The Only Bondage Is Something That You Think You Know - 7th May 2018
Saar (Essence)
Ananta highlights the futility of the spiritual search, reminding seekers they are already the unchanging Self. He encourages dropping the 'cat' identity—the egoic pretense of separation—to rest in the natural, positionless state of God-now.
The unchanging self is your reality; this one you can never lose and you can never find.
Spirituality is the end of selfishness... based on the false identity and the notion of separation.
The game has only two levels: God-now or me-now. The 'me' is just God pretending.
intimate
Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.
I must say, almost everyone, we warmly welcome to Satsang today. Let's go. Mooji Baba... suppose we have this neighbor who keeps messaging me, 'Come and help me.' You ask him, 'What has happened?' He says, 'You have to help me.' So now I'm here to help you. What is it you want? He says, 'I've lost my way. I want to get home.' What do you say? You say, 'I don't think this is home because my thoughts are telling me I haven't got it yet.' Yes, but you are home. 'It doesn't feel like home.' So the game could continue day after day after day. Then they distract a curtain like this, and then after a while, it seemed like last time you met him, he sees he is home. The next day he sends a message: 'Help me, come, come.' Then you come, then 'I caught it,' and then 'I lost it.' And then day after day he is messaging you to confirm that he's bought what she's got. So this is the game of the spiritual seeker.
You never left home. You can't leave it if you try. This game of getting and not getting is what defines a seeker. What is the ego but, at the last minute, just a grasp? Beautiful. It is like a resistance to what is and grasping for what is not. It can feel like something in the instance is not enough, but you never really check. It's like you have a refrigerator full of the best food, but you go out begging, saying, 'I don't have a morsel to eat.' So how will this work? Neither the searching for it nor the proclamation of it is it. You are it. But which 'you' is this? Not a made-up you, not this coming and going body-you. That which has never moved, has never changed—the unchanging Atma—is your reality. This one you can never lose and you can never find in the way that we think of finding. Anytime we can feel like 'I have to find this truth,' as if I will find an object or I will find the Self as a luminous something... but what witnesses even that?
Everything in the world is made up of something. So do you think the world is made up of what? What about your awareness? What is that made of? What about your existence? What is that made of also? Your Self is not changing in character. This Self has given to itself the power to pretend as if it is something limited, something objective. Our life has been a grasping. The human condition has been that of grasping. That's why I feel like the cat story I tell is very useful. Say you were born in a world without any mirrors. You were born and everybody started telling you that you're a cat. Your mind is telling you that you're a cat. Then as a cat, what are you supposed to do? You're supposed to open your paws and go to the next bowl of milk. And this bowl full of milk is constantly changing. This bowl is education, relationship, experiences. And when you get tired of this, you get tired of this and you say, 'Is there any end to this grasping, running off to the next bowl of milk?'
I have tried this. I have tried finding a relationship, I tried spirituality. You see so many retired spiritual seekers. As long as I was promised something... this promise was made. You were told that if you come to that ultimate bowl of milk—Brahman, or Mukti, Nirvana, freedom, liberation—you will always be happy, always you will have a superhuman existence. So then you go master to master, Satsang to Satsang, hoping that the cat gets something. Many times, because Maya is very potent, many times you can feel like, 'Oh, this was it! I really got it. I'm that super-cat now. I'm a special cat. I'm a liberated cat. I'm a free cat.' Until you come to a Satguru who's the only one who has a mirror. He says, 'If you're done with your cat business, are you happy to look at this mirror?' And I'm making this point jokingly, but it's a very important one. If you are done with your cat business, then it is very straightforward. If you still have hope for this cat because you carried this identity for so long, and the real intent is to really make this actor a super-cat, then this play, this game, can go on for a long time.
So I might say spirituality is the end of selfishness, and it can sound like a simple thing to say, but this selfishness is based on the false identity, the notion of separation, the notion of individuality, the notion of ego. So are you willing to see that you are home for one moment without being so concerned about this cat and this cat's feelings and this cat's thoughts? It never existed anyway. We've been taught to believe in its existence. Now the miracle: how are you going to check? You cannot check on this in a way of believing. You cannot check on it based on this cognitive quality. I don't check on it based on some feeling. You cannot even check on it with some experience. Many times you say, 'Oh, I have the experience of some stillness.' How can you then check on what is at the core of all of this? What has been here uncaused, even in sleep? To what is it?
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So you don't have to be a humble cat. You don't have to create a special 'I.' Rather, this 'not you,' this neutrality, is very troublesome for the mind because it will say, 'What am I? Okay, at least tell me what I am supposed to do. And if you don't tell me what I am supposed to do, at least tell me what I am supposed not to do. Give me some position at least.' And this mind is nothing but a position machine. So even now as the words are being spoken, this mind will take a position: 'Am I doing here? Action?' This position... but what is the truth? That is the question. So this mind will pose also as the judge, as the sufferer, as the doer, as the desirer. All these poses it takes on. But what is it that is being honest before you pick up the phone to message your neighbor, 'Oh come, come, let's celebrate, I got it'? What are you? What are you in your motionless existence?
So what is organically here? Tell me that. Does it need some doing? If that has something which is not done yet, what is missing in your organic presence? I use the term organic, meaning the unconditioned, in your natural business. So it's neither doing nor not doing. It is neither finding nor not finding. All of these things are safely thrown away because none of this is applicable to you in reality. These things are really applicable to the pretense of you. Now, this little doubt we can say, 'But, but, but...' This is true. You are a reserved participant in anything we learn. All the possibilities... in the last five years, we've heard every single doubt possible. Well, you can't even say that. You need now to take a step. The biggest fear in all: not taking a stand. You don't have any stance about anything. A mountain doesn't have a stance. Your hands can have a stance, your feet can have a position. But what are you? I accurately could say: see the emptiness that is just here.
Yes, I know that Advaita can become something to do with a team, like you are so used to taking a position. Make a stand, let it drop. All opposites must drop. Everything that could have an opposite, including dropping me. This is the most blatant being, your own divine presence. Rather, the trick the mind can play is to tell you that you're getting it wrong again and again. Another really common one says, 'Be empty of positions,' and yet again and again you're taking a position. So that is also a position. Okay, this can last this way. You can see this. Everything is seen. No position has arrived this moment. What's the response? You like here? God is now.
If you make more distinctions, it's available. Everything that we've learned, even the spiritual classics... we don't value any interpretation. Everything becomes just part of the play. There is only one thing that causes you suffering: it is something that you think you know. You know what? Suffer without knowledge. Everything... only when you think you know something, this conceptual knowledge, it's constantly... what is the need for it? Is your existence not enough? Do you need to know something? You forget everything that you know about the self, about the world, everything you do. It's a good education. For example, what are the trees? Do they need to know two words next round? Because not deciding where the next branch might go, left or right, and yet look at the tree. It can unfold, but it is not even concerned with beautifully or not beautiful, because that can be like a half-surrender. 'I surrender to you, just make sure it comes out beautifully.' That is what I was promised. The tree is not concerned with how it turns out.
There's a greater intelligence which is running its life. The same intelligence which is running this one, the same one that is making this heart beat, this breath happen, these words appear. There is nobody sitting here saying that. But sometimes when these words come, that same supreme intelligence decides to play as if it is an object. So the only suffering is something that you think you know. But we don't know everything. Who is here with this? Does anyone know this? Well, this nobody can notice from the mind, and yet we want to know so much. Why does this exist in the world? Why didn't that exist? Whose existence is it? I don't find that. I never found, and none of you ever found, a limited existence. You know all the existence of the world very much.
One of the games will be limited. What is that? There was one that has a position, jumping into the position that an idea of our position is who we are. Something similar to be looked at the other day... well, maybe you know the sages who were saying that. But it is my attention that goes to this unlimited Self. And I said to him to look: where does the attention arise from? Is it you? It can feel like without our attention, it can feel like without going to this... but actually, it's more like the spring which is coming back to rest. Empty of the springiness. So if you look at the source of where that looking is coming from, because what has happened is the mind got so used to looking at the content of things, now unless we join in a way to that which is non-perceptual, it can feel like, 'Oh, it's coming from that side to this.' So we must clarify this a bit and see what is the source of the looking inside. Where does it arise from? Does it arise from a piece of content?
The physical eye is the only thing you can realize. One thing: there is no such thing as arising, which is to use words for a very strong phenomenon. So you are in that. Let's see that. The only thing that fits very well with the tree example: that is home, that is well. Now why do you want to go? Rather than that, it is easier to say, 'This one is this one and you are now.' I lost it. It is that which is Maya. And the 'you' that is not Maya now means neither existing nor non-existent. At a glance, unfathomable. As I say, the game has only two levels: 'God now' or 'me now.' To live the 'me now' part can seem like that has got to be it, which is 'me now,' different 'me now,' 'meow meow.' So then laughing 'meows' are planning. The 'me' is there, the 'how' will be there. But 'God now'...
Those attendees just like this: the whole conversation is 'God now' but 'me now.' But the master says it's 'God now.' And all that's actually happening in Satsang, if you see, is 'God now' being reminded. Anyway, but 'me now' and also same 'God now.' What is the game there? It is you. So ego is nothing but God pretending, becoming the pretend, becoming what is just until becoming something greater. One cannot become. If you have become, okay, that was your time. Okay, that which is timeless you can't think about anyway. So like I was saying last week, surrender all your guilt. You are writing a book. I'm no longer interested in taking all those things which are wrong about you, because those who surrendered anyway, we don't want them anymore. It is only what you feel you're right about. What is it you need to be right about? Anything that you think you know about this world of lies—how everybody should be, how this one should be, how the master should be, what freedom is, what brings you anything about the past, any prediction about the future—then the mind will have just one trap. It'll say, 'But then my life is meaningless.' And the master will say, 'This me is meaningless.' If you still hold onto the 'me,' then all of this will seem like impressive meaninglessness of the world. To let go of this limited idea of you, you have to destroy it. I can't stay low.
Don't be scared of that. Register you think of its meaninglessness, especially the 'me.' I was saying the other day that it's like a bit like learning to ride the bike. And you smell, it can seem a bit wobbly, but don't you see it's so natural? And you wonder what the fear was about. Thank you all so much for being in Satsang today. Rishi Mooji Baba Ki Jai! Jai Jai!