Just Remain in the Self

I am sure over the years I have explained it in various ways, let’s see what comes up today. [Smiles] Lets see if we can meet it here. What I am really pointing to is a conceptual emptiness, an intellectual openness. When we are not relying on any words or any sort of phenomenal expression to describe ‘what Is.’ To remain open and empty is to be without the constructs of mental understanding and meet ‘what Is’ in its utmost openness. So, what I am really pointing to is an utter end to belief in these conceptual notions about yourselves, in these conceptual limitations. Now, many can find that very difficult, confusing, the mind throws everything it has at you. So, sometimes what I do is that I say ‘Okay, now if leaving everything seems like too much, you have license for one, [Smiles] one notion’. And I also sometimes make a menu for you guys [Chuckles] and say, ‘these are the good ones that you can hold onto.’ I would say ‘Guru Kripa Kevalam’ for example is a very good one because anything else which is coming ‘But what about this, this should be like this or not like this’ or ‘My life should be like this, I should be this way, I should be Free by now’ whatever the notion is, you can say ‘Master’s Grace [Folds hands] is all there is and is just taking care of everything’. That is one final notion. If you have this, then you don’t need anything else. It doesn’t have to be in Sanskrit or Hindi [Chuckles], you can say ‘Guruji [Sri Mooji] takes care of everything.’ ‘I have no trouble because my Master is taking care of everything’. It can be very innocent and simple like that. Some will say this is all airy fairy, rubbish. They don’t believe in these kinds of devotional tropes so what else…‘we are not attracted to this kind of stuff, give us something else.’ So, Bhagavan [Sri Ramana Maharshi] has given us, he said ‘Ask yourself Who Am I?’ and ‘Who Am I?’ is super powerful because not only can it do the clean-up job of the nonsense representations of ‘What Is’ from the mind, because ‘I should be like this, I should be more like that’, he says ‘Who Am I?’ [Makes a gesture of cleaning up] all gets cleaned up. Not only can it do a clean-up job but also it is very helpful because it takes you beyond that which you usually expect in the world. If you followed Bhagavan’s pointing, it will say ‘When something appears, whether it is a thought or something else, you can say who witnesses that thought. So, it takes you beyond these phenomenal concerns into that pure witnessing. So, that’s why this is another beautiful concept that we can hold onto. Then there are many. ‘Make no distinctions’ for example, it doesn’t sound super great but it is actually fantastic. Make no distinctions - If you just don’t make distinctions, you could… You could say ‘forget about better or worse.’ So, all of these are helpful sticks, helpful final sticks that you can use. In our scriptures, it is said that ‘I am Brahman’ that could be another one. So, whatever resonates with you the most, you can pick that, you have license for that one. And that one will be like that thorn which Bhagavan [Sri Ramana Maharishi] talks about ‘the thorn that removes other thorns and in the end it is thrown away too.’ For some it doesn’t have to be a conceptual thing, it could be a mantra, you could take a mantra [Makes a gesture of dropping] and just whatever is happening in life you just stick with that [mantra]. Or as Maharaj’s [Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj] example, his Master told him ‘Just stay with the sense I Am’ and that was the only notion he held onto for three years which he felt ‘In just three years I was Free’ and when I was reading it, I was like ‘Three years’ [Laughs] I can’t hold it for three minutes, it felt like that. But it resonated with him so its fine. Something like that ‘Just remain with the sense I Am’. He used that pointer, that is the only thing he said he used and he came to this final Seeing. (So that is a part of it) Now many of us (especially in India) have a very devotional temperament. It becomes very natural for us to just surrender everything to the feet of the Master. We don’t have ideas about servitude, these kinds of things don’t bother us, that’s why something like ‘Guru Kripa Kevalam.’ (And not just of course in India but everywhere in the world, it’s part of our conditioning here and it’s not much in the west) So, that’s why Guru Kripa Kevalam seems very easy. Just don’t bother with it. Everything that the mind is inviting you to resolve or fix, the Master has already taken care of it, and you can remain in the Unborn.