A Deep Sense of Ease - 27th April 2016

And I don't know... when you ask them, oh, it's very beautiful. Don't be fearful of this 'I don't know.' That it is the coming from this 'I know I'm a person' though that 'I don't know' which seems more difficult in the spiritual journey for most. Because we are so convinced that we are this name and form, that to come to this 'I don't know' seems to stretch out for a long while for many. So if you're in this 'I don't know,' then don't be fearful of this because this is very beautiful. Now, this 'I don't know' the mind is very scared of. So it might try to give you some candy now, say, 'Come back, come back. I'm so bad, I have happy thoughts. Will you come? Come and this will rescue you.' In that, Guruji says the Maya, it says, 'I'll protect... I'm here to serve you, I'm here to protect you.' But you try leaving and it becomes very, very scary again. So don't buy into this candy which the mind is selling to you because it is scared of this 'I don't know.' It knows that from this 'I don't know,' a true recognition, a true realization will appear. So it has to take you away from 'I don't know who I am' back into personhood saying, 'Okay, but now I am a happy person and that's all I wanted.' It's not true right here, definitely, because the urge is within that the urge is to discover what we truly are, which is prior and beyond any sense of happiness or unhappiness. It is accepting, and in this accepting and allowing there can be a natural sense of peace and happiness, but it's not personal. There's nothing personal about this.

Just disconnect to what you've been saying and what you said about 'I was never born' or not. And that one's been driving me nuts all weekend because I have a direct experience of that we don't die because I communicate with people who were in the physical and who no longer physically here. I can talk to my father who's passed on for ten years and other people, I talked to them. So I know we don't die. I say, 'Alright, I don't die,' great. But the idea 'was never born' thing, oh my god, what's that about?

If you don't die, is it possible to be born actually? You know, the question itself, the answer is there. Unless that it can there be birth? I don't know. I don't know why is not because if this one is eternal, then can there be birth or death for this one?

Mentally I know that. I know the right answer. Mentally, I don't have a direct experience of it.

Yes, actually experience, but we don't have yet the confirmation that this is true because that which we are always has been. You see, that which is aware of all the states which are coming and going and itself is not coming and going, that is what we most naturally are. That which has seen even in this seeming lifetime, has seen so many bodies and so many realms and so many experiences have happened. See in this waking and so many different dream states, and this so-called waking state which is just another dream state. And also it has experienced nothingness. No phenomenal appearance has also been experienced so often. So we see that something can be born—the sense of presence, the sense of consciousness can be born and can dissolve—but that which witnesses it is not taking birth or dying.

It seems incredibly boring.

Yes, but to who? That's not sure.

What I can sort of conceptually step back and experience that eternal being, I can... I've been there. And then it's like, 'It's so boring. Why would I want to hang out here?'

Yes, so this can be said in two ways. One is a very primal way, you see, where if you are all there is, there is no birth or death for you and nothing can ever happen to you, and it is everywhere and you are not phenomenal, then what's all of this about? Yeah. That's why I say that my favorite reason—which is not true, but you have to give a reason to things just because you have to say something—yes, but so my favorite when someone asks what is the point of the creation of this universe, I say because it was too boring. I want to make this. So then I created this play, this phenomenal experiencing in which I have pretended to be this person and playing out in all of this adventure called life with all its ups and downs, with all its seeming bondage and freedom. So if you're speaking from there saying, 'But if I'm all there is and there is nothing actually moving and yet I'm here and nothing is moving, nothing is changing, maybe I need to buy a TV or something in front of me.' So this whole phenomenal experiencing is the TV of awareness. The movie screen in which all of this is playing out. Yes, because it's too boring.

But what I was saying earlier, what I wanted to point out and stress on more, because many times as you are coming to the recognition of what you are, the mind comes in with the same thing: 'But do you really want this? This is so empty and this is boring. You will just become a vegetable. You will not have any enthusiasm. You will not have any wonder left in life.' But this is not the actual experience of the sages. They actually find that every moment is full of so much wonder and joy and peace when we drop all these expectations and fears, guilt and remorse, pride, arrogance, specialness. And all of this is gone, the stories that we have about ourselves and they are gone and we don't know anything at all, then there's so much wonder in every moment. It's so much joy, you see. So that is the voice I was cautioning against which can come in here: 'But this is so boring.' But the voice and answer is the one that... our vision, this is what you go for.

But I do know I have met other sages who all are apparently blissed-out most of the time.

I actually haven't met anyone who's blissed-out all the time. No, I actually haven't met anyone. Then maybe that is great grace because here it's not this feeling of being blissed-out all the time. What's that like? A nice way, much more natural than that. Just everything is allowed. I cannot say that there is a strong experience of bliss in every instant. All states are allowed to come and go very naturally, and yet what I see myself to be in reality is untouched by any of these states. And also there is a recognition that everything phenomenal is coming and going, and anytime there is this belief or attachment in something, then it is setting up for failure because I know that this is a temporal theory. This is so, it is going. So if I have to attach something here as me or mine, then that is bound to cause suffering because it will come and go. So if I attach even to the sensation of bliss when it comes, it is seen often enough that even this is coming and going. So if I give it the idea that it should always be like...

Everything phenomenal is coming and going, and anytime there is this belief or attachment in something, then it is setting up for failure because I know that this is a temporal theory. This is so; it is going. So if I have to take something here as me or mine, then that is bound to cause suffering because it will come and go. So if I attach even to the sensation of bliss when it comes, it is seen often enough that even this is coming and going. So if I give it the idea that it should always be like this—'Oh, for me now it is always like this'—then I know when it goes, the mind itself will come and say, 'See, now you lost your freedom.' There is the bliss, and it is that's why I said it is good news that I haven't met anyone who is blissed out all the time, because the mind would say, 'See, this is the true sage; he is always in bliss.'

Now, what can be a bit confusing is that this state of simple allowing itself, non-resistance, allowing, is a very deep peace, you see. So this peace can be confused to be like a curtain on panels of something. So when the sage says, 'I am always at peace,' he is not talking about this sense of phenomenal tasting of peace—'Oh, so peaceful, so peaceful'—not like this. It is so much peace because everything is allowed; nothing is resisted. So this is the deeper peace.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Later, yes and yes. This is the constant experience even here, except for momentary buttons getting pressed and thrown away once in a while. I have to say that mostly the experience is non-resistant, not personal. Mostly the experience here is not personal and the simple allowing of everything to come and go. Wherein there is the deep sense of ease. I don't know how it is allowing all, yes. So if there's an anger that comes, there's an ease because it's coming and it goes.

Yes, I feel ease is a very good word. I'll use this word more often. There's a deep sense of ease. It is not a struggle with life. It is not a resisting with life in any way. I like ease.

So, I guess it was a thought that said, 'Okay, so where are we now?' Look, it's that I don't know the one who tracks. I guess it's the therapist in me. Oh, the tracking one is the tracker guy. Tracking is my arch-nemesis. I have a tracker woman. A tracker woman when you monitor; she monitors what's going on. 'Okay, so where are we now?' I heard you were a good boy today, a good girl today, who believed only ten times. Right? So there's a feeling that came up of, 'Well, what do I do now? What do I do?' You know, we've had this nice conversation and now what do I do with this new insight? Like I have to go study it. Like when I get off the hangout, then I'm going to listen to this again and study it.

Actually, this happens initially because the strongest leg for the ego is the leg of the doership. Without doership, without the sense that 'What do I do now?', the ego actually cannot survive. This table, the table of the ego, just falls down without the leg of doership. So it's very natural for it to try and retain itself saying, 'Okay, what is the plan now? What do I do now? This was very nice. What do I do now?'

Now, as long as there's a sense that I can do something, then we can do two things. One is we can just not believe the next thought. Or second, we can self-inquire and ask: 'Who am I? Who is the doer? Who is the I that should do something?' So as long as the sense of doership, which you say is strong, is there, then we can either not believe the next thought—which is good, but I know it seems like a doing—so we can do this, or we can do the self-inquiry, which is also actually not a doing but can seem like it. So with either of these, then you come to this place to see that there is no doer at all. So the question when it comes, 'What do I do now?', it just becomes laughable. Just like every other thought, it becomes laughable.

So until it has become laughable, we can just not believe the next thought or we can just inquire into what I truly am. And the answer is otherwise, 'I don't know.' I don't know. Is there an I that doesn't know? Because when you say 'I don't know,' what you're actually saying is, 'I know that there is an I that doesn't know.' There is an I other than that now, yes there is. Okay, so who is this I that doesn't know? It's not I, not actually like this. It is, but this is so heavy, you know? This is just frustrating because we are used to trying to figure it out with the mind. We are used to trying to figure it out with the mind, and this is unfathomable for the mind. The mind has no chance here.