The Point of Satsang - Coming to a Place of Unassociated Being - 27 May 2015

So you come to a point now where even this starts to seem like a sham, you know? But the next trick, the next trick which the mind will play and is playing on many of you—and we already had this one satsang which is labeled "What's the point?" you know—because once we come to this point where we see this personal seeking, the seeking for freedom also was just personal, it was just egoic, then the question comes: "So what's the point?" And I want to speak a couple of minutes about this. What's the point of satsang? And it can get confusing because we say that what you are is ever free. What you truly are, that cannot be bound, isn't it? And the person can never be free because it is only just imagined. So if what you are is always free, and if the ego will never change, then what's the point of satsang? It's a very valid question. Many of you are encountering this, isn't it?

But there is something which is getting missed out in these two perspectives. So one, we are taking the absolute perspective as awareness, and it is true that as awareness you can never be bound, you see. And the other perspective is this personal perspective, the imagined one as I say, which is the ego. And saying that, we often say that the mind will always talk about you as a person, so don't expect it to change. So then what is the point? The point of satsang is that we come to a place of unassociated being. And for those of you who are new to satsang, they might be confused now between awareness, beingness, and person. So let me quickly, quickly go through those as well.

So when we speak about person, we are saying this idea that I am a separate entity, I'm an individual, I am that which my name refers to. And it is not the body. What my name refers to is not the body; the body is just a part of what it refers to. Because the body is unconcerned about relationships, unconcerned about being a father, mother, daughter, son, parent—all of these things it is unconcerned with. It is unconcerned with the amount of money you have. It is not just the body. There is an imagined entity called the person. I say imagined because when you look for it, you cannot find it. Where is the person? You say, "I don't know." And yet you will find that there is the voice, the voice of the mind, the voice of the ego, this thought stream which is constantly trying to convince you of your personhood. And because it speaks authoritatively, we start believing that, "Yes, I must be this person." This is what we mean when we say ego, person, mind; we use all these terms interchangeably.

Then the question is: what is this being, Atma? You keep hearing these terms, you see: Consciousness, Atma, soul, being, God. But how many are clear about what it is, or is it just a label or a concept? If I were to tell you the sense "I am"... many of you, this can seem confusing. But if I were to ask you, "Can you stop being?" it is clear that there is a being which is here with a sense that "I am," Atma, I exist, the presence. And in this state which we call the waking state, it is not possible for this presence to not be there. The sense of being to not be there is not possible in this state. And yet in the deep sleep state, even the presence is not there. So if even this "I am" is not present, how do we know that there is something called sleep state? How do we know I went to sleep? Like I often say that in satsang it was so boring you went to sleep, then you wake up in ten minutes, you know you went to sleep, isn't it? There is nothing to report from there, but you are aware of even this nothing. So this is what we mean by awareness.

And I ask the question: are you aware now? Am I aware now? This is the only non-phenomenal experiencing, which means this is the only confirmation you can give without actually tasting anything phenomenally. Am I aware now? You don't see anything to confirm this, and yet you know completely, "Of course I am aware. Awareness is here. It is what I am." When we say that this awareness, this awareness can never be bound, it is easy to take: "Yes, this awareness can never be bound, it doesn't want freedom." And then when we check, the voice of the mind doesn't change even after this discovery that I am this awareness. The voice of the mind is still the voice of the mind, always talking to you as if you are a person, you see.