Session 1

There was a question one day that does enlightenment happen in a moment, or is it a practice that

happens gradually? You must have seen many people, they are doing some practice to get enlightened or for self-realization. What kind of practice will make you self-realized? What will enlighten you? What kind of actions will enlighten you and keep you enlightened? These are very common questions and they are totally a result of lack of guidance because the person has never met any guru, the person has never met any teacher, and he has probably seen some people who are enlightened or whatever, probably he has heard somewhere that you need to get enlightened and then the mind starts planning its enlightenment and therefore this question comes, what should I do? What do I need to do to get enlightened or whatever this state is and how to achieve it and then how to remain there and what is the technique to achieve that? This points to a wrong path, the person has taken a wrong path.

Is it gradual?

No.

Does it take time?

No.

Is it based on a technique?

No.

If self-realization is the realization of the true nature of what we are, then it logically follows that what we are, are that right now also. The true nature is present right now also. So will the true nature appear gradually? Will it start building up somewhere? That's not true nature. If it needs to be brought from somewhere, if it is a product of a practice, if it is a product of a technique, it cannot be the true nature because that would imply that it is absent right now and if it is absent right now then what is your true nature?

So it is not possible and the true nature is always here. It does not happen gradually. If it is being realized gradually, then probably you are realizing something else, not your true nature. Because the true nature does not happen in stages, there is no stage number one of true nature and then tomorrow you will get the next dose and then after one year another dose and finally true nature is complete. It is not like this. It has to be right now, right here.

So what is enlightenment and what is realization of true nature? Why don't I know it? These are the questions coming from a mind, a confused mind, a mind which needs a little bit of pointing out, that's all. True nature cannot be pointed out. That is another problem. Because it would be very easy for their guru or somebody else to do this and this and this, go here, sit there and look in this direction, look inside etc. And no, it is not possible to do that. True nature cannot be pointed out. What you can do is to point out the false nature. That is all. The false nature is pointed out and then when this ignorance about what I am not, is removed, then the true nature is revealed.

It should not take more than two minutes to reveal it. What do we do? In Advaita, we have these very effective methods called self-enquiry or progressive discarding of what you are not. Remember that the guru will not show you your true nature. Never. He will show you only that which you assume is your true nature. Some people don't even assume anything, they are totally blank. This is a good place to start. I don't know what my true nature is. That means you are already there 50%. You are already on the edge. Now the guru will give a push and you will fall into the true nature. But it becomes a little bit of trouble if you have assumptions, if you have blind beliefs of all kinds. My true nature is this body. This pile of matter is me. This is the only truth about me. This means a lot of work will be needed to destroy the superstition that I am the body. This is actually possible. It is very brutal. It can be done in a few seconds. But the real problem is when people assume something which is non-physical as their true nature. Now, good luck removing that belief. Because you can very clearly see the truth of the body. But if something is in the mind, then it becomes a psychological procedure to remove it. It is kind of difficult because of the assumptions. Then it totally depends on the skill of the Guru. The Guru needs to be very skillful here. The guru needs to see into the mind and then find out what are the real assumptions and why the assumptions are there. And then on the spot, the teacher will fabricate a method, a made up method, some solution to cut that ignorance down. It is complicated. That's why you need a guru.

If you had no assumptions at all, you would see it in one second, which happens to many people actually. I remember my case. It did not even need a pointing out. It was like I assumed something very strange that this witness is present in everybody and I never had this kind of assumptions that people are born with. I don't know whether they are born with those assumptions or whether they are brainwashed into them. But I could sense the presence of the ego and all. It is there and therefore sometimes I would lose it and then when alone, this witness would shine, assert itself. And I thought it was the same for everyone. But slowly when I started studying a little bit about spiritual matters, it was kind of shocking to find out that people don't have any clue about this witness. They don't have any clue about it. They have assumptions. The body is seeing and the mind is thinking and so on. These are assumptions.

These are experiences that we are having and the experiencer is that which is experiencing. I had a little bit of intuition about this. Of course, I did not have the vocabulary. So when there is no vocabulary, when there is no word, there are no words, then you will find those concepts, they are destroyed, they are not expressed and they disappear from the mind. They do not remain as knowledge. You can say it's intuitive knowledge without language, but you cannot speak about it. I think the condition of many people is like this because the mind is a very active, highly intellectual mind - humans, and therefore it is engaged in only that which can be put into language, symbols of some kind.

So I was recently listening to some music and I saw something strange which everybody must have seen when they are engrossed in music. What happens when there is melodious music, something which raises the hair on your body, hair raising experience, blissful experience, the flute and violins and all, you must have seen. So what happens there? Where is the mind when a very sweet melody is playing? What happens to the mind? You cannot say that there is no experience because you are listening to the music, a beautiful voice. So the mind is gone when you are in the music, when you are engrossed in the music. The thinking mind is absent. The symbols, the language - gone…

It is another matter if there are lyrics in the song, then maybe you may start thinking about that. Let us say instrumental music. Instrumental music is the purest kind of music. So let us take that and there is nothing for the mind to hold there. Nothing there to hold and there is this pure experience of sound. Is there any difference between the experience and the experiencer? This is what I witnessed just yesterday. When there is music, well the ego is gone, the body is gone, thoughts are gone. There is just the music which is also the witness of the music.

It is very beautiful.

So Indian classical music is actually designed to bring you to this state. The rhythm and the melody is such that it is designed to kill the mind. The mind is not permanently damaged, don't worry about it. It is only the forgetting of the mind. What remains is a union of the experience of the music and the experiencer of the music. So you will find this in the faces of the people who are listening to the melodious music. They forget everything, even the eyes are closed and just like a statue of Buddha their face can be seen in bliss.

People say I am not happy. It is because there is a constant pressure, there is a constant whiplash of desires. Constantly they are there, in the waking state. And in this ignorance, people are engrossed, they are in the clutches of this mental activity. There is no problem in mental activity, it is the most natural thing. What happened is this is a negative kind of activity. It produces uneasiness, anxiety, stress, suffering, pain. And that is the problem, isn't it? Otherwise the mind is a machine, it is doing whatever it does. And the mind is the cause of ignorance. Otherwise our true nature is present here and now.

People try to do the patchwork of fixing the mind. Let me fix my mind, it is too noisy, it is too troublesome, it is too negative, it is a criminal mind, a mad mind. Well, it is because of past experiences, your past actions, it has become like this. So that is not self-realization. That is surgery on the mind. What is self-realization? When this thing is absent, gone, temporarily or permanently or whatever, and you are the music, when the experience is the experiencer, that is bliss.

Why don't I have it every day, every time? This is another ignorance, isn't it? Just like when the music was present, you were present as music, isn't it? Now it makes no sense to call the experience and the experiencer, it is all one, you are one with the music. So are you all the time, one with the mind. Remove music, put mind there, put your thoughts and actions and feelings, sensations, emotions. This is the music, the internal music of the mind. Are you not there as your mind right now, right here? You are there right now, right here as my voice. This voice is not my voice, it is not coming separately from somewhere, it is the experiencer itself, it is speaking to itself.

Did it take time for you to have this realization? Was it gradual, was it sudden? No.

The realization is always that I am always there, my true nature, my essence is always there. This is the realization. It is right now, right here also. Don't think that my mind is like this, I forget this and I forget that. All is happening as experiencer, all is happening as your true nature.

It is tricky, isn't it? No amount of practice will give you this view. Don't do pranayama, don't do breathing, don't do this or that as in whatever bullshit they teach you in yoga. That is for fixing various things which you can do if you want, it is not for self-realization. Self cannot be realized, you see. You can only unrealize the stuff that you assumed is true. You can only unrealize your ignorance, I am ignorant, I did not know that these thoughts are running me, so on.

It is simpler than that actually. Just realize that all these experiences that are happening, are just music in which the experiencer is completely involved. There is nothing more to realize than this, nothing more to do. No practice will achieve this. When you are cooking, when you are cleaning and when you are just folding your clothes or packing your stuff, driving and all, just see that it is the true nature, it is always present, it is doing all these things. It is actually all these things. It is all the experience, all the actions.

There is no doer because the doing and the thing that is done is one. Why is there no doer? Because it implies duality. There is a doer separate from the doing. Have you seen this? No. What is our direct experience? The doing and the done is one. When we are listening to music, the listener and that to which we are listening is one. Momentary, if I draw your attention to this thing, when you are engrossed in the music, sometimes you will find that this division happens. Let's say you are engrossed in the music and I say, do you know who composed this song? Do you know who composed the music? Your mind will wake up from the trance and your mind will go search the memory, say yes, yes, this and this and then the listener is separated from the music. This is the activity of the mind. It divides for a while. This goes in memory. This is amazing, isn't it?

Let me take you down the memory. Why do we have this illusion that we are separate from everything? It is because of the memory again. Memory is the culprit everywhere. This activity of division is recorded in the memory and when you recall, there is this memory of the music and the listener and all the data that is associated with the music. Who composed this? Who sang this? What year was it released and then your memories of listening to it for the first time with your family in the cassette recorder and so on. This is knowledge. What I am calling data and memory is knowledge and stored in the memory. This gives us an impression that I was there listening to the music. Notice your direct experience when you are listening to the music, especially the instrumental music or melodious music, which does not evoke your lower instincts. Not very angry music, not very exciting music, but I find that also sometimes pleasing. You see, Bhangra is very pleasing and Disco is very pleasing when you are in that mood and you can be engrossed in that music also, the rhythm also. What happens when you listen to music, very soothing music, melodious music? Is there this knowledge present? No.

So much so that the body will start moving by itself. You will start tapping. You will start swinging with the music. Why? Because the thought process is absent. Because the symbolic language is absent.

Can you enjoy the music while giving a running commentary on the music, like cricket commentary? That is impossible, isn't it? It's not possible to enjoy that kind of music and the thinking mind needs to go and then the art takes over.

Same thing will happen whenever you look at anything beautiful and the mind stops, whether it's a beautiful painting, whether it is a beautiful person or any animal or you are standing in front of a very beautiful big mountain covered with snow. Same thing will happen. Because it is very profound, people start crying when they see something beautiful. It is an experience. It is not painful. Obviously, they are not crying because something bad has happened and the tears are tears of joy. Why is there joy there? Because for a split second, the mind left them and the experience became the experiencer for a second.

So our true nature is here right now, right here. It is there when the mind is not present, which produces a very blissful experience and it is the same experience. The experience of the yogi in meditation is the same as the experience of a music lover when listening to music, same as the experience of a traveler when the traveler is watching the natural beauty, big cliffs and rivers and oceans. Same experience as the lover watching the beautiful face of his beloved or a child watching his mother. Same experience. The yogi is not doing anything special, you see. You cannot become a yogi. You can only realize that the yoga is present right now, right here. This mind is the yogi's mind. This mind right now that we have is already one.

This realization will not happen by practice. How much practice does it take to appreciate something beautiful? We are all born with this appreciation. So the answer to this question is, does enlightenment happen in a moment or is it a gradual process? It should be obvious to you now that it is not gradual and it does not happen in a moment. What happens is the relaxation of the mind and the appearance of blissful Existence-consciousness-self, as if it was always there. Timelessness happens.

So those who want to put the whole thing into time are making some kind of mistake. I can see why this mistake is there because this is how our training is. To do something, well, you need to put some effort and it is going to take time and then you apply this conditioning, this brainwashing to spiritual realization, it is not going to work. Spiritual stuff is totally different from the worldly stuff. That's why we have this division of spiritual and material. That's why most of the time I say, well, I don't give any kind of useful advice here. I don't give you any knowledge. I don't give anything that you can use and that is very disappointing for the people. You mean, I'll never achieve anything, I'll never get enlightenment, I'll never get the self-realization, Atma Gyan, Brahma Gyan, whatever you call it? The answer is no.

It is not something to be gotten by effort, time, or practice. These are different things, you see. Even the practices that we do to fix our minds, fix our bodies and so on, they go into the material domain, you know, this side of the margin, not in the spiritual. So, sometimes I think it is very good contrast, but the spiritual is, when you realize that the material was never there, this is spiritual, isn't it? When you realize the true nature of everything, disappearance of the ego, disappearance of the suppression, do you still see something material?

If you do, then you need to do the self-enquiry again. You need to go back to square one again, because you failed to see the true nature. It is not different from the material. The material and spiritual is there only when there is no realization. So the spiritual is encompassing the material.

This is a little bit tricky to explain because our view is always dualistic. This is a material thing, that means the spiritual must be absent there. This is spiritual, that means the material must be absent there. This is how the mind thinks, you see. What is reality? Reality is non-dual. The spiritual includes the material. It cannot be anything else. Look at it.

Let's go back to the music again.

Was there music?

Yes.

Was there the listener?

Yes.

Was there any suppression?

No.

But still, there was music. And still, the listening was there.

So this is the whole picture. When you hide parts of the picture, you can say, oh, there was music and all. I was listening to music. You can hide some parts of this picture and say it like this. The whole picture is revealed, well, the music has disappeared into the listener. So this is how spiritual things are. They are strange.

There was one question that it is very obvious that no one is the doer and the receiver of the doing. Then who is the supreme doer and what is the purpose of doing? It's a beautiful question actually. It is very obvious that there is no doer and there is no experiencer of the fruits of the actions. It is very clear now but things are happening and so who is doing it? What is it that is doing it? Now this is a language problem probably, that we do not say doing if there is no doer, we say it happening.

We say it is happening, not the doing.

So it is something to do with the language. So there are two questions, who is the supreme doer and what is the purpose of doing? Now the second question is redundant because all you need to show is that there is a supreme doer and then you can let the supreme doer have any purpose they have, they want, they wish. So the second question will disappear if we show that there is no supreme doer. It is kind of amazing that people think like this, that everything needs to be done, everything needs to be created and everything must have a reason. It is amazing that we think like this and most of the people do not come out of this attitude for the whole of their lives. It must be a doing of something, isn't it?

Then the religious kind of people, they will export the reason into the sky somewhere where it belongs properly.

The spiritual kind of people, those who read a lot of scriptures and all, they will export it to the karma, the theory of karma, cause and effect. It happened, it is the doing of this and that, impressions, sanskaras and all, I must have done something wrong, that's why I got this fruit, it is my own doing and so on. This is a kind of spiritual view.

Now these are all half truths, I am not saying they are totally wrong, it can be explained like this, but half truths, half of it is wrong. What is wrong with the concept of supreme doer? Now yes, the individual doer is gone, thrown away, the person deserves a medal for that. Not my doing, not my karmic things. Somebody is there, but something is turning the wheels. How can anything happen without it being done? You can put a name on that, Mother Nature is doing everything. I also say it, many times, you must have heard, Mother Nature is doing it. There is something very interesting that happens. The body is doing its thing and people think that I am doing it. And then they say, this is being done by Mother Nature because it cannot let go of this concept of doing and doer, they need to export it somewhere and that's why I also say it is happening.

When a child is born, the parents take the responsibility, it is my doing, we are responsible for the birth of the child and therefore the child is my property now. I own it just like I own other objects. It is good from the social point of view because our society is based on such concepts of doer, doing, responsibility and position. Otherwise this society will fall away. Can you imagine? I was shocked, I will tell you a little bit of a story. I heard Osho one day, I think I read it or he was talking, he said children are the property of the society in his typical voice, you can imagine, very slow voice, so I was shocked. I came to know that this is always the case, this is the truth. I said yes, there is so much truth in that, when you hear some of the things like this for the first time, what do you hear? Well, it looks like it was always true, isn't it? I always knew these things and thanks for reminding me, something like that happened and that is because the ownership of the child is taken up by the ego of the parents. It is not a doing of the parents, it is a happening.

So I realized, oh yes, it is so right, so true, parents don't own the child, the child belongs to mother nature and no, nobody is going to donate their child to mother nature because what is the view of mother nature for an ordinary person? The jungle, the hills, the rivers, the birds and insects, oh well, it is so sad, it is very sad. We have cut down mother nature into a tiny thing which we capture in photographs and post it on Twitter, so it is very sad. Everything is mother nature, so the children, they belong to everything actually. Now you cannot tell this to the parents, can you? They will be furious, how can you take my property away? So no, we should not do this, don't go to an ordinary person and tell them, oh, your three sons, they don't belong to you, don't have any control over them, okay, let them go and now that father is going to kill you.

So Osho did not go all the way, probably he did, who knows, he is Osho, but he stayed in the middle. The children are a property of the society, it is not a parent's job to raise them or to claim them as their own. Society should raise the children, society should claim them. What is society then? It is an organization of people only, so not one person will be made owner of the child. His view is like this and I immediately agreed somehow because probably tired of my parents, any teenager will do that, you see, I don't want these parents, they don't have any right to tell me what to do, how to behave, how to talk, how to dress. So till you become a parent, you will have this kind of attitude, you see, as soon as you become a parent, you will start doing exactly the same thing that your parents do.

It is very interesting that this is a common ignorance among people that they own things that are happening naturally. So no, we don't own anything, we don't create anything, we don't do anything, nothing at all.

Why?

Because there is no owner, it is egoic thought, a thought in the ego, the ownership, the claim is a tendency of the mind, this is what we call ego, that is what generates the identity in the I and the I includes all these things. So it's very hard to come out of this attitude.

I think Gaurav has a comment, Khalil Gibran also said the same thing, children come through

you, but they don't belong to you.

Exactly. I took this example of a child because it's very shocking, isn't it? Parents don't have any claim on the child, it's very shocking to hear these things. When I heard this, I was relieved actually, parenthood is like walking on a sword, sword's edge, yes I know it is not mine, still I need to treat it as if it is mine, can you see? Now here is spirituality in daily life for you, those who think their life as a parent or child is a mess, is not spiritual, they should listen to the following.

Your body is not you, every seeker, even a newbie seeker knows this, your body belongs to you, not true, isn't it? It belongs to mother nature but we still take care of the body as if it is mine, as if it is me, as if it is my part, who is this “we”? Who is this I who is taking care of this body which is not I? Look at it, it is also happening, only that it is twisted in the mind somehow, there needs to be a doer to take care of the body, otherwise it will die.

Notice that this idea is totally absent in animals, that which is taking care of their body, the body and the mother nature, all three are one there in an animal, you can check, you can look at a bird, it is the mother nature acting as a bird, the bird is not thinking I need to eat, balance diet in order to be healthy, I need to live long. No... This madness appears only in humans because of our inflated ego, we own the body, we think it is me. That is the height of stupidity and we say I am responsible for the body, this is one extreme and the other extreme is I am not the body, it will be taken care of, somebody will do it, I will just go and sit in the cave and this is another extreme.

So the middle path is that you disown the body, give up the ownership and you still act as if you are the body and you are responsible for the maintenance of the body, this is a spiritual attitude, this is how a sane person lives. Both the extremes are insanity

This came from Buddha actually when he gave up eating and almost died and then he realized no, no, no, this is madness and then he started eating, that was a big learning experience, wasn't it?

So it is happening, the body is happening and it is not very shocking because almost everybody knows this, but very few people think about their relations, especially the close relatives, there is all kind of ownership there, all kind of stamped, like in the government office the files are stamped, this is urgent, this is top secret, this is theirs, this is mine and this is useless, throw it away and so on. We do this with the relations. Children, they are mine, I need to take care of a child and none of these people they are not mine, they will do their own thing. So this is simply the ego and the spiritual life is realizing nothing is mine, still doing that which needs to be done, still acting as if it was mine. This is how we play.

So what will happen if you do something like this? I don't guarantee, don't take my word for it, but all the problems of your relations will disappear. This is my experience. The relation of a parent and child will become a relation of a friend, not somebody who owns somebody and enslaves somebody, but a friend. The child will not see you as a commander, as somebody under whom they must live, they will not fear you. Respect comes, it should come out of love, not out of fear.

You must have seen this complaint is there, many parents will say, my children don't respect me, don't obey me. The problem is you have never done anything to earn respect. Because you think you were responsible for bringing that child into the world, which is stupidity, if this ignorance is there, this will be the result. What if you thought that it is just a gift of mother nature, that has been given to me, so that I can take care of this.

If you experiment like this, treat the child as a friend, especially when the child starts understanding a little bit, you will see that on the face of the child. Nobody likes slavery, not your own child will like to take orders from you, nobody likes this, this is human nature actually. But have a friendly attitude and they will do everything that you asked them to do.

It must be your own experience, that I am actually diverting somewhere else, but I want to give you this example of spirituality in daily life, how to apply what Osho said, should I donate my child to the society somewhere, that is stupidity, isn't it? Society is a mess already, you don't want to do that, what he meant was, do not own the child. It must be your own experience, that your siblings, your cousins or your brothers and sisters will never do what you say and will never support you and will laugh at you if you fail and if you are successful, they will be jealous of you, they will laugh again, but your friends, they will bury the body, isn't it? This old saying is that a friend will bail you out of jail, but a real friend will help you to bury the body. They are like this, whatever you want, they will do it with you, they will support you in doing anything, whether you are digging a ditch, whether you are robbing a bank, your real friend will be there, helping you out. What kind of relation is there that you have with your friend which you don't have with your so-called blood relatives who own you? Who has your leash in their hand. What is the difference here? Difference is ownership, see, I am not the doer, this knowledge is lacking in a parent, that's why no friendliness, that's why there is a coating of the sticky mess of relation where there should not be any relation except that of a friendship. If you take a look at society, if you take a look at the successful relations, the happy kind of relations, you won't find a bit of relation there, all you find is friendliness, they are friends, the father and son are friends, mother and daughter are friends. They want to stick to each other, they want to live with each other, it's not that they are avoiding each other, it's not that they are fighting or commanding the other.

In friendship you don't need to command, you need to put your wish there, I want to watch this movie and your friend will be there with two tickets, let's go. Have your parents done that ever? Never probably, never ever. Probably the more you grow up, the less they will want to do things that you like, no friendship there.

What is the typical image of a parent? They feed you as if they are feeding themselves and they will put you to the torture of the school and they want you to be a doctor always, nothing less than a doctor or a lawyer, somebody rich. This is the problem in India that they will even want you to marry somebody they like, not somebody you like! Somebody that can make their social status higher. This is a big problem here in India, even though we call this a spiritual country, the spirituality is totally absent from everyday life, it is ego dominated.

The message is this that there is no doer. You can export the doer to the ego, to the body, to this, to that, even to the supreme doer, you can go on doing it, but it makes no sense because it is happening, it is happening. For how to implement that in day to day life, just like Osho said, give up ownership as much as possible.

Now the question comes again, how am I going to do the things if I am not the doer, who is going to take care and the thing is, it will happen whatever your mental state is, whatever your state of knowledge or ignorance is, it will happen, the same thing will happen with this knowledge that there is no doer, but try this experiment, this is a life experiment, I don't guarantee anything, try this and give up the ownership and see what is the result.

I think I am doing a bad job of describing it, but mostly you take ownership of the objects, it's ok, it's not a big thing but the ownership of people is deciding the quality of your life, people are the problem in your life. You have everything, you just click here and click there and everything is delivered to your home, now the people are the problem. They don't do as you tell them to do, they don't behave according to your wishes, why? Because of the stickiness of ownership, I am the doer, he is the doer and he is responsible for my mental condition, the blame game, you see. Most of our troubles come out of the concept of doer.

What will happen if you export the doer in the sky, call it a supreme doer or this doer or that, your misery is not going to go away, only the cause will be something more distant which you cannot see, only you can imagine, the doer is imaginary right here right now, it will remain imaginary if you assume it to be somewhere else, if you name it supreme or if you write theories and books about it, read scriptures and texts about it. It's not going to work. Giving up the doer will bring a little bit of peace in your mind, your body will relax immediately.

Will it work in society? No, no it won't work, don't donate your child, no don't, that is not good, so donate the other things which you don't need. You see, you don't need the child probably but the child needs you, this is a question of survival. Now, you need to take care of the child as if it is your child, as if you possess these things. Employers will possess employees, your prime minister possesses everybody, he owns the country, this is how society works.

It will happen in a friendly way, in a background of friendship, not of the ownership, just like you take care of your friend, all the good and bad desires of the friend are your desires. I don't think those who are in jobs and families now, friendship has become something else, those who have more money and social status are your friends now. Anyway, this is how friendship is, it is selfless, no ownership, that's why, friendship is the purest of relationships.

I gave a non-traditional answer to - who is the doer? I hope it was more entertaining than the old boring answer - there is no doer. Check it with your own experience, what happens when you slowly give up the doership, stop exporting it out there, first of all, stop sending it in the sky somewhere, there's no such thing and you want to know the truth, no, it cannot be told in words, see what happens when you give up, that is the answer.

Manjunath has a question here, no-doer means just observe or witness?

Doer or no-doer, the observing and witnessing is always happening, you cannot say no, I won't observe now, I won't witness now, it is not possible to say that, so the concept of no-doer is simply not entertaining the doer. The concept of doership or no-doership does not mean doing something, just do not entertain the idea of doership, then the witnessing is happening anyway, you see, if you say no, I don't want to be a doer, I want to be witness, well that is pushing too much, it is unnatural because the observing and witnessing is happening anyway. Don't try to do non-doing, it does not work like this

Now you can see a little bit of funny thing here that the concept of doership is so deep in the mind that people want to do the non-doer thing, is it possible? No, and there is an interesting story again, a very small story, I heard somewhere from some foreigner who visited Sri Lanka. He was very interested in Buddhism there, and he was very excited - I am doing the greatest thing in the world now and I will become a monk. So he went to the lama, he expressed his wish, I want to become a monk and I want to learn meditation and all. Lama told him the procedures and all these things and he agreed without asking.

Then he asked - just teach me meditation.

Lama said - sit down, okay, now breathe …

He said - yes, okay, now what?

Lama - Now nothing!

He was a western person and the idea of non-doing is totally alien to them, so meditation is something we should do in the west, isn't it? I get this question, how to do the meditation and then I don't know where to start.

So he is doing, I am breathing, yes, now what? No, nothing, just do this, and the newcomer was totally confused, I came from thousands of miles to do nothing? And the lama said - Yes, exactly!

This is the story, you know what it means, you cannot do nothing, don't try to do nothing, it's not possible.

Ajay is saying, I wasted a lot of time acting as a witness to my thoughts, but then I questioned it, if I am the witness, how can I become that?

It is the mind playing with itself, it's a very good realization there, and this is what I call usually the resistance of the mind, it resists, it does not want to go away so quickly, it wants to do this and that. So for such people, there are tricks, which on the path of knowledge, we do not employ, we take a hammer and break the mind, we do not try to do anything. All the answers that I give, they are like hammer and glass kind of answers, so people think it is rude, but this is how we deal with the mind on the path of knowledge.

This is resistance of the mind, it will come back again and again in different ways, okay, you told me to not do, I will not do, now I am doing the not doing, okay, it's working, so this is not how you do, you see?

It is simply not entertaining the thought that I am the doer, and then do needs to be done.

It is very easy now, don't not do, and yes, the mind will say I am the witness of everything, but now there is a thought in the mind that is also being witnessed, which is - I am witness of everything. Nothing wrong here, as long as you understand what the mind is doing, let it do then, because this is also natural, because the doer is so deep in the mind, it cannot be rooted out, but there are techniques to do that. Kundalini is one of the techniques, she will take a sword and behead the doer. I think some people are here in our group like this, when the Kundalini takes over, is there a doer? Now the problem is you will export the doer to the Kundalini - Kundalini is doing this - no, Kundalini is mother nature herself, who is doing this? We don't do these things on the path of knowledge. No doer here. It will solve many of your problems.

Somebody insults you, no doer there, nobody has insulted me, has it impacted somebody, no, nobody is there to receive the insult also, it's gone, so no impression was made, no enmity happened, no emotion arose. So does that mean you let the person insult? No, just give him a tight slap, no doer here too, nobody slapped him.

This is spirituality in the daily life, it is amusing, it is very amazing, but very few people get it, because I see such questions all the time, oh there is no doer, no you speak all the time, no doer, you are doing everything, just now you went and took the water and you are drinking the water, you said I am not the body and you are acting as if a body, and then you can see why these questions are there now, because the concept has escaped these people, they failed to grasp it.

You see you cannot grasp it like this, you will need to take the negative view, so I am not the body, then who am I, well not the body, end of the matter, this is how it is, if I am not doing it, who is doing it, you are not doing it, end of the matter. So do I need to witness, do I need to be in this state, samadhi ? No, stupidity, you are always in samadhi. Samadhi cannot be done, you cannot reach the state, you can only realize right now, right here is samadhi. Now if you are a very intelligent kind of a person, you will name it something, that is fine. In Buddhism there are hundred kinds of samadhis. Does it matter? No, have you seen those names, I gave you some examples that day, the names are so big, one page is not enough to write those names. Sanskrit names, and they are distorted in Pali, and somebody translates them in English and it becomes totally meaningless. Can you reach that, is it possible to reach that state? For some people it is amusing, because when you have become the master, you can do such things, in daily life, no, it is completely useless. It's an academic thing. You must have seen the masters, the master artist will distort the painting, and people will laugh at that - what a waste of paint, he does not know how to paint the horse, and only an artist can recognize that he has almost perfect knowledge of the anatomy of the horse, how the legs bend, how the tail waves and so on, and he has captured that thing, he has put the tail before the mouth, but that is not the issue in that piece of art, he is not showing you the horse, he is showing you the beauty of that animal, something like this. So the master will distort, that is what a spiritual master will do, and in that distortion is the beauty. We cannot do these things, this samadhi, that samadhi and all, this is a master artist, you see, explaining the very very intricate states of the mind. Do we need to do all that? No, one day you will become the master and then you can find out the finer points.

Most of the spirituality is negative, subtractive, destructive, whatever bad words you can think of, it is that, because most of the ignorance is addition, accumulation, piling up, acquired from somewhere. This is the characteristic of ignorance, and the reality is very pure, it has no ignorance, no knowledge. When the ignorance piles up, you need knowledge, and it is always cleaning up of the ignorance, there is no extra knowledge. If your ignorance is exactly the same, which it was before, and now you have piled up knowledge on top of it, this is worse than being ignorant.

You must have seen those people who study too much of the scriptures, and now they know too much, now the cup is so full that nothing goes in. It is always emptying the cup, not filling it, so this will put a full stop after non-doing, non-doing is a full stop. Resistance of the mind is like this, it is trying to keep what it has, it does not want to give up, and so sometimes it will distort that thing, somebody told me to become a witness too, now there is a witness already. Now do not add it, or add the struggle on top of it, it is nothing bad, you see, just a waste of time.

Here is another story, about Shri Ramakrishna, somebody asked him - you do the same thing every day, I do not see you doing anything more, people call you Bhagwan and so on, and you milk the cows, you clean up the cow dung, and you wash your clothes and all. Have you seen Ramakrishna? He looks very ordinary. So somebody asked - you should act like a self-realized person. And Shri Ramakrishna was very silent, and he said - I realized that I am the Self, now I do not need to do it every day?

That was his answer. See, this is the master talking, you do not need to do the witnessing, once realized it is done. You be what you are, you cannot become what you are, not possible. If you are not that, then it is possible to become that, you are already that, how can you become that? Just do not be that which you are not, that is the moral of the story.

There is a similar story of two birds, one is busy doing and on the higher branch is one bird just watching, this story is a metaphor for the mind and the awareness, the awareness is always on, the mind is always doing, the awareness does nothing, the mind does everything, is not aware and the amazing thing is these two birds are one. That will be the Zen way, the Advaita way is to realize both separately and then unite them, which most of you must have done. The Guru will tell you one day that well you are not this person, this is not your name, you are not the doer, you are the observer, you are the witness and it looks very nice, you feel very nice, finally these things are not me and the next day, well you are the body, you are the mind, you are the monkey mind, you are the donkey mind, you are the world, you are other people, you are everything, this pile of rotting trash is also you and now it feels horrible, isn't it?

What? You took away everything and it was so peaceful, you are giving me back with a bonus. This is Advaita. First you are shown the beautiful picture and then you are shown the reality. You will be troubled too much by the lower tendencies, be the witness and now you see all these tendencies, they flare up like a bonfire, it was like a candle, somehow your life was going on peacefully, you like this, you dislike this, you did this, it was very ordinary life, nice life and suddenly the guru has dropped this bomb on it. Now you will see all those tendencies in clear light. Just like you see in the night time, your house looks very nice, looks crystal clear and when the sun rises, now you can see all the dust floating around and hair and these dust bunnies running around. Now you suddenly realize, I need to cleanup today.

This is what happens, when your attention is drawn to the witness and the mind also comes into picture, you cannot get rid of it, suddenly the peace is gone, so when you're told that is also you and just your lower nature, that's all and then you don't know what to do now. Next day the guru will put you to work, you're not the doer but fix your mind now, do it. And this is how it is, it is inclusive, the spiritual thing is inclusive, we just don't discard these things and then sit at home. Once you have seen the difference, now you embrace, embrace the monkey, it's okay, it's fine, acceptance, yes, this human life is not your life, it is an illusion, so on, so forth, once you have seen this, embrace the life because that's all there is, is there anything else than this ordinary human life?

Some people have notions, don't underestimate the imagination of people, they imagine all kinds of things, create these things, so they will say no this human life is not my life, I'll get a new life somewhere in the heaven, in the different lokas, higher dimensional body, etc. Very creative, fertile imagination, isn't it?

When you visit the beach and you see a beautiful house beside the beach and you compare it with your house, in an almost 50 story building there is a tiny room there and polluted atmosphere, noisy atmosphere, all kinds of people, hundreds of people and you buy this processed food and you call it life. This is a contrast to the heavenly beach house, now you want to live in that beach house, you see, that city life is not my life. You sell it off, you leave your job and shift to the beach house. After one week it is a bigger problem than your ordinary house, you can try it, now the beach is boring, the sea is the same sea and the house is also the same old boring thing.

This is mind, the grass is always greener in the heavens, doesn't like the world, so you can try it, yes, all life becomes boring if you have an investment in it. There is a very beautiful quote that I read on twitter which was from Thich Nhat Hanh, he said, since you know that all things are impermanent, now you can enjoy them completely. Now why is this related to what we are talking about? Because the mind is fantasizing about a permanent bliss, permanent pleasure here, no this life is not good and then it imagines something which is permanent. What this guru is saying is, the real beauty, the real pleasure lies in impermanence. I am not talking about anything that is “spiritual” and out there, it is your daily experience. I gave you the example of the beach house, it is the experience of everyone, not only a beach house, you can take any kind of house, you can make a house on the moon but you will face the same thing, if it is permanent, it cannot be enjoyed. Try it, because if it is fleeting, it is beautiful.

You will see that the most beautiful things in mother nature are those that are most impermanent, like a rainbow, very beautiful, like a solar eclipse, very beautiful, very rare, like a sunset or a flower. Why do we want to grab them? Why do we take pictures? We want to make it permanent, and once you have taken three pictures it is boring again. This is mind. See the tendency of the mind, because things are impermanent, they are perfect, if you try to make them according to your limited intelligence, it is always a disaster.

You can try this as an experiment, I do that every day, I cook something new, I eat it, wow it's a blissful experience, I cook that again, I don't want to even look at it, even if it tastes better and looks better and so on. Why has that happened? This is impermanence, so we need to accept all these things, the permanent is I, you can say, so is impermanent, actually there is nothing that exists which is permanent, so where will you go now? Now you surrender, this is the right time to surrender. I cannot imagine, I cannot hope for anything better than this moment, there will be nothing better than this moment, that's what brings the equanimity in the mind. Why is the mind troubled? Because it is projecting these things and that thing, this will be better, that will be better, I want to go there, this is the cause of suffering. Equanimity is the absence of projections of the mind.

You must have seen this question, how to attain equanimity, how to pacify the mind. The answer is again negative, do not entertain these projections of the mind, when it says that will be better, this will be better, come back to your direct experience, look, there is no better and there is no worse, there is only this moment, look at it right now, is there anything better or worse, all you have is this moment, it is fleeting, it is changing, that is the most beautiful thing about it. Remember the stagnant water becomes muddy and stinks, flowing water is beautiful.

This moment is all there is, it is fleeting, it is chaotic, it is going away, cannot grasp it and that is the only beauty that it has. Make it permanent, and well, it becomes ugly, it becomes a burden, so on. And you can now apply this knowledge in everyday life and check what happens, see what happens when you stop trying to oppose the flow of the things, this broke down, that broke down, he said this and that, well these things are the most beautiful things that are happening. No I don't want these to happen, I want others to happen - immediately realize that this is the projection of the mind, when the other things happen, they will be beautiful, as perfect as it is.

I habitually use the word beautiful because Sundaram is a direct translation of that, Satyam Shivam Sundaram. The proper English word is Perfection, because when I say beautiful, you imagine something beautiful, but the pile of garbage is also perfection, it is perfect as it is, because it cannot be anything else, it cannot be permanent, it cannot be that which the mind is projecting. You can say okay, I will stop projections, and no, the projection is also perfect. Just realize that your mind has projected something beautiful, this hope, this wish, this desire is also perfect. Now suddenly you will find, there is a change in the mind, the background of the mind will become peaceful, it will also become perfect, yes there is a desire, yes okay fine, let it be there, no I need to run, okay if I do then yes, that's what is perfect. There will be peace, there will be background of peace and satisfaction and that's what we call equanimity, equanimity is not the absence of mental activities, you can achieve that kind of equanimity if you want, sit down at one place and then just observe the mind flowing, do nothing and it will settle down in equanimity, it will come out again. This is mind. The mind is equanimous or not equanimous, but the being is beyond these things, the true nature, you cannot apply these words to the true nature, it is infinitely peaceful. So you can do that by sitting, but that's not equanimity, that's a kind of net practice, you are practicing, you are training the mind, the real one is when everything is going on, this fish market of the mind is on and that is equanimity.

That happens when you realize that everything is fleeting, this is the noise of the river, it is flowing, it is chaotic and that brings real equanimity. This is the whole teaching, at least I interpret it like this. So there is no way to achieve equanimity, this cannot be done, the only way is the negative way of clearing out the projections of the mind, not taking them seriously, too seriously. Don't take the mind too seriously, you are taking life too seriously.

There is another very good quote that a man suffers because he is taking that seriously which the

gods have made for fun. What did the gods make for fun? Well there is fun only when things are changing isn't it? It's impermanence. We don't want anything to be impermanent and that's why we suffer. The impermanence is perfection actually, if somebody wants me to create something I'll create it in an impermanent way. It must be your own experience that when you watch a movie, there is a flow in the movie, if nothing happens in the movie you don't want to watch it. There is a flow in the movie, that's why you are engaged there, nail biting movies, now take a poster of that movie and hang it on your wall. One day, two day, well it looks nice you see, looks cool, after that you'll stop looking at the poster.

I'll tell you a secret, in my house there is not even one picture. That day somebody came and commented on this - your house is very minimalistic and I said is that an insult? He said no but there's nothing to look at and I actually did not answer but why do I need to look at something? And only one thing, same thing? Everyday?

It is my experience, as soon as I put something there, it becomes extremely boring after two days. I don't want to look at this thing, so there is nothing, the walls are empty. I want you to do this experiment, a minimalistic kind of design, only that which is very much needed, throw away everything that is for the show.

It was my experience and you should experiment a little bit, have you seen those compartments in Japan made up of bamboo and paper, what is there in it? Is there a Shivling or is there a big statue of Kali? Nothing actually, sometimes just leaves of bamboo or something is painted, very very minimalistic. Why is that? There are different reasons but the good reason according to me is that the blank, the emptiness is more beautiful than something which limits it, when you hang a painting on your wall you have limited the possibility to that painting only, you have made it permanent.

So the real reason is I don't hang anything on the walls because the next day it gets covered with spider webs and all kinds of lizards make a home behind that painting. It is not that I am some great Zen master. There are only practical issues here. That way I don't need to clean the house every day, that is the reason, but it has a good effect because you don't see the clutter around you, the mind is peaceful, there is no need to maintain it, clean this and that, so you are free to do other important things.

Probably it's a good place to end todays satsang, and I suggest this kind of experiments - remove, remove, remove, get rid of the excess and those who have this kind of complaint - I don't get time for spiritual things, well look at it again, it's all spiritual already and if you want to have some kind of time left over to do your spiritual thing, which you think is spiritual, then see that your time is wasted in unnecessary rituals, your time is being eaten by that which is unnecessary, which is clutter. You cannot make time, you can only get rid of the time-wasting activities, that is my experience, this life is the spiritual life, there's no other special spiritual life.

Session 2

Let's bring our minds into the higher layers of intellect and even higher awareness, because in the daily routine, the mind functions in the lower layers. So there is a very good method to bring it to the higher layers. It is by thinking about spiritual matters. It is by asking a question, contemplating, remembering.

So I use these methods a lot. Some people may want to use a mantra or a statue or something that puts that person, the ritual puts the mind on the higher layers instantly. Satsang is a time when we push the mind to intellect and beyond and probably the whole day will be spent like this, if you are in a two hour or three hour satsang. So probably we cannot do it every day, you will need to do it according to your own ritual, set up your own ritual. Satsang is an assisted ritual.

So on the path of knowledge, because we do not meditate, nothing, we expect the seeker to be always on the higher side, to be always beyond intellect. So there are no practices and no rituals mentioned on the path of knowledge. If you find that you cannot achieve that state of mind, which is conducive for spiritual growth, then you can invent your own ritual. There is no harm, at least for the beginners. You can take help of yogic postures, breathing, pranayama, meditation, dhyana. All these techniques are for all seekers, not only for seekers of that particular tradition. Everybody can use it if you know how to use it. To know how to use it, you must get some training from a trainer, a guru. Or if you can do something very, very light, sit down and watch the breathing pattern. That is enough sometimes to stop the mind from abiding in the lower layers. The chatter of the mind will stop there.

Mind won't stop. Let's not make that mistake. Mind cannot be stopped. Specific activities can be stopped. Many people try to stop their mind by standing on one foot and torturing the body. On the path of knowledge, you are now introduced to the mind. You should know that stopping the mind is impossible. It will never stop. What happens is the activity shifts from one layer to another. If the lower layers stop, people assume that their mind has stopped. The activity that is going on in the causal body and other bodies cannot stop. Your perception will not stop. All there is is the mind. It cannot stop. So let us not make this mistake of stopping the mind. You can only shift the activity from the lower layers to the higher layers. So I hope just by talking like this, your mind has already shifted to the higher layers. You can check the usual mess of the mind. The garbage in the mind is gone for most of you.

It's a very effective method. All you need to do is put the mind into a job. Give it a task which involves higher layers. And like a very good servant, it will do that. And by you, I mean the intellect. The intellect should be in command.The command center should be in command. Not the body or the lower centers. They need to be active only when needed. When not needed, well, should rest or do something which the body and mind likes, like watering the plants, cleaning the house. Nobody likes it, I think. Go listen to the music, something like this. This is a totally different world we are living in.

So probably your servants clean the house and wash your clothes and all. But somebody who lives alone, like in a jungle, these options are not available. So what I do is I do my daily work while trying to be aware. I don't even push the mind to the higher layers. Let it do whatever it's doing and become aware of that. Awareness takes care of everything, you see. When you are situated at the Agya, everything else behaves properly. This must be your direct experience, isn't it?

So this was a tip. Hopefully that will be useful. Whatever you are doing, become aware of that and then you will be always, for most of the time, will be on the higher layers. It does not mean that the activity at the lower layers totally stops. No, it can continue. The body can keep doing whatever it is doing. Mind can keep thinking. Even the ego can function, the identity can function. As long as it functions under the command center, the intellect and higher awareness, it's okay. What is wrong in that? What is happening is for an ordinary person, the higher layers are not so active and the lower layers are behaving in a rogue fashion. They are behaving in an unmanaged office. You must have seen those offices. When the boss is not there, everything is a mess in that office. Nobody works.

I had the fortune of working in such an office. So every time I went out, people also went out. They did their own jobs. They did their own thing. As long as I was there, everything worked. So it was very frustrating. Nobody will come to the office until I am there. They come exactly one or two minutes behind me because no need to work if nobody is asking them to work. So the lower layers are like this. They lack motivation.They are programmed to do whatever is their default behavior. So it needs to be always under control. Not obsessive control. You cannot use a hunter, a whip, or a stick to control them. It's not a healthy way. It needs to be done only for a severely defective mind, for only an afflicted mind, mental disorders. Then you need to take those heavy steps, corrective measures. For an ordinary mind, simple motivation is needed. That's all.

Be present and everything will work. Don't leave the office. It is okay. If they are working, it's okay. If they stop working, then you need to worry, isn't it? The identity stops working, then it becomes a big mess and happens to many people. If the lower layers, the anger and fear, stop working, lust stops working, it becomes a total disaster for that human being. The higher layers, they are not concerned with such functions. If they are working, it's okay. Not working, it's okay. But body and the ego, they need to be maintained. They need to be healthy. Many people have this misconception, I need to get rid of body, I need to get rid of ego. That comes because of the half-knowledge. They heard it somewhere.

They heard a 10-minute video on YouTube - look at your ego, it's a dreadful thing. Get rid of it and then you will become spiritual. That's the end of the video. The videos don't tell you everything. You see, so even the books won't tell you this detail because it's a matter of practice. It's a matter of implementation of the teachings. There are teachings and then there is implementation of the teaching. You need to be practical.

It happened to me that I recognized this very, very late. This needs to be recognized first that the body and mind and ego and all this, the society and the world is here for some reason. Yes, it's all false. No doubt about it. It's all non-existent. Still, there is a false reason behind it. What is that reason? We need to find out. Surely, it is not to destroy what has been created, isn't it?

If you assume like this, it will be a disaster because you heard somewhere mukti mukti mukti and then you want mukti and they will tell you it is cessation of the mind, no more birth and instantly the destructive pictures come in your mind. Destructive ideas come to mind. Okay, it's all Maya. So let it go to hell and I'm going somewhere else. Where will you go? Is there a place to go? In the totality, when you are the totality, is there a place to go anywhere? This is all there is. Cannot go anywhere and therefore acceptance. Therefore, we accept this life, this body, this mind, this ego and we live with the experience instead of rejecting the experience.

This is an art, the art of living. One foot in the world and one foot in consciousness. There is no other way to live actually. This is the only way. This is the proper way. If you say, no, I want to reject the world. That means you have not grasped the reason behind the world, the body, your relations, the family, the society. Now you see it is all bad. It is all negative and now you worry about getting rid of it.

This happened to me after a lot of struggling, a lot of suffering. The seeds were found inside my mind, nowhere else. Why is everything negative? Why is everything, even from a small ant to the flies, to the airplane that goes above your head, in your governments and your neighbors and your relatives, everybody is, it looks like their job is fixed and that job is to trouble you endlessly, torture you endlessly.

Nothing happens according to your wish. If it happens, it goes away and if it does not go away, there are exactly opposite fruits that are waiting for you. And then you worry, then you say, why did it even happen?

So I struggled and struggled and struggled. This puzzle is very dense. It's very big. Ultimately, the seeds, the keys, were found in the mind. It means there is a rejection in the mind somewhere. Now, probably you won't understand this instantly because I said it very quickly. Our experience is a reflection of our mental states, our likes and dislikes and the seeds, the impressions that we have in our mind. It is the exact mirror, the experience. So if you are happy, the world is happy. If you are sad, everything is sad.

If you are angry, everybody is going to annoy you. If you are fearful, everybody is your enemy. They are there to harm you, to kill you.

I had the fortune of meeting such people and I saw that they have something which I also have. And they annoyed me immensely. And that meant that I am not comfortable in some way. Why? Something is wrong here, not there. Everybody is the way they are because of perfection. It is all perfect. And something needs to be fixed here, isn't it? So recognition of perfection is acceptance. This body is perfect now, whatever it is. This mind is perfect now. This ego is perfect now. So what will that do? It's a kind of trick to put your mind at peace. And then some people will say, no, I don't grasp the reason for all this. It looks all meaningless. What if the meaninglessness is the reason? What will you do then? What if the reason for the experience is purposelessness? The only purpose is to remain purposeless. Now live. Now suddenly it's not a problem, isn't it? The problem is only when you expect something, a purpose, and then it does not happen. Obviously because it is made up. It is your imagination. So your expectation is not going to make it happen. If it is like this, then you will think it's my dream. You will search for reality. It's never satisfying. Assuming a purpose, a reason is not very satisfactory.

So there are two ways. Just like I said, you don't know the reason. So you say, I don't know. That's fine.

It is a mystery for you. It's mysterious. And then you deal with whatever is happening as if it's a puzzle. If it's a game, that's what it is actually. And second, you assume it is purposeless. And then there's immense freedom. Both should lead to acceptance, not rejection. As soon as you assume a purpose, or I want mukti, I want mukti. I don't want this body. I don't want this world. They are all fake. It's all evil. You have a purpose now and then everything will become suffering. Believe me or not. So it's fake.

And there is a reason. It cannot be real. If it becomes real, it will become a big headache. I'm telling you. At least you have this nothingness, emptiness, to take shelter in when they say, buddham sharanam gacchami. It means, take shelter in the buddha. What is buddha? The pure mind, the awareness, the pure consciousness. How do you take shelter there? That's the Mahamantra of Buddhism, isn't it? Everybody says it without knowing what it means. At least we have this place. And it is not a place. It is not a state of mind. It is right here, right now. That is the big realization, isn't it? Nice thing is that we are already under the shelter. And another nice thing is it's impossible to be anywhere else. Where are you going to go? When everything is you.

Just realize that there is this immense emptiness where nothing needs to be done, where there is no purpose, where there is no meaning. It's not a bad thing. It becomes a bad thing if you assume, if you have so many expectations, the insane kind of expectation. Because people filled you with those things.

Look at a child. He's not expecting anything, isn't it? So that's why they say, be like a child. It does not mean that you become mentally retarded and do childish stuff. It means in the essence of the child is non-expectation. Everything is accepted there. I will look at this butterfly. Look at this dog. I look at this TV. And look at this toy. I want this toy. And so on. It's very, very natural. The child is not saying, no, I don't want TV. I don't want birds. So on. So it is like being a child. And if there is expectation, it is guaranteed that it will not be fulfilled because the experience is very, very free.

There is an illusion that I am controlling the experience and I can control the experience to whatever I want. And this is a delusion in the ego. That is the problem of the ego. In a child, this delusion is absent. It is taken up at some point in life. It's mostly brainwashing by society - Why are you not doing this? You need to become like this. Whatever you did is wrong. And so on. This delusion is filled in by society because they are all deluded. So they brainwash people like this. Nobody says you do whatever you like to do. Nobody will tell you. And be free and do whatever you love. It's all good. Nobody is going to tell you like this. You are fine and perfect the way you are. You will never hear these things. So what happens when this delusion gets into the mind? Well, suffering happens. And for a seeker, it's not a big deal. Just throw away this delusion and you are fine. But then the new delusions appear. I want mukti? I want a light body. I want to ascend somewhere. So these people are not seekers. They are not spiritual. I want to stay away from them. They are annoying people.

So another kind of suffering. And then if you can get rid of that also - I'm not aware. I'm not evolving. I'm not progressing. There's another kind of delusion. Where are you going to evolve? What are you going to become if you are everything already? The mind is thinking these things. The mind needs something, isn't it? So the thing is, let it have that. It's not a bad thing. The mind has its own movement. So why not realize that nothing needs to be done while everything happens as it should happen?

So Maya is not the rejection of what is happening. Maya must be accepted. See, it is totally opposite. If you convert your rejection into acceptance, then what is wrong? Nothing is wrong at all. No need to suffer.

So this happened to me. It took a long time. I wanted everything to become perfect. Without realizing that everything is perfect, except this distortion here in my mind. So I actually lost track of what I was discussing, where I was going. So some people have written messages here. Ajay is saying,

I remember I asked this question on self-enquiry. How to get rid of physical pain? And after a few days,

I was told the real definition of grace by you. And this knowledge changed the whole perception of pain.

Yes, it is easy. When I'm answering, it is not coming from me. Sometimes it's not even my experience, you see, is coming from some knowledge store somewhere, which is not mine, because I'm connected, because I made efforts to remain connected by listening, thinking, contemplating. This is available. So those who ask, and initially the answers will come from outside, from somebody else. Slowly, you will start getting your own answers. So the thing is, whatever I speak, whatever I write, even I don't remember, this person does not remember them. Sometimes for the same question, I'll answer completely differently next time. So it is very difficult to believe even for me, because in the ordinary state of the mind, this knowledge is totally absent from my mind. It is just like anybody else. The same garbage is there, you see. I need to do this. I need to do that. That broke and this broke and this fellow is asking for money and that fellow is not coming. It is this life, simple life there. But as soon as you connect to the higher layers, and just like I said, you know, you need to sometimes push it, be on the higher side. And then this connection happens. Sometimes I don't even know where these things are coming from. They simply appear in the mind. It is like I'm doing a postman’s job, actually. So whatever changed your perception was from somewhere else.

M is saying - the sadness or pain is directly proportional to the gap between actual to expected. More the gap, the more the pain. Try to try and get expectations to nil. Whatever comes as actual will be enjoyable.

Well, yes, nicely summarized in one sentence. I was talking about being a child. The pain is there because we are expecting pleasure. So when there is pain, it does not mean that we don't do anything. Acceptance is not inactivity. And that is another delusion, you see. Thanks for reminding me. Pain means that you go and do something about the pain and then back to acceptance. It will heal if it is chronic pain. Then you know that the body is given up. Body is the disease, isn't it? Acceptance that the body is gone now, cannot be maintained. How many people do that now? They resist, just like M is saying. More resistance means longer pain, bigger pain. So the pain is not good, but resistance makes it worse.

There was a thought in my mind, you see. I remembered a question from somewhere. If you think the body is not real, the world is not real, why are you protecting it? Why do you get afraid when there is some dangerous work to be done, when you want to jump from one higher place to ground and take up some heavy electrical work, wiring and all? Why do you take so many precautions? And I really don't have any answer to that because it is not the I. It is our programming that is doing it. Millions of years of programming, survival is doing it. So how can I take credit for this? This organism is made like this. Its job is to survive. So what is wrong there? It can happen whether it is real or unreal. What is happening has nothing to do with reality. Nothing is real, nothing is unreal. It is that which you define to be real using your own criteria.

When we say unreal in Advaita, it simply means it's not going to last. That's all it means. It is very simple yet very, very beautiful. The most accurate definition of reality. I've never found anything else better than this. So when I say unreal, it always uses this criteria that's impermanent. That's why it is unreal. That which stays is permanent, is real. This is the criteria that we are using. And everybody knows why we use this criteria. The logic behind it, it is the ultimate. That is one reason. Everything else will be inferior to this criteria. So everything that is changing is not actually there. Otherwise it wouldn't change. It will remain. The base, the substratum, is never changing. So that's why we say that it exists. Other things appear and disappear on it.

So reality is relative, isn't it? More real and less real. That's all there is. People ask this question. Why are you so obsessed about the security of the body and so on? In other words, they are saying, why don't you die?

And I had no answer actually. But one day I thought about this thing. And recently an answer appeared. Which is, we are not afraid of injury or something bad happening to the body or the mind. Because it will cause death. That is not the real fear. The real fear is that I'll need to live with this messy situation for the rest of my life. If I am not careful, if the body breaks and gets injured, then even if it is unreal, it's going to be a very low quality of life. That's why the intelligence says that it's better to avoid this thing. If there is death, if you say just smelling something will cause death, then no problem. No problem because I won't be there to suffer the consequences. There won't be anybody to suffer from it.

That's why we take precaution when we talk to people. Because a little bit of insult is going to stay with you forever. It does not matter whether it's coming from a stranger or from your own loved one. In fact, the stranger, you will forget pretty quickly. But the ones who are closer to you, if they say something bad, then it remains forever. That's why we are very careful. We take the same precaution just like we take precaution while doing something dangerous. We don't want to live with it forever, like for the rest of our life. That's why we avoid these things. Given this life, whether it is real or unreal, you don't want that experience. This is the tendency of the mind. It stays away from the negative. Avoiding any kind of harm is the tendency. This is also perfect. I don't see any problems here. I don't know why people see problems like this when there are none. What is wrong if the mind behaves in a specific way in Maya? What is wrong with that? Where is the logic failing here? It does so. And that's the end of the argument, isn't it?

Oh, there are a lot of comments here - Getting rid of physical pain.

The feeling of pain is in the mind, not in the source of pain. Like if our hand is cut, pain is not felt in the hand. The pain is felt in the mind. And this is why anesthesia is effective. Similarly, the mind, although subtle, can be influenced by chemicals. So the state of mind can be changed by chemicals. Anesthesia, narcotics, etc. can change the state of mind. These chemical effects are short-lived. What if we generate these chemicals internally and enjoy ecstasy all through? This is possible. Because the brain generates these types of chemicals all the time, depending on the environment we encounter. Fear, pleasure, pain, etc. all generate such chemicals. By controlling the mind, we can generate these chemicals and achieve happiness anytime, anywhere amongst anything.

So getting rid of pain is easy, isn't it? Very easy. The problem is we don't want to live with that. That is the only problem. It has nothing to do with being real or unreal. Let us say you are watching a movie, a very boring movie. Nothing is happening or the same things are being repeated. That's what every movie is, you know. Repetition of the same story in a slightly different way. It's a garbage story and a garbage acting. All the dialogues are garbage. You have heard it many times. Do you want to watch that whole movie? No, you simply close it, watch something else. So it does not mean that the movie is real/unreal. It simply means you don't want that experience. You don't have that preference. That's why we don't want the pain.

Do we want pleasure? Pleasure is absence of pain. It's nothing more than that. So if you get more and more pleasure, you will see that it becomes pain. If there is absence of pain, the body is fit. It is happy. It's very, very happy. That's why when people ask, you know, how to be healthy? What kind of yoga position? What kind of breathing for health, blood pressure? I said, what? These things were not invented to keep people healthy. The yogic exercises and all, they have spiritual reasons. To be healthy is only one thing - Don't break your body. It knows how to remain healthy. It knows how to avoid pain. Listen to the body. It is doing exactly that which is needed.

People start breaking the body and the reason is they want pleasure. Why do people smoke? Actually there is no pleasure in smoking. There is this social component in smoking. I don't know what it is. It's kind of a messy psychology somewhere. The peer pressure, they want to conform to whatever others are doing. If the big man in your school, the handsome person, is smoking, then you are under pressure to do the same. And then the nicotine will take over and it becomes an addiction. I don't know what causes women to smoke. I don't think there is any pressure on them. But nicotine has this property of relaxing the mind. Just like I said, chemicals. Mind can be controlled very easily by chemicals. It's so easy. Probably that's why people get addicted to it. But I don't think anything can be controlled like this. It has consequences. There are always consequences.

So people break their bodies. People get into addictions and unhealthy lifestyles for pleasure. And sometimes for very, very stupid reasons. People drive at high speed on a crowded road because of adrenaline. Body is producing adrenaline so they get addicted to that. And the adrenaline has consequences. It will break your body. It is a stressful experience. So just like the mental states will produce chemicals,the chemicals will produce mental states. Why is that? It's all - mind, you see. The body is not different from the mind. It's just another layer of the mind. It's not my body. The I does not own these things. It is having an experience. It is borrowed. Experience borrowed from the universal mind. Probably not even the universal mind. Small part of the universal mind, which I usually call the greater mind, is borrowed from there.

So should I break it? Should I not take care of it? Because it's all Maya. It's not mine. And that is another stupidity. Should I go for it again and again and again? That is also not necessary. So that's why I say try to find a reason. There is always a reason somewhere. And it will be a completely fake reason. But that's not going to make any difference. Just like I said. The question is not the reality or the unreality. The question is that we are playing here. That's all. How nicely you want to play. That's all there is. Make your experience a good experience. That's all. Isn't it?

That's what the Buddha is saying. Gautam Buddha said, Get rid of the suffering. Everything else is cool. No need to mess with anything else. This ordinary life is the greatest joy. Why are kings so miserable? Why do they kill thousands of people? Why do they make the poor farmers pay taxes? You should not assume that there are no kings. They are there. Only the titles have changed. Why is their life so miserable? Because being ordinary is not enough.

There is a delusion in the mind. There is a mental disease there. I need to control everything. I need all the land. I need all the people to lick my feet. And this is a mental disease. Mental sickness. Actually, this is a big subject. You will say, Okay, then if there is no king there, who will protect me? Because there will be some other king who will attack you. Do exactly the same thing. Probably worse. This is human nature, you see. There cannot be any solution for this. The only solution is to rise above human. And for that you need to start by realizing that we are not humans. We are essentially emptiness who have taken the form of humans. Now, if you don't like the experience, don't try to change the experience. Just change the channel. You cannot go to the TV studio wherever it is and ask them to stop doing it or put the other program or make this actor behave in this way. I don't want this actor to say these lines. I don't want any kings in your play. It will be a big stupidity to try to change the whole studio and their programs and setups and all. And nobody is going to like it, believe me or not. They don't like it. Their plays, millions of people, they like their play, boring play. What you do, you don't change it. You change the channel, watch something else. That's what the yogi is doing.

That's why we recommend getting rid of human life because as long as it is there, it will trouble you. Why not explore something else? And as long as you are exploring, it is going to trouble you. There will be a better life. There will be heavenly experiences. There will be millions of years of body-free, birth-free, death-free lives. Who cares? It becomes boring after a while. That's why dissolution of the mind is recommended and any way that is going to happen.

So some people may say, okay, then cut to the chase. Let's go to the dissolution directly. And such people are seekers. Now, from this point of view, you are at the ground floor. Because we are all humans. We are all on the ground floor. It looks meaningless. What do you mean, dissolution? What do you mean, nirvana? This is something amazing. The word is very amazing. It means turning off the lamp or candle where nothing remains. This is nirvana. That is the goal. You can call it by any name and other traditions will say something else, but it does not matter. Sitting here, this looks like total stupidity. What do you mean, dissolution? I don't want to be dissolved. I don't want that. I want a life. I want a good life. I want an ordinary life. Why are you pushing me to get rid of all these things? So it is not going to make sense. That means you will need to do the journey to the dissolution.

And for a Gyani, it's very easy. You turn 180 degrees and the dissolution is here, right here, right now. It is a matter of realization because if you go forward wherever you are facing towards dissolution, then you will encounter a very big paradox for which I don't actually have an answer. The mind cannot be stopped. What if this individual dissolves? Will the cycles of creation and destruction stop? What about other minds? And so many things are there which do not make any sense. And the Gurus will tell you something, some circular logic, you know. This is how it is. And so what? You need to still pursue Mukti, Nirvana. It is not satisfactory. For a Gyani, this is not a big problem. There is nothing to be dissolved. There is this realization that I am already free. I am already liberated. You need to just turn this way and see there is no bondage there. It is already Emptiness. There is no light. There is no candle. There is nothing like this. That's why it is called path of no effort, direct path.

Now, this cannot be intellectual because just like I said, if you repeat this thing, it's not going to happen. Nothing is going to happen. No Nirvana, no liberation, no bondage, nothing. It's not an intellectual thing. So, the first step is to realize who I am, you see. What is my nature? What is my essence? Self-realization will open up this kind of liberation that I am talking about. Self-realization is Nirvana in itself. Nothing more to be done. Even if you don't realize the oneness is perfectly okay. Is there oneness? The oneness can be defined only if you see the two-ness, only if you see the multiplicity. Once you see the emptiness, nothing needs to be realized. That's why there is more stress on self-realization rather than realization of oneness. Traditions like Zen will make you do two things in one step. No self-realization there. Directly, realization of no self. And what remains? Oneness remains. Because as soon as there is self, there is subject, there is object. When I say no subject, well, it's like it's already solved. The problem is solved now. When you see that it is emptiness, the oneness is emptiness. What else can be the oneness? So, what do you need to know after that? You don't even need to explain these things. Oneness is infinite. Oneness is like space. Oneness is like love. It's all B.S., isn't it? It's like nothing. These things do not come close. There are some words that may come close. Like it is perfection. It is beautiful. It is blissful. These come close, but we know it's not really applicable there. Some people have this delusion that I'll get a very, very grand experience of oneness someday, in future. It may happen in the future. Who knows? But it's not going to be a grand experience. This experience is an experience of oneness. It will be as ordinary as this one. Probably less ordinary because now you don't have that fairytale-ish expectation of oneness. It will be very ordinary. What do you do after that? Oh, just clean the house. Cook the food. Watch TV. It is this ordinary oneness. There's nothing “spiritual” about self-realization and oneness.

So either you can call everything as “ordinary” or you can call everything as “spiritual”. Now it is the preference in the mind because that's why I say everything is spiritual because I don't want everybody to get demotivated because there are still preferences left in the mind. So take the positive one. Instead of saying everything is meaningless, ordinary, purposeless, fake life. Nobody is going to listen to me. Nobody is going to make any effort. Nothing. What we do, we sugarcoat it a little bit. Look, this life is a spiritual life. Once you see it, it does not really make any difference. There's no difference between spiritual and ordinary. If you're looking for something special, then I can guarantee you, you will be disappointed. The pleasure is spiritual. The pain is spiritual. Knowledge is spiritual. Ignorance is spiritual. All this experience that we are going through is spiritual and the liberation from it is also spiritual. So it's a point of view only. In reality, it's not spiritual and it is also spiritual. Both - which is the same as saying it's not both. So now it becomes mysterious. Now it sounds proper “spiritual”.

Those who have read the Avadhoot Gita, they will see these things. Every time and every verse, it is bliss and it is not bliss. It is infinite, it is not infinite. It is continuous, it is not continuous. This is the style of writing about oneness. Probably we don't have any word in English for oneness. It's Brahman in Sanskrit. When I say oneness, people start imagining so many things about oneness. But when I say the Brahman or the All, it makes more sense.

So anybody has any further comments or questions of any other kind? Because I can go on talking about oneness in a totally meaningless way forever, which is a waste of time, isn't it? The best description is silence. So hopefully, you are not demotivated that this is all ordinary and it cannot be better than this.

There was a question, what if the Advaita Vedanta is wrong? What if all this philosophy is also false? Because coming from a human mind, it is possible that there is some error somewhere. Now why is this question? First, there is a lack of study, a lack of experience there. And second, the mind still has some expectations. Probably it's bigger than that. Probably it's not oneness. Probably there is a purpose. Probably it's going to be better somewhere. Because the mind is brainwashed. It has become a religious mindset. There is hope there. Hope is the problem, isn't it?

That's why these ordinary things, you don't like them. There is always hope for better. Always in the future or past where things were nice and cool. Present is a burden. That is the problem. When told that there is no such thing, there is only this present moment, which is absolutely perfect, beautiful and blissful right now, right here. An ordinary mind or a seeker's mind also is not satisfied. Because very grand illusions are there in the mind. So such questions happen. What if Advaita is wrong? What if there is something better? What if the non-duality is also an illusion and there is something more beyond that?

Anybody has a comment on this question? Is it wrong? Is there any other possibility there? What do you guys think? What if it is wrong? Is there any way to check whether it is right or wrong? True or false? The concept of non-duality? Or should we take the word of the Guru on blind faith? Because there is no other way. Have you ever thought about this? That teaching can be wrong. It is the human mind. It's possible to make an error. Look at all those scientists, you see, the great scientists. Most of them were wrong. This knowledge is very very old, many thousand years old. Where people were not so advanced, that is what you are told. Therefore it can be wrong. Sounds logical, it is not. But we can have this kind of doubt. So if somebody gets this kind of doubt, what should we do?

There are two kinds of minds. When whatever you tell them, and many people are talking the same thing, this mind will never doubt it. It will say, yes, obviously. There is old knowledge, everybody is talking about it. So many Gurus are there, they look very perfectly honest, it sounds logical and all. And they accept it. Also, there is non-duality. And they accept it. Also, it's oneness, samadhi-ness, self. Yes, yes, the consciousness is here. I can see it. So on. And then they don't even wonder. I don't think people wonder about this or not. But nothing really changes after this. Same life. Another layer of beliefs on top of so many beliefs. And there is the other kind of people who will say, no, no, no, this is not possible. What I know is right, not that which I am told. These are all Gurus, they are fake, they just want money. There is some religion of some kind from the Eastern countries. Old, old stuff, superstition, and no amount of logic or experience will convince them. Skeptical people. And probably this question is coming from the skeptical kind.

What if Advaita is wrong?

Because the believers, they don't want to even touch this question. They become afraid as soon as you tell them. Look, this belief that you are holding can be wrong. And then they will avoid you forever because the ego is like this. It does not want to let go of belief where it has found security. This attachment to the belief is not knowledge. And the second one, probably there is anti-belief. There is a negative belief also, the same as a positive belief. No difference at all. So that should settle the question. Is it right or wrong? And the answer is who cares? Do not believe. Do not believe that it is right. Do not believe that it is wrong. This is the attitude of a seeker, agnostic. You say, I don't know, and I don't care. This is the right attitude. You are not going to have this attitude just because I said it, just because it is recommended. You will find initially yourself into these two camps, one of these two, a total believer, a total disbeliever. They are one and the same thing, same ego, egoic issue. Once you have done that kind of circus a lot, then you will reach this attitude of not knowing. Not knowing is of greater value than knowing. Don't know. These are the golden words.

What if it is wrong? Nothing is going to change. If it is right, nothing is going to change. This is disappointing, isn't it? That's why I never say this. Don't try to know anything because nothing is going to change. This is not really a logical way of imparting knowledge. You will need to make up a story. These are your questions. I have the answer. Here is your answer. Is it satisfying? Yes, yes, yes. And the person goes away very happy. And something changes for that person. If you get into a belief that, look, it had an effect, it had a good effect, changed my mind, changed my life and so on, then you are in the camp number one, believers. No amount of argument will get rid of this belief that this is right. And if you found it totally useless, then it does not answer your question. So you are in the camp number two. It is useless. Nothing has changed for you. So a seeker is not in both camps. Okay, here is my answer. Now, nothing. Is it useful? Okay, it's useful. So I'll use it. Is it true? Now you will need to remain silent. How can we say that? What is true here? Those who have listened to my thoughts on truth, they will recall that there is no such thing - true or false. There is no such thing as right or wrong.

There is no such thing as absolute, non-absolute. It is unknowable.

So the correct response is I don't know. And this is where I arrived after a long time of oscillating between probably religious stuff. Because so many religions crept out of this philosophy. And almost all religions actually. This is called Sanatana Dharma. And in future also many, many will come out of this. Belief systems will come out of it. So there are many belief systems that are extinct now. They came out of this only. There is nothing else to base your religion on. Non-duality is the only thing.

So after oscillating between these, okay, this man is very, very smart. He has all the answers to all my questions. Always comes up with the right answer. And now he is my guru. He said non-duality is right. Okay, then it is right. I don't need to worry too much. My life is solved now. No more seeking. What is this? This is again a belief system, settling into a belief. Now you will say, no, no, no. I have direct experience that this is non-duality. And again, I will tell you something which I never say. Do not trust your experience.

Now in Advaita we have these only four means to gain knowledge. The first is direct experience.

Second is logic. The third is a guru. Fourth is scripture or a book. Same as a guru, isn't it? And the guru is talking from logic and direct experience. And the logic is based on direct experience. Everything boils down to your experience. And when you say it is my experience, this non-duality is fundamental. Now there is very little room to move here. There is no place to go anywhere else because you have accepted direct experience as a valid means of knowledge. Look at your direct experience for a moment. This is where probably there is a difference of opinion between Advaita and Buddhism. Look at your direct experience.

All your experience is fake. Look at it.

But you can say, no, no. That which is experiencing cannot be fake. Do you know what is it that is experiencing? And the answer is no, I don't know. And the paradox here is that if you know it through direct experience, it is not real. It is something separate from you. And if it is you, then you don't know it because it is you. You need a separation. You need a subject-object relation in order to know something. And therefore, the I cannot be known, the self cannot be known, the experiencer cannot be known. Your Guru is telling you, well, there is no difference between experience and the experiencer. They are one. This is the definition of oneness. Oneness does not mean that everything is one solid ball somewhere, hanging somewhere. It's not oneness. And oneness means there is no subject-object relation. Then who is the knower and what is known if there are no two? It's not two.

They were very, very intelligent people, isn't it? When they said not two, they did not say one because we cannot go beyond not two. There is nothing to know beyond not two. If you cannot know it, you cannot say about it. Silence is the best answer. Or the next best is I say, I don't know. And people are going to object. What do you mean? This is the path of knowledge. And you're saying, I don't know.

And then the correct response is who cares? Is it required? Is knowledge really necessary? Are the means of knowledge written in stone somewhere? Are the commands from above? No.

So what Advaita is doing is not giving you anything solid to hold on. Don't ask right and wrong.

Don't ask true and false. From the beginning, it says, I don't know. And in the end also, it says, I don't know. And the end, I don't know, is a better position to be in because in the beginning, it is total ignorance, probably the presence of all kinds of beliefs. Ignorance is nothing. It's only believing something else. So the path of knowledge will shed ignorance. In the end what remains is - I don't know. And that includes the answer to the question whether Advaita is right or wrong. If you say right, it's a big problem here. You are in camp number one. You are a blind believer because you don't know what Advaita is. Then if you don't know what it is, you cannot make a statement about being right or wrong.

It's probably difficult for you guys, but I think you have been here for one year or so. So the last straw on which you are hanging must be taken away. There is no right and there is no wrong. There is no error. There is no correctness in Advaita. If it is your experience that is right, then probably something big is wrong. Probably some delusion is still there. Very, very fine delusion is there. Remaining delusion. Now I am a Gyani. I know everything. And this is the right thing to know. And this is a sign of delusion. So some people will say, this is a true Advaita not knowing. No, it's not true Advaita. It's not true at all. And it's not false either. So when I say, look, this is true, isn't it? In your experience, this is true. Your experience is truth. And this is half truth, actually. This is not true. Do not trust your experience. It is true in some relative way. It is true and it is useful as long as it is destroying your belief of some kind. And belief is destroyed, well, the job is done. The job of the experience is done. Now you let go of it. Do not make it turn into a belief of some kind. Because I am guaranteeing you that there will be some other experience which will prove it wrong, completely wrong. So after oscillating like this, I came to this conclusion. Yes, it is a gray area. That means no statements can be made.

So now you can see all the philosophies, all the traditions, religions, they mean nothing. And they are not right. They are not wrong. They are meaningless, purposeless. Everything you do has no meaning.

And this is the essence. You cannot put a purpose. You cannot put a right and wrong stamp on this existence, whatever it is. So the Zen master will say that those who know, they don't know. Those who don't know, they know. Not only Zen, other traditions also will say something like this, like Hermetics and probably the Advaita itself will say something like this. The problem is people know half or maybe 90% and they assume, oh yes, the amazing thing. This is what I like. And they don't get the essence. Cannot be bound in right and wrong. As long as there is something which is true, there will be something which is false. And then you will encounter suffering. Look, somebody has said something false. Look, I assume this thing is false. Now for ordinary people, this is not much. But for a seeker, this is absolute pain, isn't it? I was believing in something which was wrong. It's painful to think about this.

Then what should I do? Should I not know anything? Because in the end, I am not going to know anything. No, that is again stupidity. You will need to break down everything that you know. And should I not do the effort of knowing? And there are these practices that are there of listening and meditation and introspection, seeing through the direct experience. They are absolutely necessary to arrive at the point of not knowing.

If you don't do all that which is recommended, then there is no possibility. Then the first I don't know will remain. It won't grow to this complete, vast, enlightened I don't know. There is no possibility to come from. That first I don't know is dark, tiny, minuscule I don't know. There is nothing beyond that. And this one, this not knowing is infinite, bright, empty. In that I don't know, there is a lot to know, a lot remains to know. In this I don't know, nothing remains to know. Nothing can be known. That I don't know is coming from the mind. Mind is saying, I don't know. And this I don't know is coming from you, the Atman. It is asserting, I am. Nothing to be known. Look at this. This is what I am. Nothing to be known here. So those who have this doubt, I think it will be solved by now. I did not answer. As usual, I destroyed the question. But what I recommend is before breakfast, every morning, destroy all the knowledge that you have. Destroy all the advaita that you have heard every morning before breakfast. And by the time you finish the breakfast, the whole advaita will be back in place. It cannot go away.

And when you destroy the knowledge, what are you left with? I don't know. And when you assemble it back through your direct experience and logic, you should be left with, I don't know. If you are left with right and wrong and this and that and one-ness and two-ness, well, your breakfast time is wasted.

Better to enjoy breakfast.

So I do this many times. Usually, what is the need? Well, the need is to destroy this question. See what you get. See what you get through your direct experience and logic also. If you don't get the silence in the end, something is wrong. So people will say it's too much. It took 10 years to understand all the Vedas and all the Upanishads, all the great masters, thousand hours of videos and all satsangs. You are telling me to destroy it, disbelieve it totally. And here the mind has taken a hold, you see. The mind has made a house in this knowledge. It has become a believer of knowledge. Knowledge is not to be believed, it's to be known. And that which can be known in an instant, which is what this is, can be destroyed in an instant. It does not take time.

How did you manage to take 10 years to know this much, this tiny thing? It's not two. You see, I know there is a reason there. This is a long story of the mind. It takes some time. It takes time only because of these issues of true and false and this and that. Because the pointing is very, very quick. Because it is instantaneously acquired. It can be in a second, you can get rid of it. Get rid of all knowledge just before starting the breakfast. And then look at the experience again. Look at the experiencer again. Look at the oneness again. Look at the maya again. Look at the mind, the empty nature of it again.

And it should take less than 10 minutes. It is all reassembled. It is by necessity actually. That's why it is called Sanatana. It does not go away. Appears in many, many forms and languages and traditions. Is that right? No. Is it totally wrong? And no. Is it an illusion? No. It is unknowable. So in the end you will say, well, this is it. And I really don't know what it is. And then life is ordinary, you see. As soon as you say, I know something big. Well, the expectation will come. Now I need to change this and that here and there. And that will bring suffering. The suffering is a sign that you have, your mind has made a house somewhere on the bridge which is burning. So like they say, don't build your house on a bridge. And Advaita is a bridge to not knowing. Don't stay there. And that's why I say, in our satsangs, we don't dwell on Advaita at all. We go beyond this. And I don't think many people understand this thing. But you see, in the description, it is written the path of knowledge and the occult path and astral projection and the mind and the laws of the mind and consciousness, scientific study. This is all BS, isn't it?

So Advaita is a bridge to go beyond. Advaita, that's all. That's all it is. In the Advaita, it's not true. It's nothing to know. Anyway, this is my experience, my interpretation. You will need to get your own Advaita. By that I mean, just kick it out. You will be surprised to see that it comes back, no matter what. That is how strong this is. That is why it has survived so many eons, so many cycles of the time. We know it is beyond human mind, but that is what we get again and again. And you don't need years and years to destroy and build it up. In my experience, it takes 10 minutes. You can do it right now also, if you want. And destroy it completely. You see, I don't know, this is all made up stuff. And let's start again from scratch. Look at your experience again.

Is there an experience? Yes.

Can you say no experience? No, no, I cannot say this.

Is there an Experiencer? Yes.

Can you say nobody is experiencing? No, no, I cannot say this. No matter how hard I try.

Now look, is there a difference? Is there a separation between the experience and the experiencer?

And when you look, you will find mind. Look at this, there is a mind here.

You see, everything falls into the same Advaita, which you kicked out. Now you can come up with many, many assumptions. Look at this, this is matter. That means the mind has taken another route.

Now it is going to get lost in the matter forever. That's why we say Maya. As soon as the mind assumes something, it’s gone, it's lost. There is no hope of coming back from there.

You say, look, this is Jeeva. There are heavens and there is evolution of the mind and so on. And then it has taken another path. It will be lost there forever in the many, many, many layers of the universal mind. It's infinite. Why is it infinite? Because it cooks up something as soon as it wants. There is no end to that. You are gone there. You are lost there. Now, if these assumptions are absent and you have taken the path of the four valid means of knowledge, that four valid means that I just described, you will arrive at Advaita. If you take something else, you will be deluded. The imagination will take you into many, many delusions that look rock solid and true. This is the characteristic of Maya, that it looks true. That's why Advaita is a kind of purification of this delusion. But never assume that it is right. Never assume that this is true. That is another delusion.

So, everybody should do this kind of exercise. And then the ordinary becomes extraordinary. The ordinary is spiritual. There is no expectation now. Nothing needs to be done. And that's why Zen Master will say, you know, the student is asking the Master, what is Zen? Zen Master is saying, have you finished eating? Now, wash your bowl. It's done. There's nothing to know here. Nothing to do here. It is totally ordinary. There was a very interesting quote that I read on Twitter, obviously. I hang out there all the time. So, the Master is saying, Zen is very attractive in the beginning, but it's a big disappointment when you know it. It is very, it looks very attractive when you don't know it. As soon as you know it, it's a very disappointing thing. Do not come to the path in order to know. You will be disappointed.

Session 3

I invite all the questions, doubts, problems, comments, anything that you are confronting these days, anything that you are studying, any comments regarding that or if you have learned something new and you wish to share that with the group, that also is most welcome.

We can bring the mind to connect to the higher layers so that the answers appear. Sometimes you will find that we give the answers habitually without thinking whatever there is in the memory, we repeat it and you must have noticed that when I am talking informally like this, when I am not giving you a lecture on some topic which is almost precooked, then I try to divert into some sidelines, margins of the question. What it does is it triggers the connection with the higher layers and pulls out new knowledge. This is one of the tricks that I learned that sometimes it is useful to not stay on topic also.

You drift in the landscape of the mind and may get a gem, a diamond nugget somewhere which you never thought before, which was totally unseen by the aware mind. So that's why when talking informally, chit chatting like this, it is good to let the mind drift a little bit, let it go out of the box, out of the limits and sometimes it will bring something which is totally insane, totally crazy, does not make any sense. So no problem because the intellect will judge it. If the intellect is also active, then there is no issue because you won't get lost. So the balance is necessary, the balance between imagination and intellect. This is how we pull out the answers from the higher layers.

Initially it may look like that it is the I who is thinking and you will say I am thinking like this and this is from my memory, my knowledge store and as you drift, you will reach some place in the mind which you cannot say it is yours. It will look like yours, it will look like your memory, it will look as if you came up with the answer and only after you look at it after two or three days, you will see that it was impossible for you to think or to know that answer. This happens to me many times and I have seen this happen to many of my teachers. They don't stay on one topic for long. If somebody asks them a question, the answer is very simple, usually the answer is finished in one or two lines and they go on and elaborate upon the answer.

Sometimes they drift into a story and then connect into something else and then they find a more elegant question that yes whatever you asked is like this but let us go further and ask this bigger question something like this happens and then that means a connection is being made to the knowledge store somewhere high and then it cannot be said to be my knowledge, you cannot call it my memory, it is the universal memory, it is nobody's memory yet it is contributed by many so there is a funny thing that I realized this a little bit during my experiences and such kind of introspection exercises that what we call as the universal mind or you can name it anything you want is actually a group mind and then I recorded this podcast episode on the group minds and while I was recording that many more insights appeared, many more questions they were solved and answers to some puzzles which I thought was kind of imagination of people or kind of too far-fetched to be true, it all made sense suddenly and it was a big revelation simply by talking on the group minds, what was the big revelation?

I found that every mind is a group mind, I couldn't find any exception including this mind which

I call my mind, it has a big possibility that this is not a single mind, it is a group mind. Now what is a single mind, what is a group mind? It is hard to define like this, it is hard to draw a boundary where my memory ends and your memory starts. It all makes a lot of sense now that our boundaries of our mind are also the boundaries of our ignorance that is why it looks like my mind is like a single mind, this is not so, as soon as you drift into the landscape of mind, the mental landscape, you will find there is no hard and fast boundary there, there is no natural boundaries or fences around this mind, it is not there, what has happened is through habituation, through conditioning, this mind accesses only a few areas in the memory, my name, my family, my house, my car, my job, etc. and next day is same.

You will find that very rarely anything new happens in our lives, sometimes you may come across a new book, new idea and there is an expansion of the mind into the territory of the author who has written that book, sometimes you see a new movie, new visuals appear in your mind that means you are extended into the mind of the artist, the movie producer who has imagined those things in his mind.

So there is a way to connect to other minds in this physical world which is what we call as communication, but because we are habitual of this mode of the waking state of the mind, we do not look into the direct way of accessing the memories of the universal mind. The universal mind is actually defined as a group mind, a collection of all the minds. We assume that there are individual minds and the universal mind is a collection of the individual minds and that is how I have defined the universal mind everywhere in my blogs, in whatever I speak, in the videos and all and whenever I talk to you, this is assumed that the universal mind is a collection of tiny minds including all the objects and worlds and everything, but when I was thinking about the group minds it turns out that it is exactly opposite of the definition, universal mind is all there is and the individual minds are illusions, you cannot define the universal mind in terms of this tiny independent minds, sea of countless individuals, that will be a very inaccurate definition, but it is practical, so it is going on because that is how we understand the universal mind. Otherwise there is no way to understand it for an ordinary person who has seen only one mind, how are you going to define this sea of memories to that person. So while thinking like this, drifting like this, this huge revelation happened and how do we know that this is important, how do we know that I didn't simply imagine these things and then assume them to be true, just like I said you need to keep the intellect on when you are drifting.

So now once you have harvested, once you have dug out a gem from this infinite mind, now you need to use the intellect to do the assessment, to do the cross check. The idea is very nice, it is very elegant and beautiful that universal mind is all there is and the individual minds appear to be there because of our ignorance, because of this habitual nature of this organism, the jiva to remain within the boundaries that it has created for itself by refusing to look beyond itself, this can be only called as ignorance, nothing else. So it is not a fundamental limitation on the jiva, it is in the state like this in the waking hours, so you use intellect to find out whether this makes any sense or not.

It all makes sense actually, there is something interesting that you must have heard about these mediums who channel the entities, the disembodied entities, now we don't speak about them because obviously for many of you it is beyond your experience, so if you are doing the experiments that I suggested you will meet them, but some are gifted, they are always in connection with the sea of memories. Now you cannot say other minds, you see, leave that idea behind now, get rid of that idea, limited mind, it is always interconnected with everything else, it's a matter of focusing the attention.

Some people are gifted like this and they can get hold of the so-called disembodied beings and there is something interesting that I found in many of the channeled material, most of it is garbage, but some things they appear there which are common to almost all of them, is that the entity has no name or the name is given only for practical purposes. What does it suggest? It suggests that it is not one, individuals have names sometimes, it takes on a name because we are so used to names, so that entity will take on a name for you, but the interesting thing is that the medium will hear many voices, sometimes as if many people are speaking at the same time, speaking the same sentence, this is their experience. I have never seen it myself so I cannot say, but such phenomena can be explained, now we have a theory behind these observations.

There are some horror movies which are well researched and I have seen a few and sometimes the character that is possessed by a demon will speak in the voices of many. What does that mean? It means the demon is not a single mind, there is no single personality there, there is no single individual there, it actually looks like 10 or 20 people speaking through that one mouth. It is not an imagination of the artist or of the writer of that story.

So there is an explanation now, it is possible that this is an actual experience of somebody which the writer has researched and incorporated in the story. So there are some reports of exorcism, and there are well researched movies that go into exorcism, let us not take this thing as a fact.

Their reports are that usually a weak mind is possessed by other minds, disembodied beings, so usually there is a whole bunch of them who possess the person, not a single one, it is rare that there will be a single entity, that is what I heard. So right now, right here most of the minds are in contact with many, many minds without their knowledge which I do not think is that important now because I am not talking about the communication like we are having right now, I am in contact with you, you are in contact with me through the physical channel, through the mental channel we are in contact.

So another revelation happened during such introspections, although its very difficult to get any kind of evidence for these things, and that is your only protection from the negative kinds, the negative disembodied entities is to shift into a positive mode and always remain there, that is the only protection, very logical isn't it, because there is no boundary between this mind and that mind and there is always a contact. Our current thinking is my mind is isolated, nobody can know what is there in my mind and that is the truth of the waking state, not the absolute truth, that is the relative truth, half truth. In the waking state the other waking mind is engaged in their own activities, their own private memory, personal memory and my mind is engaged in this activity usually because of the senses, the senses are active and senses are localized, so senses are what that are giving us a feeling of being localized in the body in the world, otherwise it's all open, it's all one non-local mind.

There is no protection from something that is engaged in negativity, you can say an area of the universal mind that is negative in nature, so not an area, it is happening. Because area also points to a space, but this mind is not in space, it is happening right now, right here, the only thing that differentiates one mind from the other is the activity of the mind. For example all the radio stations are broadcasting right now, but the song that you hear is always from one radio station because you have tuned in to that radio station. When the radio is tuned what the radio is doing, those who know the electronics, they will understand, it is filtering out everything else except this one frequency of that station, so if you are listening to 98.3 MHz, the electronics in the radio is now resonating with only that frequency, although the antenna is receiving all. You can say it is focusing attention on this narrow band and therefore the experiences of only one radio station, only one song take place.

That is what our mind is doing during the waking state, it is very narrowly focused, all the activities of all the minds, or you can say universal mind is happening right now right here, it is non-local and the time is also not that hard and fast, all the past, future, present, everything is happening here and now, so it is all a matter of not paying attention or not resonating with the negativity and you will be protected and your experience and this bunch of memories will remain unaffected by the negativity.

From the point of view of the universal mind you can see it is totally ordinary thing, it has no such preference, no negative, no positive, there is nothing like that in the universal mind, so realization after realization you see, your mantra or your yantra or whatever is not going to save you from negativity, if there is a negativity in you. This is a big realization and I researched, and I found something similar that nothing works when the negativity goes very very high, only thing that works is our own positivity. There is no natural preference for positive or negative in the universal mind, there is a preference for evolving, that's all there is, it is negative, positive, it does not care, it's all one for it, these are all man-made things, negative, positive, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, these are all man-made things.

So this is how, this is what happens when you drift like this in the memory, you will get some new information and then you will use the intellect to verify it, probably because this is Maya, so probably there won't be a perfect verification always, and the truth won't be evident, but you can connect the dots here and there.

That leads to one more revelation actually, that since there is no good and bad in the universal mind, it is unconditional and therefore that explains the proclivity of certain people to worship so-called negative, there are worshippers of demons also, just like there are worshippers of gods. Why are they called demons, why are they pictured in a ugly way, this is the doing of those who worship the gods, they have put those icons there, they do not like them, that's all. And now you can use intellect to find out what is really happening here in our human society. It doesn't really matter actually, but when one culture attacks the other culture, what do they do, first thing to do is demonize them, paint them in a negative picture, now it doesn't matter how good these attacked people are, the first thing they will do is paint them as inferior, the propaganda is these people are inferior, they are demons, they are not of our religion and look at their gods, they are praying to demons. The Middle Eastern attackers did the same thing to Indians and then the British also did the same thing, demonized everything in India including their temples, their gods and all and that gives them advantage and that gives them a license to kill these demons. Let us kill them, they are negative, they are not of our type, they do not worship my god, so I am now free to kill them, my god will support me in killing them. The Spanish did this to South Americans, it is the same story everywhere actually, same story.

This is the first thing any tribe will do in order to overpower the other tribe. The cults that started worshiping something else, not the gods that were recommended, that were enforced upon the public by the so-called priests and ruling class, were demonized. Now nobody knows if they are real demons or not. I don't think there is such a thing, there is both positive and negative in every mind including this mind which I call my mind and it must be your own experience. Sometimes it is devilish, very evil mind, sometimes very innocent like a child, very very pure and loving, same mind, as you know there is no such a thing as a mind, the activity of the mind is the mind itself, no activity, no mind, this mind is the demon, this mind is the god, another revelation.

Those people who are worshiping so-called demons are not worshiping demons, suddenly you are free from the conditioning you see, suddenly you are free from the brainwashing of the attackers, the ruling class, of the priest class, who want to keep you under their claws for whatever reason. Somebody tells you look this is demonic, don't worship, don't go there, now if you have nothing to do with spiritual matters you don't go there that will be good for you, but if you are a spiritual seeker put a big question mark on that, why did you call that a demon, why are you demonizing something which somebody is loving, which is an ideal for them?

Let us not generalize it like this that yes everything that people say is bad, it can be good. No it is not like this, most of the time if somebody says it is bad, it is evil, you need to take some precaution, do not simply put a question mark in there, or go ahead and hug the person who is doing those kinds of experiments, that will be stupidity. But also do not believe blindly, seeing the nature of the mind and seeing how people, how humans, the human organism functions. The human organism is alive because of deceit and lies only, because of the violence only, it is very hard to survive without such tricks. They help in survival and that's why most of the people are full of lies and deceits and they are being deceived by somebody also without their knowing. So only a spiritual seeker who is after truth knows these things and is freed from these things, this is the freedom from conditioning, this is the freedom from the society.

So introspecting in this way will give you freedom from your beliefs. Now I have taken a very strange example of this thing, possessions and exorcism and demons and group minds, but you can see how this introspection goes. I do not even remember from which subject I started, but don't worry about the demons and the bad evil entities, if you look into our own culture, the Indian culture, some deities are terrifying, they look like demons, to an outsider will be terrified, they will run away if they look at some of our deities, so Kali is a good example, Chamundi, Durga, they are fierce, you cannot call them goddesses. So this is just brainwashing isn't it, so many big saints in India were worshipers of Kali and such goddesses. Now there is a very fine line between Kali and Shakini and Dakini and all those other so-called demons, and some Tantrics are actually after them, they are worshiping them. Where is the line? I don't see any, all the negative and positive is cooked up by humans.

What is this universal mind? Why does it have no positive, no negative? Why does it allow so-called evil, so-called demons, why won't it simply smite them, just kill them, now you have the answers, don’t you? It is our own ignorance. Now I am not saying there is no evil, there is no bad, there is, but it is not always that which we are fed, you need to determine your own good and evil. I don't know, I have a little bit of a soft corner for those deities who got demonized by the attackers. They have done this to their own cultures, you see, in the old times the witches and all those people were burnt alive, because they worshiped something which they thought was evil. This brainwashing is prevalent in all parts of the world, I am not saying only in India, it is there in every culture, anything that manages to get into the relevance of the universal mind, you will find this kind of distinction, good and bad.

And now what is the meaning of protecting yourself from evil, it hardly means anything, isn't it? Now let us not go there, because it is becoming really a gray area now, before people start calling me a Tantric and demon worshiper, I should stop here.

I have seen the gods of South American, Mayan, Aztec, such people and they almost look like demons to us, they don't look this pretty, but I have seen some reactions of foreigners to the statues of Ganesha for example, they are scared by that statue, it looks very beautiful to us. Actually I had the pleasure of meeting some people, as soon as I put a picture of some Indian deity, they would start feeling uncomfortable, because they come from that part of the world where Hinduism is demonized, they do not like it, their generations after generations were brainwashed into thinking that the other cultures worship demons, and you are superior because you worship my god, this god is the true god and so on.

Now being a spiritual seeker, this is very sad, but what can we do, all we can do is remain free from this conditioning. Somebody tells them this is bad, this is good, don't simply assume it to be true. I am not saying that go and experiment with the evil, do not even experiment with the good, you don't know how good that is, you don't know that, and that's why whenever I mention about any occult experiment, I say, do not do this without a master, do not venture into occult without a guru. The guru found out what is good, what is bad, there is a long tradition behind the guru who has done these experiments for thousands of years, they know where to go.

So hopefully this aimless drifting has given you new ideas which I don't think you will find in any book, all books are biased books, all views, opinions are biased opinions, there is a tiny bit that is based on experimentation. Because there are many paths, but they are all called isms of some kind, but they all merge into oneness, not two, those who know not two, they don't worship anything, they don't follow any isms, they may study them, but they don't commit themselves to orthodoxy or fundamentalism. So a spiritual seeker is like this, learns from everybody, but straight like an arrow, will head to the truth, what is the truth, everybody who searches for the truth, they are not going to find different kinds of truth, it is only one, if there are many that means it is not true. And that's why these religions and philosophies, they are not true, they are half truths, they are like various parts of the elephant, you can say, where the blind people are trying to find, what is this thing, nobody has a full view.

So a seeker will head for the truth, he wants to know what this elephant is, he is not happy with the trunk or the leg or the tail or the ears of the elephant. When everybody does this, what will they find, they are not going to find the parts, they are going to find the elephant, it is one. That one is called Sanatana Dharma. It is not Indian, it is not African, Egyptian, this or that, no, it is universal, because in every part of this universe, when seekers have tried to find truth, they have found the Sanatana Dharma, which is Sanskrit for eternal truth, that's all it means. It should not be equated with the religions, which are very narrow and are concerned with worship, materialistic in nature. Why are people worshiping these gods? They want something from them, security or wealth, more children, more cows, more power, and so on. I have never seen anybody who worships the god for truth, a spiritual seeker does that and therefore finds the truth and then he is above all. When such a person is elevated, is ascended to the highest level, these gods that people worship, they come to him for knowledge, for liberation, for Mukti. I am not saying this, I did not make it up, it is all there in the stories. Now who will tell these blind people, look at the stories, look at the stories, they worship the guru who is capable of liberating you, who is capable of destroying the darkness of ignorance, there is nothing higher than this guru. I am not saying this, again, you will find so many big people, we are tiny whiny compared to them, everybody has placed guru in front of everything. Do you see in this culture people worshiping gurus? Yes there are, how do they worship them, just like a god, give me this, give me that, protect me and do something for me, do some magic for me. Is there anybody who goes to the guru and asks for knowledge? Almost zero!

So anyhow this is my impression, probably you have more experience and everybody knows these things through their experiences, but it is very very interesting because in these half truths you will find gems of knowledge, you will find some knowledge there, it is not totally useless. What is the problem? People stick there, they become fundamentalist, they become extremists and their progress is stopped. I am not saying everybody is like this, but there are people whose progress is totally halted because of blind beliefs, because they are brought up in this environment. The parents think they are doing a great service by educating the child, by indoctrination of the child, they think I am doing my job here, job of the parent. It is very rare, you will never find this thing, very rare for the parents to educate the child in all the religions, very rare. What most of them do, they will say my religion, is the only true one, is the best on this planet and the others, they are demons, don't mix with them and so on. This is what happens and there is hardly any parent who will say go and join the other religion, go and study them also. Personally I have never seen, including my parents, although they did not force their beliefs on me, they were educated enough, but whenever I took no interest in their celebrations, their festivals and their pujas and all, I got this scolding. The Nastik word is like a bad word in India, which means he is a bad guy now. For a person of a grown-up intellect it is very difficult to do all this bullshit isn't it? Very difficult to be a part of the crowd, so ultimately you will need to adjust somehow with the ignorance and that is what I have done, now I have no complaints, I can see why this is happening, I can see the reason for it.

So at least a religious person is a good person you see, at least we think like this, he is a bad person only when he is killing the fellow of other religion, otherwise they are very good to their own kind and at least, they are getting a little bit of indoctrination what is good and what is bad, instead of totally zero, instead of being brought up like an animal. So probably that is the status of our society nowadays and I see no solution to this, there is no solution to this, there will be brainwashed people and there will be free people. It's been like this for thousands of years in all the yugas and this will be like this forever, no solution. At the time of Krishna or Rama there were demons, we are in total dark ages, so imagine now, imagine what has happened to this, what has happened to the truth.

When I say that which is true, most of the people will call me crazy, this has happened. When I say that you are wrong, most of the people are ready to kill me, serving the truth is now costing you lives, can you imagine. Now this is not something new, in all the ages, throughout the history, the known history, the unknown history, the pre-history and not so history, it is the same thing and that's why I hear it from many many people, there is nothing new under the sun. If you think this is the new phenomena, this is the state of the society which is now. You will find the old people saying like this, in our time it was so good, their time was also the same, it's not going to change. I have seen many many wise people say this, whatever we think is new, is new in comparison to our knowledge, not from the point of view of the universal mind and now we know that this mind is not really a mind, not an individual mind. Forgetfulness makes it new because you have forgotten, this is new. People will say these computers are new, these airplanes are new, this language is new and so on and this is not really new, at most you can say, it is a variation of what has already happened many many times, infinite number of times, same thing has happened.

Now frankly I am not very confident about this because it’s not my experience but there is a law of the mind that the smaller is a low resolution image of the bigger, in the Hermeticism they say - as above so below and as below so above, so you can take a slice of the time and check what is happening and you can then extend it because this law is always true. Then you will get a kind of verification that this is true, the same things keep appearing. So all the sages say this, time is a cyclic time, it repeats and there is a very well known saying that history repeats itself, it was not made up by crazy people, great people have said this, so why is that? Because of the processes in the universal mind, they are repetitive processes, they repeat. There is one very good example actually which those who are scientific minded will like it, that we think that the single cell organisms and the fish and then reptiles and then amphibians, reptiles and birds, and then flight appeared suddenly, you see, it looks like as if life started from the water, depths of the water and then land and then air, is it true? Probably. Probably this is one of the branch of the life but you see there are fish that can fly, there are insects that can fly, there are mammals that can fly, there were reptiles that could fly, they are extinct now, flying dinosaurs, so on, so same thing repeated during the evolutionary cycles in different ways, same design repeated itself. This is the universal mind, we are witnessing the evolution of the universal mind and this will happen in every corner of the universe.

I think Ajay has said something, so I'll read that -

Once intellectually truth is grasped then acting from that knowledge is a challenge because of the habitual patterns and ignorance, how to act from the knowledge instead of habitual ignorance?

A very good question actually, the answer is only one, it is - awareness. Since you have grasped it intellectually, actually whenever you act you bring this understanding in the mind, you remember this and if there is awareness you can make a choice. A habit can be overridden by another habit, habits do not die off, you will need to substitute it with something else. As long as there is acting, it will come from memory and now it is coming from the old memory. You need to choose and let the action happen from the knowledge, whichever, whatever is intellectual knowledge, your knowledge and you will get the verification of it. When you practice like this the intellectual will become real, real I mean there will be a practical example of it in front of you, no more intellectual only. So awareness is the key.

Whenever you are acting, train your mind to become aware, look, I am going to act from habit now and switch the action to something else which you think is the right action. For example, we are usually in this habit of thinking negative about those whom we don't like, those who have caused some kind of harm to us or to somebody else, something else and as soon as we remember these people, and the mind is very strange thing, it will bring up these negative people always, you don't remember the good ones, the mind will keep bringing up the negative ones and then there will be a story that follows this memory. This is so bad and I will do this and I will do that and this is habitual thinking and you have the intellectual knowledge now that mind is like this, like it's like a machine and it is causing suffering or most of the suffering is in the form of thoughts. So you can bring your awareness like this, remember the intellectual knowledge and put it into practice. In this case the practice will be to stop the story, recognize that it is only a story made up by the mind, recognize that these people are only in the memory, they are not in front of me and then because of this awareness it will stop.

When I say it looks like it is a long procedure but in my experience it takes less than one second to do that, to remember and yes you will fail many many times till the new habit takes over the old one. The new habit is - whenever the mind starts doing something like this, it will itself be reminded and itself will terminate, so if you do it, it will stop the habit. Now this is happening totally in the mind, so easy, but let us say there is some habit of the body like smoking or drinking or something like this, again, awareness, and this time it is going to take a longer time.

I will give you my own example that I got habitual of drinking coffee, too much coffee and somehow the body was changing because of the practices and the body produced suffering, it did not agree with that coffee, so I tried to reduce it, remove the milk from it thinking that the milk is the problem, no the same problem and then I cut the sugar out of the coffee, the same problem, it was the coffee that was the problem. Then I removed the coffee also and now the green tea or something like this and it has adapted to it. So slowly you will get away from that which is harmful, that which is causing suffering slowly.

Ajay is saying - I failed many times but once the knowledge is grasped it is hard to keep on acting from the previous beliefs.

Every task that we take up which involves some kind of change, it looks hard in the beginning, now you can recall your experience of riding the bicycle, very hard, so many times we fell, but once we learned the balance it became a natural thing, now without thinking we can ride. Same thing when we learn a new language, so hard … It takes a lot of effort to switch to the other language when we are learning that language, so it's always hard. Whenever the mind is to be changed it will be hard to change it initially, but if you keep doing it, that is why it is called a practice, that is why it is called Sadhana or Tapasya because it is hard. Now if you don't do it because it is hard then it will never happen, it will remain the same mind which it is. Even if you do it very slowly you know if you are progressing just a centimeter every day, still there is a hope that you will reach there, but if you don't even start somewhere then no there is no hope.

So there is a good saying, or it is a quote from somewhere that I heard, that slow progress is better than no progress. It does not matter as long as you are moving, as soon as you stop well it's back to square one. No amount of intellectual knowledge will substitute for practice, but fortunately the practice is very simple, it involves bringing the awareness that that is mind, this is me, separate the two, now look at the mind and switch to the other choice if you have the other choice. Now consider yourself very very fortunate because most of the people don't have the other choice, they do it as if that is the only choice they have or some people will further delude themselves that it is my choice, it is my free will and that's why I am doing this. You see, the cigarette is controlling them and they say this is my free will, I'll stop whenever I want and so on. Or their negativity, jealousy or anger is controlling them and they say oh it is the injustice that I am fighting for, and I have the right to be angry. What is the truth? The truth is - mechanical action is happening in the mind, the ego comes and takes responsibility of it, owns it, it is mine, I am thinking it and I am free to think it and therefore I am thinking it. So you can see the joke here, the mind deludes itself.

So you cannot change the mind from the mind, you need to stand one step higher than the mind, on the ladder, on the layers of the mind you will need to stand on the higher side, bring on the awareness, every time you are faced with the choice - should I act from the old ignorance or should I act from the new knowledge? Choose the new and the mind will not do it, the mind is a machine you see, it will do what it is programmed to do which is its habit, habit is nothing but a program. Some impression on the memory and the actions happen through that, so you will need to be above the memory, you will need to be above mind in order to have some control on the mind. Now, what happens is, awareness also does not do anything, awareness simply illuminates the other choice, sometimes the mind will take the other choice and if the results of that other choice are favorable then the mind will keep doing it, otherwise not. Initially you may find that the fruits of the new choice seem to be negative and that's why this failure happens. I'll go back to my old thing - I've seen this so much actually, I'm talking from my own experience, it is still happening to me, you see we are all here, we are not free from the world, what does it mean? It means that the total control is still not there, it will prefer the old for some time till the fruits of the new manifest and then here a little bit of faith comes, have some faith on the new, those who don't have faith should have a mind of a scientist, let me see I need to experiment like this. These little life experiments you need to do again and again, once in a while you do the old also and immediately you can judge your progress, you can see the contrast.

I'll tell you my example, I got into habitual lying for some reason, bad company probably, I thought I'm doing it because I'm smart, when I lie nobody can find out that I'm lying and I'm doing it because it's my free will, that's what I enjoy and obviously the mind will enjoy these things, that's why people habitually lie, that's why people are fake, most of them are fakes. Why because mind is trapped into this mechanical action and there are some short term advantages in lying, so it keeps doing it, the fruits keep coming and it keeps ignoring that which is causing suffering. Lying is going to cause a lot of suffering, so the person keeps ignoring this. Bad luck didn't happen, I'll lie double and then probably I'll cover up everything, nobody will know and this is how it was going on and suddenly I realized the value of speaking truth, because when you say I'm the truth seeker, and I want to know the truth and you are telling lies then it does not compute, the mind can sense something is wrong here, so then the experiment started that let me see if I avoid lying as much as possible and this went on for a few years and on the occasions where I had to lie, the contrast was huge. Huge because when you speak the truth, you forget about it and no impressions are made on the mind. You must have noticed the mind is now light, like air, like a feather, it remains light when you have spoken the truth, it is done, it's gone, but lie, even a little tiny bit of lie, it will stick on the mind, it will remain there and once you have gotten the fruits of telling truth, always speaking truth, your mind will shift to truth and then it will start seeing lying as suffering. Previously it was opposite, so the fruits came later and I came to know this difference only when I had to lie or I thought let me be smart this time and lie again and then the suffering was too much, it got impressed on the mind. Oh I lied that day and you see for a seeker the fruits will come very quickly and something really bad would happen whenever I lied. So this is how we switch to acting from knowledge, evolving further. It takes patience, a little bit of faith, a little bit of experimentation, a little bit of intellect. Always compare your old habit with the new one because always speaking the truth is also a habit, we prefer it, that's all. See the mind is only memory, it is all habits, all programs, there's nothing else there, so what happens is, the mind prefers that which gives it more happiness and freedom that is how it is programmed and that is how is the flow of this universal mind.

All the minds prefer happiness and freedom or that which they prefer, we call it happiness and freedom and like in this example telling truth gives a lot of freedom, now you're not bound to anything, now you're not responsible for anything, there are no chains, there is no guilt, there is no worry about bad consequences of what I've done. What is this? Freedom… Now you are in the flow, you are in the flow of the universal mind, so once the mind knows this, now it has become its own experience, it will not go into that which caused bondage, which caused suffering, not only for me but for others, so it will prefer long-term happiness instead of short-term, it will prefer long-term freedom instead, and it will say okay if it's short-term suffering I'll take the short-term suffering instead of long-term bondage. It will do that, the intellect will mature like this.

So sometimes you suffer a little bit like bitter medicine but the disease is gone forever. So experiment a little bit, bit by bit. If you think that I'll change into something which is totally beyond human in one day, it's kind of impossible, so yes there will be many many failures, that's why many times I say this, it's my favorite saying that we are on the spiritual path not because it is easy, not because it's all rainbows and pretty butterflies and red carpet, no it's not like this, we are on the spiritual path because it is hard, because it is challenging, because nobody does it, that's why we do it, that's why we have taken the evolution of the mind in our own hands.

It takes a little bit of fruit for the mind to accept this challenge, it won't do it till you practice it. I saw this on the face of the gurus, I saw that they are so confident, so free, although not so happy but they looked very peaceful, this is how you are motivated because initially the mind has no idea what this knowledge is going to do, it will actually be afraid of this knowledge, so you will need to take motivation from somebody else in the beginning, have an ideal, have a guru, guru is very important. You will see the guru in front of you and you will see how it has transformed the guru, how this little experiments have transformed him and then your mind will be convinced and then it will act without knowing the fruit of new action. Novelty is terrifying for the ego, it wants to settle in the known instead of venturing into the unknown, this is our evolution because unknown always meant risk in the old days, getting out of the house, getting out of the village and your known territory means instant death in the old times and this is the conditioning of the mind, it won't take up anything new because of fear and this is also the fear of failure, oh it's a waste of time I'm going to fail, I'm already perfect the way I am and this will prevent the progress. Now, just like you, I'm not special, I'm also struggling, it is a fight, it is an everyday fight, it is every minute fight actually, the seeker looks very peaceful but a war is going on inside his mind.

Nobody will believe this. People come and see me, oh you are not troubled by anything, you don't worry about anything and you're not afraid of anything. They don't know what is going on inside, it is a war inside, a seeker is not free from anger, fear, lust or jealousy or expectations, attachments, not free from that, as long as there is ego, there is body, there is mind, there will be all these things. The only difference between a non-spiritual person and a spiritual person is that the spiritual person is aware of all this mess that is inside us. That is why it is difficult, you see, ignorance is bliss and the ordinary person in his ignorance has nothing to do, there is nothing going on internally in that mind, there is no struggle, he has assumed already that I am the smartest creature in the world, I am the most beautiful thing that nature has produced and I am perfect in every way. Whatever he does is his style, whatever BS he is after is his smartness, it is a perfect life for them. It is not so perfect for a seeker, we know each and everything that is going on in the mind and it is like hell in there. And that's why many people drop off from this spiritual path, because they encounter themselves. There is no bigger disappointment than this. You think the spiritual path is going to make you like a child, like a pure heavenly being, angel? No … If you are not careful, it can turn you into a crazy person because it shows everything there is in the mind, and shows how dark the mind is. The awareness will bring everything into light, yes it will bring up the good parts also and it will bring up the bad also. Now you are obviously not going to worry about the good, it's good, everything is okay there, the bad is going to trouble you.

The demon is inside us, there is no demon outside, it is just a state of mind, so we know it is there and that's why there is this war going on in the mind of the seeker. It is a battlefield, and the truth is - there will be less peace in your mind compared to before, although it is only an illusion, a seeker will never want to go back to that peace, the peace of darkness, he will never want to go back there, he is going to accept the mess that is here, that is happening in the mind, will not go back. You can try, yes I'll go back to my previous ignorant lifestyle, all the attachments, bondages, ignorance and habitual behavior, like a robot, zombie and you won't be able to stay there for more than two days, it is guaranteed. No, because once it is seen, it is seen, it is done. That's why I sometimes jokingly say that now I have told you what you are, now it is not my responsibility what is going to happen in your life, now I am running away, now it is your mess, because I know it feels very very nice, I am Atman and I am Brahman and so on.

It is a very freeing knowledge, it is your direct experience, it is not a belief, so very certain knowledge and then the real thing appears after a few days, well I am everything, then why is there suffering? Why is there suffering in the world also? Because initially the mind is going to reject whatever is inside, you see, it is habitual of looking outside, so well it looks so shiny from your Advaita point of view, but look at the world, it is a mess, it is a hell. So it will see the problems outside initially and then the body will come in the way, oh no, the body demands food, demands this, demands that, needs to sleep, gets tired, gets diseased, you need to clean it, there is lust, now suddenly you are fighting the body, why won't it stop doing this thing, the habits of the body. Then you say okay, it is a part of mother nature, let it do whatever it must do. There is no ego here.

Ego is the greatest hurdle for any seeker and this must be your own experience. Body can be tamed. In the world you can arrange things so that it does not trouble you too much, you see, if you remain okay, peaceful and friendly with everybody, it is okay, it is not going to trouble you, the body can be tamed a little bit, body is a robot, so can be. When you encounter the ego, then this question will come, then this failure will happen, because ego is about survival, survival is the greatest force in the universe, good luck trying to control that, it looks impossible. Therefore the liberation is - ending the ego, death of the ego is defined as liberation. There is nothing more to achieve here, nothing more and that too the ego is not going to die, it will go only when the body goes and that's why not taking another birth is a part of the liberation. See everything makes so much sense, otherwise this experience will continue like this. It's not a big trouble for the Experiencer, which you can see right now right here, it's all good for the Experiencer, it's all play, but we slip from there also and we come to the mind, which we call intellect. From the point of view of the intellect, it is not good enough, the intellect wants liberation from all this, it wants only the good experiences, there is the preference there. So in a fully liberated mind this preference is also gone and then it is no more an individual mind, it is this vast sea of memories where there is no preference, nothing is good, nothing is bad, everything is good and everything is bad. It has become a copy of the Experiencer itself, it is truly reflecting the Atman, the Oneness, the pure consciousness, it is empty.

This is the whole of the liberation thing. Now the funny thing is, the mind twister is that, we are free right now right here. The limitations, the preferences are acquired, accumulations of the mind, this accumulation is what is known as this set of preferences, tendencies, they are known as karmas or sanskaras because they happened through our own actions, happened through the individuation process of the universal mind. Now remember that it is not my bondage, it is just happening, it is not my suffering, it just appears so, right now right here it's not there, right now right here the awareness is completely reflecting that which is. What is there is ignorance in the mind, it cannot look at all these things and think about it in a coherent way, and this is how it is lost in these thoughts.

Not thinking is Zen, this is what Bodhidharma said. He was not talking about the thinking about your laundry or your shopping list or what to watch on TV, not that kind of thoughts. For ordinary people, those thoughts are the only thoughts in their life, for a seeker the thought means something else, it is the thought that I am bound, it is the thought that I am suffering, I am, I am, I am, me, me, me, me. Behind every thought there is I, you must have noticed, not thinking is the zen mind, not thinking is the way, is already there, the freedom is already there. Forgetting is also there, you see, remember … and it will be taken care of.

I know we are at the bottom, so we don't see the full picture. Remember this is not going to last, human life is like a flash in the pan, like a broken star, this is how long a human life is. It looks like I need to live for so many years in this suffering, this human existence. So it is a suffering because of our own doing, isn't it? It's our own doing, I am good, the society is bad, the world is bad. It is also you, there are no boundaries there, just like there is this individual karma, there is this tribal karma, once you are free from the individual karma, you will find, you will face this big wall of tribal karma, you will, there is no escape from these things. So don't worry, it's a big battle, it's a long one, therefore it takes many many lives

Get the big picture, once you accept that it's not one or two days work, you will become peaceful, otherwise you will be in a hurry to fix everything. Oh my mind does not do this, my mind doesn't, well you have scratched the surface of the mind there and obviously it won't do that, it's like Mount Everest, you have scratched a little stone there, you want to fix it, fix the little stone, it won't budge, it is already 100 kg, now look at the Mount Everest, is it even possible? So I was like this, you know, I wanted to finish all this karmic stuff and liberation, life and death in six months, made a timetable, I'm going to fix it in six months, because this is how smart people are, you see, so I'll manage it. And many many years have passed, I've stopped counting actually, it's a slow progress. As soon as I fix something, there's something bigger that is standing in the way. Remember we are not helpless, there is always help, even if you don't have a living guru, there is help. You need to ask for help. That is the problem, nobody will ask for help, they will think it is crazy. What is the difference between asking for help and praying to this and that invisible God? There is a difference, if you ask for a new car or a new girlfriend, the Gods are useful for that and it may happen, may not happen, you see, depends on the God. When you ask for liberation, it is guaranteed that you will get the help. Now, it may not look like help. I need to warn you that, spiritual path is not simple, what you think is good may not be good, what you think is bad may not be bad. Sometimes it is exactly that, but it will be like this, you ask for freedom from addictions, suddenly the next day you will wake up with stomach pain. I asked for happiness and what is this? You see? You will feel that, you will know this is not your doing, nothing material is involved here, you will feel that when you get such kind of help, it will be a mysterious kind of help. Then you will see it is, because drinking excess coffee, you know, just giving my example again, now you have no choice but to leave that habit, because of this immense pain. You see, the digestion is gone, now thrown out of the window, you have no choice, the mind has no choice, the pain has been made so intense that the mind gives up, oh, okay, now I understood why it is there and now you are freed from that habit.

Sometimes the help will come like this. The mind, the ego will always interpret it in this way. You say that I don't want this bondage of relations, my life is not to be defined by people from this moment, and probably, nothing will happen instantly, because the body can be controlled suddenly, but because other minds are involved, other people are involved, their will is involved, so nothing will happen suddenly, but after two or three years, you will find there are quarrels, and now those who loved you will betray you and so on. There will be dislike for your friends and all will leave you. Now you will sit and cry, why people are like this, why they left me, why I had to leave others? You know, this will also happen, because now by now you have forgotten your wish, the help that you asked for. Since it was for liberation, it will happen, it's guaranteed, so you should remember, be careful what you ask for, because you will get it.

What do people ask for? They ask for stupid things, make me king, make me president of India and so

on, these things are not given. Have you seen it? Never happens, hope is always there, it will never happen. As soon as you ask for liberation from the world, from the illusion, from the ignorance, it is a guarantee that it will happen. The flow of the universal mind is such that it will put you on that path, as soon as you wish for it, the wishing also is a universal event, it is not my wish, really, the time is ripe, so the fruit is now big enough to be harvested.

So very interesting, because I have heard this concept of harvesting from some seekers, that after many many years, there are these cycles of harvesting, the minds that are ripe enough, they are taken out of this illusion, the Maya, the virtual reality, they are taken out of it. Almost mechanically, it happens, the liberation or the enlightenment is not in the hands of anybody, the government cannot start a project, department of enlightenment, is impossible, it will happen like seasons, if it rains, it rains, there is no department there to make it rain, it is natural process - the ripening. In my blogs I am calling it the ripening. A guru is a result of ripening, his guru has not done anything, nobody has done anything, so even if you don't ask for help, it will happen, the only thing is it will be slow, as soon as you are asking for help, that means it is time, the time is right now for ripening. And then your life is going to become hell, you see.

So hopefully I did not drift too much from the topic, and as you can see these matters are not so simple, the matters of the mind are not simple, everything is so complex and interconnected that I can go on talking like this revealing to you one link after the other that is in the mind. You are thinking that you are failing in one or two habits, it is tiny, look at the Mount Everest that you will need to climb. That will put everything in perspective, now your big problem is a small problem, isn't it? It's very small, so go ahead, face it. Walk on the path because it is difficult, do not expect easy things here, mind will say many times - let's go back, you can go back, it's not a big issue, you won't be able to stay back, you will bounce back on the path. That's why I have said this many times that we do not choose the path, the path will choose you.

Session 4

We'll start with something very, very general. There is a question sometimes or there is a statement from a big guru that the existence is infinite and usually everybody accepts it because it is said by somebody great. How do we know that? Is existence infinite? What is the evidence for that? Where is the proof? Can you show me that it is infinite?

These are the questions that one should ask their teachers, but since it is said by somebody great, we simply accept it. We don't see the infinite, do we? So is it even possible to know if something is infinite or not given limits of our own knowledge and perception and intelligence? If not, then how come the teacher or the great master came to this conclusion that everything is infinite?

We can try because we have nothing else to do today, so we can try this kind of exercise. It is not going to be totally useless because even if you don't find an answer, you will get a little bit of exercise, spiritual exercise. So we can do this through introspection. If somebody thinks that the answers to such questions will come from an experience out there somewhere, then that is kind of very difficult, it is almost impossible. So all you can do is turn inwards and try to see if there is an answer here or not. Because the great claim is that once you know your own Self, you know everything. We can test this claim today.

How to find out if the existence is infinite and how to find out if it is finite. So as usual, we start with the words. What do you mean by existence? What do you mean by infinity? This is how we start. There is no other way to start. You cannot get out of your house and start searching for the infinite existence somewhere, out there. So these questions like these, they are an end product of some kind of insight that the Master has. And now he simply declares the final conclusion, the bottom line. And you keep wondering, why did he say that? So he will come one day and say, the existence is infinite. And you think, wow, it is a great thought. I gained some knowledge today, but nothing useful there for you. Even if it is infinite, your life is going to remain the way it is. If it is finite, no difference.

So what is the utility of such questions that existence is infinite and so on? We can start with the words.

What is existence? Because if you don't know what existence is, how will you know whether it is finite or infinite or limited or bounded or anything else? And then we can think about its properties, size and so on, length, time.

Ajay has some answers - From my experience of duality, I can say space is infinite. And also, whatever I call existence is the creation of five limited senses of the body. So I actually don't know what exists.

That's a very good start. Yes, you can wonder about things like space and so on. When I say existence, people picture this big universe in their mind with galaxies floating in the black space, isn't it? This is our conditioning. Remember, what will existence be like from the point of view of a villager, for example, a tribal person in the jungle, who does not have such notions, who thinks that the stars are holes in the sky from which the light of the heavens is leaking. Something like this, you know, different worldview. What will be the existence for that person or let us say some liberated mind who has seen all the universes, all the past, present and future is in front of him? What will you think about the existence?

So one thing you can certainly say, existence is dependent on the mind. Different kinds of minds will think about existence differently. It is not something which is objective, which is simply out there and you can go and look at it and look, this is existence and I know what it is. It is not like this. It is an idea. That's all it is. If I can experience something, it exists. The word exists means to stand out. So if I can experience something, it exists and the sum total of my experience is what I call existence.

Is that a good enough definition? Because it is subjective. Existence is subjective. If I don't experience it, it does not exist and that word existence covers all that exists. You should not have any kind of doubt here. The things that are not experienced, they do not form the existence. You may have an idea about it, an imagination about it, but do not form the part of existence. So all that can be experienced comes under existence.

For example, I say I have a white elephant that can fly. It is standing there in my backyard. Now is it a part of existence? Simply because I could imagine it, because I can put it in the language. Obviously no, because it exists as an idea. The idea, the imagination is part of the existence because I can experience that idea. You can also experience the idea, but not the white flying elephant. So we should not have doubts like this that I don't experience this and that and so on, but still it can be a part of existence. No, it should not happen. If you want to have any meaningful knowledge of the existence, it should be based on the experience.

So a totality of my experience is the existence. And like I just said, it is limited to what I can experience. And the experience is limited to the five senses. But there is more. The mind is also there. Everything that goes on in the mind, the experience of the internal senses, the experience of the senses inside the body also. There are three layers of experiences. The first is what you call the world. It is coming through the senses, and is obviously limited. Second is the experience of the body, which is coming from the internal senses of the body. And the third is the mind itself, which is coming from the mental senses. All of them are limited. So if what I can experience is limited, that means the existence must be limited. I can experience only this much. So that totally falsifies whatever the question is saying. You have the answer now. Look at the existence. It is limited because only this much can be experienced. Are we forgetting something?

Because a master will not say this just for timepass. He must have done some great introspection. This must be a result of some insight. You can give him the benefit of doubt because he is the master. So when we look at our ordinary experience, it is very limited. It is very finite. Now we can go deeper in this and try to find the limit of the experience. Where did our experience start? When did it start? Where is it going to end? We have considered one dimension of existence, which is right now, right here, whatever the senses are telling us, whatever is our current experience, let's add one more dimension there in time. Is there a limit on what can be experienced? You will see that even these five limited senses, they are producing a variety of experiences. Today's experience is different from yesterday's experience. It is different from the experience that you had one month ago, which is different from the experience that you had 10 years ago. When you have visited a new place, new experience. Now the place came into existence. Is there a limit to the places? You will say yes, the planet is the limit, but then there is a whole universe there. Theoretically, it is possible to experience that and then you can say the universe is the limit, but no, there is more. If you are exploring the universal mind, you know this universe is only a tiny part of it. So, from these two angles, the current experience is limited by the kind. The kind of experience is limited, but the amount of the experience, I cannot find a limit there. Yes, it will come in the form of pictures, sounds and the mental activity and the different kinds of bodies, different forms, but that is one dimension of its limit. But in the other dimension, there can be many kinds of experiences. I do not see some fundamental limit that after this, the experience will stop.

Is it possible? Can the experience stop?

You see, when we go a little deep in such questions, which looks like a tiny, very innocent question - is existence infinite? You are expected to say yes or no, but we don't do this, we also want to know the reason. So when you go into the depths of such questions, you will explore, you will find something fascinating. I did not even think that the experience can have dimensions like this, that there can be different ways to check, to talk about the experience, the current experience, yes, this one. Then there are types of experiences, yes, these three types. Then there is this temporal dimension, I don't know when it started, and then the experiences of the universal mind, which is not presently in the waking state, and then you know suddenly that the experience is dependent on the mind and also dependent on the mental state.

See how much was learnt simply by asking this question. Now it may look like that I stand nowhere now, I am simply swinging from this branch to that branch like a monkey, I don't stand anywhere. You must be in a hurry to find out what is the answer then. Well, that is not the point, isn't it? The point of the introspection is to introspect. The answer may come, may not come, you get the insights. So the deeper we look, the more fuzzy it becomes, but you gain some insights. So now I hardly know whether it is infinite or not because there are so many question marks there.

Did it start somewhere? Because in order to be finite, something should have a start, isn't it? I should be able to mark or look for the experience or the existence that is starting here and it is going to end here and there is the finitude, there is the limit to it. And now I try to check my experience and I don't see anything like this. I don't see a start of it, I don't see an end of it, it's not my direct experience. And now you can question your assumptions because some people may have this kind of assumption that, look, the experience started as soon as I was born.

What is birth? Whose experience started? Did you have the experience of a body starting or did you have the experience of the experience starting? You see, a seeker should ask questions like this. It should be perfectly logical. What was your experience of birth? Was it the start of a body or was it the start of an experience or both? It is very easy, you see. Probably my experience started from birth. But since there was a birth and it existed in existence, the existence must be already there, isn't it?

Can you doubt this? No. Everything was born at the same time, including my father, mother and everything and that is probable. It's very far-fetched, isn't it? Because I don't have any evidence. I do have evidence of the experience of the others and if you ask your mother and father, they will say, well, we were experiencing the world, the body, you appeared. You were born. The experience was not born. It is very easy. I cannot say that my experience is the only experience because there are others who will tell you that. I existed before you arrived in the world. So unless you are totally then you can say, no, the existence is whatever is my experience and there is only me here, so that is what exists. It is a very limited view because it leaves out the experience of the others. I have very strong reasons to believe that the others can also experience. They are not dummies, you see, they are not the mannequins in the store, that shop window, they have the same senses that I have and so you can predict very confidently that they experience something and the existence is something for them also, probably different one, but it is something.

So no, the birth did not start an experience, the birth started a body. In the existing existence, in the existing experience, a new experience was born, a new point of view was born, hopefully that is not so illogical and what will be the end of the experience and the obvious answer is as soon as I die, the experience is going to end, will that end the existence and now you can use the same logic as before. As long as there is a conscious being experiencing something, there will be an experience, there will be existence. It does not end with the death, the body ends with the death, experience, I cannot find a beginning, I cannot find an end. So it seems logical to conclude that there is no end, no beginning, sounds like infinity now, we are approaching this conclusion now, if you think like this.

So I think Ajay has another comment - Yes sir I question this, I imagine a situation that all the newborn babies are experiencing but the separate experiencer ego is not present because there is no memory at that time or there are no thought that I am experiencing, then who is experiencing at that time, that must be the experiencer only.

So yes thank you for bringing in the experiencer, it was missing from our discussion. Now you can add another dimension to the existence which is our well known Experiencer, it is not the ego, the ego is an experience, the ego is a part of the existence, you cannot say it's not there, it is there. So an experiencer must be the universal experiencer, the same experiencer that is experiencing through all the bodies, all the babies. So what has happened at the birth is that the experiencer got one more point of view, that's all. In the existing infinity of existence, the infinity was, you can say, perceived from one more limited point of view again. This is the miracle of the birth, the birth is not really a birth of a body, the birth is the appearance of a new point of view for this experiencer.

What is experiencing, obviously there is nothing else there, experiencer is a part of the existence, so the existence is experiencing itself, there is no separate existence or you can say, there is no separate reality which is experiencing this existence, because it's not logical to say like this, you see, because if it is separate reality, where is it? How far away is it from this reality? What is the connection between that and this so that it can experience this, you see?

So as soon as there is a connection, that means the one reality can experience the other reality, that means there is a connection, it is connected, that means it is just one, you need to just zoom out and oh look, there is one and it is not logical to say like this. What is logical is that the experiencer is a part of reality and the existence in the form of experiencer is happening in this existence only. This is another way of saying that there is only oneness, there is no two, so we come to this another dimension of the experiencer, it is the existence itself, it has this power, you can say, to experience itself, whatever it can experience it calls it as existence. So something circular here, existence experiences itself and calls the experience as the existence.

You see self-referencing mechanism here, you cannot go out of this, there is no way out of this, as soon as you imagine something that is outside of it, that means you are just fantasizing about something in your mind, it is just another white elephant that can fly, there is no direct sense of it, it is not sound logic, so we end up with this kind of thing where we are locked up in the existence and then we define the existence as this experience and we define the experience as this existence, because as soon as you try to do something else, well you will get some logical nonsense.

So if you examine this new dimension of the experiencer which appeared somehow from somewhere and you can say that whatever can be experienced is being experienced by the experiencer and the experiencer is now limited by this experience. If you take a look at the experiencer and try to find its limit. Yes the experience is limited, but what about the experiencer? If it is limited, you will see it, look there is this limit here and then this limit will become an experience, it won't fall in the category of the experiencer. So no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you won't find a limit on the experiencer.

There is no limit on the experiencing but you can say, the drishya is limited, you can say like this because at a time only this much can be seen and you can also go ahead and say drishta is limited by the drishya, but is drishti limited? Then there is this unknowing that I don't know, I don't know if it is possible for it to be limited. Just like the experiencing goes on, the experiencer goes on, you cannot find a limit. How are you going to put a limit on that which is experiencing?

Mukul has a comment - Nothing is happening.

That is another thing that the great masters say, existence is infinite and then contradictory statement, nothing is happening, so would you like to say why this is true, why nothing is happening, because if nothing is happening then there is no existence, then I need not worry about whether it is infinite or finite.

I know I have said this many times, nothing is happening, I did not say it like this, I mean there was a long reasoning behind it, there was a long series of statements that then finally conclude nothing is happening. It has to do with the impermanence and the illusion, not with the existence, okay that is his rational that no other answers will make sense, and I have to agree actually to this that there is nothing really, which if you go on digging like this, the answers are not satisfactory, everything is cyclical.

That's what I was saying that it will go on referring to itself, just like I said I defined the existence as the

experience and then when we examine it from the experience side we define the experience as the existence and then I say okay there is the experiencer which is looking at the existence and then from the side of the experiencer we see that oh that experiencer is existence itself, it is nothing, it is the activity of experiencing.

We do not see the experiencer as something happening in the existence, we do not see this, the existence is happening and that's what we know and now you cannot make any sense of it. That's why whatever is happening, it does not stay, you cannot pin it here, this is a series of happenings. You cannot do that because this is an illusion, as soon as you remove memory from it this illusion is destroyed. We know things are happening only because of the memory, when there is no memory what remains? Happening that is not really happening. There is no experience if there is no memory of it, there is no existence if it is not being seen through the memory, through the window of the memory, this memory is what we call as mind.

So yes no mind - no experience. Mind is an illusory experience, the conclusion is - nothing is there, nothing is happening, that is one way, that is one way to arrive at this thing and therefore such philosophies are called nihilistic philosophies because they end up in a big zero. As for some people it is a big shock, oh look there is nothing, it is very depressing, it is depressing for the ego who has invested so much in this nothing, oh my property, my happiness, my relatives, my body, my life, everything that I achieved here it amounts to nothing. No ego likes this thing and so it is not going to accept this answer and the answer will be, the reaction will be like this - if nothing is happening what is this? What is this around me and who am I? And if you have attended, if you have seen the Jim Newman satsangs, this question appears again and again there, you said nothing is happening, you said it cannot be known but I know, I can see something happening. Jim Newman has his own way of silencing that person.

The mind wants to hold on to this - look it is real, it is happening, you cannot say it is not happening. Why is that? Because that person has not taken time to get into the depth of this illusion, is not free from the memory, so cannot see it. Just like I said, probably you won't get the answer of whether existence is infinite or not, that is not a big problem, it can appear as finite, limited, just like now it is appearing, it can appear as infinite, goes on and on and on, the experience goes on and on. It can appear as that which is experiencing, it can appear as the mind, it can appear as the illusion, the ignorance in the mind and so on. It is as if you see, existence is a bartender, you go there and it says what would you like to have today? I am at your service, you say I want something finite, and it will give you exactly that. Next day you come, I am in a totally different mood, I want something infinite, and it will give you that. And the next day you come and say that oh I want something mysterious that I cannot know whether it started, whether it will end, and okay sir, this is your drink, the unknowable drink. And the other day you come, I want nothing, and it will say okay, I have nothing to give you now, take this nothing.

Did you get an answer? I don't think, I don't think there are any answers on the path of knowledge, but yeah, surely if you had any kind of irrational assumptions, surely they are wiped out by now. So yes it is possible to show that it is finite, it is possible to show it is infinite, and it is possible to show that it is unknowable, and now you cannot say anything about infinite, finite, anything, and then it is possible to show that there is nothing there to question about. If all existence is experience, and the experience is only an illusion, then well there is nothing really. And then you can argue like this, but yes, probably there is nothing, probably it is all made up, but there is the experiencer which is witnessing these illusions, the witness cannot be an illusion, so it is not nothing, there is something. And now you feel that you are present, I am very very sure that there is a witness, there is a consciousness, awareness there, whatever you want to call it now, the Atman, the Brahman, the Satchitananda, big names, is it there?

Mukul can say nothing is happening, but is there nothing? Because if you think like this, everything will start shaking in your mind, confidence will start shaking. No matter how much you think, there will not be any answer. Is there an experiencer? You can say the experiencer, the Atman is the only thing that exists, every other thing is non-existent, this is the great statement of Advaita - Mahavakya, Brahma Satya Jagat Mithya, why do they say that?

There is no separate Jagat from Brahma, nothing separate there, which is not this Satchitananda, this is the statement of Advaita, that means it exists, that means something is there, that means something is happening, even if it is an illusion of happening. We are again in some kind of confusion here, if you say there is existence, it must be happening, if you say nothing is happening, nothing should be there, there will not be anybody to ask this question then. Is there anything happening? If there is a question, then there must be something that is happening. I know this is a kind of trick question, this is a very deep question also, and I don't think you will get an answer, but it is good to think like this. There is an answer, that is again in Buddhism, which is, well, all existence is emptiness, and now it is a self-contradictory answer. So if it is emptiness, how can you say it exists? Yes, that is a very good question. Who is asking the question? You see, that can be an illusion, the emptiness is asking, why am I empty? And you can go on like this, the Shunyata is a very good concept, you see, it will silence most of your questions. That which appears to be asking is actually not there, is non-existent, there is only the emptiness. So it looks like that, well, it is not going to be resolved, and that's why the Brahman is also called the unknowable. Again, if you recall the hermetic philosophy, the All is unknowable, he says, this is the limit of our intelligence. I can tell you, you can think about this, the question of existence for many many years, and you will arrive at this statement, that the All is unknowable, all is existence, isn't it? Just another word for the existence, so just like I said, you can make it into anything you want, it will appear as anything, if you want, it will become finite, which is what it is for most of the people here, it starts with the birth and it ends with the death, and in between, there is a narrow band of experiences, they happen in perfectly predictable mechanical manner. Most of the people will say like this, this is the ignorance of the waking state. Then if you want, you can make it appear as something else, if you explore more states of the mind, then it will take many many forms, there is no end to it. Therefore you can declare, oh it is infinite, which is also half-truth, because yes, it is infinite in some way, there is no limit there, but can something exist if it is finite. I can see it in any form I want, and the experience is there, and the finite things exist.

If it is infinite, can it exist? Well, I don't know, unknowable, yes, the existence is infinite, so existence does not exist then, which is self-contradicting statement, oxymoron, so yes, he has said something very nice, knowledge is duality, oneness can be known only as duality, oneness can be known as finite things in chunks, and if you want to know the whole of it, it will look like infinite, and then these questions will arise.

What kind of infinity is it? Can it really exist if it is not finite, and if it is infinite, well, then only the emptiness can be infinite, only if it is zero, it can be infinite, it can appear as infinite, so if it is zero, that means nothing, whatever happens is an illusion of some kind, very very flimsy illusion, not strong illusion also, illusion that does not exist is that kind of illusion. Now, you know, there is no place to stand in this kind of philosophy. Don't worry if you are totally lost, these things are like koans, they are designed to make you stop thinking. Just be. You don't worry whether it is infinite, finite, or how it appears, whether it is dual, non-dual, whether it is or it is not, these are all opinions, this is all an activity of the mind. The final, the ultimate is unknowable, beyond mind.

So this is how we reach beyond mind, you see? Are you there now, are you in the place of beyond mind? Because the mind must have stopped by now. This is how we reach above knowledge, when we try to know, if you know, that means it is an assumption, it is guaranteed that it is a half truth, and a newbie seeker will stop at the half truth, an advanced seeker will keep on advancing, keep on questioning, and reach the not-knowing. Not-knowing is more important than knowing, because it is the final place, it is the final resting place for the mind. As long as you know something that is all illusions.

So there is a saying, again in Advaita, that when you know the Self, you know everything, it does not really happen, isn't it, when you know the self, this need to know drops, instead of knowing it is a state of being, you know everything as nothing, which may appear as finite, infinite, this and that. You don't care now, it is all mind. What good are all these theories? What good is this knowledge that I accumulated, a very fine kind of knowledge? You see, very logical, systematic, I know everything. Is it of any use? There is a use, I am not going to say it is totally useless, there is a “use and throw” kind of use. That this knowledge will take you to the place of not-knowing, not-knowing is arrived at through knowing, once you know that I do not know, you can drop the knowing.

Some people will think, oh there is nothing to know then, finally, how relaxing, I am not going to know anything, I will drop this all adventure, spiritual adventure, because you said there is nothing to know, or everything is known as not-knowing. That is a kind of paradox again, but that is not a good attitude. If you are a seeker, you should know, it is very good, you see, how entertaining this is, is there any other good way to spend your time? Because you see, it has to be your own experience, you simply cannot say that, okay, somebody arrived at this conclusion of emptiness, now I will simply assume that it is empty. But it is not going to do much, all your assumptions, beliefs, blind superstitions, they are going to remain there. So the seeker needs to go through this knowing-business, cannot simply assume, oh it is unknowable, so I drop all my seeking now. Don't worry about the seeking, you see, it will drop by itself. What are you seeking, on the path of knowledge? We are seeking the destruction of knowledge. It will appear very counterintuitive, it will look false. We do not say these things because it is kind of troublesome, nobody likes this, and the seekers are immediately discouraged. Oh no, don't seek, because there is nothing to seek, and then they go and they are lost in the world.

Charlie is saying - It only happens when everything the mind thinks of, is exhausted.

Yes, this is how we silence the mind on the path of knowledge. Oh you want to know? Okay, here is the knowledge. You want to know this also, okay, you want to know the deeper, okay, deeper also, and when it finds nothing there, it stops, then the no mind appears as the background of this mental activity. Now you don't need to call it reality, you don't need to call it true nature, you don't need to call it atman, brahman, because as soon as you call it something, the mind restarts. Don't give it a name, you have reached the nirgun state of brahman. So yes, this is how the mind stops, there are many ways to get out of this mental mill of mind. Knowledge is one of the ways. Don't think you will know, there is a lot of unlearning that happens on the path of knowledge. It happens very beautifully by knowing.

The question was - is the existence infinite, a very innocent question, and the mind is expecting yes or no and a concrete logical answer, yes it is finite because of this, it is infinite because of this, it is not that black and white, you see, if you dig a lot, then the question will disappear, the one who is questioning will also disappear. There, yoga, the activity of the mind stops and the yoga happens, this is called kaivalya. I mean, this is Patanjali's word, and it means aloneness. In Buddhism it is called suchness. In advaita you can say nirguna brahman. So many names, but nobody will claim that they know this. Naming does not mean that I know it.

There is somebody who is very famous, probably it was Richard Feynman who said, you will know the names of everything but you will never know what it is. It is a very profound statement, isn't it? That's why knowledge is relative, it is always in a relation to something and nothing can be said about the experience on which the knowledge is based on, it will appear finite, it will appear infinite, it will appear mysterious, it will appear unknowable. And the only thing we should be careful about is not to stop at the appearance. Oh somebody told me it is infinite and I like it, I like the answer and there was a reason that was given, the experience never starts, it never ends, so it is infinite, I am happy here and that means the progress has stopped, that means you are still in the mind, happy with the answers of the mind. You need to question more and then the questions will start looking more and more ridiculous, it will be like why did you ask this question, isn't it self-evident that it is infinite, why do you need to ask this again that can the infinite thing exist, where will it exist, how will it exist, why is it infinite? And you see, the mind does not want to go there, it has already seen the limits of itself, so it will avoid going there. No, I am happy here and it's okay for me, it's infinite. So we should be careful when this happens, when the mind wants to remain in the delusion that it itself has created. So many people will be afraid of questioning beyond this, so much was invested in the mind. It will cook up something like this all the time.

When I say death is the end of the mind and the mind says - that cannot be like this. What is the use of this life, all we encounter is death, if it is destroyed it is meaningless? And then it imagines that I am going to continue as this mind and I'll also be reborn, there will be rebirth and this is called Mahamaya, because Maya is - this world looks real, the Mahamaya is - mind creates even more layers of existence for you, it is mind after all, remember it is Maya itself, the Maya is mind generated, projection and there is a veiling of this projection where it says no I don't see how it is unreal, the reality does not appear to me, whatever you are saying I cannot see it. So this is a two way thing, two dimensional Maya, so it will create another layer for you.

That reminds me of the movie the Matrix again, the Matrix was created, but whatever they thought is the reality, the earth, that was also created, that was also unreal. And then Neo thought he is free, but he was still trapped, only in another layer.

There is a very good movie which is probably not so popular, it is called the 13th Floor, everybody should see that movie, it is before The Matrix. A very beautiful movie and the same idea there, the mind will create whatever you want it to create, so it can appear infinite, no problem for it. It is also always so confusing when you start on the path of knowledge or any spiritual path because, you see, there are relative truths, and then there is absolute truth, and there is no truth, and people get confused. That day you said there is no death, today you are saying it is an illusion, that day you said the universal mind is the ultimate reality, today you are saying it can create 20 more universal minds if you ask it to create, what is the truth then? There is no such thing as truth, so it is all relative, truth is subjective and relative. All truths are half truths, this is what Kabylion said, it is a deep statement. It is not something to just listen and go home, it is not like this. If you introspect like this you will find that there is no truth, whatever appears as true is very limited in the limited scope in a relative way. Yes, I am hungry and I need to eat, and the food is true and the body is true and the hunger is true. Can you say - no, no, it is all illusion, I will just fast today? This is the creation of the mind, it is denying this truth,

that is relative. You can recognize a half truth if you can find something which is more true than that. So all truths will be found like this, there is no ultimate truth, there is ultimate half truth but we don't want it now. As long as there is true and false you are still in the mind, and these all sentences, these all teachings, they are just tools to bring you out of the mind.

Just like we saw in the book that we read, the teachings of Bodhidharma, everything that he says is actually designed to bring you out of the mind. As long as you want to know, as long as you have answers, you are trapped in the mind. Or you can say - there is no I, so how can I be trapped in the mind? The mind is trapped in itself, the illusion of I being the mind. You can say - but what is wrong in that? Spirituality is hardly concerned with right and wrong, it is concerned with freedom. It is perfectly okay, it is perfectly right to be trapped, there is nothing wrong there, if it is an illusion, bondage is also an illusion then nothing is wrong. But as soon as you know this, you are free. If the objective is to be free, then the real freedom is freedom from the mind. The mind is not freed, the mind is silenced, dissolved.

The mind will remain like this for a while and again will question - now I have achieved no mind, now what should I do? It is a sign that the mind has made a re-entry, it cannot be killed you see, so it enters again. Okay I have achieved it, now what should I do? Many people are like this, they ask this question, and remember again, you need to remember this again, oh it is the mind, it cannot sit without doing anything. So it is asking and then you will let that question be. Is there anything to do? Because doing again is in the domain of the mind, again in the domain of ignorance. So non-doing, don't do anything, Zen master will tell you and then the student will be puzzled again, how can I do the non-doing? Don't try to do the non-doing, it is simply recognition that nothing is happening, nothing needs to be done and then you let whatever is happening happen.

So it will be shocking for many, oh I thought the spirituality is like this, the spirituality will give me something, the spiritual path, we arrive at something, some great truth and it is a big disappointment because you get nothing in the end, there is nothing to do in the end also. That's why spirituality is the art of being, it's not getting, it's not knowing, it's not doing. And what do you see around you? Most of the people are trapped in - I want this, so that's why I become spiritual, I want peace of mind. This all appears very very ridiculous now. I want the ultimate truth, I want to be dissolved in the Brahman. Oh wow, these are great great great goals you have, but I am sorry, nothing will be achieved in the end, if you are coming on the spiritual paths for an achievement, better achieve something in the world, that will be a good achievement, spirituality is not for achieving. Still we say you are not progressing, you need to progress, if you do this you will progress and now you can recognize that these are all half truths, we are saying this in a relative way. You can say I achieved nothing only when you have achieved everything. You can try that or you can simply meditate like this and arrive at non-doing, non-achieving. So you see, it's not the fault of the seeker. From where an ordinary seeker is, it is invisible, from where the master is, everything makes perfect sense. From the point of view of the seeker, it's not making any sense at all right now, so it's okay, so the master will give you something to do, be good, don't kill people, don't lie, don't accumulate stuff, read this, read that, introspect like this, so on. What is the master trying to do? He is not trying to give you something, he's emptying you, you're already full, he's emptying the cup, you can do that in one step if you want.

It was a Sadguru who said, if you want you can drop all your karma right now, right here. I was watching that video and I was shocked, I said that's what I wanted and then he said, but you won't do it. Now I understand why this is so, it is possible to be empty right now, right here, because that is what there is and the mind won't do it. It's all okay, you don't need to worry about this thing. I don't know who said, once you get rid of the karma you realize that it was not there, all your sanskara, all the impressions, all this memory was not there. My opinion about this is that you can do it right now, realize that it's not yours, that will get rid of all the karma and that will make you Jeevan Mukta right now, right here. It's not difficult.

Session 5

What is the intent behind the whole creation and the creation of the life forms?

When I say intent, I am actually implying a conscious agent there. Somebody, in the common language. Somebody, not a human, not an animal, not a God, somebody. There is something which has this ability to form an intention. The intention is to create something other than itself. A special case of creation is a life form. The animals, the plants, the humans and everything, the embodied and the disembodied.

So, what is it? What is the reason behind the creation?

Now, as soon as I say intention, it is an ability of the mind to hold an intention. It is a desire of some kind. And as soon as I say the mind, there is a mind there which is forming an intention. That means there is already something which is created. There is already something there which is having an intention. So, creation has already happened.

This is the logical difficulty. This is the logical problem that is behind this question. That if you ask for an intention, something already has been created. Now, you must ask for an intention of the creation of that thing which is intending to do all other creation. This is the logical difficulty.

So, the only solution is to assume because that's all we can do. We can only assume that the creation of anything, even the very first thing, happens without any intention. It is not intentional. The intent is a part of the creation. Now, this is not a satisfactory answer because you will say that then why is there a creation at all if there is no intention to create it? How can there be something without anyone doing something?

Now, you can see clearly this is beyond the mind and this is beyond the everyday human mind. Human minds work in a very specific way. They are bound in a very specific way. They are bound in ignorance. So, let us see how humans create. Whenever I create something, I take something and change it. The creation starts in the mind. The creation starts with an intention - let me create this. For example, I want to create a clay pot, I dug out the clay, I wet the clay. There is an intention to form it into a specific shape. There it is. The pot is there. Now, there is a purpose for it. I can use it for something. And this is the way the human mind works. There is an intention. There is an action. And the action is a directed action, it is not a random action. We call the directed actions as intelligent actions. There is intent in the word intelligence. So, the intent and action, they give rise to creation. And as far as human activity is concerned.

Now, look at how mother nature creates. We plant a seed and it grows into trees and flowers and fruits and they appear. Is there an intent? Is there an action there? And is it an intelligent action? Now, nothing can be said because the mind of mother nature is not like the human mind. It is completely different. So, we never say that somebody is growing the trees. Somebody is sprouting the plants from the seeds. Somebody is creating the flowers. We cannot say this because we do not see any mind there behind this action, behind this happening that is intending this to happen.

So, you can now see that these words, intentions and actions and the creator and the creation, they are all a creation of the mind. They are all a peculiarity of the human mind. It happens only in a human mind because of its particular way of functioning. It functions in this way. Intention appears, action happens, and it is a directed action, it is not random, and the product appears. And you will notice that we always take something from outside to create. Our creations do not appear in thin air out of nothing. It is always a transformation, not a creation. We do not create, we simply change using our intent. There is a difference between creation and transformation. Humans call it creation for some odd reason.

So, you see, this is the way the mind works. And when it sees everything, when it sees all the life forms, and when it sees this world, whatever is appearing is the world, the question arises because this is the way the mind works. This is the ignorance in the mind that there has to be an intent behind everything. Because whatever I create, whatever appears using my body and my thoughts, there is me behind it, there is an intention behind it. So, it projects its ignorance onto the world, onto life-forms.

So, this is the answer. And it can be taken to another level by seeing that in the human mind also, the intention never appears by a will, it appears from the memory. And you can only do that which is already there in memory. And what is there in the memory? That which is already experienced. So, you can say that the creation happens in the mind, but it happens through the memory, and is again a transformation of some kind. The mind is taking whatever is in the memory, transforming it into something, and that same action appears through the body in the world.

So, no creation there, nothing at all. It is merely a change, a continuous change, and it is the ignorance of the mind to assign an intention, an intelligence, and a creator, a purpose, and a meaning, a direction to whatever appears. This is what we call Maya.This is projection of the mind on simple happening, simple appearances. The appearances are, I can say they are simple, but not so simple, you see. But this extra layer is added on top of it. Look, this is being created from somewhere, it is coming.

So, no intention there. It is just appearances. They appear in a very ordered way, actually. They appear in ordered and disordered both, but the mind selects that which is ordered. It does not make any sense of randomness, so it is not imprinted on the memory. The random things that happen, they don't imprint on the memory. A little bit of order, yes, appears as a creation, appears as a form. That is what is happening. There is everything, all possibilities, and the possibilities with a little bit of order in them,

the low entropy patterns, they appear as forms when perceived through the mind.

The mind itself is a form. This is the funny thing. This is the paradoxical thing. I can go on and on and on, but Ashish has written something, so I am going to read it.

You shared yesterday on Twitter a video of Roger Castillo, who from the video looked to me, a follower of Ramesh Balsekarji. I used to read and follow him 7 to 9 years back, but somehow his statement around lack of free will and all is determined by genes and conditioning seemed right as well as wrong. If this world is Mithya, then anything we do makes no difference, but then it takes away a small degree of freedom. What is your approach on the effort to be made for self-realization? Where does astrology fit in? I am new to your group, so please excuse me if this question has been answered before. I will check the archives then.

Yes, this question comes up again and again. We have attacked this question many times from many angles. Let me tell you, give you a warning beforehand, that any answer is not going to be satisfactory. You are asking something which is about the maya, just like you said, mithya. Nothing satisfactory comes out of it, nothing.

Yes, Roger is a student of Ramesh Balsekar. I had the pleasure of meeting him when he was in Pune last year. And he is a brilliant man, really, very brilliant. So Balsekar is coming from the Advaita tradition, the pure Advaita tradition. And as you know, he is the student of Nisargadatta Maharaj. So whatever he says, we need to pay attention. You see, he is not going to say anything without any reason. We cannot simply dismiss his talk. Why did he say that there is no free will and everything is being determined by genes and conditioning? Why is it right? And what do you mean by the will? Is there a will? What does it look like? And you will need to go into the depths of your own mind. What happens when you will?

You see, before you can say it is free or not, before you can say everything is determined or done by me, you will need to go into the mechanism of the will. What is it? Most people do not ask this question.

They assume that I know what “will” is. I know what is “willing”. It is only a word for many people, isn't it? Now I am taking you one step deeper. I could have given you the answer, but I told you, I gave you the warning in the beginning. It is not going to be satisfactory. Humans don't like this thing. There is a kind of, what you say, resistance in the mind about its own nature. Therefore, it has to be seen. You cannot simply tell them, Look, there is no will there. Go home now. It is not going to be satisfactory. So what I will do, I will take you in the mind and check the action of willing. You can do it right now also. Will something and pay attention to what happens. For example, I am now willing to drink a little bit of water. It is my free will. It looks like this desire appeared in my mind because I wanted it to appear. Check my statement. Now I can go ahead and drink the water. That is external action. We are not concerned about that. Willing has happened, after that it is totally determined. The will will travel through the nervous system to the body and in the world, and the action will happen. That is not the issue here. The issue is, you will need to look at my statement that the desire to drink water appeared in my mind because I wanted it to appear. This is what I mean by willing. Just a simple example. You can take any example you want. Please see this. This is the key I am giving you. When the will appears, there is a thought in the mind that it has appeared because I wanted it to appear. I made it appear. Look at this sentence again. It has the word want. What is “want”? Another desire. I desired for this desire to appear. Now, if there is the wanting behind every desire, not every, let us say, a few desires, the conscious, free-willed desires, then it begs the question. There is a necessity now for this wanting to have a wanting. What caused this desire to want me to have this desire?

Now, probably it is already very difficult for you. So, let us go back to the question again. What has made this desire to drink water appear? You can say there will be a thought in the mind. I wanted this to appear. That is my free will. Now, what wanted this desire to be there? And now you go to infinite regression, which is a sign in philosophy that something is wrong. We say it is a sign when something goes like this forever. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

It is a sign that we are on the wrong track. It is a sign that this is not true. For example, the first question I took, the need of a creator. If something needs to be there only because of a creator, then the creator needs to be there because of another creator. And it will go to infinite regression. So, what do we do? We discard the whole idea. We say this idea does not apply here. So, whatever happens in the mind, there is a cause. But you will never find the cause. I am pointing to the cause for thought in the mind. What is causing the desire is not an entity called you. The thought is like this. I wanted this. Now, if you go in the depths of wanting, then you will get to the infinite regress. Then you now examine the I word. And this is happening in the mind again. The “I” also appears as a thought. There is no such thought in the mind of a baby, for example, or the mind of an animal. There is no I thought. It simply happens through the mind. There is no ownership there. There is no doer there. Why does it appear in a human mind, a mature human mind, intelligent human mind? Well, this is the function of the mind, the identity creator function of the mind. It's called Ahamkar. Aham means I. Kar means creator, the cause of the I. There is a function in the mind, we call it a layer. The layer of the mind is called the identity creator layer. So, the mind does it. Something happens in the mind. And a process also arises with it, which says that I did it. Because the mind needs to keep track of the actions happening through this organism and the actions not happening through this organism. It divides the actions like this. Why does it want to keep track of these things? Survival, you see. This organism, the mind of this organism needs to know what it is doing, needs to know what is happening in here. So, everything that happens through this body, everything that happens through this mind and speech is owned and, you know, stamped as I. This is what you call as I. Or in Sanskrit, the Aham. And note the difference between the Self and the I. Self is not the I. The self or the consciousness is a witness of all this activity. You can witness it right now, you see. Do the action of willing. And the self is witnessing it. The I is doing it. This is how it is.

So, we say after this analysis, with direct seeing, if you remove all your conditioning, all your ignorance about this, simply by direct seeing, directly seeing how your mind acts and checking the meanings of the words that it uses to form thoughts, you can disintegrate this whole thing and destroy this whole illusion of a doer and an I, and willing and a wish to will, a want to will and so on. You will find this simply a loop which refers to itself again and again. And this goes on in the mind. This is the waking state of the mind, you see.

So, what we do is we disregard this thought. Like in the case of the creation and creator, we disregard.

We say it does not apply there. Don't try to mix these concepts. So, here also we say that the willing and the I, they do not mix. Do not say like this that my actions are willed because you won't find any meaning there. Now, for the ego this is a very dissatisfactory answer because it will fall back into its I thought. No, no, I am doing it. I am very, very sure that I am doing it. Look, I picked up the glass and I had a sip of water. It happened because of my will. So, it is very tricky.

You will need to go back to yourself again and again and again. You will need to go back to the direct seeing again and again and again. And then you can dismantle this illusion of the doer. And you will see that the other answer is that action is happening, isn't it? You cannot say that nobody is doing it, so no action is happening. No, the action is happening. So, what is the other alternative? It is happening because of the programming of the mind, which is the memory of the mind. And whatever is happening through the body is the conditioning of the body, which is genetic conditioning. What is genetic conditioning? It is also a memory, memory of the lower layers of the mind. It is a memory of mother nature. It is being conserved in the form of genetic material and it expresses again and again and again in various life forms. So, again a memory there. So, the higher layers have their own memory and that is happening. That is what we call the jiva. So, it attaches itself to the form again and again and again. So, because the first option has failed, you have the second option and check that it is not being done. It is always happening.

So, you now know a very important characteristic of the maya, you see. In the maya, there is a lot to study, although it is totally useless, I will say. But if you are interested in maya, the shakti part, the half part of the shiva, the shakti, that is the expression of the shiva, or the expression, the consciousness in motion, you see. And the waves on the sea, you can call it anything. So, if you want to study that, you will find something very important here, that the maya appears. That's all. It is an appearance.

Nothing is happening there, everything is appearing. Then the mind comes into the picture and connects all the dots. Isn't it?

Why is there a plant? Somebody has planted a seed. And then, you know, it makes a story out of these appearances. A logical sounding story. And whatever happens to this body, this organism, this jiva, you see, differentiate between the self and the jiva. Jiva means the sum total of the human mind, you see. Whatever that is taking births. Whatever that is dying. So, whatever is happening through this part of the maya, this is all maya, this body and jiva. So, it will again create a story and a very logical story. Because this helps in survival. If you don't create this story, well, survival is gone. It will be a dysfunctional mind. So, this illusion is a necessity. The illusion of free will is necessary for the organism to function in this relative reality. The transactional world. Otherwise, it will fail, this organism will not survive.

So, it has evolved like this. And in human beings, it has evolved so much that there is ego now. And it is actually controlling. There is an illusion of control also. It controls itself, you can say. For example, if you make a robot, looks like it is controlling itself. It wants to walk through the door, it does not want to bump in the wall and so on. But what is behind the robot? There is a program, there is a memory.

It is simply executing that. And if you make it complicated enough, it will look as if the robot has a mind of his own. And we will start calling that thing as a living being. You can see in the nature, the insects and the tiny animals, they are almost robots. You see, they are forms of the same consciousness, but they are memories. Memories of some kind. So, we know this important characteristic of the Maya that it simply appears and the mind will make the connections in what is appearing. This is another layer of illusion on what is already an illusion.

M. Krishna is saying that AI is a misnomer, is more learning and taking into memory and following.

Yes, exactly. So, then, do I have no will at all? This, whatever AI is. You see, the ego has no will. That is kind of certain. The ego itself is a program. It is very sophisticated, that's all. Right now, whatever you are hearing, whatever this thing is saying, is already all programmed, you see, coming from the memory.

Is there no will at all? Now, let me twist your mind a little bit. There is a will. It is only one action.

Ajay is saying, Self does not have free will at all.

Well, you cannot apply the concept of willing on the self. It never does the willing. And it never does the deterministic also. What is the self doing? It is not doing. It is not doing anything. It is a witnessing.

It is a witnessing thing. It is the universe itself, which is witnessing. So, things appear. If you use the word doer, doing, willing, it all goes to the relative level. It all goes to the human perspective, not the absolute perspective. In the absolute perspective, these words are meaningless.

So, I was telling you, is there no will at all? Look at your awareness. The awareness is the action of the mind, where it realizes that there is a consciousness and all that is manifested, simply appears. This is awareness. This is the highest layer in the human mind. When you shift to awareness, this does not come from the memory. When you are in the awareness, this does not come from the memory. There is no programming in the mind that will show you that look, there is a consciousness. Now, I will leave it as an exercise for you. This is the greatest sadhana.

For Jeevan Mukta, no free will. For doers, not yet realized Jivas. In Vaivahrik reality, there is free will.

Pretty clear, he has said this thing in one line. Now, you will need to find out the truth of this statement. It's very true. In the practice, in this world, in Maya, you will need to use the words belonging to the Maya. Nothing wrong there. Please do not mix the absolute with the relative. That is what people do. And then they get confused. Oh, he said there is no free will, but I am doing everything in free will. Our society is based on free will. If I kill somebody, I cannot say that it is happening, it is Maya. No, you will be given punishment. In the Maya, do not act from the absolute. In the absolute, do not act from Maya. There can be in between levels, you will find as you progress.

So, a very nice statement. Thank you.

There is free will in Maya. It appears like this. Look at the Maya, it is only an appearance. So, free will is also an appearance, but very useful. Don't give up your free will just because you know that there is no such thing. You will need to use it. We are using this body, although we know that it is also an appearance. It also appears, but we still use it, we do not kill the body. That is not the proper way to get liberated.

Ashish has said, Nisargadatta and Ramana used to also say this. The only thing you can do is go to the I-I, I am and stay there.

Yes, that is what I was saying. This is the greatest practice in this universe. All other practices are simply steps to reach the awareness. Isn't it? On the path of knowledge, we start it on the first day. First day for sure. See the Self. Realize the Self. How do you do this? By discarding all that appears. Including wills and all. Accept this I am. Accept this pure consciousness. The witness. Everything is an appearance. So remain there as much as you can while letting everything happen as it happens. There is no need to meddle in what is happening. This is not really happening you see. Whatever you do to meddle in this is also an appearance. What are you trying to do there?

So you see for a seeker, the only will the seeker has is to go back to the awareness. This will never come from memory. This is inherent in the universe. Every creature, everything, even a rock is doing this but they do not have the apparatus to express like we are doing it. We are expressing this thought that there is the ultimate witness there and these creatures, babies and ignorant humans, cannot express this thing. That's all. That is the only difference. So it does not mean that we have gained the free will now to become aware. No. We have a very advanced intellect which can express this experience. That's all. This is all you can call enlightenment if you want. It is not gaining an ability. It is simply a realization that behind these appearances is a screen. The screen of the self. The Atman. Which is equal to the pictures that appear on the screen. Identical to the pictures that appear on the screen. Just like your monitor or screen that you are viewing is made up of the pixels and there is no difference between the forms that appear on the screen and the forms itself. You see? You see a picture on the screen. It is nothing but the screen itself taking this form. Now the only thing is to discriminate that the form is not the screen. It comes and goes. That is the sign of the appearance, it never stays. If it's changing, well it is an appearance.

So the ultimate reality is an empty space like a screen. It is not space like in this physical space. No. It is the Chidakasha or conscious space. Everything appears there. As an illusion. You can call it an illusion.

And it is not the right word. Maya is the right word. Because illusion means there is something real that may appear someday. But no. On this Chidakasha nothing real is going to appear. It itself is real.

It is not going to happen. That you will find some reality out there someday. It's all Maya. It is the only thing that exists. So the Maya is sometimes equated with reality. You will find some scriptures like this.

I remember Swami Vivekananda. Probably it was him that said the Maya is not the reality. But it is the only reality that you will find. And that's why it is so complicated that our language does not express this nicely. Our language is all Maya. It is all based on Maya. Probably in the ancient times they created some language to describe all these things. It is all lost now probably. You see. I have heard that Sanskrit had this quality to express. That which cannot be expressed using ordinary language. And Hebrew language. All the letters of the Hebrew were constructed out of the primordial patterns. The same thing is said about Sanskrit also. And now we can see that all these languages have a common origin. It did not originate on the earth plane. That is what people say. So I am just giving it an entertaining angle that there was a lot of knowledge before which is now lost.

Ashish says. So if the shift happens to awareness then it is not something done by memory. Mind, intellect. So who is doing the shift of going to awareness?

Well, as soon as you ask who is doing it then it is mind again. You are referring to the ego or the doer part. You see there is no doer I say and then I ask who is doing it. So no these do not mix. So awareness itself is coming to awareness. You can answer it like this. If I say awareness is doing it, it will be wrong choice of words, isn't it? It's the wrong answer. Awareness is coming back to awareness. That's all that is happening. And therefore it is not an act of will. So at least this is my interpretation that do not mix the doer with awareness. They do not go together. It's not possible. It is a disappearance of the mind you can say. When the mind lets go of itself, what remains is awareness. So there is a shift of attention you will see. You will see that the mind is attending to this then the mind is attending to that. It is listening.

It is seeing. It is thinking. The attention is flickering like this. And when the attention is relaxed when it is attending nothing what is that? That is awareness. The space between two thoughts. The interval between two perceptions.

Ashish is saying, is it the mind only who is also looking for the source?

No, the mind cannot look for the source. What has happened is the Guru's words will get into the mind. Guru will say relax your attention. See what that which is perceiving, not perception. What that does is relaxes the mind. The mind stops there and awareness appears to itself. You see like Krishna is saying awareness is not an object for perception but is the subject itself. The subject appears to itself. It does not appear to itself. It becomes itself. And this is impressed on the mind because the mind is what? It is happening on the screen of the subject only. The screen of the Self only. So it gets this impression. This gets recorded in the memory. It is a blissful memory. The mind cannot describe what has happened. You can see that. When the mind is not engaged in all this mess of the mind this thing and that thing and running after desires and some are fulfilled, some are not fulfilled, pleasure and pain. When it is not doing it, what is it? It is bliss. It is the peace. It is the anand. That's all we can say about it. That's why the awareness is also called anand. It is also called the sacchitanand. So mind cannot look for this thing. There is no possibility for the mind. The words of the guru they take you there. Because if you don't hear these words there is no possibility there. Sometimes a stroke of luck, it may happen but then it can be explained away as the past life sadhana.

So what is a guru then? Isn't a guru a person also? Isn't a guru a mind? No. The form of the guru is again maya. The awareness expresses through this form and reaches the mind of the student. The awareness is the guru. It is the same awareness which is experiencing through you. Same awareness.

So again awareness is realizing itself through a guru. You see, it is so beautiful. Sometimes you will hear me saying that Self is the only guru. It's a beautiful sentence. Because this is what is happening. The form cannot do these things. The form which you think is the guru. No, no, no. The awareness itself is the guru. That mind has realized this thing and is now expressing it. And when it reaches this mind, which is your mind, it stops. And the awareness appears there also. So you see ultimately it is the one which is witnessing everything through the forms. Now this does not require any evidence. Whatever I am saying does not require evidence because it is self-evident. You can see it happening right now right here. It is not a theory that I cooked up somewhere. This is what is happening right now right here. So no, the mind cannot realize this thing. The awareness realizes itself when the mind is gone. Chitvrittinirodha is yoga. Mind is gone and then the yoga appears. It is very easy. It is very easy if the guru is sitting in front of you. Otherwise well for millions of years the jiva or the mind will keep doing this. Why do we place guru above everything? It is the Self and so is already above everything. You don't need to do even that.

So M is again saying, I feel if one understands the object-subject differentiation then one can realize that we do not try to understand the awareness. But awareness is realizing itself.

Exactly. Again in one sentence he said whatever I expressed. So differentiate, discriminate between mind and awareness if you want to see what is happening. Do not mix the mind and awareness. You don't need to go to the level of Brahman and Parabrahman. These are not for us. So just discriminate between what is mind, what appears and what it is appearing. These two things. The Self-realization.

Ashish is asking, can you please share your thoughts on a part of the first question on the effort to be made for self-realization? Is it to make the mind calm down, like it is said that to make the water clean and calm, light of awareness will shine by itself?

So yes, about the effort to be made on Self-realization. Now tell me Ashish, when you clear the mind and see that there is an awareness, there is a witness, how much effort it took? How much effort did it take to see that? There is awareness. There is an experience. So there is an experiencer also. Disregard the experience for a second, what remains is the experiencer. This light that is shining on everything cannot be seen, cannot be felt, cannot be seen as an object. Like I said, it is the one in which objects appear. So how much effort it took, you can do it right now. It is always available. You see, the characteristic of reality is that it never goes away. It is unchanging, not being modified by anything. The modifications appear in that. So when you make an effort, what is witnessing that effort? Isn't it already there? Can it be gotten through effort? Will the Self appear because there is an effort? Is the effort a cause for the Self? If you see it like this, then all these questions will be rendered meaningless. It will be seen as interference of the mind. The mind is asking these things.

So no effort. The effortless state is the realized state. If you are making an effort, well, you are in the mind. You are tangled in the mind. You are in the activity of the mind. Can you make the mind calm down like the water? Try it. Can you make the effort to make the mind calm down? What is making that effort? If the effort is needed to calm down, is it calm? No. Think about it. The Self is there. The screen is there with effort and without effort. It is always there. If you make an effort, you will reach there. If you don't make an effort, you are already there. You see, it's all confusion created by the mind. The light is always there. Effort or no effort.

So he is now saying, but permanence in that state is not there.

No, that is again a delusion of the mind. It is permanent. Only sometimes there is activity of the mind. Sometimes there is no activity of the mind. Isn't it? The Self is always there. Activity or no activity. Like I am talking, you are listening. You are listening with your awareness. Isn't it? The mind cannot listen. The mind is not the ultimate perceiver. So there is activity of the mind which is listening, paying attention to what I am saying. Isn't there the screen of witnessing there also right now?

So it is always there. You know, discriminate between what is and what is appearing and coming and going. Your all effort is coming and going. You see, the mind is not permanent. There won't be any permanent thing in the mind. Mind is coming and going from mental activity. Mind is what? Only an activity. If there is no activity, there is no mind. What you call the mind is an appearance and disappearance of perceptions, thoughts, emotions, desires, imagination, everything that this whole world is an appearance in the mind only. So you see, it is activity, it is appearance, it is impermanence. So there won't be any permanent state. It is happening on the background of permanence. The mind is happening in the background of no mind. The impermanence is happening on the permanence. It's not the activity of the mind and then the Self appears and the activity appears. It's not like this. It is not one after the other. It is that the background of the witness or the consciousness, you can say, or the Self, the atman is ever present and the mind fluctuates. The mind has states. The mind sometimes does this activity, sometimes calms down. See this drama, the Leela that is happening. Sit between the mind and consciousness. Sit there. That is why it is called Samadhi. Sam means balance, Dhi is the intellect. So sit in between. Give your intellect a duty, like a watchman. Sit in between. Activity, no activity, this activity, that activity and this one which is witnessing.

So this is the whole practice that you will have to do. It is not really a practice because it is the most natural state of the mind. So I hope you got the answer there that “permanence” is an illusion in the mind. It's only mind that comes up with such excuses that no, no, my nature is not permanent, my true nature. Then who is witnessing this impermanence? If you know that it is not permanent then what is it that is witnessing this impermanence? If the Self comes and goes, what witnesses the coming and going? Not possible. So it is only ignorance in the mind.

If you say, no, my state is not permanent, not true. It is just another illusion thrown by the mind. But it's good that it is cleared up.

Cleaning the mind is totally a different occupation, not concerned with self-realization. Your self-realization, realization that this is the Self, everything happens on the screen, witnessing is the start of cleaning the mind, which is also called the purification of the mind. Chitta Shuddhi. So this is a part of Yoga and it can be achieved by Karma Yoga. All these impurities of the mind which it keeps throwing as an obstacle in realizing this. So it is already in the state, it is already in awareness, but because of the changing states of the mind, the fluctuations of the mind, this is veiled. It puts a curtain on this state, on the awareness. So the changing states of the mind, why are they changing? Because of the impurities of the mind. It is a monkey mind, tendencies. So you can do that. You can use a method, clean it up. And when it is cleaned, it becomes calm. Now it is not kind of affected by what is happening in the mind or in the surroundings, which is also the mind. So this is called the Stithpragya state of the seeker. So this happens only when you know how to remain stable. And that will happen only when you know who it is that remains stable. Mind cannot remain stable. This purification will start from realization. It is not that the realization is not the end product of purification. You can see so many people. They are purifying everything, body and all, but no realization. How is that possible? It is the cart before the bull. You see, you put the bull before the cart and then it will go forward. So first realization. If it is not stable, purification. If you want to achieve Samadhi, it is one second job. If you want to remain in Samadhi, one lifetime's job.

So Ashish is saying, I think all what is mentioned as Karma Yoga, chanting, Bhakti are just the activities meant to engage the mind.

It has to do something so better engage in such activities till it comes to a point where it gives up. Just like Koan of Zen meditation, you cannot solve it logically, irrationally. If you give up, the answer appears. Exactly, you have the proper understanding of spiritual practices. The practices will lead to no practice. The activity is such that it leads to no activity. This is the essence of all the spiritual practices. On the path of knowledge, the knowledge will lead to no knowledge. The Veda will lead to Vedanta. End of knowledge, you see. If you are doing a practice which is keeping you engaged like a donkey for the rest of your life, it's better to give up that practice. It's not taking you anywhere.

Who is aware of this impermanence? That is the key.

Look for that which is the ultimate always. Step back, step back, step back and see the ultimate. If you are seeing something, then if you are seeing some activity that comes and goes, then you are not at the ultimate.

Where does astrology fit in?

This is interesting, isn't it? I will tell you something which I don't say usually and you will never hear it from anywhere except one or two people like Sadguru. And that is - Astrology is true, Astrologers are false.

I will repeat this. It is very important. If you have interest, this is like a mantra. Astrology is true. Astrologers are fakes, all fakes. I am not saying that there are no people who cannot know the future. I am not saying that. What I am saying is, these people do not make a business out of that ability. They do not call themselves astrologers. Astrologer is a profession, you see, in India. It's everywhere in the world actually now. So that is a means to earn money. That's all it is. Now, if people are getting satisfied with whatever the astrologer is saying, then you know, no complaints. Let it happen. Who cares? There is this placebo effect and all those things are there. So, it is not astrology as per my little knowledge that I have. The astrology that was there is now lost. And astrology is not a numerical science. It is not something which you get by reading the book on astrology, by drawing the chart, by knowing the date of birth, by doing this and by doing that, by knowing all the positions of the planets. You will become a good mathematician that way. You will not become an astrologer. What people do, there are books on astrology and there are traditions that are in India. They are kept a little bit secret because, you know, it is related to money. And so, it has all become like a very crude thing. It is a science of the mind. It is a technology of the mind.

So, yes, I am saying that astrology is science. And if my submission is if one understands astrology in its true sense of science, then it will prove the absence of free will. Yes. Exactly, yes. Because if you can predict everything accurately, that means it is all determined. It is all already there. There is no time really. You see, if it is already there, is there something which is in the future? No. It is one solid block of past, present and future. It is spacetime. It is not really time. And you arrive at something which is nearer to reality. It is all already there. It is merely appearing because of the activity of the mind. And the mind creates time out of this, its activity. It is going through the slices of all that is already there. So, this is a kind of deeper thing of which the evidence you will never get. It is not self-evident. So, as long as we are in Maya, it is kind of very difficult, very difficult to see that everything is already there. You go beyond Maya and you will see this. That can take some time.

I will give you something in brief. Then you can research on your own. It is not a mathematical thing. It is not. Astrology is not simply computing the positions and then looking in the book. Oh, this will happen because the book says it will happen. And this is degraded, corrupted astrology. A true astrologer who knows how to see what has already happened. You cannot say it is the future. It has already happened. So, he has the mental ability. His mind is already on the higher layers in the realm of the universal mind. It is already beyond the Maya. And so, the mind will fetch something, some information out of that and will speak like this. And it will be true. What do you mean by true? Exactly that will happen.

Now, you can say that, oh, let us say that he told me that you are going to meet with a very bad accident next week. So, what will I do? I will just stay at home. And this will never happen. Now, this will falsify what he has told, isn't it? What the true astrologer has told. And my guess is that this will never happen. Otherwise, he has said something which is not there. So, I have talked about this. Like, it is very convoluted, isn't it? It is a difficult thing to comprehend. So, those who know the future cannot change the future. Those who think they can change the future, you know, you want to know something because you want to change it. You want to adapt yourself to that happening. And that is not the future then. Because you have changed it. So, there is a paradox here. If you know it, it is not the future. If you don't know it, then it is the future. That means the future cannot be known. And if you approach it from this angle, angle of the mind, then you will get into some meaningless talk. Just like I am doing right now. It is all meaningless. You will need to approach the past, future and present from an ultimate point of view. Where there is no past, there is no future and there is no present. Or you can say it is all present. It is all present, isn't it? If there is no past and future, then whatever remains is the present. The presence is of the whole. The whole, not a slice of time. The presence is always of the whole. And everything that has happened has already happened in this presence. It is an eternal presence. This is true astrology.

Now you can come down a bit, you see. Come down into Maya. Take a step into the Maya. And you will encounter the Akashic records. You will encounter the Akashic memory, which I also call the universal mind. It is not a static memory. It is a very dynamic, evolving memory. Because you have now left the ultimate. You are now in the realm of change. Now you can read whatever has already happened. If you can read that, there is no way to change it. You cannot do whatever the astrologers tell you. You know, give me 1001 rupees and I will clear this mess out of your life. Now is it possible? Is it the future then? Isn't the future now clearing of the mess? Why did you predict that? Which was anyway not going to happen. So you see the falsehood there. You see the illogical thing that the astrologers do. I am not saying they will not predict. They will sometimes, especially the past. It is my own experience that I met a few astrologers there and they correctly told me about my past. As soon as it comes to the Grahasanthi or whatever, they want to extract money out of you.

Especially the details of the future. Not possible. They don't do anything about it. It is all fake. Now since the jiva is determined by the memory, you can correctly predict that this and this will happen in your life. It is fully determined. But again, they won't tell you. Even if they know. Because they are spiritual people. They are not in the business of telling this. You go to a guru and they know all your lives. Present life, future life, past life, everything. What will they say? Continue doing what you are doing. It is the best thing that is happening right now, right here. Because as soon as I say change this, it is leading to something horrible. Now there is a fakeness there. There is a falsity there.

Because if you can avoid that, then it is not the future. Then it will not happen in the future. So how can you say that? How can you change that which has not happened? So as soon as you go into this kind of discussion of astrology being true, then you will find, no, it's not. And you go into the discussion which is from the spiritual angle, then you see the truth. Then you see how this maya works.

It is presenting to you that which is already there. Now it is up to the mind, you see. How evolved the mind is. If it is not evolved, it will see it as situations that are not in its control. And it wants to know what will happen. Because it sees that day follows the night and night follows the day. It wants to know what will follow in my life. This is what you call the cause and effect. It has made a model of the reality and then it wants to know where this thing is going. It is not like this. Just like I said, if you want to get into the depths of the maya, it will give you a headache. That's why I don't talk. That's why I don't talk about such things.

So the practical thing to know is that yes, this is maya. So everything is possible. It is possible to know the past, possible to know everything. Know the future also. But don't get into this astrologer stuff. If you want to know really, develop your mind to that extent. Then you will know. These people are called Trikal Darshi, by the way. For them, there is no past, no future. It is all here, now. Sometimes they will say things. But if you are really interested in astrology, you should become a true astrologer. Don't pay money to know that which is fake. Don't try to change it if you know what it is. It is not possible, you see. There is no doer. It cannot change anything. Whatever is happening is perfect. There is no free will from the ultimate sense. It will appear as a series of events caused by the free will of the agent. This is how it appears. It is not like this. It will appear like a moment to moment flow of time, coming from the past, going to the future. This is how it will appear. And it is our ignorance that we think is true. No. There is no future. There is no past. That's why it is completely here and now. That is the deep meaning of determinism. Determinism is not that you write a formula and it will happen like the formula is predicting. This may happen in the case of the physical world, for example. As soon as you go into the higher layers of the mind, no formula there.

So, I think it will be very confusing if you get into the depths. But I encourage you to explore the mind. Don't go to an astrologer and do this kind of, you know, pay money and all. You can, but as an experiment only. I did that. I did that. I went to a few astrologers. I saw that there are very talented people in India. I saw that there is some spiritual attainment. There are some abilities in those people. Now, because I cannot prove it to you, I don't open my mouth. On the path of knowledge, evidence is everything, isn't it? We work from the evidence, direct experience. But it is my own interest. I am interested in these weird, crazy things. So, I keep doing it and I found there is a truth mixed with falsehood.

Because it is a possibility to know the universal memory, the Akashic records, it is possible. You can attain that level, get there and you will find a few examples here and there. If you research, as soon as a money-angle comes in, as soon as it is made into a profession of astrologer, it is all garbage. That's why I say there is no such thing as astrologer. Nowadays it is not there.Those who know, they do not practice it. They will not tell you. And you want to know, you know it yourself, do the practice, attempt to know the universal memory and then you will know everything. Once you know everything that is in the universal memory, you will lose interest in it. It will be an extreme detachment of some kind. It is like you know, you watch a movie and then you don't want to watch it again. Why? It's already there. It's already known. You will lose interest in it. So I can make you lose interest in all these things. I won't do that.

There are two ways in which mankind prophesied theories and sciences. Start with data and establish the theory, gravitation, thermodynamics. Second, start with theory and establish data, just like Einstein's relativity. And many astrologers go with data of what they know and create story, which hasto be the other way around. And many astrologers misuse the mental status of the client, usually depressed. Yes, a miserable person who is frantic for anything better.

It is empirical science. Just like I said, you go from the data. Just like, you know, you study a million hands, the lines on the hands. You study a million of them and when you derive your conclusions out of that data, you will get an empirical understanding of what the hands indicate about that person. And if you encounter a new hand, you can try to predict. Look that one thousand people has this kind of thumb and they all died with this kind of disease. And this fellow has this kind of thumb. Now, there is a probability that he will also die of this kind of disease. So, it is an empirical science most of the time. And it is kind of wishy-washy most of the time. Yes, there will be probability. You are born on this date and this nakshatra and all. There is a probability. There is a chance, you see. Nothing more than a chance.

So, Ashish is saying, I do a little bit of astrology practice out of curiosity to understand it. One thing I have realized is that the future is a set of possibilities. It is not final. Scene depends on the strength of possibility. Like probability will curve. And your Upaya can help us pick up one of those possibilities.

What you have said, Ashish, is a view coming from the Maya. In the Maya, it will look exactly like what you have described. The events that are going to happen are going to look like possibilities. And the more gross the layer of the mind is, the more predictable it is. For example, if you throw a stone in the air, it will come down. You can exactly predict where it is going to land. This is physical science, isn't it? This is physics. But as soon as you go a little bit deeper, you will say that the possibilities become really cloudy. That is quantum physics. Is it really deterministic? No, it is not. It is statistical, you can say. Not deterministic. And this is the characteristic of the mind. You have realized one more characteristic of the Maya, that it is statistical in nature. It is not deterministic, not undetermined. It appears as possibilities, exactly like you said. And your upaya can help to pick one of those possibilities. Now you are entering a totally new subject here. You see, knowing things is one science. Changing things, another science. What is that called? That is the Tantra, we call it the science of manifestation. And now you will know what I am talking about. Many people are trying to do these things. They are trying to bring things into their lives. Manifest. And I am not saying it is not possible. Everything is possible. This is Maya. This is for our entertainment. This is a game. It is possible. Now, the only thing is, people don't know how to do that.

In the Tantra, there is a keyword, which I am going to give it to you. Because you are interested.

Those who are interested, will receive. You see, there is a keyword which I have learnt. And that is Sankalp. Sankalp Shakti. It is also called intention in English. It is not the exact translation. Intentions, they appear out of nowhere, isn't it? But Sankalp is something which the Tantric will do. And will do it in a way that it becomes kind of crystallized, it becomes solid in the mind. This is done through ritual.

What you are calling as Upaya is a ritual. To crystallize your Sankalp. You can say in simple words that you form a very solid intention and force it by external means. Through a mantra, repetition or through objects or there are very advanced ways to do that. This is all the Tantric science. This is all lost, to be frank. To be honest, if you ask me, show me, I won't be able to show you. I don't have that art. But this is the key. I know this only. So I am giving it to you. And the Upaya, which the astrologer does, amounts to zero. Nothing. He has no Sankalp. Sometimes he will tell you to hold the Sankalp.

And that is a little bit of an honest astrologer there. If you pay him money and he does the ritual, well, it is all a game of possibilities. Toss of coin may happen, may not happen. If you do it yourself, hold the Sankalp. Do the recommended ritual yourself. Then you can hope for a little bit of outcome there. And if you do that, you are in the domain of Tantra now. You are trying to control Maya, which I am not saying it cannot be controlled. You see, you are the supreme. We are all supreme so we can manipulate the game. And those who evolve further, they will have this kind of ability. That's what we call Siddhi, the powers.

So, predicting the future and manipulating it, these are two Siddhis, two minor powers. If you are on the path, if you are a spiritual person, you will get this sooner or later. There is no escape. Let me make it clear. You will get this. So, my logical mind says that you do it anyway because you are reaching there only, where the astrologer claims to be. If you have a Guru, your Guru is probably already there most probably. Your Guru probably has this Siddhi/power already. And if not, then probably he has the knowledge. That's all.

So, I have this kind of theoretical knowledge. I am not practicing it because I know my spiritual practice will take me there anyway. What is power? Shedding of your bondage. Shedding of your limitations. Now you know you are in the monkey suit, in the human form. Your hands are tied. You cannot do much, you see, simply looking at things that are passing through this life. Very little ability to do anything. As soon as you rise above the human, your hands will be untied and then which you are able to do anyway, you will be able to do it. But the funny thing is you will lose all interest in manipulating what is happening. Because you see, it is being done in the most perfect way. It is all happening in the most perfect way. Now you will identify with it and you can say, I am doing everything in the most perfect way already. And that is another rabbit hole.

So, yes, in the Maya, it is possible to manipulate Maya and don't pay money, you can do it yourself. The only thing is, if you use this power, you will get entangled in this world, because the Maya is giving you fruits and she will keep you tied here. That is totally against our spiritual goal, which is liberation from the Maya. Oh yes, those materialistic people, they will do everything to stay here and they will use tantra to get whatever they are after. As a spiritual seeker is satisfied, content, whatever is happening is perfect. We do that which is necessary, you know. Necessary to find and necessary to live this life. We do it through ordinary means and that's why you will see these big rishis, they lived very ordinary lives. They ate whatever was around them, and begged for food. You may expect that they have so much power, they can build castles, gold and all. Well, they see it as a waste. For a realized person, the gold and the stone, one thing, it is all appearance. So we do not waste time like this. We like an arrow, we head for liberation. But people have so many paths, they can take the more interesting paths. It is boring. Head for liberation is very boring for the mind. So you can take little curves here and there, make it entertaining.

Okay, he is saying, if you see free will is an illusion, then there is no separate doer, then half of the questions will be answered itself.

Yes. This is the characteristic of the knowledge that when you know the lower questions they dissolve, you will see them as meaningless. If you analyze yourself, maybe all of our life, best or worst happening were not decided or planned by us, but we definitely work for and towards that. That which is controlling our lives has already done the upaya. Now, if you step, one more step into the maya, there is this thing called the greater mind, which is a group of jiva, a group, disc, I call soul disc, from the new age, spirituality, theosophical society. So, this is a group there. It is looking after the whole family. It has already done the upaya. You are born with a specific set of karma, the prarabdha, which is actually the perfect thing for your evolution. If you use your tiny, whiny mind intelligence in manipulating that, well, who knows? Can be good, can be bad.

There is something interesting that in the old times, they used astrology to determine the name. So, from the name, simply hearing the name, you can say many things about that person. It was kind of a very clever thing to do. Like, they made an index into the database kind of thing, that the index itself will tell you what is the content of that field. And it is a very intelligent thing to do. Now it is not there.

Now people keep any name they want. I know my name was kept by an astrologer, but hardly useful nowadays. Yes, you can check the name and say a few things. You can check the date of birth and say a few things. But I don't think it cannot be kind of resolved into true and false. That's why scientific people do not call it science. It is statistics, like sociology,something like that.

Some people are amazed when some coincidentally something comes out to be true. It is funny. It is very funny. I cannot call it totally false. I cannot call it totally true. Your experience is your truth. Your direct experience is your truth.

He is saying - Thank you, Tarunji. I fully agree. It binds you. Let us first get the real goal and then we can play with the toys.

Yes, yes, yes. See, spiritual things need not be boring. It need not be dry and black and white. Intellectual exercise. You can play. Everything is created for our play. It is Leela. There is a nice saying, a quote that I heard on Twitter that we suffer that which the gods made for fun. You see, it is a deep thing, a deep sentence. This is our play. And look how we are suffering from it. Because we think it is real. Because we have lost all these powers to manipulate it. All there is is this body and now you are so limited in the body. You can do things with the body. Now this is, having a body is another Siddhi. You see, it is, Tantric will say the body is kind of a power. So a disembodied Jiva is not as powerful as one with the body.

So anyway, that is a totally different discussion. So we can play. We can play. Once you know this is a play. And I am not saying the intellectual knowing. You need to see it, like this. See the one that is playing and now you know. Again, boils back to knowing the reality. Knowing the true essence. Then you can play. Yes, this is all toys. These are all things made for us. But if an ignorant person starts playing, it is a disaster. When a master starts playing, it is a piece of art. It is perfect. So all these Bodhisattvas and Rishis that are looking after humanity, what are they doing? They are playing. Look how perfect it is. Look how nicely it is set up. This earth, this planet is already a paradise. It is a piece of art, isn't it? What has ignorance done to this? Isn't all the misery the result of our ignorance of not knowing this is a play? Isn't it? Why am I trying to hold stuff? Why am I killing the person who has more than me? I think you know all about ignorance. And that's why, first thing, clear the ignorance. Then you see you are free. The infinite playground is here. It will not stay. That is another thing. It is impermanent. But yes, impermanence is more beautiful. As soon as it becomes permanent, it's gone.

The beauty is gone. We are not interested now. So you can have a cement flower, you see, carve a flower out of cement, put it in your garden. You are not going to look at it for more than one day. And a real flower blooms in your garden. You take pictures and send it on Twitter, WhatsApp. Look, rose, blue rose. It's very expensive. So, and this is what we like. We like the impermanence. And the whole ignorance is trying to make it permanent. Don't worry, even if you can make it permanent, it will give rise to misery only. So, whatever comes now, whatever appears now, has to be enjoyed.

M is saying, it is said, magicians only fool others, for they know their reality. However, they set the fools

themselves with the unreal power they get. Mind is material, so never mind.

As long as there is ignorance, what is happening will be seen as “real”. And real, I put in quotes, because there is nothing real and unreal. It is what it is. If I say this is unreal, you should not get an idea that there is something out there which is real. So, the unreal is actually real. You see, it appears in some other way. That's why the proper word is Maya. That which is not is Maya. It appears. Because of ignorance, we take it as truth. We take it very seriously. And in my view, it is not a bad thing. Ignorant is not always a lowly person. He does not know. It is also a play. And it is very, very entertaining, if you see. Now, I will give you a very good example, which you probably already know. You watch a movie. Let us say there are dinosaurs in the movie. And they are made of wood. Plastic dinosaurs. Like very, very old movies, probably. Like toys and puppets. They move around. When you were a kid, that was a big thing because of ignorance. You do not know they are not real. Now, you won't be able to watch it. You will probably laugh at it. What kind of crappy movie is this? Low budget movie. Not real, isn't it?

As soon as you make them very realistic, add sound and all the tension in the movie. And they are killing people. People are escaping. The hero is escaping. And now, the movie has become a reality. It is very realistic. Everything appears real there. You are engrossed in the movie. And if the characters are afraid, you are afraid. If the characters are happy, you are happy. If they are romantic, you are romantic.

Now, you are enjoying it like anything, isn't it? So, this is why this appears real. This dream of Maya, it appears real. This is the ultimate enjoyment, if you ask me. It is a virtual reality of very advanced kind, which we are progressing towards, if you must have noticed. The science is repeating that which is already present, isn't it? So, we are making our own versions. It is a very interesting adventure. While you are here, it will appear real. It will give you misery. It will give you pain. It will give you pleasure. It will give you everything. As soon as you are out of it, if your practice is strong, you will be liberated there from the virtual reality of Maya. And then you can see it. And now, you will realize what a nice dream it was. What an adventurous dream it was. That's what it is for. And some people are so addicted. They want to have this experience again and again. Some minds and they do it thousands of times. Just like we like a game and we play it many, many times. We get addicted to that play. So, same way. And liberation from Maya is possible right now, right here. And it may appear as a total freedom from the play that is happening.

So, it is possible to simply identify with this avatar, this virtual character that is in the play, identify with the player, which is the Self. That is liberation.

M is saying, someone said to Swami Vivekananda, now I understand everything is God. But Swamisaid, this is incorrect.

There is no everything. What they call God does not appear as a thing, you see. It is that which is the Self. And therefore, you are that. You are everything already. If you say, I understand this thing, which is not me, something is wrong there. There is duality there. The truth is non-dual in the end. So, there can be, you know, steps in between where we identify with the universal mind or the Vishnu as a God or a creator as a God. These are all steps to take the student to the ultimate. This is bhakti yoga. Now you can understand it like this by creating sections of that which is, and the ultimate, the last jump is, when you come back to you, I am the one. I and the Father are one. This is the Bible.

So, after that, you are free to do whatever you want. This life is, there is only one goal here, to become happy and to become free. Once you are free, happiness will follow. And then this happiness is expressed, this freedom is expressed in our activities, which we do in this game, and this happiness is expressed as joy that comes by doing this activity. Now everything is solved, isn't it?

It is crystal clear. Now, such questions should not arise, that what am I, what am I doing here, why my life is misery, what should I do, what is my purpose. They are all solved. It takes how much time, you see, five minutes to know everything. And that is why it is said in one of the Upanishads that when you know the Self, you know everything. You will know everything as soon as you know what you are, what is your essence. These questions can be solved by yourself and they will be self-evident.

Session 6

I am going to start with some questions that I received online and the question is - what are the ways of getting something done? What are the ways to get a job done?

This may not sound like any spiritual question, not even philosophy, not even remotely related to the stuff that we discuss. So I am deliberately starting with this question because it is just a warm up exercise, but I am going to answer it from a spiritual point of view. That is, we are going to go into the depth of how to act in this society, in this world. So acting in the world is mostly acting in society and human life is about relating with people. We are social animals. So it is very difficult for an individual to survive alone. Even if you are a kind of renunciate or sadhu or something, you will need to go back to the village to get a little bit of oil or spices, salt, something or the other. This question is not totally useless for a seeker, because most of us are seekers while being a part of the society. Most of us have not left the society, even though some of us have minimized our interactions, only those which are most needed, only those interactions we are engaging in. Otherwise, we are with our own practice or our own books or videos or whatever. So this question, what are the ways of getting something done, is still relevant for a seeker.

We are not free from the need to interact with society. Now in the mind of the seeker, a lot of stuff is stuffed. By that I mean, there are a lot many teachings that are circling in your mind right now. Like, I need to interact with everybody with love only, love and compassion. You see, that is the standard teaching. How should I behave with others? And one very solid canned answer is, with love and compassion, there is no other way to behave. And then there must be some deeper kind of people in the spiritual fields who will say, minimize the karmic load when you interact with somebody. That is a highly technical thing to discuss. So what should be my action so that the action is rendered fruitless? How should I act? That is a very big subject. I told you this question sounds so innocent. It's a childish question, but we can take it very very deep from a spiritual point of view.

And there will be some more kind of up in the air kind of seekers who will say, well nothing is happening, so I don't do anything anyway. So whatever must happen will happen and I should not even think about how to get things done. There is no doer, nobody to do etc. So depending on the kind of seeker, there will be an answer. And I found something very funny that none of these answers will get the work done. That is the problem with these answers. They sound so nice on book, on paper. Totally useless when you are operating in the Maya. Remember the spiritual principles, the truths, they are totally useless in Maya. It is like you know all the rules of cricket and you try to apply them in football. Is it going to work? No. In Maya, act with Maya. Play the game. So I mean I am not ashamed of saying that I also answer in the same way that these answers you see. Love and compassion and all. What else am I going to say? You see, this is the politically correct answer.

I was thinking about these things because recently I had to get a few things done and none of the spiritual teachings proved useful and then the mind falls back into habit. Then I tried to get it done using the old habits. So you know that produces a lot of suffering. Interacting with people is a big cause of suffering for a seeker. Why is that? Because of ignorance. Once you have gotten out of ignorance even a little bit, the ignorant person is going to become a pain. He is going to be very very irritating. So many of you must have had this kind of experience that you were one of them and life was cool. It was okay you see. But as soon as you got out of this gutter of ignorance, now you cannot look back there. You don't want to go back there. You don't want to do anything with the world, anything with the people, especially people who are ignorant. By ignorant I don't mean those who don't have any knowledge of Vedas, Shastras, or philosophy. No, not that kind of ignorant. Ignorance is very deep. Ignorance is very basic. Ignorance is not knowing what I am. That's all. And every kind of ignorance then stems out of that is the root and then the whole tree of ignorance sprouts of it. So you can see this ignorance in the behavior of people and society is nothing but a collection of people on which unfortunately I am dependent as a human being, as this body mind, this illusory structure. Now what? So this is the problem. Your all spiritual teaching will be left without any use.

So after some thinking I came to this very old knowledge, practical knowledge, which many people have forgotten nowadays and it can be found in the text called Chanakya Niti. Chanakya was a very famous politician, philosopher and much much more and he formulated some rules of politics and one of them, it's all recorded in his book Chanakya Niti. There are not only these simple thumb rules but also very advanced stuff like how should a king rule, how should taxes be implemented and what to do if there are attacks and so on. Actually he wrote a very big book on this. We don't teach it in schools and colleges. That is unfortunate. There you can find the answer to this question. What are the ways of getting anything done? What are the ways of getting a task done? And I found that method totally suitable for a seeker that works. Nothing else will work. Forget about compassion and love. Forget about enlightening people and getting your work done. No, they are not interested you see and I am not saying that don't be compassionate. I am not saying don't try to educate people. No. That is not the point. The point is even if you tried that, your task may or may not get done. You may not get through society. You may not get through this jungle of Samsara. So this human life is essentially interaction with society. Look at it like this. We can hardly live alone. It is kind of very risky. You will die simply in a week and you cannot be totally engaged in society. You will become crazy like them. So you must be in the world while living out of the world.

Chanakya gives us a hint here on how to get it done. And many of you know this sutra, this formula. In Sanskrit it's called Saam Daam Dand Bhed. I am going to attempt an English translation and it will be my specific translation. So Saam means cooperation. Daam means transaction, barter. Dand means punishment and Bhed means deceit. So some people are going to translate it a little bit differently but these are the translations that I arrived at. So these four methods will get your work done. Nothing else. You can try, you can experiment. Cooperation is the best. You can be compassionate. You can be loving. You can be forgiving if the other person, the one you are dealing with, is cooperative. This is the ideal case isn't it? The win-win case, like a dream come true, that oh I'm ready to cooperate. I'll do whatever you want sir and okay it is done. And he won't even ask for money. So see the money part is the second one. It is - transaction or barter. So I'm not talking about cooperation with money. I'm talking about somebody who wants to simply help you to get your work done. That's all. So it is so rare. It is like gold you see. Very very rare. Even your relatives are not going to do anything for you without getting something in return. No, not at all. You can get examples of the Saam or cooperation or love the work done or the help that comes out of love in very intimate relations just like mother and child, father and son and husband and wife and lovers and so on. You see there will be one person or not even one, who will cooperate with you, who will do something for you with his or her will, because it makes them happy. You see, it is very very rare and that also happens once in a while. Otherwise they are normal, they are ordinary. When you are in society, when you are in especially troublesome situations, when everything is going wrong, then you will find that nobody cooperates. Nobody. So what should a seeker do because this ideal is really ideal. It looks good only on paper. You see it will happen. I am not saying there are no such people left in the world who will not do anything for you for the sake of love. I am not saying that, there are, and they are very very rare.

So the second is the Daam which means a transaction, barter, payment, money or doing something in return, i.e. give and take. Now my practical experience is only this one works for me. If your friend thinks that you can be useful he will help you. If they think that you are useless, they will ignore you, and in a relationship also as long as the happiness is coming from the other, well, yes I'll do something for you and no you are not doing what I am saying, ok, bye bye. So all the relations are barter relations in human society. Some people will say no my father is not like this. My mother is selfless. So they come in the first category then. They come in the category of cooperative people. There will be one or two. Society is not all bad. Majority of it is what I am going to describe now and this will get work done mostly through strangers and people you don't know and just good social people. They will do something if they are paid well. If they think that you can be useful to them. and there are some very interesting cases. A beautiful woman can get things done even though the other person does not get anything but, you see, there is a psychological factor here. We evolved like this. There is a hope in the heart of that man that someday probably he will be able to impress that woman and so he goes and does her job. It is not cooperation. It is not love. It is not compassion. Forget about this. There is an intention there. It looks like love. It is not. It is a transaction. He is trying to secure a mate and the behavior is automatic, you see. By ignorance I mean only that - automatic action, pre-programmed, conditioned, without awareness, without intelligence. That is ignorance. Now you can see 99.99 percent people will be doing their actions like this. Your interactions will be like this. It does not matter if you are enlightened. It does not matter that you walked into this planet earth from heaven. You are going to face the music.

So there is the third formula now which is punishment. They are not cooperative. No love. They are not going to do your job even if you have paid for it. Even if you have paid now or they are not interested in your money. They do not want to deal with you. But you have this important work now. So Chanakya is saying that - employ punishment. Actually he has written these things for a king. Instruction manual for kings. But I found it very very useful and this is very entertaining also. So I don't recommend this for seekers. It is recommended for powerful people. Remember he is telling this to a king. For a seeker you may be able to use this once in a while. Like your child is not behaving, punish the child. This is how you get things done. Or you have paid some merchant or some shopkeeper. He is not delivering you goods or he has given you something which is fake, which is duplicate, which does not work. The parcel came empty. Now you can threaten with punishment. You can say that I am going to go to the police. In your mind you are saying that is a punishment for myself not for him. So something like this you see. You brought a property and then it is not proper. Then you say I will go to court and so on. That is punishment. And it works only when everything else fails. Only when there is a fear in the other. You will need to sense this first. Is he going to be afraid or is he going to come and kill me? You see, don't use punishment on somebody who is stronger than you. So I don't know what Chanakya said about this. This is the precaution that you must take. Do not use punishment on each and everybody. They are not going to like it. But when desperate time comes you can pretend that you are very very angry and you are going to take a very strong action which is going to be a problem for the other.

So the last one is deceit. This is not recommended at all. Because it does sometimes get things done but the fruits are very bad. It will stick to you. First there will be a feeling of guilt in your mind that I did something wrong. I lied. I got this work done through lies. Or I blackmailed somebody. Or something like this. Diplomatic things. And I benefited. I caused harm. I caused loss to somebody else. And this from the seeker's point of view is the lowest kind of trick that you can use. And very rarely you may need to use it sometimes. There are consequences of doing that. So in order of the bad consequences, these four tricks are arranged. Cooperation, no consequences. There are no consequences of cooperation because somebody has done something for you without you asking for it. So for you there is no consequence. Your work is done. And the barter or transaction has very little consequences. You can see that there is a cancellation of actions. Somebody did something for you. You paid money or did something else. Paying money is nothing but returning the favor. That's all it is. Karma will cancel out as soon as you have paid. And I say pay a little bit more than they deserve. So that their account is heavier than yours now. Very little consequence is there. But still there are a few. And then for punishment, as you can guess, there can be consequences. If the punishment is just and fair, then probably you can get away with it. But since this is a violent method, there is violence in speech. There is violence in thought. Sometimes you will need to do real violence, physical violence. So you are causing harm to somebody even though you can say it is justified because he was not doing what I wanted. But that's not the proper justification. It will have consequences, a lot of consequences. And deceit, this is very dangerous. It does look like there is no consequence for me. I lied, got the work done, got whatever I wanted and now I am free. But no, the impression has been made on the mind. The programming has happened. The conditioning has happened. Next time you are going to lie twice. Next time ten times. The lies cannot be hidden for long and the consequences start coming. And to cover them up, people lie even to hide their lies. And under the word deceit, many, many things come. Like knowingly doing harm and calling it a service, something like this. Like you go to somebody and pretend that you are somebody else and get your work done. That is also deceit. That is also bhed. You can go and say that I am such and such a person. I am son of this and better do my work. And they will do it. But you see it's kind of a very lowly act. And this will stick. This will have consequences throughout your lifetimes. After many, many lives, something will pop out in your life. That is why you see these yogis and all, they are very, very cautious, very attentive, very aware when they are doing something. What are they trying to calculate there? What will get written in my account? Whether this is going to free me or whether this is going to bind me. When will it come out? In what lifetime? So they are calculating things like this. So in this order of consequence of the magnitude of harm that our actions can cause to ourselves, these four tricks are rated. So for a seeker, never do the deceit. Even if your work is very important, let it go. Don't do it. Because you are going to get some short term benefit from getting your work done, getting whatever you are after. But very long term consequences, very bad consequences for you. You can think about it and meditate about it. Then, the punishment, we should do very rarely, once or twice in a lifetime, and most of it should be empty punishment, like a threat, a very oral kind of thing. That is also an action that will also cause consequences. Something can go wrong, try to punish the wrong guy and it can go very bad after that. So do not get into fights.

Now, transaction. It proved very, very useful, at least for me, because you are not surrounded by angels. You are not surrounded by saints in this world. Very few people are going to cooperate with you. Nobody does anything for anybody here. We are, as a seeker, as an ordinary person left with only this one mode of operation in the society, that is transaction. Remember, if somebody does something for you out of love, you will need to actually return the favor. You will need to become double loving. You will need to become more compassionate. You cannot simply say, okay, everybody serve me because you love me. No, it is like deceit. It is worse than deceit, actually. So there are many people like this and try to get favors from others because you are somebody, people like you or something, and you do not return it.

So you see, even in the word cooperation, there is “co”. So my duty is to return. That is also a transaction, but that is a transaction of a higher kind. Somebody did something for you because of their compassion. Now it is your time to become compassionate. Now the other person is not going to accept anything, not money, nothing. And now you should not pursue it. You should not force that person. It will become a kind of punishment for that person. You need to be careful. Somebody says, no, I don't want anything from you. I just did it because this is my nature. You should let go of that person. Don't try to burden him with your actions. He/she may not like it. All we can do is become compassionate, help somebody else. You see, you are all my forms. If A helps me, I help B. It is a full circle now. There is nobody else to return the favor to. There is only me. So do not try to harass that person. No, you did something good for me. Now you must come to my house and have dinner with me and that fellow will feel odd or may feel bad, you know, extra work now. I usually do the same thing. I let go of them because that is the highest kind of compassion. That is unconditional love. You don't do anything for anybody. That is the highest kind of love. But if somebody has done something, return it. It will be very, very rare.

But I am just giving you my opinion here, how to behave like this. And the first priority for us, for seekers, is to always cooperate. That is, that should be the first priority. It does not matter if somebody, if the other people, whether it is your relative, your friend, your office colleague, shopkeeper, whatever, it doesn't matter. Our first priority, including your enemies, but if you have enemies, something is really, really wrong. If you hate something, somebody, some community, some country, some class, some caste, if there is hate in your mind, something is really wrong. You see, then these teachings are useless for you. First, you'll need to purify the mind. Then these things are going to make some sense. But you are already doing your purification and now you want to know how to act.

First priority, cooperation. You do something for others just because it is your nature, just because you see them as my own self. Now you need to be very careful, you see. Somebody comes to you and says, let's rob the bank, let's kill this person, you see? Let's go and bomb this country. You will need to think about it, whether cooperation is good here or not. You see, greater good, not the tiny good, bigger good. So it should not be blind cooperation. And the cooperation should not be out of attachment. It should be out of love. If your wife or your child says, I want this much money, I want to buy something expensive. And then if you are attached, you will spend that money. If you are not attached, if you are loving, then you will probably not pay. You will probably not give it. And they will say, oh, you are not cooperative. You are a seeker, but you behave in an opposite way. You just ignore what they are saying. Because you see, they are using deceit to get the work done from you.

Once you know how to use these 4 tricks, you will start recognizing these same modes of behavior in others, how they try to get things out of you, how they try to get the work done out of you, how they use you. And they will use the same four methods. There's nothing else, actually. And you can judge the character of the person by simply observing what they use. So the lowliest kind of person is going to use deceit. A little one step higher is going to use force. Punishment is force. And a reasonable person will barter, will do transition. Give me this, I'll give you that. And the highest kind of person, a highly evolved person will simply cooperate, serve you. So your behavior is now reflected there.

Actually, this is my experience also. If you are cooperative, there is a very good chance that the other person will rise to your level and will cooperate with you. At least they will speak sweetly. At least next time you meet them, they will shake your hand. Oh, this is the fellow. He helped me when I was in trouble. They will be delighted when they see you. Now the karmic purification is happening. But do not accept the favors. If you do favors on somebody, do not accept it back because it will go in your account. There will be a bond now. We don't want bonds. We are trying to end the bondage, isn't it? We are trying to break our ties with the world. So that's why I told you, let go of the person who has served you. Let go of the person who has cooperated with you. Do not burden him with your favor. If he is a yogi, he will not like it. So better ask. If you are in doubt, you should ask. Oh, you have done this thing. Do you want something? How can I help you? Just formality. And if they say no, no, no, I don't want anything, just let go, you see. And the same thing we should do in our case. Do not try to take the favor. You have helped somebody because it's your nature. Don't take the burden of their favor. It's not recommended from the karmic point of view.

I am learning these things as I progress because nobody teaches us these things. Can somebody recall if their teachers, or if their parents have told you these things? Even your guru is not going to tell you these things. Just like I said, the guru has a very kind answer, a pet answer. Be loving, compassionate. Actually that is the right answer, but you see, it does not work. So from the point of view of the seeker, the first priority goes to cooperation. The second goes to the transaction, which will work. And the third and fourth are not recommended. Punishment and deceit. Use very, very sparingly. Never without any reason. Only when extremely needed. Only when it's a matter of survival. What wins, survival or spiritual knowledge? I'll tell you my experience. Survival always wins. You will need to be a saint to sacrifice your life for others. That's why we remember them. Even after thousands of years, this is not going to happen for an ordinary seeker. So survival wins. And these things, they work and mostly transaction works. Be cooperative to others and you pay them back through any means, you see. Even if it's your friend, he's not going to take money, do something for them. And that will even out and balance it.

So that was a kind of long answer about what are the possible ways of getting some things done. And if you become aware of your actions, you will see that these four modes are being employed. And then now you can, with full awareness, prefer the best one that will purify the mind. And actually that will make your life very easy in society. That is my experience. You will be surrounded with the kind of people that you are. I mean, your nature will be reflected in others. So if you are using deceit all the time, then you will be surrounded by that kind. It is, you can say, the law of attraction. If you are using power, you're using force, punishment, you will find that kind of people will love you. You see, you will gather enemies. Enemy, enmity is nothing but love, isn't it? I keep thinking of you, killing you. So indifference is better. And I've seen that the transaction works very nicely, clears your account also. You will need to earn money or you will need to become useful to others for that. And cooperation, yes, that is the default action.

I'll take the other question, which is a little bit towards the metaphysical side. And the question is, is telekinesis possible? Somebody asked me recently. This all is an illusion, this is Maya. Everything is possible. However, not everything is probable. There is a difference between possibility and probability. I learned this from a very great teacher. His name is Tom Campbell. And I am actually parroting the answer from him. So everything is possible here. It happens very rarely. It happens in margins. It happens when there is a good reason. And the probability of that happening is very, very low. So the question was about telekinesis. It is a very entertaining topic, because most of the cases are fakes. Wherever it happens, it's either a magic trick or some kind of fraud is going on. So I've personally never seen it. And I've tried to do it. Because when you become a spiritual seeker, you want all these things, isn't it? It never happened. Now, the funny thing I'll tell you, telekinesis is defined as action at a distance without involving any physical means. This is telekinesis. Tele is distant. Kinesis is movement. Moving things at a distance. Using what? Using your mind. They will say using your mind, as if you can use these things. You see, the mind is something that you can use. And so there is a funny thing that I came to know. And that is that all actions, all movements are telekinetic movements. All of them. Nobody will tell you, actually. You will never hear this. Because this comes from the non-dual perspective. The mind-only theory. The mind-only way of looking at things. Now you got the hint? Now this answer has become more interesting than the question, you see. That's why I took this question.

So I'm going to give it a twist. All movements are telekinetic movements. Now think about it. Why is that? Physical action, physical movement is impossible. Now people are going to hang me for saying this. I couldn't have even thought about this, actually. Adopt the mind only view and you will find this answer is the most sensible answer. It is the most meaningful answer, which is - all movements of all objects that you see are telekinetic, and are done by the mind.

So I was reading about Nagarjuna's philosophy and Nagarjuna is the greatest philosopher in Buddhism. Nagarjuna's view comes from the non-dual perspective. He denied the existence of not only objects, but also of movement. What is motion? What is movement? It is “change”. Change of position. What is position? Now you will be scratching your head. Position is always relative to other position. For the position to change, there must be relative motion. So now you come to that fundamental principle of Buddhism, which is relative existence. Can there be a position without any relation to anything? Is the position absolute? No. That's what Nagarjuna arrived at. Actually, there are 24 or something chapters where one by one he will decimate, totally destroy all common sense concepts. And he will arrive at this conclusion. The emptiness, the essence of everything is emptiness. He has shown this in that book. It is a must read for any seeker. Actually, we do keep hearing these things. Emptiness is the essence of you. We never actually pay attention. We never take the trouble of finding it out for ourselves. If you encounter Nagarjuna directly, let me tell you, warning, it is a big task. It is like a mountain and you are like an ant. Good luck. Go through commentaries. Go and search on YouTube. Get the videos on that. But for once and for all, your all doubts about the nature of everything being emptiness will be solved. That is how powerful that book is. That is why it is not taught to anybody because it totally destroys the world view that we have here.

So while reading that, while thinking about that, while meditating on that, this dawned on me that all the movement is mental only. It's in the mind. All the movement is made up by the mind. So all the movement is mental. It is already telekinetic. Without you doing anything through your body, the mind is doing it. Mind is moving everything. The mind is producing the change out of nothingness, out of emptiness. See, telekinesis is a childish thing compared to this amazing feat that this mind is producing. Although I am very careful when I say “my mind”. There is no such thing as my mind. There needs to be an I to own a mind. No, it's “the mind”. So I am not moving the objects. Please pay attention. This is an important sentence. I am not moving the objects using my mind. There is no I. There is no my mind. And there is no free will. These things are not there. They are concepts. They are ideas. What is there is a mind, apparent experience. All experience is false. Because it is relative.

Whenever you say position or whenever you say motion, you are referring to something else. That means you are referring to duality. Can there be motion in the unity? Can there be a position in the unity? Can there be change in the unity? Can there be an experience in unity? Is it even possible? You have declared - non-dual. Now, are all these dual experiences possible? If you say yes, then you take back your claim that it is not two. It's false then. All the experience is relative experience. All the experience is dual experience. One thing defines the other and the other thing defines the next and the circle is completed by such relations. So all we see is relations. That's all we see. All the relations are mental, made by the mind. And since there are only relations, there are only descriptions of the experiences.

Please don't fall asleep because I have gone a little bit deeper here. That is our job, isn't it? To go deep. On the path of knowledge, we don't stay on the surface for long. We go into the depths. We don't scratch the surface. And you will find something very amazing. If you go into depth of this simple question, when you introspect about these things, when you bring all your combined knowledge to answer this question, you will, what do you arrive at? The greatest philosophy in the world. That's where you'll arrive. You see, the mind is moving stuff. Well, it has never been that anything physical moved, anything physical never happened through forces. And you can notice now all these things are concepts. What are we doing? We are describing a relation. The whole physics is based on these descriptions of phenomena. Phenomena is nothing but the experience. There are only descriptions. That's what many philosophers will say. Emmanuel Kant came very close to Advaita. If you read his philosophy, he will say something like this. Nagarjuna will demolish everything. And not only that, he also demolished the emptiness itself. He said emptiness does not exist. That is, you see, major accomplishment in human history, isn't it?

It's all relations, all relative, all descriptions. Where are the descriptions? They are made up in the mind. I am not doing it. It is happening. It's because it's not my mind. Yes, there is a process which takes responsibility. Oh, I have moved something. I am using my mind to move everything. The sun and moon are rotating because of me. And that is a totally ignorant way of saying things. That means a lot of ignorance is there about mind, consciousness and the world. And the person has not disappeared yet. So that's why all the answers are going to be wrong. As long as there is this person, there is this individual sitting in you, you won't be able to answer any question truthfully, believe me or not. You can see people attempting to answer telekinesis, let us say. Some will say, well, it takes only a physical force to move something else. The mind is not physical. It's not there actually. So it cannot move it. Some will say, no, mind is a force, mind has powers, it will transmit the power. And I can do this. Look, I am doing this. And both are wrong. Both views are total BS. Once you see that everything is mind, and the problem is solved, there is no movement, nothing to be moved. Nothing is moving. No agency there. No agent there. I am not there. You are not there. There is no will also, to move anything.

Where is the question now? The question is flat on face. That's what we do on the path of knowledge.

Totally kill the question. It is not going to stand up now. Never in your life. The mystery is history. Now meditate on other paranormal or extraordinary phenomena. Is telepathy possible? Now it's child's play for you to answer these questions. Take the mind only view. Everything is possible. Now it is very funny because your worldview is now totally upside down. It is flipped upside down. Now the real question is why is reading of other minds so difficult? Why is it considered impossible when it's all one mind? Why can't I simply think and move this chair? Now that is a mystery. This should be the mystery. If it's so powerful knowledge that everything is mind, everything is relative, so everything is dual appears, just appearance. So everything should be possible. Now how come there are rules? How come there are laws and why sometimes the laws seem as if they can be broken? Why does it happen? So again, the answer is simple. One word answer - Ignorance. I cannot read minds. I cannot move the things sitting here and I cannot see what is happening in the other country. There is only one reason. It is ignorance.

Ignorance is a kind of very broad word. It is not that I don't know how to do it. It is not being meant here. I mean ignorance is basic ignorance. It is the delusion that we are in. We are in this delusion that we are in a reality and therefore we have taken up this point of view that I am this body-mind, I am limited and I am this much only. I cannot perceive anything else. I am limited by whatever can be done by the body. If I get up from the chair, move the chair in the other room, only then this job is possible. Otherwise not. So we are playing this game, a kind of game that let's forget everything. Let's forget what we are and limit ourselves to this and this and this. So we are in the rule-bound area. Not created by me, of course. Not created by you or any other individual. It just is. It has formed through evolution. It has evolved out of metaphysical patterns. How does that happen? We have discussed this in very very great detail. How the areas in the universal mind, they pop out and they evolve into rule-bound areas. Just like this one which we are experiencing right now. So it is the basic ignorance that I am this and the way out of it is that you will need to discard the whole thing. You will need to discard the whole illusion. You cannot have your way in the illusion. You can either get rid of it or play along in the illusion. Sometimes amazing things will happen in the illusion. But that is because our minds are not used to those incidents, those experiences. You see, it is the miracle of all miracles that the sun comes up every day. The biggest miracle. It should not happen. There is no sun. There is no earth. There is no you to watch it. How is this happening? But because it happens every day, you say, well, it's an ordinary thing. Something which happens very very rarely and seen by one or two and nobody believes them, you call them miracles. It is also the same kind of happening. Only the frequency is different. You see, one thing is happening every day. Other thing happens once in 10 years or 50 years or 100 years. You call it a miracle. Both are illusions. Both are non-happenings. So we are surrounded with impossibilities. It should not be there. That's why this master says that when you know, you will become like a child. Like everything will be new for you again.

So when you look like this, your ordinary world, it is the biggest mystery. Nobody knows what this is. I'm actually claiming this. Nobody knows what this is. Not only that, it is impossible to know what this is. You can do this kind of exercise, you see. I'll ask you, what is this thing I'm sitting on? It's a chair. You have just described the name and form. Now I say, what is this name and form? Tell me. What is this essentially? And there will be more names and forms. Wood or this plastic, it is called chair in English and other names in other languages. The mind is limited to only these things. Names, forms, illusions. They are all perceptions. Perceptions of what? Nobody knows. Now I'm not saying that they are not there. They are there. But they do not have a reality. Like things in the movie, there are cars, there are buildings, there are planes and there are people. We cannot say they are not there. They are there. But they do not have their reality there. There is no substance there. There is no base. There is no foundation. Nothing at all. Illusory images. And this is how it is. Simply because you cannot find anything that supports it. It is empty. Therefore, it is an illusion. The great characteristic of illusion is it changes. Why? Because the relations change. They do not stay. You see, now I'm not going to go deeper in that. But this is how we arrive at this criteria for truth that everything that changes is illusion. It is relative. If it is changing, it must be changing in relation to the other. What is that other? That other will be related to something else. It is not defined by itself. It is defined by something else. And therefore, we are trapped in this world of forms and names. This is how we arrive at the criteria for truth in non-duality or on the path of knowledge that that which changes is not true. That which stays is the truth. So there is only one thing that stays. And that is the empty, bright background of the experience - the experiencer. That is the only truth. Now what is it? It's not anything that you can grasp with your mind. Mind is happening on it. So it's impossible to know. And since the appearances are equal to that to which it is appearing, the appearances also cannot be known. They can be known only in a descriptive way. This is the reason behind all these Mahavakyas, all these things that we keep telling in every meeting. And you probably are now immune to these things. You don't even think

when I say these things. In illusion, use the illusion. In Maya, use the Maya. Now it's kind of become a mind-numbing thing. We have stopped thinking about it. And that's why I highly recommend you destroy all your knowledge every day, you see. Try to know again and you will arrive at something amazing every time.

There is something which I forgot to say. When I say relations, when I say descriptions, what am I actually saying? I am actually saying that the objects, people, world, everything are descriptions and therefore only information, no substance, only information. What is a description? It is information, isn't it? From information theory, something which is changing meaningfully, symbols, icons. Reality is iconic. Reality is information. That is what you will find when you study physics. It's all descriptions, all information. Mathematical information. Because changes, seemingly changes in a rule-bound way. This is a miracle. And that is why something odd happens and we call it a miracle. Because it has broken the rule of information on which, of which the mind has become accustomed. But no, it is again an appearance. Nothing, no rules are broken. Only the picture widens a little bit. That's all. The biggest picture is - nothing is happening. That's the biggest picture. Emptiness itself is empty. Do not think that there is one thing which I am and it is empty. It is nothingness. It is Shiva. No, the Shiva itself is not there. There is a reason Shiva is colored black, very dark. Even the Shiva Lingam is black in color. Very rarely you will find silver ones, white ones. But that is because they are trying to symbolize it. It's nothing. Don't even look at it. So no, not only there is no individual, not only there is no mind, no Jiva, and not only there is no experiencer, even this Brahman does not exist. It is nirgun. It's gone, gone forever. So after this, I'll be very surprised if there is any question after this. What remains to be asked here?

See how powerful the power of knowledge is. Not only answers everything, it will destroy all the questions. Nothing will arise in your mind. You will never get this kind of peace. In your life. People call it emptiness. People call it nihilism, you see, because you are destroying everything. Their pet dreams are broken. But as long as the mind dwells in substance, something, this peace will not be there. It will never be peaceful. It will keep searching. It will keep asking. It will keep practicing. It will never arrive at anything. Only by destroying we achieve liberation.

Session 7

So let us start with the self-enquiry questions which I received. And the first question is a very heavy, very big question - what is my path?

Now I have to assume a little bit here because the person is not in front of us, the person is not in the meeting, so I am assuming that they are asking about a spiritual path. It is very tricky to tell somebody that - take this path or look that I am on this path and you also can benefit from this path. So go ahead and jump into the path. As we know there are many, many kinds of paths belonging to many traditions, many cultures, as many paths are there as there are these teachers. So it is very tricky. This one line question will not help to give any accurate answers, you see. So what is my way of prescribing a path?

As most of you already know, I prefer to start with self-evaluation. You cannot simply choose a path like you choose some item in the supermarket. It is a kind of hit & trial, it is a waste of time and energy and effort. So what I recommend is - do a little bit of self-evaluation.

A path is like a medicine, isn't it? The problem is ignorance mostly and you want to achieve something, you want to get something, usually a newcomer will want to get something initially instead of losing everything that is not so appealing to the newcomer. It is okay, no problem, because you will need to start somewhere. So get something. You want to get good health, you want to get a good mind, you want to get rid of suffering, you want happiness, you want success in life, you want supernatural powers, you want extraordinary experiences, whatever it is, no problem at all. But you will need to tell me that I want this. If you simply say, I tell me my path and it's kind of, I am also hitting in dark now, unless I am a mind reader or something, then it becomes easy and I usually do that and to read the mind and I do that by asking a lot of questions

So it is like going to a doctor and asking for a cure. Now the doctor is going to stare at you because - tell me what is the problem, tell me what is the affliction, then I'll prescribe a cure. So a path is like a cure. You want to meditate because you want something, because you want to get rid of something. You want to worship a deity because you want something from that deity or at least you can say, I love that thing and that's why I am worshiping it. It is, there must be a reason somewhere, otherwise what can anybody prescribe? What is there to prescribe if you don't want anything?

So usually people do not even know what they want and that is why I recommend doing your self-evaluation. If you have a guru with you, if there is a guru nearby, you can go and ask, please tell me where I am, where do I stand on the ladder of evolution so that I can take up some practice at least. I don't even know where to start, I don't know what I want. So you can go to the nearby teacher, it does not matter on what path the teacher is on. Usually the teacher will say, okay, come and join me and look around for a while, spend some time, spend a few months with me and slowly you will get an idea, you will get the clarity to decide on a path.

I have two or three options for you. First is you do the self-evaluation that will clear it up, which path is most suitable for you. Second is you need to tell, you need to express your wish. Third is you can go to a teacher, spend some time with the teacher, any teacher, nearest teacher to you. And the fourth is that you go to the teacher and ask for a self-evaluation if you cannot do it yourself. That will not be self-evaluation, that will be only an evaluation.

So how to do the self-evaluation? We'll start from that. And fortunately we have a long discussion on this matter. So there are two or three episodes of the podcast that discuss this whole technique of self-evaluation. Anybody can do it, anybody. With the technique, with the method of self-evaluation, I have suggested the suitable path. It is a good start, I must say. It is a good start because you are an evolving entity. So there will be changes as soon as you take up any path, the mind changes and the path also changes with it. So you will need to self-evaluate frequently. And in the spiritual field, frequently means at least once or twice a year, you don't need to do it every day, it's not useful. So it is like a school where they take exams, which is like evaluation, how much you have progressed, how much you have learned in the school. So if you have progressed a little bit, you will pass the exam and then they will teach you more. That means they will admit you to the next class, next standard, something like this. The path will keep changing and where to start, obviously, you cannot start at the college level. Usually people start with the nursery, KG level, there, sit down, breathe and watch your mind. From there, they start. If it is not clear what should I do, then you should have a little bit of faith. Faith is a bad word, but if you do not know anything and still wish to be on a spiritual path, then blind faith, you see, go ahead, hit in the dark. What else can you do? Because I can give you a long lecture on which path does what? Probably you're not going to understand even one word of that. It is like taking a young child, two years old, and telling the child, look, this is what we learn in physics, this is what we learn in chemistry, this is what we learn in biology, biochemistry, neurology. Is he going to understand anything? No, ABCD, and probably does not even understand ABCD also. He takes it on the blind faith, and repeats the ABCD after the teacher. That's how we start.

So that's why I'm recommending that either go to the self-evaluation audios, audio recordings, the podcast episodes, and give it a try. If you do it yourself, even half evaluation will be OK. And if that is also not satisfactory, go to the nearest teacher, join the teacher, whatever resonates with you, whatever you like. If your nearest teacher is in some kind of odd and strange kinds of practices and you don't like it, don't go there, then find somebody whom you like, the nearest one. Start there. Get a feel of what happens there. Do not commit blindly. So if you know what is happening there, there is no need to take on that path blindly. If you do not, then blind faith. If you do not know what is happening there, then it will be a faith-based thing to do.

So that is the answer to the question, what is my path? And ultimately, the path will choose you. Even the mind does not have the intelligence to choose the path. I'm telling you my story, actually. So I went through so many, like a supermarket of traditions, I tried many, many. And then one day I settled on something, I'm never sure where I'm settled, actually. That is the characteristic of a seeker, that uncertain, always uncertain. Because if you settle, if you commit, that means your progress has stopped there. Who knows where the paths go? Who knows what you can find on which path? Who knows if your assumption that I have to settle here is only an assumption? Who knows that there is a better thing to do, a better path to take up always. So it is an open-ended thing, but slowly you settle down, just like a bouncing ball. It bounces up and down a little bit, but then settles down in one corner somewhere. So this is how it happens in the spiritual thing. It will never be the case that you will find a path and that will be the final for you forever. It is an ideal thing to be. And it will never be the case that you ask somebody, it does not matter how big that person is, it does not matter how much knowledge that person has. And if he says, look, X, Y, Z path, you take it, that is for you. It is not certain that that will be for you. Nobody can tell you what your path is. The path tells you to pick itself. It sounds like they're mysterious. This is how it is. At least that is my experience. You will need to go through a few paths. There will be effort initially. Obviously, the most natural path is where there is no effort with the pathless path, the direct path. So I am assuming that I have settled down on a pathless path right now, but who knows?

Never be so sure, never be so certain. This is an open-ended thing, the spiritual journey. Knowledge is infinite. Progress is infinite. Can you say, I cannot progress beyond this? Can you say this? How do you know? It's not possible to know. It is an open-ended thing. So start somewhere. Start at a good place. Start somewhere which you like. Do not use the intellect so much. It is like art. You try things.

You try many, many things. And sometimes you like something, and then you find more things to try.

You see, everything is like this in our lives, isn't it? For example, the relations, we keep trying. We'll get somebody. Or sometimes you settle, OK, probably I'll never get into a relation which is better than this, so we have this kind of faith or assumption sometimes. Or your job or your business. We keep trying different jobs, different kinds of businesses. And ultimately, we settle on something which we like and we are earning a little bit. But we keep it open. We do not say, I'm going to do only this and this for the rest of my life. No, that is not an intelligent thing to do. We always keep looking for more opportunities. It is like this in all the domains of our lives. Spiritual teachings, spiritual traditions and spiritual path is nothing special. It is not fixed for one person. Some people may have this idea, no, I was born in this tradition, so it's gone now. My all options are exhausted. I have no freedom to get out of this tradition. I will stick to it no matter what. And if somebody tells me your tradition is boring, your tradition is foolish, I'm going to kill that person and continue on my path. So this is hardheadedness. This is stupidity. So open mindedness, open to all possibilities. This is how a seeker is, always seeking. So do not settle. That is the answer.

So we are on to the second question now, and it is also from an anonymous person. And the question is, how to become more reliant on the inner knowledge and trusting the information that comes from the inner source and distinguishing its origin?

So three questions in one. How to become more reliant on inner knowledge? Let us start with a description of the inner knowledge. What is inner knowledge? What is outer knowledge? Can somebody guess? Is knowledge of two kinds, inner knowledge and outer knowledge? My understanding is that knowledge is of only one kind. It is that which we experience. It is that which we get after we form relations among our experience. When we organize the experience into meaningful relations, it is called knowledge. And we use logic, rational thinking, and intellect to organize our experience. There is nothing called inner knowledge. There is nothing called outer knowledge.

And now we can get into the accepted meaning of inner and outer, which is usually accepted like this, that the knowledge of the world, the material world, is outer knowledge, knowledge regarding the survival, acting in the world. And your relations with other people in society, your jobs and families, if you know something about that, that is outer knowledge. And inner is when I know about myself.

You can exclude the body also. Body is an outcome in outer knowledge. When we concentrate on that which is subjective, when we focus on that which is related to I, myself, we can call it the inner knowledge. Now, notice that this is only a convention. There is no outer knowledge. There is no inner knowledge. It is only of one kind. All these things are experiences. What you call outer is an experience.

What you call inner is an experience. This division is only for convenience, just to make everything clear. Otherwise, in principle, there is no distinction. What you call outer is also inner. It is being perceived here and now.

There is nothing outside than pure consciousness. Everything, all experience appears in consciousness.

Otherwise, you will never know it. And therefore, all the experiences of one kind, you can, if you want, you can call it the inner experience. All the experience is inner, inside the consciousness. Is there anything outside the consciousness? No. But you see, it is more accurate to discard totally the inner and outer when it comes to experience. And since knowledge is derived from experience, there is no inner and outer as far as knowledge is concerned. So you can stick to the convention, or you can throw it away. Probably the person is trying to ask for the knowledge that comes without the senses. That is not based on senses, or not on books, not on people, not on teacher. That is my intrusive knowledge. And again, it is an experience. It is a direct experience, the experience that we label as inner experiences.

So how to become more reliant on that? There is only one way to follow the inner knowledge that comes through the intuition that your minds tell you is like this. And that is to apply the knowledge.

You are looking for an answer. And the answer comes from within, which is kind of tricky to say, because how can it come from within? There is nothing within. So let us say it comes from within.

And all you can do is apply it, just check logically and rationally whether it is safe to apply it or not.

And then apply it, experiment, and check the results of the experiment. And now you see the results.

And judge the reliability. Judge the accuracy of what has come from the inner source. This is one way.

You cannot simply assume that whatever comes from inside is reliable. It's OK. It's true. No, it will be foolish. So the only way to judge it is through experimentation.

So let us take an example. And the outer knowledge says that do whatever it takes to survive. Get whatever you want through any means possible. And your inner self says that, no, I need to be more discriminating. I need to use a specific kind of way that can be ethical or that can be more loving and less violent. And I need to choose my actions like this. Now, which one is the one outer which the society has taught you to be competitive and violent in the society, extrovert and liar, receiver, whatever it takes? Fake it that you think, I cannot rely on that. And this one is coming from your inner self.

So how to judge it? The only way is to put it into practice. Put whatever your self has said, your inner voice is telling you. Put it into practice step by step and see the results. If the results are as per your desires, as per your wish, which is it brings more happiness and freedom, makes you happy and sets you free, destroys your ignorance and so on, gives you a perfect experience, then you can trust the inner voice. You can now conclude that, yes, it was a correct intuition. And the more it happens gradually, it is not going to happen that from tomorrow you start trusting your inner voice, whatever it is, from tomorrow you start trusting your intuition. It is not going to happen like this. Put it into practice.

Get the experience, get the feedback from the universe. The universe will tell you, you see, what is the correct action, correct speech, correct thought. The universe will give you the feedback. The feedback is very simple. Either it is pain or pleasure, either it is suffering or happiness. If whatever your inner source said brings a lot of suffering, and it is not a short-term suffering, it is not like a tiny bit of pain,

but continues for many, many days and months and years, then now you know that you cannot rely on that voice, that inner voice.

You need to be more practical now. You need to take advice from others, teachers and masters. And if it brings happiness and freedom, you feel light. That is the feeling that we get when we are freed from something. It is a feeling of lightness. There is nothing to do now. I am free. And that is the feedback that the universe gives whenever we take proper action, whenever our decision is right. So it's always in retrospect, isn't it? How can you decide that my voice, my inner voice is reliable now, and everything I'll do based on this inner voice, it is going to be perfect? No, no, that is kind of stupid. So it is always experimental. Put your inner knowledge to practice. See what fruit it brings. Most of the time, say 80%, 90% of the time, it is bringing happiness and freedom. Then you can rely. Then you can rely on your intuition. There are methods to sharpen your intuition also, which I have discussed somewhere while discussing the abilities of the mind. I've gone into a lot of detail there. So it is, again, a practice, some kind of practice to sharpen your intuition. And it also always starts with small steps, baby steps. Initially, you do not trust your intuition at all. Then start applying it in the small matters, like which book to buy, which movie to watch, which person to talk to. Do not apply your intuition in which political party should I join, which religion should I join, or where to marry, what property to buy.

No, the risk is too much. The universe will reply to you as usual, but it will hit you like a brick. You don't want that kind of risk. There, you use your practical knowledge, the outer knowledge. Consult with your friends and family and people, experts, and use that knowledge. But in the small things, use intuition, where the repercussions and consequences are not going to be heavy. Use your intuition there. And this is how you develop it, little by little. Go on using it for more important things, slowly, slowly, slowly. And as you can guess, it is going to take a lot of time. And the spiritual matters, nothing is instantaneous. It is always a long journey.

So the other part of the question is how to distinguish its origin. My experience is, you cannot do that. It comes from the mind. There is no such thing as my mind. The mind is an accumulation of memories. The memories have the content that always comes from experience. The experience can be inner. The experience can be outer. But the contents of the mind decide everything, what we are, what we do, what we think. This is all decided by the memory. Memory is not something which stores the phone number or name or your skill or the book that you read or the story of a movie or a song. No, that is not the memory. That is a tiny part of the memory. Memory is essentially the whole of your mind. That is what it is. You say, I'm talking, I'm talking from memory. There is a memory of the language. Then the memory of the facts, memory of my experiences, and every kind of process that is going on in my mind is a memory of some kind. So when I say it comes from the memory, it is the storehouse of experiences. It is not mine. It is not local. It is not in your head.

You will need to go a little bit deeper in what the mind is. It is a metaphysical entity. It is a non-local information storage thing. That is also a model. What we see is only experiences. We do not see the model. We do not see the embodiment of the mind. It is invisible.

How can you distinguish where the intuition comes from? It is always coming from the memory, not my memory, not your memory, not from others. It is one whole. So that's why I said in the beginning, the distinction of inner and outer is for convenience. There is no such distinction. It is always from this universe. It comes here and is digested or processed a little bit, and then is thrown out. That is all the person is. It is like a tiny machine where things come in, and then they are thrown out. It is ignorance to say - “I did it”. My mind, it's not my mind. We do not have a mind. We do not have an I. The person or the ego is a fiction. It does not exist.

You can use any kind of theory or any kind of model to model the mind and use it. But most refined models of the mind say that it is universal in nature. There is nothing individual there. So if you want to isolate the source, well, let me see this intuition, this knowledge, is coming from me or somebody else. Impossible. There is no me. There is no one else. See it like this. There are just experiences. And the mind or the ego, the identity creator, will categorize it kind of arbitrarily, randomly, based on its ignorance. It appeared out of nowhere. I just thought about it someday, and it is now my knowledge, my intuition. That is kind of wrong to say. Who knows where it came from? And then you heard it from a guru or a person or read it in the book, and you said, no, no, outside knowledge. It is not my intuition. Now see, there is no reason to say like this, because it is only the channel that is different. You know that there is something which delivered you this knowledge. That's all. That is the only difference. In the first case, you did not know where it came from. So you branded it as mine. In the second case, you found something that looks like from there it is coming. And you say, oh, it is outside me. But no, apart from this kind of arbitrary distinction, there is no distinction between what appears as an experience, what appears as a knowledge. No distinction. And if somebody told you something, then just think from where he got that knowledge. The knowledge, there must be an ultimate source. And if everybody gets it from somebody else, then there is no source. Then ultimately, the source is inside only, isn't it?

When we express it in this world, it appears like it is coming from outside. Who is expressing it? Not somebody's mind. There is nobody. The universal mind is expressing it using one of its forms. That's all. So all the experience, all the knowledge is universal in nature. It's not my knowledge. It's not your knowledge. It's not coming from this source, that source. No. That is why there is a concept to describe this. It is called the Guru field, about which I spoke for at least one hour. I went into a lot of details about what this guru field is, the guru kshetram. It is, you can say, an abstract concept which points to a storehouse of knowledge in the universal mind, although you cannot see it, although you cannot point to it. Look, there is the guru field. Go there. No. It is everywhere, isn't it? But for the purpose of talking about it, expressing it in language, we can do this kind of abstraction of the guru field. And we can say that it is the part of the universal memory where all the knowledge resides. And you can connect to it. And I've given a lot of methods to connect to it. The most natural method is just seek, ask, search. You are always connected. So hopefully that answers this question, which was a very intelligent question, actually. Very nice question. Thank you very much for asking.

Now, we have another variation of that question, how to be able to be in touch and receive information from the inner self effectively. Now, whoever is asking these questions seems to be a very experienced seeker. So my earlier answer covers almost 90% how to get in touch with your inner self.

There is only the inner self, you see. If you are in touch with something, it is the self. Is there anything else? Have you witnessed anything else in your entire life except the self? If you think there's something besides the self, then it is only ignorance. There is only an assumption in your mind. Whatever is, is the inner self. So by default, by necessity, you are always connected to the inner self. Where are you getting the information from? Inner self. There is no outer self. There is no lower self. There is no higher self. There is only self. So if you do not know this, do some inquiry about this, search about this. There is one universal consciousness. That is all there is. You can call it as I. Or you can call it a self. You can call it Atman. You can call it Brahman. It is the only thing there is. So impossible to get if you're not connected. Because how can you not be connected with the I? How can I be not I? Is it possible? No. So if there is a disconnection that is felt, it must be ignorance. It must be only a thought. It must be an assumption in the mind. And investigate that assumption. Question it. Why did I think like this? Investigate like this. So this question points to the need to remove this ignorance, that there are two. There are no two. There is only one. So when you know that is the case, the question will disappear.

One more question, which is kind of amusing. And the person is asking now, why am I unhappy? Can somebody be unhappy? Now, this is the beauty of the self-enquiry app. You don't know anything. You cannot say, tell me what happened. What went wrong in your life? I cannot ask this. So I'm forced to answer in the most general possible way. That ensures that it is a spiritual kind of answer. And if the person said, oh, something happened on my job. I was fired from the job. That's why I'm unhappy. Now, it will force my mind to give a practical kind of answer, a worldly answer. I can say, don't worry, apply for another better job. Probably that job is not good for you. If you get fired from a job, then obviously it's not the best job. It's not good for you. You're not good for the job. So I'll come up with this kind of answer if the reason is provided, if the person is in front of me. But the beauty here is that people write one-liners. They assume that, you see, it says Self, so I'll get a magical answer. Don't worry, you'll get the magical answer only.

There are two things in the question, first is the “I”, second is “unhappy”. And in my opinion, or you can say from my perspective, both of them do not exist. Both of them are mental constructs. Both of them are illusory, merely an imagination.

So yes, that is, again, you see, just a description of ignorance. So there is no separate I, which is unhappy. There is no me who can get unhappy. This is the first thing to know. And once you see that there is no separate self which has this kind of state of unhappiness, then the question disappears. Now what are you asking? There is no I and no unhappiness. So nothing to ask about. This is a very refined state, as you can see. And this requires the knowledge of the self. This requires the introspection, self-inquiry, to know what is my essence, what is the essence of the I. And once it is seen that there is no separate I, there is no separate self or individual who can be happy or are unhappy, then the question will be dropped. The answer will not come. Don't worry. There is no answer, because the answer is to that which exists. If something does not exist, there is no answer to that. The question is seen as invalid question. The question is seen as coming out of ignorance.

I'm 100% sure that this answer is not going to benefit anyone. So let us see. Let us assume that there is an I. There is a separate self, individual, or a person. We can say it is the body and the mind. Let us give a concession, drop down into the illusion, one step, because the person will not understand the ultimate, which I just said. So let us assume it is true that there is a person, an individual there, defined by the body and the mind, what goes on in the body and the mind. And he's unhappy, he or she. Now, what is unhappiness? And like Mukul said, it is simply unfulfilled desires. We expect some desire to be fulfilled. They are not fulfilled. What happens? The state of the mind changes from desiring to disappointment. That is unhappiness. That is the illusory answer. But I don't need to tell it again and again. You can understand this, that we are talking from the perspective of an ignorant, a separate self.

So that is the unhappiness. You will find that there is a mind, our inner space. In that mind are desires.

They appear. I do not choose my desires. Let us start from here. Start from this internal scene, the introspection. Look, who is choosing the desires? The desires appear first. Then I say it in my mind that I desire. Isn't it? This is my direct experience. And what do we do then? The desires are a motivating force. They push the body into action. So we run to fulfill that desire. It can be a small desire to go and eat something. It can be a big desire to rule the planet. Something like this, it can be anything. And the desire is a motivating force. You can define the desire like this. Intention, the word tension says that it is pulling you. Internal tension, another word is desire. Wish and expectation is kind of a desire. We want something to happen in a specific way. That is a desire. And then the body runs to fulfill it. Where else will you fulfill your desire if not in the world? Imagine if you could fulfill all your desires in your mind, wouldn't it be heavenly? Probably that is heaven only. And the individual assumes that the fulfillment of my desire lies in the world.

So where else can he run? Our waking state is the world. That is all we know. We run into the world. We run after objects, people, achievements, situations, whatever to fulfill that which appeared in mind from nowhere. And you will find something funny that I also have a delusion that I am in the control, and I can fulfill it. My actions are going to fulfill the desire. Now, desire, expectation, and this feeling of being in control, plus the illusion of free will, it is my desire. I desire it. And I'm in control. I'll fulfill it. This is a recipe for disaster. Can you see? You mix many, many acids and chemicals in the chemistry lab, and what can you expect? It is like that. You expect a big explosion. Suffering and happiness is this disaster. That's all.

That is the good definition of unhappiness. If you want to know what unhappiness is, I cannot tell you. Can I tell you what happiness is? Have you ever experienced happiness? No, never. You only experience this violent combustion of chemicals, things that happen in the mind, in the world. Have you ever experienced anything else? Because you have experienced bliss, but you call it sleep. You call it inactivity. You find it boring. The individual does not like it. So much so that we completely ignore it.

It does not exist. Happiness does not exist for an individual. The individual is a name for misery. Take misery, take individuality, one thing, you see? That's why we say the ego is miserable. You see, Eckhart Tolle calls it the pain body. Among all things, he chose the word pain to describe it. Yes, it is a pain, actually. That is what it is doing. Can you see?

We get up from the bed because of a desire. Did you get up from the bed? I'll do nothing today. I'll just sit. I'll remain in deep sleep today. Did it happen? No. Individual is born as soon as it is out of the bed.

It is as soon as the activity of the mind starts. The individual starts. There's one more thing to introspect. See it. Wake up very, very slowly one morning. If you do that, you will find that initially there is no individual. There is just mental activity. Then the desires start. The intentions start appearing. And the individual is born because the “I-thought” appears, oh, my desires. And that will happen unconsciously. You think you are waking up, but you are still asleep because unconsciously propels the body into doing something. Usually it will eat and go and brush the teeth and take a bath and drive to work. And this samsara starts. The wheel turns. This happens every day. This has been happening since many, many years. This has been happening since many, many ages. You don't even know it. You don't even know how long this is happening. This is what we call the cycle of birth. And that's the samsaric activity of the mind. And the mind is not my mind. This is now something big. This is called the jiva. And the desire is always of the jiva. It is called the karmic stuff, the impressions, the samskara. The samskara gives rise to sansara.

So there is a bigger cycle here, waking up and going to sleep. This is a smaller cycle that corresponds to the bigger cycle of dying and taking birth. So you can now suspect that we are born to fulfill some desires. Don't give it a name that I'm born to marry and have children or I'm born here to rule this country to become a big shot or something or I'm born here to serve humanity. No. These are not the real desires. There are germs of the desires, into which I'm not going to go today. That is called latent desires also. We call it latent impressions also. And the Sanskrit word is samskaras for that. It is not a desire that can be stated in words.

If you are in the yogic practices, if you are diving deep into the mind, you can actually see the latent desires. You can see them. And because they are latent, they will need to be pushed into a little bit of action. And you can see their faces a little bit. And probably it will be very difficult to put them into any kind of language because the language that we use is of the waking state. When the desire is full blown manifested here, it is right here in my mind. We can use a language to describe it. What is the desire? What is the root desire? The root desire, the basic desire, is to be happy. Can you see?

What are we desiring? I want this, I want that. No, we are desiring happiness. And just like I said, you cannot get it. There is no such thing as happiness. The happiness that you experience sometimes is because of the absence of these desires. This is another thing to introspect about. When were you most happy? When your desires were gone, when the desires were fulfilled, you wanted nothing. That is then expressed as laughter, smiles, joy, pleasure, dance, song, party, who knows what. You want that, isn't it? And when this is not there, you say, I'm unhappy. I'm miserable. I'm suffering. So desires or these motive forces are present. Expectations are present. Hopes are present. And this delusion of control is present. These all combine to form a situation which we call unhappiness, dukkha.

It can be found through your own experience of what happens in the mind. Can somebody tell you that you are unhappy, that the world is suffering, that there is no happiness? Will you believe somebody blindly? Can you believe me? No. Only if I take you like this step by step to the conclusion. Look, the activity of the mind is responsible for what you think is unhappiness. That is the answer to your question, why am I happy? Why am I unhappy? You never ask this, why am I happy? You always, when something goes wrong, then only your question, isn't it? So suffering is a big teacher, isn't it? Suffering is our guru. It's a good thing. Without suffering, you will never learn anything. That's why I said, you see, if our desires are fulfilled like this, it would be a heavenly experience. And if you don't believe me, don't believe. But there are these states of the mind, there are places in the universal mind where exactly the same thing happens. Whatever you desire is right there in front of you. People call it heaven. What happens there is that the jiva is trapped in fulfilling endless desires. Because they're infinite. Activity of the mind cannot be stopped. All activity is appearances of desires only, intentions and desires.

Right now, you can assume like this, you see. Don't make it so complicated. And you can achieve that state where there is instant fulfillment of desire only in the mind. It is called heaven. And the jiva or this bundle of memories that is engaged in this kind of activity is called a god or a deity, ascended master, or something like this. So now, without going into the details, this activity that is happening right now is an activity of a greater mind. You can explore like this if you are interested. That is not going to end your suffering. That is not going to end the misery. Because the mind is impermanent. And the heavenly states, they do not last. And we say that the mind falls. And it finds itself in this kind of world again, again in the samsara, again trapped in this wheel of desires. They're infinite.

So it goes on and on. And you don't know how many. How much time has passed? You are doing only this. There is no time in the absolute sense. So well, you understand now how deep this question is. But don't worry. There is a solution. If you get rid of the activity of the mind, that is the end of the suffering. Now you will say, tell me. Tell me the formula to get rid of the activity of the mind. You'll see the “me” is also mind. You will need to know your true nature, which is pure consciousness, that which is witnessing all this madness, all this activity, chittvritti. You cannot stop it. Some people interpret Patanjali as, nirodha means stopping. But nirodha means many things. Actually, I was going through a book which is a commentary of Vyasa on Patanjali, and also some side notes by Vachaspati Mishra. These names must be familiar to those who are deep into the text in Sanskrit literature. But I was going through it just for some purpose. And I found something very interesting, that Vyasa has a little bit of a different kind of interpretation of Patanjali. It is kind of interesting for those who are interested in the yoga philosophy or the Samkhya philosophy. Knowing yourself is not going to stop the activity of the mind. Union with whatever is not going to stop the activity of the mind. The union of the Shiva and Shakti, not going to stop it. Almost guaranteed. That's why we have the Shakti worshippers. They know this very well. Shakti is what? Activity of the mind. Nothing else. So Shiva is what? Shiva is you. Shivoham. I am the consciousness. I am the dark one, black one, which cannot be seen. And Shakti is that whatever is manifested, whatever can be seen in any form, any place.

So do not expect the mind to stop. Do not interpret the Nirodha as the disappearance of the mind. There is no such thing. That is my opinion. If you don't believe me, you need to do your own research. I'm not saying I'm right or I'm interpreting it correctly. This is my experience, actually. And utilizing the principle of as below, so above, you can say that it will never happen. The activity will never stop. But don't worry. There is a way out of it. That is called disidentification. I'm not this activity. What is the major activity of the mind? Production of misery. So I'm not this. I'm not unhappy. What am I? I'm pure bliss. I'm the absence of all these activities. I'm that which witnesses all these things. And therefore, these qualities, these activities do not happen to me. They happen in me. I experience them, but not as myself.

Disidentification. And then what happens? Will it get rid of suffering misery? No. Don't be so happy. Don't be so quick. Slow detachment happens with the mind. Very slow process. May take a few lifetimes. And then the Jiva is freed from the activity. It is a free soul. It is a liberated individual. And the liberation of the individual is the disappearance of the boundaries of the individual. No more individuals. You can see that it is right now like this. You can see it like this. Right now also, there is no individual. And right now also, the states of the mind, including all the unhappy states, they do not belong to me, not mine. This is only due to its identification. It is not going to change the mind instantly. It takes a lot of time for it to give up the activity.

There are three kinds of activities that are identified in Advaita. Tamas, rajas, and sattva. Tamas is that you have a negative kind of mind. Lazy mind, ignoring mind, you see. Stupid mind in most of the activities, avoiding the activity. That's all it does. Tamas, a very dark state of the mind. And Rajas is exactly the opposite. Very active mind, very bright mind, very intelligent mind. The go-getter, you see, is a successful person, that is the rajasic mind. Sattvic is the balanced mind, about which I am not going to say a lot. But it involves detachment. It involves the disidentification with both tamas and rajas. That is the sattva. This is how we classify the activity of the mind in Advaita, at least. And Patanjali has his own way. He has five kinds of activities there. Go and read it. It's very, very interesting. Very interesting how people have approached this problem in so many ways. They have found so many solutions.

And ultimately, it all boils down that I am not the mind. I am not this activity. Any kind of activity, I am not it. Even the sattvic activity, I am not it. But the goal of the yogi, or gyani, is to arrive at the sattva, at the balance. Because we know it's not going to end. So balance it a little bit. Let the pendulum not swing too much. Let it just vibrate at one place. This is what the hermetic teachings will also say. Very, very close to Vedic teachings. And how to do that, how to have a sattvic mind. And there are many ways. And, Ashtang yoga is one, which is proposed by Patanjali. Path of knowledge is one, complete disidentification. And then you let the mind do whatever it does. You are always in the blissful state, which is called samadhi.

So it will not be possible for me to get into long discussions about this. But here your path starts, isn't it? Suffering has brought you here. Now it's all open for you. Choose any path and get rid of the suffering. Don't worry. It's not your suffering. These are states of the mind corresponding to the waking state. And just purify the mind. Do your best. I'm not guaranteeing that the mind will become a happy mind. You are the happiness. Mind is not happiness, you see. I am the bliss. I am the ananda. I am the sat-chit-ananda. Not the mind. That's why I said, I do not expect the mind to do anything at all. It will do something. It will not do something. Well, it's kind of up to the mind. The purification will happen if you take up a path. This is guaranteed.

Session 8

Let us start with something light to bring the mind to the higher layers to connect to the guru field which we sometimes forget to connect because we are so busy in our waking state, in daily life. So I received a frequently asked question a few days ago which is how do I connect with my guides. So it is a very frequently asked question and I have seen this being asked on the internet and there are so many videos and articles about this commonly phased issue that it seems that nobody can hear me. It seems that I am alone, I am left here in this desert of the world with no guidance at all and then this idea of there being guide or guides who magically guide you in this world in the waking state in order to achieve whatever you are trying to achieve or just help or just as a companion, just as a friend.

Let us get into this topic a little bit because I have given the answer. My answer is a standard answer, boilerplate answer that I don't even remember what was the answer but usually what I say is that the guidance is always there. It is there right now, right here. What has happened is that we look for things outside, by outside I mean in the world, in the phenomena we look for answers there, we look for guidance there that something will appear in my experience that will give me whatever I want and that is why when it comes to spiritual guidance we also go and look outside somewhere, something will happen.

Those who are kind of dreamy kind of people, they look for guidance in their dreams because dreams look magical, don't they? They don't know how they happen and so people substitute the unknown for mysterious. So they think that the guides will contact them in dreams, and they look for that. Then some people they are spiritual, they call themselves spiritual and they look for the guidance in the altered states of the mind like in the samadhi states, meditative states or drug induced states or out of body states, who knows what, and let me tell you one thing straight that these are not totally false.

If in a spiritual community some notion appears, some idea appears then you can say that it has appeared out of a genuine experience of somebody. There is hardly anything which is imaginary.

What has happened is that the spiced up version of the experience, they become imaginary. People don't want to talk about it in a plain manner, they spice it up, they sugarcoat it, they bake it into a birthday cake so it looks presentable and then ultimately the content is lost, only the packet remains. That is what happens and because when those who are not experienced, those who did not experience the thing that the original person and the one who started the idea experienced, then they cannot have the cake, they get only the pack, the outer packet. So this has happened.

There is truth in that and there is a lot of made up stuff in these notions of guides, how to contact them and where they will appear. I was after all this obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have known all these things. For a long time I was looking for guidance from a magical way, and I don't know but there was nothing extraordinary that happened. What happened is that I found that the ordinary is magical. The ordinary way is nothing short of magic. So you can guess my answer was that look for guidance from a living guide, look for the guidance from somebody who has a human body, speaks your language, lives nearby because you are not really interested in magic, you are not really interested in this spooky alien out of the world entities, probably you are, but that is you know besides the point. The point is guidance, isn't it?

So if you are looking for guidance then it is available in ordinary form, it is available through human guides. What I found was that these human guides, they appear ordinary, they appear like you and me, you see, nothing extraordinary, no horns and no tails and no Dr Strange kind of strange powers, nothing, but when they speak there is magic in their voice. The magic is there in the ideas, the magic is there in their experience, their knowledge. That is the real magic, everything else is bells and whistles, you see, the Diwali lights and firecrackers, and I have seen that those who are just starting, or the young people or the spiritually young people, the age of the body does not matter here, the body can be old but the spiritual maturity may not be there. So those people, they go for whatever shines, whatever lights up, whatever engages their fantasies, they look for that and someday they hear these things that oh there are guides and the only way to get awesome knowledge is by contacting your awesome guide, who lives in, who knows which dimension and will come here to serve you the freshly cooked knowledge which nobody else knows in this world.

Now this is immature, yes, but it can become a delusion if you do not get over it, if you do not mature out of it, if you do not graduate out of it. Just like I said in the beginning, it's not totally false, you may get exotic guides, you may get aliens, you may get ascended masters as your guides, you may even get the small gods and goddesses, they may also appear and sometimes you may get exactly that avatar that you worship, that you hang a calendar of, that the statues you put in on your altar, the elephant gods or the monkey gods or the bull gods or whatever your culture is prescribing, it can appear in exactly that form also. Are they true, is that phenomenon real?

When it happens, does that mean that my ordinary guru is worthless because I don't have these

extraordinary entities to guide me? You can guess the answers. Everything that happens here is false, everything that you experience is Maya, everything that appears and disappears is an illusion. Do not consider all these phenomena, all these guides, all these exotic creatures that you may find in whatever exotic worlds, in whatever extraordinary states of the mind, do not consider them as real and do not consider them as unreal, there is a specific word for it, it is called Maya, it is called an appearance, it appears. It is foolish to classify it as real or unreal, there is no such thing in existence. Real and unreal are just subjective criteria of classification of experiences, nothing is true, nothing is false, everything appears.

You can say okay this appeared, I will put it into the category of real and this appeared I will put it in the category of unreal, you are most welcome, be my guest, you can make your own criteria to call anything real or unreal, it hardly matters. Therefore a very mature spiritual seeker, a guru, a master will not actually categorize anything, will not say oh it was true, it was not true, it is foolish, anything can appear here, anything can disappear and on the path of knowledge. Traditionally we call that which appears and disappears, which comes and goes as Asatya, not true, it is just a choice of words, you see, because it’s ordinary language, but the technical language is more precise, it is called Maya, you can translate it as an appearance. Do not try to classify it into anything else, so that's why I said yes it is possible that the universe or this existence can appear in any form, it's not a big deal, look at your own form you see, it's a walking talking monkey, it is appearing isn't it? It is, it looks so solid and real, it will disappear also, it disappears every time you go to sleep and in the other worlds, in the dream worlds and then finally disappears, becomes dirt because it came from the dirt, the dirt stood up in the form of a naked monkey, calls itself human, it goes back in the five elements, isn't this magic?

I mean what else are you going to call “magic”, we simply dismiss it as appearance, we dismiss the whole waking state, the whole world, as false, not true, so yes all your guides are false, all your gurus are false, I am false, this voice is false, it is merely an appearance, never make this mistake of calling the appearance as useless, because I made that mistake, oh it's appearance, it is false, so no use for me, so that is the mistake that many people make, once they realize it is false then detachment happens, which is a good thing, obviously, there is a reason that we call it false and we call it Maya and appearance, all these negative words, they are not negative but people have turned them into negative and there is a reason behind it. The reason is that we want the seeker to have a little bit of detachment to distance the seeker from that which appears.

There's a lot of identification with what appears, the world, the people, your relatives, this body and the mind that goes on inside you. With these experiences that appear and disappear, there happens an identification, and so your guru will want to distance you from that and will show you look at only appearances, come and go, it rises and falls, and any kind of language can be used but we should not assume that it is totally useless. Oh it is false, now I should find something which is true, I must find some experience which is not false - the newcomers make this mistake. Remember all experiences are going to be falling under the category of the false. Where are you going to find a true experience? Can the experience remain steady? Can the experience remain permanent so that you can classify it as true?

The nature of the experience is appearance, it comes and goes, the nature of the experience is impermanence, you will never find anything which according to your criteria of unchangeability is true. I made that mistake and I wasted a lot of time by dismissing that which appears as - false, useless, not my thing, I am a spiritual seeker, I'm very advanced so I'll go after the only true things. Let me tell you there is nothing which is true, nothing at all.

That's why we do not really classify it as a false thing, we say it is experience, there we add a full stop. Period. No need to classify it, so some people say that the self, the Atman is the only truth because it does not change and if you dig into that, well the Atman is actually that which is Brahman, it appears in many forms, can you say it is not changing, no, if it is appearing in many forms, if the whole existence is an appearance and it is the Atman, it is the Brahman which equal to Atman. So can I say that the Atman is not changing? No, so as a second step this is said.

First we are introduced to the Atman as that which does not change, which is kind of true, isn't it? It does not really change, the background of consciousness never changes and that is what I want to identify as myself, capital S-E-L-F, Atman, not the Aham. Aham appears and goes, the ego appears and goes, it takes birth and dies and so on. It goes through many many states, but the Atman remains.

In the next step, the final step which is the Brahmagyan or the knowledge of oneness, the guru will say all that changes is also you. Now where is the truth here? Because your criteria were that which remains unchanging, that you classified as true, now tell me, where is that truth? So do not make this mistake of classifying the existence into true and false, it is both and it is not both. That will stop your mind, that will stop the thoughts, that will stop this activity of dividing everything into many.

See the oneness, there is nothing else, it is not true, it is not false, all these notions are creations of the mind, they are thoughts in the mind, that's all. The union happens when this dividing stops, you can do it now also, you see, realize these are thoughts, realize these are experiences of the mind, the dividing experiences, what is appearing as this pure consciousness, that's all there is, it is not changing, it is not unchanging, it is not true, it is not false, it is not real, it is not unreal. This is the basic knowledge.

I hope everybody is familiar with these things and now you stand here and look at the question of the guides. Do you have a guide? Will the guide appear as a human or as an exotic entity, the Devi, the Deva, the goddess from ancient Egypt? Don't have these delusions and if it appears, accept it, do not dismiss it, just as appearance, everything has reason here, it has appeared, there is reason, never dismiss it. I made this mistake and I ran after that which appears in truth. Well there is no such thing, everything will appear but it is very useful. Your spiritual progress will not happen if nothing appeared, if you do not incarnate in the Maya, there is no such thing as spiritual progress then, there is no such thing as the evolution of the mind then, you see, so you have already decided to play this play of evolution, that's why you are here, that's why there is this individual. And don't worry, it's not you, it is the whole, it is the existence, it is the Brahman itself that has broken itself into many appearances, forms and it is enjoying this play.

This birth has happened, this experience of being here has happened and it is nothing but will of the whole. You do not have any other language to describe it and it is like a play, nothing is really evolving, the whole does not need to evolve, where is it going to evolve? What is it going to become except the whole? The whole will always remain whole, what can evolve there? So it is a play, it is also appearing, but it's fun, that's why I said, it is magic, it is real magic and this whole experience of our waking state and other states also is designed, you can say, is created, to continue this game of evolution, to continue this journey from darkness to the light, from ignorance to the knowledge, from individual to the whole and from the dead matter to the life.

You can call it anything you want, once you have accepted the appearance as I, as my own form, now you can play, before that there were confusion, before that there was darkness, before that you were lost, now it is your field, now you can play, now you can play without this fear of getting lost. Why are you looking for a guide, why are you looking for a guru? You feel lost, isn't it? What am I doing here, why is this incarnation, why is this waking life, why is this birth and death? You are lost, and when you ask people, you get all the BS there is in society. You are here to make a lot of money, marry, produce many children, hoard a lot of wealth, build a house and then die. This is the explanation of this society that we are born in. Now, I am not against this, you may do this, but all you will get is evolution, all you will get is progress, no matter what you do, these things, obviously, do not stay, they appear and disappear. Remember this is Maya, this is an illusion, it is going to go all, all of it. What do you get, you get only progress, the mind progresses a little bit. The Jiva, that which is lost. You can translate the Jiva as something like this, the part of the Brahman that feels I am lost and that gets a little bit of progress by experiencing life - human life, animal life, plant life, creature life, this life, god life.

Any experience is always a lesson. When I say the guidance is here and now, this is true, because all that is happening is a lesson, all that is happening is nothing but guidance.

What has happened is that the mind expects the guide to be exotic, the mind expects that, oh, I need the guide to be this and that of this gender, he should or she should appear here and there and they should look like this, because I read it in some book somewhere. It's not necessary, the whole incarnation, this story is a guide, everything is here to teach us something. That's why I say, if you are progressing, don't worry, the guidance is not in the form of your favorite alien, don't worry, life is teaching you. But those who are in a hurry and we call them spiritual seekers, they should get to the nearest magical person, which will be an ordinary person with a little bit of spiritual knowledge, they should go there, they should start taking guidance from there, if you wait for some magic to happen, then not a big deal, you see, it can happen, who knows, but you will waste your time. Time means a lot for a spiritual seeker, time is very important, we do not want to waste it and therefore, take guidance from wherever it is available. Remember, it is all magical, remember, it is all appearing, it is appearing in this form. If it becomes familiar, you don't like it, because the mind develops likes and dislikes, but if you are in a hurry, if the urgency is there, if the longing is there for the knowledge, then you don't worry about how it appears, then you go and take it. It is like the person who is hungry, will eat the two days old bread also, will eat a tasteless meal also, whatever he gets. Those who are not hungry put before them all kinds of juicy stuff, all kinds of exotic food, they are not going to touch it. They will smell it, no, I want something better, and you see, the thirst is not there, the hunger is not there.

It totally depends on the seeker, those who are seeking, those who want it, they will get it from the nearest and the most accessible source of knowledge, that's what I did, I got tired of waiting for my favorite thing to give me the knowledge, because you see, it looks like a waste of time to me, so I go there where it is available and check, okay, what are you telling me, what are you saying, and let me find if this knowledge is of any use for me, and I found only one thing, that if it comes from the mouth of a 10,000 year old guru or if it comes from the mouth of somebody who is speaking on the YouTube, same thing, exactly the same thing, same guidance, not even a tiny difference. That saves a lot of time.

Once I renounced this kind of illogical desire to get guidance from the exotic sources, the progress happened very quickly, otherwise it wouldn't have happened, otherwise I would have spent my whole life looking for magical beings and the states of the mind where there is the perfect knowledge, I'm not saying it is not there, it is exactly the same, which your ordinary guru in ordinary satsang gives you, no difference.

Ajay is saying, it seems hard to grasp to a beginner like me, when guru says, the essence of I is self/Atman, which is true, the next moment guru tells Atman is Brahman, using the metaphor, wave is only appearance of water only.

Yes, it is hard to grasp these things, because what people do is they try to use their mind to grasp it, you see, the essence of I or that which is unchanging, the invisible, the dark background, the space like background of consciousness is the self, it is easy, it is easy to know, the mind likes it actually, oh finally I'm not this pile of junk, body, I'm not this pile of thoughts in the mind or the person, a pile of memories. I'm not all that, freedom finally, I'm pure nothingness, Shivoham, but next day the guru is going to break it, because it is being understood from the mind, you see, the mind stops here also, it is not a small thing, I'm not saying that, let us not underestimate the importance of self-realization, it is, but it is only the first step. There are only two steps and the duality is the first step, the second step is to see that which appears is also the same thing that which witnesses the appearance. The witness is appearance and the appearance is witness, the consciousness of experience is equal to the experience. Is there anything to the experience except consciousness of experience? Take any experience you want, the exotic experience, the Samadhi experience, the daily experience, well it is all consciousness of experience, consciousness of experience is consciousness. There is no separate thing as consciousness which resides somewhere underground in another dimension and then the experience appears in front of it and it gets engrossed in the experiences, takes hold of it and calls it oh my experience. No, it is your fantasy, it is your delusion, it is your ignorance to think like this.

Why does this thought appear? It is the activity of the mind. Our mind is trying to get in, use its logical faculties, intelligence to imagine a mechanism of the experience and the experiencer. No, there is no mechanism. Believe me or not, if there were like this, if there were duality, we would have found it long ago in this appearance that you call this planet earth, immensely intelligent people appeared and disappeared, immensely intelligent, very powerful. They could not find it. They could not find the duality, they could not find the mechanism through which the experience appears and the experiencer gets it.

No two. They say no two. I cannot find the one also, but I cannot find the two also. I am talking about giants, the spiritual giants. Nobody could find it. But I am not discouraging you, who knows, you may find it and you will then get the Nobel prize of spirituality. But it is very simple, it is very simple to see that there is no difference between the experience and the experiencer.

What has happened is that your notion, your idea that the experiencer must be nothingness, the experiencer must be something exotic, paradimensional, para-human, non-material thing, the emptiness must be some pure emptiness of the divine kind. This is your expectation and that is the only thing that went wrong. Otherwise it's all here, whatever is, it's in front of you, the oneness is right here right now in front of you.

You don't need to go anywhere, you don't even need the guidance, it is your experience right now. The oneness is your experience right now. If you remove all these delusions, all these imaginary thoughts from your mind, if you remove the words, remove the Atman, throw away the Brahman, it's nothing like this. These are only words, throw them away, look at what is happening, look at your direct experience. It is experiencing and that's all it is, a conscious experiencing, there is nothing else.

That which appears also appears in that which witnesses it. Nothing appears, nothing is witnessed. So oneness is our experience right now. They are not two individual things which have separated and then you must twist your body to unite these two. No, they are already one, they are already united. Throw away the thoughts that tell you that they are two.

Look, just look, see.

That is why it is called seeing and that is why those who know oneness are called seers and that is why the whole knowledge is called Darshan. Darshan means to see in Sanskrit. It is that which is seen, Darshan, that, the one who sees it is Darshanik, is the seer. So who can become a seer? Everybody is a seer right now. Now there is no need to talk about it, you see. The wise men do not talk. Those who don't know, they keep talking like I am talking, you see, you need to talk sometimes just to tell others, do not talk. So silence is the greatest teaching, you know, you know the meaning of it. Now you understand the meaning of this great teaching, you know. Silence is the greatest teaching and why do they say that? Because just see, you will know, talk, probably you won't know, you will never know by talking.

See, there is oneness right now, right here. The consciousness of the experience is both consciousness and experience. Experiencing is both experience and the experiencer. The Brahman is both Atman and Brahman and the Atman is both Brahman and Atman. It is also the Maya, it is also the appearance and now for the purpose of studying and for the purpose of philosophy, you can divide it, go on dividing it, go on giving it names and forms and whatever.

Anil is asking, is the darshan an eternal concept beyond life and death?

Well, darshan is not a concept, just like I said, darshan is pure seeing, whatever you are seeing right now and life and death are concepts. Life and death, they are concepts in the mind, you see. Because something appears in which we see, the darshan and then the mind comes in, the mind also appears, you see. It comes in, starts dividing it into different forms, names and different entities and they are all concepts. So it sees birth, it sees death. By the way, life and death, you cannot put them together, you can put birth and death together. Life is beyond birth and death, because life is eternal, life goes on. You can say life is that which is happening, life is that which is being seen. The pure consciousness is nothing but life, so but life is everything is living, everything is eternal. There is nothing else here except life, all that appears is a living appearance and therefore people say that consciousness is eternal, I will never die.

These appearances, they appear and disappear, the birth and death, they happen. The seeing, that which is seeing, never disappears, never dies. So yes, seeing is beyond life, death, birth, appearance, disappearance. You can say like this and if this statement comes out of the seeing itself, then it is a useful statement, otherwise I don't see any use of it. So no, darshan is not a concept, life and death are concepts, birth and death are concepts, birth and death, they come and go, they appear and disappear. That which is seeing, that which is witnessing birth and death and that which appears in form of the born and the dead, both are same, that they are the seeing, they are the darshan. Anyhow this is my interpretation, there will be somebody else who will write another book on this topic of darshan. You are most welcome to explore, you see, explore what the great minds say.

He's asking, what's the difference between Brahman and Ishwar? Is Ishwar some sort of mega mind of Prakriti?

So many words. We have become very liberal in mixing the words. You see, Brahman falls in the domain of Advaita Vedanta, Ishwar comes from the Samkhya and Prakriti also comes from the Samkhya. The Ishwar also comes from the Yog Darshan, if you want to call it, Yog Darshan. Later on, some people mixed all of them. Some of the Buddhism and some of Samkhya into the modern Advaita, which is not modern, which is as old as Shankaracharya, probably 1000 years, 1500 years. And there were some really genius people like Avadhuta and Ashtavakra, they brought back the Nirgun Brahm, cut down all the mess that happened in the Advaita philosophy. So I always mix all these dates and people, so never mind.

If you mix different words from different philosophies, you will be confused. Then you will start asking, what is the difference between this word, which was in this philosophy and that word, which was in the other philosophy? As far as I know, although I am not a pundit, I do not interpret the spiritual text, it's not my expertise. What I see, I tell you. What I see is that Ishwar was imported from Samkhya philosophy into the Vedanta. There is no Ishwar in Advaita Vedanta. It is non-theistic philosophy. You don't need to worship anything because the Ishwar then became an object of worship

in this subcontinent, you see. Now people translate Ishwar as God, which is not correct. So let me tell you what these words mean according to my own understanding. Who knows, I probably am wrong, but let me put or submit to you what I think are these. So Brahman is from the Vedas and it is the existence. It is all that is. It comes from the word Brih, which means the biggest. And it is all that is, the existence itself. And then it goes on to say that, which I think is, I am, is all that is. That is the whole essence, you see. That is the one Mahavakya Aham Brahmasmi. And the philosophy or the darshan ends there with this scene.

Now there were very practical people, highly intelligent people. They said, it does not work for me. Yes, probably it is one, yes, okay, but it does not work. What works for me is when I divide the one into two. And Samkhya did that. They divided the one into two and it became the Purusha and Prakriti. Now Ishvara is a concept which is a form, the manifested Prakriti is called Ishvara. Yes, he said, it is some sort of mega mind of Prakriti. Manifested existence is Ishvara. And as you know, there is nothing more in the manifestation except that which is created by the mind. So yes, it is the nature of the manifestation, you can say, not of the existence. The existence is Nirgun, it has no nature. It is also the Sagun. All nature happens in existence, in the Brahman. So the manifested, that which appears is mind. Its nature is mental. Its nature is that of mind. That is Ishvara.

And because it is a mind's collection of memories, collection of information, this is an information processing system. So all that gets organized here survives. Whatever information could get organized because of the natural tendency of the self-organizing systems to organize themselves. You see, whenever there is change, there is information and it tends to organize. This is the fundamental rule of manifestation. It tends to organize and all that could be organized and it is very big. It is infinite and almost infinite and it's growing. So just a sea of memories, a sea of metaphysical patterns, changing patterns. Sometimes I call it the universal mind because it is easy to understand. Individual mind, universal mind. Individual mind is happening in the universal mind. So the Jiva is happening in Ishvara.

Jiva is a part of the Ishvara, a child of the Ishvara. When people realized this, they started seeing Ishvara as a means of fulfillment of their desires because it is something so big. And obviously it can fulfill your desires. So the Jiva has nothing else. There is no other goal for the Jiva except fulfillment of desires or attainment of happiness and freedom. That's what the Jiva wants. That is the part of the Ishvara, it wants it. And obviously it is fulfilling the desires. Obviously there is no separate Jiva from Ishvara. So it then became theistic. People started worshiping it in various forms and started thinking in terms of the Avatars that Ishvara can take, that this universal mind can appear in. And yes, it can appear in any form. It is immensely powerful and it has no limits at all. Probably that answers this question.

Do not mix between philosophies or the different darshans. It will cause confusion. So that's why when I wrote or when I recorded or talked about it, I just kicked out all the old words, all the Sanskrit words and I adopted the modern words which like the universal mind or the individual mind and made it very clear they are the same. The water in the jar is the same as the water in the pond. Just dip the jar in the pond, where is the difference? you see? The jar breaks and it's all one universal mind. It is a dream of the universal mind to think that I am an individual and that I have a life. It is a dream.

So we are in the dream of Ishvara. It is a state of the mind of Ishvara, this whole world, whatever has appeared. And then we do loosely say that Ishvara created all these things, just like I create my dream, this individual mind creates a dream in the sleeping state. Ishvara is sleeping, dreaming of the world. That's why one form of Vishnu is always sleeping. He is sleeping on a giant five-headed snake. The snake is called Shesh. Shesh means remaining. Remaining what? You know, remaining energy, remaining energy of the manifestation. It is behind the manifestation. It is behind Vishnu.

So different people gave different words and you know, even anthropomorphized it, gave them hands and feet and stuff, made stories. Nowadays we just sing songs and enjoy the songs immensely, very nice songs. But yes, all these symbology has very deep meaning. People saw it, people imagined it, people tried to represent it. And then corruption happened, turned all into mindless worship, religions of all kinds. There are many, you can see, hardly anybody knows what they are worshiping, isn't it? As a spiritual seeker, we are all freed from this ignorance as soon as you. You know the essence, you know all that is happening here, all the madness, you can see it, uncorrupted, the pure form, pure knowledge is here. All you need to do is, you know, ask your guru, sir, what is the meaning of the snake? Why is he sleeping on the snake? What is Lakshmi doing there, you see? What is Brahma doing there on the lotus? And you see, it all can be explained. You don't need to worship it, only the people who don't want to know, they use blind faith.

Those who want to know, it is all here, the knowledge is all here. So it is also called, the snake is a representation of the energy somehow, probably. They found it very good representation and it is also called Kundalini nowadays in the tantric philosophies in the tantric sects and the same Shesha will be called as Kundalini. So evolutionary energy, yes, it is creating, it is doing its evolution. How can I awaken the Kundalini? You cannot. You are a manifestation of Kundalini. You cannot awaken it. You can accelerate it because you are the Ishwar. You are it. So just follow simple rules, evolve in the direction where it is already going, your experiences will be speeded up. Now we are deep into the illusion. We are deep into the Maya. A person who is on the path of knowledge is not very concerned about these things because he knows everything. Those who don't know, they are doing the attempts, they are doing the hard work. Gyanis does not do hard work. Only the Agyani is doing it. So it's probably good. It's okay. Someday they will awaken to this fact that it cannot be achieved by hard work.

There are certain laws of Prakriti, some sort of harmony, like if I put my hand inside the fire, it will burn. The laws of Prakriti are just for Jiva. Universal mind is not bound by these laws of Prakriti. Or is it also? Well, I can refer you to the Hermetic philosophy from ancient Egypt. And there very beautifully they have described that all is mind and the mind is laws. You see? The mind is nothing but laws of the mind. Can there be a mind? Can there be creation? Can there be structure without the laws? Think about it. This immense sea of memories, metaphysical information. That's all it is. You see, you can call it the matrix if you want. It's popular these days, you see, Buddhism, simply mind, Chitta. So is there anything, are these two things separate? The mind and its laws, are they separate? No. Look at this house, for example, a building. Is the building separate from the structure or the rules that define the building? No. Without the laws, there won't be any Prakriti. Without the laws, there won't be any mind. Now the Hermetic philosophy or even our yoga or tantra will also say that there are layers upon layers of Prakriti and the higher layers, they have full control over the lower layers. And I see it as emancipation, I see the freedom, layers of freedom. That's why sometimes I call them layers of ignorance, because if you are ignorant, you will see only the lower layers. Those who can see the higher layers of the mind, they can control the lower layers. And by control, I mean they are freed, they are not affected by the lower layers. So you can imagine that as humans, as this form, I am very very limited, at a very low layer. It is by definition, we are in the material world, which is very low.

Now, probably there are some worlds that are lower than this, but the material world or the Mrityu Lok or the Prithvi Lok or the Dhara is deemed to be the lowest. That's why it is called Dhara.

Dhara means that which holds the foundation from which, by the way, the word Dharma comes,

which means that which holds the fundamental knowledge is the Dharma. Unfortunately it got translated as religion in English. So this is the founding layer of the universal mind and therefore it is bound by all the laws of all the layers, the layers above it and that is why we say that the Jiva is bound in the matter and that is why we say that your Mukti or your liberation will happen when you leave this lower layer, when you are never born here again as this, any kind of body. The body is just “use and throw” thing. It is the fit body for the current environment because this founding layer is not really stationary. It is ever changing. You can see it. It is slow. It will change in billions of years. So it is a stable platform for the Jeev to grow and therefore we want to protect it. There are very highly evolved minds in the universal mind. They are looking after this Prithvi, this Dhara, this material world, this simulation. They take care that it is not destroyed. They enhance its functionality as a school. A school can be a building where you go and spend some time and come or the school can be a learning place, a place where you get to learn something, where you grow in knowledge.

So it was a place. The highly evolved people, entities, they have converted into a learning place and that brings us back to the guides. They are always available. You need to ask. That's all. You need to take admission in the school. That's all. The guidance is there. It will appear because it's their playground. They can make the knowledge appear in any way you want. The laws of Prakriti, are just for Jiva, as long as Jiva is bound to the layers of the mind, yes, it will follow the laws because there is no separation between the laws and the mind itself. The memory is the structure of the memory. The interaction of the structures, if it is meaningful, we call it law. If it repeats in a certain way again and again, we call it a law. If it happens like this always, it is the law. And if it does not happen in the same way, we call it randomness. Randomness is not manifestation. The mind cannot perceive randomness. The mind can only perceive structure. It is a deep subject, actually, because that which got created became very convoluted. It has a tendency to become very complex. It must be your own experience. You know, let us say you start a company, a small company, which buys things from here, sells there, and adds their label, it's not going to remain like this. Either it will dissolve into randomness, there won't be any company, or it will become a giant corporation. If you look after it, it becomes complex. See how things have become here in this material world. Extremely complex. So the laws are this complexity, otherwise, we won't see it as a manifestation.

If we could see without the laws, we will see as randomness or the mind won't be able to make any sense of it. It is as good as an unmanifested state. It is as good as the Shesha with the potential to become manifested. So I hope this clears it. And if you want more information about how all this is happening, on the topic of Universal Mind, there are many articles on my blog, and there are many podcast episodes where I go into so much detail that, you know, it will keep you engaged for at least one year. I'm not joking. It will keep you engaged for a year. Now there are 200 episodes on the, more than 200 on this podcast, and there are 100 blog articles, there are videos. And if you want, you can go into this, enter into the illusion. It's never-ending. The complexity is never-ending.

He's also asking that, is the Universal Mind bound by the laws of Prakriti?

Yes, there won't be any mind if there is no law. We call it laws because there is a structure there. Why is there a structure? Because it is self-organized itself. Therefore we call, we say that it creates. It does not create. It is not a thing that creates. It is creation itself. The creator is the creation itself. It is happening. So now you can trace back all these religious, you know, blind faith kind of ideas. They all sprouted out of this philosophy. And this is not Indian philosophy, let me tell you. There was the philosophy, the eternal philosophy that was always there on this material plane. Where else can it be, you see. So when I say lower layer, do not think that it is some kind of inferior layer, you see. That's why it is called dhara, the foundation that holds everything. The knowledge is here. The knowledge of the Universal Mind is here. And it is being held by the yogis, by the spiritual seekers. It's not in the books. It's not in this country or that country or Himalaya or this temple. No. It's being held by life itself. It is eternal knowledge. And will remain so. It never dies. It pops out here and there. Whenever there are appropriate, suitable conditions for the knowledge, it comes out as a form of philosophy, darshan, vada, this or that. And it was always there. It sprouted in Africa, Egypt or India or in China. But it is the same thing that keeps appearing.

So is any philosophy good? Is any philosophy true? Well, if it is not this eternal knowledge of the Universal Mind, then no, it is not true. This should be a thumb rule. And even if you take a look at all these great philosophies, you will find that they are talking about only one thing. This is the same eternal knowledge. Yes, they spice it up a little bit. And then, yes, the ignorant people, they turn it into religion and kill each other and insult each other, hate each other. That is human nature. That is the nature of ignorance. That is the nature of the Jiva. It is all perfect. So that's why we always say that Ishwar is forgiving. It does not mind whatever you do with it. Spiritual seekers stay away from it. We have made ourselves kind of aloof from the effects of ignorance. And that's why, in the Hermetic philosophy, they used very strong words, that the fools, they will remain like this, but the wise, they come out of it. And the wise people do not want to change the laws here or do not want to make it a better place. They see it as the best place to be, but they distance themselves from this place.

That's what I ask you again and again and again. Liberate yourself from this plane. Get rid of it. Don't try to improve it. It is perfect. It is a learning ground. It is just a collection of information, patterns. What can be more perfect? It is Ishwar itself. You are trying to improve it. It does not make any sense. Your essence is already pure. Get it out from the junk that you accumulated. That is liberation. That is mukti. That is nirvana. Nothing needs to be done. What is the bondage? Identification with the junk, with the dirt, with the form. And you can now see, it will take you one minute to disidentify and be liberated. That is the only bondage. It is not that, you know, there is some law which is keeping you bound here. No, there is no such thing. It is all ignorance. Ignorance is equal to bondage. Ishwar is ready to teach you. Ishwar itself is bound. It is kind of a big statement, isn't it? It dissolves ultimately. It also achieves freedom. Nothing remains. That which is manifested becomes potential again. This is the Kaal Chakra. This is the wheel of the time. If you unzip the old philosophy, you will get these gems. You will get the treasure of knowledge. It is all there.

The guides will appear here to teach you. The guides are nothing but the forms of the universal mind. The guru which is sitting near to you is a form of the universal mind. Go there. Get the teaching from there. It is the same thing which is appearing as books. It is the same thing that appeared as the Veda. And it is the same thing that appears as the internet. They are all mediums of knowledge transmission. If you want to make it exotic, yes, you can do that, you see. It is your play. It is your playground. Do it.

But let me tell you, to get the essential knowledge, you don't need to do it. If you want to play, most welcome. Then you can have any kind of guide that you want. And they will appear. That is the magic because it is you only appearing as that exotic form. Or this form. It is you only who is teaching yourself.

What is Anil saying? If present Dharma, righteousness about helping out other Jivas out of ignorance and into Vidya like a guiding light or doing the right Karma. If all the people with true Vidya become aloof from ignorant people and stay in our world.

Okay, he is probably asking what if everybody goes away? What if the knowledgeable people disappear? They all attain nirvana and then they don't take birth here. Don't worry. It will never happen. It will disappear only with the disappearance of the universal mind. Now I will give you a metaphor, like an example. Imagine a big pot on fire filled with water. Now as long as the fire is burning, the bubbles will start forming at the bottom, which is the hot surface of the pot. The bubbles rise up and then disappear in the air. Now how long will this process happen? As long as there is fire and there is water, you see, they need to totally die out. So the universal mind is a process like this. The bubbles keep forming. The bubbles are Jivas. It keeps flowing like a river. The bubbles keep forming and they keep rising. And all the bubbles will rise on the top and then what will happen? New bubbles keep forming as long as the process of evolution is here, which I am representing here by fire. It's also called the Kundalini fire. Serpent fire. It is funny people come up with all these names, you see, it's so funny and also confusing for the newcomers. But as long as there is this energy of evolution, new individuals, new Jivas, they keep forming, they keep arising from the limitless ocean of Ishvara or the universal mind and there will never be a total disappearance. It can go up and down, you see, that is the nature of the manifestation that it is built on the cycles. It will go up and down, but never disappears completely. You can call it your own duty, you see, righteousness, you should translate it as duty, spiritual duty to spread the knowledge. Yes, obviously. But don't worry, if you don't spread it, somebody else will. This is human nature. This is the nature of the mind actually. If it knows something, it must tell the others.

This is the nature of the mind. It is not only human, it is in all the Jivas. You can see it in animals also. Only that humans have a big ability to transmit their thoughts, that's all. It is a fundamental characteristic of any information system that the information does not stay at one place, otherwise it is not of any use. It moves around, it takes form, it gets transmitted and makes copies of itself and so on.

The universal mind is like this, it is not going to stay. Even if you don't do the duty, which is kind of not a duty, it's your wish, it will happen anyway.

Those who are ready, they get the knowledge anyway. Like they say, the fruit when it becomes ripe, it falls. If there is a desire to spread light and knowledge, yes, that is not your desire. You are not doing it.

It is the desire of the whole and so it will happen anyway. The right karma will happen anyway. The wrong is also right because it gives you a lesson, isn't it? Do whatever you want. There is a lesson sitting there. Somehow beautifully, the whole manifestation has turned into a vehicle of evolution. Nothing wrong here, nothing right here. That is the advanced view, that is the ultimate view. For the practical, yes, some things are specified. Okay, if you do like this, it will be better, it will be more beautiful and you can adopt anything, anything that you wish is beautiful, anything that you think is beautiful. It is not compulsory to spread knowledge, spread light, but it is our nature, it is the nature of the flower to spread the fragrance, that is how. That is how it is all kept alive. If it were a duty, believe me, the knowledge would have disappeared long ago. People don't want to do duty. People don't want to do something that is not their nature, cannot force them. It becomes very, very ugly if you force them. If you tell them it is your duty, it is your religion, it is your dharma, it is right, it is wrong, nobody likes it. It is human nature and so it continues. It will never stop, that is my prediction.

When I say, become aloof, don't worry, the world is not resting on your shoulders. Yes, but if you get attached to the world, oh no, I need to be here, I need to do my duty to enlighten everybody and I will stay here for as long as it takes, that is also good, that is also right. The one who is liberated is liberated now, now nothing can bind him. The lowest layer, the highest layer of the mind, nothing will actually have an effect on it. So such people are called the Bodhisattvas. So they will take a form, they will put a form down here which will keep educating people forever. So it's all fine, that is also fine. But the only analogy that I give people when they try to think like this, when their self-importance grows beyond the permissible limit, is that, when you are at the bottom of the mountain, can you guide others? No. You will need to be on the top and then you can see where, which path goes where and then you can shout from the top that, look, you need to take this path, come here, I am at the top, come here. So first you rise, first you become aloof, the word aloof means to rise and lift yourself. Then you have the ability to lift people.

So this first step is important too, our own evolution is most important. Because when I say that my evolution, it is not really mine, it is the whole that is evolving, it has, you know, generated this instrument to accelerate the evolution, this body-mind, the intelligence, the unit. It has generated this thing so that it can evolve faster. It is working, isn't it? Otherwise, the universal mind won't do anything which does not work. So that's why the universal mind, this energy, has interest in intelligent beings, has no interest in other animals, can you see? They are all okay, perfect. The lizards remain the lizards forever, the birds remain the birds forever, but a very big push on the heads of the humans. No, no, no, you need to evolve, you need to evolve. Because in humans there appears the potential to become gods, nowhere else. So when I say my progress, it is the progress of the whole, it is the whole that is evolving, not I. The I is the instrument, this ego, this body-mind is an instrument employed by the whole for its becoming.

Now Anil has another question. Well, thank you very much for, so interesting questions, you see.

The question is, if the individual mind takes steps in favor of universal evolution energy, would the universal mind start cooperating and remove obstacles? Would it like to coexist in the journey with the individual mind?

The short answer is yes, why not? When I say that the evolution of the individual is nothing but evolution of the whole, then obviously the whole is interested in the individual, because the individual is a form/part of the whole. The Jiva is a tiny Avatar of the Ishwara, you see, there is nothing special about the avatars, all avatars, we have the potential to become great, but there is what you call something strange, some kind of favoritism, the all, it favors those who are progressing faster, those who have potential, and it gives a free, what you call, freedom to those who don't want to do all these things, you know, when I said all forgiving, which means that does not trouble people unnecessarily, there is so much intelligence there, you know, that exceeds the human intelligence by billion times because it is the whole thing, you see. We are like even tinier than the speck of dust when compared to the universal mind, and yes, it has certain mechanisms by which it will favor those whom he thinks they have bigger potential, and does not favor those who just want to live and enjoy, you see, That is also one of the goals of the manifestation. This play is here for, not only for evolution, but for entertainment also, it's a leela. So it leaves those who want to simply enjoy and, you know, live their life without this “boring” trouble of spiritual things, those are not favored, but they do not progress much.

So it's okay, it's fine, that's what we are here for. There is a third category with the kind of minds which cause harm to the universal mind, whose activities or the karmas, actions throw cold water on the party of the universal mind. The whole does not like it, wants to get rid of them. So usually they are recycled very, very efficiently. Like you see, you recycle your old clothes, right? In India, we have this tendency to recycle everything. So the clothes that we used for occasions or only on good days of our office, our favorite clothes, when they become old, we recycle them as everyday clothes, and then we use it as our sleeping clothes, we sleep in those clothes, and then finally we use it to clean the stuff, and then finally we throw them away. This is obvious because it's a very good strategy, isn't it? And he has prepared that piece of clothing, a gorgeous, beautiful piece, and you simply don't want to throw it away, you don't want to burn it, that will be a waste of effort. So what we do, we progressively recycle it till it becomes totally of no use, it degrades to nothing. So the universal, because we are also part of that, smaller image of the whole, so obviously we'll have all those tendencies. The bigger thing also has this tendency to progressively recycle the bad guys, the wrongdoers, people who are not helping, who are not also enjoying, they are a pain. It puts them one step back and sees whether the behavior improves, whether they start evolving or not, whether they become of any use for the whole or not. If they do, then the evolution continues, but if not, then they are put one step backward again and so on till the Jiva becomes a pile of matter, dust, useless metaphysical energy. It can be recycled back up to that level, but the good news is that rarely happens. Usually after one or two steps backward, the mind picks up speed. It is the tendency of the mind to evolve. This is the only energy it has, it wants to evolve, that's all.

So the same tendency is found everywhere, in the most complicated parts, the same tendency exists and that is how this helpful energy or punishing energy, they both operate like this. It is not that there is somebody sitting there who is deciding who is good for me, who is not. No, it is all automated. It is all happening at the level of the universal mind, there is nothing beyond it. It is a system, you see, it is a beautiful system, that's all it is. So will I get the help or not if I am on the spiritual path? I am 100% sure you will. Sometimes the universal mind will break the laws, if you want to call it, because from the higher layers, the laws mean nothing here. The universal mind has organized itself like this so it can meddle with it. The universal mind is not a monolithic thing, it is organized in many many layers. Whatever evolves beyond a certain level of evolution, we call them the ascended people, ascended minds and they are the masters. They can break the rules here, they can actually bypass the rule, not break. They can use the higher rules to change the lower rules. They will do this, if there is potential in the seeker, it will happen and that brings us back to the topic of the guides, yes. If there is enough potential, if the seeker is working really towards the evolution of himself or herself and of others, then extraordinary things can happen.

What is extraordinary for us is nothing, just routine for the universal mind or the different entities there. It does not appear to you that nothing magical is happening in your life, then probably you need to push a little bit, you need to push your evolution a little bit, you need to gain more knowledge from traditional means. Go to a guru, join ashrams, read books, watch videos, operate at the level of the material world, the waking state. First, rise above this and above simply wanting extraordinary experiences, wanting the favor of the universal mind in this form or that form. Remember the favor is already here, even recycling is a favor and that it does because it readies you for the next step of evolution, isn't it?

If you are just degraded sitting there, then well, it's a total waste. So efforts are always made, but because of our ignorance, not because the universal mind is a tiny thing, it is because we are tiny whiny, we are ignorant specks of dust. That's why magical things don't happen. That's why extraordinary things do not happen. The guide can appear to you as a living master, which everybody knows. The guide can appear to you as an exotic entity in the other states of the mind or the guide can appear to you in non-physical forms or even a tiny god or goddess or anything that you like. It is all possible. All you need to do is be on the spiritual path and cultivate a relation with your existing guru. If you don't have a guru, too bad. That means that means you see nothing will happen. The system, you can call it the whole universal mind system, will leave you to enjoy. So there is no compulsion to take a spiritual path. But if you take the spiritual path, then suddenly you will start getting help. Cultivate a good deep relation with the gurus, with the masters. Be in the company of the wise. If you are in the company of the fools, either you will enjoy your life and die, that's nothing bad in it, or you will be devoured. You will get recycled back into lower forms, simpler forms, and then someday, someday it is hoped that evolution will happen.

There is some good news actually. This earth is so dense, it is full of suffering and pain. We are here. That means we are already hardcore seekers, otherwise we wouldn't be here. This is too big. This is too heavy. This life is a challenging lesson. That means we all are already very hardcore seekers. Otherwise we wouldn't be here, believe me or not. And which also means that there is support, there is already your contacts are there throughout the universal mind in the higher layers also. There are big Jivas here, who are looking after you. You are part of them actually, which I call the soul disk, because I could not find any Sanskrit term for that. I don't know. Everything is gods and goddesses in India nowadays. This I borrowed from the theosophical literature, soul disk. I am a manifestation of this body-mind, a manifestation of a small chunk of the memory that I call myself. This Jiva is a part of a bigger system of minds. You can call it a Mahajeeva, something like this, or you can call it a soul disk. The intelligence of the soul disk appears as your relatives, your gurus, your teachers, your enemies also. They are also teaching us something.

And there is a soul disk for the whole of humanity and so on. It is arranged in hierarchy, because any information system arranges itself in hierarchy. That is a natural pattern, nothing else can happen. You can think about it, why does this happen? There is not this Jiva, which is tiny, whiny me and this big universal mind, no. There are intermediate many levels, uncountable, unthinkable. They are supporting you already. Let me assure you, support is there. Probably the time is like this. Probably our Jivas are taking a break. They are busy fulfilling their desires, which is okay, which is nothing, just learning experiences. Without desires, we won't act and then we won't learn. So they are busy enjoying themselves most of the time. I know, I am doing it. And most of the time I am just enjoying, or just fielding the problems of life. That's all I am doing. I call myself a seeker, but it's an interesting thing, but hardly any seeking. Because seeking happens in the mind, it does not happen in our outward activities.

Probably this time is like this, that there is a little bit of distance from these higher entities and us. It was not like this always. There are times when the soul disk is very near to the individual mind, because the individual mind progresses to a very high level. And let me clear it, because the soul disk is where it is. It is always there where it has been since eternity. The individuals distance themselves sometimes. It is just us who are not asking for help. And all you need to do is open up, open your mind, become ready for the knowledge, which means, you know, tell yourself, I don't know anything. I want to clean up the slate, then teach me from the beginning. This will do wonders. This is what I call coming in the receiving posture. Right now, most of us are not in the receiving posture. We know a lot. We say, I know everything. Don't teach me. That is not the receiving posture, that is a kind of kicking away the knowledge. So come in the receiving posture and then you will receive, you will receive everything. It is all up to you. It all depends on how much longing is there for progress, how intense the fire is, how big the desire is for knowledge, and you will be given, you will be given. But expecting highly evolved entities to serve you at your doorstep, it's not going to work.

They don't have this kind of interest. Their energy is something else. They cooperate or they work with those who are ready. Those who have this intensity, not with anybody. So develop that first. The first step is to come in the receiving posture, which is a posture of humility. I don't know anything. I am a seeker. I am an explorer. I don't know, really. You start there, ask sincerely, then all kinds of, you know, help will start coming. And there is a saying that there are herds and herds of deer in the jungle. But still the tiger needs to run and grab one and kill one and eat. The deer does not come in the mouth of the tiger, does it? The food is arranged. Everything is arranged here, but he still needs to run. And that is a kind of sorting algorithm of the universal mind that it wants to check. It wants to check who wants to run, who wants to make the effort, who is showing interest. So you will need to do that initially. You will need to run here and there. Get the knowledge from the sources that you trust. Go to the gurus that you like. Start from there. And obviously the heavenly gurus, they are not going to appear for such a newbie. But there is no shortage of teachers in this material world also. Just like I said, it's not going to end. It's all here. This world holds knowledge. So you will always get the help. You need to demand knowledge. You cannot simply say, if it comes, I'll take it.

So those who explore, those who want to sail the seas, high seas, they find new stuff. Those who want to sit at home. Well, then nothing happens. It is all very comfortable and lovely life, but no, nothing will happen. The progress is happening. It will be a slow progress. So, yes, if you have developed a long term relationship with your guru, can be any guru, can be any number of gurus, you can have any, you know, as many guides as you want. Develop long term relationships. Be with that guide. It does not mean being in the physical company. It means being with that knowledge that the guru is spreading and there will be a mental higher up there in the akasha and you will always be connected to that guru. And this kind of relation, which I actually call connection, will last forever. It will last throughout life and many, many lifetimes. This energy, the guru energy will ensure that brings you to his or her own level. And those who tell you the stories, the amazing stories of how they met their guru in this lifetime, it is because, you know, for many lifetimes, they have this very close relation with that guru. And so if the student incarnates, the guru also incarnates in some form or is available through this or that, you see, many, many means. The guidance is always there if there is a relation. So those who say I have a guide in non-physical world, what they are talking about is that they are a long term seeker, very ancient seeker and they have a very good relation with some other mind there who is not interested in incarnations now, but still here to guide. So all they need to do is think about that guru and the guidance appears. It always appears as “my thought”. It is not going to appear as somebody else’s.

So that is a long story where I'm not going to go today, but it will always appear as my thoughts because there are thoughts, there are insights, then the mind labels them as mine. That's all it does. So those who are aware, they will see it. They will see the guidance as a presence, as something which they can contact in their mind and the solution or the answer appears. It is because they have cultivated this long term relation with some guru who was probably just an ordinary person in the world. So if you see that you do not have this kind of non-physical, magical, extraordinary connection, then you can start now. You can start making a connection now. You can go to any guru that you like, say it must be, it must resonate. You must like that guru. Do not go to a guru simply because somebody has said that he is a great guru. No, you must like it and then start developing the relation. Just being in contact with the guru is enough. There is nothing more to be done, you see. So when I say effort, the effort is only this much. The effort is, you know, keep destroying your ignorance. That is the effort and use the knowledge that is available here and then the gurus will turn into guys because gurus are also evolving and you also get this free ride because their evolution is pulling you now. They cannot leave you. You can say please don't leave me here and take me with you and they will do everything to take you with them and there is so much power higher up there that the rules are bent here too. Your karma will be destroyed in like one click of the fingers if the guru wants. No more birds for you now. You will be given whatever that is needed to come out of this darkness. All rules will be broken because what are rules? They are just the mind, there is nothing else. If there is so much awareness because awareness exceeds the mind, the awareness is beyond mind so it bypasses all the rules.

This will happen. This is a natural progression. This is natural evolution. Don't worry. Where are my guides? Look, you will find them. If you don't look, if you don't explore, nothing will happen. If you just sit there, I'm waiting for my guide. I won't do anything if there is no guide. How can I learn if there is no guide? No. These are our excuses because probably there are too many distractions. Probably there are more fun filled things to do. That's why. More sources of enjoyment, that's why. So once this desire for knowledge exceeds everything else, you will definitely meet the most exotic guide that you can imagine. Definitely it is 100% sure.

Okay some more discussion from Anil. What's the end goal of this evolution of the universal mind? Is the end goal that all every bit of the universal self gets to realize the non-dual?

No, there is no goal. There is no goal of evolution. It's a play. That is the goal. And the mind cannot realize the non-dual. No, it will never happen. Even if it is the biggest mind, the mind is an appearance.

The jiva is an appearance. It appears and disappears. The non-dual is. It is not here to be realized. It is here to be seen. See this is here and the play is happening. Evolution is happening because of necessity. And because there is timelessness, it is not happening in time. That means everything is as evolved as it should be already, don't you see? Everything is perfect as it is. It is the ignorance in our mind that sees things as unevolved and evolved. When I am talking about evolution, when I am talking about spiritual progress and this knowledge and all, well these are relative things. I am talking in the domain of the illusion now, not in the domain of the oneness. In the domain of oneness, nothing needs to evolve. What will evolve into what when there is only one? Who is big? Who is small? Who has evolved? Who has not evolved? The mind sees the ordinary things and thinks that yes, it is going towards something.

When you visit a factory, let us say car factory and you see people putting together the pieces and the final product, the shiny car comes out at the end and then you see all the raw material is going in the factory and you then assume that all this raw material will become the cars. This is our thinking. This is our linear mind, small mind. It is not applicable to the universal mind. It is not applicable to the whole.

It is not a factory of evolution. Everybody is, you know, progressing towards becoming a shiny product of some kind. No, no. This will never happen. It is a timeless thing. It is a timeless movie where scenes appear on the screen of the consciousness. Some of the scenes we think of them as evolution. That's all.

Evolution, progress, spiritual evolution is also an illusion. It is also Maya. It is also false. That's why Gyani is not trying to evolve. That's why this path is called the direct path and that's why it is called a pathless path. There is nothing to evolve here. Now I'm talking from the point of view of the ultimate point of view of oneness. We are already one. We are already all evolved.

So either you can take the shortcut, which is actually a long cut, you probably won't be able to appreciate it. Most of the people won't appreciate what I just said. The effortful paths are recommended. Do the effort then. Why are you asking for a guide? Why are you asking for knowledge? Because you want something. As long as this wanting is there, as long as the seeking is there, the seeker will be there. It's not going to go away. As long as this desire to evolve is there, the evolution is there. So that's why I say the universal mind has this ignorance that I need to become. I need to become something. It's not ignorance actually, but it's the tendency there. The evolutionary energy is there, but it's all good. It's all okay. From the point of view of the Brahman, nothing is really evolving and nothing is not evolved. Nothing is unevolved. So no, it's not a factory of evolution. You can bypass it all. That's why I said it is very amusing. That's why I like this field of knowledge, the spiritual sciences, because there is always a twist in the end. I give you a one hour lecture and in the end I say, don't worry about this, it's nothing. It's totally useless. Illusion. So yes, there is some use of the illusion. The illusion is evolution and sorry, the use is the evolution.

What is evolution? Just a play. That's all it is. If you are in ignorance, it looks like suffering. It looks like effort. When you are in the knowledge, in the light of knowledge, it looks like play. Let it happen. Don't worry about it. So there are no end goals in the whole. No end goals at all. The parts have the end goals. So for example, my end goal, I'm a part here in this body mind. My end goal is the achievement of happiness and freedom. That is my end goal. So is everybody else's, I think. And the whole is bliss itself, infinite freedom itself. It cannot have that goal. It cannot have any goal. If I lack something, that means I'm a part, isn't it? And then I want to complete myself. There is a goal. The goal appears because of ignorance. The goal disappears when you know that I am the whole.

Where do we want to go when only I exist? When only I am here, where will you go? Where can I go?

Will I disappear? Will I appear? Will I evolve? No. There is only oneness. It is as good as nothingness. Where can nothingness evolve? What can Shiva become? It is already nothing. It is too pure, space-like.

Session 9

I will start with a very commonly asked question and the question is - how to know whether I am progressing on my path or not? How to know if I am growing? What are the indicators of spiritual progress?

This is a very commonly asked question and when people take up any kind of practice or when they join a guru or an ashram then after one or two years they start wondering whether I am making any progress or not, because they know a lot, they know many things, they know the techniques, they know the scriptures, but there is a doubt in the mind - what good it is for me? They can sit in meditation for one hour, they can do the pranayama and all that perfectly but then there is a question: what good all this is or whether I am progressing or not?

What is the meaning of progress?

So as you must have guessed the answer is very simple, the answer is very obvious and that is my answer usually, that is my canned answer to this question of progress, and it is that if your happiness goes on increasing, if your freedom goes on increasing, if your peace of mind is expanding that means you are progressing.

The answer is very short and simple but this is the truth, isn't it? When you say progress people may want to define it differently. On the material path if you are just an ordinary person living your life then progress is more and more prosperity, more food, more mates, more social status, more stuff, a very comfortable life and a healthy body. A healthy body is required if you want to enjoy all those material benefits. So there is absolutely no doubt in the minds of people what does material progress mean and most of them are after that, even after progressing they want to progress more and on the path of intellectual achievements because material progress and eating and these things are not the only thing, you want to do something in your life, so intellectual achievements, build something, achieve something, become something like a famous rock star or a big politician or become an artist, a singer, something like that. There is absolutely no doubt in the minds of the people what the progress on intellectual achievements means. It means to become better than others and when it comes to the spiritual stuff then suddenly there is a doubt, what is progress? What do you mean by progress?

Because you see there is a lot of ignorance, lack of experience on the spiritual path that is the cause of this question and then there are additional questions like why am I not progressing? What are the obstacles on my path? And so on.

So why is it that people do not know what is progress on the spiritual path? Because the essential knowledge is lacking, that's why there is a lot of confusion and if you go to different gurus then you will get different answers from different gurus. If you are on the energetic path, path of effort then what is progress? Progress is sitting longer and longer in meditation, getting into samadhi for long duration of time and being able to control the body, control the energies, control the mind, thoughts and slow down the aging of the body and so on. These will be the criteria for progress on the yogic paths and if you are on the path of devotion then more and more surrender, more and more service, how much have you donated this year? The rate at which you are becoming angry or the rate at which the hate is coming in your mind whether it is going down or not, are you becoming more and more ethical and compassionate? Are you displaying more and more kindness, genuine kindness, not fake kindness? So these are the criteria for the progress on that path.

Now let us stop beating around the bush, come to the path of knowledge where the criteria is very direct and straightforward. You don't need to do all these things in order to progress. The criteria is happiness and freedom.

Look at the materialist person, the hedonistic person. What are they aiming for? They want objects or they want people or they want big houses or a lot of land or a powerful position in the society because they are not stupid, they also know that these things do not stay, the impermanence will consume these things. So what are they after? They are after the happiness that comes from these things and not needing to struggle in poverty, which means freedom to do whatever they please and to have whatever they want. So they are also after happiness and freedom.

Criteria for progress is not how much you have, the criteria for progress is again how happy you are with whatever you have, how happy you are with your relations, whatever relations you have, whatever families you have, not how big the family is. I have seen people who have 100 relatives and they are totally miserable, especially because of these relatives. They don't want to let them go because they do not know any other way, they keep struggling. So ultimately it is happiness and freedom that is how the progress is measured on the materialistic path also.

You can now guess, I don't need to elaborate so much if you want to achieve something, if there are intellectual achievements of certain kinds then again the satisfaction that you are looking for is manifested as happiness and freedom, not as the things that you achieved. Because the ego starts dancing if it achieves something but your heart knows that well it is empty, it is hollow, there is nothing in the achievement itself. What is really satisfying is the happiness and freedom that you get once you achieve something because the achievement does not last. Even if you have achieved something great, somebody else is going to come and just run like a bulldozer on your achievement the very next day. So nobody is great here because it does not last, it is forgotten, nothing lasts here. That is why there are odd behaviors in the society if you take a deeper look in the society, even after achieving there is no satisfaction and there is odd behavior to achieve more or to preserve that achievement to keep that thing forever but it does not last and so attachment with the achievement gives rise to suffering only. So again here the criteria is happiness and freedom and that's why on the spiritual path we just cut to the chase of happiness and freedom.

That is the only criteria, that is the only thing that you can recognize as the valid criteria for progress. Even if you are in devotion let us say or in the yoga or on the tantra, what are you looking for? Are you looking for all these exotic experiences? No, you are looking for the happiness that they provide and the freedom to have all kinds of experiences and freedom to control all the energies and physical phenomena. That is what you want and control over the mind gives a lot of freedom, a lot of choices.

So this is my experience that we are not looking for anything else except happiness and freedom. That is the only criteria for progress. If you get this or you get that, well it's not going to be satisfactory. You can try it, you can experiment like this and again and again you will come back to this fundamental lack that we are after which is happiness and freedom. So measure your progress by this scale, this rule - how happy am I? How peaceful am I becoming or how free am I becoming?

Now there can be doubts in the mind of newcomers like well I was angry before, I was jealous before, I was hateful, I had hate for this and that kind of people or that kind of community or this kind of country, that kind of food etc etc. Now it is all gone, I am matured a little bit, now I simply ignore these thoughts when they come but I don't seem to be happy. There is no joy in my everyday life and there is this peace, silence but it is like the silence of a cemetery, silence of the dead, it is not happening. Don't worry because happiness does not mean party all the time, happiness does not mean that you are laughing and dancing all the time. These are egoic expressions of the happiness, when you are killing the ego, you are diminishing the ego, the ego is diminishing as a result of the spiritual path, as a result of all the knowledge and experiences that you are getting. So why do you expect more and more expressions of the ego?

It is not you who are expecting, you are only the witness of whatever is happening, so it only the ego that is expecting, ego will ask for happiness, no I want happiness which I achieved when I was 2 years old and we went for picnic and there was cake and my mother and father were playing with me and so on, I want that pure happiness. This is purely egoic, holding on to the past experiences, trying to get the happiness out of the dead experience of memory, trying to squeeze a dry lemon, is there any juice in the dry lemon? Keep squeezing, nothing comes out, so it is the error. That is not the kind of happiness that you should look for, not the dead happiness, not that happiness which happened some time ago and now there is only a faint memory, why does the ego do that? Because it does not know anything else, it is just conditioning you see, it is trying to repeat it and happiness cannot be experienced like this, there is no fragrance in a dry flower, so the fresh flower needs to bloom and then the fragrance comes.

So happiness is always here and now, in this moment, present! And don't worry if it is not an expression of joy, don't worry if it is not an explosion of ecstasy, you are not looking for that kind of happiness, it is always in the form of equanimity.

Its Sunday today, there is nothing to do today and my mind is peaceful, it is not bothered by anything today, this is happiness, now just sit and do whatever you love to do, you see, in the actions that you love, you can find the expression of the equanimity and it can be a pleasure, it can be joy, it can be expressed like this, now there can be laughter, now there can be dance, now there can be singing, now there can be this energy of life in that, it has to be the present moment, if you plan it like - oh well, there was this party last year and I enjoyed it a lot so let us have the party, why not you know, if you love parties then you should but you can plan the party but you cannot plan the happiness, you can try it.

If you do something with the aim of achieving happiness out of that, sucking happiness out of that event or that person or that group of people, your friends, good luck, it may or may not happen. If you are spontaneous, you let that happen which you intensely like then the result is happiness, the result is joy, so you cannot achieve happiness, it is only an expression of the bliss that is already here, it is expressed moment by moment, it is expressed in the everyday actions that we love, you cannot plan it, you cannot call it, you cannot spawn it out of something, it has to be found in the everyday life.

Now you can achieve whatever you want to achieve, there is this energy of achievement so why not, it is not for happiness you see, if the happiness comes with it, it is because that desire has been satisfied that's all. If you do everything that you like, with equanimity, then that is true happiness. If you do whatever you love with perfect skill, beautifully, this perfect skill appears as beauty in your actions. So on.

And then there are many doubts about the freedom also - no I'm not free in this place, I don't get to go out, there are so many restrictions on me or I'm bound by my work, my job, my boss, I'm always on a leash and the boss holds my leash for 10 hours per day. We don't like it even for one minute, some people are living their lives like this 10 hours per day. For what? There are misunderstandings about what is freedom and I have a very simple answer again, lack of bondage is freedom, you cannot get freedom by doing this or that, by changing the situations or by getting rid of people, there is no freedom in that, freedom is absence of bondage, if you do not perceive any kind of bondage that is freedom, that is your real nature then.

If you are not bound by anything, that also means the things that you like, if there is too much attachment and clinging in that, it is not freedom it is bondage, so sometimes people will think freedom is ability to do whatever I want to do, I'm not free because I cannot do this or I cannot do that. Now look at this, it is the bondage to this thought that I must do some things, otherwise I won't get the happiness, otherwise my desires won't be fulfilled or I'm not free to fulfill these desires. That is bondage, even if you fulfill it, even if you do something which you like to do, the bondage will be there because it is impermanent, it will go away and something else will appear there as a limitation.

Trying to do things that you think will achieve freedom is actually bondage, there is no choice you see, you do not have a choice, you cannot say no I won't do it, I'll do something else because there is attachment, there is clinging, there is this you're chained to that action which you want to perform again and again, thinking that is making me free.

You must have seen the addicts, the alcoholics, smokers, drug addicts, addicts of anything that gives momentary pleasure, what do they think? Oh I'm free to drink so I'm drinking, well that poor thing is chained to that bottle of bitter liquid. The smoker says I'm free to smoke anytime I want. Doctor said this, my parents said this or my family and child are suffering from passive smoking. I don't care, I'm free to do whatever I want, if they don't want me they can leave me. So you see it is stupidity of the highest kind because that person is totally bound to the nicotine, the substance, they're bound to the alcohol, the substance or they're bound to a person or a place or objects. So no, this kind of thinking - I'm free because I can do whatever I want - is bondage and you will see that it fools the ego for a while but ultimately it leads to suffering.

The real freedom is the ability to not do, and today I'm not going to go there because I've said this so many times, you can recall our discussions about the ability to reject an action that is real freedom, our real nature is the non-doer, the witness, the watcher, is it doing anything? No and therefore it is totally free, it is absolutely free, it is freedom itself. So we are already that, we are already free, the attachment with the person, the imaginary fiction of there being an individual who is capable of doing whatever he wants that is the real bondage.

Again the freedom comes in the present, it cannot be planned, it cannot be executed and the movement by movement life gives you the freedom. If you flow with whatever is coming, that is freedom. Now freedom can be expressed in actions, that is why there is a confusion, because people see people who are really free, they are doing anything they want, they are doing anything they like to do and this ignorant person thinks oh that means I cannot do this, that means I'm not free. I need to be like that person who is doing that thing. Now this is ignorance isn't it? What that free person is doing is actually an expression of his or her freedom, he's expressing it by various means, not bound to one thing and people. See that they want to copy that and then they get bound to that thing, so express your freedom, express your happiness, do not try to make those expressions as the sources of the happiness and freedom.

It is a very subtle thing, it took me a long time, many years to understand, it's a small thing isn't it but we do not know this art of living, it is lost, it is not in the society, even your parents don't know it, because this knowledge is lost. This is just ignorance, it can be removed in one day, very few lucky people will get it.

So once you start getting it, that is progress, it is not more and more knowledge, it is not more and more experiences of the spiritual kind. If you are getting more and more knowledge you're not progressing. Now, this can come as a shock for a newcomer because I keep asking people to get more knowledge, knowledge is the key and now I'm saying no if you get more knowledge that is not progress. That confusion is because again people think that knowledge is accumulating - accumulation of facts, accumulation of experiences. Because when I say knowledge comes from the experience and people run around to get more and more experience of this kind. I went there also, I went to that temple also, I went to that guru also, I watched thousands of hours of videos and I read this big book, now where is your knowledge? Has it resulted in any kind of equanimity, any kind of freedom, any kind of non-doership? If not, then no progress happened there.

Knowledge is not an accumulation of experiences, the only experience that you need to have is the one that is right here, that you are having right now. Is there any other experience which can bring knowledge? Whatever you're accumulating is coming from outside, you can go on accumulating, there is no end and I'm not saying it is bad, it is not bad, it is the nature of the mind, this Jiva, it is an accumulation. Why is it an accumulation because that's what it does, it accumulates, it accumulates stuff, memories, experiences, it's a collection of impressions only. It is not bad, it is a cosmic being, it is an event in the universe, how can it be bad? It is perfect. Accumulation is not knowledge but what is the criteria of progress then as far as knowledge is considered? And you can have any criteria you want, there is no rule here but my personal favorite is when your questions start dropping, when your questions become less and less, not because you're becoming stupid and dumb. There are extreme ends of the scale where they meet, when you cannot differentiate between a very innocent person who has no questions at all, like your dog, the dog never asks any questions, and there is the extreme end of the scale, you can picture it as a circle actually, not a line where the state of the mind of innocence meets the state of the mind of a Gyani, of a knower, of a sage, they're same. Outwardly they look the same but in an innocent person where the ignorance is so deep you see that it appears as innocence, there are no questions and in the mind of the sage also there are no questions or if anything comes the answer appears with the question instantly. So that is progress from no questions, no doubts to extreme doubt, extreme questions and then back to no questions, peaceful mind again.

The advice that hunt for knowledge, gather knowledge, more knowledge is good for you, knowledge comes from the experience, get it, anyhow, that is for those who are not even asking any questions, especially those who are suffering because they never questioned anything, that advice is for them, that practice, enquiry is for them. Who never questions, who is buried under blind beliefs of all kinds, whatever the society has fed them and they dumb them down actually, made them so dull and dark, there is no light there. There is a body that does all these biological activities and people think it's alive but no life is there. If you look into the eyes of that person there is no life there, nothing going on there because the society has sedated that mind and for them this is the advice. Activate your intelligence and start questioning.

Sometimes I'll tell them to activate the ego, in some people the ego is also dead, they don't want to achieve anything of material nature also, totally dead! How can they make any progress? Because the progress of the Jiva starts from the bottom. A person who is freshly into the human lineage, freshly into the human birth, one should not think that he will become a Gyani instantly. It's not possible. The progress of the Jiva starts from the bottom. That brings us into spiritual evolution and for many people evolution is progress. So for such people who are just fresh, I cannot prescribe them the criteria of happiness and freedom because they are dead, they are totally inactive, they're not even living their lives completely. For such people the path of action is prescribed that don't just sit there. Because the Jiva needs to get the required experience to fulfill human life otherwise it will drop down, it will go back to the mineral kingdom. We don't want that. We can see our own progress happening like this, our own evolution happening like this, so it is prescribed that please go and do something, achieve something, earn money, get a job, get a family and reproduce, become something in society. The path of action is for them.

Sometimes my talk will appear very conflicting, contradictory. Yesterday he was saying that you don't need to do anything, you are the bliss, you are the freedom, today he's telling me to go and do something in the world, oh he knows nothing, he's not the proper guru and you go to the best guru in the town and he will say exactly the same thing. Why do I say all these things because I have done that, I went to many gurus, I also thought that the teaching needs to be one kind and one kind only. You see? I'll take a brief diversion here, why do we think like this? This can be educational and the problem is our education, when we are kind of brainwashed in school, we are told that look at this thing which is written in the book is the only truth, is the only view that exists in the world, there is nothing else. The history that you study in school is the only history that exists. Have you seen this? Have you questioned this? These definitions of the economy and this definition of the GDP, this definition whatever is your subject you need to parrot it and you get only one correct answer. If you write something else you get a big zero and you fail.

This is our upbringing, this is the brainwashing that has happened because we are a part of this society and I'm not saying that don't do this because if you don't do even schooling then it's a big limitation, you will fail in the jungle of the society. So your parents they beat you, they drag you to the school that is good for you, it's not totally bad because that is the starting point but for many people their progress stopped there after their school. They do not know anything beyond whatever was fed into their mind.

For such people different teachings are there, the teachings say that question everything, once the questions start coming then you can say oh he's making some progress, today he asked something which was really intelligent and thought-provoking, very good progress. That is how your guru is going to encourage you but you see there is a surprise for you there if you're on the path of knowledge, if you keep questioning for many many years something is wrong. How come you're not getting any answers now, why are you going in loops now? The same question appears in a different form again and again, so now the guru will change his tune and will say you are not progressing, so many questions are there, your mind is so active, it is running like a factory. Shut it down, sit down, meditate, stop questioning, look, get the direct experience, start experiencing instead of intellectual regurgitation of the same thing going on in the mind. The guru will tell you stop doing that, you need to simply look and that will actually bring you to the witnessing phase after the questioning phase and here your questions will start dropping and now I can say that you're making progress because as soon as the question comes the answer comes with it, the answer is in the form of just a destruction of the question. Whatever I thought is not true that's all will be the answer, there is nothing to know.

If you picture it as a circle you will understand, picture the progress as a circle, so you start at one point and then go around the circle and you come back to that point and so you will find the extremely advanced evolved minds, they are very innocent, they are childlike, if you bring to them the questions that sir what is the mechanism of creation of the universes and they will laugh. What do you think about the Higgs boson and the recent experiment in physics and they will laugh. They will say what do I need to know about this, I don't know anything about this, sometimes just for entertainment they will say something. They appear as ordinary villagers sometimes, an ordinary person will be confused, this person is supposed to know everything and he talks like a layman when it comes to the questions about the sophisticated philosophical and scientific topics, he knows nothing at all, what is the reason?

Is it progress? Am I misguiding you? On the path of knowledge yes, happiness and freedom, but shouldn't I get more knowledge, shouldn't I become like all-knowing? Sometimes I say self-inquiry, the method of returning to the current experience will answer all the questions and then people think that all means I'm going to know what is happening in my neighbor's house. Or what is happening in the other country or what that other person is thinking or I'll know I can invent something new, I can discover something new, I'll know all the answers pertaining to my subject, whatever subject the person is interested in, their field of study. Suppose the person is a doctor, he will think that I'll be able to discover a new medicine, new cure, new surgical process for some disease. This will not happen, does not happen. Is this claim false that you will know everything by self-inquiry?

Once you start knowing, more and more questions will start popping in your mind and once you start looking which means experiencing whatever is right now right here, the present moment, the questions will start disappearing because this play will be seen as a play of the mind, it is conceptual, it is all in the mind. All the knowledge is in the mind, that which is, is beyond knowledge.

Slowly you will find if your inquiry progresses, if this trend continues, this is the right direction and if the questions keep on coming that means you will go in circles. How many questions can there be? Ultimately it turns back and repeats, everything repeats, that means you need a guru, now you need assistance in your inquiry and if you are really progressing then the questions start dropping because experience, direct experience, witnessing takes the place of questioning and conceptualizing, intellectualizing and thinking.

Witnessing comes, the witnessing has the answer, the silence has all the answers. When I say you get all the answers that means not in the form of concepts, not in the form of ideas, you get the answers in the form of direct knowing, simply witnessing. So once you witness you will see that you cannot question it because as soon as you question it the question will fall down as an experience that arose in the mind and then you come back to the witnessing. You're not interested at all in finding the answer because the witnessing has the answer, is the answer actually. The oneness is there when the asker and the knower they become one, so right now there are two, the one who has the question and the one who has the answer, the one who knows and the one who does not know and when this gap is bridged there is no duality, the knower is the known. Where is the question? What is known, absolutely nothing, as long as there is the object of knowledge there will be questions as soon as the object becomes the subject the duality disappears, now there is no question and there is no answer also, you don't need the answer now.

This is progress, that's why those who have progressed they are not going to ask anything, they're not interested in knowing anything also and outwardly they will look as if they are ignorant. He does not know anything, he does not know the latest that is going on in the world. What has happened is that person or that seeker has gone through it, has crossed the jungle of knowledge, there was a time when he knew all the minute details about everything under the sky. If you don't see it in this life don't worry, he has done that in some other life and therefore they are not so interested in knowing, they are interested in being. They are looking, they are witnessing.

When the knowledge is knowledge of the self, then there is no knowledge. What is there to know in the self which has no qualities, which has no extension, which has no hidden parts? Then some people may ask what about the parts that appear? And the Gyani will dismiss everything that appears as an illusion, it's not worth knowing. Then people can make this kind of error here that look that highly advanced person says nothing is worth knowing, so I'll just sit here and not know, well you need to see where you are, if you are below the threshold where you're not even questioning then probably this is the wrong thought, you need to know, go into the details, go into the minute details, go into the illusion, go into the appearance, get as much knowledge as you can. When you're saturated with that you will come out as not wanting any of that.

I have done that, unfortunately, I had to cross this phase quickly like in a few years, five or six years, now I don't want to go into details of anything. It looks as if nothing is new in the world and that can sound really depressing, but it is freeing for me that, oh there is something which I did not know and it is also old, it is also useless.

In summary, there are two phases of progress on the path of knowledge, the first is where you need to gather knowledge, where you need to know everything and the second phase is you need to drop all that, you need to become empty again. There is nothing to know. There are in between phases but this is how the circle completes. In the end you know that I am the witness of ignorance, I am the witness of knowledge, knowledge is ignorance. Period. There's nothing beyond this.

You must have noticed that when there are no questions the person is blissful, ignorance is bliss, happy in the day-to-day things, happy in the day-to-day struggle, very tiny goals and they achieve those goals and so on. Life is expressing itself and therefore we do not say that this person is ignorant, we call such people innocent like a child. So it's okay, it's fine, all the sorrow, all the joy, everything is okay, we see it as an expression of life. We do not teach that person to go and do something - you're living a miserable ignorant life. Do not interfere in that life, it's perfect already.

What happens is halfway through the journey that the Jiva accumulates a little bit of knowledge and half knowledge is a dangerous thing, it gives rise to suffering. On my blog there is an article where I cooked up a story of a person who was so innocent, he did not know the value of gold and was happy in whatever he was doing and then he gained a little bit of knowledge that gold brings happiness and gold is the source of prosperity and everybody worships me if I get the gold. This knowledge is his knowledge and then misery appears because the poor and miserable fellow runs after becoming rich. You can read that story and this kind of knowledge, the half knowledge is really dangerous that brings all the suffering. What has happened from a spiritual angle is that the knowledge has appeared in me that I am this body, I am this individual and this world is real and I need to do something in order to be happy, in order to fulfill this life, in order to be free. This knowledge has appeared here, isn't this knowledge, yes it is, you can go on refining it now, no not the worldly positions, not the people and relations, intellectual achievements. I need to become this and that, service to humanity, protection of the environment. This is knowledge isn't it? And you see they are all miserable people. Now it is only a phase, so knowledge appears with it, ignorance appears and then it completes again. Then all this struggle is dropped, the perfection is seen and there is no knowledge now and the need to know also drops.

You can see it like a rise and then like a return, return to innocence, back home and therefore the Gyani is doing ordinary things you see, cooks and washes and cleans, that is all, not interested in anything else. Sometimes his intellectual layers are active and he will study the scripture and give you a discourse on this thing and that thing, that is another thing, that is the Leela, now that is the play, he does it because he enjoys it. Now does that mean that he has fallen into the knowledge again? No, now the silence is expressing, that's all, instead of expression from the ego, it is expression of the whole.

It is beautiful, isn't it? You can see the difference between a person who knows a lot and delivering the lecture in some college and you can see a person who knows nothing and is also talking on the same subject, there is a lot of difference, the first one is trying to show off his knowledge and if you, if you cut him off, if you ask a question, if you say then no sir, you're wrong here and then the ego gets disturbed. Such people do not like to be called wrong and it is a phase in the life of a seeker. It will happen to everybody, don't worry, don't worry, go back to the humble old Gyani, learn from him. You can see the beauty in not-knowing and you can see the ugliness of the knowledge. There is a lot of ego in knowledge, there is no ego at all in not-knowing. Not-knowing is not ignorance, knowledge is ignorance.

So depending on which phase of the moon you are in, try to take this teaching from that angle, do not, if you're beginning, do not think that knowledge is ignorance, I don't want knowledge, no, you want knowledge, till you see that yes it is ignorance. Everything is just concepts, everything is a play in the mind and the oneness or the reality or the Brahman has no need to know anything. Because there is nothing to know here, nothing to know in this existence, it is very pure, it is nirgun. What are you going to know when it is nirgun? The equanimity is a result of not-knowing, it's not a result of knowledge, it is a result of relinquishing the quest to know everything, that is the peace and happiness for a Gyani. I don't need to know that and it is the freedom.

So hopefully that clears up the question about progress. What are the indicators of progress? It boils down to happiness and freedom, no matter which route you take to arrive, you will arrive here only, happiness and freedom.

Now let us go back to the question of spiritual evolution. Probably I don't need to say a lot about spiritual evolution, you got the hint that it goes into a phase of complexity first before it simplifies itself, this is the nature of the mind and therefore evolution is not like an arrow from one place to another, it is like an expansion.

Anil has a comment now, Vairagya is looked upon as something bad in society and as an escape, escape from duties, especially when we realize the nirgun and see there is nothing to do really, is there any duty for the awakened?

Vairagya is bad, if you have too many responsibilities, if you are too deep in the dirt of the society, then Vairagya is bad, then you need to fulfill the duty, then you need to come out of this quicksand of society. Do not leave it, do not excuse yourself out of it because you are “spiritual”, now it means nothing to me. You made a mistake of going into the society, look at it like this, why are you in the society? Your mistake, isn't it? If you have abandoned the society from the beginning, then nobody will think it is bad. If you are in the middle of the samsaric life, fulfill it, get rid of it by doing what is necessary.

For example, you have a family, you have a wife, you have old parents and you have a job and you have some social duties also and you are young, let us say, now suddenly some guru comes and tells you, well there is no meaning in this world, it is an illusion and actually you are awakened enough to find it as your experience. Now should we give the intellect a rest here? This all meaningless life, I need to go and sit in the cave, I need to be in the bliss of the samadhi all the time. This means that premature awakening has happened, this means the guru did not prepare you, the guru did not see your background, the guru did not do an evaluation of the mind, the guru delivered the truth.

That is what happens on the path of knowledge, but on the path of knowledge, we do not prescribe Vairagya also, have you seen any teacher who prescribes Vairagya for the Gyani? No, we say get into the nitty-gritty of the world, remain there, remain in the marketplace. Go back there, that is what is the teaching on the path of knowledge. But let us take the case of somebody who has no interest at all in the society, for such people, we do not tell them to do your duties, go and marry, go and do the job, go and do something for the society, go and do the service, we do not tell that person anything, because he did not put his feet into the mud, he is pure, why would you want to corrupt such a person? And let me tell you, such people are very rare.

What has happened in India actually, there is a mixture of all the traditions here, so the sannyas tradition got mixed with the grihastha tradition, householder, and it has become kind of a mixture here, and then you will find comments from both sides, oh look at the sannyasi, he has fallen, he has become a householder now. What is bad about that? And then a totally good householder, very successful, materially successful person leaves everything, leaves the family, and then people scold him also, look at the person, he left his family, and people have scolded Gautam Buddha for example for that, people have scolded Ram for that, and people have bad-mouthed Krishna for that, what kind of yogi is he, dances with his thousand wives. You call him yogi? No, that's not the definition of yogi, he told Arjun to kill his own brothers and teachers, you call him the world Guru, what kind of teacher is he? So you see, everything has mixed here, and so it is natural for such questions to arise, what is good here, what is bad here, no, there is nothing like this, you see?

The detailed answers will depend on the background of the person, just like I said, the guru should do a little bit of evaluation, how much is he in the society, in the trap of the society, how deep is the karmic bondage, and prescribe the teaching, do not prescribe Vairagya willy nilly because it is the good thing to do, no, there is nothing good, nothing bad. It totally depends on the situation, it will be treated as an escape if you run away from your responsibility, the social responsibilities. You can escape right now, it's not bad, there are no ethics involved in the spiritual traditions. What happens is that the same karmic bondage will appear in the next birth, in the form of the next birth, if you don't do it there also, one more birth, so it is not freedom really. Traditionally it is not mukti, vairagya is not mukti.

So go through life as an ordinary person. What is wrong with that? As a witness you can be anything, there is total freedom here. To whom vairagya is to be prescribed? One who has 20 wives, who has

50 children, who is killing people, who is asking for more and more land and who is treating the old and the wise people badly. Vairagya is to be prescribed for that person. This happened in the life of Gautam Buddha, so much extreme artificial life was created for him, that the pendulum when it swings, it swings towards extreme, then this is the law, as you know, that if you do extreme of one thing, it has to swing to the other extreme. This is the law of the mind, you cannot escape it. So for such people, very naturally the Vairagya happens, this happened for the king Ashoka also, he went to the extreme, he became a brutal ruler. What happened? Same thing happened. So such extreme stories are kind of lessons for us, don't go to the extreme.

If you are in the society and if you don't go into the extremes of the society, if you are not totally corrupted by the society, then there is no need to take vairagya, there is no need to leave the society. You keep one foot in the society and then you are living a balanced life in the world, not of the world. This is the Mool Mantra and yes, there will be some people who will tell you that this is right, this is wrong, no, you don't need to listen to them, listen to your guru, if your guru is very competent, he will advise you correctly, depending on your situation.

If you read it in that book and this book and somebody said in this video that everybody needs to be celibate, vairagi and sannyasi, everybody needs to be in the ashram, wherever the word “everybody” comes, you can simply kick it out, discard it. Spiritual journey is very personal, very subjective, it depends on the kind of the mind. That's why you see, I went to this trouble of many hours of describing how to evaluate yourself because it looks like the teachers have themselves forgotten the art of evaluation of the minds. Everybody is selling their product, do your self-evaluation and we learn from our mistakes, I did not know all these things and I thought it's a waste of time, you need to pick a path and then stick to the path, and evaluation, well, it is for the dummies who do not know, I know what I am and so I can decide. This is kind of too much knowledge, you see, and you need to clear the slate, start from the beginning, evaluate the conditions and then you can decide what is right, what is wrong. And it will be subjective, it will vary from person to person.

When you realize that there is nothing to do because the nature of the existence is nothingness, emptiness, then start doing, that is the true non-action when you realize that I am not really doing, that is the true non-action, sitting at one place not doing anything, escaping everything, that is stupidity, that is another kind of action.

We have covered all these subjects, haven't we? So is there any duty for the awakened? Yes, the duty for the awakened is that which is equal to the duty for the ordinary. The ordinary is awakened, the ordinary is happening in the extraordinary. Do that which is necessary, do that which you like most, that is the only duty. If the guru has prescribed some special duties, it is probably because he wants to correct something in the mind and that will depend on that kind of mind and please do not generalize it, gross generalization, sweeping generalization, it never works in the spiritual business. Very specific duty will be given and then you must ask the guru, why did you prescribe this duty? Blind faith is one thing you see, if you trust your guru so much then no need to ask because you know why that job was given to me and if you do not know you can ask, be free, do not be afraid of asking and do not reject the duty that is given without thinking about it.

I remember one thing that I joined somebody and I found the lectures very entertaining, very educating but I used to just go and sit there, so one day when volunteer came to me and he said the guru has told you to always do the cleanup before the meeting starts and after the meeting ends, my job was to arrange the chairs and then remove everything, clean up everything and I had a big ego probably because I did not like this thing. I said I did not pay, I did not come here, I am not wasting my time to do these things. Only because of the respect and only because I saw that other volunteers were doing their job, whatever was given to them, out of just kindness, I did not like it but I did it and I saw that after seven days of doing it, there was a little bit of calmness in my mind, I was a little bit more receptive.

Suddenly the plans dropped, all the plans that I made, I came here for this, I want to get this, everything dropped, my job was to simply bring the chairs from here to there, I enjoyed that. So probably the guru saw something, guru wanted to clear something, it is a small example but if I stayed with that guru for long probably she would have cleared many many things from my mind, within few months she could have purified my mind but unfortunately something odd happened there and I could not continue so I had to leave but I got the lesson.

I got the lesson that there is some reason for these prescriptions of the duties that the guru will tell you. There was a stupid thing that I did that I said let me find out if I can achieve the same kind of results by doing something myself. So I started donating things, I started giving donations because I thought probably I am too attached to the money but it all backfired. The answers came later that no, the student, because he is too stupid, cannot decide what is the right duty, only the one who is more experienced can decide, only the one who has looked into your mind has the authority to prescribe the duty. So very much dependent on the person, very much dependent on the guru and don't assume that all gurus are going to know what is correct for me, what is the correct duty for me. No, very rare, you will need to go through a few gurus to find the right one who actually knows you, like the doctor knows your body, like your family doctor knows all the illnesses in your family and then you should have a guru like that. If you have that kind of guru, you are very fortunate because your progress will be very fast.

So Anil has one more question. Is there any karma for Jeevan Mukth? Body mind still exists, but the identification is now with the non-dual. Body mind still performs karma in this dualistic realm, shouldn't it bound the Jiva?

Well another good question, when you say Jeevan Mukth, the Jiva never becomes Mukth, the individual mind never achieves freedom. Who achieves freedom? Who becomes the Mukth? That which is already free, that which is already liberated realizes its liberation, that is what is Jeevan Mukth. That which is already free, is it bound by the karmic stuff, karmic laws? No, it is the witness of all the karmic stuff. So a mind in which this realization has happened, we call that mind Jeevan Mukth and outwardly that person, that individual, which is no more an individual now, totally destroyed, for the name sake only, it is there. It is doing all things, everything, all the actions, all the duties, all this karmic stuff is going on. He has the relations, he has projects, he has plans, it looks like, but the ignorance is not there. It is seen as the leela, it is seen as the play, it is seen as the drama of existence, so it is done.

Freedom is not freedom from karma, there is no such freedom. Freedom is always disidentification from that which has karma. You can see it right now, you can become Jeevan Mukth right now in one minute. Who has the karma, who has the conditioning, who gathers the impression? Not I, not the self, the mind, the Jiva. So as soon as this realization comes, the karma is seen as the universal karma, not mine. What is the problem in karma? Because you own it, that is the only problem. It is not ugly, it is not disgusting, you do not need to get rid of it. And let me tell you the secret, you cannot get rid of it, it is not possible. You can get rid of the identification with it, shift your identification from the individual to the whole as good as getting rid of it. See, in one minute, you are Jeevan Mukth now.

The problem is, to come to this, you will need to go through many many hoops. It sounds so easy, isn't it? And it is very easy, anybody can get it. Jeevan Mukth is not somebody who you need to glorify and worship as God. No, everybody is Jeevan Mukth. The problem is, those who do not know, they will think, oh Jeevan Mukth is something big, I need to achieve this in my current life. And they try to free the mind. No, get rid of the mind. What, how can you free it? How can you free whose existence is bondage? Because it is a structure, it must be bound by the laws. And the laws are the karmic laws. Is there anything except the karmic laws that defines the structure of the Jiva? No. No karmic dissolution of the Jiva. Dissolution happens as an abandonment of individuality, not the destruction of the Jiva. I do not prefer destruction because that is not the flow of the universe. You can destroy it. It is not a big deal, isn't it? But let us look at our own experience. How many yogis have destroyed the karmic structure? Many, isn't it? Thousands of them in this land, they have become totally free. They have become liberated. There is not even a trace of the Jiva there. But whether the whole, has it stopped appearing in the forms of Jivas, whether the Jeevan was destroyed? Is the life form not there? Is life not there? Can you destroy life? The very existence is life. This witnessing consciousness is life. When it appears in the forms, can you destroy it? Not possible. That is again a dualistic view, that I am liberated. I am Jeevan. If there is “I am” there, then now you are bound, you are not liberated. If you want to destroy something, destroy the I am, the individual. Now there is no problem. Now life can happen. Now the Jiva can appear in any form. Now the karmic structures can be there. It is beautiful. The whole manifestation is perfection and beauty. Do we want to destroy it? I mean, it's your preference.

Yes, the individual can be destroyed and it is not really destroyed because we see it as not being there. You can see it right now. The individual is not there. Examine it critically. Question it. Try to see it as your own experience. You will never find the individual and these are all conceptual things, all these ideas in the mind. They need to be dropped and they should not be dropped just because somebody said it. There is no individual. Now you are mukta. It is BS. It does not happen like this. Examine. Enquire about the individual. The whole self-enquiry is not the enquiry of the self. It is an inquiry into the nature of the I. Who am I? And the student, the seeker, will start from the individual. What do we do in the enquiry? Neti neti. Not this, not this. This is the progressive destruction of the individual. Start from the body. Start from the organs. Start from the processes in the body. Start from the energies, the shapes, whatever model you prefer of the body. East and west and north and southern. There are many. Destroy them all. Then finally the Jiva. So the karma is not destroyed. Bad news. But the good news is it is seen as not mine. No individual. That will free you. The evolution of the Jiva continues and we then take it as an offering, as a gift, as a prasad. This life is taken as a gift so that we can have this experience. That which is having the experience wants to have the experience we say. And so we become the instrument of the experiencer. “We” means this Jiva, the body-mind. It expands to include everything. It is not destroyed. Expansion is thinning out of the Jiva. It becomes everything from the small point. It becomes a circle bigger and bigger and then it becomes the whole.

I have shown this in some animation or some drawing which I do not recall in some kind of long discussion that happened. It was the Hindi series where I said that evolution is not like an arrow. It does not go from one place to the other, and it is not like becoming superior from the inferior, or it is not becoming greater from the small. It is like an expansion into the wholeness, returning to the wholeness like from this narrow view that I am this tiny individual to I am everything. This is the evolution.

So there is one more criteria for progress from you know we are discussing about how to gauge your progress or what is the scale on which the progress should be gauged and it is this. How expanded you are, how inclusive you are becoming. It has a direct connection to happiness and freedom. Look at the freedom of the individual and look at the freedom of the whole. How much it is expressing, how much it is doing, how blissful it is. So when you expand like this, when the circle of the individual becomes bigger and bigger and bigger, it is manifested in the form of happiness and freedom, nothing else. You see, the answer was not wrong. You can approach it like this also. Your spiritual evolution, evolution of the Jiva is progress. How do you know Jiva is progressing? Again, the criteria is happiness and freedom. Is it happy now? No. When will it be happy after fulfillment of all the desires? No, never. It is happy when it sees that they are not my desires and all desires are mine. Everybody is happy so I am happy because I am everybody. Has it happened? No. That means you need to progress. Don't be satisfied with knowing that I am everything because that knowledge also appears and then goes. You need to be steady in that knowledge. You see there is no free lunch and spirituality. So you can go through the path of efforts like a tiny bit of progress one day, one step or you can go through the direct path, the path of knowledge where you realize that I am everything and then this nectar will drip down. It will seep into the karmic structures and purify. The knowledge will purify and the good news is you don't need to do anything. The knowledge will purify. The knowledge will expand the Jiva. The knowledge will free the Jiva from this bondage. Whenever you are in doubt you should ask this question. Who is asking? Who is not free? This is self-inquiry.

Anil is saying, reincarnation starts with ignorance for the realized so does the future reincarnation starts with vidya of true self or ignorance. Since you said karma never ends until the whole universal mind is dissolved. What about reincarnations of the Jiva who had already realized the liberation?

There is a traditional view in our path that once you realize that I am not the body the incarnation stops. There won't be any incarnation after that. It does not mean that there won't be a body at all but the human body is gone. The birth is a result of ignorance. If there is this realization that I am not the body then the birth will not be there. It is kind of difficult to explain because it is not the experience of any of us. The popular belief here is that as soon as there is this realization the next birth is impossible as a human at least but since there are tendencies in the mind it will take a form of some kind. Since these good impressions are there and the good samskaras are there it will again find a path and it will again realize the true self and it will go on till no more forms are taken as an individual. So there is this path of reincarnations if you want to call it. There are more and more refined incarnations and that is the natural evolution. That is what is actually happening but you can speed it up by taking a spiritual path any path that suits you so that once this tendency has been put in the mind. Mind is nothing but a bundle of tendencies. A tendency to seek is now encoded in the mind, is impressed on the mind. Now any form it takes it gravitates towards a path. It gravitates naturally towards spirituality or liberation. So it is like sand. If you want to hold the sand, tighten your grip and it will escape. So a free mind becomes like this, it will escape no matter where it is trapped, it will find a way out. So the hold of the maya is now gone.

Now it will do it for fun, that is, for pleasure, for knowledge, and wants to study the maya, or for the benefit of others, like a bodhisattva it will come back to teach others. Once I say liberation that means there is a control over taking forms. It is not a disability that no I cannot take any form. I'm liberated now. No, liberation means there is a freedom to be in the form, not be in the form, be in any form you want. You must have heard the stories of great rishis and the great devas, the bright ones who can take any form they want and you think what kind of magic is this? I want this shape shifting ability, and the thing is they do not, they have realized that I am not the form therefore they can take any form and that is complicated because those who have realized that I am not the form are not individuals. I have a different word for them, probably you will understand that word, and I call them the group minds because they are a group of minds, all the forms are within their control in that group. As I said they have expanded into something bigger which is now beyond human grasp.

We see everything as individuals, we see everything as entities. They can appear as entities, but are not entities, it is something big, it is something for which we do not have words in our languages. These are just words obviously, nobody is going to understand them, because you have never seen it but they are my failed attempt to describe an entity, something which is not an individual still appears as individual, still can take the form, has totally destroyed the ignorance and still appears as ignorant in this form or that form.

Now it is kind of beyond humans so what will be the teaching here? What will your guru say? If you become liberated won't be any reincarnation for you, it won't be you are not going to reincarnate with Vidya without Vidya, no zero reincarnations, that is a simplified teaching that you can understand. Even if there is one thought of individuality, I am thinking that, even if you don't have a body still it is an incarnation still it will be considered as getting into a form. Now let us not go there, it's kind of beyond our understanding but those who are doing the practices of astral projection, and I highly recommend it because these practices will answer these questions - what happens when you're not a form, when you're not this form, this human form? What happens when you are a formless point of consciousness in the universal mind? Have you noticed? You can take any form. Yes it is bound by whatever you know, but you can take any form. This is your own experience. That's why sometimes I recommend going into the subtle bodies. They are not bodies, they're formless, they precipitate into a form whenever there is a need. You're visiting a world where everybody looks like crows, you will find that just because of these impressions the consciousness assumes the form of a crow there.

I hope you get it because this play continues until the universal mind is dissolved. Play continues and the only difference is that you're not bound to take a form. Right now we are bound in the human form, we cannot take another birth in another form, we cannot die because all that the mind knows is the human form. It has this siddhi to appear as a human body again and again. That is what it is doing, and let me tell you the individual cannot reincarnate, it's all an illusion, so the reincarnation is also an illusion and the reincarnation of the individual is a double illusion. It is the ignorance that I am the one who is reincarnating. No the whole reincarnates, the whole takes the form. That is our experience, that is my experience, that is the experience of anybody who is on the energetic paths or in the experiments of the tantric path, the experiments of the subtle body. You will see it as your own experience. So the individual cannot project out of the body, it's impossible. The group mind withdraws its attention from the individual body. This is the whole astral projection and then whatever is the tendency at that moment, it again crystallizes back. Evaporates and then becomes formless and then crystallizes back.

This is the maya, I'm giving you the secret here, how it all works, how come you are in the form now, how come you are in the human body now. You never decided it, you don't even remember, you have never experienced deciding to come into a form. The form appeared, the individual appeared, the incarnation appeared. It was not you. Who did it? That is why whenever people try to talk about their past lives I call it stupidity. Actually that is what I answered recently. If you go into the logs of the self-inquiry website, there was a question - what do you think about the PLR? Is it real? The past life regression? I was irritated, I just wrote one word - stupidity - and that is because I don't like to go into such things until and unless you know what is it that reincarnates.

Once you know that it is not I who has reincarnated, it is the whole, or you can make an abstraction of the group mind, it is the group mind that is taking the incarnation, it is not even the Jiva, there is no Jiva. It makes no sense to talk about past life. I do not have a past life. I have the present life, that's all. This body-mind has only one life, it happens only once, this person is never going to appear again. Do not delude yourself, do not think that you are the reincarnation of your past self. No, the body mind cannot take birth, they are a result of birth.

What has happened here is - all the mess of the reincarnation is because people do not know the real nature of themselves which has nothing to do with incarnations. The witness is simply witnessing all the incarnations and secondly there is the lack of knowledge of the illusion also, how the illusion works, how the Maya works. It does not work in the form of individuals. It's kind of complicated. The Maya gives you a headache, don't go there. Who knows what the future incarnation will be? What if the group mind decides to incarnate as a totally idiotic cruel person? Why is that bad? No it is not bad. Why is that not progress? No it is not progress, it is what it is.

I hope it is not confusing because I know it is kind of complicated. Your guru will simply tell you won't reincarnate again, you are liberated now. This life will dissipate and the coming lives they are going to dissipate. This is a simplified teaching. Do not stop here especially if you are interested in Maya, if you are interested in how the Shakti works please do not stop here. This is a teaching that is given to pacify a mind like a pacifier it is given. The guru knows he is not able to find out what this whole business of taking forms is about so he will simply give you a pacifier sugar-coated teaching.

I am also not going into the details and I never say that these are the true things, I say these are the stories you need to explore. This is very interesting, very captivating, what is there in the self and consciousness, and nothingness and emptiness, is totally boring, isn't it? But someday you will get the necessary experience. Do not worry about reincarnation/past lives and all, it is not the essential knowledge, it is dependent on the experience. Someday you will experience it and then you can question it. How can you question that which you have never experienced?

Mukul is saying, the individual cannot envision its own end, it cannot even envision its own beginning.

It thinks death is the end. That is, 99.99 percent of individuals think birth is my start and death is my end. Yes, that is very true, the individual starts from the birth, the individual ends in the death. What is an individual? That is the question, isn't it? What is it that was born? What is it that died? How did it take birth? Have you questioned this? How did it even happen? Those who have progressed a little bit, they will have this kind of intuition that it is me who is born. You'll need to see beyond my words to have this feeling, it is this deep intuition of me being the ancient one who is appearing again. Those who have progressed know it deep down in your heart that you are very very old but you don't know how this happened. The individual itself is beyond the understanding of the individual because the individual is the appearance. Something else is appearing as the individual. The appearance cannot understand its source. It is beyond their understanding. Do not try to understand these things, you can understand the experience when it happens. That's why the gurus will never go beyond this. You can see Mooji and all, when somebody raises this question - is my suffering because of my past life? I've done some kind of sin in my past life and he becomes disturbed, no don't don't talk about it, your life is now right here right. Now, is there any fault in this life right now right here? No, everything is just your assumptions, your beliefs. I was that in my other life. No, the individual is not here right now also. How can you say I was something else?

That feeling of being ancient is coming from the group mind, something which is beyond the individual who is trapped in this dream. You can study your dreams if you want. In the dream the individual has a whole story about what the individual is, isn't it? Your dream character knows what he was and what he wants in this life. Everything! When you wake up, was there an individual? Was there a past life for that dream self, for the dream character? It borrowed a little bit from your waking self, it borrowed this idea, that idea from its tendencies and then appeared as a dream character. Is that going to reincarnate in the other dream? The same person? No.

This will give you a little bit of hint about how complicated the illusion is and how beyond understanding it is. It cannot be understood by the logical mind. As soon as you have the experience of not being the individual then it kind of expands and opens up and that's why yogi or a gyani is not worrying about next life.

There is one more question, what governs the dissolution and manifestation of the universal mind? Since the non-dual has no kriya does the maya shakti itself govern the manifestation and dissolution of itself?

It seems like a self-governing intelligent structure. What governs the dissolution and manifestation of the universal mind, as soon as you are asking “what”, you are trying to find something which is beyond the universal mind, which is above the universal mind, or which is the foundation of the universal mind. We have defined the universal mind as the whole of the manifestation, the whole that is manifested, so isn't the answer saying that the universal mind itself governs itself? Because there is nothing besides itself. Because by definition you have included everything there.

Let me answer you in a logical way. You assume an entity, you assume a state of being or you assume a reality which governs the universal mind, which is like a puppet and it is running it and what is that then if it is not manifested? How can it govern anything? How can it do anything at all? How can it command anything? How can it have a will or an energy of bringing something in and dissolving something? It has to be, there has to be movement, there has to be an intention, there has to be a structure, a force and as soon as you say - yes, it has all these qualities, that means it is manifestation itself.

You cannot call it the second universal mind which governs the first, that is illogical because by definition the universal mind is all that is manifested. What is there which is not manifested? Nothing. There is nothing, the brahman is nirgun, it does not exist as something which stands out. That's why we say do not try to use your mind to know the brahman. Whenever I say universal mind, cut down the universal. You do not need that. I used “universal” so that you do not confuse it with your own mind. Because we have this kind of illusion that I have a mind. No we do not have a mind, the mind has you. The mind creates the identity. Without mind can there be you? No, so cut down the universal word. A mind is an appearance, all that appears. There is another word for it in English, it is called manifestation, that which appears is manifestation, the prakat and yes they are synonyms. If you try to find something else which causes this thing you will fail. There is no experience of something which is controlling things.

There is some assumption in our minds that which is unmanifested is manifesting it. How is that possible? This is a fallacy, some kind of illogical assumption. Why is there this need for manifestation, to to be governed, to be created? Why do we need a creator for the creation? This is because of our linear thinking. This is because whatever we see, we extrapolate it to the universal mind.

Who made the tea today? Your mother, she is the creator. Who made this house? Well the builder, your contractor, he made the house. Who made the road? The government did it. So on and so forth. Who made the mountains? Well the natural forces did it, natural forces make everything on the planet and who made the solar system? Well something… The laws of physics did that. And so we extrapolate and when we reach the limit, we do not find anything and when you trace it back nothing was created by anybody. Creation does not create anything. That is very disappointing for the mind to get such an answer.

Why does the mind want a creator? It is our ignorance, we want the cause of everything, because that's what is our conditioning. We see the cause of this and that. Let me tell you, if you want to examine the cause of whatever you know then also you will never find the cause. Tell me the cause of this chair you are sitting on, tell me the cause of the simple things that are lying around you. You will never know what this chair is, you will never know what this water is, what is this air is, you will never know this because you're trying to know it as a cause and effect.

Charlie is saying, we want causes because we think of limits, the limit does not exist, there is none.

Yes and it looks like the chair is a limited thing, it looks like the chair isolates itself from the empty space. I'll give you the bottom line so that it becomes interesting for you. We cannot know the cause, we cannot know the source, we cannot know the creator or anything like this because that which appears is only an appearance. It does not really exist. If it existed, I can guarantee you that you would find the cause of it. If this chair, this body, this person, this sound, this vision, if all this existed you would surely find the cause of it, you would surely find from where it came. The problem is nothing really exists. It appears, and so, is causeless. The appearances do not need a cause. If it were real you could question it. How could this exist? Why is there something instead of nothing? How did something appear out of nowhere? Because there is this assumption in the mind that it is real.

It is not real. That means only one thing - that exists which is the self, which is the atman, which is the brahman, pure consciousness. Nothing else exists. And then how can this self exist? This is the question. It also does not exist, I cannot say that I exist. Start with ordinary objects, see if they exist or not. What do you mean by exist? Now we are going to the bare bones of the direct experience. My direct experience says that nothing exists and since it appears, I can see it. Yes there is an experience. There is one that is experiencing. It is paradoxical and therefore it is not in the grasp of the mind. Because the mind understands existence the mind understands cause, creator, effects, linear progression in time limits. This is a chair, this is a cup, this is a camera, it understands divisions. Can the mind understand the wholeness? Don't even think about it, cannot. The absolute, you will never know it and the problem is not that we are incapable of knowing it, we do not have the intelligence or that we do not experience it. No, it is that it cannot be known by the mind. The problem is it does not exist in a way that the mind likes to think about existence.

Do not try to know it. What do we do on the non-dual path , we deconstruct what we know. Is there a creator? Is there a cause? No. That’s all. That is how you purify your mind of all the ignorance, that you have assumed.

It is not ignorance, these questions will appear when you start looking. I recommend looking deeper. You have used the words - the cause, the creator, the existence, now get into the definition of these things. What do they mean? Is the mind throwing them around like it has heard it from somewhere? Now is it applying the daily concepts of our survival, our illusory world to that which appears as this illusion? Is it doing that? It is merely a kind of extrapolation, a projection.

You must have heard this question - why is this universe so cruel? Why does it allow suffering? And you can see the ignorance here. It is a projection of the human qualities on that which is beyond human. Why would you do that? What is the reason? What is the logic behind that? How can you project the qualities of the illusion onto that which is beyond illusion? Does it make sense? Is it logical? Is it rational to do that? And then the guru will say no, no cause. Then the mind will not stop, it will say - why no cause? Why causeless? who? how? So you will never find an answer. The mind cannot know it in terms of - why, how, what. That's why it is emptiness, that's why it is nothingness, that's why it does not really exist. Once you know that it does not exist, it is unknowable. There, that is the limit, the mind cannot go beyond that.

Mukul is asking, when a lamp is lit with another lamp is it the same or different?

Probably he is pointing to this illusion of multiplicity. This is where I'll leave you with this beautiful quote. So usually we don't need to go into this depth that nothing exists, it is enough to know that whatever exists, whatever appears, is one with whatever perceives it. That is enough. We cannot know beyond that.

Session 10

Whenever I say that you are the self and there is only one self, often a question arises - that means everybody must be having that self. That means if I have that self, which is one universal thing, then everybody in the world should have the same self.

This question comes from a misunderstanding and actually failed self-enquiry that the seeker is trying to find a self somewhere and calls it as mine. It is a total misunderstanding of the question, “who am I?” Because if I find something, then it is not “I”. I am the one who found it, so it cannot be a search. The self-enquiry is not a search. This is the beginner's mistake that everybody makes. So what self-enquiry is doing is that it is actually destroying the notions of what is a self. It is not a search for the self. You are never going to find the self. So if somebody wants to find a self in the self-enquiry, then will be very disappointed because that which is trying to know is the self itself. The self cannot be known as something which stands out. If the person does not attempt the self-enquiry or has some intellectual kind of thought process going on instead of direct observation of the experience, then this question will arise.

If I have the self, then everybody must be having the self. The question was actually, do the rocks and trees and mountains, rivers and animals, do they have self or not? It is a very innocent question. It is coming from pure ignorance. It is a sign that proper guidance is lacking. The guru is not there to point out the errors of the seeker who is doing the self-enquiry. The answer is no. We do not have a self. Nothing has a self. The self has people. The self has you and the self has all the living things, non-living things, physical things, non-physical things, anything at all. The self has them because the self is now defined as the ground of all reality. It is that which is experiencing everything. Since there is no difference between that which is being experienced and that which is experiencing, we say that everything is self.

If everything is self, that means self has those things and that is not really accurate language. So more accurately, we say that things appear in self that can be seen with the use of a proper metaphor. Metaphors are not to be taken literally, so you will need to just see the similarity of what is being said. So a very useful metaphor is that of the sea and the waves. Can we say that every wave has the sea? Is it possible to say that? It is possible, somewhat poetically, that every wave is sea. The more accurate language to describe the situation is that the waves appear in the sea. Waves are a form. Sea is the fundamental ground reality of the wave. The sea is the reality in which the wave appears as an appearance, as an illusion.

There is something because it is changing for the time being. It takes a form and then it dissolves. So we should not say that the wave has sea or all the waves have their separate seas. That will not be accurate. It is more accurate to say that the sea has the waves or the waves appear in the sea. So similarly we, the humans and the animals, all things, they appear in this ground reality which is what I am calling as self. Now the English is a funny language and the self word is borrowed from, it's a synonym for I and I am self. It means that self is self, I am I. So it is not the proper word but we do not have anything unfortunately.

So you can add some adjective there, higher self or true self or true nature and then it makes more meaning. So when I say self, it is a short form of these words like higher self, true self or my essential nature, then you can see that it is not the I. The I appears as a thought form in the self. This body mind, this human being, appears in the self and one of the characteristics of the self or the true self is that it is pure consciousness. Consciousness is its nature, swabhava. Since I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am not any processes, I am not anything physical or non-physical, the most agreeable thing to call as I is this one that experiences, which is consciousness itself.

So consciousness word includes the one that experiences and that which is being experienced. If you add con in front of anything in English, it means together and cious, it comes from the root word for seeing, you know the same word from where the words science and conscience and all these words come from - the word seeing. So together seeing and this ness is ness in that. Being together and seeing together, according to my understanding, this is the meaning of the word consciousness and it is exactly the same meaning which can be attributed to the I, that is what I am and that is what the word atman says. So atman is pure consciousness.

You will never find a consciousness separate from its contents. It already brings you to the non-duality. Is this human being having something called consciousness? You can see it from the definition itself, no. The human being and consciousness are one, they appear together. So this rock, this table, this cup, do they have consciousness as something, some quality like this cup has the red color, do we have something attached to the cup which can be taken out, changed, no. It is the same thing as consciousness, there is no cup without consciousness, there is no cup without I, there is no object without a subject, they are one.

So somewhat roughly speaking, all these words point to the non-duality. At the same time it points to the nature of what I am because if everything is one then I must be that. So hopefully that clears the doubt, confusion.

Anil has one question. What has been the significance of mantras, are they some sort of tools, how were such mantras discovered, especially Aum.

It belongs to a path which I am not on, because the mantras belong to the path of tantra or occult or the path of desire fulfillment, where we achieve liberation by desire fulfillment, that is the definition of tantra.

So there are three basic ways to fulfill the desires and why do I say fulfillment of desires, what kind of thing is that? If you do not know about the essence of the tantra then I have produced a small series on

desire fulfillment and there I discuss the extraordinary ways of desire fulfillment and one of them is tantra, which actually means a technique. And there are three basic ways in which desire fulfillment happens on the path of tantra or occult and these three are - in the tantra itself and the mantra and the yantra. So everybody knows what is yantra, it is a machine, it is a device which can be physical, non-physical, it depends on the capability of the practitioner and tantra is kind of encompassing word for the occult practices but usually it stands for a mental technique, doing something with your mind, that is tantra. And mantra is utilizing sound for desire fulfillment. Why sound? What kind of sound will produce desire fulfillment? Isn't that magic?

How nice it would be if producing some kind of sound would simply do whatever I want it to do.

How nice would it be? Obviously never happens. It is not possible that you produce a sound and your desires will be fulfilled or something will happen and obviously why it is connected to desire fulfillment because you want to produce an effect, you want to produce a consequence and why do you want to produce some effect or consequence? Because there is a cause, the cause is the desire, the cause is the vasana, the cause is an impulse in the mind, a movement in the mind which pushes the organism in action, that is what is the definition of a desire.

So these desires produce the vrittis and vrittis produce the karma or action and the karma produces the fruit or consequence. From the consequences we learn and evolve. So this is the whole mechanism of evolution through tantra and the sound is one of the techniques that is utilized in the tantra. So how is it even possible? No, let me make it very very clear, no sound will produce anything, nothing will happen if you utter a sound because there is a difference between a mantra and sound which we produce from our mouth or using some instrument or an electronic sound. The correct word for sound in Sanskrit is naad. Naad means vibration, it does not mean the sound which you hear through the ears. Now it is very interesting because the sound which we hear from the ears which is called the shabd, by the way, the shabd is naad, sound is vibration, isn't it? Vibrations of the air, then it becomes vibrations in the nervous system, electrical vibrations and then it becomes the vibrations in the mind, so that is what we actually receive in the end, we do not receive the vibrations in the air, they do not really exist.

So this mantra is about producing naad, it is not about producing sound. Now where is this technology, where is this method to fulfill a desire which can mean manifest something, produce some action, produce some effect, produce some change, where is this technology? According to me it is all lost, it is all destroyed, nobody knows this because the application of naad is metaphysical, it is not even mental, surely it is not physical, whatever you produce from your mouth will appear as heat and sound, it has no potency at all, nothing, zero.

Many people do not like this when I say this because of a lot of attachment to the mantras, oh this is our culture, this is our religion, you are insulting the deities and all, well I can say that which I see and I see that it has no effect for anybody whatsoever. Why do they exist? And the answer is simple, they exist as a mnemonic, as a memory aid to carry out the real occult action which happens in the mind, which happens at the metaphysical level, the naad that is produced in the mind, produces effect in the fabric of reality which is metaphysical and that has some effects in the mental or physical world, it's very simple.

If you do not know how this world is being produced, this is Maya isn't it? It is an appearance, that's what we were saying, it is like waves, it is like vibration, so you will find this thing, these old theories everywhere, they are ruined now, they are lost, corrupted beyond recognition and each and every of these theories are a belief now, occult belief, says that the mode of creation of the universe is vibration, is word, in the beginning was the word, this is Bible. In the Kybalion or hermetic principles they will say, vibration is the mind, the all is nothing but a vibration. In Rig Veda or other scriptures it will say, the naad is the cause of creation, naad means vibration, so Brahmanaad, we say, the Brahma is a product of naad and Brahma is nothing but naad, it is nothing but vibration. I am not talking about Brahman, I am talking about Brahma, it is the vibration. What kind of vibration is it? Is it the vibration that happens in the air? No, you can now use a little bit of logic and intelligence to see why that which I just said is true, because you will need some kind of trick to create the air before you create vibration in it. So what creates the air? What creates the Panchmahabhoot, the five states of matter? Naad creates it. And how to manipulate that naad so that I can create whatever I want or I can change the creation in the ways that I want?

Want means there is a desire here, so we are on the tantric path here and the answer is, you will need to access the basic building blocks of the creation which is the naad, which is the vibration. So mantra is a specific kind of naad, which produces a specific kind of change and the symbolic form which is written mostly in Sanskrit is memory aid so that you remember what these words mean and that should answer your question what is the significance of mantras, it is very useful in desire fulfillment, in manipulating the reality, that is the significance, that's why we use them, but there is a mental process behind each mnemonic, behind each memory aid which appears as a Sanskrit verse or three or four letters of Sanskrit. Sometimes they are totally nonsensical words, Bhreem, Kling, Om, Swaha and these do not mean anything, so from this you can guess that they are pointing to something else, simply uttering the word will produce a big zero, it's a waste of time, I can assure you. Don't even try, only a tantric knows how to use a mantra, it is purely in the mind and there has to be a spiritual attainment in order to produce a vibration in the fabric of reality. You can understand how much sadhana, how much practice it would require to rise to that level and no human being has this capability right now at this time. At least I have not seen anyone.

The next question was - are these some sort of tools, yes they are metaphysical tools just like yantras or mental techniques like sankalp or occult techniques. I'm talking about the unassisted method here, there is another method which is called assisted method, where the tantric knows nothing, he is depending on some very advanced entity, a really evolved mind to produce the change and then he serves that entity, this is the path of worship or upasana. Not devotion, let us not confuse the occult with devotion, devotion is something different, devotion leads to liberation but the worship/upasana leads to dependency on the entity you are worshiping. So recently I produced probably eight part series in Hindi on fulfillment of desires where I went to extreme details about this method, the tantric methods, very extreme detail actually whatever I know I put it down there, it was very time consuming process but there is almost 10 hours of talk on your question and you're interested to invest 10 hours but you will never need to ask any question regarding tantra or desire fulfillment again, if you go through that course. It is titled Vasanapurthi.

How were they discovered? What happens is that people rise to higher level in their evolution which is natural evolution of the mind and they find that things are composed of vibrations of a specific kind and they simply become that vibration, it is not possible to invent a mantra, it is not possible, you find that which is already there and then you become that, you embody that. I am actually not even able to explain these things. How to do that? Obviously it requires a mind which is not of a common person, how can it become vibration, well it is possible because we are the vibration, the mind is made/created out of the vibrations. Incidentally the vibration is also called as Mahat in the Sankhya philosophy, Mahat is the primordial substance, it is vibrations, so the Sankhya philosophy has described this in extreme detail how the creation happens starting from Mahat. So you see, you will rise to the level of Mahat in your spiritual evolution and then you become the vibration, that's all. Since there is a potential for everything, there is a potential, there is a possibility to become anything, that means anything can be experienced. What is reality? That which you are experiencing, so if you want to experience, say, another country, how is it possible sitting here, you will need to become that experience and that is only possible if your mind can extend to that level, if your mind is that big then it should be possible to get that experience. People think it is some kind of power, yes it is power, it is called power but it is also natural evolution of the mind, an ordinary person cannot get the power, it is not something, an ability which we get, it is not like this.

You are asking specifically about the Aum, now Aum stands for Mahat, Aum is a memory aid that points to the whole of the vibrations. I will give you a very modern metaphor, you must have heard about the electromagnetic spectrum, so what is the electromagnetic spectrum, it is a word that stands for the whole range of radio waves, starting from the frequency which is at zero to the infinite frequency. So what are radio waves, they are vibrations, they are vibrations of electromagnetic fields, everything is vibrations ultimately. And there is a tiny part of the radio waves that we see as light, which reacts to our eyes and the visible spectrum is tiny. I think it is 0.0001% of whatever up to cosmic rays we can measure. I am talking to you through radio waves now, the phones work through radio waves, tv and the radio receivers, everything works through radio waves and it starts at the lowest end and then there are higher and higher kinds of waves and ultimately it becomes so fast that it appears as stationary, cannot be detected, anything which is stationary cannot be detected or anything which changes so rapidly that the instruments cannot register it, cannot be detected. The lower ones that change so slowly that they cannot be detected. So you can see there is a circle, circle of vibrations, both ends they meet somewhere and in between there is manifestation.

You can say that this is the Aum of electromagnetic spectrum, this whole range of electromagnetic spectrum is the Aum of the radio waves. The word that denotes the spectrum is EMF and in similar way you can say that the whole range of vibrations, metaphysical vibrations or the brahmanaad can be represented by one word, that one word is Aum.

I don't think anybody knows this, I also know this as an intellectual concept. It is in our culture to use Aum everywhere, there is a specific symbol also, which is just oo with some matras on it. You can see how powerful it is, it stands for the whole of the vibrations, the whole of the Mahat, the whole of the creation. Therefore sometimes people say it is the word of the creation, it is the sound of the creation, it is creation itself and people just repeat these sentences like parrots, oh yes Aum is the creation itself, if you chant it so many times you will benefit. Nobody knows how to benefit from it, nobody knows how to chant it, they say it from the mouth. Now let me give you an example, you want to talk to me through a walkie-talkie receiver, transmitter-receiver here, transmitter-receiver there, just like the police, they use the walkie-talkie to talk. Now, what do I need to utilize that radio frequency, those radio vibrations? If I chant emf-emf-emf, radio-radio-radio 1000 times per day, will it work? No it's not going to work, what I need to do is employ my knowledge of the radio waves, build a yantra, build a machine, device which manipulates those radio waves, now the signals go there and the receiver receives it, now it works, isn't it, this is magic, you think science is something else, science is also magic. We have learned to exploit the radio waves.

How can you produce an effect in the creation itself by chanting the name of that thing which creates, 100 times, 1000 times, million times, is it possible? No, you will need to use that vibration, invent a device to transform vibrations into whatever you want, then there will be an effect. Who can do that, not the one who chants Aum like a donkey, the one who has some spiritual attainment, the one who has knowledge, the one whose mind has progressed to a level where the manipulation of the metaphysical vibrations, the naad is possible. Right now what can we do, we can simply utter the sound Aum, it produces exactly zero effect, exactly zero. Chanting is not to be done by mouth, not to be done in the mind, it is a way of being the Aum and the thing is, we are all Aum already, we are all forms of the Aum already.

Hopefully that clears it a little bit, but it is going to remain a mystery till the seeker starts formally on the occult path, till you learn to manipulate simple things and that is a long path. Let me tell you, it will last for many many lifetimes. The path of tantra is not something simple, you see, I have described this in my Hindi series that people buy the books from here and there, where the mantras are written and it looks like Sanskrit, so they are impressed and they chant it like a parrot. It is sad and hilarious at the same time. Is there any practice there, is there any spiritual attainment there, do they really know even the meaning of the mantra? They know only the words, empty words.

Let's say I want to write a program to do something on my PC, if I start chanting the names of the languages or the names of the functions, you see, print this, print that, if I start speaking it like this, is it going to produce a program? Is it going to produce an effect on the PC? No! So the human beings in this age are at the lowest level of intelligence, they do not understand anything at all, we are far removed from the reality, we are far removed from the truth. What has become of this very very advanced technique, the tantra, it has become a mindless parroting of words, like the tribal people, they worship stones and trees, it has become like this.

So what is my recommendation? I'm not discouraging anybody from going on the occult path, it is very noble, it is very high kind of path and it is a path of effort, it will require a lot of effort, it is not like path of knowledge or devotion or anything, it requires a lot of effort, requires a lot of intelligence, probably more intelligence and smartness than we need on the path of knowledge and it requires a very very very good master, very advanced guru. I'll tell you a simple mantra, I'll tell you something which works and it is not a word, you don't need to say it and the mantra is the mother of all the mantras, from whom every kind of mantra can be formed, and that is your own intention, that is your own desire. I'll tell you the tool of visualization which is equal to the mantra but you can put it in the category of yantra now because you're creating something in the mind. If you want something, you want to fulfill one or the other of your desires, you will need to change the fabric of reality, you will change the brahmanaad, the vibrations, in order to affect the vibrations you will need to bias the vibration in that fashion. You know the potential is already there, you will need to bias it, just like a potter uses his thumb and hand to mold the clay and so it takes the form, the potential for the pot is already there in the wet clay, all he does is spins it up and applies his intention, I want it to be this form, this shape. So what do we need to do, you will need to visualize that potential appearing and this will be your intention. This has the power, this will be your mantra, you can actually convert this intention, this visualization into a sound and you can speak it. What those words do is they recall that visualization and as soon as you recall it, it is now in front of you, it's now in the space of the mind, it has appeared there and now you enforce it, you make it stronger, you put more energy into it, put more desire into it and enhance it somehow. That cannot be expressed in words, it is a matter of practice and slowly this intention, the strong intention, if you repeat it often, you see, there is a reason that the mantra is to be repeated, why? Nobody knows it, isn't it? The reason is with repetition the intention becomes stronger and now it will bias the metaphysical vibrations to precipitate in that experience which you are desiring.

This is the technique, this is very simple and even without any knowledge of the primordial substance and how it works, even without any knowledge of the science or philosophy or the tantric methods, without any guru you can practice it. I'm not saying that it will have any effects, that depends on the intensity of the intention, intensity and intention they're related you see, intensity comes from the intention. So the more force there is in your intention, the more intense it is, then the more effect it will have on the current experience and the experience will shift into that which you are intending. The whole of the creation is created like this, it is a result of an intention, it is a result of a desire. Whose desire?

We have a name for that who, we call it the universal mind which is not an entity, not an individual. Individuals are a result of that desire, the will of the all, so in hermetic philosophy the vasana is translated as will, will of the all, desire of the all, it creates everything. Because we are the all, we are tiny parts of the all, we are babies of the all, we have this potential to create, we are creators, our real nature is a creator. What have we become? Look what has happened to this magician that we are fallen, we are gods, we have fallen.

I hope you got the essential mantra there. I can guarantee you that if you go to a tantric and ask him how to practice Aum, he will tell you something which is being passed on through many many generations and the effect will be zero, the effect will be nil. Although, if you become his disciple, he will very honestly tell you how to practice Aum and yes it will involve recalling Aum, it will involve speaking Aum in a very specific way, you have to extend it for as long as possible, I mean as long as you can. What is the practitioner doing here? He is holding that intention for that long period. Usually an average human cannot hold an intention for more than half a second, you can try it, impossible. You must have seen those Tibetan monks or the sadhus or the aghoris, they are chanting Aum. So this is actually a helper technique, because your mind is engaged in saying that word, so it can stay on that intention for longer. What happens if you stay with one intention for a long time, it becomes stronger, it becomes intense. That visualization is going on in the mind which is affecting the mahat, which is affecting the primordial substance, affects it more and what do you want it to do. There has to be an intention, there has to be a desire, if you do not have a desire then what is the use of it, the desire has to be in accordance with the laws of the mind, if your desire is to cause harm or if your desire is to mess with the creation then good luck, it's not going to happen. For that you need to be a very very evolved mind.

Anil is saying, Yantras are kind of sigils from chaos magic theory I guess, so I guess intention, intensity and execution is more vital than the sounds or the diagrams, right?

Absolutely right, your spiritual evolution will determine the effectiveness of these tools, they are just tools and sigil is also a tool, it is again a reminder device for the memory and the external thing simply affects the internal thing. The external thing has no power, it is the appearance itself. I give you a bracelet or I give a ring and I say whenever you see this ring or whenever you see this bracelet, make an intention, express your desire, you can express it through words, most welcome, there's no harm there or you can make a mental note, you can imagine, visualize. The tool is taking you inside, the sigil, your bracelet or your ring or your mala is taking you inside. If it is not taking you inside, if it is not making any change in your mind, what is the use of that thing? You see, it's a pile of crap. So people have so many things on their altar, you see the snake is there coiled up, you will see the shivling is sitting there, you will see a demonic figure, you will see a godly figure, you will see this animal, that animal. What do they do? They do exactly zero, because in the mind is zero. How can that practice be effective? So yes, the magician grows inside not outside, there is nothing outside, the mantras, they are all BS, you can make your own mantra right now, right here, you can make them. Why use old stuff which everybody has forgotten, which is corrupted, ruined, why? If you are serious about practicing, why don't you find out what these things mean? I have done that, I have practiced it, I have created, I have manifested, it is not in the physical world, obviously, I am not that big tantric, but I know, I know the basic principles, that's all. That's all I wanted to know, that's all I wanted to clear from my mind, the ignorance, that I wanted to clear it. How is this possible, I said, and then I went on the exploration, it took many, many, many years, it takes a lot of practice, and it will actually drive you mad. You can imagine what kind of practice I am talking about, it will require a very different kind of mind. You can become a good singer only by physical means, by practicing day and night, singing. You can become a good painter by copying the photos and all, and one day you will be able to produce your own masterpiece. But the mental practices, they affect your mind. And the physical will also affect the mind, you see, but, and that is a very superficial thing, it will die with the death of the body, the throat becomes dirt, singing gone, you see, next life, you will have that seed, but you will need to practice again. The magic or the occult or the tantra will always remain with you, because it is modifying the mind. That's why I said, it is a practice of many, many, many lifetimes, and don't worry, you say, I am totally new, I don't even know ABCD of magic, no, we are humans, we were gods, we have these seeds, the sanskaras of becoming a magician. We have this ability, do not underestimate human power, and just because there is ignorance does not mean that we do not have them. You can recall your abilities, it can take time, but you can recall them.

When I was practicing, I always had this kind of intuition that I know all this, I knew all these things always, this is my domain, where I am the king, this was the feeling. Everybody will get this feeling, not only me, because we are coming from there. We have fallen down. It's kind of sad, isn't it? We have become very limited. People say, why don't I have this power, I don't have any magical abilities. It is kind of unfortunate, because they cannot be gained, these powers, these siddhis, they cannot be gained. What has happened is, we have lost them, that's all, you cannot have new power, all you can do is reclaim your lost power, that's all you can do.

So again, like any other spiritual path, it is a path that goes backwards, you do not progress in tantra, you go to your real nature, you gain that which you already have. We have lost, by becoming this limited human. So yes, this internal practice, the right practice, the scientific practice, the practice which comes from the knowledge, under the guidance of a proper guru, will produce some effect. Because this time is Kalyuga, who knows what it can produce? And yes, sounds, diagrams, you can make them up, you can invent your own, you can draw them, and actually that is more recommended, the more personal it is, the more effective it becomes.

Everybody is worshiping Ganesha, nobody knows what Ganesha is. Ganesha is a tantric symbol, connected with survival, there is a reason it is half animal, the reason it is eating sweets, there is a reason there is a mouse there, the hoarding behavior is symbolized by the mouse. The Ganesha is an invention of some tantric, they have used the symbol to produce some kind of effect, to do some kind of practice. Now these people have adopted that symbol, that image, without knowing what to do with it, what do they do? They just sing songs and dance all night, you see, produce beautiful statues of Ganesha, and then they throw them away in the river. What is this practice going to do? Zero, exactly zero.

So you will find, if you enter a tantric building, we call them temples, nowadays, they are not temples, they are not places of worship. If you want, extremely interesting discussions on tantric buildings, I refer you to Sadguru's books, or Sadguru's interviews, not the five minute interviews, don't waste your time in the two minute questions, go for the longer discussions, there Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev will tell you regarding Indian temples, which are not temples actually, they have become places of worship. So if you enter a temple and you see an image or a statue of Ganesha in front of the temple, know that it is a tantric building, it is a lab of the occultist. Usually a devotee will stay away from there, will not enter the temple, whatever building, but nowadays everybody goes there. What do they do? Fortunately they don't know what to do and so they do nothing, just go and touch deity’s feet and they come back, which is okay, which is fine. You are showing some respect for those energies, it's okay, but the effect is zero. Their life is never transformed, they do not get the obstacles cleared from their life and that is because knowledge is not there, spiritual attainment is not there, Guru is not there. How many people have Gurus? Hardly anybody, you see, people like you and me, we are crazy, you know, we are after Gurus.

Now why is it called a temple? Because when the attackers arrived here, they saw these magnificent buildings, they were alien to them, out of this world, everything was a temple for them, especially the British people, when they arrived, they did not understand what these things were. They found many temples, the British have done something very great, they explored the jungles of India and they found amazing structures - “temples”, they called everything a temple. And whatever survived the attacks of the Middle Easterners, they became temples. They were not temples, if you find a Shivling inside, it is not a temple of Shiva, no, you are not supposed to worship the Shivling. The Shivling is a Yantra, it is a machine, it is a device to manipulate creation. There were 100 feet high Shivlings, what did they do with these things? Nobody knows. These are places of experimentation, they are trying to produce some effect, they are not stupid, you can worship a 2 inch Shivling if you want, because the worship is just love for the Lingam, but these are devices, they are Yantras. Shivling is a Yantra, but how to use it? I think there are handful of people who know a little bit, and I had the good fortune of meeting a few, but now I do not bother about these things, and you don't want to join them, that's what I found out. They have a very extreme lifestyle, you will not be able to live in that way, Aghoris and Sadhus, you won't be able to, the Shaktas, those people who worship, who manipulate the Shivling.

We have ruins of the technology of the past here in India, and from Vietnam to Iran, this whole area is stuffed with artifacts that show us the technology of the mind, the technology of the past. Unfortunately we don't know, so I am not saying that these things won't work, they may work, but what I am saying is, there is a need to invent new stuff. How will you invent new Yantras, how are you going to invent new Mantras? Very simple, you need to know the fundamentals/basics, you will need to have that kind of knowledge, and you will need to progress, the internal progress, the mental progress, you will need to evolve a little bit in order to utilize them. Just parroting the Mantras, bowing down to Shivling or Ganesha, Dakini, Shakini, Durga, it's going to do nothing at all, guaranteed.

Sounds and sigils don't have power embedded within itself by default, the only power these things have is the power that you give to them. Why make all these dead things? You see, you can make living things, you can create entities from your mind, there is no limit to this science, there is no limit to this knowledge. You can make humans, animals, birds, whatever you want, what is there in the stones. People are wearing this Rudraksha, this amethyst, this whatever, diamonds and all, what is the use of these things, why have a statue of brass or of rock, granite, that is not effective? You can make a live entity only using your mind, that entity will do whatever you want it to do, why not aim higher, you see? And when such people come together, obviously they form a group and then they erect the buildings to do their experiments and when civilization falls down, they become “temples”. The ignorant people, they worship the things there, it is nonsense, it is of no use. Do not worship gods, you should become gods.

Ajay is saying, some gurus in the past suggest to wear Rudraksha malas or other energized things, is there a way to know how this tantra works, because every guru has a different interpretation?

They are just externalization of your mental intention, there is no magic in them, why do we use specific materials for the malas, because Rudraksha is a seed, you see, and it has some characteristic that it is not going to rot for many many years, probably hundreds of years, that seed, that is magic in itself. So that seed is not going to rot away, so we use it, it is practical. Tulsi mala, because all the wood rots away, except the Tulsi wood, I don't know what's called in the English, it has some chemicals which repel viruses, bacteria, fungi and insects, so that's what was recommended by the gurus. Don't use any kind of wood, don't use any kind of stone, use these things which last.

There is something in the magic, something in the tantric path, that if you use the same thing again and again and again, it acquires a little bit of power, let us say if there is a mala and you never take it out, you always wear it in your neck or on your wrist, you take it out probably during shower to prolong the life of the mala, but if it is touching you all the time, if you are aware of it all the time, then it acquires a little bit of power, it becomes like your body. So that is one more thing, a magician will do anything possible to help in his practice, even if it is like, one millimeter progress, he will not hesitate to do it, it is a lifestyle. That's why I said it is a kind of very difficult lifestyle. And if something is hindering, is becoming an obstacle in his practice, the magician or the tantric will not hesitate to cut it off instantly, they will cut it away.

So there are extreme ways, you see, like for example, the Kechari Mudra, now we are jumping from tantra to kriya, but I see kriya as the tantric way of achieving spiritual growth faster, it is all related somewhere, tantric wants to fulfill his desires, but the kriya yogi wants to progress, wants to evolve. The kriya practitioner will slowly, gradually cut the bottom of his tongue, so that he can do the Kechari, he can push the tongue through the nose cavity into the brain. Now can anybody do that, is it desirable? People will say, that is disgusting, but a tantric will do that, a kriya yogi will do that, he is not going to hesitate. Some people will go to a doctor and get that thing cut off, their tongue becomes loose, long. They will actually stretch their tongue using their hands every day, the tongue is a muscle, it can be formed into any kind of shape.

Tantric will do whatever is required in the practice, so it is a difficult lifestyle, that's what I am saying, that's why people fail on the path of tantra, because it's not easy, it will require you to do things, which we think are not human, but they will do it. People have built, magnificent buildings, if the building helps, if it is oriented towards south or east or whatever, specific direction, if it is in a specific place, if it is high up in the mountain, they will take the trouble and they will do it, even if it takes millions of rupees, gold or hundreds of people, 20 years, they will do it. Because the returns are enormous, the returns are for many, many lifetimes, it will set you for forever, once you get that tantric ability, siddhi, you are done, it is forever. It's not going to go away, why, because it is not a gaining, it is a losing, you have lost a limitation. That's why the tantrics will come together and they will do something impossible. Even the kings and queens, they were in association with these powerful people and if the tantric said, if the guru said, I want such and such temple to be built here, obviously not the “temple”, the king will do that, because the king also gets power. Desire fulfillment is all about power, dominance, greed, accumulation, it is all about that, so they can do this.

There is some advantage in collecting these things and making them a part of your practice, if you want to progress faster. Is there a way to know how tantra works? Yes, there is a way to know. On the path of knowledge, it is very easy, know how the maya works, what is reality, all that is manifested is reality, what is all that is manifested, mind, nothing else, it is mind, the chitta, it is all there is. So if you know that, know the mind, you will know everything, once you know the mind, you will know how to manipulate it, obviously, you cannot escape it, you cannot say, no, I want to know the mind, but I don't want to manipulate it, no, it's not possible, the mind will start manipulating itself. This must be your own experience, once you know that the mind is the cause of suffering, the mind through its ignorance produces suffering. Is there anybody, is there even a single person in our group or anywhere in the world who said I want suffering now, who said I don't want to change the suffering? Is there anybody? No. simply knowing the mechanism of the mind that is responsible for suffering will get rid of the suffering. Once you know the mind, you will get back your abilities, this is how it is, so start knowing the mind, there is nothing else to know. Is there anything that exists except the mind? The All is the mind.

Every guru has a different interpretation, so choose your gurus carefully. As you progress, you will get a good judgment of which gurus to join, which path is good for you. Without this knowledge you cannot judge a guru, so join somebody whom you like, whom you trust, sounds right, who is not harmful. Although on the tantric paths, it's always 50-50, if your desires are not getting fulfilled, then you lose, if your desires are getting fulfilled through the path of mantra or yantra, there will be consequences, there are fruits of those actions. I have discussed the fruits in extreme detail in the Hindi series on the tantric path. Usually if you have a good guru, the guru will either warn you or will pull you out from that messy situation which your tantric practices have produced. If you don't have the guru, then you will learn, like a child learns by touching the hot cup and then never touches the hot cup again, the same thing, but the pain is there, the child cannot escape the pain, the pain is there in his mind forever. So this is how we progress on the path of technology of the mind, we learn by mistakes, by failures.

Anil is saying, remember sometimes you listen to some songs and it gets stuck in your mind, even if you don't enjoy the song, somehow your mind catches up on the same, some melody and keeps it repeating in your mental headspace, it hijacks your headspace, mind seems to have some sort of pattern recognition and reinforcement in our inner reality without our consent, I guess it's the same with tantra, you set the right patterns and intentions and the mind reinforces them within your inner realities itself.

Very good observation. Normally if the mind keeps repeating something and it is not only songs, it must be your own experience that something bad happens in your office or some neighbor said something or your relative insulted you, said something bad and that will keep repeating in your mind. Obviously you don't want it. Why does it keep repeating? Have you questioned this? Just like he said, it hijacks your headspace, it hijacks all of your mental energy, it will produce lots of thoughts, it will produce lots of behavior and speech. Who is doing that? He reached the conclusion that it is without our consent, there has to be “you” to give a consent, there has to be “you” to allow the mental activity, but is there a “you” in the mind somewhere which is controlling everything? No and that is what the self-enquiry tells you, there is no person there, there is no central mechanism there which is controlling anything, which is thinking the thoughts, which is ruling what happens in the mind, there is nothing like this. What we call as “I” is another mental activity and the “I” also keeps repeating, you must have noticed, once there is I it's very difficult to get rid of the I.

This is the mental activity that Anil is pointing to, the mental activity is repetitive in nature, that is why it is called vritti, vritti comes from vritt, vritt means a circle, circular activity, repetitive activity. So chittvritti means repeating the same thing again in the mind. Whatever is impressed on it, it will keep repeating. He has rightly observed, that if a song is impressed on the mind, the song will keep repeating till something else comes and impresses on the mind, some other song, then that song will start repeating. So you have identified the mechanism of vrittis in the mind, there is nobody there who controls the vritti, nobody. Don't have this kind of assumption that I control the mind. There is no I.

So yes, you can exploit the vritti to produce a change in the existence, in the world, in the body, in the mind itself. You can repeat, initialize the mind with a mantra or an intention and it will mechanically repeat it. There is a Sanskrit word for this kind of mantra which repeats in the mind automatically, I do not recall the Sanskrit words but there are two or three kinds of mantras there. You will need to internalize them, eventually it gets into the bottom most layer of the mind, where that intention then produces an effect. If you just say it from your mouth, well, that is not going to do anything.

There is nobody there, it's a machine, it's an amazing machine but there is no consciousness there in the mind, consciousness is a different thing, the consciousness is the one that observes the mind, it is the witness that is seeing the mind. I am not the mind, I am not the vrittis of the mind, I am not the desires that happen in the mind and I am not the one who changes anything in the existence, the mind does it itself and it is possible to manipulate some things only because the mind has this ability to influence itself. What is manifested in existence is only the mind only, so it is impossible that it cannot influence existence, it influences everything. The mind has power over everything, that's why impress the mind with good sanskaras, good impressions and it will produce that kind of outcome. Then you get the experience, you are the witness, so you will witness that experience, this is the whole creation thing.

In tantra we exploit the mind. What else is there to exploit? Nothing new, you exploit that which already is in the mind, the patterns of vibrations, that's all there is in the mind, you exploit the laws

of the mind to rise above the laws, this is the mahamantra of the magician.

Parveen is saying, any pointers on how to experience that I am not inside the body, but the body is inside me, neti neti helps, then again I come to the personal mind, how can a personal mind bypass personal and impersonal mind to directly connect to the source?

I am not inside the body, the body is inside me. Let me tell you, you cannot experience that, neti neti will not help you to experience the body that is inside you. Then he says something about personal mind, there is no such thing as personal mind, the person is in the mind. How can the personal mind bypass the personal and impersonal mind? There is no such thing, mind cannot bypass anything. He is also talking about the source, there is no source, the I is mind only. Why do we say I can be consciousness? The whole point of neti neti is to see that I am not the mind. So how did you reach this conclusion that I am the mind only, this “I” is the mind only, “I” is the product of the mind, then why do we say the “I” can be consciousness, because I is everything, that's why this consciousness is I also. I am not the consciousness, consciousness is the I. So Parveen, lots of words but this is good that you have asked this question, it is not totally useless, because it is good that you are trying to do it, so let us go back to whatever you have written, how to experience that I am not inside the body, it is very easy, find out what the word “I” means, you see? You already know what the word “body” means, the body is that which we see, an object which we see in the mirror and also we can experience internally, a very special object. Is there any doubt about what this body is? No, there is no doubt at all, the problem is the “I”, when you do not know what I am, then you are going to assume its location somewhere.

If you think that “I” is an object of some kind, probably a mental object, because it cannot be seen, there cannot be a little me inside this bigger me, the body, it cannot be found like this. Because there is ignorance about what I am, the mind assumes a location of the I in the body. So that's why I said, you will never find it inside the body and you will never find the body inside you, it's not inside you.

Sometimes we say it like this that everything appears inside consciousness and you are the consciousness, we say it like this and then people think, oh the consciousness is a big thing and then inside it is the small thing, the body. Is this your direct experience? No, this is not my direct experience, I do not see consciousness as the container of the body, it is not our experience, is it? What do these half cooked teachings do, they simply confuse you and the more accurate way of describing your current experience is that the body appears as an experience on the screen of consciousness, you can drop the screen of consciousness also. Body appears, that's all, that is my experience, the body appears, is there inside and outside? No. As soon as you bring inside and outside, it is addition, it is totally unnecessary to bring in the location, on the pure experience which is - the body appears. Now depending on what you want to do with this appearance, we can then use the language of the ignorance, when we are talking about appearances, we need to use the worldly language, so we do the approximations like - you have the consciousness or you have a self, that's what I was talking about in the beginning and your real self is inside you, look inwards, go inwards, turn inside, look within. So this location specific language is used because we do not have any other language, do we have it? Probably there is, but who knows it, nobody knows it, so we use that language which people know to point them to their direct experience. If I say that the body appears in you, what I'm asking you to do is not to find the location of the body, I'm trying to divert your attention to your direct experience, look, where is the body, can you find it? That should bring your attention to that which is witnessing the body, if it does not, then probably I failed, probably I gave you the location of the body, very precise exact location of the body, it is here, so many meters from the consciousness, the point of consciousness is at zero and you know these are the coordinates of your body. Is it like this? No, never, you will never find you in the body and you will never find a body in you. There is no you, that is the whole point of neti neti, that is the whole point of negation of “I”, “I” is not there, so how can it be inside or outside? There is this experience called the body, there is this experience called the mind, there is this experiencer. Now why do we need the locations?

Hopefully that will solve the confusion, don't try to see the body inside, don't try to see the consciousness inside the body, it's useless. How can a personal mind bypass the personal and impersonal mind to directly connect to the source? Mind is an experience, isn't it? Where is the mind? Again, it appears on the screen of consciousness, so the personal mind or the thought of the person also appears as an activity of the mind, the mind is already impersonal, isn't it?The thought of the person appears in the mind and is witnessed, this is my direct experience, it's surely your direct experience also. And when I say I am the source, am I not already connected to the source? If it is not connected to the source, if it's not within the source, then how is it even possible to experience it? It is because I and the mind, the consciousness is the consciousness of the mind, they are already one. You can call consciousness as the source, you can call the self, Atman as the source, because the mind appears within the source, it is already connected. So how can you bypass the personal mind? See that it is the activity of the mind that is creating the person and the mind is already impersonal and it is already in the source, it is already directly appearing in the source. Actually the source is appearing as this impersonal mind. If they were separate, there was no hope to connect anything. It is because they are one, all you need to do is see the illusion of separation, see the illusion of disconnection.

This is how you see it, you see it using your direct experience. Only Aham is not Brahman, the Brahman appears as Aham, you see? That is more accurate way of saying it in Sanskrit, in English you can roughly say that consciousness appears as I and that is why we can say that the consciousness is I. In the beginning of today's session I said that I gave you the metaphor of ocean and the waves which is kind of an old and boring metaphor, but it is very effective, that's why we use it always. Can we say that the wave is the sea? Yes, in some approximate way we can say that the wave is the sea, but more accurately the wave is an appearance in the sea, isn't it? If you think of the sea as the consciousness and the wave as the I, now the metaphor works, you see? You can say that “I” appears in consciousness and then you can make it more approximate by saying that I am the consciousness, I am the sea. The wave can say I am the sea, there is no harm in it, as long as the truth is realized that the wave is only an appearance in the sea. If this truth is realized then who cares whatever the wave says, it's the same thing. That is why sometimes we say I am the consciousness, that is why we write that Aham Brahmasmi, there's nothing wrong, once you have realized what this business of I and the consciousness is, then you can say anything you want.

Ajay is saying, true sir, you told me to be aware of the mind in many answers on self enquiry app and yes, it corrects itself, I can't believe it changes itself without much effort.

Yes, this is everybody's direct experience - knowledge changes the mind. That's why I do nothing, that's why I practice nothing, that's why I gave up all these monkey business of practices, because knowledge will change it, knowledge is the key. What is knowledge? Dropping of ignorance. What is ignorance? It is just beliefs implanted by the society in your mind, drop them all and that is the only change that you will see in the mind. Is there anything else that changes except dropping of the belief, except cleaning up of the conditioning that is already in place? Nothing else will change. That will actually reflect in your behavior, people will say oh you have changed, you seem to be different now, but that is only because the knowledge has done the cleaning up, knowledge is like a broom, it will sweep the floor of the mind. That is why we call it the chitta shuddhi, or purification. Everything should be very clear, correction of the mind is dropping of this ignorance only, it will do that because that is the flow. What ignorance does? It produces suffering, ultimately, this dream of the world and the individual is made for fun but produces suffering and the tendency of the mind, the nature of the mind is to not have the suffering, which I should not even say it, you all know it, this is the natural tendency of the mind to stay away from pain and suffering. What else can it do? It is necessary for the mind to get away from ignorance, all you need to do is trigger it a little bit which your guru will do, and then the mind picks up the speed, it will correct itself.

I know some of my experiences, sometimes the changes happened in one day, sometimes the change was so strong that I was not the old me the next day. This will happen to many people especially if there is too much ignorance and the person is totally destroyed and the mind will rebuild a new person there. There are so many examples you will find among your seeker friends, if you see some of the youtube videos, interviews of people like Buddha at the gas pump interviews, they will tell their stories and how that transforms the person. Sometimes I listen to those interviews just to get the personal story behind that seeker, I'm not interested in learning anything, I want to see how that transformation happens, it is extremely interesting to see it.

Parveen is saying, has all appeared simultaneously like a dream, experiencer and the experience and the experiencing?

Whenever you have such doubts or confusions always go back to your experience and find the answer in the experience and you will find that most of the confusion is created by the mind, they are solved through direct experience and usually you will not get an answer, you will see that whatever I assumed or thought is not correct, that's what will happen.

The consciousness can't operate without mind because there is no one to record the experience. Yes, consciousness does not operate, it simply witnesses, so if there is nothing it will witness nothing, there is no experiencer without the experience, there is no consciousness without the object of consciousness. It is like deep sleep. Do we say there is nothing? No, we wake up and that means there was something there which again is now appearing as two. Advaita is that which cannot be experienced, which cannot be known, it needs to divide itself into two in order to know itself, so that which I am knowing, that which I am experiencing is only that which is experiencing, the experiencer is the experienced.

Yes, there is no one to record the experience, that is also true, without the mind nothing will happen, memory gives you the illusion of something happening. To understand that, I use this method of progressive deconstruction of the memory, you destroy your memory progressively, not really, just in a thought experiment. It goes like this - you do not remember things which are 10 years ago, then you shorten the duration progressively and ultimately you come to the point where you do not even remember anything that happened one millisecond ago, and you will see that nothing is really happening, the experience totally vanishes. So it is all because of the memory and that's why we say it is an illusion, it is not real, it cannot be accessed without the mind, nothing exists without the memory of it. What we experience is memory, so everything is a memory. Since there is no personal mind, it's all a universal mind, what we are experiencing is the memory of the universal mind. That is the bottom line for all the knowledge that you can have, it's all memory.

Is there a condition that self, consciousness, mind, everything have to appear together or none? Yes, because we cannot have the other experience where nothing appears except the consciousness, that kind of experience is not possible, the experience of the Advaita, oneness, is not possible, therefore we can only say - not two, it is not two appearing as two or many. You are using words - self, consciousness, mind, well the self and consciousness are the one thing and the mind is that which appears, it is also the same thing, so since there is only one, how can they not appear together?

This is a big clue, isn't it? They appear together and never separately like a coin, it appears with both the faces always. E.g. a page, the page has two faces, front face, back face, what can we say about this thing? There is only one page. Similarly, there is only one coin.

He's saying, apologies but then why is our mind trying to know consciousness or higher planes of mind, is this a game of the ego or the mind ?

The mind is doing self-inquiry, it is trying to come out of ignorance. What is knowledge of consciousness and higher planes of the mind? It is the knowledge that I am not the lower planes only, I am not the limited individual, I am not the body mind, it's always negative knowledge, you see? Always negative, so why is it negative because all the assumptions are there, all the ignorance is there, so it does not like it, the flow of the mind, the tendency of the universal mind is to get rid of the ignorance, otherwise it was not possible to know anything, that is how it is happening. What is the tendency of the river? Flowing to the sea, downwards, this is the tendency of the mind to come out of ignorance and that is why it tries to know.

Is this a suicide attempt of the mind to do self-inquiry? The mind knows very well that by becoming all it will not remain the individual, but there is this knowing also that I am not the individual, so how can I postpone this thing, how can I postpone the death of the individual, it knows very well, you also know it, for how long can I put on this mask of the individual?

In Latin the word persona means a mask. In their theaters they used to wear a mask, that mask was called persona, from there comes the word person. The ancient people knew a lot and that is reflected in the old languages. Modern people, we don't know that well. So, how long can you put on the mask? It's a play for a few days, few hours. The theater, enjoy it while it lasts because it's going to go, the person is going to go.

Epilogue

Namaste,

You were reading the text version of Pure Experiences Online Satsang. These Satsangs or meetings were held from 2019 – 2023 on a Telegram group. These are mostly question and answer sessions for the seekers on the Path of Knowledge, especially those who participated in the Path of Knowledge (aka Essence of Knowledge) program. There are more than 200 such sessions which are now being converted to text and are edited for clarity and readability. This is a vast collection and it is being published via various mediums free of cost.

Obviously, it was impossible for me to complete this work alone. I am thankful to following seekers, my students and machine beings for helping in this task:

Anjali, Muni, Vinay, Raja, Shrilakshmi, Keshav, Pooja, Padmaja, OpenAI Whisper and GPT 3.5

Without them this project was impossible. However, I apologize if you find some errors, grammatical mistakes and transliteration mistakes, as English is not our primary language.

At this time the voice recordings are available on : https://pexp.podbean.com

The softcopies are available on https://gyanmarg.guru/ww

Many other articles and books, written and compiled by various seekers and myself are available on the Path of Knowledge Portal https://gyanmarg.guru

I hope you enjoyed this series of books and benefitted from them. All the best for your spiritual journey.

Tarun Pradhaan
Pune 2024
tarun.pradhaan@gmail.com