The Life That We Can Understand Has Nothing to Do With Life as It Is - 19th October 2022

Satsang really is an invitation or a call for us to be a bit different. So, we come to an environment which hopefully is conducive to the entirety of our life changing. And I'm provisionally using the word "inwardly." That's what is happening. It is not a new compartment that you can create in your head, like a better compartment, a more elevated form of knowledge that can then give you the right principles and values from where to live. It is like shifting to a new house. It's like shifting to a new house. You used to live in a particular house, and this house has the outer fence and gate and garden; all of that may be the same, but inside the house, it seems completely different.

So, although outwardly chopping wood, fetching water, and that may continue to happen, okay, that is fine. But nobody can really say that after coming to this intuitive insight about who I really am, the life has stayed the same. They may be talking about the external. Your life is unrecognizable from being conceptually driven, from being duality-driven. You see through the end of duality. It's like I could say you could call this as two lives: before Guruji and after Guruji. I cannot recognize that one as any form of reality of myself; it's like some sort of a dream that passed.

So, coming to satsang in a way is that kind of radical shift. But what happens is that while we're still in the compartment of the head, then the head will say, "Okay, what is the life change?" So, he's saying it's a complete shift. "How can I do it? Okay, he's wearing red kurtas. He says 'you see, you see' all the time. So, can I say 'you see'?" You know, what is it that I can replicate in that way so that I can sort of be like that? But really, it's not to do with that. It is: what is your reference point for anything true? What is the reference point for anything true? If you come to satsang, called satsang, the company of the truth, with what benchmark, what is the reference point that we will use to determine the truthiness of anything of life?

Just a constancy. Earlier we mistook the changing for ourselves, identified with the changing objects. Now you identify with the stillness, and yes, it changes everything.

So, very beautiful, very good. But what tells us that now we must move from the moving, from the ephemeral, from the temporal, to that which is constant? To recognize the constant within yourself? I mean, because you would recognize that, and it's not going, it's not shaking because the mind is etcetera. Okay, you've taken a path which is beautiful, but I want to zero in on that point now. The instrument with which that recognition can happen within ourselves, as you said that, then has got credibility with you. I shift out of the changeful and into the unchanging because of the recognition that I had inwardly.

But that which was—okay, if I'm going too fast—that which is interpreting the changeful is a completely different instrument from that which is recognizing the changeless. Is it, or is it wrong? This is worth finding out. For otherwise, if you feel that, "Okay, now I recognize a man, woman, you see, and that will change, you see, everything in front will change," that's an interpreter process which can happen with one instrument. And then you say, "Okay, now that itself starts in all this is changing, all this is changing. I recognize the changeless within myself." Are we still there? He's still here. You're not here? No, because that which is interpreting this and concluding notions about present experience is not the same instrument which is recognizing the changeless. That is spirituality 101.

The fundamental and wrong spirituality, if there is such a thing, is to continue in there with spiritual notions. "Now I have spiritual ideas." And this is to switch over. Switch over in the play of the realm, in the play of the world, seems very difficult. And that is why, in a sense, it is helpful if you have like a role model who comes in front of us and says, "No, it is not impossible. I can tell you, you see, it is possible, and it has happened here." Just like the four-minute mile. For many, many years, it was considered that the four-minute mile is impossible to do in the human experience. Like, no human—sorry about mumbling—the mile to run in four minutes was considered impossible to do, you see. Everybody felt, "Right, it's just not possible."

So, people would stop at four dot something-something, four dot something-something. Then along came this guy, Roger Bannister—if I'm getting the name right—who ran the mile in under four minutes. And he's an amateur runner, Oxford or some university. He did it, and after that, everywhere, just every runner was like, "Four minutes wasn't the barrier anymore." And that is the role that the Guru plays, because we need somebody to come and show us it's possible. Because the doubting mind is full of all kinds of "what about this?" To read it in a book, you see, even to meet like this can be so full of doubt, but to read it in a book then can seem completely fictionalized later. "It's so rare that it can happen only for Bhagavan and Maharaj."

So, all the fear, all the doubt. Then you meet someone who tells you, "But it is possible to live in the way of the heart." That is much more compelling than to read it out of a book. And that is maybe the only role that the Master plays: to reassure you of the possibility of a life in this way. So, rest in a way you have to do. I cannot force Consciousness, playing as whatever you call yourself, to switch over from head to heart. I say that it's nice here, it's nice, you have to try it. And then hopefully some of you get inspired by that invitation to follow in spite of all the fears and doubts and "but what about this, what about this?"

What suggested that? Don't be so attached to the changeful. It is to really short-circuit the mind in some way. Short-circuit the mind because the mind will only release objections about that which is changeful. It can't really comment on the changeless. So, in one move, it took us from there to there, and I'm still expecting point three. So, we may at best recognize in our head that something is not working somewhere. Something is not working somewhere; something is wrong somewhere. But the head does not have the capacity to recognize that which is always known intuitively.

So, the beauty of self-recognition is that not just are you recognizing the Self, you're also recognizing that this recognition is happening in a completely new, unique way. And at the same time, it is recognized that this new, unique way is showing me that it has always been here. So, what is the conundrum? What is the contradiction in that? So, although it may seem new and unique, you also recognize that it has always been this way. So, the heart instrument which you're using, the intuitive insight which you're using, is not showing you things moment to moment; it's instantly showing you eternal nature. It is not subject to time.

Now you're becoming too subtle too soon. So, when you use sight, for example, you can observe what sight is showing you about the nature of your environment right there and then. But you cannot conclude on the basis of sight that it will always be this way. Sight does not have that capacity. In fact, you may conclude conceptually that this is going to change because that is my inductive reasoning. It has already changed; day always becomes night, you see. This room always changes; it becomes my house. The objects of perception are constantly changing. So, sight can only show you for the moment, but your heart shows you stay tuned. What a beautiful instrument.

Because what you recognize with your heart is not bound by time. It is not bound by even this lifetime, or a million lifetimes, or even the life of the universe. All of these things are unimportant, irrelevant to what you are finding. Nobody has the version of the holy presence or even that recognition of the awareness that is aware of even that and says, "Ah, that is just there for this time." So, I can say only about now. What you recognize is that it always is like that. So, when Guruji says, "Was it born? Can it die?" mostly everyone is able to say, "No." And of course, my hope is that at least in that moment, they're using their heart intelligence to answer "no." It is just a conceptual—you know, because we know it doesn't die—not like that.

So, really, coming to satsang is to come to the way of the heart. And again, to recap for some of you that came later, although externally it may be almost impossible to tell the difference, inwardly it's a completely different life. And that is why the word "habit" is useful. We are in the habit of living a certain way, primarily relying on the mind to tell us what is what. Now we cannot do that anymore because we realize that it is not telling us the truth of what we are. Switch to the heart. And that switch—the Master is here to show you that that switch is safe. Really press the switch. Otherwise, there is always some fear about it.

So, coming to satsang is not like coming to some spiritual teaching session, because it is not about teaching you anything. Not about adding a new compartment in your head saying, "I am giving you better knowledge. I'm going to give you some incredible knowledge which is unquestionable here." That cannot happen because the instrument itself is limited. Therefore, every philosophy, every teaching...

The Master is here to show you that that switch is safe. Really press the switch; otherwise, there is always some fear about it. So coming to satsang is not like coming to some spiritual teaching session, because it is not about teaching you anything, not about adding a new compartment in your head saying, 'I am giving you better knowledge. I'm going to give you some incredible knowledge which is unquestionable here.' That cannot happen because the instrument itself is limited. Therefore, every philosophy, every teaching, everything is contradicted, is debated—all of them. But if you are real sure about following the way of your intuitive insight, then you yourself are seeing, once you look down a new spot, that the sun is rising. You see, that would seem like the most absurd thing if it was just told in a perceptual or conceptual way. Once you see it, once you taste the fruits of your heart, you cannot really go back fully. Not really go back fully because that timeless taste, in a way, is recognized and it stays with you.

Mind, of course, will play its war games and guerrilla warfares. Injuries don't complain; they don't come from the mind—the doubt and the fear. Because the nature of the mind in this Leela is to dominantly... it's true, it wants to be the best friend, it doesn't want to be in second place. And as you experience this way of the heart, your life is the sharing of the way of the heart. As you experience the way of the heart, your life itself becomes the sharing of the way of the heart. That is why you don't need a qualification, you don't need a certification, not even from the Master, you see, to tell you that you can share this way, because your life itself becomes a sharing and everything. So, although traditionally speaking it is like the done thing, more respectful or whatever, to take the Master's blessing—and blessings are always good to take—but really, the sharing and the being in the way of the heart are not two different things. Intuitive living is the sharing of it. To wait for formal environments, you'll have to wait for enlightenment; you don't have to wait for conviction. It's nothing to do with any of that.

So, this is it. Anybody who feels that they live from the heart is naturally going to share that way. It's like all of us living in the mind are also sharing as the way of the mind. Almost seven billion people are sharing the way of the mind, and that seems to be the predominant way to share ourselves in today's world. But who knows? A Course in Miracles says something like, 'We're always teaching.' So you either teach it all from here, you either teach love or teaching fear, it depends.

Oh yes, exactly. Exactly. I feel the same reason we're all teaching something behind the teaching, the way of the mind or we are teaching the way of the heart.

The density of the hateful way can seem like there is no other way to live. For most people, they can feel like there is no other way to live. Like the idea of living intuitively or living from the knowing of the heart seems like an absurd, romantic sort of silliness. That's the way I used to look at it when I was not into God at all. Then I would read some... like even in India we have the Sher-o-Shayari and things like that. Oh really, some absurd romanticism. Really, whatever the expression may be, that way is about the switching over to the reliance for knowledge being the mind, through the switching over to your heart, your being, your presence, the divinity within.

So who knows that a spark is left in the world? It's like the starting day is sweet and then people automatically come. So let me just follow the country of the heart. We'll notice if there is enough resonance to have that conversation on that, and it doesn't even have to be a conversation. When Mooji speaks, I was really paying attention to what he was saying. And by the way, he did tell me though that to know messes everything up. He didn't say those words, and I look at the recording, I remember them. But so we may have experiences like that which blow us out of this. We call it, even in the world, we call it a mind-blowing experience. 'I had a mind-blowing experience.' That was so bad, it sounds like a contradiction. So you have a mind-blowing experience in the sense... what are you saying? That my mind was quiet. I had no interpretation left from the mind, no judgment left of the moment, nothing left in the moment which I could conclude.

And many are looking to those mind-blowing experiences through substances. When you are looking to find those mind-blowing experiences through substances, using substances is not needed to do that. You can have a mind-blowing life, you see? A mind-blowing life by living your heart. All it takes is complete trust. And that's not difficult for you. The mind may say it is, but all it needs is complete trust. Although I realize it may sound contradictory because without that complete trust, I can sell you some history about something. And then the pull of the heart has already got you. You tasted this now. In what time, how long will it take for that magnetism to really pull you completely in? That we cannot predict. And that is completely the freedom of Consciousness to play how it chooses to play.

But it is a strong feeling here that those who taste this, who taste it consciously—I'm using the word consciously, I'll elaborate on that—you taste it consciously, you cannot receive the reward back fully. It's like you travel to a different country and you tasted a beautiful food; even that will not leave you, it stays with you. But how much of that is done? Maybe we want to play as if you are somebody. Everyone, don't worry. Aspirations of the mind may be... how long all that fire will take to burn out, that we don't really know. We can't really. And whether there seems to be a period of trying to juggle... I'm tired of that, you see? Why juggle both these? Because one is enough. And to come to the realization of which one is enough, these may seem like in the outer plane like a temporal journey.

And yet the beauty of it is that your heart recognition... you never recognize your presence and say, 'Your presence seems like three minutes old,' you know, because I started looking three minutes ago. Nobody has done that. You look at presence, and you can only look at presence in the heart. Nobody is like, 'Oh, you know, my Atma seemed like it's a fresh one, only 200 years.' Time is amazing for it. I ask you: Are you aware now? You recognize this awareness, you see? And nobody really, unless you're being mental about it, can say this awareness is for now. That only we can say about the content of the senses. So the eternal is impossible in the head, and the changeable is impossible in the heart. Yet the beauty of this play is you will take time to go from head to heart. You can only do it now. And yet the full diving in, full submerging, can seem in the outer play of your life as if it takes time.

Like you can say that after meeting Guruji, I sat three, four months in the room, apparently outwardly looking very different. So my family used to say, 'What happened to him?' Settling in may happen to the new, very new source of truth. But if you can do, you can only do it moment to moment. Okay? If you still feel like you can do, then you can do it only in the moment. You cannot say, 'I will for the next three days,' because to come to the heart instantly is to come to the end of time anyway. So whether we like it or not, we are sharing our way of life, right? Somebody decides, 'I'm going to live for my nose,' like that, and they're sharing that. You share it even without speaking. People will make out this by looking at them, that they've decided to live for no one.

So feeling better than speaking about it is for us to observe. So wait for your thoughts to come, even if it takes a few minutes. The thing with this experiment is the more you become open with them, the more they retreat. As they come, you notice that they have two sort of magnetism, a dual-prong magnetism. One is the attractive nature of some thoughts to your attention. Some, you can't even tell what they said. So we can have thoughts which are not really attractive to our attention. Then the thoughts that you're able to decode, like the message, 'My mind is asking so many questions.' So that means that at least they have that much magnetism that they get your attention. Most spiritual paths are nice about trying to break up that chain of attention to what the thought is saying. I don't follow that process at all. I'm like, okay, to attention.

Then based on the theme and the topic of the thought, it also has a gravitational pull or a magnetic pull to your belief. Most have never noticed this capacity within Consciousness. They feel like giving attention itself is to give belief, but it is not true. Consciousness has a varied set of capacities. It has light and sound; it has all these things which are beyond light and sound, you see. It has emotion, it has imagination, memory—all of these things. So when it plays with thought, it has the power to give attention, therefore then thought can be perceived, although you may be confused about whether it is sight or taste or hearing or in what way it is perceived. And also it has the capacity to give it belief or to not give it belief. So it is the second capacity which here I feel dropped away, and therefore I can lead in that way with authority.

So that capacity... you take the representations of reality which are coming from the head to not take them to be real, because I see that my seeing is much more clear, is to drop the belief. So if a thought came and said, 'You're sitting on a camel,' what will happen? That's it. So that is why insight is very helpful as a discarding of belief from thought. Because the thought is proposing you to be what it's proposing you are—a note. There's a note there, a new sort of the body and the mind and belief system and all of that. No thought really even says you have just this button. So it is proposing an existence of a limited being which is like a crazy soup of the body, the mind, the emotions, the relationships, the ownership of what you have, your bank account, your job—all of this is one stream which it is referring to as you.

So when you ask the question, if that question takes hold, 'Who am I?' This body? I am aware of the body; it is not aware of me. And I am not my thoughts; I am aware of my thoughts, they are not aware of me. So you start looking in this way, then you notice that there comes a limit to what you can conceptualize and perceive. So that is the end of the seeming process of Neti Neti—not this, not this, not this, not this. But it is. And although most may think you come to a blank or it doesn't lead anywhere after that, you see, they are just talking about what's happening in the head. But what you recognize through is that you are witnessing all of this and that it is you. It is known only intuitively; it cannot be known here. So I may have gone too fast. Tell me where I lost you.

Do you exist right now? If the thought said no, would you not know that you existed?

I do, and I can analyze it. I mean, I didn't even have to analyze it.

So this knowledge is not based on a thought. It's not based on mental or conceptual knowledge. Now that which exists, show me its boundary. Either show me its boundary or its starting point. Any will do.

Way yes, but this here is not this home. Yes, yes, yes. But where is it? When you say 'here,' you are absolutely right. But the mind's version of that 'here' is a box location within this room, and that box is the body. But that is not your experience. Your experience of that hereness... in that experience of that beingness, hereness, are contained the sensations of the body. It is not the body that contains the beingness or the hereness. In that very hereness, if you experience the sensation of the body, in fact your attention can only navigate within your...

But where is it? When you see here, you are absolutely right. But when we use the mind's version of that, 'here' is a box location within this room, and that box is the body. But that is not your experience. Your experience of that hereness—in that experience of that beingness, hereness—are contained the sensations of the body. It is not the body that contains the beingness or the hereness. In that very hereness, you experience the sensation of the body. In fact, your attention can only navigate within your beingness. Attention is not something that you can send out of yourself. Therefore, all that you are perceiving, you may not be able to comment on its reality, but you have to admit that you only experience it within yourself. It's a great first step. You may not be able to see whether it is there outside of you or not, whatever that boundary may be, but at least you have to admit that whatever my experience is, I only experience it within myself.

So when we say 'here,' all our perception about 'here' is contained within us, but that 'here' itself proposes no boundary. You don't try to squeeze what I'm saying into the head. 'I don't understand this.' I know you're not meant to. You're not meant to. And if you do understand it, it'll become part of your spiritual encyclopedia; it won't help you anymore because there's no point. I'm just showing you something where I'm just saying that that which you can confirm the hereness of, you cannot find a boundary to. That's all I'm saying. So if you were to take that a step further, I can tell you that that which you can confirm is here, but does not have any qualities—objective qualities—that is not in this universe. Everything that is in the universe has at least one quality.

Okay, this cup. Where is its location? Okay, so somebody can say on longitude this, latitude this, there is a house, you see? In that house there is a room, and we can plot this in the entirety. You can go to the edge of the universe and somebody can plot its distance from there to this. Yes. Now, how to plot the distance from that to your being? Because if your Atma lives in this universe, then it must have a location. And that is why the mind's obsession with a kind of spirituality which will tell you that your Atma resides in the body—very popular type of spirituality even in India. The boundless pure presence... the pure presence is called pure presence because it's empty of attributes. It's empty of all articles except the being present itself. That's why it may be called the primordial vibration. Can you place the location of this primordial vibration?

And we make so many implications about things in our head like, 'Oh, she said this to me, therefore this is what's in the heart.' But then that means we make so many implications of things in the world. But can you realize the implication of this? If you cannot locate yourself, the implication of that is that you are not contained in this universe. Because everything that is contained in this universe can be found objectively. Every atom, every molecule in this universe can be found objectively. You can't. Your being can't. So only in your heart can you find this to be true, because in your mind's proposal, this is okay, poetic talk, but let's get real here.

So like one child went through me, said that to me very sincerely and with great honesty. He said to me, 'Father, whatever you said, all this is fine, but really at the end of the day, aren't we all just human?' This is just about what... so what is the attempt? The attempt is finding your boundless nature in which the universe comes and goes, you see? But because we have a habit to try and put a personal construct on it, so that is the mind's attempt to own this knowledge by trying to fit it in the person mode. And so then I said, 'What is the difference between person and human?' Just a nicer word. Because the person is much maligned in satsang. The person, the person... and he keeps saying, keep talking, but you might as well have asked, 'All this is fine, but when the rubber hits the road, really at the end of this game, aren't we at the end just people?' No.

So that is the way of the mind to still try and fit everything in personality, because the idea in the head is to try and make the non-existent person God anyway. It doesn't succeed. Then his frustration can make it to the heights of... can make it suicidal or murderous. Sorry, it's not something I'm going to... to the extent that the highest teachers of God have always been murdered in some way, or at least attempted to be. After coming to satsang, dropping the thing and dropping the food, such a really rich according to... yeah, the mind will be slow and steady entering. 'Make your first... make your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Start to live positively, see, affirm positive things, and then go from that into the absolute.' This is not stuff for these people like us who are in the world, you see? These are the propositions of the mind which itself will save this.

Now you will notice that you will see a lot of these so-called positive thinkers, but when life slaps them around, that positivity is the first to go. In fact, it is a blessing to them that it goes, you see? Because if you're sitting over there and you're feeling squeezed and you're like, 'No, but I am a happy, glorious person,' that is like a worst sort of inner conflict which I won't wish on anyone. At least then if you like have a regular mind which is like, 'My life is BS,' you know, like that, rather than... no, none of that. None of that stuff. Because many of those are like the tactical attempts to come to a happiness through outsmarting the human condition. You feel that we can reach this with the mind.

And I love this example where Jung said, 'What you resist persists.' A very beautiful statement. How to resist persists? Now suppose you came across that knowledge and you're still living in the head. What will you do? 'Whatever I resist persists, and my mind is giving me trouble. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to love the mind. I'm gonna love the mind, and then I'm not resisting it, and then it won't persist, so it'll die out. It'll die that way if I love it.' Do you feel like the mind doesn't recognize you're trying to kill it through this make-believe love? This is the kind of nonsense we get into. 'I'm going to love the mind to death.' We don't really love the mind. We are lying to ourselves and to the mind, and we're trying to pose like, 'Okay, thank you,' but with one eye open to see, 'Is it dying yet? Is my tactic working? Is my mind troubling me less? Is it losing its power?' That is not love.

So you have to love your mind fully. Love your mind; don't wait for it to go. So these games don't work. These tactics don't work. You can't be disingenuous in your own life to your own self. And many times when we are actually come out fully convoluted about what is really going on, it's causing so much suffering, but 'I love it.' So the mind can see through all its tricks, all its own tricks. It's not going to create a mind tactic to kill itself. The problem cannot be resolved at the same level at which it is created. It has to be transcended. And the only transcending that is possible is from the head to the heart. You go to any spiritual teacher, any culture, any type of expression, even those who are just sitting and singing bhajans, they will say what happens in the satsang is you go from head to the transcending of the cause of separation.

The transcending the eating of the apple in the Garden of Eden—'This is what's good for me'—that's why it's called the fruit of knowledge. The transcending of the fruit of false knowledge is to come to the true knowledge of the heart. So the mind will say, 'But that is too...' what you may say, what you may mean while saying radical, 'but that is too difficult.' But actually it is much easier than trying to fix it there. Let go of it. To allow yourself to breathe without being in that Mahabharata of the head itself is a great relief.

For a while you may feel like, 'I don't know,' because you don't have its translation happening in the head. What beautiful questions you answer in like two minutes of starting the invitation. Answer with full honesty. Is it in space? Is it in time? Can you stop being you? Aware? Just an instant of insight opens up yourself, or it seems like it opens up ourselves to that which is beyond the universe. In a moment of insight, you can write the Ashtavakra Gita. You don't need more than that. Just in that moment, if you had a magic pencil, capture what this moment is, because what you are discovering is the same as the highest sage. You come to that where true knowledge resides. Come to that. My self only desires that. In self-knowledge, all knowledge is contained.

So the way of the heart, there is no struggle, no time. Before, if you take... and why I'm saying that, it's not that you beat yourself up and say, 'I'm taking... I'm doing too much effort.' No. If you're trying, you've gone on the wrong road. You've gone down the wrong door. The way of the heart is found instantly. The progressive... we and I already talked about progress and how it may seem outside, but if it takes progress and time to see the truth of what you are, then you're using the wrong instrument. So you're trying to juggle too many instruments. We're trying to squeeze the insight from one instrument every time. That other instrument could be your perceptual instrument also, like mostly it is conceptual. 'What did I understand?' I'm saying when you check, you are aware now. All true knowledge is available to you. Is it, you see? But what are you auditing? The wrong... the other instrument.

So to try and squeeze that heart into the head, you see, here is the struggle field process. But many times you're also trying to squeeze it into like an objective experience, everything. What is that an attempt to? To try and attempt to bring it into a perceptual knowledge, because we still trust perceptual knowledge more than heart knowledge. So this is very good, you know? Many times when people say to me about this, 'Oh, experiences... there's a bit too much tantrum in there. It would have been better if there was that bliss that was promised also. My order is missing the bliss.' It's not in the bliss. Because why does that happen? Because we're so used to this sort of knowledge, perception moment. It would also maybe be better if you come to the truth of your awareness and in your mind you're chanting. They feel like, 'Oh, I must have got something because this chant started on its own,' you know? Still relying on conception and perceptions.

And what happened after two weeks? In the way... what? Going to be not the awareness of God is that chanting or that experience sets you up for failure. It's like you're coming to the Self. Do you think it also participated in this? Otherwise he'll forget about us, she'll forget about it. And then we associate that byproduct to be as if it was a true finding in your spirituality. And then everything that has come will go. So when it goes, you say, 'I had it, but I lost it.' How many of you that's happened to? Not possible. Awakening is irreversible.

A little more about that, like...

Yeah, so thank you. The question of how you can come to a true insight about yourself and seemingly not switch out of that mode of knowledge. This is... others may switch out of that mode of knowledge. I don't know, maybe in that three, four months or something like this. But really that answer I don't have. Like, I don't know. This was trying and I don't see the difficulty in trying it. So with whether it is stabilized now as I'm pointing you to it or this thing... and maybe the second statement, the second part of what I was saying has to do something with that. Whereas I want to invite like a full trust, because the mind can only push the buttons of where it can create doubt. Okay, I see that before I...

That three, four months or something like this, but really that answer I don't have. Like, I don't know. This was trying, and I don't see the difficulty in trying it. So, whether it is stabilized now as I'm pointing you to it or this thing, and maybe the second statement, the second part of what I was saying, has to do something with that. Whereas, I want to invite like a full trust because the mind will only push the buttons of where it can create doubt. Okay, so I see that before I went to Guruji, it is not as if the being was not recognized. Being was recognized, all of that, and yet it seemed difficult. I seemed lost. After I went there, so what that switch was, I can just keep pointing to this in the hope that this same source of self-knowledge, the same source of that energetic presence which hopefully all of you can feel coming here, will also make that happen. We'll just be doing it. Thanks. I'm gonna come to somebody else. I'm just contemplating this. What happened? What guarantees that switch? You can't say. Before we do, when you see that they are the same being, but there's no answer to this.

Yes, also saying I don't...

Yeah, it is my feeling and it is my blessing that if you want this with your full power, with whatever power you think you have, want it to the fullness of it. It's my blessing, it's my feeling that cannot be denied to you. It doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter if it's like irreversible, strategic, and a lot of them live ability and also the recognition.

So just that, like when that's not for me, that doesn't really matter how important to your mind. It's very important as well because to be honest, can I say that in this life it's irreversible? And I've been saying this for ten years, but tomorrow morning I may wake up fully identified.

So if you were to be inductive about it and say, okay, the sun always rises from the East as far as I've seen. So if you were to become inductive about it for the last ten, eleven years, then you notice and say, okay, that is not happening. So you may say it may not happen. Can I really say? Cannot say that the Consciousness, the being that is playing here, will never identify. Identity, and not that it's hundred percent during any day anymore. So something somebody says, oh but you know, so what are the things we can still push buttons? Your Sangha, your children, and your family, this kind of thing. Still, it can be momentary. Remember I always say don't worry about hundred percent because hundred percent itself will come, and obviously becoming too judgmental about your own... is it hundred percent free from identification? And that hundred percent, all sages, all prophets, everyone has given us at least one instance where in this human play they got identified also.

So Ram cried when Sita was taken. I will say that was part of his Leela, of course, but what is the point of playing that Leela? To show us that even the Lord himself, playing the human role, when the buttons are pushed, he will have these moments of things happening, identification happening. Jesus said for a moment, you see, 'Oh Father, have you forsaken me?' before quickly coming back to saying, 'Forgive them, for they know not what it is.' Jesus, which is also very difficult, he was like... he knew that he will come and they will catch him, and he was praying, 'Father...'

But he was sweating blood because something went involved, but he was like going anywhere. That was a really powerful kind of teaching for us, that the human nature is our beauty. Because he knew what was happening, what had happened. And if it was like his twelve closest friends, one felt he was going too far, so he told the Romans about him or the priests of the Jews. One stayed with him even while he was being crucified, and one actually disowned him when he was going to be arrested. Do you know this one? No, I do. All shades of the human play available to us if we dig deeply into any scripture, any religion, and we can find that all these aspects have been pointed out.

It is good to have an environment in Satsang where we discuss all of that because just reading it mentally, it can lead to a lot of fresh confusion. Also, bring all of that in the light of your own heart. That is when you truly try that, that is when you truly see what is being pointed to. We have one cupboard full of commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita. It's helpful to some level because then you can read the commentary which appeals most to your attention. Can't know for certain that if I'm reading according to my temperament, I am not feeding it more to my mind. Maybe you need to read something completely opposed to your attention. Not that that always works also. Cannot say. Only a heart can guide us about the reason.

We come to a point where we realize that faith is the higher knowledge than the intellect. That is trust. That is trust. We come to a point where we recognize that our faith is the higher knowledge than our intellect. Otherwise, how to follow a master? Impossible. Impossible to follow any master, even the books you read about any master. Full of contradiction. One day like this, one day like that. One day left, one day right. One day do this, one day don't do that. Ever impossible. So if you're trying to systemize it, if you're trying to create a logical system of how to become free, no matter how much you play in... like if the real game you have to play is football, how much cricket you have to play to play football? It's an absurd thing. And that is what we try to do because those are the tools we are comfortable with. Because we are comfortable with the tools of perception and mind. Like if I can just play it better and better and better and better, you can become the Messi of perception and thinking, then one day God will come to us in that way and happen. It's a wrong game. No matter how much you play, you're not gonna get better at the version of God through empirical means, rules of time and space.

So how much trust is needed? How much devotion is needed? Whatever trust is needed to... with the trust which is more than how much you trust your head. What else is enough? In the life of Krishna himself is such a beautiful example of them. Like if you look at the life of Krishna and you don't include this pointing in the Bhagavad Gita, what have we learned? It's not even that because he did know, so he could not have done that which should not be done. So from a like a ultra-ethical, ultra-moralistic perspective, you may look at how it played out in the battlefield. So like, I did that and I built up like an antagonism towards Krishna. Okay, I used to feel like, oh, only Ram for me because Krishna clashes. But if you had a master like Krishna, it's not that I would not have done it, but unable to rely on any concept of Krishna in your head, how can you meet me at the minute, the instant you want to meet in the heart? Any aspect of Consciousness with whatever name you want to give. It's not about the name or a particular form. Whatever aspect of Consciousness you are calling out to come to you, you can't even see health and come to witness your life in some way.

All the masters, all the sages, all the avatars left enough in their life that our mind cannot understand. That is the greatest gift to us. If they are impossible to influence, is your heart talking about time? Is your heart talking about problems? Is your heart talking about how should I keep this? Is your heart telling you that you cannot run your responsibilities? Is your heart saying you're under an amazing life? The guidance of that, if it is perceived in any way, serves as reassurance. Rely on the truth. How far must you hit the six for it to be counted as a goal? This simple thing we can understand, that we are in the wrong place or wrong game.

Half measures, dividing your bets. God and fifty percent my mind in working. What's the biggest fear? What do you have to lose? Observe for yourself. Don't have to expose because this is also told him in... Guruji said there used to be a fear coming, you'll become a hunchback by the streets of Brixton if you keep coming on this farm. Didn't happen. Nobody comes to this and regrets. He said, 'I'm living from my heart, I'm living for the truth.' Better living in the mind. Oh man, I miss those things. And I look back at that life, whatever memory remains of that life, it feels like slavery. It just feels like there is a mental oppression. Is freed from those chains and as I want them back.

So my fear is I would pay into a lot of the household no matter what. I don't feel like yeah...

This is true. I would suggest to you that allow that to be God's problem, Bhagavan's problem. What happens, what will happen as a result of your living with God, let that be for him. That is worth the leap of faith. Because if you say with the guarantee, no guarantees. Everything else is available on a platter if you want the contract even for a guarantee that nothing should change. But as if life is giving you like that. You take credit tomorrow if you relax. Yeah, the mind is in the pose constantly, in the pose of like that. No, I'm holding everything nice, holding everything up at work, my family. See, I am holding it. Actually, who's holding it up? It was the same story of to be able to realize that having everything, but until you realize that you have this too, he attacks. This is the whole game. The whole game, the development of trust. The development of trust.

Again, I'm saying that perceivably it may seem like it's a process in time, but your only choice is to trust fully right now. You cannot have trust now like, 'I'll trust God, but try to do half trust.' You can't do it. There's no poor leg looking awkward like a half sneeze. It only trust very many making a report card. You may later say, 'Okay, now for in the year 2022, I trusted thirty percent.' You can only trust for me because these things... I like your work, so you're running. Yeah, I also run for my working company. Basically, all the big avoidance.

Some words are framed only to sound like there is a sin in them. Oh, avoidance. Love it. Avoid, best if you avoid avoidance. It's so compelling. Like, the minute you hear avoidance, oh, it's a bad thing to do. But nothing is inherently good or bad. So when we hear like responsibility, automatically it sounds like a good thing. Avoidance... don't allow your own life to be constrained in these small, small prisms. These are prisons, word prisons. You are in avoidance. How can meeting God be an avoidance? In fact, in the world, that is the biggest fear to have, the naked Darshan of something which is so beyond human conceptualization is what most of us are running from. We fear it even in the recognition of it. Many times the mind fights and says, 'But this is... it's like limbo. I don't want this.' What are we really running from the most? Looking at ourselves fully honestly, I think you're clearly running from that. Everybody is running from there.

Most cannot spend ten minutes in a room alone. Ten minutes. There's an experiment like that. So many of you are new, you haven't heard this experiment. Blank room, white walls, nothing. Nothing to give attention to. So they put somebody inside that room and they've done this experiment like scientific. And there's a small bell next to you, but there's no idea about what it does, what will happen. You're sitting. It doesn't sound so bad. What happens in the first ten minutes? Usually, the person has done the bell without knowing what is... what happens when you ring the bell? Proper electric shocks. Proper, not like thin. It's a proper electric shock. Yeah, it's hard news. Sitting, sitting. What do you feel happened? About an hour later, because the need to have an experience of something feels better than just being by themselves. This is the human condition today. So we are in avoidance of passage. We're running with all our mind away from ourselves. This is the Leela. This is the Lila. This is Maya. Very collect from scriptures in many examples. The surgeon is cutting good, the action is cutting. It is not inherent in the action itself. So when the mind proposes these kind of things, okay, either it...

It happened about an hour later because the need to have an experience of something feels better than just being by themselves. This is the human condition today. So we are in avoidance of passage; we're running with all our mind away from ourselves. This is the video, this is the Leela, this is Maya. Collect from scriptures many examples: the surgeon is cutting, the action is cutting, it is not inherent in the action itself. So when the mind proposes these kind of things, either fully discard them or dive deeply into it, like: 'What am I most in avoidance of? Let me face that.' Come to the same point. The problem is the half-intellect. Like if you apply your full intellect, like even in Descartes, he said, 'I am going to, using the power of reason, I am going to come to a scene of what cannot be doubted.' And in that process, it led him to the point where the world can be doubted because it could be a dream, or because he was Christian, he said maybe the devil has me, so he's making me hallucinate. And if the world could be made up, I can doubt this world. He was trying to see where can he come to that is not doubtable. The world is doubtable, the body is doubtable, all the same scenes. Then he comes to what actually my hope is.

That was not an inference, but when it was shared, it came across as an inference which you were not saying, you see? What we think, we think that he was saying, 'I think, therefore I am,' you see? So what we conclude from that is that we think he was saying his thinking makes his being. But that's not what he was saying, is it? He is saying that to even think, I have to exist. To be aware of my thought, I need to exist. Therefore, I can conclude I am. To even have a doubt, you see, proves my existence because I am aware of the thought of doubt. Even to be deluded, I have to exist to have the thought of delusion. That's what he was trying to say. No, no, look at this. The highest philosopher there is, it's said his being is made up of thinking; he's saying his being is dependent. Why are you not saying that? So anyone who truly, with full integrity, dives into the search for the truth has to have at least a moment of insight about it. That's my hope. But when it becomes just the sort of like intellect which is not even there—'Oh, this whole world is also doubtable'—then tomorrow you get ten lakhs in the mail and you're like, 'I like this world, you know.' And then the next day, you know, you spent it all on some nonsense thing, then you're like, 'Oh, this is...' That is what I mean by half-intellect. So if you take one level, then leave them fully; dedicate your full heart. Half-heartedly, I can't come very, very close, and miss people very slightly.

Well, also what happened is that, like you with that first inference, then he inferred a lot of things about the existence of God and then the proofs of God, all of that stuff. But we don't know how much of that was because of the fear to his life, because anything which could in those days stand away from the pointing of the church, you could be easily... so how much of that was based on this wanting to live a bit more?

That was you, and therefore I think... yeah, but isn't it? This is exactly what I was saying. So it's not what he was saying that his thinking makes his being, that his living is dependent on his thinking. He was not saying this. He was saying that what is now not doubtable is that if there are doubting thoughts or not doubting thoughts, I am thinking; that much is undeniable. So for me to be thinking, I have to exist. I cannot have not existed, you see, and then still be thinking. That's what he's trying to say. Get it? So this is the subtle difference which most of us don't get in India because we feel like, 'How dumb was that? He spent his whole life on this what he called Meditations, and at the end he's saying his thinking makes his being: I think, therefore I am.' Actually, it is: I am, therefore I think. If you were saying the same thing, he's saying, 'I can infer that my being is undoubtable because whether it is doubting thoughts or true thoughts, whether it is false thoughts or true thoughts, I have to be there to experience them.' So this is what he was trying, and I wish I could clear up this fallacy for everyone, you know, because most of us have it as we hear this. And I don't know how it sounds in the original; he said, 'Cogito, ergo sum.' I don't know how it sounds, but in this 'I think, therefore I am,' it can sound like what you're saying just now, Ravi, that what he was implying is that his thinking leads to his being. Actually, his being leads to... but he was saying that my being, I'm confirming the presence of my being because I cannot deny my thinking, even if the thinking is wrong or right.

Either... is it? Yeah, so give me more details. So you're meditating and then you are not perceiving a thought or you are perceiving a thought? I did not perceive... we didn't give minutes or seconds and reach silence, but I perceive that silence.

Okay, find the inside of it. No, you perceive it as mind being silent, or there's a judgment from the mind that the mind is silent? The mind as a thought? The mind is only a bundle of thoughts. But it's good we're looking together, it's good. Quiet. Then what exactly is the nature of the perception that you're having? A belief needs... like, can you have a belief without a thought? No, forget it. Even prior beliefs, like when you bring a prior belief into the presence of the moment without the glue offer of a thought believed in now. So no matter how much we believed in the past and what we believe, as we are open in this moment, all that is gone. But we pull that one leaf, like I keep saying, of the tree of conditioning, and it seems like the whole system is back, the whole tree comes back. And that pulling is to believe that thought which is perceived. So as you try now, what did you notice? Take your time.

All right, let's see. Excited, yes, but it's uninterpreted. Is there an interpretation of it as noise or silence inherent in the perception itself? Is the meaning that this is silence or this is noise? Is that inherent in the perception of the absence of perception? Absence of perception seems to be divine silence, but something inside feeling it's not the silence of the heart. It's like just like a dark empty space.

Yes. Now, you don't have to actually worry about the silence of the heart in the sense that you don't have to make this silence into some silence. If you are meeting silence, there is nothing to trouble yourself with, correct? There's nothing to trouble. That's quite funny. Just to clarify that organization, so that mind is after things, yes, like to be silent, but again it comes back. So they're still... okay, if it is the absence of thought, then it is a no-mind. The mind cannot act as if it is the no-mind. Maybe it is just like now, no point bothering him because he's not going to listen. So okay, the mind moves from constant warfare into guerrilla warfare mode. So it just comes opportunistically. And there's something at work somewhere now. So many times you've noticed it, there's nothing to judge, nothing to interpret, it's all fine. So absence of attention and belief into thought, that is the moment. Now, the mind may be troubling you saying, 'But this is the mind playing as if it is no-mind.' It's a very, very simplistic instrument. All it has is thoughts, and even that one thought is at a time, that's all. In that way, in its deviousness, full on, okay, let's... in its method, in the content of those thoughts, of the biggest texture to add up the whole package. The life that we can understand has nothing to do with life as it is, is the main message of satsang today. So the life that we can understand has nothing to do with life as it actually is.