It is Not A Statement Of Being-ness or Openness Depending on where Attention Is

Yes, there is no contradiction. Attention can be wherever attention can be. It is not a statement of Being-ness or Openness depending on where attention is. And I am glad you put it in these terms because, this is a very common confusion. We feel like, only when my attention is on one end of the spectrum and what are the ends of the spectrum of attention? You could have darkness or full vibrant colors. This is the spectrum. So, some may believe that if my attention is fixated on some pure darkness then I am being with my Self. And the minute the world distracts me then I am no longer being with my Self. It just not true. Attention can be here.. it can be here…it can be here.. [pointing to different directions in space] it can run around wherever it wants. It is nothing to do with your being or not being with yourself. That’s one spectrum of attention. What is the other seeming spectrum of attention? You may feel like the most pristine place for attention is to rest in your Being. So, that is one end of the spectrum and the other end of the spectrum is to have attention on something in the world. So, that might feel like it’s a spectrum. But you realize that even this is a notional boundary. Because you could be purely with pure perception and anything in the world, it does not take you away from the Being. Where is the world? It is in your Being. There is nothing that is appearing to you which is outside your Being. You are just navigating your Being with your attention actually. So, you never leave your Being in that way. So, these are ideas that this way is better, this way is better [gestures], as long as you are empty of a conceptual representation of Reality as you no longer taking a thought to be valid Truth, you can never leave your Self. So, to a sage like Bhagwan [Sri Ramana Maharishi] is reading the newspaper, he is working in the kitchen, he is living in his ashram naturally, he is walking around. Does he ever leave the Self? So, it cannot be that he is reading the paper but is not visible because his attention is only on that dark empty space (or something like that). One, the representation of Awareness… the mind’s representation of Awareness is a dark empty space must be let go off. Awareness is not a dark empty space. It is spaceless, timeless, you cannot represent it in anything that you can visualize. Then part of this contradiction will go away. But the idea that with my attention I leave my Self is just not true. The Self is never lee. It is only that the Self itself, takes itself to be, imagines itself to be or believes itself to be (more accurately) something that it is not. Using its own mind, which, the mind is also a creation of the Self itself - the play thing that it has created for itself to take itself to be limited. Now, when we come to Satsang it seems like we are done with that play thing, and we want to return to a true Reality and dropping the false believes. So, as long as you are not taking your Self to be that which you are not, you are not falling for any ignorance. Self-knowledge is naturally there, which is the greatest cheat code which is available, thanks to Bhagwan’s Grace and all the Masters, the greatest cheat code which is available is that Self Knowledge is already there, Self-realization is already there. All you have to do is let go of ignorance, let go of that which you think you are. I feel like I have to make that point, where this idea of identification, I think has to be clarified. So, I was saying that ‘How do you identify with this’? [Pointing to a napkin held in his hand]. And I did this experiment with some friends the other day and they were saying that when you say ‘I am this napkin [showing the napkin in his hand] then I am identified with it’ but that’s not it. You identify with it, with anything that you believe about it. [looking at the napkin held in hand] ‘Ahhh I like white’, or ‘This is very good for hygiene [pointing to napkin] it is good for hygiene.’ [Smiles] I am saying that what is the painting that you have painted about yourself in any of those representation - that is already identification. The ‘I’ which likes or dislikes white or prefers cloth to paper or prefers paper to cloth. Who is that? So, to identify is not just to say ‘Oh, I am this napkin, paper, Hssue’. To identify is to take any notion of it as a true representation of Reality, because, very quickly you take a limited representation of yourself. We can explore this deeper but, you may say, ‘But Ananta, if you were to say this Hssue is white and believe that notion about it, what is the problem in that?’ And I admit that in that notion itself there is no such big trouble. But, what usually follows in our mind is the notion of ‘I like white, I don’t like white, we should not use paper anymore, we should use more paper’, you see, all these preferences and ideas in which a picture of our Self as a limited entity is contained, soon follows. So, a very natural seeming belief which I oeen speak about is the coconut is green. As far as the coconut is green – it is not true, but as long as the amount of harm it can cause is not great. But very quickly following the notion ‘the coconut is green’ is our preferences about it. ‘I like green coconut, green coconut has better water, more water, less water… I like’, you see, the ‘I’ very quickly is there. And the beauty is that to have the perceptual taste of everything that it contains, just don’t need that notion. Just in the looking of it [looking at the napkin], in fact, the notion just gets in the way. That’s why I oeen I say that ‘I only saw a flower aeer I met Guruji, but it was no longer a flower then’. So, like that (there is nothing) in your perception of it there is nothing lacking. Your notional belief system about it, you may feel like it amplifies the enjoyment of the perceptual world, but actually it just reduces it. That’s what happens, mostly we are missing on life as I was saying, because we are caught up in our interpretation.

Exactly, that label itself is the fertile ground for [inaudible] , exactly. That’s why I was saying, ‘It was no longer flower’ it lost its label. What do you think about it? [Pointing at Sangha member], he is been deeply trying to think something about it. But if you go digging you will only get potato.

Yes, like you are speaking now. If you keep speaking, you will see that you do not have to think about it first, it just flowing out.

What to say, because you could say you are all of it, or you could say you are none of it. You are not limiting yourself to just it, we can say it that way.