Drop All Concepts and Ideas Into the Satsang Fire - 9th Sept. 2016

So let's do one thing today. Let's visualize a strong fire in front of us. There is this big fire, the Satsang fire, in front of us. And let's sacrifice in this fire our favorite concepts, our beloved ideas, our biggest attachments. And experience is going to be, because the coming and going of appearances is independent of our ideas about them. And in this world of appearances, to call something 'me' or 'mine', that is what is the problem. Nothing is 'me' or 'mine'. You don't even know who 'me' is. 'Mine' in the world of constantly changing appearances—the minute we call it 'mine', that means 'I want it', 'it is', 'it must stay here'. But nothing is constant in this ever-changing world of Maya. This is the root of trouble.

When you say that 'I must have' or I resist and say 'I must not have this', either way it's the same thing. Desire or aversion is a desire only. We call it desire only—desire to have something or not to have something. So let's all create this fire right now and see if we can throw all our ideas into this fire. The ones that most 'ouch'—that if you like, when you say 'everything is fine, I'm willing to hand over everything to existence', but 'this I don't want to give up'. Let's do one internal audit like this and see what we might still be refusing to give up. What are we most fearful about losing? Is that eternal? That which we are most fearful about, is it eternal? Then it will be lost one day. This body itself will not be here. This realm itself will refuse to appear. And what about the objects in this realm? What is it that we can throw into the fire?

The mic is better. It could even be, it could even be the idea that 'I know something about the truth'. And this gives us a lot of trouble actually—the ideas that we know something about the truth. Now when suffering comes, then it adds to the suffering because you say, 'But how can this still be happening to me? I'm supposed to be beyond this. I know so much.' See if any concept is like this, just remains mental, then even these can be thrown away. This throwing away is true openness. All these thoughts and ideas will enter through the door and will automatically leave unless we hold something back with our belief.

And as you come to Satsang, all your attachments are being pulled away. And that which we might be holding on to, when that is being pulled away, then that can seem like the burning, you see. The hand is burning. You cannot be fully open and yet hold on to some concept. You cannot be fully open and suffer for any reasonable period of time. You can only see momentary. Someone says, 'Fear came of losing my children.' And this fear is into the fire. And all that is thrown into the fire. That's what I said: the idea we have about something doesn't change the fact of whether that appearance will continue to appear or not. This is the fear, isn't it? That if I throw away the idea, what if that stops appearing for me? But this play of Consciousness is independent of what we think about it.