Wait in This Temple of Your Heart - 26th July 2023
Saar (Essence)
Ananta guides seekers to peel away the layers of perception and ego to reside permanently in the heart's temple. He emphasizes that God is a living presence within, accessible only by surrendering self-concern and intellectual knowing.
Don't be a visitor in the no-mind; make this your permanent home, your most natural abode.
To know a single thing will make you a citizen of the world; be empty of all knowledge.
If you lose yourself, you will find God. Inwardly, make your whole life about God alone.
devotional
Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.
Sometimes it can feel like the world, the layers of the world, are like a fog. You just have to decide to come to the core. So, what's at the center of your existence? And who's at the center of your existence? If we don't come to this realization, this recognition, then the fog itself will seem like it has something to offer. Just like children deciphering shapes in the clouds, the human condition is like this, where we spend most of our life determining meaning and sense-making of these perceptions. But in that, you're getting lost in the fog of perception, not looking deeper beyond that.
In a way, the practice of Neti Neti is a way to just keep the form aside layer by layer and come to the center. Don't visualize it as a center, because our visual constructs will never match what is inside. Peel back all the layers of perception. What remains? Is there something that inherently remains that we cannot say 'not this' to? You may say, 'I am not this room; I perceive it, it is not perceiving me. I am not this body; I perceive it, it is not perceiving me. I am not this thought; I perceive it, it does not perceive me. I am not this feeling or emotion; I perceive it, it does not perceive me.' Then where do we come? What do we discover here?
It's important for us to come to this point. Whether we use the invitation, the inquiry, or conversation, use whatever has been made available to us to come to this point. What is this place? This is the no-mind. Nothing needs to make sense, nothing needs to be understood, nothing needs to be calculated or figured out. None of those things are relevant. There is no 'me' here. Get used to the feel of living here. Don't be a visitor here. Don't say, 'Oh, my practice was very good today because I came to a special place called no-mind.' Make this your permanent home. This is your most natural abode anyway. You can only be here innocent, naked, motionless. You can only be here independent of time, beyond time and space.
Whose house have you entered now? Who lives here? Is it just an experience that we are having? Because here is your true presence. To live here, it is important that you don't know anything, because to know a single thing is to make you a citizen of the world. As you are empty of everything that you could know, or knowledge that you have learned—meaning empty of that—what is truly known? Forget about everything else. This is the house that is empty of perception, where you can find God's presence in the simplest way. That is your true home.
Which part of you is beyond perception? Is there an aspect of yourselves that you cannot perceive but you know? In that place, what is your shape? With what do you recognize this? There are metal detectors at the gate of this house, and if you try to understand or make sense or know, then it will not let you in. If it appears as if you haven't met the Lord of this house, the God of this house, then you must just innocently wait. If you visited a temple and the curtain is not open yet to see God, all you can do is wait innocently. But you cannot leave. You have to learn how to live here no matter what the cost, no matter what happens, no matter what fear the mind is telling you. Wait in this temple of your heart.
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Don't exchange it for false knowledge or ignorance. Don't try to be right. Don't even try to be free. Be empty, being a kid of all things. Sometimes some dust will come—some self-importance, some self-concern, some self-knowledge, some self-will. All of this dust will come. Just shrug it off. Forget about it, but don't spend time thinking about it. If something muddies your clothes, just change them. Don't examine the type of dust; just leave it behind. Be fresh moment to moment.
The mind doesn't know how to live here in the temple of your heart. From your heart, there's a tiny peephole. When you look through that peephole, it looks like this whole universe is here, but in reality, it's nothing at all. Not a speck of dust. All the world's drama and confusion and problems—and even its fun and games—in your true house, it's just a speck of dust that can be discarded with a flick of your finger. But when you take yourself to be an object in the world, then it seems impossible to ignore or discount. Come to your true house. Tell me, what can shake you here?
If you get involved in the story looking through the peephole, then you won't want to leave it. If you get involved with narratives, then you'll have to wait, because the wait can go on forever as the story never ends. Don't wait for the story to end; you stop. Anything the world can promise you is nothing compared to your natural gifts at home. Don't worry about these tiny glimpses that you find in the world; the true source is your own heart. Nothing has ever been given to you from outside.
Who lives here? Who is the owner of this house? This is not a little question; it is a very big question. So don't hear it poetically. Who lives in the true house? This world is also perceived. Is there a 'who'? There is a danger that we can make it a 'what.' In the instant we make it a 'what,' for some of us it can seem a little more comfortable. Instead of 'who,' if we say 'what' lives there is a presence. But the instinct of some of us, the instant it becomes a 'who' lives there, or whose presence is it, that is when we start to feel unworthy. Like the prodigal son, I meet the Father of the universe. You'd rather have a scientific sounding word for it, or even a spiritual sounding term like 'Consciousness.' But I am pushing you to meet God, and the doorway is through your heart.
Literally, not your physical heart, not your emotional, not even your energetic heart—the core of your being can seem like a heart. The essence of your beingness, the presence. By now, whose presence is that? Is it a living being? Is it the same one that has been represented forever through various embodiments? Has the same one appeared in this world in the form of Ram and Krishna and Jesus? The very same one lives in your heart. Could this be true? Could this be real? Or is it a fantasy? The only living being, the highest living being, is that one's presence that you meet in your heart.
How would it be if it was true and yet you never met Him? Are you okay to just meet this one conceptually through His names or His story? Isn't it of utmost importance to come to Him now? All that is needed is to be free from that tiny, irrelevant, self-important, and empty self-concern. If you were given a new life plan—a full hundred years all over again—but in that whole life you could be concerned about only one, 'me' or God, who would you be concerned about? That life starts now. What stops this life from being that life? I know that if you were all given this option, you would say 'God.' Why not now?
If you could write a new story with your lives, what would that story be? How would it be about 'me' or God? If you could give fame and glory to one, if you want one to be known among everyone in the world, do you want that one to be 'me' or God? The mind tells you that it is important for 'me' to become something, but then you're making this exchange. You're trying to make the unreal special while the real is forgotten. Nowhere in our looking did we come across the presence of a 'me' here. The 'me' is the unreal, just a made-up idea. The presence that you meet, the presence that you experience intuitively, is only God's presence. And if you want to know where God is, follow that presence.
If you feel that you cannot follow that presence, follow the love. If you cannot find love in your heart, let go of all self-concern. Live like a foolish beggar, not entitled. Forget about your life; surrender it to God. If you want to know something, forget about it. If you want to know better from us, forget about us. If you think you have good ideas about your lives, forget about them. Surrender all of this. If you think you know what's happening in your story, forget it. None of us have any idea. If you're trying to be enlightened, forget it. What do you have to do to become nobody? You have to become somebody who's trying to become a nobody. You have to drop it. If life slaps you, accept it as a foolish beggar. Life loves you.
Humility, I pray, will lead you to love, because pride gets in the way of love, acceptance, trust, and devotion. Humility brings you to the fragrant, unconditional love of God. And here you learn that you can love—an active love for God. Direct everything that you have to offer towards God. All that you've directed towards a 'me,' direct it towards God. All concern, all importance, all narratives—make it all about God. I cannot stress enough how important this is, because I cannot bear that any of you will leave this life without meeting and living in God's life.
Many times your own good-seeming intentions about yourself will get in the way. Even the simplest idea may come saying, 'This is too much for me,' or 'This is too difficult for me,' or 'I don't want to suffer anymore.' Serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the non-existent one—when will we break out of this Maya? You think spirituality is a self-help program, but Grace has brought you to the possibility of meeting the reality of God. Even though you may have come to help the false one, you've been served something much more than I could have imagined. Don't waste that opportunity because it doesn't conform with your ideas. If you went to a restaurant to buy idli and instead someone served you a seven-course meal, would you say, 'I just wanted my idli, not this'? Is anything wrong with it?
Don't get into these childish tricks of the mind: 'I didn't want it this way, I didn't want it that way.' What capacity do you have to want the right thing? Why do you trust that so much? Don't spend the rest of your life catering to the non-existent one, especially when God is waiting in your heart like a mother waiting for the child to return home after playing. You know you're going to run out of ammunition. I'm not asking any of you to believe me; I'm showing you God's reality. The only presence that you have ever met is God. You've never met anyone else.
If we spend our life catering to everyone but God, the individual 'me' is very sticky. Your self-image will seem very right because the conceptual mind is on its side. Who can go beyond that? You can go beyond rationality into love. Otherwise, you spend the next ten or twenty years here, and I see from the end of those years you'll still be wondering, 'Is this the right place for me? Am I really getting what I wanted?' Break down all these constructs. There's no time for all this. Look at what your heart is saying. Is God real? Can you smell the fragrance of God's presence in Satsang? Follow that fragrance towards its origin. Where is it coming from? That is your heart.
Nothing else is important. Inwardly, make your whole life about God alone. I want to promise you that, to paraphrase Guruji a little bit, if you make your life about God alone inwardly, you will not regret it. Nobody who has come to this devotion, to this trust, has truly regretted it. You may have your moments of frustration, but you will never regret it. Have you ever heard anyone say on their deathbed, 'I wasted my whole life in service to God'? No. They say, 'I wasted it in search of relationships, money, health.' I'm not saying avoid those things; I'm saying inwardly don't bother. Outwardly, whatever has to play out is fine.
If you want to wait for the next lifetime before you can say 'I want to live a life for God,' remember I just asked you: if you were given a brand new life and you had the option to live it for the ego or for God, what would you choose? You don't have to wait for the next birth. Maybe this is that next birth. Every time we make this deal, unlike Groundhog Day, we keep coming back. That is the whole story of attachment and worship. When would be a good time to rest? Truly mean it. When will we stop playing games of 'me' and 'you,' of this and that? When will we get to the heart of the matter?
The ground is laid out perfect for you. Nothing is needed more. This ego—flick it away. Nobody has a thought to offer you that is worth exchanging for God. I give you my word that you will not regret this. If you lose yourself, you will find God. But if you hang on to ignorance, even in God's Grace, it's very unlikely. It's actually the best news. I'd like to know how much Grace has blessed us already that we can talk about living in God's light as an actual potential, as a natural possibility for this life. If you ask most people, even spiritual ones, they may say that it can take many lifetimes. But God's Grace has blessed us with the possibility of life being led in His presence, in His light.
I remember when I first came to Guruji. I thought it was because I was suffering and I wanted a more peaceful life. The notion that God's light would be here and tangibly apparent was too far-fetched. You only read in stories that it happens to the very rare ones. The blessing of God's constant presence seemed too far-fetched. Then we come across these radical figures who say we must constantly live in God's light. That can seem so difficult and frustrating at times. But if that's truly what's in your heart, that's all that you really want. I see all of you; you're much further ahead than I ever was in your love, in your devotion, in your trust. Just a tiny push: do not waste time on things which are irrelevant.
God is here. He is real. He is present. I promise you that I may be silly and foolish about everything, but this is the truth: that God is in your heart and nothing is in your way. Nothing is in your way except that which we choose to value and identify with.