Shedding the Weight of Concepts and Conditioning- 18 May 2016

If there is still the belief in personhood, then we must continue to not believe our thoughts, or to inquire, or to remain in the presence, or to remain as awareness. All these pointers are for your recognition of the truth as well as for you to end your conditioning. So, jokingly I was saying the other day—I am not sure whether you were in that Satsang or not—but it's just like Consciousness has been eating a lot of fast food. The fast food of concepts. By evaluating these fast food concepts, then it is starting to pretend as if it is a person, you see. Without eating this fast food of concepts, it is not possible. So now what is happening is that Consciousness is tired of all the junk food and wants to go on a diet. And with the growing of the diet, what is to be shed are just the ideas of personhood. So the weight that it is shedding is the weight of conditioning. All of this is just metaphorical, okay? No, no, this is not to be taken as, 'Ananta says that, you know, Consciousness became fat' or something. This is metaphorical. So like this, it put on the weight of conditioning, and everything that we attached to the sense 'I am' is the junk food that we have eaten.

Now, when we go on a diet, then the previous junk food is being burnt on its own, isn't it? All that is asked of you in a diet is that don't consume new junk food, you see? Yeah. So now what happens is that we start the diet, and just when we start, then something, some very tempting dish will come. The mind will offer a concept which has been your favorite—good or bad, it has been your favorite, you see. So this comes up. Then what happens is that because it's habit, maybe you eat that due to some conditioning built up. Now the trouble with spiritual seekers is that after we consume that—so we were calling it the salad—after we consume that salad, then the hamburger of guilt comes. 'Now I should not have consumed this. I'm feeling so badly. I am not worthy of freedom. I am not worthy enough to do this diet,' you see. So this guilt thought is consumed, and then as we consume this hamburger, then we give ourselves the position of the failed seeker or the unworthy seeker, and we believe thoughts like, 'I will never get it. This is not working for me. I don't want this path. It doesn't work.' All of this.

So then after the hamburger, we also eat the dessert of becoming the unworthy seeker. So it's much simpler. Sometimes the salad comes and because our habit is to eat the salad, it gets eaten. But at least let's not follow it up with the one-two punch, you see, of guilt and then making ourselves believe that I am something like an unworthy seeker or the failed person on this journey of enlightenment. All of that rubbish. If you can at least not eat that, then what happens is that more and more... so we were talking about this conveyor belt, like the restaurant there in London. The conveyor belt on that the sushi comes. So on this conveyor belt, different different types of sushi are coming, just like in the mind different different thoughts are coming, different different things. And just like this conveyor belt, you have to allow it to just come and go. Just to come and go. Now if you are not picking up this, then in this moment we are free from conditioning and all past conditioning is burning itself out. Sometimes the burning can be sensed energetically, sometimes it cannot be sensed at all, really. So we must allow that process to happen on its own.

And in this way, then not only have you come to the recognition of what you are, you are also not picking up any fresh conditioning. You are losing all of this weight of personhood, you see. Now, what cannot happen—one mistake that many on this path make—is that they feel that the instant they have the recognition, it must be the end of all conditioning. This is very rare. It can happen, I'm not saying it cannot happen, but it usually does not happen. Usually what happens is the recognition is there, and with the recognition a strong fire is lit. It burns a lot of the conditioning, but not necessarily all of it. And then the mind can come very strongly and try to convert this recognition, which is so sublime and ineffable, and tries to convert that into words. It says, 'This is what we saw. This is what you understood. Yes, yes, I got it,' you see. Then this itself becomes fresh conditioning. So just after a full workout, a thousand-calorie workout, then we start consuming all the caramel custard as follows. Then this weight comes over. So the recognition can work as a big workout, a lot of burning off these calories of conditioning, but not necessarily the end of the diet.

And that is why many masters and sages, in fact most of them, have said that after the recognition, just keep quiet. And then you find that all of this is allowed to be assimilated. You're not picking up new conditioning, especially not the spiritual conditioning. In this way, then the 'I am' just remains as the 'I am.' Now what happens is that you are able to just keep your... from whatever report you've shared even here, even earlier, you're able to just keep your attention on this sense 'I am.' And keeping your attention on this presence itself avoids any fresh conditioning to be added to this I-am-ness, you see. But many are not able to just keep attention still on this presence, but it is not the end of the world even for them. Because to add concepts, to go from unassociated Being to pretending to be the subject of some concept, needs also our belief.