Your Discovery Is That You Are Without Any Reference

Let’s call it space for a while. There’s a space in which confusion appears, and that space can seem clarified also at times. Can be confusion [moves hand from side to side] or clear [clenches fist]. Now, what space is that?

So, let’s call it mind. Does that mind being turbulent or being still actually impact the rest of you? Confused, confused, confused, still, still, still. Now, is that all there is to your existence?

At that time. But now what about this time? Of course, when we are caught up it can seem like that is completely, fully engrossing. We are fully immersed in that; it can feel like that. But now we can check. What is the real situation?

Don’t worry about that moment. It’s like many of us, if we have some trouble at work, then it seems like our whole life is work, work, work. That has to be resolved, there is nothing else to our life. If we have a problem in our family, then it can seem like family, family, family is all that our life is, there is nothing else in our life. So, this is the nature of attention. We can get fully engrossed in something. But we are checking now and we are looking at this space of a lot of activity and doubt and all these contradictory, confusing thoughts. Sometimes this seems true, sometimes that seems true. Now we are just checking, does that contain us completely? Or is there something more to you than just that?

So, in that space when we draw a conclusion saying that, ‘This is what life is, or this is good, or this is bad, this should be, or this should not be’. This conclusion is drawn in that space? At least, the offers are coming from that space. Now, with that conclusion drawn, let me give you two examples: Some of you can make this conclusion: ‘I am not understanding anything he is saying; I don’t know why I came here in Satsang, it’s pointless’. And some of you can say, ‘This is very nice, this is exactly… I feel so good, open and spacious’. Now, with that conclusion believed in and drawn, what actually changed?

But even the belief of who you are can be the same in this case. Like in either conclusion (this is beautiful what you’re saying). Without any conclusion, you are not caught up in a limited notion of who you are. So, I was just going to come to that actually. [Smiles] What you said is very good, but I am just looking even at the identification as a body-mind complex, these two various notions can come and opposite notions can come and what does that actually change when we buy into that idea? First is when we pick up the identity, ‘I am this one’, and then ‘this is what this is’. That ‘Satsang is very good’ or like ‘pointless, very bad’. But does that have any impact on that which Is, even the phenomenal aspect of that which Is? That which Is just Is. With that concluding (which is also a part of that which Is), nothing really changed except like a position got taken that ‘This is the way something is’. And our exploration in Satsang has been to look at these ideas, these conclusions, and examine the veracity of them. Are they really valid? Are they really true? And what is the standard of truth that we are applying to these. Because all our problems, our so-called suffering in life depends on these conclusions. Like Papaji [Sri H. W. L. Poonja] said, ‘To be happy, you need nothing. To be unhappy, to be suffering, you need something’. So, this, if we can examine, whether these conclusions actually hold true? And what is the standard of truth that we can apply — if there is such a standard of truth that we can apply universally and say this is the benchmark on which I consider something true. So, for this one important step is needed, which is that whatever occurs to you, you cannot automatically take that to be true, you cannot say, ‘Okay this occurs to me, it must be true’. This is how most of the world operates. ‘Because it pops up in our head, we believe it is true’ and especially after it escapes our mouth, then we are definitely stuck. Then it can feel like now I have to defend that position as if we are the lawyer for that position. So, if we are open enough to firstly atleast say, ‘Just because something pops up in my head, it occurs to me, does not automatically make it true’. How many of us are open enough at least for that much? [Smiles] That is the only openness actually that is needed. Because those who are stuck in that ‘Just because it popped up in my head, it has to be true’, then there is no debating or questioning or arguing with them at all. [Laughs] Then something will make them open, and then we can have this kind of conversation.