Who Is Coming to the Recognition of the Self? - 7th December 2017

So this 'I', because it can point to various things, has represented for most of us—has represented the body-mind. So much so that even when you are recognizing that you are not that, there can be an idea that 'It is the body-mind, I personally, am coming to this recognition. I am coming to some insight.' This can be the notion, but it is not. It is Consciousness itself which has played with delusion and now is playing with recognition.

So many times it can happen that when we are experiencing suffering and we want to answer this question 'But why am I suffering?' then we try to use even the concepts of Satsang to get over it. 'Why am I suffering if I have seen this? Why do I continue to suffer?' But who does the 'I' represent there? And this 'who' is recognizing? Ask yourself this question: Who is recognizing the truth of who you are? Does it have anything to do with the identity? Is the identity coming to the recognition of the Atma, or is the recognition itself not that there is no identity?

Therefore, the notion that 'If I have seen the truth, then why am I suffering?' itself is false, because that which has seen the truth, that which is recognizing itself, is not suffering. So in one statement, we mixed up two 'I's: the Self-recognizing 'I' and the sufferer 'I', and we are trying to resolve this contradiction. Therefore, when I say that using this for truth's sake alone, it is not some sort of a prediction that suffering will continue to come or joy will not be there. It is to break away this concept that Advaita pointing should be personally beneficial, because these can be the last vestiges of the personalized 'I'.

Even the insight of freedom, the insight of truth, the limited sense of 'I'—this mind—can try and use to resurrect itself. And herein lies the contradiction, you see? Because in your truth, you were seeing that there is no personal 'I', there is also no suffering, and yet that cannot become an expectation, because that expectation itself seems to then become the thing—the 'checker guy'—that blocks. So simplicity is not to hold on to any notion at all, especially any notions about why.