What Deserves Our Seriousness?

Was that also a thought? [Laughs]

There; where? You mean here with Ananta?

Okay. Yes. So, if ‘the arising of thoughts’ is thinking then some thoughts can sHll arise. Like thinking is sHll happening if that was thinking. But to take them to be true and therefore give belief to them is very rare. It’s very, very rare and that is why the idea of limitaHon seems almost alien now. Because the proposal from the mind, which is constantly saying that ‘you are this object’, that is mostly rejected here, I won’t say 100%. I used to get this quesHon oeen iniHally and I used to jokingly say 99.97% or something like that just to make fun. But the point is, the mind will use the 100% itself to trip you up. It will say ‘Oh, that thought came and you believed it. You can’t be Free’. So, 100% is a very problemaHc noHon. So, give yourself the space, give yourself freedom and don’t make any benchmark even out of this funny number that I am saying because the checker guy (the mind’s version of the spiritual ego, the checker guy) will say ‘See now in Ananta’s case or another Master, they must be 99.97% not believing any thought; look at you, you believe at least 20%.’ That is not helpful. The idea is not to create a report card for ourselves. So, what thought would be worthy of our belief? That’s a good way to look at it. Because only something True is worth believing. Isn’t it? Like why would you want to believe something that is untrue?

So, we can look at that specifically in a moment. I just want to clarify for everyone once again because this can be a very confusing thing for many. So, let’s go through this and we will talk about this ‘recalling beauHful moments’ part as well. So, that which is worthy of our belief, should be that which is True. Now the Truth should be a valid representaHve of ‘what Is’ isn’t it? If it is not represenHng ‘what Is’ in a valid fashion, then it is not worthy of our belief. So now a thought (no maZer which thought you look at) you will see that it cannot represent ‘what Is’ and I like to say it does not represent even the manifest aspect of what Is. It can never do it. And you have heard me say this before that if I were to say, ‘Just represent even your perceptual experience right now’ and I give you hundred thoughts, you will not be able to completely represent it. Somebody should be able to read those hundred thoughts and be able to recreate your experience enHrely, but they can’t do that. And actually, even if they had a million, they could not do it because you will miss some shade of light, some shadow, some sound, some bird chirping, some traffic noise, something will get missed in that representaHon. But ‘what Is’, the manifest aspect of what Is, is already available to us in our pure percepHon. This is a very subtle point. So, that knowing which is available in percepHon itself is enough. The further representaHon which comes as an add on from a thought, is only trying to storify what is available in percepHon. Because without that you cannot insert it in a story.

Exactly, Yes.

Exactly, even that which we call memory, actually we cannot truly say if it is past or future, it just shows up as percepHon and it is the interpretaHon from the mind which says ‘Okay, this happened yesterday that was so beauHful’ but without that also which shows up can be enjoyed. So pure percepHon is the purest experiencing, like God experiencing God; is already available. The limited representaHon cannot happen in that. It is only that Consciousness itself is using it’s own ability to make this linear narraHve of an individual as part of the Leela. And now as a part of the Leela is playing this game of these conversaHons to step back from that limited representaHon and narraHve and come to this pure percepHon, pure Being. So, no thought can truly represent what Is, so why would you bother if it is not true anyway. Secondly, you may have said for example that some thoughts are just represenHng phenomenon. Like I take the example of the coconut being green. You might say ‘Okay, what is wrong with that? It’s just saying coconut is green’. On the face of it, it doesn’t seem like there is anything wrong in believing that. But what you will noHce with the mind is that soon aeer the first proposal, the add on proposals come which say ‘Oh, green are not so ripe, the water is very sweet. I like a bit orange-ish coconut’. So, the ‘I’ comes in fairly quickly and once we are in the habit of buying the iniHal proposal, it seems like the follow up ones seem easier to believe. But the thing is that whatever the thought was proposing was already apparent in our percepHon anyways, we don’t need that addiHonal informaHon, it is already here. Like you can perceive the colors of this shirt, now to say ‘it has white, then it has brown’ is for what purpose? It is just for the purpose of conceptual understanding. And we can use that conceptual understanding only so that we can insert it into some story. What other use does it have? It doesn’t aid percepHon in any way.

Yes, yes, yes absolutely fine. Whether the percepHon is external seeming… and I am using this word ‘seeming’ carefully because actually the disHncHon between external and internal is also conceptual. But whether it is what we are used to calling external or it is thought, memory, imaginaHon, pain, pleasure, emoHon all of these percepHons can conHnue to be perceived. And, actually, the secret is that Consciousness by itself in pure percepHon is enjoying every experience, even that what we call sadness or pain. Of course, it is there to enjoy them. In fact, it is said that enHre Leela is the play of Consciousness and what kind of play would it be if there was no enjoyment someHmes. So, yes everything, everything that arises can be perceived and whatever needs to be known about that, is already known in the perceiving of it. You don’t need to augment it with the addiHonal conceptual informaHon. The only thing you will lose is the ability to storify or to make a narraHve out of it.

Yes, and hence suffer.

Very good, I am very happy to hear about your experiments and contemplaHons.

SomeHmes I say (I like to say), that it’s only aeer I met Guruji [Sri Mooji] that I saw flower for the first Hme. Otherwise, I was so caught up in ‘What’s this, what’s in it for me, how can I use this, can I always remember this or not?’- all this kind of ‘What’s in it for me’ stuff that we miss the beauHful imagery, the beauHful creaHon of Consciousness itself, moment to moment direcHng this play with such beauty and magnificence. Because Consciousness itself is playing the game in such a way; at the moment where most of its aZenHon is dissipated because it is going to the mind and the mind’s idea of ge^ng and keeping, that it is missing out on the beauty which is apparent in every moment of life.

Right now, in your room there is a ray of light, at least a ray of light. How beauHful …there is light, how beauHful is that? Yes, just to perceive that itself and not to say that a shadow is not beauHful, a shadow is as beauHful. Without the intellect making these judgements everything that is perceived is full of this play. But we are missing this movie and that’s why we feel we have to go to some special place and what happens when you go to a holiday or some special place. Only for a moment we may be looking at a river or the ocean or a mountain, and we may forget to think in that moment. [Smiles] And we feel like ‘Wow so beauHful’ then aeer a couple of minutes, it starts to become regular again and we are back to our way of ‘Oh, we should do this every year, why don’t we take a holiday more oeen’ this kind of story making comes back.

It’s only used for as long as Consciousness wants to play that way, is to convince the Consciousness itself (the most magnificent Being) that it can play as a limited enHty, as a body mind object.