Nobody Can Start Closed, Everybody Starts Open – Right Now!

It is your experience that you are perceiving, isn’t it?

Yes, so this ‘you’ that is perceiving, that is what we are after. This ‘you’ that is perceiving - how is that seen or known?

Don’t know and in fact, that which we are calling ‘don’t know’ which means that conceptually we have no idea, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you mean? So, we don’t have a good conceptual answer for that one and yet it is clear that you are perceiving. So how come at one level it is completely clear that it is ‘I’ which is perceiving but at another level we don’t know how we are calling it ‘I’. Question is clear? I can repeat. Okay.

Yes, so at one level it is clear that you are perceiving this hand.

Is there anyone here it’s not clear that they are perceiving this hand? (They are too advanced in spirituality; they need to come down a bit.) [Laughs] So it is clear to everyone that they are perceiving this hand. Yes? So but this ‘I’, which is the perceiver of this hand, you have never perceived, isn’t it? And yet it is so natural for us to claim that it is ‘I’ that is perceiving. Isn’t it? So, this naturalness of this claim that it is ‘I’ comes on what basis?

Yes, yes. Okay, now when you say ‘feeling’ what do you mean? Is it a feeling?

Yes, it’s not even like you can’t even say joyful or painful or you can’t really give any quality to this, isn’t it? And yet it is ‘I.’ So the basis of this that ‘I am Aware of even my perception, I am Aware of all these perceiving’ that doesn’t need any conceptual or phenomenal basis. With me? That recognition of the Self doesn’t need any conceptual or phenomenal basis and yet all our effort can be to try and get some conceptual understanding or phenomenal experience. All our effort is only in that direction to try and get some conceptual understanding or phenomenal experience. Isn’t it? But this knowledge of ‘I, I-ness, Awareness’ is neither phenomenal and conceptual of course, is part of phenomenal but we can say ‘neither conceptual nor phenomenal’. So now what we are trying to do, what is giving us trouble, is only we are trying to convert this very natural Self-knowledge into some sort of a conceptual understanding or a phenomenal experience. If you didn’t struggle that way, no trouble. Nobody doesn’t know themselves. (I know grammatically it might not be right) [Smile] But nobody doesn’t know themselves.