We Are Bound By Our Intellectual Concepts
The 'me' that has problems doesn't exist - problems are mental constructions, and the Self is not an experience to be attained but the knowing without thinking.
I’d like to surrender or expose something, see the falseness in it. Last few days, every few hours there’s always an urge to reconfirm of sorts, who I am, or position. It comes from an urge like something (is) undone. The speech that moderates this search is, ‘You’re not done yet, something is not right, have you seen your interaction with your brother’, those kind of things, sort of a checker thing. It’s a torturous thought, this checker and checking. And as sort of an attempt to do it, I see the attempt is done, the checking is also happening simultaneously, so nothing is really actually being checked on. It’s like a problem is created and a checking is happening, seeing this is happening or that is happening. But this trouble that forms right after, ‘See, you did this, you did that’, this one that punishes some ‘me’, I feel I’m quite attached to it (of sorts). I respect it for some reason, I want to see this clearly because even what I’m saying doesn’t seem like true seeing. What you’re referring to or what is being shared in Satsang is - there are moments when it’s obvious, it’s obvious that I’ve (sort of) bought into the things that were thoughts, that was there and believed in and the power of belief is so real; and it was another thought of ‘you’ that believed it.
So now what’s happening?
This one is trying to confirmation about whatever is being said as correct.
[Chuckling] And, what’s the real position?
A tired one, a frustrated one.
Real? [Both burst out laughing]
It’s like I need some help, some sort of... it’s like the same problem for years and the same thing I’m going back to and responsible because of that.
Who? [Laughter in the room] So who’s had this problem?
The thought.
[Laughing] The thought has had the problem.
Father, it goes when you say it, but, there is frustration that it went! [Laughing]
Yeah, this is it, ‘But how, it can’t be so fast!’ [Laughingly snaps his fingers] But I’ve heard this very often over the years, ‘Can we talk about a problem which is not there when you (Ananta) are there?’ But you have to present it to me for me to look at it. Like you go to the doctor and say, ‘I have a big growth on my head or something but whenever you come it’s not there’. So how is the doctor going to help? [Chuckling] But then the doctor will obviously ask you this question, ‘Are you certain that it is real?’ This seems to vanish every time I’m around. You know and sometimes what happens upon hearing this, next time we make a decision that even when Ananta is there, I will make sure it doesn’t go [Laughter in the room] and I will show him that this is the real problem.
I’m feeling, I shouldn’t talk, ‘Shhh, there’s no problem’, like I’m not having a conversation like that but it seems like that…
Something is not whether there’s a problem or not, the thing is not whether there’s a problem or not, the thing is whether there is a ‘you’ or not; to have that problem or not. So, the objective of Satsang is not to come to the end of problems for a non-existent me. It’s just to see that there is no such me for whom there is a concept called problem. So what happens when you come to Satsang or when we have this conversation, you see that the one who is at the center of it, the protagonist of this story, itself feels non-existent. So it’s not the problems suddenly go away for me, although the mind may have the interpretation of that but actually you just get some space from this oppressive notion about yourself. And... it was good that, you were quick to, when I said ‘who’, it didn’t come like, ‘No Father, I knew you were going to ask me that, but tell me something else; what else you got, don’t use your Brahmastra (your main weapon), tell me something else in some other way’, so that didn’t come, [Imitates sangha member] ‘No this was serious business, I’ve built it up over the whole Wednesday break that we had.’ [Laughter in the room] ‘This can’t be right! Whole day and a half is gone! Let’s give it some time, let’s give it some attention, let’s say okay, what are the contours of this problem and let’s really look.’ And the mind will come and say, ‘But this is avoidance, but let’s look at the non-existent problem for long otherwise if we just look and see there is no ‘me’ to suffer from that problem then that is avoidance. [Chuckling] Let’s make it real first and then come to the unreality of it.’ And the mind will decide, ‘If you come to it in one hour then you were not avoiding it’, you see, ‘Then it was not avoidance, you looked at it, you saw, did the non-existent me have a finger? Did it have a hand? Did it have an elbow? Did it have a shoulder? Then you really looked at it and saw that ‘there is no such me’, (says in a serious tone) then you didn’t avoid it, you really solved it.’ When you look you immediately say, ‘But I can’t find this me. Whose finger, shoulder, elbow should I look at? Not there’. Then the mind comes and says in an angry tone, ‘It can’t be that fast, that’s avoidance.’
Father, the way you are using the intonation of, ‘There isn’t a me’, I can see that that is also a thought that is trying to comment on the observation that the ‘me’ was in a series of thoughts, a story, ‘Was there, was there’.
Like a cloud or wave of some sort, not really even that but just the one through the narrative that seems to have some continuity, you see. And the thing with that is that we are bound by our intellectual concepts about that which we call ‘experience’ but it itself is empty of any such, any such interpretation. So you see we get bound by that and say that, ‘Till I have this kind of experience’... okay, this was the part of a question that I felt I was forgetting that Nitya asked actually because she was saying that “I’m not really with my Self” but she knows that I can’t really leave my Self. So we are still defining the Self as another experience, as a lack of thoughts, or some emotional state being either empty of any so called negative emotion or presence of some so called positive emotions. We are still labelling those things as the experience of the Self. But the Self itself is not an experience. So that is why my new Brahmastra is this one ‘What it is it that you know without having to think anything or having to perceive anything? On this break I’m leaving this tool with you which I think is very very potent. What do you know without having to think anything or perceive anything?
Key Teachings
- Problems exist only for a presumed 'me' - when examined, no such me is found, so there's no one for whom problems are real
- We wrongly define the Self as an experience (lack of thoughts, certain emotions), but the Self is what we know without having to think or perceive anything
- The mind creates intellectual concepts and labels experiences, binding us to these interpretations which are empty of any inherent truth