q: I exist…,

A: As ‘I Am’ exists?…, that’s what you said isn’t it? Okay, Go on.

Q: And in the same way as the body is appearing, the energy is…,

A: [Directed at another member of the Sangha] Are you crying because of the questions or because of the answers? Or both? [Laughter] Sometimes I also feel like crying [Laughter]. At least she didn’t say ‘The crying is just happening, I am not crying, crying… [Laughter].

[Directed at the questioner] So ‘I Am’ is there then?

[Directed at the Sangha member] It’s the answers; because I started talking again and she started crying again. [Laughter]. And he is saying ‘Can we please be quiet’. [Laughter]. Now I’m very scared to talk because I might explode in front of him. [Laughter]

Q: I would love that explosion.

A: You have to explain to her what happened.

Q: Yes, Father, it’s just like when Shakti is spoke with the question, and also the way was she putting those questions, I felt like I had the same thing. That’s why I wanted to follow up that.

A: Very good. This question actually was very strongly present here also. We have spoken about this also, how there is so much identity around work, my father…

Q: Also like what you speak, I’ve seen in the experience that’s just what appears in the present; like in the moment in the body…,

A: Exactly.

Q: But like in satsang, I fight with you because… [Laughter]

A: Oh finally, because what? We’ve been waiting for this answer for a very long time, but you told me you were in the debate team in school or something?

Q: Because I feel like there are many moments also where a lot of identification is going with this doership, and it’s good if we can have more clarification of this.

A: Yes, yes, very good. Very often I’ve said that the real conclusion to this free will vs God’s will debate is only to find out: Who is that one who could have free will? And once we see that there is no one else here except God then there’s no distinction between God’s will and free will. And I’ve immersed myself in this question for many years, as you know, with Ramesh and….

Q: But I do still feel strongly that I do have free will.

A: Yes, but you are who?

Q: So like if you say that…, if I…,

A: You are who? [Laughter] He’s just like ‘Ignore the question, let’s move on’.

Q: No, no, the question, what you’re implying to say, is that it is the person, it is the person.

A: No, no, I’m not implying anything. You tell me: Who you are? [Silence]

Q: I can’t relate it to this question of free will, to this sense of ‘I Am’.

A: Okay, let me see if we can relate it. So there’s God’s will, you call it destiny or luck or whatever you call it, and there’s this idea of free will, you see. Now God’s will we know belongs to God, okay?  This free will belongs to who? [Silence]

That must be the meaning of free will, that it is free from God’s will. Free will means what? Free from God’s will. That’s a very funny term, but free from Gods..,

Q: I don’t see how this free will that I claim to have is separate from the Gods will.

A: Exactly, it cannot be different because there is no individual you. There is only God.

Q: But I do feel that I have free will.

A: I know it’s a prevalent feeling in the world where most, if you go, they will say ‘God…, we believe in God but we have our own free will’. And then you say ‘You who?’ The concept of free will starts to dissolve, you see, because once you see that there is nobody here that has free will  therefore all must be God’s will; because only Gods is.  If we say ‘God is everywhere’ or ‘God Is’…, then what are we saying? ‘God is everywhere except this I who has free will’?

Q: No, because this ‘I’ is…, [Inaudible]

A: Okay, include it, and how much control does the super-set have over this ‘I’ which is included in that? [Laughter] Just label it and leave it at that; look more. And say ‘Okay there is a super-set and there’s a sub-set’. So what is the boundary of the super-set and sub-set?

Q: [Questioner recites Hindi]

A: Okay now he’s saying…, Now you usually have to translate because you’re a better Hindi translator than me. [Laughter].

Q: We say that we can’t talk about how the Supreme power is, because we don’t have that much strength and power.

A: Yes, yes, but we are not saying anything; we are just saying ‘Who is this I who doesn’t have the power to know God?’

Q: Okay, so let’s take this practical example. [Laughter] Okay, okay, I can simply drop it if you…,

A: No, just don’t drop the question ‘Who are you?’ Because somewhere in our belief we can say that ‘That is beyond me actually, to find out Who I Am. To find out the distinction between God and I’. Don’t make that an unapproachable question. So what if the rest of the world says it? That’s why there are so few of us in satsang here. Because there is a feeling here that you may know directly but it cannot be known mentally; so either you prove me right or you give up on the question.

Q: No, I am very much okay. We can’t talk about it continuously but if you are ok with it.

A: Yes, but you don’t switch the question. Who is the ‘I’ that can have free will? That is independent; won’t call it God’s Will anymore?

Q: Okay, so I will give a practical example for that. [Laughter]

A: But do we need an example? Just say who the ‘I’ is. [Silence]  If there is an ‘I’ who is here, we must be able to point to it, no?

Q: And would it be wrong to say this ‘I’ who has claimed free will is the Consciousness which is present?

A: [Inaudible] … as that ‘I am this Consciousness’, then God is also ‘I Am That I Am’. Therefore only, it is only your free will, but You as God or Consciousness.

Q: There’s something.

A: The next thought it is creating…, now with which gear is it creating the next thought? [Silence]

Q: If I ask you ‘Can you imagine a banana?’ …, can’t you imagine a banana?

A: Who? But who is imagining it? Power of imagination belongs to who? I’m not saying there is no power to imagine, I’m just saying it doesn’t belong to this fictional entity called Ananta. Who created this idea that ‘Let me say about the banana’? That also came from the same Consciousness, didn’t it? Isn’t it? The same Consciousness which has the power to project this thought has the power to project imagination, has the power to …

Sangha member: Father a banana just came into my head one second before you said it. [Laughter]

A: But before I said it he said it, no? [Laughter] She’s making all attempts to hear only this side of the answer and not that side of the question, so maybe just subliminally the banana went in and I said ‘Banana’ and she said ‘Yes, banana’, [Laughter].

I feel we are very close to something here. Because all that has happened to you individually now you’re seeing belongs to Consciousness. The power to imagine, the power of creation of the next thought, the movement of the next action, you see, all of this; who is doing and who is experiencing? Is there an entity called Azhar there who is doing it?

Q: Okay, so this hand moves.

A: It moves.

Q: Before the movement happened, didn’t the experience? Was there will which arose this movement? Before thought, before movement, there was a will which caused this movement.

A: Yes, and who created and experienced it?

Q: The sense of moving, the sense of thoughts coming, the sense of imagination; all of this is appearing in that. I am denying the existence of Azhar. And you yourself say ‘Can I say that it is the Consciousness or I Am?’ Yes, of course, that is then what we are saying. But in my experience it’s not like what you say or Moojiji says, that Consciousness is not deliberately bringing all of these things, in my experience…,

A: What does it mean ‘deliberately’?

Q: Like, what it sounds to me when Mooji speaks on this topic, then it feels like he’s on some automatic gear, and I’m still on manual gear.

A: So let’s look at that, because the feeling of being in manual gear feels like…, does it feel like Consciousness or Presence is doing it? Or does it feel like there’s an individual decision maker who is doing it? Because my experience from the past of feeling like ‘I’m doing this’ or ‘I must do this, now I’ll have to do this’ …, that felt like just the interpretation or the sub-titling coming from the mind, you see? Irrespective of what was coming from there, the actions were moving independently of this. That’s why it’s always been automatic, it just feel like…,

Q: What’s so…

A: Okay, so let’s go to the root of this. So, suppose you are doing it deliberately on manual gear. Who is this You?

Q: The one which says ‘my body’ and ‘my thought’.

A: Yes, and who is that? That is a starting point of when we come to satsang. We come to ‘my body, my thought’. Now after we look and inquire into this ‘me’ …, who do you find?

Q: I don’t see how it is wrong if I say that it is the Being…

A: Okay, forget about the conversation we’ve had. So, I will link it back for you I promise. Who is this me?

Q: This sense of Being; I Am.

A: The sense of Being is here, is anyone else here?

Q: That which knows this.

A: Okay very good, so this sense of Being, is God, Is there any other will except that which belongs to this One?

Q: How could it be possible? We say like [Questioner speaks in Hindi]. But it doesn’t seem like this..,

A: But that’s why we use the dream state to check; who is projecting the entire universe in the dream? After waking up you say ‘It’s all a projection of my Being, Consciousness’. [Silence]

So if you say that all will…, ‘So, what I find for the me/my, when I say ‘My will’ I find only this Being and that which knows this’. So, this Being is that which we call God. So then, are you saying ‘this is free will’ or ‘Gods will’? [Silence]

So this is a very good contemplation. Contemplate further into this; that there is no other God than this Being. And just like a dream where there might be a sense of a dreamer in a dream life, you see that the entire dream was just a play within Yourself, within your own Being. Then in the waking state you will have the same insight. When you take away this idea of ‘existence of another besides this Presence’ then all the glory of this Presence will become more and more clear to you.

So a mythical person and a mythical God will dissolve, you see? And you find that your own Being, your own Consciousness, is the One Consciousness, is the one God, and we’re no longer relent on some ideas about our self or some ideas about God.

Q: So if you really mean to say that the Being that I experience myself to be, and that which I call God or the supreme power Is One,…then how is it that…? Okay.

A: Contemplate more on this. This is very good.

The question is ‘What does the mind really want?’

So I will say what very often I hear, which is that ‘The mind is also Consciousness. The mind…, because everything is Consciousness, the mind is also Consciousness’. What is the purpose of it? It is designed by Consciousness; we can say like this. All of it is much more primal than any description; but we can say that the mind is the tool that Consciousness invented for itself, the game that it invented for itself, which allowed it to believe itself to be a person.

Without this device, this energy construct, it would never be possible for God to operate personally. So it wanted to play this game of person/person. So just like if I want to play a game of Doctor/Doctor with my daughter then it’s good that we have some of these plastic stethoscopes and you know devices that give more belief to the construct.

So, this realm is for God to experience Herself or Himself personally. It makes do with this device which interprets everything in a personal way so that God can then play in a personal way. Without this, it is not possible. Any appearance can come even the most horrendous or the most sublime, but they’re not taken personally unless this energy, this energy construct called ‘the mind’ was there.

Q: [Inaudible]

Of course. Only It wants to play. Who else is there?

Q: [Inaudible]

It is not really, but as part of the play it has made scenes where it play-acting where it is really like down and out. So like this, it is all part of the play. Either great bliss or in great sorrow; all part of the same play that it is writing for itself, part of the script. Including the play of delusion and freedom from delusion, all of this; satsang, not believing thoughts, recognizing what we Are is all part of One play, the same play, your play.

Q: [Inaudible]

Yes. It can express this, but even in satsang, no two expressions of Consciousness will exhibit exactly the same journey, isn’t it? Why? Because in the play, even in life, redundancy is very boring. If all this is one big Leela, then why? Why have redundancy? It has already been experienced in one form in that way so why must it be experienced this way? So like a fingerprint, you see? Every expression is unique. Isn’t that amazing? Every face is unique, every fingerprint is unique. Why? Because In the tasting of this play God apparently doesn’t want a redundancy because it’s boring. So every expression, everyone in satsang, all of you are so different. Listening to the same thing, your interpretations could be different, your questions could be different. But in reality you are the same, you are One. In fact at that point you cannot say ‘You and I’ anyway, there is only One. So all this play of ups and downs, all of that actually…, what difference does it make to Being? Being is just Being, isn’t it? What difference does it make to that which is aware even of Being?

Nothing. Awareness remains untouched irrespective of the content of the play. You see? Awareness never has a bad mood or a blissful state. It’s just the unconcerned Witnessing. Even ‘unconcerned’ is a term we have to use actually because it means like it’s aloof or something. Not even that. Uninvolved. But that’s just terminology we have to use to describe it. It is neither concerned nor unconcerned.

Now, right now, You are…, just watching all of this. That which is watching is untouched.

If there is a gift I could give you, it is the gift to forget about all that you know. Just forget it. It is not the truth. Whatever it is that we know is not the Knowingness. That’s what’s funny, isn’t it? Because the Knowingness is the Great Un-Know-able. That which is the Knowingness Itself cannot be known. True Knowingness cannot be mentally understood.

So at best, whatever is spoken in satsang, whatever anyone has said, at best, they are pointers; they are thorns used to remove other thorns and then to be thrown away. There is no ultimate truth in that way. Even to say ‘I Am That’ is not the ultimate truth. And whatever we know is adding to the calories of the ego; whatever we know. The good news is that all we have to do is not pick up new ones.

So Garmina went to the US and she got me this ‘fitness tracker’. It keeps track of all the calories burned and if you enter the food consumed, also then you know that at the end of the day you burned more. So like this, I say that you don’t have to go and have an operation (although satsang is like an operation), the recognition of the truth in this instant is like an operation which removes prior conditioning; is like an operation of the Master that removes prior conditioning. And prior conditioning is what? That I have attached a condition to ‘I Am’…, ‘I am something’. Conditioning is as simple as that.

So as long as this conditioning is there, that ‘I am something’ then we must make all effort…, (I know this will sound very non-Advaita to many of you but), not to pick up any new idea. No new calories for the ego. ‘Oh, but this is too difficult for me. It never works. It sounds like a teaching. It sounds like an instruction.’ All these are also ideas. Because in this moment, your diet is done. You have a perfect balance between burning and consuming, in this moment.  Are you going to pick up that desert coming on the tray now? And are you going to pick up that which says ‘No, no, I must not pick it up’. It’s not even that, you see. You don’t want the diet-er identity. To get rid of all the calorific content of the ego would not mean that I become the diet-er. It only means that I become Nothing.

Even this much to say, although it seemed like it would be such a simple explanation actually, makes it seem a bit confusing.

So, what am I really saying? I’m saying that the next thought will come. It will come. The next thought will come. It will come and it will dance in front of you, and in the dance it will sell you something. It will tempt you with some idea. Don’t buy. And if you buy, what to do? Nothing. The next thought will come. It will dance in front of you. It will try to sell you an idea. Don’t buy. In that moment is the dropping of the presumption that ‘I am something’. Including the idea that ‘I am buying’ must not be bought.

No spiritual idea. Very quickly the seeker or the ego will try to find refuge in something spiritual, saying ‘Yes, yes, all this is getting cut off, but he will not mind if I go to a scripture and start consuming that’. But there comes a point when you have to say ‘Not even that’. You are your own scripture now. Your own insights from the Presence, uncontaminated by the mind, are as scriptural as the greatest scripture. You don’t need anything. So at best, the use of these concepts are to allow us to uproot and release all other concepts.

Talking this diet metaphor even further, I heard that there are some foods that you can eat which not only have no calories or very few calories for themselves, but also when they’re being digested they help the body in burning a lot of calories. So, that is satsang.

If you’re not making a spiritual framework out of them, not making spiritual concepts out of the words in satsang, and you allow them to be here on their own, just like they’re being spoken on their own, then it will not add to any sort of conditioning.

Possibly the worst thing that could happen is that satsang could be shared and then the mind is interpreting everything, everything. And then, what we remember from what was being shared, what is assimilated from what is being shared are these mental interpretations; our idea about what was being shared. And if you remove this interpreter, then I feel like satsang is just so clear actually. Just so clear.

Because what are we pointing? Don’t believe your next thought. Does it need any addition, subtraction, interpretation? Nothing. Can you stop being now? Simple. It doesn’t need any interpretation, not even a report card that ‘this happened’. Are you aware now? These are just the pointers which need no additional content to make it clearer or something.

The additional content that is shared in satsang actually is just to get rid of any ideas we have picked up about these very simple pointings.

When I ask you ‘Are you aware now?’ …, you Know it is ‘Yes’. I don’t even care what your mouth is saying actually [chuckles] because I know you Know it is ‘Yes’. It is ‘Yes’. That’s it. You had the darshan of yourSelf. The Self has had the darshan of the Self.

And the mind wants to come and gate-crash into the party later, saying ‘Nothing happened. But nothing happened. What do I see? Is this freedom? Can I keep this? I must forever be like this’. All this is just the mind wanting to gate-crash the party because it’s feeling left out.

Are you aware now? You see nothing to confirm this, that you are aware. You did not see Awareness as an object. And yet you know you are aware. You say ‘I am aware OF something’ but it doesn’t matter what the ‘OF’ is. But what are You? ‘Aware of’…., seems like such a simple phrase. ‘Aware of’…, but what is this ‘aware’? You cannot understand it. You’ll never be able to understand mentally what is this ‘aware’. To say ‘I am aware of it; I am aware of the world.’ … ‘I am aware of my Presence’ also’ some of you can say. What are You? You are Aware. The ‘of’ is not relevant, because the ‘of’ is changing. But what are You?

Are you an entity that is aware? Who is that entity that is aware of sleep, of waking, of dream? Bodies are changing, worlds are changing, happenings, events are changing. There is something, then there is nothing. All this is moving about. Is there an entity that is aware of them? Who are you in your deep sleep state? In sleep state, is it your experience that you are an entity that is sleeping? It is our experience that there is nothing; no-thing is there. Who is it that Knows the difference between sleep and waking…, that is aware ‘of’…?

Therefore when you check ‘Am I aware?’ you say ‘Yes, I am aware’. This ‘I’ which is aware, is it separate from the Awareness itself? No, there are no ‘two’. There is just ‘I’. No attributes, no color, not empty or full; no description, no label.

‘What am I aware OF?’…, then the play of ‘OF’ starts. Then the play of ‘OF’ starts. I’m aware of my own existence. I exist. I Am. But did the ‘I’ change? It became ‘I exist’ but the ‘I’ did not change.

That for which there was even the distinction between existing and not-existing, that ‘I’ did not change; only the sense of existing seems to appear. And within this sense of existence, of being, this whole phenomenal existence seems to arise. There is nothing outside of this existence; nothing phenomenal outside of this existence. That You are.

And none of this so far has given any opportunity for delusion. You see, the appearance of the world is still not the opportunity for delusion, that which we call ‘the mind’. There is no separation, no ‘two’, no sense of ‘me’ or ‘mine’ and ‘other’ and ‘theirs’…, without the appearance of this energy that we call ‘the mind’.

Just I Am. Just I Am. Everything can appear, like for a baby, a child before they’re 2-1/2 years old, everything can appear. Pain can appear, external images can appear, fear can appear, but the sense of ‘me’ and ‘other’ does not exist. The sense of separation does not yet exist. And this is true right now. Right now, there is no sense of ‘me’ and ‘another’. Anything can appear. Images can come outside, seemingly-outside, or images can come seemingly-inside as imagination; emotion, sensation, everything can appear. Is there some distinction, unless you label it, unless you have a thought about it, unless you call the body ‘body’ and the space ‘space’? Is there a distinction between body and space?

It’s just part of one appearance, isn’t it? One existence which is shining with the light of My Presence. And You Are / It is. When this sense of existence, I Am, is not there, nothing exists…, or more accurately, no-thing exists.

The inquiry ‘Who am I?’ is so beautiful. It takes away all the clutter. And it’s so simple actually. Simplest prescription for delusion. Why does the mind resist it so much? Why does the mind want to be done with it? The mind says ‘It should be done’ but actually this inquiry ‘Who am I?’ reveals so much. There’s no end to it. We want to come to some conclusion, that’s the problem. The question; then the mind says ‘When will it be finished for me?’ Never. [Laughter].

It’s not about finishing. There’s no perfection in this realm. In fact the imperfection is the perfection. There’s no perfection in any action, any expression, any words, (least of all words actually). [Laughter] And if we engage ourselves in finding imperfection, then we can go on for a million lifetimes, and we’ll keep finding them. But ‘Who am I?’…

So this question ‘Who am I?’…, in its sheer simplicity, in its sheer potency, is very difficult for the mind. And the voice of separation, this voice of individual existence, plays in the way that it does everything possible to resist this looking. Because the question ‘Who am I?’ is not a thinking process. If you can’t find your shoes, you will look for them. Just thinking about it might give you some pointers to it, but will not help you find them. In the same way, we ask ‘Who am I?’ Because in the pretending to be something individual, we seem to have lost the real ‘I’…, that which is impossible to do, which is to lose yourself, yet this is the game of the seeker.

If you speak to a child, and you tell this child in satsang: ‘So what do you do?’ [Laughter] ‘We look for the ‘I’. It’s the funniest thing, isn’t it? ‘What!?’ [Laughter] ‘I look for the ‘I’? [Laughter] That which looks itself is the ‘I’. I look for ‘I’. So who is the ‘I’ that looks? You are aware that you exist. You are aware that there is the appearance of this world, there is the appearance of the body, there is the appearance of thoughts, emotions, sensations. And there is also the awareness of your own existence. Stay here, don’t get sidetracked from this point. You know that you exist. That which knows of existence, what can we say about that one? That you exist is not secondhand information for you. This is the most apparent, most obvious thing, to know.

Who is this?

Who am I?

Most of us now can say that we know that the person does not exist. Say ‘I know that there is no person’ and that itself is clear that this ‘I’ cannot be a person. And then we say ‘I know that I exist, but not personally’. The sense of existence, the sense ‘I Am’ is also known. By who or what is it known?

This Knowingness, this Awareness: is it at some distance from you?

The mind says that ‘The one which is dancing on the screen, the one that is dancing on the screen, should now become Awareness. That is when I will tell you that you are free’. The mind says like that. That this one that is appearing should now merge into Awareness or some fancy idea like that, you see. It’s not about that. It’s not about the body-mind which is appearing, because you are not a localized entity encapsulated within the body-mind somewhere that you can’t even find. Therefore you cannot be here, you see. When I say ‘here’, I mean ‘here’ spatially. You cannot be enclosed in this realm of space. But the mind only knows this realm of time and space, and therefore it is frustrated as a seeker.

Q: Very, very frustrated.

A: [Laughter] She says ‘Very, very frustrated’. [Laughter] Is the frustration of the mind, a bad thing or a good thing? [Laughter]

Q: To the mind, it’s a very bad thing, but…

A: To the mind its own frustration is very bad obviously. But?

Q: But it’s just grace. I can’t just touch the mind. It’s just…

A: Because what does the mind want? The mind says that ‘One day I woke up and I mediated so hard, that I saw the Self’. Like this. [gesturing to hand as an object] ‘This was the Self, I saw it as an object’. You see, it wants it like that. It cannot be like that. Because if it were, if something was to appear like that, then the question would still remain: Who is it appearing to? You see? So it cannot be an appearance, because you cannot be an appearance. Something deeper than the mind already knows this. Because when I say this, that you cannot be an appearance, it seems so obvious. Or maybe it hurts the ego too much. ‘Yes, yes, how can I be an appearance?’ [Laughter]

A: Aparna said in the meanwhile, “Just a horrible day as a person.” As a person, then everything is horrible, usually. Relatively [Laughter]. Then if the person itself is just imagined, then the horrible day for the person is also imagined. Because right now, everything is just what it is.

So the seeker identity takes on these ideas that ‘I must keep my attention only with the Presence’.

Q: Father, because it’s like if right now, if it goes to the mind, then it feels just, too much. And when then attention is brought back…

A: What is too much? Let’s examine all the concepts that we believe…

Q: It just goes ‘Zzgh-zzgh-zzgh-zzgh’.

A: The mind is too much…

Q: It’s too much. And it’s too…, and everything is so restless, and…

A: If you’re trying to cross the street, then he amount of traffic on the street makes a lot of difference. But if you are not trying to cross or to move anywhere, if you are just watching the traffic on the street, then does it matter whether it is a lot of activity in the mind or not.

Q: But it feels like I become the traffic and then it feels like…, I know I can’t … [Laughs] Yeah, so it feels better when the attention is on the Being…, and then when the distance…

A: And so if I was to say ‘Don’t even be concerned about how it feels’ then how does that feel?

Q: It’s very fearful, Father and it’s like as soon I touch the person, everything is very fearful. It’s not even like a normal personhood anymore. It’s become, like I was just telling Samik, normally if you are attached to your person, you are just normal; like you know normal work day. But here now just it’s impossible. It gets almost like a fear of death, like I can’t live like this anymore. And it comes to that point where like ‘Oh my God, hope I don’t do anything wrong’. So I can’t be there in that fear.

A: Okay, now this voice…, you give it to me for a while. This voice you give it to me for a while. Now, speak as your Presence.

Q: [Laughs]

A: What is happening to You? Speak as the Presence. What is happening to You?

Q: Nothing. That’s why it’s nice to be here, Father. Because when the mind’s like that, to be here is so joyful. Even if, (it’s just okay when), the mind is screaming then. So the fear is like when the attention goes to the mind, it’s just completely engaged with the mind because of fear. Here it’s all fear ridden. Because I know where the mind is taking me. It’s not going to be like…, even like before you said ‘Even if you were a person and you were at my feet, would you be happy?’ It’s impossible to be a person anymore because this mind will not let me stay there and it’s grace because I can’t be a normal person. [Laughs] Having tasted the light there is no way I can be there. No way. And I can see like as soon as I wake up, this fear emerges; like so, so much fear, and the story starts and then takes a while to just come back into the Presence. Like it even says that ‘I want to leave everything and go live in Sahaja with Guruji, because I cannot…, I have to get back’ because of the identity that feels it was there, somewhere. And then I can see it and this energy comes back to the Presence. Even when I see it’s all noise, it’s so much better, Father.

A: Okay, this I that is reporting is which one? Because the theme of our satsang today was ‘Who am I?’

Q: The same one. So the one that wants the attention back into the Being is not the Being itself?

A: Not in this way.

Q: Not in this way?

A: Everything moves only through the will of Being. Because if God wanted attention to be somewhere, you are saying that it wouldn’t be? So God is not wanting.

Q: Something wants to know what to do, Father, because as soon as the attention goes, it’s very like…, so the story goes like when I wake up, it’s like randomly in the mind somewhere; the attention. And then it starts. It’s like all the attention is on the mind random; like, I have to do this or …

A: You know that all of this play of personhood is just a pretense.

Q: Yeah.

A: Why are you taking it so seriously?

Q: It’s very fearful.

A: Fearful is what? Like the presence of fear, what does it do to You? If you keep fearing the fear, then it will keep playing the fear part. Can it not be that if there is fear, there is fear? If there is joy there is joy. Why must something want to change?

Q: Somehow I can’t accept this, Father. That’s why it’s playing again and again.

A: Because you feel like ‘I must do something so that this fearful state doesn’t come’.

Q: The biggest fear is, the one that says ‘I can’t live like this anymore’. And the fear of doing something to myself. This is the fear. And after one of the sangha members said, like she was suicidal, that fear came up like ‘Oh my God’…, that for me, from that day on it comes, it comes like if I touch the person, it gets into the grief ridden, fearful like I can’t live in my person anymore. This is what it says and then …

A: Okay, so start now.

Q: Start where?

A: Start not living in the person. How will you do it? Don’t even play with your attention. Freedom doesn’t mean a mastery over our attention. Because if it was just about keeping attention on the third eye or something like this, you see, it is a very constricted state also. If it happens naturally it is fine. But if it just became that ‘I am so free that I have to just keep my attention on the tip of my nose’…, that can’t be freedom isn’t it. Just because attention is moving, what is happening? Let it move now.

Q: It’s not moving now. [Laughs]

A: It’s moving, no? It came to the face, it went internally; it’s moving still. Let your attention move about. Accept whatever is coming, don’t label anything. Even if labels are coming let them also come and go. [Silence] Say…

Q: [Inaudible]

A: Give the giver also.

Q: I don’t even have control over the attention because that was giving some solace.

A: [Laughs] I am the destroyer of all solace.

Q: Something is not liking it because …, yeah.

A: You see, because if it is not natural then it moves about; and you are trying to control it. And it becomes this Mahabharata of trying to control your attention or not. Better to drop it. For some, it can seem natural. You see, it wasn’t here naturally.

Q: It becomes natural; like from experience it becomes natural when you let it go and somehow here it is not playing this way.

A: Let it go now. Let your attention go wherever it wants. Then? Attention is actually God’s way of tasting this world, including the realm of contrasts available in this world are tasted only through our attention.

Q: That’s getting into the thoughts all the time then.

A: Yes, so it is tasting thoughts; like that. Then? Let all thoughts come also. Then? The thoughts itself comes and says ‘Oh, but it’s getting stuck in thoughts’. Something is not liking all this.

Q: There’s this identity that fails to understand what’s going on here and I really don’t care.

A: But it’s really very simple, no? You left your attention. Now what is left? Attention is going to thoughts, okay. So, then what happens? Thoughts are saying something like ‘Attention should not go to thoughts’. That itself a thought is saying this. So, then? If you are no longer believing what a thought is trying to convince us about who we are, then nothing else really matters. If you are no longer believing what the thoughts are trying to convince us about who we are, that’s all there is.

Q: But there is a sense that belief goes.

A: Yeah, so this is the main point, you see. Yeah, the belief goes to what? That I am a person still.

Q: I need to look at this father because I don’t even know if I am just…, like if there is a fear that belief is going, and all this is going on because of that or …

A: Okay, let’s start very simple.

Q: It’s not possible that I believe myself to be a person at all and…

A: Exactly, that’s what I am trying to tell you.

Q: But it’s very muddled up in the mind …

A: The mind is muddled up. Who does that matter to?

Q: Over-muddled up right now.

A: Okay, the mind is muddled up. Who does that matter to?

Q: The mind.

A: And who are You? I want to hear it today. Now, who are You?

Q: This energetic sense.

A: Energetic sense is here. Is it always here?

Q: Sometimes strong, sometimes not strong at all, but it’s here. I am always here.

A: Who knows that ‘I woke up. I went to sleep’? Is it not you?

Q: Yeah.

A: That is why we call this ‘I Am-ness’, this Presence the primal or the primordial appearance; the primordial vibration. But You are that which is prior even to this. And it is this Knowingness Itself which is now existing. You see? Because this can be very confusing to the mind, and I have realized that some in the sangha have started to get confused with this. But actually it is as simple as this. Okay, what do you see? So, it’s a hand. So this is a hand, and now what do you see? Do you see a finger but is it not still the hand? You see? So because the appearance of Consciousness is there, did the hand become two? You see? So it’s one hand; and hand itself with the birth of the Being…, like this. It seems like there is a dichotomy or something like this, but it is still the hand. It is the same ‘I’ which is ‘Am-ing’. Same hand no? One hand. Like this or like this. The appearance can appear of these fingers. And when I did like this, immediately it came ‘Oh, finger’. Was hand is now finger? It is actually still hand.

It needs lot of innocence to just stay with this because when you try to understand it, it’s all confusing. It’s still a hand, no? Whether a finger or not appears, it is still a hand but with the appearance of the finger; and the flow of life is like this nail which is growing on the finger. Then the nail itself starts saying sometimes that ‘Oh, there is no finger’ while it still continues to consider itself to be the nail. I know it’s digressing a bit from where you started, but the point is that many times, when we say that there is no Being or Consciousness or Presence, it is just the individual identity of the nail now saying that ‘There is no finger. It’s only the hand’. Okay, forget it. [Laughs]

Who are you now? You see? Identity itself comes and says ‘When I touch the identity I feel so terrible. I don’t want to be stuck there’. This is which one?

Q: This is the painful one, Father.

A: This one…, this one. [Laughs]

Q: Now that you have taking the attention thing away, I am going to… [Inaudible]

A: So ‘What do I do, what do I do?’ is about which ‘I’? It’s too free actually. Not having to control our attention is too open and too free and there is an urge to go to some thought about it.

Q: Sometimes when I just let go of the attention, there is an extreme sense of fear, like very wobbly. Like I was in a store the other day and [inaudible] and then just come back to Presence. Something was just like very wobbly.

A: Guruji used to do…, no, let’s do that.

Q: There is no sense of Presence sometimes, Father and then something starts to feel very wobbly. It feels like if the sense of Presence is not here. Then for sure there is personhood going on, like some nonsense.

A: Okay, let’s do like Guruji used to do. You know, once he said ‘I am just going to say 3, 2, 1, drop it! And you let go of all sense of control’. Just one thing you have to do is don’t go and hide behind any concept. Don’t believe a concept. Okay, so all of us, no matter what fear comes, what wobbly-ness comes, let it all come. Let’s see what happens, whether our head really explodes. So 3, 2, 1, drop it! [Laughs].

Now come what may, don’t pick up a concept. Let all concepts come and go.

[Silence] Now what happened?

Say it, say it, it’s good. At least you will say it, and others who are feeling it will say ‘Thank God she asked that thing’. Because I just presume it is just so simple. [Laughs]. You say what happened. Thought came, or some sensation came or what happened?

Q: I have no idea.

A: And it’s a bad thing?

Q: I have no idea really.

A: Yes, get used to this ‘I have no idea’. Don’t worry about it. This having no idea, this not knowing, is the mental not-knowing. Don’t rush to a knowing; don’t rush to any interpretation. Remain without a mental knowing of everything…, and see if life stops. Resist the urge to know something mentally…, and see if existence stops. The urge to label things; don’t call anything fear, don’t call anything joy, bliss.

Q: Love you, Father.

A: Love you too, my dear.

We must all digest the fact that, that which we considered ourselves to be for so long was just a myth. Really, before we get into any ideas about the nature of Awareness vs Consciousness, today can we digest this; that all that I considered myself to be, all that I might still consider myself to be is pure myth, the mythical person, mythical ego.

And does a myth need to be killed? Don’t need to kill a myth. Just the idea or the belief in the myth dissolving is the killing of the myth. It is not a physical entity that needs to be destroyed, the ego.

Are we digesting this really, that everything I consider to be true about this one, this person, ‘This is how I am, this is what happened to me, this is the story of my life’…, is all just mythical. Why? Not because the appearances didn’t come. Appearances might have appeared in that way, but what was I believing myself to be? I was believing myself to be a person, a separate entity, who is the experiencer of all these appearances.

Now we are finding that, that experiencer is not personal, it is Consciousness itself. God is playing, because we check and we check and we check and we don’t find this individual entity. It only has a representative. That’s the miracle, you see. The leela is that the non-existent one has a lawyer to represent it. The mind’s voice, convincing you, convincing God, that God is a person.

How to let go of that which is false?

How to let go of that which is false is only to let it come and let it go.

If there was a voice in your head which kept telling you that you are a pink elephant, but when you check you see you are not one, would you still keep saying ‘But my mind is, but the mind is, but the mind is’. You know that it is not representing the Truth. It is representing the voice, it is pretending to be the voice of this pink elephant, which doesn’t exist. Once you see this to be true, then to be rid of the false, because there is no evidence of this pink elephant you see. You check, you check, you check; you don’t find this pink elephant. Only this voice keeps coming and saying ‘I am an elephant and I am pink this is my forest, [Laughs] this is what I want, this is what happened to me, this is the story of my pink life’. [Laughs]. You see? That’s what I mean by our thoughts will go from being our tormentor to being like a comedian in our head. And the example is not ludicrous because the belief in this personal identity is the same as this belief, if we believed ourselves to be pink elephants, the non-existent one. You see? [Smiles].

It’s just simple like this and we feel that when we come into spirituality, what will happen is that the pink elephant will find better pasture, [Laughs] will find a pink partner, will find some happiness, some peace, some joy. But what happens in the company of Truth, (which is the definition of satsang), is that very strongly the push comes to inquire into whether I am this pink elephant. Is it true? And initially some resistance can come. Initially some resistance can come and it can say ‘But I came to find some [inaudible], I came for some happiness, I came for some juicy sugarcane for the pink elephant…, and now all that you are doing is asking me whether I am really a pink elephant or not’. That’s all that we are really doing. But what happens is that we continue to take on the elephant’s voice and say ‘But now I want to understand Consciousness, I want to understand Awareness as the elephant’. So our mental understanding about even spiritual concepts is as useless, as the elephant searching for sugarcane; the non-existent one. So we must digest today and now the fact that we don’t exist as this entity, as this separate entity. And I repeat:

To let go of the false, all that we need to do is to not believe what the voice of the false is saying. And to see for ourselves what we really are.

Even now whatever thoughts might be coming, who are they representing? What are they referring to you as? Even the thought which says ‘I am God’ is referring to who actually as God? See if there is a sense of separation in that. Because when we say ‘I am God’ we are actually saying ‘Everything is God. Only God is’. But this is not what thoughts are referring to. You see?

So come to terms with this enormous yet most obvious discovery: That which we have referred to ourselves as, for so long, has no existence.

So then, as we let go of ideas of this pink elephant, then there comes a point that the memory of believing yourself to be one, itself seems laughable. All our worries, all our concerns, are just like the concerns of this elephant, saying ‘Where will I find my next sugarcane patch?’

Come to terms with the enormity of this discovery. Don’t shy away from it, even if it seems too vast. Don’t run to a concept, no matter how spiritual or advanced the concept might seem. But the promise of completion of your understanding, [Laughs] the completion of our true understanding is the dropping of our mental understanding. As long as we are looking for the mind to get to concepts of who we are, then know that it is still mental, it is still personal.

Why must That which is prior to the appearance of the mind, why must That need the mind to find out who it is? That which is present prior to all appearances continues to exist with or without the mind. What is That which is prior to all of this?

How can it be…, the wonder is, how can it be that we consider ourselves to be so much this non-existent entity and we miss what we are in this moment, right now? Just because some sensation is there, just because some thought is there, just because some constriction is there, who is aware of that? Are you the constriction? Or that which is aware of it? Are you the thought? Or that which is aware of it? Who are You?

And a very good place to start is ‘I don’t know’. Don’t be in a rush to know. To know mentally is not going to help. So a very good start is to see that I don’t know who I am, but one thing I do know is that there is no person here. Actually this much is enough to come to this ‘I don’t know’. Because then in this space of ‘I don’t know-ness’…, all insights come.

There is no need to rush to get more and more insight. As long as we can see that ‘I am not a person’. What does it mean to see this actually? It is just the seeing that that who has this story has no existence here. And the stories are also the ‘same old, same old’. We talked about the four stories we usually have. All life is just a combination of these four stories. Wanting better relationship, wanting monetary, financial security, wanting healthy body and wanting some lasting happiness, peace and joy, the search for freedom itself. Basically all our lives are just different variations of these four stories playing at different times. So who is it that wants better relationships? Are the atoms and molecules which make up your body, are they interested in any relationships? In the same way who is it that even wants freedom?

There is no need to rush to any answers. Don’t be afraid to admit that ‘I don’t know’. Because in this not knowingness, we are letting go of mental knowledge. We are admitting that the mind actually cannot have a good answer for this. So ‘I don’t know’ is much more useful than a mental answer; which could be Consciousness, Awareness if it is just mental. You see? Because the mental saying that ‘I am Consciousness or I am Awareness’ will not help us if we have a breakup in our relationship, when we lose our money, when the health of the body starts to deteriorate and when we find that this mythical freedom we are not getting.

There is no value to these concepts except if they are used as pointers to point to what we are, to give direction to our looking in a way. That is the only use. But when we start mistaking the milestones and the arrow marks for the destination itself, then that is the spiritual ego.

So look for the person, really look. All of you, really look. Look for the one who wants better relationship, wants freedom, wants financial security, even wants a better body. Who is this one?

And I know you have done this before. Like a stewardess in the airline, I will say that I know you all have heard these announcements before; but I still request you to look again. Look for the person. Look for the one that has likes and dislikes, desires and aversions. Don’t go with any mental conclusion. Continue to look. The mind says ‘There is no person. Yes, yes, you see this’. Then inquire into: Who is speaking and who is looking at this thought also. Is there anything personal there? Is there anything personal there? Where is this person sitting? Is there an entity sitting inside your head?

Because I remember that it was the predominant feeling like this; that there is somebody sitting inside our heads and driving this car called the body…,and I can direct the body, I can move it. How, it has no idea. Not a finger it can move and yet the finger moves. The mind doesn’t know how to move it. Which thought can move something? Just like a sage said: ‘Presuming I am the doer is like presuming that I am doing the digestion of my food’. It is just happening. Right now millions of processes are happening in the body and there are so many.

I have been helping my son with some biology studies that he is doing, and you are amazed at the intricacies of the functioning of this body and the supreme intelligence which runs this body. The mind doesn’t have a clue. If a germ enters, then the whole body reacts and it sends warriors to meet them, to fight. Who’s doing all of this? Is a thought saying ‘Now you go, this germ has come’ then sending the antibodies or all of these. It’s not. It has no idea. Who’s doing all of this?

Even if we don’t know who is doing all of this or we don’t admit that it’s God, at least we can see who has designed this supreme intelligence? [Silence] The dynamic aspect of You.

The bad news for the person is that in knowing this, that I am God, usually does not help the person in any way. You see? And if there is this personal desire that ‘The discovery that I am God will lead to my life being in a certain way’…, then even that will have to be dissolved in one way or the other. So if the person doesn’t even know, if this voice in our head doesn’t even know how to move a finger, then how can we say it runs our life? ‘What should I do next?’ And how can a bundle of thoughts be experiencing our life also?

Q: I’m contented, complete, no problem. But the problem is…, Nisargadatta Maharaj.

[Laughter]

Nisargadatta Maharaj says that he has seen the dissolution of the Universes and the bodies and everything. If he has a cancer in the body, that Consciousness, you know, is not bothered about it. Whatever is happening, whatever experience is happening is all happening in the play of the Consciousness. [Paraphrases Nisargadatta]: ‘I am beyond Consciousness and I don’t care what the Consciousness is doing’/ So here the confusion comes. So if he…,

A: Go with your own experience. As I’ve said, for all kinds of things which are contradictory, we use whatever resonates with you; use it to see the Truth for yourself. You say that ‘In my experience, there is no confusion left. Now the problem is what Maharaj is saying’. How can it be? [Laughter]  Maharaj could be talking to anyone, it could just be a different type of question/answer session, he could be just having fun. So leave it.

Q: Okay, okay fine. So, this is answered. Second thing is that, you know, no Guru talks about ‘Once you have awakened to the Truth, you have glimpsed the Truth’…., then what happens afterwards. Nobody talks…, even including you; nobody talks. A little bit actually Maharaj talks but other than that nobody talks.

So, nothing is, nothing is. But when I asked Bhagavan Mooji three years back ‘Now what?’…, he said ‘No next’. I said ‘But ‘I’ is still there, why don’t you cut it?’ He said ‘It will evaporate like a camphor’ [a white substance that burns and leaves no trace behind] Okay. But he said ‘Don’t touch ‘I’ and just be silent’. But after that I started having a lot of panic attacks and my whole attention was on my body/mind, fear and everything. I just could not remain as the Witness.

By Grace I am back now on this path. So the thing is, I have a glimpse. But if you read Advaita and other things then they say that, you know, ‘I am Brahman’ is still a glimpse from the Consciousness, but it is Brahman. Okay. Then ‘I Am’ has to dissolve because the Brahman is not saying ‘I am Brahman’. So this ‘I Am’ has to drop, then only the Brahman remains in the Nirvikalpa Samadhi. And then whatever the God spits out, whatever the residue it spits out for you to remain active in the world. And sometimes it is a compassion…, like for you, it is a compassion to teach. Maybe for Bhagavan Mooji it’s a compassion to teach, some only have to do some Seva. So which-ever is arising which comes out of the Nirvikalpa Samadhi after dissolution, that is the way you live the life. Because the mind doesn’t ever really extinguish totally one hundred percent.

Now this experience is not there, this experience is not there. Then once you come back…, like for you…, you having compassion, right? You want to be a teacher. All the people in fact they smell your fragrance, they call you Father and you know this kind of  a love, you know the love, the understanding which has to actually convert into the love, as you see everybody as One, not apart from you; this experience is not there.

So how will this experience come? That means there is still to be done. I cannot, I cannot just be happy like ‘Okay I have seen the Truth now, I have awakened and that’s it’. No actually, because there is still an urge to… [Inaudible].

A: Okay so I feel to say something about this. I don’t feel actually it is true that we don’t speak about ‘Once the glimpse of the Truth is seen, then what next?’ because especially in the last few months when you’ve been there, I’ve been sharing this…, that the recognition of the Truth, the seeing of the Truth of what You are, is not necessarily the predominant end of the conditioning.

Full of the dissolution of conditioning, it doesn’t necessarily mean that if the Truth has awakened or the recognition…, or an awakening experience has happened …, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is the end of conditioning.

So what is it that leads to the end of conditioning? For that, we have to understand what is the meaning of conditioning? What is it that leads to the end of conditioning? So where are these conditions? These conditions are just ideas that we’ve attached to the Presence of Being.

Now what happens is as these ideas are being dropped? I’ve been talking about diet. When you’re on a diet you don’t have to specifically say ‘Today I will focus on the food that I ate three days ago; today I will focus on the food I had yesterday’. When you’re dieting, when you’re not picking up new food, then all that has to be burnt from the past will also get burnt on its own.

So as you’re not buying any thoughts about Anil and attaching them to the pure Presence I Am, then all the previous conditioning will also take care of itself. And as this conditioning is dissolving and we are not buying any ideas about ourselves then we will find that this sense of ‘Am-ness’ also seems to become more and more transparent.

I know it seems to be severe when it has a lot of ideas attached to it, but as they’re dropping now…, including the ideas that ‘I haven’t got this, I should get this and then I will be free, this is what this one says, this is what that one says; and then I will give myself the freedom certificate’…, drop all these ideas because they’re just attachments to the pure Presence.

And as you rid yourself from all of these concepts, you will come to this point where you see the ‘I Am-ness’ is very transparent, very light. It’s like this contact lens which you can’t even see and yet you know that it exists. We’re rushing, rushing…, ‘I want this, it’s been so long and I haven’t got this’. Just allow yourself now to not go with that urge to pick up from ‘the conveyor belt’ of thoughts. Just now. And then this diet of conditioning, we will find that it is thinning out. This sense of ‘Am-ness’ just seems like an auxiliary.

From this point on, any amount of trying or trying to mentally understand it or any amount of conceptual frameworks, any amount of Truth-seeking and scriptures and various Masters words; none of that is going to really help. It’s your openness, your nakedness. Don’t try to cover yourself up with any ideas.

[Silence]

For some of us, some fear can come, some anxiety can come about this. Remaining still in this way is very uncomfortable for the mind, you see. It wants to come with a complaint.

Then one day when you just allow this mind to come and go, you will find that your mouth is just being used as the Presence itself. Then you will find that there is a great fragrance of love and peace which emanates from you. Just give up all your trying and efforts. Allow this mind to come and go.

It’s the One Being, One Presence that speaks from here, that is not different in any way. And I look forward to hearing the same words which you share accompanied by the fragrance of love, peace and joy.

[Silence]

[Note: The questionnaire calls both Ananta and Mooji ‘Bhagavan’ in reverence to their lineage, Oneness, with Ramana Maharshi]

Q: Bhagavan, I just have a small query. Like for almost twenty years I’m on anti-anxiety medicines. So they’re keeping a lot of things under the carpet. So the suppressed energies which should come out in the process.., they’re not coming out. As soon as I reduce the medicines, you know, havoc happens. You know it’s almost like a ton of Shiva Tandava. [A vigorous dance described as the source of the cycle of creation, preservation and dissolution] That is what happens, totally uncontrolled energies. So I have this doubt whether I should continue to keep them suppressed with the medicines or I should take a plunge and slowly, slowly, you know, taper off the medicines and let the suppressed energies come out. But it will be hell, it will really be hell. So what should I do?

A: Having some experience of this in my life also I can say that there is no reason to subject yourself to any type of hell. There will come a day, with my Masters Grace, where these anxious thoughts, anxious ideas, anxious energies will be allowed to be released. But there is no rush to play with that now, because here you’re coming to more and more recognition, more and more insights about who You are. So we don’t have to add another factor, in the sense of ‘Okay let me now deal with these suppressed energies’. No, you come to this seeing and this dissolution of as much conditioning as possible and then Grace will unfold in this way also when it is meant to.

So now the feeling is to say that: Don’t necessarily be in a rush to taper off or to feel like ‘I don’t need this’ or whatever. In fact I would say that whatever your wife says you do, you do that, in terms of your medicine.

Q: [Laughs] Okay she says ‘Don’t take [medicine name]’. She says ‘Don’t take [medicine name]’.

A: Sounds like a good idea, yes.

Q: Okay, okay. Thank you Bhagavan. Thank you so much.

A: Thank you.

Q: Thank you for you Grace, Bhagavan’s Grace. [Mooji]

Someone came to me and said ‘Can you tell me the way to MG road in Bangalore?’ [I said] ‘Go straight on this road, and then you take a right, and then you take a left, and you’re on MG road’. Then, to help, we say ‘When you take the right, there’s this big pristine white building, very clear, very beautiful. And when you take the left, you’ll see this big space, un-used, nobody’s using it’. Then what happens? I expect that they’ll just look like this and they’ll come to this destination…, so-called seeming destination that we’re talking about.

But what happens many times is that first someone could feel like they’re being misguided. They say ‘Oh, but when I spoke to that other one, he said first the space will come and then the building will come. So can we discuss that?’

So I say ‘Go and check, what comes first?’ They say ‘No, no, but that one seemed more credible than you’.  I say, ‘Okay, I might be wrong. But can we go and check?’ … They say ‘No, but I brought the map also which actually says it’s like this. There is no space (or there is no building)’. Like this. Then what happens is that we start collecting. So around this sense of getting direction, then we start collecting this other… [Inaudible] ‘What do you want? MG Road?’ … [They say] ‘Oh, I know, I know, I know. First you go left from here, then you will find this very, very beautiful restaurant; and you go and eat at that restaurant.’

You see what I’m getting at? The point is that we get so stuck in what it must look like and what is the right way and what is the wrong way, and who is saying what. ‘Is this the truth? Is that the truth?’ Then we refuse to first go and see for ourself. This is the seeker identity. It is looking. You’re saying ‘I’m looking for the pen. Can you tell me what it’s like?’ And I say ‘It’s blue in color and it’s got a white cover on top’. What else is needed but to look…, for that which is blue in color and has a white cover?

So something starts enjoying the seeking itself, and in the enjoyment of the seeking itself, the pretend-seeker does such a terrible job of it; and is the most transparent thing. You see? It can be seen through so easily. Something wants to make conclusions about what the pen looks like, wants to debate the color of the pen without actually finding it.

It is not of great value to be the best one who is looking for the truth. You do not need to become the best seeker. There is no awards, no medals for that.

And then what happens? Unlike in the pen metaphor, unlike when we’re looking for some object…, for an object, we start looking. Okay, can I find this red color pen? So I go looking over here, looking over there, looking over here, looking…, and the mind is comfortable with this kind of looking. It’s used to this kind of looking; trying to find the best relationship, the best way to make money, the best way to take care of the body. Now it is trying to find the best way to become the best spiritual seeker. But what the mind cannot fathom…, is looking for That which is Looking.

How do you look for That which is Looking? Where must it be? Where can I go to find it?

And sometimes this conversation will be easier with children, actually. With little children, it would be easier. Because it must be right here, no? The One who is Looking has been here.

You’re looking for the Self, isn’t it? Self-realization. That means what? That That which has looked is now looking for Itself. That which has looked for other things and now has played the good game of looking for Itself. Where do we go to find This? Where do I go to find the ‘I’? [Laughs] You see? It’s funny.

And then we start fighting about what the ‘I’ looks like. ‘No, no, ‘I’ doesn’t look like this. ‘I’ looks like this. This is the true ‘I’.’ [Laughs] It’s a sham, I tell you; all this, it’s a complete sham.

Q: It’s a shame.

Sometimes a shame, yes. Because if you’re just open right now, there is no way that you can miss YourSelf. You exist? Or no? I’m not saying ‘As what’…, don’t start debating. You exist? Or no? Who doesn’t exist? Without putting the sense ‘As something’…, can you honestly, with integrity, say that you don’t exist?

Q: I don’t know. [Inaudible]

Yes, but even to say ‘I don’t know’ there must be ‘I’ that doesn’t know. ‘I don’t know’. You didn’t say ‘Robert doesn’t know’. You said ‘I don’t know’. You didn’t say ‘Azhar doesn’t know’. You said ‘I don’t know’. You see? So there’s a sense that I exist, even if I don’t know as what do I exist. And it’s very, very basic; very simple.

There is nobody who does not know this. There is nobody who does not know this. And this Knowingness itself, that is aware even of existence, is That which is the Truth of What We Are.

It’s very simple. I know that I exist. I am aware of my Being.

And then what happens? We clarify what the discovery was. We don’t need to actually. We just …, maybe we need to…, it’s good to look at this question. [Chuckles] Suppose we need to? Then we find that this ‘I’ that knows even of existence, it looks like nothing, it looks like no-thing; just the Knowingness Itself. You Know that You Are. And the minute we say ‘I am’ it shows very clearly that ‘I Am’.

I find it very funny when sometimes someone will say ‘Oh, but you’re creating a dichotomy between Awareness and Being, or Awareness and Consciousness’.

But I Am.

No? ‘I’ itself is ‘Am’. So where is the dichotomy? It’s not somebody else who is ‘Am’. It is the One Self that is ‘Am-ing’. [Laughter] It is the same Self that is ‘Am-ing’. Nobody else. There’s no dichotomy.

So, just because I’m eating an ice cream, does that mean there are two of me now because there is the functioning of eating an ice cream happening? So, this ‘I’ which is the Absolute, the pristine One, is functioning as Being, but still the same ‘I’, no? It’s ‘I Am’.

It’s very simple actually. Just this ‘I’ is all I have ever known. You have not known anyone else except this ‘I’. You say ‘I went to sleep, I woke up, I had a dream’. Even a child talks like this. Therefore the truth we have always known. The truth of what we are, we’ve always known in reality. And the truth is Here.

In this realm, you will find that every expression and its complete contrast is available. So just like the voice of intuition (if you want to call it that) is pointing us to that which is always true, just in the same way, the voice that is the opposite of that voice is also available. You see? Is it saying ‘No, no, all of this you don’t believe; because you are a person, everyone considers you to be a person’ …, this voice is also available. And for most of us, and for most of our lives, we’ve given a lot of authority, meaning and belief to this voice which has never, ever brought us this lasting sense of peace, lasting sense of joy; never got us lasting happiness. And I know this because otherwise you would not be here. I would not be here.

So, then why do we still have allegiance to this one? So I say ‘Take this road. Take the right, then take the left’. The voice will come and say ‘Go in the other direction. Take the left, then take the right’. And you say ‘I want to have both the directions’ [Chuckles] and land up in the same place.

When we say ‘The mind is also Consciousness’ what are we saying? Because the mind is nothing but this messaging; nothing but this messaging. So although it is of course made up of Consciousness, it is not speaking the truth.

And the best part is that we don’t need to actually get anywhere at all. There is nowhere to go; nothing to get. You are Here.

We only suffer because we believe our thoughts. We only suffer because we believe our thoughts.

And if I ask you ‘Can you stop being now?’ …, you cannot; and you see that Being is Here.

And when I ask you to check ‘Are you aware now?’…, you are. It is the same One that is aware even of Being.

What does this Awareness look like? That it looks like nothing, makes no sense to the mind. That Awareness looks like nothing, (therefore it can’t look like anything in the first place), that makes no sense to the mind. That’s why for many of us now it wants to paint some fancy picture. You want to make a word visual out of this Awareness which is completely unfathomable.

For the first time ever…, (because traditionally I have not been that attracted to Krishnamurti’s teachings) but for the first time ever, I posted a quoted by him. It was just so beautiful. We get so stuck in the description of this and that, and we start to believe that the directions are That to which they are pointing. Or maybe you start enjoying hearing the directions so much that you start saying ‘Okay, but what if I took this…? Where does it go? Does it take me out of Bangalore? Does it take me…, does it take me to Chennai?’

Instead, can’t we just look for ourselves?

That which Knows of your existence, what can we say about That One? Let’s get straight to the heart of the matter. That which Knows of your existence, what can we say about That One?

Is it somebody apart from You? Are there two of you? Who knows that You exist? You need somebody else to describe for you this ‘I’ that Knows that You exist? Can any description do It justice? Any terms?

Just before satsang started, one in the sangha was saying that ‘Maybe I’m just tired of hearing these terms: Freedom, Consciousness, Awareness’. Okay. We can lose them. We don’t need them actually. Because Truth, you cannot lose.

So actually, I’m not showing you freedom; nobody can show you freedom. I’m showing you that there never was any bondage, except as an idea…, except as an idea believed in.

I had an idea once when I was younger that one day I will be a songwriter for one BIG rock band or something. It was not true. It was just an idea believed in. And once it’s seen through, it’s dropped.

So if any of us still have the idea that ‘I’m the seeker. I’m the person. I’m separate. I exist AS something’ then just like this idea of being a songwriter, this will also be dropped. But if we keep believing more and more ideas about it, then how will it be dropped? If we keep feeding ourself these ideas of personhood, ‘I must drop my personhood’…, do we need an idea to drop it?

It’s just like this. If I kept saying since then, 30 years ago til now, every day, ‘I must not buy the idea of being a songwriter, I must not buy the idea of the songwriter, I must not buy the idea of the songwriter…’ it keeps the songwriter idea alive. ‘I must not be a person, I must not be a person, I must not be a person’ keeps the sense of personhood alive. So let’s use these as chemotherapy to remove this sense of personhood, not as vitamins that we’re taking every day. [Chuckles] ‘I am NOT a person! I am NOT a person! I find no person when I look. Isn’t that great?’

Sometimes I feel we’ve gotten so jaded with what we’re hearing that the fire is gone from it. [Slow, dejected voice]: ‘I’m not a person, I know I’m not a person. Yeah, but …’ [Stronger voice]: ‘If I am not a person, then what am I? Come on!’ What else do you need?

That’s why I’m starting to realize the value of how in India for many centuries actually this knowledge… [was held back for a time]…, until the Guru had this sense that ‘Now you’re ready to hear that you’re not a person’. And when it was told, it used to hit home!

Now because every day, Monday to Friday we hear ‘I am not a person’ [Chuckles] …, it just feels like ‘Yeah, yeah, I know I’m not a person. What else you got?’ Let’s keep it fresh. ‘But seriously, I am not a person! What am I?’ [Chuckles] ‘What am I?’ …, ‘What’s going on here?’

Because this whole world seems to be designed for people. ‘Everyone is asking my name and my form and what I want; and I have no name and no form and I don’t want anything’. Wow. Come on, you must see the great wonder in this! Everyone and everything says ‘What’s your name? What do you want? Where did you live? Where are your parents from? What do you do for money? What about your relationship status?’ [And you realize]: ‘I have none of those in reality. I have none of those because I am not a person’.

‘What am I?’

Just this much, with having no idea of what I am, is the end of suffering actually.

But what happened with us? ‘Oh, I want to just make sure I’m not the person. I just want to not be the person. I want to not be the person’. In that itself, we keep the ‘person’ alive.

Q: [Short inaudible comment]

But what is seen? What does it mean when we say ‘I am not a person’? We see that there is nobody; because all suffering is personal. Can we really say there is impersonal suffering?

Therefore in the Looking Now, you will find that there is no person…, or you’ll claim some money from me. [Ananta has this 3-year ongoing joke that ‘If anyone can show me the ‘person’ I’ll give them $1,000]. Don’t go mid-way! Today either you claim some money from me or you see that there is no person.

Q: [Short inaudible comment]

You’re claiming money? [Laughs]

Q: [Inaudible]

She says ‘How do you define what a person is and what do you mean by personal?’ Very good.

So, ‘I Am’ is not personal. I just Am. Being is just Being. Now, the instant we attach something to the ‘I Am’ it relies on the belief of my separate existence as a person. ‘I am a man, I am a husband, I am spiritual, I am good’…, you see? Because no longer are we referring to ‘I Am’ as Existence, that that which exists is I Am. We’re not saying ‘Existence is good’ when we say ‘I am good’…, we are not saying ‘God is good or Existence is good’. When we say ‘I am a husband’ we’re not saying ‘Existence is a husband’. You see? So that’s why the question then is ‘Who is the husband?’

So anything that we attach (using the power of our belief) to this sense of Existence Itself, which is impersonal, is the play of being a person. The picking up of more ideas about ‘I Am’, the picking up of more lies about ‘I Am’ is falling deeper into the personal conditioning. And the dropping of ideas about ‘I Am’ is the dissolution of conditioning.

Is there a person Being?

Q: [Short inaudible comment]

The picking up of ideas about ‘I Am’ is going deeper into personal conditioning, and the dissolution of ideas about ‘I Am’ is the dissolution of conditioning.

So this Being, is it Being personally? Is there anything personal about it? Which means, is it Azhar’s Being or Prabha’s Being? Is there a sense of individuality about it? Does a child, before he gets to use the language, have the sense that this Being that is here belongs to this name and form? Or it is just experienced as this sense of Existence?

It doesn’t matter what your name could be. It doesn’t matter what form there is. It doesn’t matter if this body is 40 years old or 10 years old or 20 years old…, the sense of Existence has been the same. It’s not aging.

Just Being being.