'I am Awareness, but... sometimes it gets obscured' - 7th August 2017

Let's take another way of looking at the same thing. What do you think? You think that 'I find myself' as if it is an outward motion or an inward movement, and at times there comes an obstacle in the middle, it gets covered up, it gets blocked. So what I'm saying to you is that what you are is neither an outward movement nor an inward movement. Therefore, the movement of attention, although it can be used sometimes in the self-inquiry in the recognition of what you are, it is not a prerequisite that those who are enlightened or those who are sages, their attention must only be in Awareness itself. Then why would they wake up into this waking state or the world? They can exist nothing without our attention on it. So when Awareness of the Self is done playing the game of the dynamism, of the dynamic aspect to appearance, that is the rule. Then you might not ever wake up.

The fact that there is something that still wants to experience itself in this phenomenal way in the waking state will come. What we are saying is that movement, either left or right or in or out, is not required for you to be yourself. Therefore, the truth can never be covered up. It can at best be a pretense; it can at best be a facade which all of us have been playing. So this is another very, very popular mind trick. It's one of the trump cards of the mind. It tells you that, 'Ah, see that experience which you had in which there was nothing at all, just an empty space? When you stay in that experience, then we will be free.' It comes and says like that. I am saying to you that no matter what appearances are coming and where attention is going, you would have been unlimited effectively.

So now let's take a simple example so we can relate to this. If you always thought, you were always told by your parents, your family, all the people you met, and the voice in your mind, that actually the sun comes out from the West—this is what you always believed—then you meet someone rare. One comes on your path and he says, 'I see, the sun doesn't come from the West, it comes from the East.' Then you know it can't be. And if you trust this one, you say, 'Okay, tomorrow morning wake up at this time and you check.' You check, you check. Ah, the sun came from the East! This is maybe it is only today. Maybe this one did some magic on me. Maybe it's producing some magical... okay, so you check. The sun comes from the East. All of the things that we hear in Satsang, it's only in Satsang. Then we say, 'Okay, you check again, check again, check again.' You checked a hundred times.

Now the mind will come with its trick and say, 'You have to be in that checking state, otherwise the sun will come from the West.' It's because you are looking that the sun is coming out from the East. It is not the insight there on where you are checking this one. Whether attention is going to thousands of objects in the world or it is remaining unattached to any phenomena, you are the Self. So let's see what it means when you say, or someone says, that it gets covered up. What is this process of covering up? This is what we're discovering, isn't it?

Now all of you, let your attention go wherever it wants to go and tell me: how does the Self end? Don't try to control your attention. Let it go wherever it wants. Tell me how the Self is gone or something gets covered up. Your attention got attracted to some objects, some phenomenal content was perceived. Where did you go? Did you lose yourself? Nobody can lose it because if you lost yourself, then who is looking at attention going here and there? You will see here the witness, or even attention, or tension board. Now what happened? The voice of the interpreter comes. Suppose now attention went to the bodily phenomenal fold in an anger situation, any of these popular ones. Sensation is there, attention going to it. Nothing was covered up. You don't find an individual experience or existing. The world comes and says, 'Ah, till you're free from this anger, your face of the association will not be cheap.' Instantly, by this one set of all the cells, when it seems like our individualized identity comes to the fore again, without this, there is no covering them.

Wherever you are, attention might wander, but it will never move the Self. Even in the belief to the thought, you actually don't lose the Self, you just attach. So is the Self. Being is 'I am,' and then this concept: 'I must be free of anger,' then 'I must be free of lust' or 'I am discrete' or something. Consciousness then poses as if it were something now committed. So this is how we are getting duped by illusion. It is not in the play of attention alone; it is attention working in coordination with belief. If you have a bank locker, one key is with you, the other key is with the banker. Then you go to the bank to open the locker. Both have to function. Both attention and belief have to work in coordination for you to pose as if you were company.

Like when the Zen master said, 'Let all thoughts come and go, don't serve them tea.' If you don't say, 'I won't let any thought come,' all that is coming can come. Don't serve them the tea of your belief. Don't identify with what it was. Only the next one. Amazing, super cool for you because your starting point is with freedom.