Don’t Waste a Waking Breath - Find This Living Light Within Yourself - 4th September 2023

But many, many, many—in fact, most—postpone it. They postpone it because of some mental fantasy which says, 'Yes, yes, but I have this to do. Yes, yes, I have this responsibility. Yes, yes, this is... yes, yes, I'll come to it. I know what you're saying is true, I know what you're saying is true, but I'll come to it.' Okay, but remember that this whole game is about time. The whole game is about time. The battle between the mind and the heart is for time. Take the example of my son, who has never said no to me. He never said no to me, but he always says 'tomorrow.' And many of you who are parents can obviously relate to that. So be careful of this 'tomorrow.' And sometimes it will seem like the whole Leela itself will collaborate to justify the decision for tomorrow. 'Just not possible today. Not possible. Tomorrow I'll have more time. Tomorrow I'll wake up and do the exercises. Tomorrow I will start doing my practice properly. Tomorrow I will inquire into the nature of who I am. Tomorrow I will surrender my life to God.' Do everything tomorrow.

And suppose that even God is a concept for you. Suppose you feel like, 'What is this God stuff?' I can guarantee you that you cannot make a claim on Truth without coming to the discovery of God, or make a claim on God without coming to the discovery of Truth. So whether in the beginning you say God or Truth, it doesn't matter to me. But don't waste a waking breath. Find this living Light within yourselves. In whose life do you see the light of the sun? So I am going to submit to you that this life is wasted existence unless it is lived in the light of God. And coming from a former atheist, that's quite a strong thing to say. But if this statement wakes you up or it irritates you, you see, you must do something about it. Don't just leave it for tomorrow. That is the point. So, have you met God?

I know... how many have met God? Wow, this one short break and all the hands are going down. How many met God? It's like a force that answers out of you, so I'm not buying it, you know. That's a good question. So I promise you, you will know. If you meet God, you will not be wondering whether, 'Oh, that which I met, was that called God?'

Yes, it is. Tell me more. Well, I know... I'd love to know. I can't talk about knowing, but if it needs inferring or computation, yeah, I'm doing that right now. Then what I'm trying to say is, I know I can't escape that knowing. So is that what we are saying, or is there some extra revelation?

Yes or no? But until it's yes, it is no. Remember that a presumed yes is much worse than a no. Clarifying a presumed yes is way worse than a no. So if you're doing the 'must be'... 'Oh, I had the experience in meditation five years back, I went from a vasana and there I found, you know, something, and oh, that must have been it.' Yeah, and maybe we need to change the question then and say: Are you meeting God now?

Confused. What are the two ends of the confusion? Are you meeting God now? Yes, I don't know. I just got this... what's happening now, then? If you consider the God or what, I don't know. So I don't know how to define God exactly.

This is good. Okay, so you're right that one way of defining God is to say everything is God. So when I'm meeting everything, that means the content of my perception, that can also... we can say, 'Yes, I'm meeting God.' But okay, so thank you for helping me clarify the question. Are you meeting a presence within yourself which is the holy presence? Yeah? Where is it? Where do you experience it? Oh yes. What is its... any attribute, any gunas, any shape, any size?

It's like a calming presence.

Yeah. Can we define the boundaries of this presence? That is it. Where does it start? Where does it end? I just want to make sure that it's not like a perceived image, you see, because the mind will also want to participate in this conversation and say, 'Okay, he's asking for a presence, yeah,' so it can do that. So you just have to be careful that we're not getting tricked by any imagery or any sort of visualization type of thing. And it's a very authentic Atma darshan. The whole point is to come to Atma darshan, which means to come to the discovery of the holy presence within you, and in the light of which—only in the light of which, I may add—can the absolute reality of Brahman get realized. But we'll come to the second part in a bit.

So to come to this, and we refer to it by many names: Atma, Holy Spirit, Guru presence, Light within, light of the universe. We use all these names for it just to point, you know, in various ways and see if anything just clicks somewhere. So that is what we are really... as a real project, not as a ritual discourse or just like learning spiritual concepts, but as a real endeavor. Can we come and meet God in this way? And there is no real distinction between Atma and Paramatma. So to come to the Atma leads us to the ultimate discovery of the highest truth.

So Jesus said something beautiful in the Sermon on the Mount. He said, 'Blessed are those who are pure of heart, for they will see God.' So he's told us the prerequisite: pure of heart. How would you meet that? What would this pure-heartedness be? The catch is to meaningfully and also persistently, you know, be in the peace. You have to give up the attachment to the worldly sensations and ascribing truth value to everything happening in time. You have to sort of look for the stillness and be the stillness. So you have to live in the heart. You can't... I mean, like Bhagavan says very beautifully, he says... so just to quote because I think he says sort of the wise man stays in the heart. Otherwise, the mind comes to the heart, experiences it, but then goes back into the world and then comes back as an experience. Then you start feeling the transience, and that's really trouble because you're caught, and you're caught in a very bad way because you don't know what to take for real. So only the pure-hearted can become empty of themselves, is what you're saying. Can become empty of themselves, and when they are empty of themselves, then they are not buying into selfish emotions about what the world means, or notions about desire, pride, guilt—all of these things.

So I would simply say together, if you work on just humility—you work on just humility, which is the absence of believing ourselves to be special—then the rest of the pure-heartedness will naturally be drawn from this. We may not realize it yet, but once you become more and more humble, then our truthfulness, our compassion, our unconditional love, all of this deepens. And in fact, if you like really hate humility—'I am something special, I have known it when I was born, in astrology I told my parents that he is the most special one or she is the most special one that has ever been born, so tell me anything, Ananta, but this humility business'—you see, or you think that also, which is the same thing, which is that you already think you are exceedingly humble, so it is the same thing as pride.

So you could say, 'Okay, I will deepen my feelings, or I will deepen my honesty, integrity, deepen my unconditional love.' Any of them. Good luck. I was sharing the other day this little legs of one... people you pull at one, all the rest will also get dragged along. So you don't have to get intimidated by the notion of becoming pure-hearted, and definitely don't start trying to thin your thoughts—not going to happen. So don't fall into those traps. Just become humble, or become honest, or become loving, become compassionate, and the rest will automatically flow. What happens then is that the mechanics of delusion start falling apart. Mechanics of delusion start falling apart because how do we get... what is the reverse of empty? How do we become full of ourselves? Okay, let me explain a couple of minutes on the empty thing first.

Most of you have heard me belaboring this point, of course, that the lane is too narrow for both me and God. If there is me, there cannot be God. If there is God, there cannot be me. So if you're hoping for a beautiful partnership, you know, 50/50, God and you will high-five each other and we will spend the rest of the day in collaboration, both are discussing with each other what should we do next to this world, you know... okay, it's not going to happen. And actually, I dreamed it that way, but it's not very far from how we live. It's not really far from how we live. But clearly all the sages have told us that the lane is too narrow. There's not enough room for God and...

They cannot be me. So if you're hoping for a beautiful partnership, you know, 50/50, God and you will high-five each other and we will spend the rest of the day in collaboration, both are discussing with each other, 'What should we do next to this world?' you know, okay, it's not going to happen. And actually, I dreamed it that way, but it's not very far from how we live. It's not really far from how we live. But clearly, all the sages have told us that the lane is too narrow; there's not enough room for God and me. Humility is a well-known prerequisite to come to the discovery. And even if by Grace a discovery happens while there is pride, then the abidance in the discovery will not happen. So, empty is a prerequisite for this. To live a life in the light of God, we cannot dissipate that life between God and me. And this is the part that is probably scary for all of us in spirituality: Am I ready to be empty?

But examine the value system which determines what you consider important for you, which can then become more valuable. Or you may say, like somebody in Sangha said, 'I don't know if I'm cut out for God.' Actually, he's in. And somebody who's been with me for quite some time, she said, 'I don't know if I'm cut out for this.' But I want to submit to all of you that there is no option. It's not that you can say, 'No, no, I am happy. I will live like me and I will die, whatever, we finished then this life is over,' you see? Then I would call that the biggest mistake or the biggest folly, especially because you were told that it is possible to live in the light of God. It's not that you are looking at two roads and say, 'Oh, should I go through the city?' At the end, we have to get to the same point only. Okay, now it's the difference between true life and our false attempts to make hell palatable.

And I don't mean... I mean right here. A life which is full of worry, stress, strife, pride, guilt, ups and downs every day, and one day so happy, one day so upset—that is hell. And all our tactics of desire—'I'll get this, then I'll be better; I'll get this, then I'll be better; if I only become like this, I'll be better; if I had this relationship, I'll be better; if I had this much money, I'll be better; if my body was younger, I'll be better; if I had some meaning in my life, I'll be better.' You see, the last one is a very popular avoidance as well. All of this is just trying to make this roller coaster, hellish roller coaster, palatable. No, no. 'I don't know whether I'm cut out for this.' What option do we have? I want to submit to you that there is no other option.

And I also want to submit to you that don't get caught up in this sort of New Age spirituality which is talking about it will be so easy and your life will become full of ease and peace. It's really difficult. Expect that it will be difficult to let go of ego. The Buddha himself said one man—and these days we may say one person—may defeat a thousand armies, but to win over their own mind is even more difficult. So there is no other option, and it's not going to be easy. But it becomes easier with faith. It becomes easier with humility. So it becomes easier with integrity. So the whole of spirituality basically is various, various, various ways or rivers flowing into: How does one become empty for God? So whether it is sadhana, whether it is seva, whether it is devotional singing, whatever it may be, it's how do we come to this point of becoming empty of the false self so that we may come to the true self?

Yeah, at this point many regret coming to satsang. It's like, 'I was better off without being provoked in this way.' But I'm happy to be proven wrong. You may say, 'It is what it is. If God wants me to find him, I'll find God. If he doesn't, I won't find. I am okay, leave me alone.' But really dive into what your heart is calling you to do. That inner guide is always available to you. But if you say that 'I want to undertake this difficult journey of becoming empty for God,' then I promise you that I will stand with you and I will pray for you and I will bless you every moment till you come to the same discovery which has happened here through God's grace.

Then I can only speak from direct experience here. For part of this life, I would have felt conversation like this is not just absurd, it's just plain foolishness, nonsense. Those who don't have faith in themselves, then when this construct called God... you know, everything God does, it's just a nice feel-good idea. That was the primary concept I lived by for a long, long time. Then life slapped me around quite a bit, and then I started looking for answers. What's going on? What's my purpose? Why am I here? Who is here in the first place? All of these questions started. And with all that, every spiritual practice, everything done, everything done very badly and consistently, God's grace led me to my Master. And sitting with him, I came to the recognition. Firstly, I came to the recognition of the absence of a limited me and the presence of reality.

But the thing is that both sides of this equation are infectious or want to spread. Individuality is infectious since it wants to spread, you see? And those who have gotten the bug of the love for God, there's nothing they want to do but to spread that. And it's been this way for as long as the human condition has existed. So suppose that through God's grace we are pure-hearted and therefore we are able to remain open and empty, which is actually very simple. Which is actually very simple. Open and empty only means thoughts are visitors; keep your front door and back door open. Let them come, let them go. Don't serve them tea. Then saying that's open sounds very simple, but the thought comes in saying, 'What will happen to you?' But that is the 'you' you are trying to be empty of.

So to switch from the maha-mantra of 'What's in it for me?' to a life of open and empty conceptually is very simple, but it's probably the most difficult thing we will ever do. And because it is actually so simple and yet the most difficult, that is why in most branches of spirituality they've given you a practice or a way as to how not to grasp your mind, how to not do, how not to grasp, because grasping is suffering. Now true spirituality is about a complete acceptance. It is not a bypassing or an avoidance of even the slightest thing, you see? It's a pure acceptance. So when we say open and empty, it is not a repressive open and empty saying, 'Don't come,' you see? It is a welcoming open and empty saying all thoughts are visitors, they can come. Or every emotion can come, every perception can come. So it's a welcoming approach saying whatever life has to throw at me, let it through, but I will remain non-grasping. So it's a full meeting of everything that comes.

Then the next question that you should ask, you could ask, is: 'But then why are you, Ananta, always picking on the mind? Why are you doing that? Because isn't that also part of Consciousness, and shouldn't we be accepting also of the mind?' So accepting the mind means that we allow its constructs to come and its constructs to go. That is to accept it. Accepting doesn't mean that if something is a lie or inadequate or primitive, we take that narrative to be our truth and live on that basis. It's subtle. Everyone with me? And if I was sounding academic, I can make it simpler.

So accept what the mind is saying. It is saying, 'I hate that person,' 'This one has done me wrong,' 'This one is really lovely.' It is making those judgments. Then accepting it is saying that this is hearing, hearing it out with our attention, you see? But has anyone ever been able to tell me what is this using their mind? Tell me this moment, what is this? Are you clearer about what this is in natural pure perception, living in the moment, being in the moment? Or if the mind was to tell you? So the mind's interpretations are always empty of God, very primitive and timid. And if we do such a bad job of interpreting one moment, how much credibility can we give to our stories of our life? 'Oh, my life was always like this, then I started like that, then this happened to me.' These narratives, they trap us, and they're so inaccurate.

Nobody... you make a narrative about two days, no two among you will agree on the same narrative. So reality is impossible to grasp with the mind. And right now, notice that we are just talking about the perceptual reality. We've not even talked about the elephant in the room, saying: Who is witnessing all of this? That is never captured in any narrative. The third bird is never part of any story. So just because you have a younger sibling who's always making up stories telling you... oh, you know, I had a younger cousin who every time I would go to my village to meet him, he would say, 'Oh, you know, last month Kapil Dev had come to my village and I hit his ball for a six.' And he was like a tiny kid at that time. So just because you're accepting of them doesn't mean you're buying the stories.

What is the basis on which we can confirm that our mind's narrative is true? Very few actually even ask this question because for us it just seemed like if it came to my head, it must be my truth. How many of us really even ask this question? If it is my voice, why do I need a telephone call to myself? 'Hello, this is what you're feeling right now. I'm really upset with you.' You know it already. So because... and you look across all cultures, all traditions, all spirituality, they've always told you that the only way to take yourself to be the false limited self is to fall for the narratives from the mind about the past and future. And to let go of the false, to let go of the limited self to meet reality, we must not buy into these stories.

Okay, now why it is scary for some of us is because we have not yet experienced knowledge which is intuitive, or we have experienced it but we have not realized what it is. That we don't have to rely on this limited mental instrument which makes primitive judgments and concepts about everything that we perceive. There's something called intuitive knowledge, heart knowledge, which is the source of true insight, right? And again, it's present in all cultures. We call it the Atma, Satguru presence, Holy Spirit, Great Spirit. You're looking... this is the stuff I do when the body is not well, you know? So I was looking at various cultures and we're looking at the indigenous Americans, as they are called now. Looked at how did they pray to this presence within, the Great Spirit they called it. So this is of course very beautifully the Wakan Tanka, very beautiful. Then we're looking at Africa.

And these are... why I'm naming all of this is that without any so-called evangelism or cultural spread, how people came to this discovery by themselves. So in whatever period of time, whenever people searched for this, they came across the holy presence. Some call it the Great Mother, some call it Great Spirit, and they've composed songs, we composed prayers. So how to become empty of the mind? One simple way is if we for some reason latch on to a question which we cannot answer and we cannot leave. The question comes like, 'Who am I?' or 'What is my purpose?' That seems so important to us. Central. It's so beautiful because so central. It's like, 'Who am I?' It is not about somebody else, not somewhere else. Who am I?

So then it's impossible to answer that question. Impossible in traditional empirical ways. Impossible to... because it's ineffable. Impossible to articulate it. And yet those who are looking for the truth cannot help it; they have to find out who they are because truth for whom? Yeah? So that's a very popular approach: to find a question which you cannot answer but you cannot leave. This was forced also, like in the Zen monastery. So the master, the guru would say, 'This is a koan, you have to solve it,' you see? So you may hate the question, you may want to leave it, but you can't leave it because that was your only sadhana. So that is the way in which to let go of the dependence on the mind, to remain empty of the mind. The other is to surrender whatever it is offering you. God's problem, Guru's problem, Father's problem.

This was a question which you cannot answer but you cannot leave, so this was forced, also like in the Zen monastery. The master, the guru, would say, 'This is a koan; you have to solve it,' you see. So you may hate the question, you may want to leave it, but you can't leave it because that was your only sadhna. That is the way in which to let go of the dependence on the mind, to remain empty of the mind. The other is to surrender whatever it is offering you: God's problem, Guru's problem, Father's problem. Then you can go on. We've talked about this. You can chant, you can sing, you can do yoga, you can do the previous thing, but no authentic spiritual path is going to tell you, 'No, no, you keep believing your thoughts, keep taking yourself to be the false one.' You'll get that over there. They will tell you something so that you break that pattern of false narratives.

Now I'm realizing more and more that a force multiplier in this is an active love for God. Whatever our path, it may just be to be open and empty, but to be open and empty without the active love or the anchor of God, you can see is much more difficult. So I would suggest that no matter what your spiritual modality may be, love God. And actually, I would go as far as to even say, even if you don't know what your endeavor to be empty is, whether it's just to remain open and empty or whatever it is, start just by loving God wholeheartedly. And if we approach this with a deep love for God, then we'll get out of the whole spiritual Christopher Columbus syndrome.

What is that? You talked about it recently. So many of us are like, 'Oh, I looked within, I did inquiry. After five minutes, I came across Consciousness. Consciousness, very nice. And then I asked who is aware even of Consciousness, and I saw Awareness. Okay.' It's like discovering Africa, India, it's America, is it? And that has become very popular today, and I've contributed to that popularity and am well aware, but I'm making amends now. So when we come to Consciousness, you're coming to a living presence, you know? A living presence of your own life, not like a living presence in a zoo saying, 'Ah, there is a lion.' Your own substance, your own reality, which is a living being. All our love, our prayers, all the good things that we have to offer can only be to that. So a deep, active love for God will help us not get into too scientific or exploratory a mindset, you know? And that love will hold you steady. Yeah, hopefully, yes, that's it.

But the beautiful thing with the active love for God also is that your love for God is also God's love for you. Have you noticed this? This love for God is... you can't say it is coming from my direction towards God or God's direction towards me. You try to actively love God, but when you look, you can't tell whether it is God loving you or you loving God. And of course, our Advaita mind will instantly say, 'Yes, yes, because no two at all.' So let's keep that aside for a moment. So the living presence within ourself is the source of this unconditional love, and the deeper you deepen in this love, the stronger you will be anchored in God's light, and the simpler you will find it to be humble, faithful, compassionate. So remember that it's not a question of achievement or 'I found Consciousness, I found Awareness.' Only your Consciousness, I have found Awareness. So this becomes like spiritual tick boxes. But loving God with all your mind will prevent us from missing the crux of the discovery.

It's not a question, it's just... I'm sharing something. I was talking to one of my friends, and he's been on the path for a very long time, and recently he's been going through a lot and he stopped sadhna and you know... so he's gone to an extent where he was questioning whether God really exists. And I've been talking to him for quite some time and, I mean, I'm sad actually. I don't know why I'm sad, but I'm feeling sad. And another person, similar... that person was also going through a lot of, you know, and it was like, they believe that black magic and such things exist and 'I'm being attacked,' something like that. But honestly speaking, after coming here, right, being in such things for quite some time, I do not buy into any of these things, you know, because I know that it's just one thought away, you know? I can go back to God.

Sometimes when I'm alone, right, when certain situations happen, you know, this mind comes up and since I've gone through certain experiences, I somehow sometimes fear, you know, that I'll be away from God, you know? And it's a deep fear, you know, like, 'What if God abandons me?' You know, I can't exist. So that, I don't know... I mean, correlating all these things, right, this feeling is not a good feeling, you know? I'm feeling very weird.

The answer was there.

I know it's one thought away.

No, no, but you said that if God abandoned me, I can't exist. See if you can meet that without my further explanation.

Existence is what I'm feeling... intense fear, yes.

No, I'm just saying that the God that you're finding, is it possible that you could exist but it not be there?

No, okay, it's not possible.

Yes, so it's not possible for those who are truly coming to the discovery of God for God to abandon them. But it is always possible for us to abandon God again for the mind, the human condition, is it? So is our fear that God will abandon us, or that we may abandon God again? Because the God that we are finding, there is no question of it leaving. We can push it to the background and push it away by indulging in thought-based things.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Father.

And the fear, by the way, is an attempt by the mind to do that. To do that, okay? So, a metaphor is coming along, or like a similar thing. Suppose you said you fell in love with a girl, huh? Who says that, 'I don't like any boy who has fear. I don't like anybody who has fear.' And you're trying to... 'Is she going to leave me?' So that itself is the fear which will make her distant. So this is what the mind plays. It is telling you, 'I am scared God will go away,' but its notion of being scared is just to take you away from God. So give the fear, stay with God, you know?

All these human yearnings for love... once we love God and notice God's love for us, we never have that again, that expecting it to come from somebody else or from the world or in somewhere else. It doesn't come. This is a beautiful part about the love for God, that you feel content, you feel full. There are many years in spirituality where people will claim a lot of love for God. This is in relation to what I was saying earlier, not with your report, which is very nice, but I'm saying that notice that they may say, 'Oh God,' but you can sense in their whole manner with their grasping, imploring... so religion did not, although they may speak about the great love for God, it is not yet lived experience. You feel just so full.

I used to tell these kids sometimes, 'I'm feeling so much love, so much love, I could cut it into slices and give to all of you and I won't know what to do with it.' There's so much love, what do I do with it? And most human grasping actually is the need to feel loved. But when you get it direct from the source, then this world cannot push you around. The world's approval systems are based on negotiating love: 'You make me happy, you entertain me, I will give you a like.' And more and more it's becoming like that. But once you find the whole ocean in your heart, all these dancing images in front, there's no difference to you.

To love God... then after loving God fully in your heart, if you still experience some fear of God, then that is called awe, okay? That is called wonder, reverence. Because love and fear truly cannot coexist, you see? But we find in many traditions that it is 'Love God, fear God,' and even together. Sometimes you notice that people become like really courageous when they're in love, because when you're experiencing this love, you don't notice that it was scary earlier, you see? With God, it's a little different as you're meeting the immensity of it. It's like if I suddenly told you that there's a huge mountain inside you, like bigger than Mount Everest. Of course you can love it, but even to meet it or to embrace it seems so impossible because we have lived with our notion about ourselves being in such a tiny construct that it seems awe-inspiring, even intimidating at some level. And that is actually, I feel, healthy because it avoids our putting God into a limiting concept just because we can relate to the limiting concept better.

So if the construct is always a bit out of reach and there's a bit of wonder, there's a bit of awe, there's a bit of intimidation that we meet, we find in the presence of God. Just even in the idea of God, I feel it's very good for our ego. Forget about God, notice the vastness of the one that we are talking about, the magnificence, the innocence of the intelligence of that one. I mean it fully, literally, when I say that every day I feel like I'm just starting out on this discovery. I'm just starting a beginning because of the immensity of the grace. And look at the wonder of this, like what are we even talking about? This is the wonder of this: in this visible world, everything is made up of, apparently made up of atoms and molecules and all of that. All these bodies are made up of food; this is digested food, all of this. And because our attachment and identification is so deep with this, even in that, God is finding a way to reveal himself. Although it's not his true position, but even then we may say that in my heart, it coincides in seeming with my physical heart, I find God's light, isn't it? In this bucket of food, you see? If I look really deeply within, I can come to the light of God himself, which is beyond all perception, beyond all time and space.

What other proof of his love do we need? That in the human condition, it would be so, so difficult if you did not have a way so directly to find his presence within. And that which is universal, you know? You can talk to anyone from any part of the world and say, 'Look within yourself.' And of course, I make it a point to say within yourself, but to start with, even if you said, 'Look within you,' and you consider yourself to be the body, and if you were to really look, you will find the light of God. It sounds like such a simple statement: in everybody there is Ram. What if you were to take it literally? Was he lying? Who must that God be that has made himself present seemingly even inside this bundle of the flesh and blood? That which animates your life.

So one child said, 'When I needed him the most, he was not there.' How to explain? Should we make a schedule and timetable and say, 'Okay, Monday afternoon, Tuesday evening, when my life is like this, then you please be there'? Because he doesn't know? Like he has to be told by us, 'I need you the most now'? Because all this talk about him being the light of the universe and just talk to this... he doesn't know? He just hasn't met him. Because to come to the mountain and then make a report that, 'Oh, the mountain was in my pocket yesterday but today is not there,' we haven't met the mountain. 'Where was he when I needed him?' A popular lament. As long as we keep thinking that we know better, there's no end to this stuff. But who within us knows anything at all? If God was not there, is knowledge possible? Like, 'I know I need you.' What is that 'know'? Does that 'know'... that 'know' is possible without God? 'I know you are not there.' What is that 'know'? Is it possible to know and for him not to be there? Thank you, thank you, thank you very much.