Truth Means That Which is Not Coming and Going - 1st February 2016

Now the fourth confusion also sometimes can be that we confuse what is the—what I call the phenomenon—would seem to be the events. See, the phenomenal perceiving is only arising in the presence of 'I am' through the senses, the world. So the world uses awareness in this way: 'I'm aware of this glass, I'm aware of this concept.' That which is phenomenally perceived, obviously that is subject to the presence of being, so that is coming and going. But who knows of, or who is aware that phenomenal perceiving is happening? That is the awareness that we are talking about, not the phenomenal perceiving in itself. So sometimes if you use awareness in that sense of phenomenal perceiving, then of course we can say, 'Yes, even awareness is coming and going and it belongs to my being.'

The easiest way to unravel all of this for us as Satsang students is to be clear with our direct experience. Use whatever pointers are available to us in Satsang and check for ourselves: Is this directly what is experienced here? The entire point of the spiritual practice and self-inquiry is just to come to this direct experience of what we are. So what is our direct experience? Sleep is a direct experience. We don't have to learn about sleeping in a school, that 'this is how you sleep, this is what happens.' It's a very natural dissolution of the sense of being. And waking up is also direct experience. Not conceptually, there was a sense of being. This awareness was aware of itself. Then there is now, made up of awareness itself, the sense of being. With the birth of this sense of being, the entire circus starts. So much comes to life instantly. Its whole playing with all of its energies—metaphysical, physical—and it's all alluring in a way.

Very quickly we get involved with it. Very quickly we get involved with the identity of being the person and the body. But in Satsang and self-inquiry, we slow it down and we look. So what is happening here? Being came to be. What happened along with the birth of being? We noticed that there are also the forces of attention, of belief. There are these energies called thoughts, and the entire energetic creation that we call the world is present with all the forces of light, sound, gravity, electricity, all of this. But what happened to that awareness which is just aware of itself? Nothing happened to this awareness. It did not become an object within this phenomenal plane. All of this objectivity, phenomenology, is within it, but truth itself did not stop being aware. It remained untouched and unknown. This is the 'I' that is ever-present.

And just the reverse of this happens when we go to sleep. In a scripture it is said, just like the legs of the turtle, this world rolls back into itself. All of this sleep is coming, all of this rolls into being, and then being dissolves into that which it was always made up of, which is awareness itself. That is all that is going on. Everything else, if you say that there is something other than this, to me it seems to be just imagination, because for my direct experience, this is what we can speak.

Now what happens is, with the presence of being, then there can be this impulse towards conceptual understanding. Because of this realm of phenomenology, we use to understand using our mind conceptually. But Satsang needs to unravel that sort of understanding—that understanding which is unreliable. Any concept is not changing based on the concept that we have. The seeming life of the person changes with the concept that they carry. It seems to change like that. So that is why all this positive thinking and thinking positive, self-help and all that exists. 'Think happy thoughts.' Because the concepts that you carry seem to affect the person identity. What we would be saying here is that whether you have the most terrible thoughts or the best thoughts, the truth of what you are is not changing. So whatever conceptual understanding we might have ultimately actually does not matter.

Therefore, we must stop fighting about any conceptual understanding. 'Oh, his understanding is like this, his or her understanding is this, this is not compliant with my understanding.' Forget it. It's never about any conceptual understanding. Then the space that comes to look together only is from that sense of 'this is the way that I see it' and there seems to be somehow a disconnect with the way another sees it. Then that is a beautiful contemplation that we can have together, and it is something that I am always up for to utilize the surface which is appearing in the presence of being.

My mind is the merry-go-round. In these circles it says, 'I'll take you there, the final destination.' The merry-go-round! The buyer ticket says, 'Become a better person now, become like this, become like that.' Buy that ticket, you jump on the merry-go-round and it seems to be moving. So initially it can seem like we're making some progress, and then it starts turning back. Yes, turning around. You feel, 'No, no, no, I'm losing it. That way I was much better, a better person.' Yeah, and then it starts going back again, forward. So this merry-go-round, we realize that after a long time you started, you're just at the starting point. Then you say, 'I come to Satsang and I am going to get off this merry-go-round. I've seen this merry-go-round is not taking me anywhere. I'm going to get off.' So yeah, 'I'm not going to buy the mind ticket.' Then it comes back with another ticket: 'This is now, this is super now, you see? I'm going to take you to the super enlightened state.' Oh!