Don’t Listen Today As If You have A Problem to Solve - 15th March 2021
Saar (Essence)
Ananta guides seekers to drop the effort of intellectual understanding and problem-solving. He points toward the natural awareness of existence, revealing that the ego is merely a non-existent shadow and reality is the unperceivable witness.
Satsang is like a car wash; just allow the words to wash over you without trying to grasp them.
You would not attempt to feed pizza to your shadow; likewise, do not try to fix the ego.
If you can perceive it, it is not you. You are the unperceivable witness of all perception.
intimate
Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.
Now, don't listen today as if you have a problem to solve. Yes, don't listen as if you have a problem to solve and some resolution is going to come. Because you hear these words also, don't listen to try and understand. Naturally, it will go to the intellect and it may remain there; it's fine and not to push against it, but there is no effort to grasp at it. Don't force yourself to try and understand what is being spoken, just in a more relaxed way. Because all that effort may be useful in traditional classrooms, here it'll only get in the way. And in your effort, many times you may make a shape, you see, in your head which could be quite different from what I'm trying to convey. In fact, any shape would be quite different from what I'm trying to convey.
So Satsang is like a car wash, almost. So just allow the car to be washed. I'm not saying zone out or bliss out or something—not that you can do that—but I'm just saying that whatever, if you feel like you can pay some attention, pay attention, but don't force any sort of understanding or grasping at these words. They will do the job themselves; you can allow them to, too. The best thing to do often, I say, is to get out of the way. The one that can do or can understand, that one can get out of the way.
So just for a moment, there is no problem with anything. Nothing is missing anywhere. Nothing is too little or too much. And we have lost for the moment the ability to judge anything to be problematic. Nothing to resolve at all, including the problem of trying to understand is not there. The primordial vibration of your being is naturally present here. There's nothing you can do about it either way. You cannot make it more, you cannot make it less, you cannot make it better, you cannot make it worse. All these things don't apply to your pure consciousness being, which is just naturally present here. You don't have to try and stay like this, hold on to it, or let go of it. Nothing. Yes.
And this, this very natural sense 'I exist,' 'I am,' you are naturally aware of it. You don't have to do anything with your attention. You don't have to do anything with any thought. You're just aware that you exist. This awareness that is aware of your existence is your reality; it is another name for you. And it's naturally the Self that we are looking for in self-realization; it is just this. And if you don't bring any nails for which this has to be the hammer, then there's no problem at all. You know what I mean? It's like we're expecting this to do something for us or to solve something or resolve something for 'me.' But did you notice that in the entire conversation so far, we didn't encounter such a 'me'?
We saw that there is just a natural existence and very, very natural awareness of that existence. At which stage did we encounter a 'me'? Not in reality. Even if we call that which we perceive to be reality for a moment, even then in the perceptual realm, we never found the 'me.' So just like you would not attempt to give pizza to your shadow—like you would not attempt to give pizza to you—somebody has tried this, right? Feed some food to the shadow because you recognize that it doesn't really exist; it only seems as if it does. So in the same way, you are realizing that there is no such ego or person as a tangible reality. It is only the play of thoughts which seem to create the notion of a shadow character.
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So the thoughts, which is the shape, and the character that is created is the imagined character. Like as children we may have played and given the shadow a name, in the same way we seem to have taken that non-existent shadow character to be a tangible entity called 'me,' whatever name and form we may have attached to that 'me.' And now we're trying to fix it, make it go away. But once you see that it has no reality, its presence, apparent presence, or absence makes no difference. So trying to get rid of this 'me' is the shadow's own attempt to get rid of the shadow. It is the way we can interpret the play of the shadow can be that way, but it has no use in reality.
So what is the... if you came, if this was a hospital and this was a doctor's room and you said, 'I have this problem, I take this character, you see, to be my reality and now I want to be rid of it,' what should the doctor say to the patient?
Yeah, so we take the shadow to be this shadow. I take that to be me. How can I get rid of it? But I see it, I see it.
But you're right. You find the reality and the notion of yourself being the shadow then dissolves. So, how to find this reality? How to find this reality is the essence of being free from the notion that I am the shadow entity, isn't it? And the path, so-called path, which is really the pathless path, has been emphasized from here over and over again. And from all the masters who are sharing, these pointings to this reality have been shared, isn't it?
And primarily what is important is to understand the wrong way to find reality. The wrong way is to try and find it objectively as if it is a thing, because you make yourself to be a thing in that. So if you take yourself to be a shadow and you are looking for a bigger shadow to resolve the notion of shadowiness, that is not going to do it. So don't look for a thing. And the 'thing' is anything that can be perceived. Yes? So what is the non-thing that you have come across? What is not a thing? You know what I mean by not a thing? Not perceivable, does not have attributes, quality, shape, size, length, breadth, height, duration. This, the perceiver itself, is the recognition of that which witnesses all perception but itself cannot be perceived.
And it sounds like a very fancy concept, but trust me, it takes much more effort to understand it conceptually than to just meet it for yourself, you see. So that's the second tip: don't understand it conceptually. Don't make any shape of the notion of the unperceivable perceiver, because you can't do it, you see. Your mind will offer you some visuals, then you will take that to be your reality. But whatever the visual is, it is not you. It is still perceived. Whether it is full of light or full of darkness, it doesn't matter; both are still perceived. So this is all the insight we need.
How many still feel like you're taking a visual to be your reality? Okay, let me expand. If you had a spiritual experience and you take what you saw in that experience to be your reality, raise your hand. What you saw in that experience, if you take that to be your reality, raise your hand. Okay, I saw one hand and now he's under peer pressure. Okay, who else? Second screen. Okay, I see something. Thank you, thank you for honesty. But simply don't do that. I have no better guidance: just stop it. It's not you. Forget about it. If you saw it, it cannot be you, no matter how magnificent or how empty the visual looked. It was still a painting, still a painting of perception. So what to do in this situation is just to ask yourself: who is aware of the perception of that? Who's aware of the perception of that?