Are You in the Universe or Is the Universe in You? - 29th August 2022

So to lead a normal life, what we need to understand about this moment? In front of you, you need the thought to tell you that if you put your hand in the flame it'll burn? This you put on the gas every time and you don't jump into the gas because the thought tells you don't jump in because it's dangerous? It's not like that at all. You don't even think about it every time you put on the lighter. You're saying to yourself, 'No, no, don't put your hands in because you will burn'? Because unless you did that you would put your hands in? Is that your experience? So when you go to the balcony, you look at the thing and if the thought didn't come 'don't jump,' you would jump? So the intelligence is already contained in the perceiving itself. So if you didn't get a thought right now saying 'move your mouth,' say like that, 'move your hand like that,' you would not do it? Like the nodding of the head, the shaking of the head is happening because first you thought yes or no? Because you have a bit of that head shake going on, so I'm not sure whether you say yes. Isn't it?

So what intelligence makes you move? A true thought would depend on what we mean by truth. So if you mean by yes, the body will get affected, you know, if it goes to the hot plane, so then it's fine. But I keep saying the coconut is green seemed like a very harmless thought, but does the mind leave it in that? Do you leave yourself unharmed, unconceptually molested by the same? Okay, 'don't touch the candle flame,' you know, mind will also say, 'Oh, when you were a child then you used to study in candlelight and you know time was so tough, kids these days don't know.' So all I did possibility, it never leaves it a gesture like a, you know, the juicy sweet type thorn which you don't need anyway. In any case, you're not going to put your hand in the flame or jump from the balcony. So if you may beat you, it may beat you by saying, 'Hey, I can say the truth by the way you are doing so well or not doing so well,' whatever. So under the guise of a harmless expression, you may find yourself that too identity, back to the mode of suffering.

So what is the way to establish truths? What definition of truth can we take to be true and with what instrument can we gather this truth? What is true? Be troubled with that question because if you take the Vedantic definition, everything that is perceived is false, it's unreal. Only the unchanging is true. Then it's true. So we yearning for meaning, we're learning for sense making, we're learning for truth, but what is the mechanism through which we can find it? And this is where 99.9 percent of spiritual seekers are going wrong. 'I'm searching for the truth, I've been searching for a long, long time.' But how can we search for the truth with God? What has to transition that the spiritual seeker becomes a spiritual finder? What changes? You say you saw the truth, I had an awakening, so what changed?

Stop relying on the wrong instrument.

Okay, good. So when you stop relying on the wrong instrument, then what happens? The truth is just apparent. So the process is that of deconstruction and not of construction. The process is the coming to sunyata, coming to empty, is to come to the truth, the most, the highest truth. And this the mind can never fathom because to the mind, empty is lack. If you're empty of something, if the glass is empty, you see, is it a good thing for the mind or the bad thing? It's a bad thing. It wants like some goodies there. What do depressed people say? 'My life is so empty, I experience an emptiness all the time.' And they're coming to Satsang like this and said that 'I experience emptiness all the time.' Wow, that's it! So what's the difference in the two things? What? It's not... they are obviously not expressing the same thing. So what is the difference?

So we have an idea of how something should be and the absence of that we call empty mentally. And here the empty that we are talking about is the absence of conceptual grasping. But when you are empty of that, you are full of the apparent truth. I find it easier if you try not... that is the process of grasping. So all of Satsang is just to negate and not to construct. So I'm saying with most spiritual seekers there's so much spiritual concept, so much righteousness that it takes some process of negation before they can just chill. And we are understanding all our spirituality probably never felt that that itself will get in the way, as you would call it. What is the graduation certificate of the spiritual seeker? The graduation is the spiritual ego. The spiritual seeker graduates into the spiritual ego. The dissolution of the spiritual seeker is what we are trying to do. For the spiritual ego itself will get in the way of you even hearing these words because for a while you will try to fit everything in the box of things that you think you already know. And if it conforms to that box you'll be like, 'This is good, this is helping, this is helping because it's confirming what I already know.' And if somebody is something that blah blah blah blah, that's definitely not helping, I don't need that.

So this is our human condition that we are trying to graduate to a greater knowledge, a higher knowledge building on top of what we already know. But that is not possible in Satsang and that's why Satsang is the strangest classroom in the world. If you're understanding everything I'm saying, I'm saying no, it's the opposite.

But like one thing I find kind of confusing is like you said that, I mean it makes sense to me that you shouldn't like create any kind of construct because eventually...

So even this, this is just... these are, I've not said this often lately, so thank you for asking that. So these are also notions which are provided to you in Satsang. What is the advantage of these notions? This is the poison that tries to cut the poison. So that's why I often said that don't make an altar to the words of Satsang. It's just like the words of Satsang are like heartbreak, you know, you use it to do the cleanup job but you don't take them to be some ultimate truth. Even open and empty, are you aware now? Everything over my everything is a notion, is a concept, and ultimately you don't need any of this. Though Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi had a very nice metaphor for this. He said that he had two in that... so he said and there is on... if it's ever gone in your hand, what do you do? You take another thorn and you try to remove that thorn and then what do you do with that thorn which you used to remove this one? Exactly. You see, you also said that you use the stick of the funeral pyre to light the fire and then what do you do with that stick? That also goes into the fire. You see?

So all of these pointers also have to dissolve and for that you need to use your own nose or integrity, whatever you want to call it, to see whether you're getting into some sort of just conceptual denial. 'No, I don't need inquiry, I don't need any point, there is no suffering happening to me,' but actually you're just like full of internal conflict. Or actually if you're being open and empty, if you can go even subtler, if you're just being open and empty, then you're not being open and empty. Is this like Guru's example of 'just be' and you try to 'just be'? No longer just be. Not possible. So the constructs which are on offer in Satsang, that's why we call them pointers. So these pointers, they point you to the destination but once you reach the destination you don't need the pointer anymore.

That's why a book like The Power of Now came out some 30 years ago or something like 25, 30 years ago. Everybody knows in the moment there is no problem. Everybody is, especially in spiritual circles, there's nobody who doesn't know that. Then why isn't everyone happy? Why didn't everyone have time? Exactly. So the attempt to remain in the present itself is the diversion from the present. Others who doesn't know just the power of now? Right now no problem, be happy. Everyone know. But when they make a tactic out of it, they make a strategy out of it, it doesn't happen. So in which we do we come to the discovery of the Self? Letting go of ignorance is the only way to come to the discovery of the Self. How to let go of ignorance? Recap this point which is what the conversation... and be as you are. As Bhagavan said, you will not be free unless you be free from all of your conditioning. Let go of ignorance. He said the attainment of the Self is not some new thing that you will find, it's not some new thing.

A tactic out of it, they make a strategy out of it; it doesn't happen so. In which way do we come to the discovery of the Self? Letting go of ignorance is the only way to come to the discovery of the Self. How to let go of ignorance? Recap this point, which is what the conversation is: be as you are. As Bhagavan said, you will not be free unless you be free from all of your conditioning. Let go of ignorance. He said the attainment of the Self is not some new thing that you will find. It's not some new thing that you will find; it is the letting go of the false. So the way to freedom, the way to the truth, is to let go of all that is false, all the conditioning.

So then the disciple obviously said, 'So if I have to do this, how can I do this?' And Bhagavan says, 'It already is.' When the disciple is frustrated, obviously he's like, 'If it already is, so then why you told me that I have to do this?' Because you have to do it, of course. Okay, good, thank you. I know what I have to do; how do I do it? It is recognizing the false. It is not that we make a conceptual category of false. It's very subtle. What you're saying, to notice it is not to categorize it, because many get stuck there also. 'Oh, the world is all Maya.' In India, it is like this because you've heard about Maya and Leela and all of these things for so long, you can just feel like the way to be free is to just like label all of this. Too much opposition to what is showing up, and it becomes like a personal rejection of some mental category.

So it's a very good point. What is the difference between recognizing and categorizing? Is it possible to recognize without having to categorize? The noticing of it itself is the dropping, because there's nothing else you can do, you see? There's nothing else you can do. What else will you do with the thought besides attention and belief? What can we do? What are the tools do we have? Nothing.

So when you say that categorizing, you mean that it's like a thought believed in? Exactly, 'This is false.' It's within that, 'This is the world, this is false,' all of these kinds of things. The words just recognize. I'm looking for a feeling that might make it as it is. How are you sure who witnesses that next one? So that just eventually, I don't know how, but you just realize that you don't need though that, yeah. And nobody... it's effortlessly quite appalling to you that you... it's silent. I mean, just using yourself like you are aware and that you are. And if you are aware that it's quite becomes...

Suppose that, you know, all of you go meet some spiritual seekers somewhere, say part of a popular sangha in Bangalore or something like that, and you're just like, 'Self-realization is apparent.' They're like, 'But how can you confirm this? Because we've been looking for the Self for a long time. You've done thousands of kriyas and thousands of things. How can you just say? What practice did you do?'

That's the strangest thing. That's the strangest thing because everybody, even before coming here, spiritual... like very few, very, very few I can count on my fingers who are not spiritual, not part of some satsang, did not have a guru. Those are very, very few are persisting and trying to find God as if God is a perception. Although the attempt of the Vedantic sages was to tell us right up front: it will never be found as a perception. And the rare ones who are not trying to find a special perception of God are trying to think about it and figure it out. 'Who am I?' trying to solve the 'Who am I?' as a mathematical equation or something. Or even worse, just trying to convince themselves of some belief system saying, 'I am Brahman, I am Ram, I am the Self, I am the unborn.' These are the wrong ways of seeking. Every way of thinking is the wrong way of thinking.

They used to say stop looking outward, look inward. But what does this... the first thing that was evident, you know, the first time I came as well, was the presence and, you know, the fact that there was the non-phenomenal universe that I was not aware of and now could recognize. Now I find that if a satsang recording is played to a few people, for a lot of us the words themselves perform their, you know, their action in terms of cleanup and you, you know, you feel being. But I find a lot of people don't. Yeah, and I'm certainly mystified by what's going on.

Yeah, that's good. If it's effortless, you know, it's not like all people feel like something exactly. Just wondering, you know, what's the... what's happening? We can make some lame sort of remarks saying how consciousness loves diversity, variety, doesn't like redundancy, so everybody's temperament and conditioning is different and therefore something, something. But I feel like most of you have come to a point where you're not really that interested now in the 'therefore' and 'this is why it is' and all of that. In fact, when you say to me, 'I am so mystified by this,' I hear it as good news. It brings us into a state of wonder. And why? Why would you want to exchange that state of wonder with an understanding? It's completely contrary to the way of the usual mind understanding.

It's like what you're saying is not looking in the mood, baby. My whole job is to confuse you. And you're not making jokes, because he said that if I don't—I'm paraphrasing—if I don't, then you'll hold on to your knowledgeability. So how many that we come across are really open to being open in this field, to come to the end of their conceptual knowledgeability? It's very rare. So these words don't seem to attack the mind; the mind seems to attack back everything. So like a notion like the unborn or the nominal, all that sounds so attractive to the mind, but when you actually come to the point of remaining in the unborn, that is when the mind says, 'Oh no, this is not what I wanted at all.' It sounded so good because Bhagavan said all things are perfectly resolved in the unborn, but I have to go? I didn't bargain for that. 'But what about me? What about me?'

So then we come back to a sort of tamer spirituality saying, 'Okay, a little bit of this, I feel some peace with this,' this kind of stuff. It's okay, I mean, it's their path, but that's not what this kind of satsang is for. Do you know what's happening to you? If you know here, you can throw it away because you will only insert that in your narrative. You will say, 'I came to satsang with Ananta and it's like that.' Okay, it is like this. It's so nice, it's very boring, it's very whatever. Which you think may be happening has nothing to do with any of this. So don't live in your head. Reality has nothing to do with what you're thinking about. You don't need to know here what is happening, and here you know that nothing else ever really happened.

So, so what's happening? What's going on? Like the simplest question which everybody asks is a courtesy. From where can we get it to answer what's going on, or the conceptual explanation of what you think is this? How this is like... there's something... is there an obstacle to being or is there something getting in the way? Dude, you can always ask. Is there any word? Like one child told me, 'You sound like some professor.' Then I noticed that I have two modes. Either that the usual professor mode is the usual one like that, or now I have a new mode in the last few months which is the lion. Can you, can you, can you stop being done? And I feel like everybody's a great lion. Are you coming? That's home. So, doubts, questions?

So, you know, sometimes things happen where you know you then have to, you know, you have to either accept the circumstances as they're playing out, yeah, or you have to get into a flurry of action, you know, to try to change the course. One is to accept circumstances as they play out and two is to get into action, yeah, to try to change the way that things apparently seem to be flowing.

Thank you for asking this. Okay, good. This is very important. Okay, nothing that I've said is about any external circumstance or the movement of this body, whether it is active or inactive. Now notice whether from open and empty a flurry of activity may still happen, you see or not? That's very, very important. It's not about becoming vegetative, sheepish, quiet. It may happen and that's fine too, or it may not. It may be the opposite. You may say one day, you may have this in your heart, suddenly Father's revealed something so great, this needs to be shared. So you may become like a missionary just sharing, and who knows? We don't know anything, you see? So full of activity, just going to everyone. But who are you? Look at this. Like that, we can't say.

This is the beauty of this open and empty, that it's independent of whether there's activity or inactivity of the body. In fact, it has nothing to do with this body anyway. The first thing you like, you notice everything instantly, but yeah, in a manner of speaking, the first thing you notice when you open and empty is that this body is perceived just like every other body there. There only seems to be a centrality of some visual perspective directed this way, but that in no way makes it my container or something that gives me a location. You notice that you don't have a 'where.' Where are you? Where are you now? What is your location? Where are you looking at this world from? If you're looking at a world—and I mean actually literally, not poetically, not metaphorically—where are you? You know you're looking, but you can't say. Well, let's find out. Where was finding out me? I'm working from where I am, but where are you?

Very, very literally, it's like somebody asking you, 'Where do you stay? Where do you stay?' This is the being of the human condition. The mind can ask all kinds of questions about God and truth and love and beauty and joy and all of these things, but the mind cannot take this, like, cannot, does not have the ability to assimilate a single answer. It doesn't know where you are, who you are, what life is, what truth is. And the being of the spiritual seeker is the one trying to do like a doctorate, a PhD degree, but the books that they are reading is all nursery rhymes. You cannot get to truths with the mind. The mind is just too small; it's too shallow to meet the depth of who you are.

I don't know where you are. Like she said earlier, everyone says 'go inside,' but you go inside, you close your eyes, okay, you cut some stimulus out. Inside what have I gone? Inside what have I gone? I went inside the body? All organ, flesh, blood, bones will be visible, so obviously I didn't go inside the body. So inside what am I going? Nothing. Even like we talked about fourth dimension, fifth dimension, this conceptually, the space-time continuum, just concepts. What is the true way to meet all of this? Start exploring for yourself: where am I? A question like that can introduce you to your dimensionless reality. But we really have to sincerely look and not settle for like easy conceptual answers.

Do you want to spend your whole life, do you want to spend your whole life in ignorance, just presumed answers? 'I must be a body, I must be something living inside the body.' Sometimes the question like this can seem to physically hurt the mind. Don't fear that. Don't fear that discomfort. It's like the heart ever owned that I could have told you so. The mind also plays that game. You have no location. What is it? There's no location. Some of you are confirming this like conceptually to yourself as we speak. Conceptually this like leaves this question: I have no location. That's why sometimes I love this Zen tradition where for 20 years, one koan, that's all. Can't believe it. 'I think you solved it.' Go to the master. No.

So I have given you a carrot because this is more of an age of carrot than stick. So I've given you a carrot saying that your timeless reality, your dimensionless reality, will become apparent to you if you truly look at where you are. What is my location? Everything which is in the phenomenal universe can be plotted in some way. If you're on the Earth, you can be plotted as latitude and longitude. If you're in the universe, you can be plotted as galaxy, this planet, this and something. So where are you? Make a plot like, tell me your plot. Tell me, suppose you...

I’ve been your character saying that your timeless reality, your dimensionless reality, will become apparent to you if you truly look at where you are. What is my location? Everything which is in the phenomenal universe can be plotted in some way. If you're on the Earth, you can be plotted as latitude and longitude. If you're in the universe, you can be plotted as galaxy, this planet, this and something. So, where are you? Make a plot. Tell me your plot. Tell me. Suppose you were—sorry, I keep referring, but this has become the metaphor always—but suppose you were reviewing somebody's work and say, 'Where is your work?' Generally, what does it mean when we say 'generally here'?

Hear me okay? In the sense that—and it brings me back to a long, long time back when we were having satsang there and it was the same question. Okay, same thing we were doing and where is that 'here'? Very simple. It's like, what is your location? What is the answer? So I think, okay, that's too obvious an answer at a gross level of the body. And then otherwise, if you say inside the body, it's the gross level. You are the body. What level is that?

It's okay. I mean, at the gross level, it's a flower; this is a body. So you are the body itself, or you are in the body?

In the body.

You're in the body. Now, in the body—like if it is in the glass, we should be able to spot it, right? Like every object can only store another object; it cannot store a non-objective thing, you see. So if you are something in the body, we should be able to send some surgeon or something to find you. That doesn't happen, no?

I agree. I agree with you. But still, when the question is 'where', it's not like a diffused feeling that I am all over. It is still a feeling that it is...

Okay, so let's use a metaphor which maybe you may broaden this conversation. It's possible that we could be having this conversation in a dream, and you could be waking up any moment saying, 'I had this strange conversation, isn't it?' So, let's presume for a moment that this is that dream. Then where are you? It's quite discovering because everything that we call the waking state, we also experience in the dream state. But when we wake up from the dream state, we say, 'Oh, all of that happened within me.' So then, who is the container and who is the contained? Because if we are saying that at whatever level I am this or inside this, then I am contained in this realm called the world. Now, is that something which is undoubtable? And also, people have had all kinds of experiences of out-of-body and you... so I feel like it's really worth exploring. So we can't just leave it at 'I must be somewhere within the body' as what?

But when you come back to the question of 'worth exploring', then how exactly?

Exactly. So that's where I'm pointing you to your intuition where all these answers are contained. So when Ashtavakra said—I promise you in satsang you will discover what Ashtavakra said, and you will say even that is too limiting—where he said that you are the boundless ocean in which the arcs of universes come and go. So that is very far out from our idea, very, very different from our present idea, which may be that I am something contained in a body. And if you just look at it—except just taking it at face value—if you look at it at any level, scientific level, spiritual level, any level, we find that there's no basis for saying that. Like at the scientific level, there is no entity like that which is inhabiting a body. That's okay. So I'll just repeat this part. I was saying that if you look at it even at a scientific level, this question of where we are, science has not proposed that you are an entity sitting inside the body. So from which level should we take this proposition to be true? There is no surgeon who's discovered such an entity. There is no validation of any of this at any level of credibility, which is that it seems to—we seem to base that on some central, like I keep saying, centrality or visual perspective. But this could be a dream. This could be a computer program with a virtual reality headset. This could be anything. So what can we determine undoubtedly? Except, so we are basically concluding that in our head we can't figure this out, isn't it? That much we are concluding. Now what else do we have? What else do you have?

And that's why I've been looking at all the questions in the invitation also, and I've been asking everyone, 'How are you answering those questions?' Because everybody says, 'No, no, no,' but is it just like a belief system? No. Like, 'Were you born?' Everybody says they did the invitation from time to time, but even people who do it, it's like, 'Where you are?' No. 'Can you die?' No. And they're just like trying to make themselves believable and maybe feel happier that the belief is reinforced. But where is this source of knowledge? And I'm not saying everybody is doing it like that; many are intuitively being able to respond. Are you? So if I was to frame a question: Are you in this universe or is the universe in you? Which one tells us the truth? It is coming from into the head. When we try to squeeze the unsqueezable into the head, that is where it explodes and reacts. And I'm happy to be—happy to see head explosions.

So the question really—okay, so we change the question from 'Where are you?' to a simpler question: Are you in the universe or is the universe in you? Now it's very confusing because all our life we believe that we are inside the universe. But these strange people keep coming along from time to time saying—Descartes will say, 'How do we know this is not a dream?' Ashtavakra will say, 'These universes come and go within you; you are the ocean.' What to follow? How to go to the truth? So I guess there are a couple of suggestions. One is, if I ask myself intuitively, I know I'm here. And that knowledge 'I'm here' doesn't have any boundaries because the sensations of the body are felt acutely in that space. The space itself is limitless. And then I also know that every perception, when you talk about the universe, whatever it may be, is...

But what do you mean by 'all'? I know, I know that every perception—what do you mean by 'I know'? I can see. I can see that the perception is within and it's after, you know, it follows being. Like it's, you know, it's something which is contained within being.

You can see this means like see it as sight? Seeing? Not sightseeing. From where I see being, I can see that the perception is within the being. From where I see being there, from myself as the witness, what do you actually see? Because seeing can be quantified. Sight can be quantified. You're wearing a blue shirt, you have specs. So what do you actually see? That's what I'm asking about. The assumption is sightseeing from perception. I see whatever I would, like looking through an instrument. It's like some, you know, it's a visual. It doesn't mean it's me.

No, but this when you say, 'I see that this being is contained within me' or 'the universe is contained within being,' how do you see that? I mean, right, it's just—it's irrefutable that—how do you see it? That's a... you can't use it. It's very important to—this may seem like I'm getting into like micro-details, but it's very important. When you say, 'I see, I see it like this,' how do you know that?

Because I am that same.

How do you know that?

I... there is nothing separate. I am not knowing itself.

So how does that make the universe? If you want to say it's logically, you can say that 'I see it, so that is me, and I see the universe.' You can see that way also. That that is again to the mind influence again. Because this heart just knows it. There's no explanation. Without me, there's no universe, right? I come first, right? I mean, I think—I mean, just to put another angle—I come first. Without me, there is no witnessing.

How are you moving? The authority went off the page. Cross-examination melted. Now, you were here when we were doing this, no? I was just like, who's aware of the perception of this hand? I am. How do you know? How do you know? It is just to break the addiction to false knowledge. Because actually, in the world, we only consider false knowledge to be knowledge. We don't take Atma Gyan, self-knowledge, to be knowledge. And then sages like all of them sound like they are mystics because compared to what we take to be knowledge, what they are saying is just like—sounds like, 'Oh, this is some metaphysical stuff with the multiverse level things happening.' But what if that was a closer representation of your reality? What the sages have said—what if that is a closer representation of your reality than what we have taken to be so far? And is there a place—like, I use that term loosely—is there a place where we can meet the sage in their same insight? I don't need to say like beautiful meetings; meet them in terms of what they're saying. So it doesn't feel like I have to be convinced about it. Anything that—anything like every sage has said at least one thing like this that can trouble your mind. So he said, I said, 'You are the boundless universe.' And basically every line in the scriptures has said something which the mind cannot capture. Then why are they doing this? Are they doing this just to trouble us? 'I would—how can I trouble my children?' Where are you?

I am proposing, in fact imploring, that these questions are important and relevant. Your mind will say, 'There's no way, there's no way.' And if there's no way, then there's no way to find out who I am, what is the truth, what is the Self, what is the Absolute. So then to answer the question, then how to? If you cannot do it with the mind, then how to? And all the clues are there with you. So when I ask you, 'Are you aware now?' how do you do it? With what? With what mechanics, with what mechanism do you come to this discovery that you are aware? How would you do it? Has anyone seen this awareness? How would you do it? Are you just thinking you are aware? So it's not perception, it's not thought. Then how is it? How is it that you say, 'Yeah,' and you don't even say, 'There is awareness,' you say, 'I am aware.' You're giving it that value, 'I am.' How? With what? On what basis? How much effort does it need? Okay, let's get close first. How much effort does it need for insight that I am aware? Can—if you applied more effort, could you do it better? That is the philosophy of effort: 'If I do more of it, then it should become better.' But this has nothing to do with effort. Neither perceptual effort nor thinking effort; nothing needed.

So all inquiry, all questions of the sort which the mind cannot fathom, the answers are here. It is only from this place that a sage like Ashtavakra writes. Or why is it? Because every time all these questions have been asked, 'Yes, I am not even able to say yes to any of them.' Yeah, so you are the other questions like 'limitless', 'are you born?' Ah, exactly, exactly. They are unfathomable to the mind, you see. And yet the sages take some joy in asking us these things. So they must be doing it. So that is the same reason why a Zen master gives a Zen koan, because it's unfair—okay, I'm gonna spoil Zen for everyone—but it's unfathomable to the mind. But in the practice of sincerely asking, we discover an intelligence which is beyond the mind, which is where the sages are writing from. And that is the gift I want to give all of you as well. What is it that you know—we may say poetically—in the heart? See, what is it that you know in the heart but you don't know in the head? And in the heart, you always know. 'I know this in my heart.' So in the heart you always know, but sometimes it can feel like the answer doesn't come across, come out in an expressible way. It's not ready to be expressed either as a concept or any sort of language. So if I ask you, 'Do you feel like death is permanent? The body dies, you die permanently?' Where is it? Where does that come from? Is it only because of learned knowledge and tradition or something deeper than that? You see, that something deeper is not something which is a process of mechanical thinking or learned knowledge. And you get to become a little more poetic and say, 'Where do you know love?' You...

To come out in an expressible way, it's not ready to be expressed either as a concept or any sort of language. So if I ask you, do you feel like death is permanent? The body dies, you die permanently—where is it? Where does that come from? Is it only because of learned knowledge and tradition, or something deeper than that? You see, that something deeper is not something which is a process of mechanical thinking or learned knowledge. And you get to become a little more poetic and say, where do you know love? When you love, it doesn't even have to be 'in love,' but just love itself. Where do you know? Many times you love—like with kids especially—you love the kids, but you're so angry with them at that moment. Then you can't say that, oh, the love is because there's a feeling still, but you know you love them.

And this knowledge—the knowledge that you are aware, the knowledge that you are timeless, that your death is... the knowledge that you are not in time-space—all of that is the heart knowledge. That is heart knowledge or intuitive knowledge. It cannot be known in any other way. None of the books in the library there can be known conceptually. I mean, many have tried to know them conceptually. People who have written commentaries on them may have also written them conceptually, you see? But actually, what they are pointing to can never be conceptual. Anything perceptual, it's not anything where the quality is not... it's not a dark empty space. It's not something that we can perceive through any mode, any instrument of perception. Yes.

So once you take perception out, most of the knots are like different. I want to ask now: so, are you aware? Because many times—this is good to have this conversation—because many times I ask the question 'Are you aware?' your mind starts showing you some dark empty space and you feel like that is awareness. No. You feel like attention has to go to that absence of this perception called sight, absence of sound, absence of something like that, and that must be awareness. But you cannot bring your attention to awareness, you see? You can withdraw attention from the world and maybe rest it in your being or just leave it free, but the non-qualitative can never be found through attention. The attention is just the light of perception itself, and we can only perceive qualities.

So where do you know that you are aware, or how do you know that you are aware? That is the place where all answers are always known and where you don't know where you don't know where you are. I'm not asking so that you can squeeze the answer in there; I'm only asking so you can notice that space and let go of it as a reliable voice of truth. So this is game-changing, because what we took to be our assistant to tell us things which are true, you realize that that one doesn't have a clue when it comes to capital T Truth. That one doesn't have a clue. And yet they seem to be these people on the walls, these people who have written books who we read for centuries, who seem to be pointing us to something with the full authority that this is true: that you are not born or dead, you were not born nor will you die.

With what authority do they say that? Is it just like a spiritual tradition of concepts passed on, and because it's just learned knowledge we must all believe it and then we are being spiritual? Or is there a way to find that for ourselves to be true? And most of you do the invitation, and Guruji asks you this every time: Were you born, or was this born? What is the other? Was it born? Was it born? You die—can it? So it's important to notice the source of that knowledge. Because if it's just from learned knowledge, no, Guruji is unknown then. That is just like creating like a belief system around it. What is the point of the invitation or Bhagavan's inquiry 'Who am I?'

Make you recognize: in what way do you see? I am. I don't see I am, but I know I am. How do you know? Just meet it like fresh, fresh. How do you know now? What do you mean? It's so elemental. Like, you know, when you wake up in the morning, you know I am.

How are you people asking me? Go with the negative. Yeah, if I say I wake up in the morning and I know I'm on my... right, I know I exist. Can I say your metaphor?

Yeah, you wake up in the morning. I say, where do you wake up? You say, on my bed. I say, how do you know you're on your bed? You say, I mean, there is a... I just know. I mean, what they say you can perceive. So if I was to say your knowledge is wrong, you're not on your bed, actually you are stuck in a desert somewhere, you say, 'No, no, Father, I can see my bed.' You can perceive it. In the same way, I'm asking you: how do you know that you are aware? That's what you discover when you're done. You don't need that perception. You know where you are. It doesn't matter which universe is.

So this, where you discover that you are unperceivable, why can't we live there? I am actually living there, imagining I'm here. Why don't...

Yeah, so stop imagining. Is also part of the perception of being a... because I feel like many times in spirituality there's too much fluff and very little actual crux of what is being pointed. How can I get what the sages have found? You see what Ashtavakra is saying: you are the boundless ocean, the universes come and go. Why don't you fight with Ashtavakra? 'No, I'm not the boundless ocean, I am in this body.' What do you mean? So this dichotomy... this dichotomy may be just like, 'Oh yeah, you know, he said I'm the boundless ocean and let me read it like some poetry or something like that,' which is like, okay, maybe one day I'll find, you know, this kind of...

Where can you meet this? Is there something he must have said it for a reason? He put it in his Gita, unfathomable forever for everyone. Hey, why would he put it there? He's not the torturer. Why does Bhagavan keep saying 'Who am I? Ask yourself.' You can never get it with your head, you know that. Never. See somebody like in Delhi where you ask them direction, he's telling you 'You are That.' Guruji tells us all this. I don't see anybody protesting saying... but few actually. But they end up with some inference, some final inference.

Is there a way to meet this? Is there a way to meet who am I, where am I? Were you born? Will you die? Is there a way to truly answer these questions, or is spirituality just this fluffy, fluffy thing which you feel like, 'Oh, this gave me so much peace, so I just remember I can't die, better.' Is it like that? Maybe there's a place for that also in this world, I'm not saying there isn't, you see? But is there a deeper way to make this?

And for this, we only need to just not be very attached to our ideas of what the world is and how it runs. As I said sometime in some interview or something, what is the prerequisite for Satsang? And I said that if you are obsessed with the notion that you are an object inside this universe and there is not even a sliver of a lining which allows you to... sliver of an openness which allows you to fathom that it could be the other way around, that the universe is a tiny existence within you, that is the only prerequisite I know. I am not saying you have to be pre-convinced about it or have this belief system or have the spiritual insight like this. I'm just saying that when the possibility emerges, then you are not completely closed to it, the way all of Satsang will feel like an attack on most of it anyway.

So the story that you have about your life, replace the central character in that story with this boundless ocean. Tell me a valid story now about yourself. You are the boundless ocean in which the universes come as if small arcs. Yeah, some marks. What is your story? Which one is lying? Is that a lie? How is the mind and the... first of all, telling the truth? How can you meet this truth? How can you make it your own? Not today when I feel complete. Okay, in this intuitive understanding is your question.

Very good. Yes, sir. Later it feels like that, you know, there's... it could be a misunderstanding because I can feel, I can see some guys who are not doing the digging. They are doing the digging. So if you want tomatoes, how much you have today? If you did, you only get okay.

So that is the theme of Satsang today: that all of these questions, from where can we answer them? There's so many. You go to Tiruvannamalai, see so many people, they live in Ramanashram or they come to Ramanashram every day for 50 years they've been asking 'Who am I?' And what? Because they're digging with the wrong instrument. Why do masters ask this question? Why does the Zen master give us a question? And something like the invitation is like one koan after the other. So we must not solve it like a herd or something. Everybody's saying knows every question. If you can answer one of them, you can answer all of them. It's not like the levels of Zen koans like, 'Oh, you finished, okay, let me give you the next one.' Maybe some direction. It's really not that weird. It's not like, okay, first now first you solve where am I, can you solve who am I?

Like when you told us the story about the seventh sound of the woman, yeah, it was so bad and that was another time that I hear something different and I go with it and then with this new disk and I don't know if that's like mind. You don't have a like a standard go-to pointer, like one pointer that you come back to? No, it's been like this, like from one to another, so I don't know.

So you don't have like a pointer boyfriend? You may have dates with others but you don't come back? But there's one question, but it's not very consistent with... I don't know if it becomes boring, but I see that it's easy to say, 'Oh no, this is this one now.' It's okay, it's okay if it... if by asking you find that makes you open and empty, it's okay. Because although I should say actually that pick one and stay with it, stick to it so that you can find the water, and I may say like that, but honestly here, oh, just jumping from... which I think is the way, I don't know.

So 'Who am I?' used to seem very attractive sometimes. You could have read Bhagavan's book, but I feel like I was just sort of experiencing. So then 'Who am I?' and then I had this idea of just... it helped so much because everything becomes quiet. And after a few days, what happens with it? It doesn't have that quiet inquiry still works, which I now realize I never saw. Then I feel like it's not so powerful. It used to be more powerful like that. Then like, what can I do? And the good or bad thing is that I've been like so much immersing myself in spirituality that I knew so, so much. So I would do sometimes chanting, sometimes even loving-kindness meditation, sometimes so all like whatever I'd heard from everywhere. So I would just do like that.

But at one level it's okay, although my advice is coming out like this today: mostly it just comes out like stick to a pointer. I can't control how it comes out. Just checking if it's a tendency of not being focused on something. Maybe not focused. Is it like I can't really sleep because I will... what is being pointed to is a possibility and is completely actually achievable for everyone. It doesn't matter so much what path you take to traverse the pathless path. 20, 30, 40 years has been spiritual for how many? Just speaking glowing terms today already given us, right? And then this thing comes to my mind.

Nisargadatta Maharaj says, 'I must tell you to stay with the being,' and stayed with me for three hours, three years, and then I'm done. And how many such disciples did the master have? How many such disciples did? Only one or two. No, Ranjit Maharaj. So what would your advice be to us?

So like I said to her earlier, that all of this prodding, prompting, pushing is so that you get used to living intuitively and not digging in the head. Then I feel like that is that is true. And you know, today's world is very different because there's so much variety. Everybody goes to Google and searches. I don't feel like Maharaj would do all of that. He found a master, said 'This is it.' So we used to, like I was saying...

Disciples did only one or two, no? Ranjit Maharaj... so what would your advice be to us? So, like I said to her earlier, all of this prodding, prompting, pushing is so that you get used to living intuitively and not digging in the head. Then I feel like that is true. And you know, today's world is very different because there's so much variety; everybody goes to Google and searches. I don't feel like Maharaj would do all of that. He found a master, said 'This is it.' So, we used to... like I was saying earlier, in these days, carrots work better than sticks. So there's so much opportunity to run.

This expression, I don't know how it comes out, like I don't know what will come from it, but there's a sense that different sort of pointers, all pointing to the same thing over the years, really helped to bring us to this insight. Look at the Sangha itself compared to five years ago. You can see. In fact, maybe it would have also worked if I discontinued saying 'Don't believe your next thought' and I go now just in that way... that I really can't say. But to be honest, like, I have nothing to do with any of this. Just the heart speaks for the heart speaks. Yeah, yeah. And I just have to trust that, because if I ever start questioning the heart, then I'll have to go into some cave for some time.

And again, these words are coming. I will start the sentence, I don't know what else is going to come after that. I just have to trust the way it is. Look at the kids in the room. Five years ago, I would say, 'Who's aware of the perception of this?' How much flower and presence was known? And the intuitive understanding came recently. I'm graced that I can't do it. I can't do it. Thank you.

How do you know? Okay, I want to make this point which came out, I felt, very well in the satsang on Friday. Okay, so suppose we want to be free from the conditioning of the mind, no? That's the overall attempt: to be free from ignorance, as Bhagavan has told us. So our idea is to be free from ignorance. We recognize that there's a voice which we call the mind, which is the voice of ignorance. We recognize that. Okay, now once we are on the journey to be free from ignorance, free from the voice which is peddling ignorance, what do you think the voice will do? Or not think? You'll say, 'Yes, yes, I am the voice of ignorance, please be free from me'?

It will give you things that are wrong with you that you have to fix, that you are not done yet. Many times, all the rivers, you say you're too good, you're wonderful, you're the next Ram of this planet, something like this. So the problem is not with me, it is with you. It will say, 'I'm sorry.' Your mind will say the problem is not... because so that you notice that if it is a thought, it is a thought. If you fall into that trap... but that thought could be accurately telling me something, you see? But you don't need to know anything. You need to know... you know intuitively anyway.

So when it's making this diagnosis, it's making this report, I'm telling you, my child, don't get stuck in this stuff, because spiritual seeking then can go on forever. This is like today's time: I get to identify tomorrow something else, something else. The mind will never run out of diagnosis. And then, even if it is saying you are free, it is only so that it will say tomorrow, 'Oh, yesterday you were quite sweet, today you're being a bit bummed.' So recognize that the only source of trouble is that thought itself. Or if it tries to do symptom chasing and saying, 'Ah, okay, this is my true condition.' Why do you feel like the mind will help you get rid of the mind?

So that's why I've been asking: how do you know? So you say, 'I have a tendency to get pulled in again and again,' no? And if I ask you how do you know, you will say, 'I notice it.' You don't notice it. It's just not true. Your mind is telling you this is your problem. You looked at it. When you looked at it, I am sure that when I ask all of you, you will see it is because I notice it. It's not because you notice it; it is only because you think. Are you actually noticing? What you notice fully, you cannot translate. You cannot put into any narrative anyway. Try to notice you getting pulled in. Notice exactly when you're noticing it. It can't happen. No, no. Even when you're noticing, it can't happen now. Then even if you're not in satsang and you're not like in the spotlight, yeah, anytime you notice.

So they're not noticing it then. If you go to your head to tell you what is true about you, what do you think the head is? 'Amazing, this is how you can be rid of me'? It's not going to do that. It's only when I tell you, 'Oh, this is your problem, come tomorrow for the next dose of medicine.' That's why this problem... this question, although it seems very simple, you see, this is what's happening to me. I say, 'How do you know?' And if you know only through your mind, then it is the mind's trick to get you more mind, you know, not less mindy. The salesman will always sell you so that you can buy more from the salesman, not to say, 'Okay, goodbye.'

Noticing is also the mind?

No. Our report about what we are noticing is the mind. Like mostly our reports. Like a report like this, that 'I have a tendency to whatever,' no? They never notice that. It's impossible to notice because if you're noticing, then you're not going with the mind. So ask yourself: how do you know? And if it is from perception, then it's from perception, you see? But really validate that. But most of what we say, that 'How do you know that I have like this guilt or something?' 'I noticed it.' No, you thought it.

Yeah, so it's not an actual happening, it's the thought.

Exactly. So suppose you undertake a mission. You want to take a mission to be free from the operation of the mind, free from mental fusion. Then who can be your guide along the way? Not the mind, for sure. It may seem like such an obvious thing, and yet, like, how many times have we fallen for it? Like the April Fool that comes every day. He keeps saying, 'Today this is...' You feel like the mind is really going to help you be free from the mind? So if the mind is not going to help you be free from the mind, why is it giving you a diagnosis? You know, diagnosis, excuses for the mind by saying that, 'Okay, but I saw this' or 'You know, I know.' They don't.

And this is how this spiritual seeker journey seems to perpetuate longer. 'I haven't stabilized yet.' How do you know? I'm not saying you believe the opposite idea, which is also mind. It has to be... I don't need to stick nothing. I'm saying empty of any of this. We don't make a conclusion. So at least by this point, none of you are startled that it's possible that both opposites are not taken to be true, isn't it? I can see that if it is not diagnosing you, if you think you're fully bound, the solution or the antidote to that is not to say, 'No, no, I'm fully free.' They're still in the realm of the intellect. The opposite, a thought is a thought. Every thought.

If you need guidance, there's so many videos. I've shared something for ten years. I was telling someone, not even jokingly, there are more videos than subscribers on the YouTube channel. So you can watch it. There's no shortage of guidance. But we don't have to go to the head. We keep going to the head and we are basically saying, 'What do you think about this? Okay, Father's saying don't go to the head. What do you think?' It seems to be quite sincere. Where do we go for confirmation? Do you need diagnosis? A diagnosis implies that there is a patient. You need to track your progress as the world champion, find out where you are at the present moment, then figure out which way you want to go and find out how you're going to do it. That's how we work in the world. But empty of all of that, what do you need it for? If you had zero spiritual report about yourself, do you better offer a song?

Is this a spiritual report? So don't go to the seller of misery to be free from misery. We don't notice, but because it is happening, we do that. We go to the drug dealer: 'I want to be free from drugs. What do you think is wrong?' 'This is right, this is very harmless, for three days you'll be fine.' But what's in that? More addiction. Can people get more addicted to methadone? And that's worse for you. That's worse. So Advaita concepts only as concepts are much worse for you than worldly ones. If you start looking at the Advaita concepts as a worldview or a perspective from your head, it's not going to help at all, to say the least.

This is the problem: 'I am also God, why should I bow down to Ram?' You would have been better off as a regular king. But what medium? Ravana was mental as well. Of course, like some in some parts of the country and the world, they consider him to be a great savior. Shiva Tandava Stotram is composed by Ravana. So that is just a representation of spiritual ego. And what does that show about... like at least in the North, his head had to be cut off ten times. So the non-spiritual head just can be chopped once, but a spiritual head has to be cut like that. Oh, another one.

What's the report now? What is happening to you? Where are you stuck? How do you know? And the mind can sound very spiritual, very spiritual. Don't mistake that to be your intuition. It's just the mind. There can be a school teacher like for a moment. How do you know you're truly being intuitive? Can somebody shake you out of your intuition into the head? So if you're being intuitive, it is clear when who I really am as a parent to me. And if that seems confusing, ask yourself: am I aware? You cannot meet yourself as awareness through the head or through any perception. Stay there. Stay then. Don't refer to any other source of knowledge than that which tells you that you are aware. Then it is my promise that no words from any state will feel like they are too unfathomable. They may still sound wonderful, of course, but it will not sound unachievable.

What? Just that kind of satsang. Be empty. It indicates everything that you could construct. One good thing is for days or weeks or months, nobody has asked me, 'But what will happen to my responsibilities? What will happen to the work I'm going to do?' Everything can flow naturally, normally. Don't convince your mind of a single thing.