Verifying Our Truth in Direct Experience - 28th November 2016

Ananta Ji, could you speak more about the verifiable part? How do we verify what we are seeing and what we are now is the true place?

This is very good. So in all the satsangs we hear that we are this Atma, your awareness, we are Brahman—whatever terms you want to use. It is the truth, but it just remains as mere words and concepts unless it becomes our direct experience. So when we say self-discovery, the discovery of the truth, it cannot mean that I picked up this very nice concept. It must become now something which is my living experience.

So what is the way to verify that this is true? We already went through one way which is the Neti Neti, which is to say that it is not this, it is not this, it is not this. What is 'not this'? What 'you' means, what is it that remains that we cannot say 'not this' to? The simple explanation of Neti Neti is, isn't it, you can say not this, not this, not this, not this. There comes a point that we cannot say 'not this' to what I am. So that is the first way.

Then as Bhagavan said, 'Who am I?' The inquiry points to the truth of who I am, you see. So when we look at this, we see that the inquiry 'Who am I?' is not leading me to a concept of who I am, but it is a pointer to the truth of verifiable direct experience of who I am. And it's a very, very important point to discuss because most of those who come to satsang, after the point of being in satsang, have picked up all the concepts about what is true, but many of them have not had a clarity of recognition. So to pick up the concept 'I am awareness' is not the truth, not yet. But to see that I am this unchanging one which is just prior to any conceptualization—and awareness seems like a nice way to describe it, but not completely.

It's like we say about love, isn't it? That we can read lots of books about love, we can write the best poetry about love, but unless you taste it, we truly don't know it. It is not in the description that the truth is found. And how can we explain it to someone? We can keep pointing to it, but the truth cannot really be explained. So now, at best, you'll come to these very direct pointers: Are you aware now? It is very difficult to escape from this pointer, actually. You have to have a very skillful mind to escape from this. And when I ask you, 'What is your basis for saying yes?', did you see something phenomenal? And you say no. This awareness is prior to any phenomenon. It is that which knows all phenomena, that which is aware of all phenomena. Then when we come to this point, it becomes our verifiable experience of the truth: awareness is here.