Are You Done Playing With Your Mind? - 29th Sept. 2015

We're watching a little while earlier and you're looking at one of the questioners, and Guruji was using hard words. This inquiry, discovery, this question that was here: why is she just refusing to look clearly? Why is she just refusing to look? Then something came to me. You said that if you met now the one who is living through this body ten years ago—the spiritual seeker with so much knowledge—what would you tell him? If I met the past Ananta from ten years ago, what would I tell him?

First, I would say: all this knowledge which you think is helping you, throw it away. He was very attached to the knowledge, so I don't know whether he would have listened. Let's say this: all this knowledge, all the books you've read, they've done their part. Now just keep them aside. Then all your ideas—all the ideas about being a Shiva devotee or a Ram devotee—all of this also keep it aside. All your practices, your japa, the kriyas, the yoga, just keep it aside. All your concepts about everything, all your aspirations, your desires, all the ideas about what kind of seeker you are, all your ideas about who is worthy enough to be your teacher, your Master, all the judgments that you are holding on to—yes, keep them aside. Everything about what enlightenment, liberation, or freedom means, also keep it aside. And just look at what is here right now. Who is looking at what is here right now?

And then I would hold my hand and say: whatever answer your mind is giving you is not the right one. Whatever fear is coming up truly doesn't matter. No label can live up to what you are. Then the seeker might have said, 'But I don't feel anything. I am not feeling anything special.' It's not in the feeling, you see. And if there was some insight, then who is seeing the insight? Then the seeker might come back and say, 'Yes, I see. I am this awareness, this unmoved witnessing. What should I do so that I don't lose this?' And then the Master would say: you cannot lose it. You could not lose it if you tried. What you are cannot be lost. That which appears and disappears is not you. That which is coming and going, you are aware of. Just leave it right now. Are you holding on to something to be here? Even if the body is moving, you see that you are still here, unmoved, untouched.

Change the position of the witness from awareness one inch to the left. Try to hold onto it. We feel it is in trying to control our attention and keeping it somewhere. Not even that. It is even where the movement of attention is also seen. I am aware that attention is moving. Then the trouble must only be that your mind doesn't know what to do with this that you are discovering. It can say, 'So what?' or it can keep saying, 'I haven't found it.' But who sees this mind? Where do you start and where do you end? Are you done playing with your mind? Are you really done being the seeker? And if we are not done playing with the mind, then just say, 'I am not done yet.' Although it might sound like it, because I'm in a rush or something, but if you're not done playing, I mean no desire to pull you back home. It's only then will you say, 'I am done playing.' If you still keep playing with your mind, that is when I say: look at what you are doing.

There's the story in Yoga Vashistha. The simple version of that is basically that there is a being who picks up a weapon—a hammer—and he hits himself in the head and says, 'I'm in so much pain, I'm suffering so much.' Keep the hammer down! 'I tried, but this hammer...' Keep it down! He says, 'Okay, I'm trying, I'm trying.' This is all that is happening. We keep picking up that which we are suffering from because there is still a temptation to play, still the temptation to be a meaningful identity, still a temptation toward specialness, still this temptation to find something, to become something.