Humility Is the Best Way to Enter God's Temple in Your Heart - 26th February 2024

So, that dangerous end of it has to be dipped and, in fact, drowned in humility as a constant reminder to remind oneself that all that is good only comes from His light, from His presence. And this—whatever this Ananta can take himself to be—is just sheer foolishness, sheer stupidity, and still a desire to live on his own terms and wanting to be right, maybe even about this. So, that is the safety mechanism. But sincerely, you see? Not as a tactic, but sincerely through looking. The safety blanket for this one is to recognize where he stands in front of God, like a naked little child.

And so, the sages of the past looked at this conundrum where the recognition is always that I am the highest, you see, but it is also seen that the 'me' still hangs around you. And that 'me' can reinvent itself, can paint itself in new colors, can create a fresh identity which may be even more difficult to shake off. For this conundrum, they came up with the term Achintya Bheda Abheda, which means that there's an incomprehensible distinction and yet non-distinction between the highest and myself. Achintya means it's not comprehensible; we cannot really understand it, although we've tried in some words today to expand on it to see if it lands somewhere.

But really, the aspect of distinction/non-distinction, we can't really... the intellect is too small to comprehend. Because for the intellect, these are opposites. How can it be non-distinct and distinct? How can something be true and false, you see, or neither true nor false? So, that's where our logic, especially the linear logic of the West, starts to fade away, starts to give way. But our faith doesn't; our intuition doesn't. And you'll see that there's nothing unique in what I'm sharing; I'm just continuing to share from what my heart is telling me and, of course, what the sages have showed us in the past. So, if you look at the lives of the highest sages, they've also always been in deep humility and servitude to God.

Follow what your heart is guiding you to, and you'll notice that in your heart, it's all soft and light. There's an ease about it. Even if it seems like opposites, opposites only hurt in the intellect. Our heart is spacious enough for that. So, let me recap in simple terms. Whatever we can take ourselves to be—if we can be completely empty, empty, empty all the time of all identification, that would be best. But since this Maya, this world, this place is so compelling, we are tempted very often to take ourselves to be something. So, if we are going to take ourselves to be something, let us be a foolish, humble beggar or nothing at all.

So many times you'll see great sages just seeming to one moment say that they are the highest, they are That, I am That, and the other moment say that they are nothing at all and they know nothing at all. So, I'm just a little child following their footsteps. Not at all comparing myself to a great sage like Vivekananda, but for sure, when Swami Vivekananda went in front of Sri Ramakrishna, he must go even later as a little child. He won't go as the immortal one or whatever. So, in front of God, who is always here in your heart, in front of Him, what our form conveys, what our form expresses, is usually a great awe, great reverence, a great love.

It's beautiful contemplation, and we must check how it applies in our life. How does it apply in our life? Because can we notice the remnants of this 'me' or the dominance of this 'me', whatever the case might be? It is safe to really ask yourself questions like: Okay, what is it that I actually know? What is it that I have actually done? What is it in my life that is not a sheer gift from God? So, when you ask ourselves these questions, then we realize that all is because of His grace. And also, sorry, but the fastest way to close yourself is to believe that you know something, that you've got somewhere, you see? That you've climbed the mountain. It's very popular at the top of the mountain. Maybe I have not even scratched the surface of the mountain. I don't know where this mountain goes. Only the one who can say that they have taken the measure of God is entitled to that kind of statement, and I don't feel like there's anyone like that or can be anyone like that.

After hearing this, I think where my confusion was lying in that question was sometimes when the mind is strong and one has to call upon the inner resources, the being, to get out of that situation, in a way there's a very positive energy of courage. And you've also said, for example, 'Don't talk about your problems, but tell your problems who your Master is,' something like that, which is a more courage-oriented posture, if you will. So, I was getting confused in that situation with the humility and 'I'm unworthy.' But now what I'm seeing is the humility and unworthy posture is not while my mind is creating the havoc; there, maybe courage is okay?

Yes, but also let's check whether what needs more courage. Humility also needs courage, for sure.

Yeah, I guess for me now the subtle distinction that has come is... so if my mind is creating a havoc, can I be humble to that? Yes, that's also one way, right? Can I be humble to that attacking mind? The best way to enter God's temple in your heart. So, it's receding in like a tortoise, going in and going under, in a way.

Okay, let's look at this. So, what happens when we are humble, you see? If you feel that we are being attacked, then we must have a shape for us to be attacked, isn't it? That without a shape, we cannot be attacked. So, mostly what is being attacked is what? It is pride itself. It is very difficult to attack one who is not proud because there's just a subtle nuance of a difference between the word ego and pride, you see? There's really not much difference between the two words. So, when we are feeling attacked, then it is our self-image. Self-image is another way to say pride, like we have a notion about ourselves that 'I am something,' and that is getting attacked.

So, the remembrance that whatever remains of me is just a foolish, humble beggar then takes us away from a sense of entitlement or having to keep up any sense of image in the first place. Why should I not be attacked? And so, I just remembered that one child looked at my profile picture at some point—I had the Fool as my profile picture, the Tarot the Fool. So, she said, 'But I don't feel I have the courage to use something like this as my profile photo because it's scary.' It may be scary for us to allow the world to take us to be a fool. So, if we can really... it is coming to say that humility is the best way to enter God's temple. Even when if you were to go to a physical temple, we go head bowed down. We don't go, 'I am That, I have come to meet you.' That is a reason that is not my...

For me, the confusion is... in going to a temple or coming to see you or Vivekananda going to Ramakrishna, there's no question of an attack over there. I'm going to something that is far more inspiring, greater, grander. There's no confusion there. The confusion is, let's say somebody's verbally abusive to me. Okay? So now in my mind, the posture can be just humility and I avoid the situation and move on, and I will find peace in that one way. The other posture is, 'Oh, nobody can attack who really is here, and this entity is way bigger.' This is just from your own words, that's why my confusion is, like, 'Show your problems...' Finally, I feel like I'm getting the sense of the question now. I feel like I'm meeting it now.

Yeah, so firstly, whenever we are attacked—all the time, but especially when we are attacked—we must be going to God. And that going to God must be with a sense of humility, with the head bowed down, not with a sense of entitlement. Then when we talk about how should we deal with that external situation, you see, that will come from there, you see? So, I'm not at all saying that our external posture automatically should become head bowed down, you see? Although a lot of times it will be like that. But we have to allow God to tell us how to, you see? He must move us; He must guide us. So, thank you. I feel like I got the nuance of the question now. So, if you're being attacked in life, externally, internally we have to continue to be humble and go to God.

About how should we deal with that external situation, you see, that will come from there. So I'm not at all saying that our external posture automatically should become head bowed down, you see, although a lot of times it will be like that. But we have to allow God to tell us how to, you see. He must move us; He must guide us. So thank you. I feel like I got the nuance of the question now.

So if you're being attacked in life externally, internally we have to continue to be humble and go to God. But how this body-mind has to unfold has to come from His will. So that is to not be sheepish and to be strong, or maybe even to take the Arjuna posture. We can't predetermine that. So yeah, that was my question. So thank you.

Just rely on that in that moment. What is the right posture should come from inside rather than have a templatized... thank you. But we must always be turning to God in every situation. In fact, we must make that our house as much as we can, so we can't even see turning to God; it's just that we are living in His presence. And then from there, all situations can be handled. And we must remember to let go of any idea of what that situation well-handled would look like, you see? Because then otherwise that becomes the benchmark and you say, 'I stayed with God but it did or did not turn out well.' Because you stayed with God, that is what 'turned out well' means. There is no other way to determine the wellness of it or the not-wellness of it.

Yesterday the opposite of the strong posture happened. Like you said, in the moment intuitively, I was giving money to a beggar on the street and that person bowed down, and I just intuitively bowed down more and I started crying. Like, you know, how can that person bow down to me? I don't know, it was just like too much to take. Yeah, so now I understand. Like, it just happened with just inner response, and with somebody else that could have taken the strong posture; it would have been very different. Thank you.

When one is living in that space with... can you repeat my... when one is living in that heart temple, yeah, and there is a... the more the sense of this, it comes slowly and slowly and little by little, more the feeling of 'I'm not the doer,' right? I mean, you are not actually. So that goes with... so in that, sometimes I make... I'm really like, if there was a judge he would say like, 'You're a real fool, idiot, you've been rude to so-and-so,' or 'You didn't do this nicely,' or 'This is hardly the way to behave in this journey.' And then I find that now when I don't beat myself up on that at times, yes, then I'm more able to let go also of the other side of feeling great if I... or like I sometimes get carried away with the feeling that I'm now, you know, reached some... like you said, there is no mountain even, but whatever. But I think that that is helping me to let go of that also, that I have done something not good. I mean, there's an awareness of it, but it's also then let go.

Very good. So let's look at this question also. This is also fundamental to our spirituality. So like we said, in the human condition there always remains at least a remnant of this ego, of this pride. In the same way, in this human condition, there always—and both are probably the same in some sense, but just to express in a different way—there remains a remnant of doership, of agency, of volition. As much as we want to be free from that, it remains. And that will always lead to some pride or some guilt. So as long as I take myself to be the doer, there will be some... the mind will come with an offer of some pride or some guilt about that, you see?

So what is the best antidote? What to do with that agency? See, and I feel that Bhakti, and specifically the servitude aspect of Bhakti, is the antidote for that remnant of the sense of agency that we have, you see? Which is linked with that humility, servitude, faith, gratefulness, prayerfulness—all of these are the ingredients of a true bhakta. And the Bhakti then itself becomes the antidote to any sort of egoic pride stepping in. And because this agency seems to remain, because this pride seems to remain, then we must allow ourselves to be just moved by Him or just guided by Him. And these very simple instructions can be a lifetime of sadhna, but that lifetime will be worth it, you see? Because the original infection—I don't want to call it sin, but the original infection—is for us to go our own way with our own agency, with our own mind, with our own idea of choice. So allowing self-will to dissolve in His will, you see? It may not fully happen, but it may deepen more and more, and that deepening more and more itself will be the best life.

Father, just to elaborate on the humility advice, which is, as I understood it, you go to the Lord Consciousness with a sense of, you know, 'You are manifesting it all, it's Your will, just help,' kind of surrender mode. Is there also... would you also advise that, you know, to the extent we feel like we are an agent in the world, that we need to do seva? Because I meet a lot of people who deeply inspire me who say that, 'This is my Dharma and my karma,' and they seem to have lost themselves in this sense of service to the world. Whereas our path is that little bit like the world is manifest by the Creator, so we go in a head bowed down to consciousness and presence and ask for guidance. I just want to ask because there are two seemingly different paths that may lead to the same, I don't know, but you know, just want your advice on this. Should we be consciously taking time out for things like seva or making that sort of a part of our daily, quote-unquote, practical life? Or it doesn't matter as long as we're in presence and we are cutting the ego?

Okay, thank you. We're getting some very fundamental questions today which are very important and form the basis of our spirituality. So to put it in a very simple way, the question can be looked at in this simple phrase: What is my Dharma? What is my Dharma? So if you were to look at someone who is in the world, they don't have a Guru, they don't have any sense of the Atma within, the Holy Spirit within, then for them to follow what is written down in scripture, what is the advice given by the elders, what resonates the most in terms of what they feel will best help brothers and sisters in this world—it's very good. If those who haven't come to this feel a calling towards helping, doing some sort of so-called social work, then that is fine; we can take that to be Dharma.

If there's a family responsibility that someone has to do and they're not yet guided by a Master or by the Master within, then to follow the norms of the highest code of conduct in society can provisionally be taken to be their Dharma. But for those who have come to Satsang, who have found their Guru, even if they cannot hear the voice of the Master within or feel like they can be empty enough to be guided or moved by the Master within, then to follow the Master's pointing is their Dharma. Then as we get used to being obedient in that way, then we may find that that presence which the external Master truly embodies, that very presence, that very Atma, that very Satguru presence is within ourselves. So to follow the will of that is our Dharma.

So if you were to look at the classical example of Krishna telling Arjun that 'You must do your Dharma,' the way I look at that whole thing is to say that it became Arjun's Dharma very clearly because the Lord Himself was telling him to do it, you see? More than the rules of society or the situation and the family that he was born in, it was primarily his Dharma to fight in that situation because God was telling him to fight, you see? And Arjun also took Krishna to be his Guru. So his friend, Guru, God—in all ways that we can look at following one's Dharma, that one was telling him to fight. So when the Lord is telling you to fight, then you fight. And that sort of answers his earlier question as well. But if the Lord said, 'Keep your bow and arrow, leave violence and become an ascetic in the forest,' then that would have been his Dharma.

So for those who have come to God, who have turned to God, then to follow God's will has to be their Dharma. There cannot be any other way to look at that. And then when we have come to God and our deepest intention is to follow our Dharma, which is to follow His will, then we can forget about karma. Then we are not to worry about what is this pattern of movement that happened. So remember very simply: what to do, what is good, what is right, what is better, all depends on whether it came from God or not.

So what is your Dharma as disciples? For those of you who consider this one to be the Master, it is to make it most important in your life to come to His presence. And once you have been blessed by this presence, take it to be the highest gift that you can receive in the human condition or in any condition, and to endeavor at all times to remain in His presence and to be guided by His light. So it always varies moment to moment; the guidance may vary. But if you were to ask me, 'What is it that you're telling all of us to do? What should we follow if to listen to your Master is the highest Dharma for me at the moment? What is it that you're telling me to do?' I'm telling you every Satsang to make God number one. To endeavor to live in His presence, in His light, in His love. And once you come to it, then value that more than anything that you can find in the world. Value that higher than everything else, everything else put together, and remain in that holy light, in the light of the Atma itself.

Because my job at best is provisional; my job at best is just temporary. Something within you turned towards God. There was a longing in your heart to turn to the truth, to turn towards God. The endeavor by yourself maybe seemed too difficult, too unapproachable; you didn't know what steps to take. So God just moves this one to try and be like a conveyor belt, moving you from the way of the head into the way of the heart, where His presence will guide you, His presence will shine His light on you, His presence will shine His love on you, and your life will feel like it has a completely different texture, completely different flavor than it used to before. There you know that you're in the right place. In the presence of the Atma within, then you are in the hands of the true Guru, and the work of this provisional one is done.

And that same thing, Father, the visual that's coming to mind is that scene in Gandhi Ji's life where he's in court and the judge is asking him, or he's going to give his verdict, and he says, 'Is there anything you want?' something like that. And he's very strong and seems very humble at the same time, and he says something like, 'You can break my body, you can kill me, but you will not have my obedience.' It's that line that, you know, in the movie it was shown well, but it can also appear as ego and arrogance. It's that fine line.

I feel like Gandhi's life probably is a very good representation of inner humility, openness, integrity, and yet such outer courage. When we have role models which are made available to us in the world, in society, you see, our mind obviously wants to attack and tear them down. And you see, that at some level seems very satisfying because we feel better about ourselves. So we've heard of someone who always used to tell the truth, Gandhi; we heard that about him as children. So at some level, what's happening in the world is that we want to tear that whole thing down and say it was just politics, it was just all of that. But that does us no good now. We must look at where that takes us to the highest, you see, not to tear them down.

Obviously, the mind wants to attack and tear them down, and you see that at some level seems very satisfying because we feel better about ourselves. You see, we've heard of someone who always used to tell the truth, Gandhi; we heard that about him as children. So, at some level, what's happening in the world is that we want to tear that whole thing down and say it was just politics, it was just all of that. But that does us no good. Now, we must look at where that takes us to the highest, you see, not to tear them down to the lowest, because that may be satisfying to the mind, but it doesn't really help us in any way. You see, so if there's a role model like that, we must look at what can I learn from that? What was the source of that power, that source of that courage? Dive into the writings of Gandhi, for example, and you see that the source of the courage was spiritual fortitude. Spiritual grounding was so deep, and the Ram Mantra was used so effectively in his case that it gave him so much courage.

Of course, do I really know this? Just a politician, maybe? Maybe he was fooling us, maybe it was all marketing, you see. But how does that help us? You see, I would rather go to the highest and say yes, this spiritual fortitude, this strength I've seen in my own life when the outer situation is shaky. To chant the name of Ram has provided so much fortitude here, strength here. So, I would rather go with that, you see, and understanding because that body is long gone. It makes no difference to him what we think of him, you see. So, rather take the positives and what I can learn rather than to tear down every icon that we have.

Non-violence is very beautiful. We may say now, like I've read both sides of the story, right? So, we may say now that it was a very smart move because if you were to be violent in response to the British might, then you would have been crushed, you see. But are those people who are saying that, have they ever stood non-violently at the face of a lathi charge? All these people hitting you with these sticks and pointing guns at you, and you are standing with folded hands. That is courage. So, it's very easy to make like intellectual determinations later, but to live in a non-violent way is something that I'm still learning, you see. I'm still a beginner. How to not give in to the temptation of anger? How to not give in to the temptation of losing your cool? And in front of the strongest assault, look at Jesus's life. But even if you say, 'Okay, Jesus was God,' there is Gandhi. That part at least we can't deny, that the lathi charges were happening and they were... hundreds and hundreds of our brothers and sisters of the past went through all of that with folded hands. So, where did that courage come from? Where did the strength come from?

I just wondered if we could maybe explore something that I've seen coming up. So, what does feel clear is that God, the Creator, knows me on every level—every cell, every thought, every event—and that's all loved unconditionally. And that love and awareness is the same; they're one. So, it's clear even logically that that's the place of solace, yeah, and that it's already so. Yeah. And at the same time, something's there in my being, some layer that's craving love and safety and appreciation and like also doesn't know how to receive it, you know? But I don't feel like that's seen clearly, so it doesn't feel so important to go into that. But what I have noticed is this like an extreme sensitivity to when that love or... so it's like that part of me can't receive it, but the moment that it's taken away, it's like fear, anger, you know?

So, I've been asking God and asking Spirit to... but here's the thing, like the last time it came up and the last time I prayed, I went to ask and the kind of thoughts came up like, 'Ask for it to be healed, ask for the strength to let it go, ask for this, ask...' and I realized like I don't know what to do with it. I've not got a clue. And it's not even for me to say that it's an issue other than like there's an impulse to go beyond that somehow. Like that kind of knowing of God's love, there's an impulse for that to be felt as my reality. So, I just wondered if we could maybe have a look at that.

So, you said very beautifully that you recognize that His presence, His light, His love within is a true source of solace, of rest, rejuvenation, insight, intelligence, guidance—all that is good comes from that. And yet, there's an aspect of your being which craves that from the world, from our relationships, from the seeming outside. Then also you said that I take that to God, and when I take that to Him, then I don't even know what really I want out of this. What am I really asking for? And with God's presence, with the Atma within, we don't have to really even worry about whether we are asking for the right thing or we are asking in the right way, you see. We can just... so the kind of rule that I've been telling everyone is that if you're going to think about it, if you're going to worry about it, it's better that you pray about it.

So, if it is something that worries you, if it is something that you are clamoring for—that I want this one to love me, or I want my friends to love me, the world to love me, and to see me for what I am—whatever the thought may be, even though it's a thought, even though it is the mind, if it takes up some belief, if it takes up some of your time, then we can safely bring it to God. We don't have to mind our words with God. We can be fully open and say that... we can also honestly say that I don't even know if this is what is bothering me, but this is what my mind tempts me to believe. So, I'm bringing it to You because I don't know, and only in Your light can I even see what is clear, you see, what is true. So, and this is very important, that we must not shy away from even this confusion. We must bring it to His light because it is only in the light of the Atma within do we even see the nature of what is unfolding in the world.

But all of us have noticed that when we receive love from the outside, seemingly receiving love from the outside, if we were to check in that moment, where is this coming from? We always see that it is coming from His love in our heart. It is coming from within ourself. Even those who don't have faith in the word God, who don't like the notion of God, will admit that love, peace, contentment, all has to come from within, you see. The external at best is a catalyst that seems to trigger that arising. So, we notice that also. One thing that I'm still learning, and but I'm learning more and more as I'm getting older, is that we can use when the mind tempts us with the temptation that we must get love, we can use that as a trigger to give love. Use that as a trigger to give love. And you see that really there is no distinction between giving and getting. And then we can use even the mind's conation to serve an auspicious purpose, see, because often it'll be like, 'I should be loved more, I should be valued more, I should have this,' you see. So, use that as a temptation to... as a catalyst, as an instigation to give whatever you want to receive.

It sounds very cliche. It sounds very cliche, but we must try these cliche things sometimes, see how they work. So, when the mind says, 'But this one should love me more,' you love more. And it's tough. It's not always easy. And when we are angry, when we are frustrated, then the mind comes up with these kind of things. So, we are not necessarily in that moment willing to do that. But as we work on it, as we notice it about ourselves, then it always turns out more beautiful when our attempt is to give more love, is to share more love. You want to say more about it?

Yeah, that feels true that, you know, we can recognize in our relationships, friendships, family, everything, that the love that we feel for each other is a reflection of like love with a capital L kind of thing, the infinite. I don't feel bogged down by finding the right words, yeah, that's not what I meant. It's more like if everything about me is already loved, that includes the fears, the anxieties, the anger, the manipulation—like all the things that I would seek to change about myself to try and invoke worthiness for God's love. I feel like it could only be true that He's put them there, basically. So, it's more like recognizing that I don't know what needs to be done, I don't know what needs to be experienced like that. But then when something in my experience isn't resonant with what I feel to be the highest, there's a kind of impulse to want to change that. Like if I feel like my life is blessed and filled with grace, and to be kind of sometimes struggling with these, with such smallness...

Yeah. So, let me... some words are coming for this and then we can continue. So, I won't say that these are small things. I feel like this is the human condition. This is what all of us are dealing with, and at whatever level of spiritual depth we may be, as much of a deeply spiritual life you may have led, these things continue. And this is in continuation with the earlier thing, that these are the things which are the remnants of the 'me' that remain. And I don't feel it's so easy for anyone to say that it all goes away. So, firstly, it's not a small thing. These are very primal human conditions. So, don't worry that these are still playing out. This is for everyone. So, that is the first thing.

One example is coming. So, if I had a mother, or all of us had a mother who was the most loving, the most intelligent, the highest one, and we have no doubt about the fact that she loves us immensely, and yet there are times where a child will go to that mother and say, 'I want your love. I want you to love me.' So, the mother will pick up the child and hug the child and embrace the child. There's nothing wrong with that request. There's nothing that we must know better in that request. And maybe it's not even what you were saying, but these words are coming from here to share that to love God with all our heart is also our experiencing of His love for us. So, just feel free to ask for this Holy One's love. And this is one request we can constantly make. It's an unending ocean of love, and the more you ask for it, the more you give it, the more you receive it. It's all the same. Then our life becomes an embodiment of that love as well.

And of course, that which has given birth to us has also put in all the frustration, anger, anxiety—all of these things that we go through, you see. But if the parent is guiding us, if she is saying to us, if He's saying to us that we must be empty of this and this is the way, you see, if God's presence is guiding us in this way, then we may not always succeed, but our intention must be to follow. Our intention must be to follow. Because of course, God has given everything, but if God Himself is guiding us to be empty of all of that, then we cannot really say... we may say when we are a bit irritated, but we cannot really say that, 'But You only put this here.' So, we must go with the way that we are learning to deepen in our heart and follow His will, follow His guidance. Good.

99.999999999% of this game is beyond our understanding. Why has He made us this way? All of us seem to carry such a beautiful temple of God within ourselves, you see, and yet most of us seem to forget about that, give more importance to the visible. Who has made all this Leela? He only has done it. But why has He done it? We don't know, and we cannot really know with our intellect. But is there a way to live in which we can remain in that heart temple, in His love, in His light? Yes, it is when we say that you must do the will of God. What is the will of God? Is it different for different people, different at different times, different at different situations? And how do you feel it? How do you know it? Thank you, that's a good question. So, if we say that we must follow the will of God and...

He has done it, but why has he done it? We don't know, and we cannot really know with our intellect. So, but is there a way to live in which we can remain in that heart temple, in his love, in his light? Yes, it is. When we say that you must do the will of God, what is the will of God? Is it different for different people, different at different times, different at different situations? And how do you feel it? How do you know it? Thank you, that's a good question.

So, if we say that we must follow the will of God, in every culture we have examples that we revere, and we revere them because they followed the will of God. So, whether it's Hanuman here, whether it's Abraham, whether it's so many examples. So, it's a very good question to ask. Guru Nanak Ji said more than any experiences, more than any tactics from your mind, more than any practices, more than any feelings of ecstasy, more than anything, he told us to follow the... so if that was his highest pointing, that we must follow, and he used a stronger word than will, he said command, follow the hukam. So then really the most important question is this: if I must follow the will of God, firstly, what is it? How will I know what it is, and how can I follow?

So then we are saying that, suppose, let me just to simplify, if I was to say that we must follow the will of this one, there's a designated one for you in the world, you must follow their will, you see? Then what should your question be? Who is it and how can I meet them? If I'm to follow that one's will, then I must be able to meet them, isn't it? So, all of satsang, or most of satsang, is getting us to a point where we can meet his presence within ourselves, you see? Because that meeting is very important.

So till then, you see, till we are waiting to meet the Master whose will we can follow, you see, which is the Atma within, till then we must consider that his will is only for us to find him. That is the most important guidance that we can consider to be his will for the moment, which is that we must find him, you see? Because once we, only once we find him, can we live a life which is moment to moment lived in his light, where he can guide us, he can move us. So, his will for us is for us to find him first. So, what is your report about that? Can you report that you have found him, or you are still looking to find him? So then consider provisionally his will is for you to put the finding of him number one. That is his will.

How to do that? That is what satsang actually literally means. To come to satsang is to come to the company of the truth, Sat-sang, yes. You see, and the Truth with a capital T is synonymous with God, with true love, with true beauty; they're all synonymous at the end of it. So, satsang is where you catch the pulse of it, you see? There can be no templatized prescription really saying step one, step two, step three, step four and you found him. But to come to satsang, you find, you see, you start finding the pulse of it. What is the way? What is the way? The way cannot be really conceptualized. The way really can't be put into words also, but something starts to shift as you come to true satsang where really all of it is about coming to his presence, about coming to his light.

And then along the way, you will receive methods, you see? Some things will clear up the cobwebs within you. It's like the temple is within, but it's all hidden by these cobwebs within, isn't it? Which is the conditions, the tendencies, the vasanas. So, something, we keep plucking at all of that. And there are tools available. There is inquiry, which I'm happy to share more about, but I don't know if you were here the other time where we talked about how to do the self-inquiry. Also, there's the Atma Darshan Samadhi which is available on YouTube now, so you can follow that. There's the invitation by Guruji which you can follow. There are many methods which are available and you have to just sample a bit, see what resonates, deepen into that which resonates, you see? Because otherwise, if you try to do everything that is prescribed, then it seems like it's too much, you see? It becomes, it may even seem overwhelming.

So you have to just try lightly, slowly, see, you see, follow your heart, see what is resonating, what is what you're able to meet. But as you are following your heart, be careful that your mind will try to pose as your heart, you see? It will say, 'Yeah.' So just be careful to see whether it is coming from some fear or some discomfort, because there will be large parts of this which will seem uncomfortable. So you have to, like when sometimes you take some medicine, it's bitter, but you know it is doing you some good, you see? So that is the sense you have to follow a lot of times, that you may not enjoy it at first, but somewhere you have a sense it is doing you some good, no? So keep following on that, in that, and it'll get more and more clear as to how to come to this meeting with God.

But I'm here to tell you that it is not as rare as people make it out to be, and it is not as unachievable as people make it out to be. And it's the most natural way to live, is to live in his light, to live in his presence. So if you have that faith, then as more and more you are in satsang—and it doesn't, I'm not at all saying you have to be only in satsang with this one, maybe this is, I don't know if it's the, maybe if there was a ranking this may be the worst satsang you can come to—but find yourself in a place where you feel like you feel at home, where you feel like you're with someone who's guiding you, who is truly speaking from a place of meeting God's presence and not just some speculation or just some discourse type thing happening. Then to be in the company of such a one then also pulls us into the same, in the same way.

Experiential?

Yes, and it's a strange experience because largely it is even beyond perception, you see? So many of them report that, 'I was completely resisting you today, Father. I didn't want to come, you see? I was getting angry at you, you know, something you told me last time I didn't like, and still my bike drove me here.' You see, something which is what we are really saying is that some unexplained intuition starts to work, you see? So it's experiential, but it's not the self-help kind of how they say experiential, that go with your feeling and go with your... that's not what I'm saying. There's a deeper layer of intuitive understanding, you see, which we must follow, because feelings can make us very topsy-turvy, one day like that, one day like this. So it is an experience, but it is an experience beyond phenomena. And these words may not even make sense at this point, but at least they get seated somewhere and it opens up something within us.

About this weekend, in my study I have a, actually have a photograph of Bhagavan which is, you know, exactly that actually. So I just tried sitting on a chair and just looking, you know, looking at it, like just looking in the eyes. And you know, first question is, where was your wife? So the door was bolted securely, the curtains were drawn in the windows and everything, complete, I think the best secret. So with all those precautions taken, sat down and you know, I thought I was being foolish, but you feel the presence just looking at, staring at a photograph. And then I thought I was just deluding myself, so I tried it half a dozen times and I can confirm that it works. And I mean, I'm just reporting it because it was so, it felt so bizarre to the mind, but I just wanted to share because it seems like also an, you know, an easy way if you just have a photograph and you just look at it through devotion, it seems to work.

Father, it's very beautiful, very beautiful. Mind will say, 'What is happening to you?' You see? Don't worry about any of that. Follow your heart. Whatever brings you to his presence, it's very beautiful. So, there's a question, I won't read the whole thing, but really the question is: what is the distinction between asking for love and feeding an attachment? So that's a very beautiful contemplation to make. And we get a sense within ourselves that an attachment is sort of like a grasping, and many times it can seem like an entitled grasping, and it comes with mind attack and all of these kind of things. So a tantrum is a kind of a safe word that we may be using for it, but actually it is very, it's much darker than what we would call love in some way. It's much, much more like a graspy energy about it.

So love is so much more open, so much more loving, which may sound strange, but love is so much more loving. And attachments can just block our light fully. And as your teacher, as your Father, I would never want any of you to get caught up in this kind of attachment. And the mind in the guise of love wants to create more and more attachment, wants to create more and more boxes, more and more limitations, more and more constructs. So free from attachment, free to share love, to innocently ask the presence of God for a deeper love. You can sense the difference in flavor in these things. So you start to be able to smell the distinction of when it is just me, me, me, grasping, grasping, attachment, attachment, you see? Versus different, it's a different fragrance altogether.

What do you feel when you come to satsang? That, you know, where you really recognize that non-grasping, you really recognize that. So something in your heart knows it. It's completely expansive and has no negativity. It's literally the difference between heaven and hell, yeah, you see? I cannot overemphasize this point about how the mind's idea of love is so different from what true love is. And most of us, of course, have tasted both, but when in those critical moments when the mind is attacking, we lose that distinction, you see? We lose that discernment of: is this true love?

Imagine that we have a teacher because, hopefully, he doesn't fall for the mind tricks. But imagine that every time we fell for one of our mind tricks, then he also, we expect him to fall for that, and he also fell along the same way. Then both of us need to go to a teacher. So when we are feeling so right, when we are feeling so entitled, then if our teacher also was to fall for the same trap and not be able to distinguish what is auspicious in that moment... and I'm telling you that if you stay with this, there will be a time soon where you will say, 'I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful that you did not cater to my idea of what I wanted.' And that day is not far.

I've been noticing something quite interesting with my mind: the tendency of the mind to mind itself, to mind itself, to mind itself using the Advaita philosophy. And I feel that happened a lot with me earlier and which is why I got so exhausted some years ago when I first encountered Advaita. And I'm like, 'Oh, there's a non-dualist sitting inside my head.' It's like, 'This thought is not okay, this feeling is not okay, this is allowed, this is not allowed.' And it's violence. It's violence, it's exhaustion.

And I've been able to touch some kind of very distinct stillness last couple of weeks that I've been coming here, wherein I'm able to watch that tendency of the mind to mind itself using, you know, like it's like everything can fall into the trap of the mind, yes, into the hands of the mind and get misappropriated absolutely. And so much friction that is earlier otherwise present that I've noticed in my very long spiritual career, so to speak, how I like to call it. But it's quite beautiful to be able to just watch that traffic without needing to stop it or encourage it. Encouraging sometimes happens on its own, the latching on, but to not need to stop it is so, it's just something else.

Very, very, very good. This report is music to my ears. For actually for years, we've spoken about this tendency of the mind itself to latch on to spiritual teaching, especially Advaita. There's a part of our mind which loves the absoluteness of Advaita pointings, and I called this one, we used to jokingly of course call it the Advaita police. But I feel like the term that hits home real...

Encourage it. Encouraging sometimes happens on its own, the latching on, but to not need to stop it is so—it's just something else. Very, very, very good. This report is music to my ears. For actually for years, we've spoken about this tendency of the mind itself to latch on to spiritual teaching, especially Advaita. There's a part of our mind which loves the absoluteness of Advaita pointings, and I called this one—we used to jokingly, of course, call it the 'Advaita police'—but I feel like the term that hits home really well is the 'Checker guy,' you see? So it takes everything it hears in satsang and makes itself the authoritative Checker guy. 'You can't do that, that's wrong, that's right, you must do this.' And that Checker guy is the most oppressive, you see? So I used to call it my arch-nemesis actually, the Checker guy, because everything I would say, I'd say, 'Okay, don't even check,' you see? 'And don't diagnose. Okay, don't self-diagnose, don't check.' Then it will take that. So if you're finding a mind making a report about yourself, then the Checker guy is saying, 'See, you're being the Checker guy, you're just checking,' you see? The Checker guy can take all these inputs, and that is why really it is about switching over the power from head to heart, because we cannot resolve this over here. We have to transcend this whole playground and move to a different one, you see? That whole locality is full of trouble, even if it has got the right name boards and got everything precisely figured out over there, it just doesn't work.

So the very pointings which are meant to make us empty there and bring us to our heart, those very pointings can be used to make us more full, more mental, more proud also, actually, you see? Because we not only do that to ourselves, which is very oppressive, but we end up doing it to others also. 'You're being too much mind, you're being arrogant.' Who are you? Somebody who's not been to satsang and they don't have any interest in spirituality, we may attack them with inquiry like, 'Who are you?' you see? Like this kind of thing. And I'm saying all this because I've done all this. I've done all this to my unfortunate friends and family. So then as you deepen, you notice the errors of your ways, you see? So very well spotted. And it's true, it's the mind, like you said, 'minding the mind.' The meta-mind making conclusions, mental conclusions about the mind itself, you see? It's very, very tricky, this one. So I'm very happy to hear that you spotted this, and the noticing of it is basically the extent of what we can do with it. So it's very good that you notice.

Kabir Ji said that this Maya is the Mahatagini. Even in the devotion of the devotee, it can hide. Even at the lotus flower at the feet of Ram, it can hide. It can hide everywhere. And this is the way it hides even in a spiritual being, right? Our 'spiritual understanding' as we may refer to it, but actually if it is conceptual, it is not spiritual. And as much as there is—I think she was pointing out—there is the tendency to beat oneself up and the sense of specialness, which I have taken a very long time to even start to notice. That very lofty spiritual identity and spiritual ego wanting to feel different and special, different from the others. And it's so—it's the sneaky one. Sneaky, very sneaky, very insidious. Yeah, sometimes we get this sort of—it can seem humble and harmless, no? It can play that way. So we have to be very careful of this kind of thing. 'If you want to understand, you have to come to a few satsangs before you can understand what I'm saying.' Pride is so tempting, and the thing is that it's a blind spot for most of us.

How do you reconcile the spiritual capital that you collect here with your day-to-day life? Say if you're running a business where you have to do and say so many different things which may not coincide with your learnings over here, how do you reconcile the two worlds?

Well, it doesn't always work out well in the sense—if you hear my wife's report. So sometimes she runs this company and I pretend to help her a few times. So she'll always say, 'If you're sitting on one side negotiating with the vendor or something like that, you will always take their side. You will say, "No, no, let's close it at this, it's fair, it's fair."' So it doesn't always have to work like that. You just—one thing I noticed is that, or maybe it was always like this here, but you find yourself always playing win-win. Even if you're at work and things like that, you're not saying, 'How can I win and the other one lose?' And you see that, at least in my little bit of experience, I can see that when our intention is not to win over another, then in the long term it seems to work out quite well, although it may seem like there are some short-term impacts of those things.

But it's like Shreya and Preya, I don't know if you know. So Shreya is short-term discomfort, short-term misery, but long-term gain, long-term pleasure. And Preya is short-term gratification but long-term misery. So many times it becomes like that, that something naturally attunes us to like a collective vibration, and from that, at least in the long run, things seem to work out better. So you don't have to really juggle. You can just stay in your heart and allow things to unfold even from here, even at work. And initially, that's another place where it seems like you need some courage, because your mind will convince you that, 'No, no, if you go with your heart, you will become a sadhu, you will leave everything,' all that, you see? And there's no guarantee, by the way, that that won't happen, you see? So I'm not saying that that won't happen. If it is His will, then that may happen. But many times you continue to have a work life, you can continue to have a householder life like this one's life.

But sitting in His presence, it all seems to play out. All roles seem to play out. Just the other day I was talking to another one and we were just contemplating this. I was saying that as you are in His presence—He is the highest intelligence, He's running all of this universe with all its mad processes and all of that—and we worry about His presence being able to run our life and pay our bills? So we can't really worry about that, actually. Jesus and Nanak Ji said the same thing about this also. They used different animals, but Jesus said that like a bird doesn't feel anxiety about where the next meal is going to come from, you see? And they just fly and somehow God finds a way to feed them. And Nanak Ji used fishes as an example. So a fish is just swimming, it probably has no place to hold up the materialistic wealth or possessions, and yet it's provided for. So if birds are provided for, if fishes are provided for, then why do we feel that we will not be provided for?

Because mostly when it comes to work, the question is just to counter the mind's fear of being irresponsible and then the fear of not having enough to lead a comfortable life, something like that. But both those are unfounded actually, because our highest responsibility is to be with the highest. To be with the lower, to be with that which is ephemeral, cannot be our highest responsibility.

Just on that last point you said, which is the mental framework where on work, you know, there's sort of mind troubles you with you're being irresponsible, especially with your time. And you know, lack of, you know, sort of imagining desire-fueled imagination and then pursuit, chase, chase of ambition and all that, right? So that's I think we all face that. And I think, you know, just wanted to ask—I mean, do we—I guess the counter to that is what's meant to play out is meant to play out and, you know, it's being manifest by the higher power and not by my thoughts. So I'll just—if from presence everything phenomenal is manifest, then thought has nothing to do with it. So there's no free will. But do you—I mean, I just wanted to get your view on—you think there is—is that correct, that there is no real free will and the only free will is to observe or get attached?

More and more even in the realm of science, people are saying that free will actually is an absurd notion. And maybe they can correct my bad physics, but Priya also woke up just in time for the bad physics, so both of them can correct my bad physics. But I heard that every one of these particles, subatomic particles which all of this supposedly is made up of, is following some mathematical principles and it's following some rules. So you can pretty much plot the trajectory of each of these gluons or whatever they call them and other things. And also there is another element there which is not possible to plot, which is like a quantum probabilistic movement which is purely random. So it's moving according to that mathematical principle with an insertion of randomness, you see? Nowhere in their scientific discoveries have they found an agent which is moving all these subatomic particles.

So even in worldly, logical-seeming discovery, the notion of free will is going away. But the sages also told us that the choice to be with God or to be mental is with us. So what is the realm in which that choice happens? I don't feel like it's here or here, because everything here phenomenal operates on some of these kind of things, presumably—I can't really see. And yet having said all of that, I will still say that we have the capacity to turn to the mind or to turn to God, you see? And all the sages at least in this lineage have pretty much said the same thing. So where does that choice operate? Who is the one making that choice? That one is, and that choice is not any of this stuff. So we must make the choice. We must. We do have the power to turn to God, to let go of the mind, to be empty for God and to be in love with God.

See, in fact the feeling is coming to say that only a tiny bit of us is in this world. In fact, this world is a tiny bit of us. So the larger part of us is beneath the surface of these waves, that's the experience. So that's a strange thing about this intuitive insight, because you end up saying things which you know are so true in your heart, but can you really call that an experience, you see? Not like the intuitive knowing and the intuitive experience of it is not distinct, and yet you may not have a phenomenal picture of that, you see, which can satisfy the mind. So yeah, so I would say that that's why I'm saying, like I was telling her, that it's an experience but it's not a phenomenal one, you see? And that knowing and experience, actually there is no distinction in that.

Why do I know even that simply? So read the Autobiography of a Yogi, a lot of instances he narrates where he has a very, very vivid experience of the presence of God. And so also if you read Vivekananda, when he met Ramakrishna Paramahansa for the first time, he asked him, 'There is no God without—I don't see any God. Unless I see God, how do I know that He exists?' And then he touches him or hits him or whatever, and then suddenly he sees everything. Yes, on the head, yes. So I tried that once with these, nothing happened. So it's not that easy, okay? Right, so that is one side of the experience that you read about or, you know, hear about. So the other intuitive one, I think you have to just experience it.

The beauty of this presence of God thing—and thank you for saying that because my earlier answer would have been incomplete otherwise—the beauty of the presence of Atma is that it's both phenomenal and non-phenomenal. So when I ask you, 'Can you stop being?' you notice like a very subtle, the subtlest primordial vibration of your beingness. But when I ask you, 'What is the boundary of that being?' you're able to say that it is boundless, but you're not perceiving that boundlessness. You're not perceiving that boundlessness and yet you are able to say it is boundless. And but when you wake...

The beauty of the presence of Atma is that it's both phenomenal and non-phenomenal. So when I ask you, 'Can you stop being you?' you notice a very subtle, the subtlest primordial vibration of your beingness. But when I ask you, 'What is the boundary of that being?' you're able to say that it is boundless, but you're not perceiving that boundlessness. You're not perceiving that boundlessness and yet you are able to say it is boundless. When you check on the being, you find both this phenomenal and the non-phenomenal. It's almost like the representation of Ardhanarishvara, you see—half Shiva, half Shakti. Shakti being, in this case, the manifest aspect of God, and then Shiva being the unmanifest aspect of God. How do you meet that? You meet it as you meet the presence within yourself, you see.

And it's so beautiful, isn't it? Because often—I don't get tired of saying this—that if you met it purely objectively, then it would not be a big deal; it would not enlighten us about anything greater. And if you could meet it only non-phenomenally, like pure awareness itself, then that would seem too far-fetched, you see. So God has given us a helpline, a guiding hand, with this presence within, with this Atma within. Where can you say it's completely non-phenomenal? I can't picture it. I can't tell you its color, shape, or size, so I may say it's non-phenomenal. But I sense it; I feel it, you see. Yeah, you sense it, isn't it? But you can't say that about awareness. You can't say, 'I sense awareness,' you see, unless you're using awareness differently than I'm using it. But that's purely non-phenomenal. But this presence of being you can sense, and you can follow the scent of that sense back to the sheer Nirguna reality. See, so that becomes a portal for us to doggedly pursue till we come to the absolute truth. In that way, it's so beautiful.

These things, actually, I should say less about because they're better tasted than spoken. Because the danger of my speaking all of this is that the mind gets to work. It'll start inventing half and half, you see; start doing some imagination, all of that stuff. So be careful not to visualize or imagine anything that I say. It just has to be met at a different layer of your being. Otherwise, the mind, like the checker guy, it will also try to provide these kind of solutions. It will think, 'Yeah, I met it; it's half like that, it's half light and half fully dark,' you see. No, no, no. It's not like that. You have to be very careful of any visualization. When something comes, ask yourself: what witness is even that? Otherwise, you can get caught up in those things.

On that free will—so everything you said is what scientists say, probabilistic or acausal. But the latest view is that any matter—even I'm calling it matter—it's only appearing in Consciousness. So nobody has seen matter outside of Consciousness; that's one. So it's kind of a recursive loop and you can't get out of that. So I don't think you can make any commentary on 'Is there free will?' based on physics anymore. The second thing is just empirically, I don't know, you might have seen that picture of the burning Buddhist monk in Vietnam in the sixties when he was protesting against the American invasion. And he sat and poured gasoline on himself and he burned for a while and didn't move. So if you go by physics and mechanics and programming of all species, we all run fear and flight. The other one is my father is an anesthetist and a doctor. He operated on a monk in Mayavati. And they didn't have the anesthetic that day, so he told the monk that, 'You know, I'll operate on you later.' He said, 'No, doctor, give me ten minutes and I'll come to your operation theater.' He came, and it was a big abscess on his neck, and he said, 'You can put the knife now.' And my dad did the whole surgery and he didn't move. So I don't think anybody knows what's going on. I for sure don't know.

If you're operating on me, have the anesthesia! I just gave up that day. I was like, 'You know what? I don't know what's going on.' No such things were made available to this one. Beautiful stories of how God's grace blesses these beautiful ones.

I've been contemplating this question for the past few days and it's best just to not really ask for an answer, but I want to present it to you because there's something in there. And it's about: can the Father know the Son, or can only the Son know himself?

I'm glad you didn't ask me for the answer. But so then your question was whether it's a good question to ask? Is it a good question to contemplate? Is that what you're asking?

Yeah, maybe. Is it even worth it, or just stay as presence? And when you ask this question, what happens? I want to hit my head against the wall.

Okay, then you can stop. That's what I wanted to know. Because it's a question like that. Because it's like a Zen koan. That also, if it makes you—and koans sometimes initially make you want to hit your head against the wall—but really the point is to leave your intellect. So if it has that effect on you, then it's a good question. But if it makes you more mental and more frustrated, forget it. Is it like the medicine I was saying earlier, that you know it's bitter but it's doing something good? If it feels like that, then do it. But if it's just causing irritation, enough questions.

What has happened in our human condition is that we also value answers too much. It is like I've used the example of the leaky roof. It's like our intellect keeps pestering us: 'What about this? But what about this? What about this? And once you know this, you'll be done. You'll be done, this is the final one.' And then you get an answer, and you may get the answer from a credible source or you may contemplate it yourself, you may find it through anyway. And then that roof seems to be plugged; you put the sealant on it. So it's back, that's so freeing, and it does seem to provide that relief. You're not being pestered by the question anymore, so it feels good. But sometimes within a minute, and sometimes within a week, a new one comes: 'But if like that, then what about this?' Because concepts are so tiny compared to truths. They may seem to provide us some momentary relief, but it doesn't attack the true root of the problem. So it's just like an analgesic, but it's not fighting the infection. So don't value just the words of an answer a lot. If an answer carries the fragrance of love, if it carries the fragrance of God's light, then use it in that way to dissolve.

So maybe I could tell you where the question comes from. Because the other day we were talking and you talked about deep sleep and rising out of deep sleep. And the way that you explained it, at least the way that it was registered here, is that—

Registered where? Once registered where? I know you wanted to move on. I'm going to let you know.

So you said almost like deep sleep was aware of deep sleep, and also deep sleep was 'I' without beingness was aware of itself in deep sleep, and it was aware of itself coming out of deep sleep. But it feels like 'I am' was aware of myself coming out of deep sleep, but I wasn't aware of such a thing. Okay, yeah. I think there's just a deep itch I'm trying to scratch. There's just an itch I'm trying to scratch.

The example actually is much simpler. I used to use this metaphor—I don't know if you heard it before—if this wall turned completely dark once a day, you see, and then it turned back to light, would the witness have to be there in both times to confirm that this happened to it? Or could just like the white is giving me some indication of the fact that it was dark, is it? But it doesn't give you any such indication. This waking state doesn't give you any such indication. So would the witness not have to be there throughout to say that it goes dark and then it goes light? Who is that witness? So the wall itself, we cannot say the dark wall was the witness of the dark. But in this case, we are saying that I am aware that I went to sleep and I am aware that I woke up. Because if I went away, then I would not be timeless; I would just be phenomenal, because every phenomena comes and goes.

But I want to explain this to you. Yeah, this is the question you can ask: What is what remains in my sleep? Or who is aware even of sleep? So what was your idea? That once you're waking up, then at what point do you notice that that switch is happening? After the waking up happened or before? Yes, but then there's no reference point to compare it with. And do you know you went to sleep right now for ten minutes? You don't know. You can't. But you can't deny it either. There's no reference point, you see. You would say, 'It doesn't—I don't feel like I went to sleep,' because you have a sense when you go to sleep. And it's not that perception of that dark which is noticed just before sleep comes. Because you could perceive dark and then you could open your eyes, and if I told you, 'But you were asleep for fifteen minutes,' you would have no way to deny that. But actually we know that whether sleep came or not, sleep is the absence even of that dark.

I think I'm modeling that out of my understanding.

Yeah, so it'll be very good if you can pull out the core of your understanding. And the core of the understanding is that the presence, the 'I am' presence, is necessary to know otherness. That the function of the arm of God is to reach out toward manifestation, and that without this presence, then nothing can be witnessed. But then isn't a thing like Maya anything outside? It's God's own son, so it's not really other yet. But I should just drop the—because if 'I am' is like a bridge, is it? But it's also the light and the screen. So always best to leave the understanding. What is fresh inside right now? What is aware even of I amness? Is the amness inherent in that? What is your intuition telling you?

So let me clarify the question again. The 'I' that is aware even of the amness, the I amness—is the amness inherent in that, or is it beyond am and not am, being and not being? There is so much I don't know what the 'is' is.

See, I'll tell you one thing also about contemplations in satsang: that if it seems like you're having to try, then you've gone with the wrong instrument. It's just holding on to something in a light hug. So, 'Is God here? What is love? What is true?' Any of these questions which are invited, you can't—there's no instrument to make it work better, you see. You can't make your intuition more dialed up than it is. So just to offer it up, and if you want a metaphor, to offer it up to the Satguru within. And then you can't say, 'Do better.' That's how the mind functions: concentrate, work hard, focus. You can't do any of that with your intuition. You can't push it for an answer. You can't be demanding. None of your tantrums work over there. Nothing works. You just have to surrender for it.

And from there, in India, we have this beautiful wealth of scriptural knowledge called the Upanishads that came from there. Then in other cultures, the prophets heard God's guidance within themselves and they captured it all in the other scriptures. So value this heart knowledge. And imagine that if this heart knowledge had to conform to our mental ideas of things—like the kind of things they've written in the Vedas—if that had to make sense to them those days, they would have never written them or never spoken them. It was an oral tradition to start with. They would never have spoken those things if they were scared of looking foolish, or if it had to conform to some mental ideas. So your heart must be freed from the oppression of the mind, and then it is allowed to shine. But once you bring the construct from the head, saying it has to be a bit like that, you see, it has to make sense, then we lose the lightness of it, the freedom of it. Just allow it. And once you've admitted to the world you're a fool, then you're free to say foolish things. And those foolish things may seem foolish to everyone, but they may be recorded somewhere.

Your heart must be freed from the oppression of the mind and then it is allowed to shine. But once you bring the construct from the head, saying it has to be a bit like that, you see, it has to make sense, then we lose the lightness of it, the freedom of it. Just allow it. And once you've admitted to the world you're a fool, then you're free to say foolish things. And those foolish things may seem foolish to everyone, but they may be recorded somewhere and thousands of years later someone may say, 'Oh, that is very insightful. How did they know?' You see, like we do with the Vedas now. And Ashtavakra said, 'You are the boundless ocean in which the arcs of the universes come and go.' That would have been a very foolish thing to say in that time. 'The universes come and go? What are you talking about?' But now with all this, physics is catching up to that stuff and we're talking about multiversal theory and all of these things. Now it doesn't seem so absurd. Yes, true, that's true. But the same people say, 'Oh yeah, did you not see the latest Marvel movie where they were...' what do you call it?

There's a beautiful analogy that one cognitive neuroscientist uses on this free will stuff and many other things. Consciousness is... all of us scientists are looking at your monitor, which is the manifestation, and claiming that by seeing the movement on the monitor we can figure out what the computer is doing. And this is just never going to happen.

So you failed exercise to start for Father. If his presence feels only like Darshan and not living reality... it feels only like Darshan and not living reality. But to be in his presence is living reality, but it's not seeming like that.

So you said that if his presence is seeming like a Darshan, meaning momentary? Yeah, I see, I see. Like it's just fleeting, fleeting.

Now you can just... yeah, it's... I'm not doing anything, I'm just asking, but it's distinctly different. It's very distinctly different. Now there is more an aspiring or an open and empty, but it's not the same. So when the presence is there, then remember I asked one question: whether it ever leaves us or do we leave it? So what contributes to its fleeting nature? Is it that we get tempted otherwise, or does he go?

I have seen that I get tempted and it's not so. Then that is our sadhana. Then that is our project: that next time when his presence is apparent, we don't leave. If he wants to leave, he can go. And everything then must happen, everything then that unfolds in the world must be included in his presence alone. Is it in the sense that we are not leaving it? What is that? It's a beautiful one that Kabir Ji said: 'You may do whatever, you may leave if you want, but I'm not leaving you.' And what you may find is that life may continue to unfold. It may, it may not, but it's worth finding out.

So to change the fleeting nature of the Darshan, we have to stay?

There's no... and that is why it's important, sorry, but that is why it is important to ask why I started calling it his presence rather than just beingness or Consciousness. Because otherwise it can seem like a scientific principle in operation, but actually it's his grace and his mercy, you see. Otherwise we can say, 'Okay, now every time I ask this question, can I stop being, it's going to be there only.' So we make an 'it' out of him. And I do that often as well, and I'm learning to change that. So once we realize that it's him and he's a living presence, his presence is a living being, then we don't treat it like a heartbeat or something like that, that every time I look here then the heart will be beating. No, we can't take it for granted like that. So if he's here, we must hang on for dear life. Not meaning to scare at all, but it's like we can't really predict, can we?

Never intention, yes.

But our going with belief is an intention to leave. Not a stated intention, but it is an exchange. See, it is a value judgment that we make, saying that for now I'm valuing this more than this. That is what we are all learning. We are all learning. So when I say I'm foolish, this is what I mean. But there are still times where I go with this and exchange that. And what is that exchange to me? That's why I'm foolish. God is here, his presence is so palpable, apparent, so clear, it can only be him. And some story comes in between and I say, 'Okay.' That is the whole game of the human condition, you see.

And I really can't say that... because the mind wants to be quantitative and says, 'Oh, one expression goes with the mind one time out of a thousand, another expression goes half the time, so this one is better than this one.' Can we really say? We can't say in the sense that the mind wants to be quantitative and says, 'Oh, but there's one expression which goes with the mind one time out of say ten thousand, and another expression goes five thousand times out of ten thousand, so this one is better than this one.' But we can't make that judgment. Because why we can't make it is because that one time this one goes, he may be gone for this life, for many lives, who knows? The next time I get fooled, I may be like Narad who goes to the river to get water for Krishna. So the next time I may be fooled, maybe the waste of most of this life or maybe many lives, who can tell? Versus one who gets fooled, comes back, gets fooled, comes back, and yet God's grace makes himself apparent to him. So who's better? We can never judge on the basis of these things.

If there are still times where I value the mind and I can't really predict whether that will be the last of it or I'll get caught up in some big trap of Maya, till then I have to admit that it's all his grace, his mercy, and I'm just a foolish beggar. See, if a great sage, one of the greatest sages, a God-like sage like Narad could get caught, then who are we? We are nothing. So we must be also grateful that he gives us a chance to turn to him, that we remember him, we turn to him. What a blessing it is. But the commitment, the intention should be that I am not going to leave you. So beautiful that his love and light, once it is met, never leaves. He doesn't take a lunch break, he doesn't go to sleep. Obviously he is here and he's the highest one.

Father, it's possible that every moment, sorry, it's possible that every moment he guides?

Yeah, yeah, and that's usually how it is. He's not going to... he's rarely going to give you the whole project. He's just going to say one step here, one step there, usually. And maybe not even say, just move you that way. You know when he guides you and when he tells you, but you also know when other times you've just left it. And those times you're just aspiring or you're just praying to him. When you recognize you left it, then like the prodigal son who learned his lesson by now, we return home. Not the prodigal son who was leaving and coming all of the time. So it's also important to remember that to allow him to move you is as good as to allow him to guide you. So we don't need to make a special category: 'He guided me today, he didn't just move me.' No.

I can't hear. No, I did. I said, 'Father.'

Oh, you didn't? Yeah, yeah. That's an example of him moving you. He's not told you the full plan. 'Father, okay, it happened like that.' And the first time I went on the hot seat, it was just... the hand went out and I just showed up over there and was like, 'I don't know.' In fact, I said, 'No, you have to help me with the first question, I don't know what I'm doing.' Just moved like that. And that needs faith. 'Go to Timbuktu.' 'But what's the plan?' 'Go to Timbuktu.' 'But will I meet someone there?' 'Go to Timbuktu.' And that needs faith. Like, 'Tell me the plan, I have work here,' you know? So to follow God's will can seem like quite the risk, but the actual risk is in not following God's will.

Good. Now something is still unsettled. I'm feeling very frustrated.

Yes. What is the main message of the frustration? Just see it. Don't...

That's not happening like this, not happening. I'm not able to, you know, like... everything's gone. Like everything that you know, no. At such points you just... everything that is useful... it's just very frustrating, Father. I don't know what else.

You have to know something to be frustrated. So what is it? What is it?

I failed.

You failed? Okay. At doing this or even staying close to him? And who said the game is over, that you lost? Failure must come after the game got over. In the sense that if India is playing England in a test match, India can say 'we lost' only after the match is over. So is the game over? No. What you keep saying is that...

I'm saying right now it's not too late, but tomorrow will be.

So right now is the right now. Tomorrow will be the tomorrow. Right now, what is your job? To be empty for God, to love God, to make yourself available in his service, which means that to let go of my individual will, to let go of what I want, to be open to be moved by him, to be guided by him. So how can we fail right now if our intention is to be with him? Anyway, the one who could succeed must be kept as a failure only. Are you getting the sense of what I'm saying? Yeah, because otherwise that one gets proud.

Sometimes I feel... it seems like that there's a role to play here in the sense that prayer and, you know, being available and, you know, to bring that fire in my heart. But other times it also feels very helpless.

And that is also just the thing, no? It's sounding a bit like what she was saying, the Choti guy probably. Yeah, I think so. Okay. You know what's frustrating? That you feel like you meet it and then it just like sort of leaves.

And it leaves, but you have to validate that. So if you can tell me tomorrow, for example, that 'I checked on what you said and actually yes, in my case it leaves, I don't leave.' So he should be getting frustrated or you should be? He, where are you going? You should say, 'You said I want to be with you, you said I will spend my whole life in your presence serving you, all of that. Here I am and I keep coming and you keep going. This is very frustrating.'

What ahead? I think what changes...

Yeah, and when it feels like it needs effort, we must make it. Yeah, that's... I've always said we've all now noticed that when we're making the most effort with the mind, the mind tells us this is effortless. And when we are empty, the mind offers us the position that this is taking a lot of effort. We've seen the upside-down nature of the mind, you see? Because it can never be... in actuality, it is never effort to be empty. Just... yeah. The effort is in grasping, grasping, grasping, grasping. But because grasping seems natural in the mind's world, then it can seem like, 'Oh, but this is natural.' But to be empty... so it's like addiction. When there's an addiction, then it can seem like it's effort to not pick up the smoke or whatever. So we must make the effort as long as it feels effortful.

What you just said... I mean, I've seen this also. That's so... ever since I have come to you, Father, I feel like everything's been done by you and Guruji. Everything. I just had to sit in your presence or Guruji's presence and it just... it almost felt like there's nothing that I had to do, you know? That I only had to just be at your feet and it just gets done. And it's still like that, Father. But now I'm seeing that there is... I'm almost being like a spoiled brat when I'm saying that I don't want to put the effort. Because only now have I seen that there's an effort that I need to put.

This way is very... it's important to recognize one thing, and it is what I'm also recognizing: that it is a fallacy that to come to recognition is the end game. To come to recognition is the beginning of our spirituality. So what happens naturally in the presence of satsang is the recognition seems easy, the truth seems apparent. But that is the beginning of our spirituality because it is not that Maya says, 'Okay, I've lost, you win.' She may play harder. So the one that doesn't want to put the effort, the one that is saying that it used to be easy or whatever...

What I'm also recognizing is that it is a fallacy that to come to recognition is the end game. To come to recognition is the beginning of our spirituality. So what happens naturally in the presence of satsang is the recognition seems easy; the truth seems apparent. But that is the beginning of our spirituality because it is not that Maya says, 'Okay, I've lost, you win.' She may play harder. So the one that doesn't want to put the effort, the one that is saying that it used to be easy or whatever, that one has to be kept in servitude and deep faith and deep love for God. The one that doesn't like servitude must be made a servant of God. The one that doesn't like effort must be made to make the effort. Because the other one has no problem. That which we are recognizing our absolute reality to be is no trouble—no trouble with any of this, you see. But the trouble is with the one that we still take ourselves to be. That has to thin out and thin out and thin out and thin out. And whether that thinning out will be 100%, I doubt it, because there's no such example in the human condition. But the attempt should be to thin out 100% through insight, love, and servitude; through Gana and Bhakti.

Also, when the mind offers you a narrative saying that this is your problem, you must question whether it's really true or if it's just another diversionary tactic because you feel threatened by God's presence. So the mind says, 'Yes, yes, yes, but you know, it goes away,' or 'I don't stay with it,' and 'You know this and that, it's very frustrating.' It can play like that. So I'm not at all saying that we must just wish it all away, but I'm just saying that we must check on its validity. Is it really that true, this one who doesn't want to be the servant and who doesn't want to make the effort? So when we do the inquiry, at some moment you start seeing that one to not be true. I mean, you just see it as a thought.

Yeah, that's correct. I mean, in any spiritual sadhana—whether it is inquiry, whether it is even selfless service, anything, in devotional singing—you see that that one is just not there. That one is just not true, you see. But we enjoy that in some sense, but it always makes an appearance. You always come back. So when it comes back, it shouldn't... it tries to hold on to 'I am the greatest, I'm the highest, I am the master, I've got enlightened, I know I am awareness,' you see, all these kind of things.

So no, you are the servant of God. How do you know if it's still there? The one who doesn't want to be the servant of God. 'No, no, but I am that, I can see I'm that, why do I have to be in the servitude stuff?' That one is not that. That one wants to claim that. That which we take ourselves to be has nothing to do with the fresh insight of what we truly are.

You said something... I'm just going to say what you told us once: that fresh insight, we have to be humble enough to go back again to see that insight again, and not be so proud and just bring it to the intellect as arrogance and say, 'I know from before.' That was such... never come back to that in your memory.

Then memory can't store the non-phenomenal. You'll just say, 'Oh, it's some dark empty space.' That is not the insight. If that was the insight, all the practice that was needed was to shut all the lights on that side of the house, you go there, see what's there—nothing, dark empty space. Not that. But the mind tricks us with this kind of stuff. It makes awareness into a dark empty space. It makes servitude into an oppression, whereas it is the one that is oppressing. But servitude to God, for God, seems oppressive to it.

When you say servitude to God, is it to keep your...?

Yes, to keep yourself empty of individual will and to be open to follow His will. So what is your will? You just have to ask yourself: what do I want? That is your will. So, be empty of that. So even now, what do you want? Maybe you want an answer? No, no, empty of even that. So once we are empty of individual will, self-will, then His will becomes more and more apparent to us. Yes, to allow Him then to move us or allow Him to guide us. Initially, it may seem that His presence is always silent, you see, so we feel like He doesn't guide me. But you notice that in His presence also actions move, actions happen. Like the words of satsang are shared in His presence; that is why they are the words of satsang. So that is following His will. But as we get used to being moved by Him, you might start to notice that He may guide us also. It has a completely different perfume than the mind's oppressive, authoritative guidance, no? It is accompanied by unconditional love. Our truth does not vanish, but when we go with the mind, His presence seems to vanish. The absolute reality seems far-fetched. But when we are guided from the heart, this is still palpable; it's still tangible.

In your case, Him is the Satguru. In my case, and I'm not such a good servant and want to become better, is it moment to moment to follow His will, follow what He wants to move me to, follow His guidance alone? Satsang part, of course, His grace takes care of, but even outside satsang it should always be like that.

That's why it's a constant work in progress, a constant deepening. And who's to say how much is enough? We don't have to necessarily share God's talk, talk about God to people unnecessarily.

Something... yeah. So the past few satsangs you've brought this point up and I just want to maybe have you speak about it one more time. It's when there's the apparent choice of believing a thought and not believing a thought, that if it's in our power, we need to make sure not to believe it because we don't know how this thought could lead to this chain of ignorance. Possibly that because we give validity to one construct...

Yes. So if I give validity to the construct of tomorrow, for example, you see, then I may start planning for the day after, the day after, five years—all of that just needs one false construct to build a big false narrative. You know the Krishna and Narada story? I'll give you the short version because the throat is feeling a bit packed up now. But Narada is a great sage in Indian history and Krishna, you know. So they were having a walk one time. Then Narada asks Sri Krishna, 'Lord, please tell me, what is Maya?' So Krishna says, 'I'll tell you, but you know, my throat is a bit parched, so can you get me a glass of water from the river that we just crossed?'

So Narada says, 'Of course.' He goes and he's going to the river to fetch that glass of water. And as he's going there, he sees this beautiful woman who is bathing in the river and his mind tempts him. It says, 'Oh, your life would be so good if only you could have her.' And then he goes there and she's also interested in him, and he forgets about the fact that he went to the river to get water for Krishna. He forgets about Krishna because now he feels like his life is sorted. So he says, 'Now if I could only marry her, then my life will be so happy.' So he marries her, they have children, they have a house, they're living in that house—all of that happens. It's all happening next to the river.

Then one day there's a great flood. In that great flood, everything starts going. First the house goes, then the children drown, then this lady also drowns. And he, this man—who no longer is a sage, of course, but he takes himself to be a householder—so he's in deep grief. And he remembers God for the first time after that and says, 'God, why have you done this to me? I was a good man and why did this happen?' And then he remembered Krishna. And as he remembered Krishna, he remembered the whole chain of events and he remembered that actually he was just talking to Krishna and he went to get him some water and all of this happened.

So he rushed back to where he left Krishna and he said, 'Lord, see God, what happened to me? And what was all of this? I forgot about You and I took myself to be this man and all I wanted was these worldly attachments. What was all this? What happened?' So Krishna said, 'You asked me about what is Maya, and I've shown you what Maya is.' So you went through the whole cycle of Maya and thankfully you returned to Me. So that is the whole thing. So in that one thought that 'I should be with this woman,' he forgot about God and everything. We don't know where that one thought leads us.

So nobody can ever say that 'I am done, I am sorted forever.' At best we can say that since I came to my Guru, it seems like the attraction of these thoughts is not what it used to be. But can I predict what will happen tomorrow? I can't. That's why you must give thanks. We might be grateful that we choose His presence, we allow ourselves to be in His presence inside of this compelling Maya. It is the most compelling creation. Okay, thank you.