To Get Freedom Actually Is To Give Freedom - 21st May 2021

No, I have to—it's because I believe in the idea that the mind is selling me that, or even me, but the mind is selling that this peace is in danger. Because when this kind of sensation of like a volcano of emotion erupting and this like storm cloud of ash and everything, it seems to obscure the awareness. Except I can see now that it is that seen, so it's seen by the awareness. I'm never so blind that I can't see, you know? And yeah, coming into Satsang, I just like feeling, just connecting in with the vibe, everything is just like, 'Yes!'

But I'm giving you a superpower, no? I'm giving you a superpower which allows you to not be so concerned about the states which may be coming. For example, that even now, if you did not get a response which was nice—suppose you got an uncharacteristically angry response or something, you know? And so some resistance, anger, whatever, something can come, you see? But even that, as we've seen even in the case of Guruji for example, turned out to be very auspicious for him, you see? So this idea that 'I know what state should come and I know better than consciousness what should arise for me'—only from that perspective can we end up becoming a guard to particular states or situations, you see? And I see it everywhere. Some people want to guard their enthusiasm, some people want to guard their peace, some people want to guard their joy, some people want to guard various whatever else comes up. You can become a guard to whatever you feel or you have an idea that 'this is better than everything else,' you see? But like you rightly said, your truth, that awareness that you are, remains untouched by anything that is perceived, you see? And every perception is just a perception. It doesn't have the tangibility, the real sense to hurt you or affect you in any sort of way. Yeah? So, independent of whatever the perception may be, you see that you remain untouched by any of that.

So what the mind tries to do is it tries to use this discovery to try and control or change life and the way life operates now. Because we are apparently more free, we are finding ourselves, you see? Then it tries to find evidence of that in this waking state. But the waking state is free, just like a dream, to bring whatever it has to bring, you see? So allow whatever state is coming to come up, because freedom is not to have exactly the state that my mind wants. 'I want to just have that state.' Freedom means everything can come and go, you see? What kind of freedom would it be if I have to be on guard all the time? Ah, you see? And to be honest, it sounds like a very innocent sort of message saying, 'Are you okay?' you know? And I know you realize that. So it could come from some other condition or it could just be a very innocent question, we don't know, you see? But the thing is that you're absolutely right in the way you saw it, and you saw that it's not the message in itself but the conditions which you get reminded of, you see? The baggage which a relationship seems to bring, which gets activated.

Now, we don't know whether that getting activated is actually auspicious or not. I would, in fact, lean on the side of it being auspicious because if it gets activated, maybe it is time for you to see through it now, you see? Instead of playing the same game over and over again. So I don't know how long and I don't know how many lifetimes, maybe it is time to just see and say, 'Okay, the question is: Are we okay? Are we okay? Yes.' That's it. So it could become as simple as that. And even if it is 'no,' it could just be 'no' because, you know, this is what we seem to be bringing out in each other, whatever, whatever. Right? That is not the important part of this conversation. So trust whatever life is bringing up, you see? And don't make any set of perceptions into a 'better state' that we must reside in. Yeah? 'That I have to live like this,' you see? That's what I was saying the other day: whether we are in this so that we can be happy according to our mind's construct of being happy, or are we in this just because we want—really, we are tired of the lies and we just want what is true, you see?

Now, that truth—don't look for evidence of that in the way life is playing out, you see? Because what is happening actually is that when you're judging your partner, you're actually judging your own freedom, and that is what is troubling you more. Because you may have an idea of an unshakable peace, but when something comes and it shakes it up, then you start to—maybe many of us do this—that we start to question our own spiritual progress, you see? And that frustrates us even more, and that ends up coming out in our relationships with our partner because we're like, 'Oh, I'm still getting shaken up by this and this is not right. She always brings this out in me and this is not what I want a relationship to be.' Yeah? What is troubling us is that because we have a construct of what freedom looks like, then when life shows up—that life cannot be in service to any construct like that and usually pushes the button the other way—then what happens is that the mind uses that and tries to convince you that you are not really as free as you think you are, you see? Yeah, more than any partner, it is these kind of things which bother us more, you see? Yeah, yeah. We want to live on that zenith, on the peak of this mountain called enlightenment, and something seemingly pulls us down from that. And we don't like that about ourselves, that we still have that tendency to go down. So we say, 'Okay, who's responsible for this?' you see? And the usual one in these cases is the relationship, you see? That is the most obvious one, too, that we can place our blame on.

So, a lot of—in fact, we can have a whole Satsang just on this because you captured very well this whole notion of 'why,' you see? As if we know any 'why.' And freedom actually, in one way, is to not need a reason, you see? We stop relying on our capacity to reason to be, you see? The state of being in the human condition seems to be so reliant on needing a cause for everything or needing a reason for everything, and it can seem like, 'I'm not really on top of my game,' you see, if I don't know why. 'I know why this, I know why I wake up, I know why I have this relationship, I know why I come to this Satsang and not that Satsang,' you see? We seem to have reason for everything, but actually we don't have a single reason at all. Yeah? Which is true. Yeah.

So, yeah. And the mind, like as you've heard often from me—but many new ones here today—but the mind loves the 'why' question, isn't it? You see? And it doesn't like the 'who' question as much. And the change—you know this, you heard this often—but the change is just one alphabet: change the 'y' to a 'o' and that's all it is. But we notice the tendency of the mind to always present this 'why' question because it's a facade, you see? It's a mask, another mask. And we seem to build a house of reasons. Yeah? Feel like we figured out life, you see? So one example I could give you which is subtle and may be rampant in much of spirituality is that we feel like, 'What is the reason for my existence?' or 'What is the best way I can exist?' It must be in a particular state of peace. Or even the words of Satsang like 'openness' and 'emptiness' may get understood as if I'm talking about some state that you have to be in. Yeah? But when I'm talking about openness and emptiness, I'm talking about non-judgmental, I'm talking about conceptual emptiness, you see? Where we are not interpreting what is showing up. It is not about trying to maintain a particular state of openness or something like that, you see? Yes, to non-interpretive or a notion-less existence is what I'm talking about.

But the mind can hear it as if it is just, 'Oh, this is my room, this is my room, and in this room only good stuff can come. Joy can come, peace can come. Anger? No, no, you are not allowed,' you see? 'You see, you go back where you came from. You are not allowed in here.' So who is that for then? Who is anger for if not for you? You see? It cannot be that God has made this recipe and cooked it all up and it just like belongs to no one. No, it's for God to taste as the expression called you or me or whatever we call it. So all that appears in God's kingdom is for God to experience. Yeah? So when we speak of openness and emptiness, and it's an important clarification...

No, you are not allowed, you see. You see, you go back where you came from; you are not allowed in here. So who is that for then? Who is anger for, if not for you? You see, it cannot be that God has made this recipe easy and cooked it all up and it just, like, belongs to no one. No, it's for God to taste as the expression called you or me or whatever we call it. So all that appears in God's kingdom is for God to experience. Yeah. So when we speak of openness and emptiness—and it's an important clarification—we are not talking about what state can come or what state cannot come. It is the freedom for everything to come, you see. But allow yourself to be non-judgmental about it, non-interpretive about it, and you as Consciousness can completely do that. You can, without needing a reason, without needing a reason, you see.

So we looked at peace. We looked at why... what was in the middle? You don't say the whole sentence again. Oh, 'Why are you disturbing my peace?' Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You see, so doership you spoke about already. Like, there's a doer there, there's a doer here, or there's a doer there and there's an experiencer here, you see. Or there's an experiencer there and there's a doer here, you see, depending on whether we want to feel guilty or proud. You see, so the positions of the doer and experiencer also keep changing based on these things. But have we found such an agent? You see, and often we've spoken about that: that true surrender means that if we still have an idea that there's a 'me' and there is God, then we say that You, God, are the one doer and the one experiencer. You see, neither of those have anything to do with me. And truly, even that prayer of surrender brings us to the lack of this distinction between God and myself.

You see, so one doer and one experiencer. Who is the doer? Who is the experiencer? The same answer to every 'why,' which is Consciousness. You see, the world, this whole waking universe, shows up—this manifest play shows up—when you are, you see. When the light of your being is shining. You see, so who makes that happen? Who makes the world show up? You see, and if it is this Consciousness that makes it show up, you see, then how can anything within that show up with some other light? It must be in the light of the same Consciousness, isn't it? So it cannot be that Consciousness then said, 'Okay, here you go, world. You see, here are all the planets and all of this. I've done all this for you; now it's up to you guys. Yeah, now you handle it.' Yeah. And who is that 'you'? A non-existent one anyway.

So that whole 'Why do you have to do this?' or 'That does this to me'—that whole doer and experiencer paradigm, either way, whichever way we play with it, is always bound to get us in trouble, you see. And the fact is that there is no distinction like that. It's just that we take appearances in perception, you see, and we say, 'I am going to draw a line around this appearance in perception using my thoughts to call this me. I'm going to call this Mr. Me or Miss Me.' You see, and 'Oh, there's another set of perception there, so let me call that you.' You see, but it's all one set of perceptions. And whose light are they all shining in? Like Bhagwan so famously said and beautifully said: 'In whose light do you see the light of the sun?' So it is in the light of your own being, in the light of your own Consciousness. And everything that happens in this play is on the screen of the same Consciousness, in the light of the same Consciousness. And Consciousness itself watches and enjoys—quote-unquote 'enjoys'—that play.

He doesn't enjoy it according to our mind's idea of what enjoyment should be, because many times when we say it is for it to enjoy, you feel like, 'What enjoyment is this?' It's not enjoyment; it's not our idea of enjoyment. It's part of its own play. As far as part of its own play, yeah. 'Why do you do this to me and spoil my peace?' You see, so instead of 'why,' if you were to say 'who'—who is doing what to whom—I feel is very helpful. Because this is a very common sort of pattern of conditioning, and I'm really spending some time on each aspect of it so that when it bothers each of you, you can look at it and you can start unraveling it, you see. Breaking up these knots, pulling out these knots from any aspect of these notions. And anywhere you start, you see that the whole construct starts to fall apart. The whole concept starts to fall apart.

Even the mind is seen in that light of Consciousness, and even the belief in the mind is seen in that light of Consciousness as well.

Yeah, of course. Of course. The delusion and the stepping away from the delusion is all part of the play of the same Consciousness. Even the getting deluded, even to give truth to the mind and to say that 'I am this bucket of flesh and blood, I am only this, that is you, you are not me, therefore the best we can do is have a relationship but we can't be one'—you see, all of this play is part of the same Consciousness. So even Satsang, the reminder to get out of that play of delusion, it is Consciousness reminding itself that is playing this game. Why? Nobody can say, you see. There is no reason. You see, Consciousness is not limited to providing justification. You see, like who said... some famous scientist said that the universe is under no obligation to explain itself to us. So this 'why' thing is a complete charm, you see.

So let me end this particular question with this, which I have said also often, but to get freedom actually is not to get freedom; it is to give freedom, you see. So anytime you find yourself caught up in any condition, find what you are not giving freedom to. Are you giving enough freedom to your partner to be exactly how she wants? You see, usually what happens with spiritual seekers is—and I say spiritual seekers often because I spent a long time in this life, maybe the longest time in this life, playing one, so I can quickly identify those constraints—so what happens is that for most spiritual seekers, it's like, 'The world should leave me alone. Don't they realize that I have the right to be completely free? They have to be like this because I have the right to be completely free.' You see, so we want to take away the world's freedom to be exactly how the world is so that I can be how I want. You see, so it is actually the other way around where you get freedom by giving freedom to everything. Give freedom to everything, which means you are not judging, which means you are not saying, 'This is bad, you should not do this, this should not happen, this cannot happen.' These kind of ideas can be thrown away, you see. To get freedom actually is to give freedom. And when anything you feel like something is taking away your freedom, you are not giving enough freedom to that.

You see, these can be tough words to swallow, especially in a relationship where we feel like somewhere or the other we end up believing that 'I am right about something and the other one is wrong about something.' And there can be one or two things where we feel like, 'Okay, okay, it's fine whatever Ananta is saying, but I am definitely right about this and she's definitely wrong about that.' You see, and what to do with those? You see, like I was telling another child in the Sangha, I was saying with those, if you can't get yourself to admit that you don't really know that you are right or wrong—if you can't get yourself to admit that and you're clear that you're right on those things—just lose. Just lose. You see what I mean? Lose. Like, our right and wrong can put us in this battle, right? In relationships we're trying to... 'Why can't you see it from my point of view?' 'I am trying to see it from your point of view.' But we are only trying to see it from another's point of view so that quickly we can convince them of our point of view. Actually, it never truly—I mean, not never, but mostly not really that way, you see.

So those things which you feel like you are absolutely right about and your partner is wrong about, just lose that battle on those things. Just lose that battle. What will be taken away from you? Nothing, nothing, nothing. Just agree to be wrong. And not fake, like 'Let's disagree'—that kind of nonsense. Just agree that 'I'm not going to win this, I'm going to go along with whatever it is.' And not go along in the sense of becoming sheep; I'm not talking at this level. I'm speaking just of whatever gets in the way of you being conceptually empty and conceptually unattached. And from that emptiness, whatever could come from your mouth or your feet could walk towards or away, it doesn't matter. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm speaking more of that which gets in the way of us just being conceptually open, conceptually empty.

And you see, do you notice how the idea of spaciousness or emptiness or peace can actually get in the way of our spaciousness or emptiness or peace? Because it's something that needs to be... there's a constriction that something needs to be held or protected. Or it becomes an object, it becomes a... as you know, it's not the real. It's an idea almost, it's a thought. And it's like one idea is attacking this idea of peace, and they can both just be let go of if you don't have a relationship with ideas.

You can have whatever relationship or not. So, nice opportunity, it sounds like. Fortunately, it sounds like, to push up all of this stuff and to let go. Thank you very much. Very good, very good. I enjoyed that as well. I enjoyed it. I want to take one question in the chat which I wanted to look at last week as well, but somehow with all the questions I never got to the chat. So one question I want to take is this one: 'Father, can you please discuss about the concept of emptiness in Buddhism versus the concept of the Self given by Advaita Vedanta? These two seem to be similar, but I feel somehow that the Buddhists have taken the self-inquiry even further back than the Self, whereas the Vedantins have stopped the self-inquiry at the Self itself. Are emptiness and the Self the same?'

Okay, this is an excellent question. And in places like India, this can cause a lot of confusion, you see. And this confusion was here as well because I come from a more Vedantic affiliation, more attraction towards Vedanta than to Buddhism. And most Vedantins have this kind of mindset about the Buddhists which is like, 'Oh, those Sunyavadis, they have converted the greatest into nothing. What do they know? It has to be fundamentally wrong.' You see, but the thing is that the Buddhists themselves had a lot of this confusion. So the one that was most accused of nihilism was somebody called Nagarjuna. You see, Nagarjuna and his foremost disciple was Chandrakirti. And what would happen is that if people would ask them, 'Is there a Buddha?' they would say, 'No.' You see, 'Is there anything?' they would say, 'No.' 'Is there a...?' No, no, everything would just get negated.

And then those who are more positive—the positive side of... you know what I mean by positive is the more 'yes' type of people in Buddhism—they started to get very irritated with this because Nagarjuna was becoming very popular. So what happened is there was a concerted attack on Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti saying that, 'If you say no to the existence even of the Buddha, then why do you call yourself Buddhist? Why are you in the umbrella of Buddhism then, sharing all of this? And why are you talking about Buddha-nature if there is no Buddha? Are you talking about coming to your Buddha-nature if you let go of everything, if there is no Buddha?' So that is when Nagarjuna explained—and this was very helpful here as well—to see that there is actually no true distinction. They just... as every path, there could be some difference along the way, but truly they are pointing to the same thing. Because Nagarjuna explained and said, 'My friend...'

All of this, you see, and why are you talking about Buddha nature if there is no Buddha? You see, are you talking about coming to your Buddha nature if you let go of everything, if there is no Buddha? So that is when Nagarjuna explained, and this was very helpful here as well, to see that there is actually no true distinction. They just, you know, as every part, there could be some difference along the way, but truly they are pointing to the same thing. Because Nagarjuna explained and said, 'My friends, you misunderstand me. You see, you misunderstand me because what I'm saying is that you are empty of even the concept of Buddha. And when you are empty of all notions, only then can you come to the true, the true Buddha nature.' You see? But if you hang on to even the words like 'Buddha nature,' you see, then that is the same grasping which the Buddha has very clearly explained—that grasping is suffering. So there is no difference between grasping any notion and letting go of all your notions and then you come to the same, which is exactly the same process that the Vedantins inspired in the Neti Neti, in the negation of all perception, in the instruction or the pointing that everything that comes and goes is not real. That is the same, same kind of negation.

So the only distinction is in the talking about what is discovered, you see. So the Vedantins may use the word Brahman, but what is Brahman? You can't really describe it. So what does the word point to? You can't really say anything about it. Versus a Shunyata, which some of the Buddhists may be talking about, pointing to the same thing: the emptiness, you see, which is not fundamentally different. It is not like an empty void which many would misunderstand, and they feel like we have to come and live in some empty vacuum or limbo state, you see. Just in the same way as the Vedantic many times misunderstand like some manifest aspect of Brahman to be the entirety of the most glorious idea of Brahman, you see, it can be misunderstood as well. In the same way, there are mistakes happening on both sides because when there is a notion, when there is a holding on to any conceptual idea, then it seems to blur the clarity of our intuitive insight, you see.

So both are pointing to the same intuitive insight which is being pointed to in Satsang by all the great masters, you see. And that is independent of perception and independent of any concept that you may have about it. Even in the Sikh religion, for example, which is much more devotional in its character, very beautiful in its character, it's very clearly said that if you can think about it, you are not getting it. Which means that you may think and think and think a hundred thousand times, but in the process of your thinking, you will not get this. So whatever the thought may be. And the Zen masters took it to another level completely where they just said, 'Chop the head' or, you know, 'Just throw it away.' And you see, 'Does a dog have Buddha nature? No.' All kinds of things to just checkmate your thoughts, checkmate your intellect.

So whether it's a Neti Neti, whether it is a verbal negation of everything including the highest concept that we can have, you see, even the Sufi story of 'higher than that, of higher than that.' Whatever you can say, 'Are you God?' You say, 'No, higher than that.' So it is a negation of the intellect because the true reality cannot be held in this limited instrument, in this limited object. So across all faiths, across all cultures, are the pointings in one way or the other which are pointing us beyond our intellect, beyond our reason, beyond our capacity to conceptually understand, into a greater capacity which we can provisionally call intuitive, you see. Before it becomes too strong a labor, provisionally we can call it intuitive and say that in our intuition, in our heart, only there do we really recognize what we are. And the only, only, only way to get to that which is always there is to let go of ignorance, to let go of false, let go of the misunderstanding, the misidentification, you see.

So you have to taste it now. So don't have like an intellectual board which says, 'Okay, Vedantins one point, Buddhists two points.' You see, that is not really going to get you anywhere except to just... if it helps you discard a lot of conceptual notions, then that is helpful. But really you have to now taste it from your own inside and there you will see that whether it is a Neti Neti—not this, not this, not this—or it is a Zen koan, or it is the talk about the great middle by Nagarjuna, you see, it's all pointing to the same.

So a great master, Swami, he talks about how in Vedanta everything is that it presents you a concept which takes away the earlier concept that you had and then chops away the new concept as well, leaving you with nothing. And if you look this up on Google, you will find many examples he's taken from all the Upanishads where he will say, 'In your reality, you have...' One of the Upanishads will say, 'You as Brahman will have a hundred thousand hands and a hundred thousand feet. Why do you take yourself to just have two hands and two feet?' So it replaced this limiting concept of just being this body-mind into something greater, you see, something bigger which the mind has trouble holding actually, but tries to hold on to as some sort of Virat Roop or great Darshan of the Self. And then later in the measure they'll say, 'What? How can you, Brahman, have hands or feet? You are beyond all of this.' So it replaced the sticky one with the greater one which we willingly let go of, and then takes away that and leaves us with nothing that we can really hold on to. It's a beautiful, beautiful process.

So what happens is because we are so used to going in grades, you see, we go from first-standard concepts to second-standard concepts, and we're usually only willing to let go of concepts when a better one is provided to us. So you say, 'Okay, okay, you are not a human, you are consciousness itself,' you see. But nobody wants to give up 'I am a human' unless the second part is there. Like, 'You're not a human.' See, the mind, the intellect doesn't like that. 'Okay, then what am I?' But what, what, what? Finish, finish, finish what you're saying. 'I'm not a human, I am...' So nobody likes that. So provisionally we have to use terms, the highest terms we use, and we say, 'You are this, you are that,' you see, just so that you become free from that very solidified idea. And as soon as the master gets the chance, he is also going to say, 'By the way, not even that.' And then the complaints start. 'Why is this master always contradicting himself or herself? You see, why can't they be consistent? Why is all of this so confusing?' You see? And these are all the complaints, all the tantrums in response to the invitation to be empty.

Okay, now so many hands. Let's see who haven't I heard from in a bit. Okay, let me hear more from Arvin because we had only one conversation so far.

Thank you for the opportunity and thank you for your guidance last week. Actually, I felt it helped me. In fact, what I wanted to just share was that, you know, what I'm left with increasingly now is this perception that, you know, there's an object and there's a subject. And in fact, any perception is the play of those two. In other words, you know, for any sensation, any thought, anything, there has to be a perceiver. And in fact, I think the mistake is to lose recognition of that perception field. Yeah, also they sort of start to feel... I started to feel that, you know, just put myself in the position of the perceiver and let things play out. And but in fact, you know, what I'm seeing is also a perceiver. So in effect, we are like two ends of the same string, you know, in some senses. So it's actually quite... it's quite wonderful. That's what... so thank you, thank you for that.

I just have something very practical actually to just want to come to something very practical. You know, like Mahesh was sharing, the question really is, you know, what do you do when, in your day-to-day lives, let's say in work or in some situation, you know, you're being maltreated or let's say maybe there's, you know, you're being cheated? To put it more clearly, you know, it's not... somebody is doing something which is clearly wrong, like trying to cheat you or act in bad faith. Now how do you make wise... I mean, I guess, how do you make choices? I mean, in some sense, in some situations, you know, you can't really... and we're all interconnected, you can't really just step away and say, 'You know, let things flow. It's all right, nothing is real, it doesn't matter if I get cheated, it's only Maya.' But at some level, you know, and I kind of think sometimes about the Gita and what it instructs about how you need to act and how you need to make choices. And I struggle with this because I actually am in such a situation. And I started thinking about how do you make choices while maintaining your connection with authenticity? Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for this. I'm going to try and meet this question from where I feel the resonance of where it is asked from, because there are many different ways that you could look at responding to a question like this, right from the talk about doership to things. But let me see what shows up in response to how you've asked. So the attempt, just like the attempt to figure out 'why,' you see, is pretty much fraudulent because this whole notion of cause and effect, whole notion of time, 'this therefore that,' you see... and fundamentally the notion of individual agency or individual volition can be explored a lot further. But I realize what happens many times in life situations, we feel like, 'No, no, I don't have the space for all of this. My manager is bothering me, or my partner is bothering me, or something is bothering me.' You see, something is really strongly here now. 'I don't want to just think that the world is unreal and who am I really? I don't want to do that. I just want some help in how to deal with this thing,' you see.

Now there's some bad news, there's some good news. Now the bad news is that there is no template to how any situation should be handled because all of us face these situations in relationships with regards to security, money, health of body, even in finding freedom. All of these simple variables in life, we seem to face a lot of complicated things that seem to stem out of these simple variables. And we wish that we had an instruction manual which would say, 'Okay, boss shouts at you or is being unfair, I have not been promoted, whatever, this is what I should do. Wife is being a bit difficult, this is how I should behave,' you see. We wish, and we look for these answers in every aspect of life: self-help, religion, all of these kind of things. But so this is the bad news. The bad news is that there is no such template because there is no one right answer for that specific situation. Just like you don't step into the same river twice, you see, everything that you experience, consciousness—although I define some very broad-seeming variables—every frame of consciousness and what plays out in consciousness seems to be quite unique, you see. So we can't templatize and say, 'Oh, because this master had said this, or this chapter and this verse in Bhagavad Gita said this, and I only did that, but see how it didn't work out for me.' It cannot be played that way, you see. So no set of conceptual instructions. And you've seen that philosophers for tens and tens of thousands of years have been trying to figure out this whole ethical conundrum of how to live, you see. What is the best way to live? And some will say you have to be utilitarian, some will say...

You can't templatize and say, 'Oh, because this master had said this' or 'This chapter and this verse in Bhagavad Gita said this and I only did that, but see how it didn't work out for me.' It cannot be played that way, you see. So, no set of conceptual instructions. And you've seen that philosophers for tens and tens of thousands of years have been trying to figure out this whole ethical conundrum of how to live, you see. What is the best way to live? And some will say you have to be utilitarian; some will say you have to follow the categorical imperative, you see. So, some will be Gandhian about it and some will be Krishna about it. There is no real way to be able to define it and say, 'This is how we must always be,' at least not conceptually.

Now, does this mean—so this was the bad news, that's the end of the battle—now the good news is that the same place, your heart, where you make the discovery of what you are, you see, your intuitive insight where if I ask you, 'Are you aware now?' you see that yes, there's this awareness. You didn't have to think about it. You didn't have to have notions, concepts. You cannot have a perception of it either, and yet the truth is apparent to you. So if you remain in that same space and not go to the conceptual mind, then it will guide you, you see. It will guide you.

And the greatest scientists in the world have said this: that I tried and tried and tried to solve this problem, but when I let go, then God showed me, you see. The greatest sportsman, you say, 'How do you score like this? Nobody else is able to do what you do.' He says, 'When I let go of the mind, you see, when I let go.' They may call it 'the zone' or something. 'When I let go of my conceptual mind, I get into the zone, and when I'm in the zone, I'm unbeatable,' you see. So you talk about a name, a musical artist, you talk about scientists, any sort of people that you even look up to in a worldly way, you will go and ask them, they will most likely say, 'I don't know. I just try and try and try, but there comes a point where I give up and then I feel like there's much more time,' you see. I'm not so clouded up.

I just seem to like—if you, like I was a big cricket fan earlier and you always wondered how the best batsman always seemed to have that extra moment, extra bit of time. And everybody wonders about that, and the response would be, 'I'm in the zone,' you see. 'I'm in the zone.' So what is that? So basically, whether you call it the no-mind state as the Zen masters word it, or you call it a zone, or you call it being with your heart or with your intuitive insight, what is happening? It is talking about a greater intelligence than our conceptual mind can provide because our conceptual mind is very rigid. It wants step one, step two, step three. 'If X says this, then Y should say this in response,' you see, these kind of things. It can never capture the essence of life in its entirety.

So you just have to trust this intuitive insight, trust this intuition. And it is very difficult to trust, especially when it is silent, you see. When silence is the answer, that is what we struggle with the most. You feel like, 'What should I do?' and many times it can feel like, 'Oh, no answer is really coming,' but we can trust that itself is the answer, you see, and allow it to unfold. So sometimes our antagonist is in front of us and we can allow ourselves to be empty even then, and we may find us just walking away, or we may find that some words are coming from here—we did not plan to say them, or we had planned to say something else and something else comes.

So from this, we can only live in this way moment to moment, trusting the heart. We cannot rely on any template to life, or the only element in that template can be: live from the heart moment to moment. That can be the single line instruction in that template, you see. So that's the good news. The good news is that this intuitive insight is always available to us, you see. It is the same intelligence which is the light of this universe, so we can trust that, you see. But we can never go to it selfishly, you see. Or let me put it another way, because that can be confusing as well: don't expect it to always live up to what we want, what we think we want, because most of the time what we think we want is much, much smaller than what life has to offer, you see.

And the truth will always point us to a greater reality. When I was in the process of a big fight in my business many, many years ago, I felt like this—losing this business, which I felt like I have created with so much hard work and things like that, is the worst thing that can happen to me. That's what I felt at that point of time. But actually, it was the best thing that ever happened. So if you're going to our intuition with a box which is saying, 'Please provide an answer so that the outcomes that we want can happen,' it is not a cheat code like that in the game that we just like, 'Oh, I have these ideas, ambitions, things I want to achieve, outcomes that I want in things, now I can just go to God for this and He's going to just usually take care of it.' Surrender cannot operate in that way.

That's what I call surrendering with one eye open, saying, 'I'm surrendering to you, my intuitive insight, my intuitive intelligence, the Satguru presence,' whatever we called it, 'but just make sure it goes well, okay? This goes and that means make sure it goes according to how my mind wants.' So intuition cannot be in service to the mind. So that is the 'how' for anything. So it's a good Satsang today. We've looked at the 'why' and how it is mostly all nonsense. We've looked at the 'how' and how that is mostly all nonsense. And now we may understand why Bhagwan just kept pointing us to 'who.' And any conceptual answer to 'who' is also mostly all nonsense, but at least it helps us get rid of all of this nonsense. Okay, I feel like my battery is dying, so we'll switch the mic.

Okay, so I realized that this mic is not as powerful as the other one, but there's some wires and house we are dealing with, so we don't know what the right answer is yet. We'll see. We'll see how it arises if it does. Okay, so let me ask you if you looked at most of what you were asking.

Yeah, thank you. Actually, that was really helpful. I really appreciate it. I mean, I guess, you know, I just sometimes you also wonder what it's all about. I mean, if you're instruments of something that's playing itself out in ways that we can't fathom and our only course, or the recommended course, is to surrender and let go, what is it all about? What's—you know, we just sometimes you want—maybe we can't after that, but you know, who for what? What objective? The shades of the play? What is it all about? But thank you, I think I'm practically very useful. That's very useful. Thank you.

Thank you. One last tip for you is that you're right that it is this whole game, this whole play is a very deep mystery, you see. But in the mystery, if you predetermine your position, which is that of the instrument, you see, then that can also become a bit oppressive. It's okay as a provisional surrender. It is fine: 'I'm just the instrument, you the higher force are responsible for everything that is done and experienced here.' It can be useful, but there comes a point in your surrender that even that we must make unfathomable, you see. Am I the instrument or am I the light? Am I the puppet or the puppeteer? We don't know, you see.

And so what then happens is that we get used to being positionless, and in that positionlessness, our intuition—we learn to rely on that more and more, and in that all the answers are available, but just not in this sort of conceptual way, you see. So sometimes the master will say, 'I am all there is,' you see. 'I am all there is. All of this universe is just dancing to my light, to my tunes, and even beyond I am,' the master may say sometimes. And another time the master will say, 'Who am I? I'm just what am I,' you see. 'I'm just nothing.' And these statements can be very contradictory sounding to the mind, but they're coming from a different place, you see. They're coming from intuitive insight which can be beautifully expressed either way, you see.

When we become open to both being true, you see, and both being not true at the same time, then we lose our dependence on our rationality or the need to make positions out of everything. We lose that, and then that is freedom, you see. Because like an innocent child, we—but in a way more beautiful than a child because you've gone through the structures, the constructs, and to taste the freedom without those constructs is very beautiful as well. But that's also a construct obviously. And so just notice that any position that you might be taking, even the subtle ones, just don't rely on them so much. Like, question: 'Do I really know this? Like, do I really know this? Am I an instrument in God's hands? Do I really know this?' But they also say God is everywhere, so what is the line between the instrument and God itself? So just this open questioning, open inquiry leaves us empty of all conceptual positions that we can have. And don't fear that. Don't fear that being empty of all conceptual positions. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Very good. Okay, let's hear from Mayu.

Hi, can you listen to me? Yes? Okay. Yeah, sorry if I make mistakes because I'm not comfortable in front of the camera and much less opening my heart in front of the camera, so I may make many, many mistakes. First of all, I wanted to thank you again. I can't say it enough. And for offering us so many Satsangs. You are the answer of my prayers. And that we always have the opportunity to talk, and to all the sangha for all the questions because you always answer to me. And I wanted to say that I don't think I can offer you anything, but I'm here if you need something from me. I'm totally here. You're totally my heart. And yeah, I always pray for you that all this love can talk to you. I think it's the best I can do for you, but I'm here if you need something also.

And I wanted to ask you for your blessing actually today because after 11 years of relationship with my boyfriend—we live together and everything, it's a very nice relationship—but I just decided two days ago to live alone because I need to—sorry, make your time—I need to make a place where I live that reflects Satsang.

So what I will do is I'll give you a minute to pause on that. I want to thank you first for your beautiful message so far. It really touches my heart. And I've read your emails in the past as well, and they all have touched my heart. And thank you for your just availability. You see, we actually in the sangha here, we don't have a big place. We don't have any—we just have these small rooms here and there's hardly anything that is needed actually. So, but just your attitude, just your inner spaciousness to be available, it touches my heart deeply. And thank you, thank you so much for that. Thank you.

And yes, there's nothing wrong with my relationship. It's only I'm a hundred percent for Satsang and the truth and a new and Mooji and Sasha and my boyfriend is zero. He's a very zero—no interest at all in all these things. He's a very open, very lovely person, everything, but I feel I need a place that reflects this at home. And I feel and it stops me many times, although nothing stops me, but I need a place that has more to do with Satsang and I just need your blessing or if you feel you can say something. Thank you. Thank you for that.

I feel like the answer for Mahesh also captured a lot of what we are speaking of. It's not that this starts me; it's a very different energy. This is something that is—I always pray for total liberation and I think he's a part of this. There's no conflict with him actually. Very good, very good. So you may find sometimes just a natural knowing in the heart that this is not the most auspicious way.

Blessing, or if you feel you can say something. Thank you, thank you for that. I feel like the answer for Mahesh also captured a lot of what we are speaking of. Yeah, it's not that this starts me. It's a very different energy. This is something that is... I always pray for total liberation, and I think he's a part of this. There's no conflict with him, actually.

Very good, very good. So you may find sometimes just a natural knowing in the heart that this is not the most auspicious way for us to spend this life, or some feeling like that. And if you're following your heart, then it is completely fine. He sounds like a very nice guy. He seems very open. He's not interested in satsang, and that's fine. That's okay too, because not everybody is interested in satsang. But you have to follow your heart and say, 'I need just a different space, a different sort of environment, a different sort of way of communication, or the way I'm going to be for this to unfold.' And if your heart says yes, that is what it is, then it's completely fine. You have my full blessings for this.

And it sounds strange sometimes I say like this, and I don't want to sound strange, but I say sometimes that I bless relationships and breakups equally as long as they are coming from your heart. My full, full blessings. When someone comes and says, 'We want to spend time together, we like each other, you see, we are so much in love and we feel like this is auspicious and open, you see, can you bless us?' I have blessed it. Somebody says, 'Oh Father, we broke up. It didn't last. It's not working out.' Well, bless you. Yes, it's fine, you see, it's fine. So my only advice, because it's just been two days, is we don't have to sound very conclusive.

No, no, I'm not. I'm also not. Yes, it's... I also need to leave the apartment because the owner wants to move in. So for me, it was like life saying it's time now. It's something that I feel so already for at least one year, at least. And life is making it very easy also. And yes, and I feel God in every second of my life. It's guiding me really, and it's also very painful.

All my love, all my blessings. Big hugs to both of you. Thank you. A time which may seem difficult at a phenomenal level, may this time lead you both to great gifts and bring whatever Guruji has to offer—the highest that he is offering all of us—may it bring that in both of your lives.

Thank you, thank you. And also I forgot to say that since I'm so grateful for your presence in my life because it's burning so fast. So yes, since you are here and I'm totally, totally grateful. I can't say it enough. You're the perfect son of Mooji because you are him. You are him. Yes.

Thank you very much. That's the sweetest, highest compliment you can give me. Thank you. He says the truth is the truth. Thank you, thank you. I have some of that, so I need a bit of a recharge for my throat as well. The juice, maybe just... Did I have it on my face? I'm just going to enjoy this for a minute. Or if you want to get some tea or make yourself comfortable, take a restroom break, you can do that. Do you want to have some of the tea? You can have if you want somewhere you just...

So I just saw in the chat that we have the birthday girl is here, so she can come up.

Hello, Father. I just plugged my phone. Is it working?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Thank you, Father. Thank you. You think for you right at the end, that means the highest grace continue to shine his light so beautifully on you. And all my blessings, all my love.

Thank you, thank you. Each birthday is better than the last. I'm so happy. And it's also one year since I've been with you. Oh sorry, your first satsang was on your birthday. It was May last year. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, thank you so much for everything.

So welcome. I love you and I love this sangha very much. Thank you, thank you. Did you want to say something else?

No, I... you didn't have a question, you mean me? Yeah, yeah. Yes, I had raised my hand just... I think I was just giving myself a birthday present just to help, just your blessing, which you did anyway. So it's fine. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Okay, who else haven't I seen for a bit? Let me see. Sebastian, I haven't met for a while. You can come, Sebastian. Okay, oh wait, works. Can you hear me?

Yes, yes, my dear. Hello, hello. This is the first time. Yeah, so I have asked this question or part of it once before, but I would like to give it another go somehow, and I have it written down. So when I'm sitting with the Invitation, the more relaxed I get, the more pressure and tension I start to feel in my head area, at region, and that pulls the attention and most of the time I feel stuck there. No way. And at the same time, so this is the killer or whatever we call it, also the mind is saying at the same time that now you're sitting here again wasting your time because you don't know if you're in the right position. And also it's saying, 'What if you're making things worse by sitting in the wrong position?'

That's right. Okay, okay. This is a good one. So let's really look at this. So what happens is—and you can correct me if I misunderstood—when you put on the Invitation and you follow Guruji's words, then you feel very relaxed initially and then suddenly you find some pressures appearing in your head, on your face. It can feel like something is tensing up over there. And the mind—it's also coming right now, so yeah, coming later—the mind uses that to say you must be doing something wrong or you've not really understood how to do this, and even worse, you are making it worse. So you started off more free, then you have this kind of circumstantial evidence to convince you that there's something wrong, there's some mistake.

Now, the good thing about the guided meditation, especially something as potent as the Invitation, is that you just have to put it on, you see. You cannot do it wrong, you see. The only seeming mistake you can make is by trying to do it too hard or too much, you see. Like when it's put on, then Guruji is asking these questions which very naturally you will answer from your intuition, from your heart, you see. Any of these things you will say, 'No, no,' very gently you will notice this intuitively. You will notice especially a question like, 'Can you die? Can this die?' You see, there's no conceptual way to answer that in the right or wrong way. So you cannot. So the Invitation is to not go to your head in any way and come up with any conceptual answer. Just go along with what your heart is telling you, and from your deeper insight you will see you cannot die.

So the only seeming wrong way to do it is to try and become conceptual about it and say, 'Can I die? No, no. Was I born? No, no. Bankai said I'm the unborn, therefore no, I can't die.' You see, that set of inferences is not the way to do the Invitation. And not that you're doing it like that; I'm saying that one set of trouble I found with the Invitation or guided meditation is where people try to become too heavy or intellectual about it. So it doesn't feel like, it doesn't seem like you're doing that.

So now in a way your question is, 'Why does this happen to me?' and we cannot truly say. All I can say is that it is not uncommon, you see. Especially in India, when you're finding yourself to be open and empty for something to get activated in the head region, and sometimes it can seem to get very... like here also, when I used to meditate much earlier before meeting Guruji, what would start happening is like something would just start to get very constricted and, you know, then the mind will come and say, 'But this can't be good,' you see. But I was part of a spiritual sangha then and I noticed that those who were meditating, it was happening to many of them. Then I just felt like, 'Okay, this is what happens. It's fine. It's completely fine,' you see.

So I would recommend the same approach. Just trust Guruji's words, Guruji's presence, and whatever is unfolding in the body-mind set of perceptions, just trust that all of that is grace anyway. You're not trying to do the Invitation for some sort of progress or something like that. So the mind's attempts to say, 'But you're not making progress, you're actually regressing,' you see, you can throw that away because what Guruji is pointing to is not a result of some progress or it's not in time that you can have a sort of phenomenal relationship with it. It is just immediate, you see. Immediately you come to this self-discovery and following the simple questions that he's posing to us, you see. And using the presence of his voice and the beautiful presence that is available, we come to an immediate insight.

So it's not in the construct of time that can play with this whole thing of progress and regress and doing better or doing worse. It's not any of that. The only thing that you have to do in time is to put it on. Yeah, that's all you have to do. Then what happens to you, how it happens, whether it is good or bad, all is his problem. That is the attitude. That is the attitude that you should take when you follow the meditation. Just make it Guru's thing. The mind comes and says, 'But this is not helping you.' All my Father's problem, all for him to deal with. Nothing, nothing is my concern. He said you should do the Invitation, that's it. I do it because he said, that's all, right? The rest of it is not my concern because, like I'm saying, for you to say it's not my concern because we don't know what is good for us, what is bad for us, what is helpful, what is not helpful.

So that's why trust comes in, you see. If you were to do only that which you already knew is rational in your head, you see, then there's no need for trust because everybody does what they think is rational. You see, trust is needed and especially devotion is needed when we can't fathom what is happening. Is it making something better? Is it making it worse? Where am I going with this? Am I going to get it? All these kind of questions we don't attempt to answer because we trust the Master. Then the mind cannot poke you in these ways. They cannot poke you and say, 'What's happening? Are you doing the right thing? Are you doing it right?' There's no wrong way to do that.

So basically you're saying let the mind speak but don't put any value. And also because what the mind is doing is pretending to be a friend, saying, 'I'm your spiritual friend and you watch how you see.' Trying to convert this manifest play into a conceptual understanding is what the mind does in every situation. And when we buy into that notion that this is true, this is what actually is, you see, 'Mr. Mind, you have an accurate representation of what is,' that is what is called belief, you see. When consciousness gives it that truth value, then we make this box, a conceptual box, which the mind will constantly poke its own box just to make you suffer. That is the game of this limited... the seller of the limited ideas about ourselves. That's how it plays.

Okay. And the same with the pressure like that comes, just let it be also.

Of course. All right. An example is coming here, so I'm going to mention that. So what happened with Socrates is that he was told by the authorities to drink the poison chalice. Poison chalice. And somebody said, Plato and all these other disciples, he came and said, 'You must appeal this, you must fight this, you must go to protest.' And Socrates said, 'But I don't know whether death is worse or better, so why should I challenge it if life is bringing it here for me?' In the same way, whatever experiences are coming, we don't know whether they are for the good or they are for the bad. So we just have to follow our heart. You have to just trust, you see. Conceptually we cannot know. So better to just allow the deeper intelligence to flow as it is. Like I could give you many reassuring answers like, 'It's your conditioning that's been blown out of you,' or 'Some chakras are opening up,' or 'Something is happening,' isn't it? But I don't want to do that because I don't want to provide more re...

Whatever experiences are coming, we don't know whether they are for the good or they are for the bad, so we just have to follow our heart. You have to just trust. You see, conceptually we cannot know, so better to just allow the deeper intelligence to flow as it is. Like, I could give you many reassuring answers, like it's your conditioning that's been blown out of you or some chakras are opening up or something is happening, isn't it? But I don't want to do that because I don't want to provide more reason. It's reason that gets us in trouble and it is trust that saves us. So I don't want to give you a reason; I want to just invite you to trust. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Good.

Okay, let me go to Paula. Hello, Father. Thank you so, so, so, so much for calling me. Thank you so much. Um, I feel this satsang has been very helpful, but I feel very lost and confused.

Yes. Are you saying that as good news or bad news?

I don't know. I don't know.

Another thing to explore: are we physically lost? No. We're sitting in our house or wherever you're sitting. You're comfortable; body is fine. What does lost actually mean? Lost actually means, in the mind's construct, that my mind is not clear about what is being said, what is the answer that I'm getting. You see, is he saying left, left, or is he saying right, right? You see, so I'm not saying either, and I'm not saying neither of those. You see, so this confusion is very good for me. I would rather have you open like this and not like conclusive—'Oh, this is what he's saying, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah'—because it's going to be all blah, blah anyway. So all that I'm doing in satsang is clearing up what is there, clearing up what is there in our conceptual constructs in our minds, you see. And if the construct that comes as a result of that is that, 'But you're not getting anything, you're so confused right now, you're so lost, this can't be it,' you see. So what I'm saying is be confused even about that. Can you become confused even about whether you're confused or not? You have to become more confused if you're not yet confused about that. Otherwise, we can sound very conclusive. 'Actually, I am so confused.' That doesn't sound confused; it sounds very clear. 'I'm confused'—that seems to be clarity, you know, about our confusion. But you have to become even more confused about that. Are you even confused? How do you know that you're confused?

It is a misunderstanding which we can create in satsang, which is the misunderstanding of the word clarity, you see. So confusion can seem like the opposite of clarity versus what I'm talking about. Clarity is independent of what is here. But in our mind, we can feel like, 'I have a set of concepts which don't seem to fit together well. Then I'm able to fit them together well, then that is clarity.' You see, there's awareness and then comes consciousness, then all of this is the play of consciousness. You see, all of that. If you feel like there's step one, two, three, I can define exactly what is happening, you feel like, 'I got some clarity.' But that is not the clarity that I'm talking about. The clarity that I'm talking about is independent of whether you have a framework or your framework is all going to pieces, you see. The clarity is for you to realize that there's a greater intelligence in your heart which is independent of all of that. The head can be as confused or apparently clear as it likes, but that has nothing to do with your clarity, which is a deeper clarity, an inner clarity.

So the mind could be jumping, throwing a tantrum, saying, 'But he said this, now he's saying that, it's so confusing.' You see, let all that play out. That is not the clarity that we are trying to get. I'm not trying to give you a streamlined set of concepts that you can say, 'First this and this, then like this.' You see, 'I've really understood today what he's saying.' That is probably the worst, when you really understand what I'm saying conceptually. When you really get me is when you let go of this and you're just there in the heart, where there's neither confusion nor clarity. That is what I mean by clarity, you see. Otherwise, the mind will always play this game. It will say, 'Ah, yes, yes, it's so clear now.' In this moment, it could be saying that to you also. 'It's so clear now, this is like this, this is how this works, all you have to do is let go.' You see, all of this. You can see all of this and then you say, 'Okay, I'm clear again.' And then two minutes later, 'How can I let go? I'm not the doer, but if I'm consciousness, then why do I feel this?' It's all over the place, no? So we are not trying to build a house of cards in your head because that will get blown away by the mind itself anytime. So just getting you to rely not on what is here and just let go of that, so that you're resting in your true intuitive intelligence independent of whether the mind is seemingly clear or confused.

Yes. When I hear many times is that there's this inner guidance. It's what happened here in satsang and it has guided my life. It has. But there are sometimes I don't know, it's not clear anymore and it comes this...

What if the point of satsang was so that you come and you're completely confused in your head? Suppose that that is what I was offering. Would you still come?

That's a tough question. That's the test of devotion, I guess. I do. There's no other answer to that.

Don't worry. Here, a big part of what I'm doing is trying to confuse you and show you that you have a greater intelligence than that which can be clear or confused. When you talked about the inner guidance, is that ever confused? It may confuse your mind. It may say, 'Why isn't it saying something?' or 'What, I'm supposed to go to Timbuktu? Where? What?' You see, that may confuse us, like confuse the mind, but that is never confused.

So the thing is that I listen to that voice and I go with that voice and yeah, that's the confusion. And the outcome doesn't happen according to what we may have wanted sometimes, so that can also cause some confusion.

But like I said already, if we go to intuition with preconceived ideas of what the outcome should be, or at least that, 'Oh, I should have more love, peace, or joy,' or any of these ideas, then many times it doesn't turn up like that because that may not be the most auspicious at this moment. At this moment, you may need a trial by fire. You may need to work on burning charcoal or something to transcend that which is false. So we can trust our intuition to sometimes take care of us like a baby and sometimes throw us in the deep end of the swimming pool expecting us to swim.

Okay. So I just want to... I like this actually. I like this and you're so confused. It's like I want... what did I want? Do I want to just surrender it? No, I'm not... wow. It's a step back from all that conceptual conclusiveness, you know, where we are so like, 'Yeah, this is what I want, this is what I want.' I don't know what's happening. You see, I'm so confused, but am I confused? I'm even confused about that. I don't know.

As you start enjoying the taste of this, the spaciousness of not needing to be conceptually certain, then you wouldn't want to go back to that limited, 'Only like this, it has to be like this' kind of stuff. This is what happens when you get a little more confused. You start off a little confused, but you get a little more confused. Do you want to be certain again?

I don't know. I'm certain about that. It's gone.

How can I be happy right now? I'm actually quite upset. Are you sure?

No.

But he's not solving anything. This can't be it. I feel I need to say it. Not sure about that, are you? He's starting to see how made up it all is. Are you starting to see how made up all of it is? You know, all our conclusions, our ideas. 'I only want this, I wanted to say this, and I wanted to do that.' It's all made up. It's a fairy tale. Don't move towards clarity now; move towards more confusion. So be quiet. Don't represent this in any way. Be loud or be quiet; neither of them. Throw both of them. Okay? You see, the question is what to do. What do I do then? So what do I do? Don't know what to do. We have never known anyway. Very good. Thank you so much.

We come into spirituality expecting to get the master concept, and we feel like once I have mastered all the master concepts about Brahman, about the manifest, about the unmanifest, about doership and duality and desire and all the things, and once we have understood all of that, then we are truly going to be free, you see. Then we will attain mastery. But actually, true spirituality is a letting go of everything that we came certain about and not becoming certain about anything new now—not conceptually, at least.

I've taken this example sometimes of intermittent fasting. A few years ago, we went to Sahaja and Guruji was trying intermittent fasting. So first Garima, my wife, learned from him. But then one time, I didn't know it was not a popular thing then, so at least not in India. So now it's everywhere. But so one day he sent a message to Garima saying, 'Actually, they call this what we've been doing intermittent fasting, and you can look it up.' So I don't know if Garima looked it up, but I went to Google and looked up intermittent fasting. So I said, 'This sounds pretty good actually. I'm gonna try for this body. We're gonna see if you can do intermittent fasting.'

So what happens in intermittent fasting, many of you would have tried it, is that first day there's some like headaches and just a general feeling of the body not being so comfortable. That's because what happens is it got so used to feeding on the food which is available in the stomach that it forgot that it has these generators—you see, this simplistic explanation, not a scientific one. So it forgot that it has these preserves of the fat and sugars in the body that it can use, and it doesn't have to constantly look for food in the stomach. So what happens the same way is that when you become conceptually empty, you see, initially it can just feel a bit strange, like, 'What am I supposed to chew on? Is it this? Is it good? Is it bad? Am I supposed to just be quiet? Am I supposed to do this practice? Am I whatever?' The offerings will be coming from the mind and the Master saying, 'No, no, no.' So is it no, no to everything? No. So nothing. It leaves us empty of that, and for a while it can seem wobbly and strange and lost.

But then what happens is as we let go of this stomach, which is our mind, then we realize that we have an infinitely greater reserve, which is our intuitive insight, the deeper intelligence which is running all of life, which is at the core of your very being. So we learn how to then fly like a bird without needing to know, 'This is left flapping, right flapping.' You see, which direction is this? No. A bird doesn't know any of that, and yet most beautifully it can migrate to the most distant countries without any compass. How does it know? It could be the first year in a bird's life and it does it alone sometimes without a flock. It just goes. What is that intelligence which tells it? That is what we've been missing out on because we become so reliant on this conceptual knowledge.

So coming to satsang is an introduction to your heart, you see, your heart intelligence, your intuitive insight, and letting go of this. But for a while, like intermittent fasting, it can seem a bit strange. So what is he actually saying then? Are you saying nothing? No, not even nothing. It's something that the intellect cannot fathom, and it can seem very... the position the mind takes on then is that of the frustrated seeker, like, 'I'm so frustrated. I thought it's like this. You said in last satsang it's like this, but today you're saying just the opposite. What's going on?' But the Master is not going to serve your intellect; it's only going to chop it off. It's going to chop it off sometimes like that, sometimes slowly, slowly, but ultimately your intellect cannot survive. Okay. Thank you. I love you so much. Okay, who haven't I heard from in a while?

The position the mind takes on then is that of the frustrated seeker, like 'I'm so frustrated. I thought it's like this. You said in last satsang it's like this, but today you're saying just the opposite. What's going on?' But the master is not going to serve your intellect; it's only going to chop it off. It's going to chop it off sometimes like that, sometimes slowly, slowly, but ultimately your intellect cannot survive. Okay, thank you. I love you so much. Okay, who haven't I heard from in a while? I don't even know that I can make the right conclusions based on that because I could have spoken to you last week, but I may feel like we have not spoken for a long time. Let me speak to Peter.

Hello. Actually, it has been some months that we have been talking. The last time, um, maybe others won't get upset with me then? No, not for sure about these things, you know. And I'm not used to so many hands, actually, to be honest. I'm just getting used to this, so many people with questions. So let's see, let's see. Maybe I can add some more to the confusion topic. A couple of days ago, I was looking on the Facebook page and I found a report from Dale. I don't know if you read it. And it's somehow related to me because he says—in my words, what he said was—there are moments where he's just aware of his thoughts, he's just aware of what he's doing, he's aware of his perceptions, and then suddenly he finds himself completely absorbed in some activity. And that related somehow to me because in activities, it's like sometimes there comes a moment and I say to myself, 'Oh, I'm just... there's just no me. There's no awareness, there's nothing, there's just this activity,' and I'm completely absorbed in it. And then there are also moments where I can see, 'Okay, I'm aware of what's going on here. I'm aware of those perceptions. I'm aware even of this being, of this existence.' But you know, this changes somehow. And it's typical in activities, I think, that you're completely lost sometimes. You're completely lost in them. There's just this activity, no more awareness of it, and suddenly you say, 'Oh, I wasn't aware.' And this is similarly a paradox.

Okay, let me see if we can talk about this together. And as you're saying this, I remembered our last conversation, which is also very beautiful. So thank you for that conversation; it was very helpful to many, I heard afterwards. So there is a bit of level confusion somewhere. Let's just explore together and see if we can come to that. So attention, you see, in the waking state there's always attention. And attention can be one-pointed; attention can be diffused. A thought, there's some other sound coming from there, so it can seem like it's not so one-pointed, you see. But that which is aware of attention, can you try and change the state of that in any way? Like, okay, let me help you with that. For example, you say that there are times where there's just activity: 'I'm just working on the computer or doing some activity, whatever that activity may be,' you see. But you are aware of that now?

Yes, but the thing is, it feels like it all falls into one. It feels like I'm not... there's no awareness, there's not even me, there's just this activity.

Yeah, and there's no more doer?

Yes, there's no doer, there's no me even. That's just cycling or some work in the garden or something like this.

So is it the cycling that recognizes there's just cycling? No, it must be awareness. So, a simply made point, but it's worth contemplating, you see. So if I say to you, 'Peter, I feel you're just making up this stuff,' you know, you say, 'No, no, Ananta, what do you mean? I saw when I was cycling there was only cycling. I was aware of that. That's why I'm telling you. Why would I make this stuff up?' You see? So you have to have been there—not as 'me,' Peter, not as the body-mind contraption that we take ourselves to be, but that which is aware even of the absence of the 'me' idea or the absence of whatever, or the presence or whatever. That awareness does not come and go. That's why we can authoritatively say that there are times, I promise you, there are times where there is just activity. And I say, 'But were you there to promise me that?' You say, 'Yes,' you see. So there must have been you and the perception of the activity.

Sometimes we come into this kind of part of the play where we are so engrossed in this activity. In fact, some teachers would encourage that, like the Buddhists would say this is mindfulness because when you're walking, you're only walking, you see. When you're chopping vegetables, you're only chopping vegetables. It's a kind of a spiritual practice because you're right in that there is no 'me.' There is no 'me,' but you cannot say that even 'I' was not there in my reality, because otherwise who is aware of these perceptions? You see? So freedom is not to come to a particular state of attention being one-pointed always. And that may seem beautiful at times when attention seems to be so apparent on just one object and nothing else is distracting, you see. But that's not what it is. Sometimes attention can be diffused; sometimes attention can be focused. But you as awareness remain unchanged throughout those changes, you see.

So when I ask you, 'Are you aware now?' Yes. That which you discover to be able to confirm that—which is not a perception and it is not a concept—that can never change, you see. That is never not there, because then who would be there to say it is not there, 'I am not there'? The funny thing is...

I was, before I came to Advaita, I was about ten years in Zen, and it relates a little bit to the Buddhist-Advaita thing we talked about before. And in Zen you were always told, 'It's just this, just this, just this. You are just this.' And there was... we didn't talk about awareness.

Well, I've looked into Zen a bit and I've seen that Zen itself has hundreds of schools, just like Vedanta does. So there are some schools which are more like that, some schools which can focus on 'just this' or even 'what is this?' I don't know if that is the branch of Zen, like Korean Zen I heard is just meditating on a question like 'What is this?' You know, there are many, many, many varieties of this. But the attempt in all schools of spirituality is to get you to have that deeper insight about yourself without relying on the limited knowledge. Whether you call it the unborn or you call it 'what is' business, whatever term we use is to come to a true insight about what we are, you see. And it's true that the word awareness is not always helpful because many times we can come into some sort of an image-making thing. The mind offers some imagery of some dark empty space and it says, 'Here, this is your awareness,' you see. And then we feel like all my attempt has to be, no matter what is happening, I have to stay in that dark empty space. Ah, I find it, okay, you see. But that is not awareness. You have to find what is aware even of that perception of darkness, you see.

The mind offers up these paintings and images which we feel like, 'Oh, that is awareness,' but it is not. Awareness is ungraspable through any concept or through any visualization, and yet it is so apparent. Am I aware now? Yes. How do I know that? I do not know it through any traditional means. I do not know it through any traditional means at all. Did it help to clarify? Yes. Like many will say at times, 'In sleep I am not there, like there is no awareness, I am not there.' So I say, 'How do you know that?' You see? Or if I'm being provocative, I'll say, 'Are you making that up?' And that really gets... 'No, no, I'm telling you the truth.' But how do you know? 'I was there to see that there was nothing, even I was not there.' You see what I'm saying? Who witnesses that even 'I' was not there? And who witnesses even the complete absorption in some activity? There must be a witness. So use that inferential conclusion to be rid of the notion of its absence, but you can always rely on your insight to confirm its truth to you instead of having to use your reasoning. You see what I'm saying? So I'm saying that we offer up concepts in satsang to clean up whatever concepts there may be, but we don't really need to rely on the concepts from satsang to check on it for ourselves.

Yes, thank you. Very good. One question is, there are some radical non-duality teachers—all non-duality is pretty radical—who just say that this is all there is, there is no awareness and there is no consciousness.

It's the same thing like Nagarjuna versus the Vedantic swamis usually. It doesn't matter what the expression is using to clear us up, you see. So I don't want to get into the names specifically because then that can lead to some sort of as if I'm giving them a certificate of whether they've really had a true insight or not, you see. I don't play any of those kind of games. I'm just saying that if you're listening to an expression and you find yourself open and empty of conceptual notions, then that is satsang. It could be with a little child, it could be with a false master, it could be with anybody, it could be with your partner. It doesn't really matter, you see. If you're listening to satsang and they're saying, 'This, this is all there is,' and in your mind you're just filling up 'this, this, this is all there is,' then it is false satsang. It could be with the truest master. So it is more about how it is received than how their voice is. So grace has to work in that way somehow.

Otherwise many can hear that it's all this talk of awareness and consciousness and nonsense. Many times we say that there's no awareness, there's no consciousness, and other times we say all that you are is awareness, you see. What is true? Neither. Like you said, the fifth. But don't fill your head up with 'this, this.' It's the same as saying 'awareness.' No, then what's the big difference? What is your intuitive insight saying? What's your heart saying? When your head is empty, are you lost? That's the main point. Okay, let's quickly, quickly go now with everyone. Let's go to Anka and Bram. Hello, my dears. If you want to add some words to the silence, you're open. If you want to leave it as beautiful silence, that is fine too. Whatever feels true.

I don't know anything further. Absolutely. Ah, love you so much. I love you too. All right, so much. Very good, very good, very good.

Okay, let's hear from those who've already come up. If you could put your hands down. Let's hear from Shivoham. Hello, hello, hello, Father.

I don't know. I don't know what to say. Um, yeah, your hand's been up for quite a while. I'm presuming that the original question would have been answered by now with something else, or it's all clear. Clear, not clear in terms of clarity. Well, I suppose I wanted to say hello first of all, and I love you. Yeah, what I'm seeing is that everything that is coming, any question, it's just somehow is nothing.

Yes, you don't have to conclude what it is. Okay, let me ask a question. Suppose I say to you, Shivoham, can you tell me the true nature of a rose? Why rose? Rose sounds very romantic. Can you say the true nature of this cushion pillow? Can you tell me? Can you tell me the true nature of this chocolate? We cannot know. We cannot know, you see, at least in our heads. And all our attempts to understand life, you see, to understand freedom, enlightenment—all our attempts, when they are conceptual, they seem to be this game of, like we were telling Paula earlier, the apparent game of coming to some conceptual clarity then losing it again because life does not conform to those ideas, however high-sounding the ideas may be. So does that mean that we are lost? Actually, it is not true that we are lost.

We cannot know, you see, at least in our heads and all our attempts to understand life, you see. To understand freedom, enlightenment—all our attempts, when they are conceptual, they seem to be this game of, like we were telling Paula earlier, the apparent game of coming to some conceptual clarity then losing it again because life does not conform to those ideas, however high-sounding the ideas may be. So does that mean that we are lost? Actually, it is not true that we are lost, actually. And when we are not so attached to our ideas about how things are and what things should be, then that's quite freeing, actually.

Like, what is the attempt to ask a question and get an answer, you see? What is that attempt? Can we really look at the subtext of even this construct of the question and answer format? You see, mostly what happens is we feel like, 'Uh, I'm not so clear about something, you see. I feel like I'm not the doer, but there are times where I have to do certain things,' these kind of things. So there's an intellectual inconsistency which you feel like somebody will come and be able to answer. And the Master says, 'Um, all that happens is the will of consciousness.' And because you are conscious, so you feel like, 'Okay, now I got them sorted.' But what happens is life is too broad and something else will start buzzing in our heads and say, 'But what about this then? But why are there people suffering? If all is the will of consciousness, how can consciousness be so mean?' You see, all this kind of... then if you... 'Oh, but all the contrast makes it the taste,' you see. This, all that's why they sugar... they feel like, 'Okay, okay, something.' Then some other... so there's no end to that game is what I'm saying. There's no end to that game.

The only end to this game is to see that here, what I've really taken to be the truth in my head, it's just been a bundle of concepts. And there's a fear now: 'If I let go of my favorite concepts, then what will I be left with? Will I stop seeking God? I spent my whole life now, so many years, trying to find God. Now saying just be empty, you see? What if I lose the seeker identity as well? Then what will I do?' It can be these kind of questions, really. But really to come to see this: that an answer, if it is taken just intellectually or conceptually, will just add to a bundle of knowledge, isn't it? So the knowledge which is the attempt is to provide that in satsang which cleans us up, not builds up a conceptual house. And I want you to try out being open and empty and see if it is true that you are lost. Don't be conclusive about anything and see if existence just falls apart or something. And then you will see that existence is just so independent of what I thought it was. God doesn't conform to any conceptual idea that I have. And then we could... okay, I haven't heard from Radheshyam. Let me go to him.

Namaste. All my love, all my blessings. Thank you.

Okay, let me speak to Satyam. Yes, thank you. Not so clear, my dear audio. Can you try again? Now it's better. It's better, yes.

Thank you so much. You're welcome. Um, there's been this question coming up, and it's quite simple, but what's ego?

Yes, yes. Over the years I may have answered this in various different ways. Right now, what seems to be coming up is the idea of a limitation is ego, or the idea of any sort of conceptual box, you see, that defines something is ego.

But is it part of consciousness or...

Yes, of course, my dear. All ideas are part of consciousness. All ideas are part of consciousness. Everything that shows up is part of consciousness. And that's why in satsang we often say that—because I get this question often—'What are you then speaking to?' or 'Why are you then saying the mind is not telling the truth? Is not the mind also consciousness?' You see, I get this kind of question and it's a fair question that we can have. But in the play of consciousness, it plays with all color, shapes, sizes. And one part of the play is for consciousness itself to use its own instrument called the mind to convince itself that it is limited, it is just a body-mind, that it has desire. You know, all there is can want something is a big joke, actually. But consciousness plays that way as if it is true for itself, you see.

And then, like, nobody likes—or very few people, crazy people like me—like movies with abrupt endings. Most people want the story to be completely played out properly, you see. So then consciousness also plays out like this in the way of a spiritual seeker saying, 'I'm so deluded, I'm tired of this lie of individuality, I want to find the ultimate reality of the Self.' Then it juices out those scenes as well and creates satsang environments for itself, that it's always been consciousness playing with itself, you see. Consciousness speaking, consciousness hearing, all of this game, you see.

And somebody then can say, 'But why does it do that then?' you see. And like we've been saying, there is no real why. But in India, it's very democratic, no? India. So it offers various answers. In our spirituality we'll say, 'Oh, it's a play.' Some will say it is so that it can experience itself in a manifest way. Some will say because even consciousness loves to evolve and it sharpens itself or evolves in some way. Then it can say only in consciousness, only in the manifest, can it experience love, love itself objectively. So all these answers are available to us. And my favorite answer, if you push me for an answer, is that it's all a little play, you see. But I have to say that even that is not true because the mind of consciousness—the why consciousness does what it does—is not understandable to a limited instrument called the mind, you see. That doesn't mean it's not consciousness. It is just like your toenail cannot speak for you; in the same way, your mind cannot understand its own source. But there is a deeper insight which we call the heart colloquially sometimes, which is your intuitive insight or your God presence or Satguru presence where it is completely apparent what it is. So that's some insight into this apparent game that is going on here.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome. So welcome. Okay, good, good, good. Let's go to Prabhas. I haven't heard from Prabhas in a while.

Hello, hello again. This was absolutely not planned. I'm sorry for putting up my hands so late and I was late today and then I opened the laptop. I felt Guruji's embrace so strong and then this conflict came up because, you know, yesterday was my 35th... yesterday was whose birthday? My... I'm 35 years old, you know, so 35. And there is some... yesterday was a meeting with the sangha in Germany and I said they are so devoted, they just have this one master, but I love Osho and I also feel very much attracted to you and Mooji. I feel his embrace, I fall in love with him. And so is the confusion I also have. And I left him after a while, we separated, and I dropped this Darshita and so there's this somehow is a confusion or it is easy for my mind to make a confusion out of it. Yeah, then I think I like to have a new name and I like to become finally, you know, to have it clear where do I belong. Yeah, and what name should I take or should I anytime from you, from Mooji? I don't know, you know, this thing.

Yeah, so if you heard—I don't know when you joined in this satsang—but my advice today is to become more confused, not less confused.

Yeah, I calm down already doing something totally and I got the answer somehow but I thought I put it out.

The only way out of confusion is to get more confused because often I get this kind of thing about, 'Okay, I don't know.' Like, I have asked this question also to many masters in the past because I did my fair amount of spiritual going from one place to another. So what I would answer that boy if he had this question now is to say that anything, any voice which makes you open and empty truly—be truly open and empty, and empty of specialness, empty of ego, empty of conceptual ideas about itself—just that voice is the Guru, whichever mouth it may be speaking through is not so important. And in terms of where to go, who to attend with, all of that, become more confused about that.

It was a surprise for me but I feel it's right to be here. But is it possible? It feels so many years with this one master is... and so you know, you're so totally with him and then to also be completely with Mooji, is it possible to...

The Master is your own divine presence, my dear. Whatever form needs to show up in front of you, and if it makes you open and empty and there's a natural feeling of trust and devotion in your heart about that master, you can trust that voice. And life does not follow these principles of 'it has to be only like that.' If I was 35 years there, then he has to be my lifetime thing—it can't be like this because life is not just 35 years or 50 years or 100 years. It's not even just a million years, you see. Life is much, much beyond our notions of time. So you can trust life in terms of what is showing up and it's only auspiciousness that can come to you if you follow Guruji. Nothing untoward will ever happen. And names, don't worry about name so much. It's all fine. And if it changes a few times in this life, that's good. It's not bad. Okay, let's hear from Bibi.

Hey. It seems like a... when there is a confusion or fear or something because I like... I have a partner or something that I left before, yeah, because he kind of tell me that I have to choose between the family and Guruji. So I left him and now again I am with him and so I left his house and I'm in a hotel now, working in a hotel. They give me a shelter. And now his mother, his family are going to buy this autumn and he wants to marry me, something, and he wants I have a child with him or something. She tell me very often every day like this and I have fear because I don't want to leave satsang or you know...

Does he force you to leave satsang even now? What earlier in the relationship he forced you to make a choice and you left and chose Guruji. Now when he asks you to marry him or be with him, he still tells you to make a choice?

No, he's more open now. Yes, let's say like this, that I have this fear like getting lost in this thing and live because also I saw the person, I see the person like I'm not the person more of them and it's... I feel like when Guruji said that sometimes a partner comes to make, you know... and I don't know because I have also jealousy and all these things and I don't want to be a person or this person or something. I don't know. So much fear comes also. I try to be more detached from the person that I can, but I also have trust in everything that is happening and I don't know. I just want to be free and I feel also that if I have to leave everything, yeah, I don't know. I don't want to exchange freedom for anything. And also it's not bad, it's like the life is allowing also to be so I don't know. I maybe I just want something to hurt.

All my love is with you, all my blessings are with you. And I know in my heart that Guruji's grace will unfold in the best way for all of you. May it be so and may it be seen to be so. So all this that is there, don't be under any sort of mental pressure that you have to decide or not decide or something. Just follow your heart moment to moment and allow Guruji to move you. Allow Guruji to move you however he has to move you. Okay? Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, we have some left. Let's go to Jaida, Nico, and Nepal.

Hello Father. Um, I cannot see you now. Oh, I have to speak and then it will come. Yeah, yeah. Sorry Father, I'm not so comfortable. A lot of noise coming from neighborhoods but let's see if it comes. I will note because not so good voices. What's this? How the voices are coming to you?

No, I don't hear anything.

You don't hear because yet my attention...

Wherever he has to move you, okay. Yeah, I'm sorry. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much. Okay, we have some left. Let's go to Jaida, Nico, and Nepal.

Hello, Father. Um, I cannot see you now. Oh, I have to speak and then it will come. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, Father, I'm not so comfortable. A lot of noise coming from neighborhoods, but let's see if it comes. I will note because not so good voices. What's this? How the voices are coming to you?

No, I don't hear anything.

You don't hear because yet my attention is like out there and try to shut them up. No, it's okay. I don't care if it doesn't come, then it's okay and I'm good. Um, I don't know actually what to say or bring. There is a lot of thing actually and it's like every person who speaks today, just so I could relate so much in my heart and as if they just offer on behalf of my heart also. And yeah, what I can say also is like this confusion thing because I feel also like there is so much to going to head and try to not figure out, but I don't know. Yeah, only to go to mind and no answer or nothing at all, you know? It's like maybe the first time—not first time—yeah, just nothing out there. And at the same time, yes, there is so much confusion, but I cannot say that I'm confused at all. Yes, this is the place of confusion, but at the same time there's incredible like ease and it's like I'm being merged in some kind of, you know, surrender. And it's not even I do this, it's like just happened, you know? And yeah, it's like this. And at the same time, after I return from my trip, it's just incredible. I don't know how, I don't know what words can express this. Or yeah, there is still desires and—Father, voices are coming now?

No, no.

Okay, sorry about this, but really just weird noises, that's why I try to save you. And yeah, there is like an expectation and desire about life and I opened this to you before. And it's actually it's like I have projections and I know really, Father, just life has shown me and not just shown me, proven me that it's like everything which is taking place is just beyond my imagination. And everything which is happening, which was happening, is just—whether they are beautiful or not—maybe I cannot say this is beautiful, but all is just, yeah, you know what it is. And yeah, it's like there is no distinction anymore, you know, like dream life or what I expect. And of course I know that what I expect, it cannot be good for me. Just this kind of things playing here. And yeah, because there is still—they still have shards, you know, and resistance is still playing. And one thing actually what I want to share with that, when I was in Zymar, Guruji told me something and it was: relax and let my love hold you. And of course it was so, and it is though yet, Father, since I know myself there is always unrelaxation in this body and every—yeah, it's just in my life also. And I feel it just too much contraction. It's cold, yeah. And first time in my life, in that trip which I went, it's like I hear the word of Guruji. I remember it like this, this relaxed part, and it's like his word is like wakes within and really for the first time in my life I experienced a relaxation, you know? Yet when I came back to the familia again, this old unrelaxation is still here. And yeah, it's like it's in the body and I don't know, like nothing works, you know? Just this is the environment and I don't know. There's a really wish within me, you know, after—like I don't want to live in this state anymore.

No, okay. That wish is already true, okay? So besides the contraction feeling, what else is there?

Okay, the contraction itself is not problem, but my resistance and—

Besides contraction and your resistance, what else is there?

Father, I don't want to leave this thing. I don't want—

Now you don't want to leave it?

I don't want to come with you now. I don't want to—

But you had your hand up. Don't take me? But it's not that I don't want to come with you, but you want to report but you don't want to come?

No, no, no. This is the thing about desire, Father. Desire is something like this.

What will be taken away from you?

What will be taken away from me?

Yeah. You will feel like you'll become a desireless robot or some—is that the idea or what?

No, um, desire is not apart from me now. I am just so much identified with the desire and I turn into this desire itself. I'm a desire now. I play with it and that's why it's the play. It's like itself, like I don't want to leave that realm, you know? And this whole play is just—yeah, I have to leave this to you. And before also I leave it to you, but it's still here. But really now I want to leave it to you. Now I can come with you.

Because our mind's concepts about what is true about us is not our true situation. Right now you are completely free. There is no desire. You need a minute to think about what desire you have—or not a minute, but a moment at least. You are too big, you're too broad in your reality to be just a desire. A desire or a doer, all these are just ideas from the mind. But if you want something in our narrative, you see, then all of them will seem very true. If you want something like a glorious ending, or if you want some conclusion, or if you want some ending to the story, you see, then all these will seem true. Otherwise, to come with me is the simplest because you're already like that.

Yes, Father. Am I living the experience of this also with you? But I don't know, I just want a change in my life too. I believe it and I don't want it because you wanted just one thing. Suppose you wanted only one thing, what would that be?

Of course you.

Yeah, of course you. Yeah, then I'm there. Your presence is always there. But okay, what is duality knocking?

But there's duality knocking.

Yeah, if you open the door it will present you a dual idea. If you want the truth, if you want the Guru, then your own divine presence is always there. Another just obviously a representation of that. But once you want that, you see, you cannot want anything else truly. Everything else has to be according to what the divine presence wants.

Yes, and I'm so happy, Father, because I also pray like this, you know? Because I'm like a little bit—I don't know if it is the right word—but now the child, it's like I always cry for God and at the feet of God and at the same time I want this and it's like I force it to.

And road is very narrow, you see? This road is very narrow. Either God can walk on it or you can.

Yeah, Father. Yes, I remember now what I was saying. Oh, either God can work on it or you can. No, I was saying also—no, I'm not—yeah, even though I want something, I ask for something and actually I cry a lot too because of this loudness. Yet my prayer is always like this, you know? Even though I beg for you and I ask something, just please do what you want, you know? Just don't fulfill my projections and this. And so he does and it's really he gives me the most, most, most, most enjoyable life too also. Yet I don't know what it is. I don't know why I still things are like this, but they are coming up and—

Yeah, you'll be fine.

And still they are here and after the such time they will continue to play.

Yeah, either they can be God or you. So let God play with them, Father. And maybe they are not—I don't know—maybe they are true too.

May it be to do what? Maybe they are also true? Yes, but it depends on whether you're a giraffe or a rabbit. Yeah, so you know what I mean. So it could be a true desire for a giraffe, but do you know that you are a giraffe? May want to eat from the tallest tree, you see? Suppose you get this thought saying, 'I want to eat from the tallest tree because I want to be the best giraffe,' you see? Then I would ask you: but who are you? So for the desire to be valid or not, first we have to conclude on who you are, isn't it? You see? So I can tell you if the desire is true or not for you, but it depends on who you are. If you're a cat, you want a mouse. If you're a mouse, you want to run from the cat. If you're a giraffe, you want leaves. If you're a tiger, you want meat. You see, it's all different, different thing. So all desires can be true for them depending on who they are. So which desire is true for you depends on who you are. So that has to be found out first, isn't it, before we can explore whether the desire is true or not? If you're truly human, then human desires are true for you. If you are God, then God desires are true for you. If you are awareness, awareness is true for you. But who are you?

Like all of them. All of them and none of them. All of them and beyond all of them.

If you're all of everything, then all there is cannot have a desire, no? Because you're already there. All there is.

Okay, Father. Now I see that my desires become just so bigger than they are because it's like the idea, you know, like I should not have desire anything about this thing by the mind field. Yet there is, and there is this like kind of suppression like, 'I shouldn't want this, it's not good for your satsang, why you desire for this, why you want this.' But me, actually, they are maybe just innocent, they are just appearing, maybe also they are maybe just will go. But because of these things, it's like there's a better start.

By the way, I've never said that you must not want this or you must not want that. But really what I'm saying is that before you can conclude—again, you're looking at the desired side and the validity or the invalidity of them. I am asking: but before you can confirm the validity of a desire, you have to confirm who you are. Yeah, I want to—do you want to spend your whole life—suppose you are a pigeon, but you are actually chasing your eagle's desires? You want to spend your whole pigeon life chasing an eagle's desires? No. So first you have to confirm whether you are a pigeon or an eagle. That's what all of satsang is for, because that is the basic fundamental before we can say anything else. 'I want this, I need this, I don't want this, I want to go there, I don't want to go there.' You have to first confirm who is the protagonist of that, who is the central character, you see? So that's the only thing I say. I don't say you have to give up this desire, you don't want, you shouldn't want this, you shouldn't want that. All I'm saying is that you have to just confirm and make sure that it is valid for you, for what you truly are. I don't want you looking back later saying, 'Oh, I was a pigeon, but I told him that I have an eagle desire and he didn't even stop me.' So I feel like if you contemplate—and there are enough satsang highlights and things in terms of what you really are—before you can confirm what you want, that will be helpful. Otherwise, in a way, we can fall into the same trap. The people who say you should not do this, you should not do this, they take you to be something and they say you should not. And you take yourself to be the same thing and say, 'I should.' It's okay to do that, but you're reinforcing their idea of what you are. I am asking: can we just look? Can you just look and see what is it that you are truly, and then we can figure out the shoulds and should-nots? Sometimes people ask me, 'So why is it so important that I find out who I am?' You see? And I see all of this that you are doing for someone, you have to at least make sure you are that, no? We run on this treadmill in life saying, 'I want this, I want life to have these states, I want this kind of relationships, I want this kind of family, I want this kind of master, I want this type of spirituality.' All of that. And suppose the one that is running on the treadmill is not the one you think you are? So at least I would, to all of you, to remind you of that and to get you to check. And then if you confirm and say, 'But I am this pigeon, therefore I want to eat these grains,' say, 'Yes, it's fine because you are a pigeon.'

Father, may I add something? In one of our last conversation, I also report you that there is so much like naturality, spontaneous existence is—

And this type of spirituality, all of that, and suppose the one that is running on the treadmill is not the one you think you are. So at least I would like to remind all of you of that and to get you to check. And then if you confirm and say, 'But I am this pigeon, therefore I want to eat these grains,' I say yes, it's fine, because you are a pigeon.

Father, may I add something? In one of our last conversations, I also reported to you that there is so much like naturality, spontaneous existence is being experienced here. So it's like something felt like this is—I mean, not in the world—like this is it. But something feels like, you know, because the dynamic existence is just happening just by itself and everything just unfolds by itself.

Yeah, yeah. It's fine, it's fine. Everything that is unfolding is always unfolding spontaneously anyway. It's a good thing that that means your mind is not putting everything into a linear narrative, so it's fine.

But it seems like, it seems like this natural existence is not exactly what you are offering us by saying find out who you are.

Yes, because suppose that giraffe's natural existence is different from pigeon's natural existence. It's important to confirm. Suppose you felt like natural existence is to crawl on the ground because you're a worm, you see? And I say, 'But are you really a worm?' You say, 'Get away from me, just tell me whether crawling on the ground is natural existence or not.' It depends on what you are.

I'm so thankful for this clarification. Good, good, good. My family is calling me now. Thank you so much, Father, for everything. And may I add one more thing? And okay, it's not so important. Just thank you is the most important.

Thank you all so much for being in satsang today. Guruji.