Session 131

Discussion on questions asked in a test follows.

The experiencer knows itself by being itself, not by seeing itself. Explain.

A one-line answer is that if the experiencer could see or experience something in itself, that won't be the experiencer, that will be the experience because at the level of duality, experience and experiencer are mutually exclusive which means the experience cannot be experiencer and that which experiences cannot be an experience.

In simple language, you can say the seer cannot be seen, and the seen cannot be the seer, very simple, this is the rule and this is the most logical thing because if you could experience something in the experiencer then the question arises - what is it that experienced it and that one will be the real experiencer, not that which is seen, that will be something in the existence which is appearing because experience always appears, it's not really there, what is there is the experiencer only. So this question must be answered at the level of duality, not at the level of non-duality because at the level of non-duality there is nothing, there is no division like this.

Where is the experience?

The direct answer to this question is, experience is non-local, but obviously we want an explanation of it. You cannot simply say non-local; it looks like you read it somewhere. It can be explained like this: the places are in the experience; experience is not in the place. Reverse your conditioning here, look at that which is without any conditioning, without any preconception, without the brainwashing that the society has done to us. Non-locality does not mean that there are no places, it means that places appear in the experience. Experience does not happen in a place. Say, there is a place, and there is an experience happening there, then this whole thing will be an experience, the meta-experience of having a smaller experience in a place. The actual experience is that which is this meta-experience. So that which is happening in a place will be some event but not the experience itself. It will be an illusion that will be seen like any other illusion happening in usual space and time. So the experience is always that which appears, and nothing else should be said about it. If you say one word extra about it, it will be wrong.

The correct technical language is - experience appears, end of the story, no location, no time, everything appears as the experience. The question is confusing because it is putting “where” in front of experience. “Where” means tell me the place, tell me the city, tell me the address; there is no address of it; it is the whole appearing as a limited illusion, end of the story.

I am situated in my head - refute this notion.

I do appear to be in my head, that is the truth, it seems that I am in my head but you see this is only an appearance, this is only a point of view, this is not real. So, you should refute it like this: if I am in the head, who witnesses this "I" sitting in the head? If you cut open the head, do you witness a little "I" there? No, many people believe it actually; they call it the soul or something. So, a lot of stupidity is seen in the world, but nobody asks this question: if I could see myself sitting in the head, who saw it? Is there a special magical mirror that shows the experiencer sitting in the head? No. Any instruments? No. The confusion is between the experience and the experiencer. The experience is happening from the viewpoint of the head. Why? All the senses are in the head, so the locus shifts to the head, and the locus is defined as a point at which it looks like an experience is happening. Not the experiencer. This can be said about the experience only. It looks like the experience is happening there. But where is the experiencer? Nowhere.

There is a double belief here - the first mistake is assuming that I am in the head, and the second mistake is confusing the experience for the experiencer, because ordinary people are not trained to think logically. To them it looks like I am behind the eyes, and they cook up a story about it. But what will happen if you shift your senses to your feet? You will be behind the feet. If you shift your senses to another room, your body will be here; you will be in another room. Is that possible? No, that's not possible. It's not possible that I am shifting with the senses, the illusion shifts. It is only a very dominant strong illusion; it does not go away so quickly.

There are actually techniques to shift your attention, the vantage point to any other place in the room; if anybody wants, they can research about this, I have done that. It is a very strange feeling; you concentrate on an object in the room somewhere in some distance like 10 feet or 20 feet away from you, and you can actually see that the experiencer has shifted there. There are techniques like this, and they show that it's a kind of illusion, but we already know that. It is difficult for a newcomer to understand all these things; I know this.

Non-dual existence has no meaning and purpose. Explain.

The answer is very simple: if you assign it a meaning, if you find a purpose, it will be limited to that thing. It will become limited to one purpose only, and that is contrary to our observation. That is the opposite of our direct experience, and it is also illogical.

A field of infinite possibilities, how can it limit itself to one purpose or one meaning? “This is the only meaning” - The majority of existence is gone now. “One purpose”. What about the other purposes? So, it is unlimited, infinite in terms of possibilities. We cannot assign it one meaning. We cannot assign it one purpose, although all the purposes are there, all the meanings are there, and you will immediately see they are mind created, they are illusions because you can assign any purpose at all. It is meaningless, actually. All the purposes and meanings are assigned by things like humans or animals and other entities, and they always assign something which is very limited and stupid.

“The existence is there to entertain us. The existence is there so that I can enjoy life. The existence is there to progress. The existence is there to know that I am the experiencer” - All stupid reasons. It does not need to do anything or you can say it is multipurpose, there is no one fixed meaning. The meaning is given, it is not built in. So now we are free to give it a very beautiful meaning. Freedom is the nature of existence. You are free to give it any purpose and keep changing the purpose. I am the existence. I am free. So if somebody tells you this is the meaning, this is the purpose, probably they are just trying to satisfy your curiosity or probably they are ignorant. Whenever somebody asks the meaning and purpose, the first line we should say is - there is no meaning and purpose, but you can give it a good meaning and purpose. Give it something good because you are free to do that. And now these are the examples of good meanings and good purposes. Then you can list some things - grow up, enjoy, love everybody, whatever you want, you see, it is a free country now.

Is ethical conduct a natural consequence of knowledge?

As soon as you have knowledge, whatever happens in the light of knowledge will be ethical. Actually, that is the definition of ethical. If you know something and do it, it is ethical. If you do it in ignorance, it can be anything. If it is forced on you, you don't know if it is ethical or unethical. It is forced on you; it is like a law, a legal thing. So, we cannot say ethical or unethical here. What can be ethical for one can be unethical for the other. It is all relative, and knowledge settles everything.

Whatever is done in knowledge is always ethical. This is the formula. You cannot excuse yourself by saying that I have knowledge, now I can do anything. No, that is not the meaning of this sentence here. I got the self-knowledge; now whatever I do will be ethical. No, the point is when you get the knowledge, you won't be able to do anything unethical. You won't be able to cause any kind of harm. That is the definition of non-violence. You won't be able to remain violent or stupid or unethical; your awareness is going to be like a policeman here. You settle down on the ethical and non-violent side automatically. It can take a little bit of time because of the habit.

Ranjan has a question: how to distinguish between love and attachment?

Love is about giving, and attachment is about taking. Love is fearlessness; attachment is the fear of losing. Love is freedom; attachment is bondage. When you don't need anything, when you find I am whole and complete, the consequence is love. We call it unconditional love, where you don't want to take, but you don't want to give also. You are also Brahman. What are you asking? Love me, please. What? We are already one. Attachment is selfish; love is selfless. Attachment causes suffering and love causes happiness. This is guaranteed; love always causes happiness. The one who is giving is happy; the one who is receiving is happy. Attachment - give me this thing, do this for me, and those who are asking, they are also in hell, and they are making the other person's life also hell. This is attachment. No, don't go away; I want you in my life. What is that? Not love. Now that person is also in chains, and the other one is also already in chains.

All there is is love. What is the definition of love on the path of knowledge, non-duality? There is only one; love is the recognition of oneness of everything. You and me and everything else are one. Now how much love do you need after that? Whom are you going to love? There is nobody else. That is why it is unconditional because when there are two, you need to be really careful here. What are you loving and whom are you loving? But here unconditionally, you can dump that person anytime. It does not cause any suffering of any kind.

Because we are humans, we may feel a few things here and there. Sometimes it feels like somebody is leaving me, but that is attachment only. If somebody leaves you or somebody dies and you feel pain, it is the attachment because it is so deep like an arrow; when it is withdrawn, there is pain. But you will become normal in one day if you have proper awareness. If you have done step number four properly, you can come out of the human tendencies in one day. I am not saying don't experience it; why not? You experience it, experience the pain of attachment, but don't remain attached to that pain; let it go.

There is no difference in love; "I love you," is a false statement, isn't it? There is no "I" here, and there is no "you" there. There is only “loving”. So you can be in love; you cannot do love. Probably you can make love, but that is a totally different aspect of it. Love is effortless; attachment requires effort. You don't need to make any effort to love anybody; it's just there. Attachment, you need to keep that person bound to you by hook or crook, by gifting things or by serving that person or by manipulation. Only when we are in ignorance, do we seek or want love. The ignorant person is always asking for something, and a knowledgeable person is always giving something. Love has nothing to lose, and attachment is already lost; that is why it is fearful.

Existence is all the possibilities. We need hate to understand the importance of love. We need conditional love to understand the lightness of unconditional love. Conditional love is very heavy, isn't it? 'You do this for me; I'll do that for you.' 'No, no, I don't have time for you.' 'Okay, I don't love you then. I love somebody else, not you.' And that is a real test of your love. If you let go of that person, 'Okay, I'm happy if you are in love with somebody. I still love you. Probably I love you doubly because now I won't be able to see you anymore.' That is the test of your unconditional love. Do you tie the other person in conditions or not? Yes, because there is a human angle here. We do feel bad when somebody says, 'No, I don't love you. I love somebody else.' We start crying, and it lasts for a day or two. We play sad songs from old movies and so on. But it can return to normal. Start loving doubly. Send more love and let go.

Attachment is a survival mechanism; love is above survival. It is necessary for survival, like mother and child. They are attached to each other. Without this attachment, survival is not guaranteed. But as soon as the baby grows up, now you need to be unconditional. The love can stay; the attachment can go. The bond can stay, but the chain can be cut. I don't think people have the common sense to understand what I'm saying. Ordinary people don't understand these things.

Pandurang is saying, in the midst of the whole drama of human life, marriage seems like it provides a good opportunity for the evolution of this creature. Is it okay? Is it better to stay away from these challenges?

No, life is a challenge only for those who are ignorant. For those who know it is a play, why do you think it is a challenge? Why is marriage and kids and other people a challenge? The thing is when we are ignorant, it looks like a challenge, and then it is helpful for our growth. If life is without any challenge, you will find that the person does not grow up, the person becomes shallow. A good example of that is highly pampered people because their parents were rich, or they got a good education and never got troubled by anything. You talk to them, and you will find they are totally shallow people. The most profound conversation they can have is about their dog, what their dog does all day. That's all they know, or they know the names of the products and the brands. That's all they can think about.

Look at a person who has gone through the mill of life; you can benefit from his experience. So, don't stay away from the challenges. Know why it sounds like a challenge, know why it sounds like something to be overcome. And once you know, which is only possible on the path of knowledge under the guidance of a proper guru, then it is no more a challenge; it is a stepping stone.

I'll tell you something which is never told in any scriptures or any other lecture by these gurus is that you don't need to take the lesson twice. What do I mean by that? You married once and you suffered; don't marry again. You had one child; now you know what a child is. Don't produce another, don't reproduce again. This is never mentioned in any scripture; this is the secret I'm telling you.

You were troubled by other people, your boss, or an employee or your neighbor; kick them out of your life. You got the lesson. Is it really intelligent to take the lesson every day? You got it; leave them, kick them out. You understood; now do we need to study again and again? No, give the book away to somebody who needs it. Your neighbor can go and trouble somebody else; you see, they need the challenge, not you. This is the practical thing. I never take the lesson again; it is too bitter; we don't want it; it is too uncomfortable.

You see, if you think all these things are real, then you will suffer. Yes, they look like challenges, but as soon as you know that this is a play of some kind, you have two choices - Either you can play or you can leave. What do we do? We play and take the lesson; then we leave. You are trapped in a family condition right now, let us say; you have a huge family; you are in India. It is guaranteed that you will know the illusion of it all. You see, it's a “spiritual” country. So you will be married and you will spend this life learning. This was the play, and this was kind of a strange play. Next life, don't do it, and next life, don't come back here. Know it, and then act in an intelligent way.

Then some people will say, no, I don't want to come here because it's suffering. Then what have you learned? You still think it is suffering. Where is the knowledge, where is the awareness here, where is the wisdom? Look, this is an illusion; this is not suffering. You will come here, and you will be lost in the illusion; you will suffer again, and that is why it is advised not to come here, not in this particular one. This is a heavy thing; you see, the heaviness of this particular illusion which we call the world, the physical world, it's too much of a burden. Although it has some good points, but, like I said, don't take the lesson again. Why do you need the lesson again? You have taken this lesson for many lifetimes.

You come back again, and the poison of the senses makes you forget the lesson. Everything is new again because you lost the memory. You can enjoy a movie which you have forgotten; I don't remember this movie, so let me watch it again. But you cannot watch a movie which you just watched unless it is a very, very extraordinary movie, and you cannot watch it a hundred times; it will be too boring, or probably there is a mental condition there. People keep watching the same things; people keep doing the same things because of fear, insecurity, whatever. So, we keep doing the same thing; we keep arriving in this world for who knows what. And because memory is wiped out, we suffer again the same challenges.

Why is memory wiped out? I know this is a tricky question because the memory is never really wiped; it is simply that the recall is not there. Memory is there in the causal body, it is affecting you, you don't know it, you don't know your nature totally, the memory is always there; it is the background.

Vinay is saying, "If you don't learn the lesson, you will have to live the experience again."

Why do we need to take the lesson again? Well, the answer is very simple: there is no awareness. You took the lesson, but there is no awareness; it's gone like a goldfish, you see. You got burned by the hot pan, but you forget; now you're going to get burned by it again. If you got burned by the hot pan in complete awareness, you will remember it. That is why spiritually advanced people remember everything about all of their lives, or they will never say, "I remember"; they will say, "I know." There is a difference between remembering and knowing. Knowing is very intuitive; "I know what I need to do in my life," this is what a very, very spiritually advanced person will say. And who is the newcomer? No clue what to do in life. "I'll do something which my neighbor is doing; I'll do something which my friends are doing," no clue. So the more you grow spiritually, the more is retained. It may not be retained in the form of an actual event, like it won't be retained as an event where you got married and suffered because of the marriage, the bondage. But when you are born again, which means this causal body takes a form again, there will be a general dislike for marriage or any kind of committed relations. These will be freedom-loving people, and if you ask them why you don't want to marry - "Oh, it is my nature, I am like this." Mental clarity is the hallmark of an evolved person; they know why we should do this, they know it very well and will always find a reason.They find a justification. So this is seen very clearly as a desire for knowledge; the person remains dissatisfied if he or she does not take up a spiritual path. Why is that? Because this memory is still working in the background; it is still sending hints that you need to be spiritual, but it cannot say it in words. It is always a feeling.

You need to try a few things to arrive at the path of your heart, by that I mean the prarabdha, your allocation for this life; you need to find that. Why can't we find it? We're distracted by the senses and by society's brainwashing. Society and illusion have a hold over us. We are not completely free from it; it poisons us.

Why is the recall gone? No awareness. How to overpower the illusion? Be aware, know your true nature, know what you are. Know that this is an illusion; remember, make it so strong that even death cannot erase it. It should become an impression on your causal body that will manifest again and again. You have seen it with your own eyes in this lifetime that without prompting by anybody, without any worldly reason at all, no attraction, nothing, and you found yourself on the path of knowledge. How is it possible? This is the most boring thing in the world. There is a mark on your causal body and this is the consequence. How many times have you done this? Many times already; you're progressing. The real progress happens when you get a guru; now the mark will be so strong that you will be born with the knowledge. Probably that will be your last human birth because who else will want to come here again, even after knowing? There can be great people, saints and all, who may return to serve, but we are ordinary; we will never come back here.

Mary is asking, "How is it possible to not forget?"

Awareness. Cultivate a very, very strong awareness of what you are and what this world is. That must be your top priority. Only then will that happen. Do not try to remember your past life or future life or do not try to manipulate the memory to manifest something. Just be what you are. Just live a spiritual life. That is the best way.

What is a spiritual life? The life that is lived in knowledge and awareness. It does not mean that you don't do human things. That's not a big issue for us. What is the big deal in being a human? Nothing at all. Enjoy life, but enjoy it in awareness. So simple, isn't it? Do we need to become a monk and become a beggar on the street or live in a jungle? No, anyway, that is your preference, actually. Nothing wrong in that also, but it is not a requirement. That is not called a spiritual life; that is called a stupid life. Enjoy your life, but do it in awareness.

Fulfill your desires. Desires are blinding; they are the noise under which your awareness is drowned. When you listen to your mind, what do you hear? Desires, desires, desires. "I want this, I want that. This did not happen, that did not happen. My life is a waste. Look how people are progressing, look how rich others are, look how beautiful others are, look how many partners that fellow has." Desires, noise of desires. Where is awareness? Gone.

Just reverse it. Let the desires be there in the background, put the awareness in the foreground, and whatever is done by the Devi, witness it. It is the headache of the Devi to fulfill her desires. They are not mine; I am Mahadeva. Devi is the illusion, for those who like the esoteric language. This is so beautiful, isn't it? Very juicy language.

Reverse it. Let there be desires; let there be human existence. Nothing wrong, but the foreground must be awareness. The more your desires are, the more aware you should be. Let them manifest. Nothing wrong if it is not causing violence or destruction. Why will you desire for violence and destruction? You are a seeker; you are not a trouble seeker. So your desires will be pure and beneficial for everybody. Say, you want to make a video. If it is a strong desire; your ego is also going to support it. "I am doing it because I am great and I want to benefit others." Even the ego joins the bandwagon of awareness. "I am great because I am aware." Let it be great; it's okay, isn't it? Ego is the fool in the circus, so let it do its job and it is an entertaining job, but let the drama happen in awareness. You don't need to stop it. You will never desire anything wrong if you are in awareness.

Those desires will be sent to other people, like the boss forwards the really boring work to employees online, hired in some developing country, outsourced. And he keeps the really exciting work for himself. Same way, seeker, just shift the desires to some other people which s/he doesn't want. Keep the best ones for you. Be the boss, not the employee. Don't become a dumping ground of the desires.

How do I know that it is to be outsourced/shifted to somebody else? You will know it because it is imposed on you by society. It is not yours. You are uncomfortable with it; it is not your prarabdha, it is not your allocation for this life. It is imposed by others. Don't do it. Don't do the donkey work of reproducing and whatever is imposed by society or religion. You will find that some kind of stupid people imposed it on you. So send them back to these people. Don't accept that which others are giving you. That is possible only by awareness; that is possible only by intelligence.

When you do it like this, you will never forget. The memory is in the form of tendencies, not in the form of events. Your memory of the past lives or the past experience is not episodic. You remember only the essence, tendencies, sanskaras. You will never know what is the reason for my behavior. You're not supposed to know. No need for that. This burden on this tiny human brain, it cannot remember all these things. Can't remember what happened yesterday also. Causal body is huge, like a mountain, and this human system is like a grain of dust. So that is why when somebody says that I want to wipe out my memories of the causal body and be free from the karmic storehouse, I laugh. Humans cannot do it; it is too big. And the mountain is growing. Don't do that; throw away that notion that something needs to be changed in the karmic structure. You need to drop it. Simply let it go. It's not mine; it's a big mountain, but it's not mine. And you're freed; the mountain will do whatever it does. There are many mountains there.

So this is the shortcut we take on the path of knowledge towards freedom. You are already free; there is only an ignorance in your mind that I am bound. You can be free right now. And then this mountain is a play. Observe it. “No, I don't want that also”. That is also mind; not you. Mind is too stupid; it does not know what it is saying. It won't remain if it is all gone. The mind says, "Oh, I don't want to remain also." "Yes, but look, there are infinite such causal bodies. What is gained in destroying just one?" The mind will say, "I am the whole existence; I'll just wipe it out, you see. I'm the all-powerful." And the one who is saying it is stupid; does not know the meaning of existence also. That is why we enter non-doing. Non-doing is freedom; doing is bondage. "What are you doing?" "Wiping out the virtual mountains which are growing infinitely." Why? No need; you see, just enjoy.

Enjoy the causal bodies. “No, there's a lot of junk in this causal body.” “Okay, purify.” “No, it will take 50 lifetimes.” “No, it takes 50 days, contact your guru.”

You see, I have a small garden, when I try to clean it, it takes me one week with all the body pain and all the dirt in my hand; I get scratches everywhere. When I ask the gardener or whoever cleans it, it takes them half a day. It's shining, totally clean. Not my job, isn't it? I'm not made for that job. So don't try to do it yourself; contact the guru; he will clean it up. All your dirt will be cleaned; contact the gardener.

Session 132

A question by Poonam.

Creative potential of existence is infinite. Please explain. Reason to ask is I tend to think that potential and existence are the same. What is the meaning of infinite?

We already know that experience appears in existence and we never see any end to it. There is no possibility of ending of the experience. Whatever appears here keeps appearing, and is doing so since eternity and will keep doing that. So what do we say? There is infinite potential in existence. That which is appearing can appear in as many ways as it is possible. Possibility here is infinite. This is called the creative potential of existence.

So is the potential existence? We can say so but we don't say so. We say that existence has a potential. What is potential? It is only a concept. What is existence? It is that which is. So they cannot be equal. What is existence? The proper answer is I don't know. It is unknowable. I am the existence. Nothing else can be known. So do we see something called potential in the existence which is manifesting as various forms? No, never. It is an idea. It is a concept. What we see is the existence in the form of the experience and then our intellect forms this idea that - it is empty but there is experience, which means that there is a potential for experience. Since existence is emptiness, how did the potential get created in emptiness? This is unknowable as far as the path of knowledge is concerned. I don't know about the other paths but the other paths, I have seen, don't even go to that level.

Meaning of infinite is - no end, never-ending, not in space, not in time, not in variety, not in number. In any way, if you can think of any limitation, existence is free from that limitation. You can think of any limitation, size, color, whatever, any experience and you will see that everything is there. Every possibility is there. Even there is a possibility to be nothing which it already is. It is not like unlimited memory. Memory is another concept. There is no actual memory there. The memory, the vibration, the patterns, they are scientific terms used to explain the experience that is appearing mysteriously. We can explain how it is happening. But what is it? That is unknowable. There is no memory in existence. What is there is emptiness with infinite potential that is appearing to itself in limited forms. End of the story. Hopefully that is clear.

Graham is asking, you say meditate on this but you have not taught us how to meditate. Can you provide some guidance or do you just mean think about it for some minutes as you would think about anything?

Meditation is not that which people think it is. In English, the word meditation simply means to look into, investigate. It can involve thinking, yes. Meditation is not simply thinking. It is looking. You can keep thinking about all that content in the program. It gives you nothing at all. Investigating, asking, wondering about it, pondering on it, writing it and doing the Q&A. Get involved in it. Keep yourself busy with it. Just drown yourself, your mind and body and emotions into it. See how it feels. See whether it is logical, rational. See if there is anything that is not true. That is what the word meditation means.

Meditation does not mean that you close your eyes and go to sleep. That is the wrong meaning in English. So whenever I say meditate on this, simply means a lot of intellectual activity must happen there. Digest it intellectually, tear it apart, analyze it, synthesize it, absorb it completely. This is what meditation is on the path of knowledge. It is not simply thinking. It is not simply recalling that this was said and that was said and I have no clue what was said.

So yes, I have not taught you to meditate because we simply assume that the seeker on the path of knowledge already knows all these tricks, already has all this ability of rational critical thinking and curiosity, ability to question, criticize, reflect. We assume that somebody who is coming on the path of knowledge already has all these qualities. If not, you need to cultivate it. How to cultivate it? Just read any book on logical thinking and cultivate all these things. How to think properly. You can use paper and pencil, which is the best way. You can speak about it. You can debate with people. Loud thinking. There are many ways. So usually the student is not taught anything. We assume that they have the proper maturity to grasp what is said here. Yes, we do some kind of purification in the end if it does not work. But purification is something different. It is not teaching the skills of the intellect.

Unfortunately, nobody teaches these things even in the schools and colleges. The intellect is never developed in a person. So what do I recommend? Copy the guru. Copy your guru blindly. How he thinks, how he states things, how he analyzes, what questions he puts. You don't need extraordinary knowledge to know the path of knowledge. You need a specific set of skills. That's all. How things are defined. Whether those definitions correspond to my experience or not. Whether whatever is said corresponds to the valid means of knowledge or not. Whether whatever is told as truth is actually as per the standards of the truth or not. Why should I accept this standard? Why should I accept these means? This much intelligence should be there. After that it is a mechanical process of deduction and experiencing whatever is in front of us. It takes actually 10 minutes to know the whole path of knowledge if there is the right capability in the person.

So what we are doing here in the program is actually teaching how to think, how to see. You see, a lot is seen but nothing is understood. That which is, is never seen because of the faulty intellect in people. So the whole program is actually showing something, and it is showing you how to use the intellect properly. How to clear the junk. So even if you don't have any ability, after going through the program you will get this ability to think properly, logically. To see things as they are without the burden of ignorance. The ignorance will be removed. So there is no formal training in intellectual abilities. But as we go through the program you get most of the skills.

Another question by Graham, you said that the experiencer is emptier than empty. Did you really mean this? Because emptiness is completely empty too.

I don't remember now but probably I said it and it is just to dispel the ignorance of the people that emptiness means empty space. When you open a box and it is empty what is there? There is either air or space in it and that is what people mean by empty. When that which was expected was not found we say it is empty. But experiencer is not even space. The experiencer is not a place where there is nothing. This is the common notion in the minds of the people that they imagine. Never imagine it. You cannot imagine it. You can only imagine that which you can experience. Experiencer is not an experience. Don't even try to imagine it. Don't even try to imagine it as empty space or nothingness or blackness. It is not any of these things. So I had to say that experiencer is emptier than empty.

Whatever your notion of emptiness is, just drop it. It is not that. Whatever is your notion of nothingness - I can't see anything. I can't hear anything - Is that nothingness? Or is it just flat ground and there is nothing there? Never underestimate the imagination power of people. They can imagine anything. So you need to dismantle all that imagination. All the notions, all the concepts must be destroyed completely so that you can arrive at the pure experiencer which is emptier than empty. Which is more nothing than nothingness. Which is blacker than the black. Which is there but not there. Can the intellect understand this? No. What do we do? We purify the intellect of the wrong notions. Make the intellect also empty. Empty mind is a perfect reflector of the experiencer. That is how it is.

I have seen very very funny notions in people's minds. “The experiencer is that which is in the body. When the body dies it leaves it. Experiencer is in your brain. It is sitting there. It is a tiny man there inside the brain”. Then there are more sophisticated people. “Experiencer is the pituitary/pineal gland”. There are even more strange concepts. It is non-physical, they will say. What do you mean by that? They don't know. It is a process they will say. Which process? They don't know. It is all imagination. There is nothing wrong in saying that I don't know what experiencer is. Why? Because it's not meant to be known. It is unknowable. Everything in the end is unknowable. That which was known is garbage. It must be dropped. There is a process to drop it. That is called the path of knowledge. We use the valid means of knowledge in the criteria for truth and our intelligence to clean it up. And so we keep removing the traces of ignorance. If there is a notion of emptiness, it is removed. Like Poonam had some notion of potential and all. Gone now. I simply told her that potential is a word only. It is a concept. Now she is really empty. There is nothing to think about the existence or the experiencer. Thinking is a pollution of emptiness. Talking is just adding more clutter into the purity of what I am. I cannot be talked about. I cannot be thought about. Just be that which you are. That is the simplest thing. Anything more complicated than it is not what it is. We go on dismantling these things.

He's saying emptiness is completely empty too. No it is not completely empty. It is not partially empty and it is not full and it is not actually empty. There… everything is destroyed. Don't think. For example, people ask whether existence is true or not. Is it the ultimate truth? What do I say? Existence is true and existence is false. An existence is not true and existence is not false. What has it done? The intellect stops here. It stops working and that is the real existence there.

Okay those who are trying to think about emptiness and existence you can. But nothing will come out of it. Just drop all the concepts. Check your mind. What do I think about the existence? What do I think about the experiencer and the emptiness or the potential? And if there is something just throw it away. You need to only ensure this much. Is there an experiencer? Yes. Do we see anything in it? No. Is there an experience? Yes. What do we see? Potential. End of the story.

See it's very simple but the imagination power of people is so great. They want to imagine and they always imagine something which is totally cheap, made up of plastic, which does not even mimic the original teaching in any way. Like people do all kinds of meditations, who knows why they do it. They close their eyes and go on a trip of imagination and they reach somewhere where they see something - a light or emptiness? They come back and tell me that I saw that which you were teaching. I experienced the emptiness. I said that is the biggest miracle in the universe. I saw myself - I was like a light. Very good. Now get back on the path of knowledge program. Stop doing this stupid meditation. It is not meditation. There is no shortage of such people. Some people take drugs. I said why? Just hit your head with a hammer and you will get a strange experience. But there is hardly anybody who can grasp the emptiness or the existence or the experiencer because it's not a matter of thinking or knowing, it is a matter of being and purifying. Negative knowledge is important.

Parteep is asking, what does it mean to have a pointed mind like a tip of a needle. Is it reducing attention to a point? Can a point be considered as one object?

Pointed mind means that there is only one topic under consideration. It is not jumping from one topic to another. One pointedness means it should not deviate from that subject at all. If it is deviating what will be the result? Nothing will be known. Nothing will be concluded out of it. So most of the people don't have this ability to concentrate on one thing for more than 20 seconds or so. Everybody is limited. I am not saying that I am the one who can do it forever, for many days. No. But when I take a topic I can speak on it for one hour. You must have seen this. Examine it from all angles, take all the seven questions and take the misconceptions/conceptions and contemplate deeply. That is called one pointedness.

It is very funny when I ask people to please talk about suffering for 30 minutes and their lecture is over in 30 seconds. Why? Mind has shifted already after 30 seconds. So continuously bringing back the mind on the topic of contemplation is one pointedness. There are practices to do that, to train the mind. Take any object, don't let your attention go to any other object - that is called the concentration exercise. It can be a physical object or non-physical object. Any feeling in the body, sound in the ears. Don't wander here and there, stay there and your mind will be trained to be on a topic. This is similar to the samyama in yogic path.

Can one assume that attention can be narrowed or expanded infinitely as efforts are required to manipulate attention and efforts have a limit.

I don't know about infinitely but that is done for a specific purpose. If I say that narrow your attention on one thing there is a purpose and once that purpose is achieved you don't need to do it any more. Similarly you can expand the attention around the objects in the room and that is all you need. Sometimes even two or three objects are in attention and you get that inclusive attention. There is no need to count everything into it because there are infinite objects, infinite thoughts etc. So as soon as the purpose is served we don't do any more effort than is required.

It depends on for what purpose you are doing it, like the inclusive attention is helpful in understanding the experiencing where there is no experiencer and there is no experience separately, they are not separated. Include all the objects then include that which is looking and you have that state of experiencing. Now you will find that it was always there but it was covered up in the divisions of the mind. So the inclusion is simply dropping of divisions. Once that is done we don't need to include more. Do you need to go out and include every car and every person so that you can get into the experiencing? No, actually it does not even require that much. Simply use of the intellect will tell you that oh it is like this already. You don't need to do this circus to know what is experiencing or what is samadhi. The pointing by the guru should be enough - you are in the samadhi right now. That should be enough.

That's what happened to me. I got the concept of the experiencer - yes I am that and I told everybody that I already knew this thing, I was born with this knowledge, but oneness, no. How to get there, which mantra, which meditation, which exotic state of mind will give me the experience of oneness? So I went to my teacher and said - “I have been trying for six months and nothing is happening. You told me everything is one but I never see it. Where should I go to see it?” And he laughed and he said - “The oneness is already here”. And still I did not understand. He said - “whatever is, is only oneness, nothing else. The fault must be in you that you cannot see it.” I went away and after one month of intellectual circus finally I dropped all that which was stopping the oneness from being known. When I was tired of it only then I gave up and when I gave up there was oneness. It was so easy. I was trying to complicate it and that's why I was not getting it. The trick is to simplify, not to complicate, not to add but to remove. That is the trick.

Sometimes pointing is enough and you don't need to do all that manipulation of the mind. Why is it complicating things? “I want to narrow my attention so much that it is only focussed on the breathing process and nothing else will be seen in my vision or in my experience”. I say that is stupidity, why do we need that? Probably it has some application. There are applications like if you want to see your desires before they arise, before they make an impact on the memory, you will need to narrow your attention to that extent. I know that much. Do you need to narrow it even more than that? Do you need to take it to the causal layer to find out where was the point of origin of the desire? No, I think, because your purpose is to catch the desire before it has made an impact on the memory, before it has turned into a thought or something and when this purpose is solved, just let go, no need to concentrate more than that.

On the path of knowledge we do not teach all these things, they are not required actually. I have already planned that in the next version of the program, I'm going to completely remove the attention practice. It is causing more trouble than it is helping. Nobody talks about how to maintain awareness. Not even in the Hindi satsang. They are stuck on the attention all the time - Why am I getting this experience, or that experience and do I need to do the mantra 108 times or what? I said - it is my mistake not yours. I put it there for a specific purpose so that if there is any lack of skill in attending to something that can be compensated. What are people doing? They're misusing that. I'm going to remove it completely. I mean, simply pointing is needed and you get the knowledge. Once you get the knowledge, you don't need to do anything at all. Nothing physical, nothing mental.

Kamal is asking, I'm on the chapter of truth. What is truth? True and false are just results of evaluation.

See, it is very simple. Truth is a classification of experiences. Classification is in two categories: one is called true, and the other is called false. So, you can say there are two kinds of experiences: one is true experience, the other is false experience.

What should be put in the box of true, and what should we put in the box of false? How do we decide? We need a standard. We need an instrument, just point the instrument to that thing, and it will tell you whether it's true or false. So, what is our instrument? We have only one instrument: that is our mind. So, we use our intelligence to categorize whatever is appearing here in front of us, and the mind then cooks up a formula that I'll call these things as true, and those things as false. And you will find that everybody has got their own measuring stick. They're carrying their own instrument. This is called the criteria of truth. And I've given you some examples of the criteria. For example, if ten people say it is true, then for an ordinary person, it is true. Your TV says it is true, it is true. And if your leader said it, it has to be hundred percent true. These are the examples of the criteria. It is written in the book. Okay, it looks like a science book, so it must be true. It was told to me by my mother. My mother cannot lie, so it is true. So, ordinary people use ordinary criteria, and their lives are just working somehow.

But a philosopher uses that which is very, very strict, that which is very, very logical and rational, and that is what we call as superior criteria. They're exactly opposite of those that are used by ordinary people in the ordinary world. So, what is on TV? Everything is false. What is on YouTube? False. Whatever your mother told you? Total garbage. And after discarding the inferior, we arrive at superior. Like repeatability. Is it repeating? Is it the same all the time? Sun comes up every day. Yes, it is true. Does it change with time and place? So, on the path of knowledge, we have decided that we'll call everything that changes as false, and everything that is unchanging as true. It doesn't matter what place it is, it doesn't matter what time it is. This is very strict.

What is the consequence of this? All of the experience has become false. Nothing is true now. Using this criterion, nothing at all is true. Everything is an illusion, actually. That is very useful because that helps us to now focus on that which is not an experience, which is not an illusion, and it helps to call it as truth because it satisfies all the qualities of the superior criteria of truth. It's always there. It's not changing. It's the same in every place, every time. It is the same in every state of mind and so on. It is impeccable now, and that is what we call the ultimate truth. Nothing can be more true. Nothing can be more certain. Truth and certainty are similar words. So, we know in the practical world, nothing can be said totally certainly. Nothing is true here.

So, there is a certainty about some things. Like, it is 99% certain that tomorrow the sun will come up. It's almost certain. But whether there will be power supply in my house tomorrow or not, where I live, it's always 50%. Whether it will rain tomorrow or not, 10%. Not only there is a criteria for truth, there is a, you can say, weight of the truth that is called certainty, how certain it is. So, if it is 100% certain, it is 100% repeatable.

Another way is to find out the nature of things. What is the nature of something? That which is the essence, which is essential. If you remove everything that is non-essential, whatever remains will be the nature, or you can say that if you remove the nature, the thing itself will be gone. Like the nature of this wooden chair is wood. You can remove the arm, you can remove the polish, you can remove the paint, you can remove the cushions, it is going to remain a chair. As soon as you remove the wood, there is no chair. So we say the truth of the chair is that it is wood, nothing else. It can take any form, it can become smaller, it can be bigger, it can break, but the truth is that it is wood. And again, you will see that everything can change except the wood in the chair. And therefore, that which does not change comes out to be the nature or true nature of the chair.

So you see, the criteria used on the path of knowledge or Advaita is the most solid in the entire universe. There is nothing like this. And that is the power of this path that it takes us to the truth directly. Why? Because we chose this criteria. You could have chosen something else. Like, whatever is said on TV is true, would you reach here? No. Even if you wait for a million years, you won't reach the truth of what you are. You won't get any answer at all. So you will find that the worldly people never know anything about the truth.

Rajeshwari has a question, if all are one and the same, how can there be rights and wrongs.

Right and wrong or ethics is totally a fabrication of the mind. Whatever is beneficial for the mind, it says it is right. Whatever is harmful for it, it says it is wrong. So, it does not matter if all is one or not, the mind does whatever it does for its needs. That need is called survival. So, ethics are constructed mostly based on survival. The need to survive gives rise to ethics. Otherwise, in existence, nothing is right and nothing is wrong. And the reason the result is everybody has their own ethics.

At the personal level, at the level of the families, one family will say this is right, the other family will say that is right. At the level of the city, in one city, something is right, other city, something else is right. In the countries and in several other ways, the rights and wrongs are defined, and it is totally cooked up, arbitrary, and subjective. It changes, because something was right a thousand years ago, now it is not right. Whatever is right today will be called wrong tomorrow. So, place, people, time, and even one person at other times will say the same thing is wrong. Totally depends on their subjective criteria.

After seeing this, is there any meaning left in the words "right" and "wrong"? Because it can be anything, anytime, anywhere, fluctuates rapidly. What does that mean? That means these words are meaningless because any meaning can be assigned to that. You see, there are many such words like love, god, soul, spirit, consciousness, mind, you can add anything to them. It's like a garbage can, you can dump anything there. So, what do we do? We discard every such thing, every such concept on the path of knowledge. We throw it away. It's meaningless.

Poonam is asking, How would you say then society should function, and how do people live in societies?

It is very easy. They should function as they are functioning now. It is perfectly okay. And if it changes in some other way, they start functioning in some other way, that is also okay. No problem at all. And people on the path of knowledge, they should live away from society, not in the society. Should not be concerned with society at all. It is not our business.

And one more thing I would like to add, that never tell people how they should live, never preach to them. First, we are no one. Second, it shows that you have a concern. It shows that you have an attachment to society. There is no such thing. It is a group of deluded people, that's all it is. You can keep telling them how they should live, how they should function, and the result will be zero. You know, many people have done that. Many great masters have tried, everybody failed. So, the only way is to come out of it, not to repair that which is broken, don't try to fix that which is rotten. Let it rot, you come out of there. This is the only way. And this is how it has been happening for many thousand years. Those who are interested, they can try to change it. They can try to teach people how to function. They can “fix” society and so on. And it is guaranteed that they will become what they are today, because it is human nature, you see, that cannot be changed. Those who are willing to change, they will change, no matter what.

So, we do not take interest in these things. What are we interested in? Freedom, not involvement. Why? Because whatever you are getting involved in is a complete illusion. Spirituality is totally about the self. Nothing should enter in it. It is absolutely personal. So, if a guru is trying to fix everything, then there can be two reasons. First, he is not a guru. He's just a social worker, you see, somebody in politics or something like this. Second, he has some secret plan behind it. He's just showing it while working from behind the curtains. Something else is going on. It happens a lot. So, I know some people, they distribute food in the temple, and before the food, there is a half an hour lecture. So, people gather there. They listen to the lecture, and then there is a free lunch for them. So, it looks like they are trying to fix society. They are helping the poor people and so on. But it is not like this. They are seeding the knowledge there. They don't want to fix the hunger problem in the town. That is just an excuse.

So, you will find great masters. They are talking about how the society should function, what should we do, what should be the laws there, and what should the government do, etc. And most of the time, they have nothing to do with all these things. It is only to attract the crowd. And when your name is heard far and long, then seekers gather around you. He is the guru. We should go there. And the guru is interested only in seekers, not in society. It is all just a drama that he cooks up to announce that I am available if anybody wants knowledge. The flower blooms and the fragrance spreads in the air, now the honeybees come. That is what is the purpose. You see, nobody really wants to fix anything in society. They are meant to be left, they are not meant to be fixed. This was this line in the movie Interstellar. I liked it - "We are meant to leave it. We are not meant to fix it." It's a very spiritual line. If you keep fixing society you will remain trapped here. You can choose that if you want. There is something interesting that - it goes through cycles and it fixes itself somehow. That is the yuga concept. So, while it is going down, it doesn't matter who does what. It will rot. It will be destroyed. It will go down. People will become lowly like animals. And when it goes up, nothing can stop it. This is the vibration. So, seeing that, everything happens on its own. We just watch. This is what a wise man does. And others, they struggle.

Well, so I see such comments a lot from the social people. Like, we should do it for the future of our children. And I know one of my teachers, he was asked this question. A woman took the mic in the audience. "Don't you think we should do something for the future of our children?" And he laughed very loudly. That woman got offended.

Those who don't know that everything is perfect, they're trying to make it perfect; that is ignorance. Secondly, not only everything is perfect, everything is a dream, everything is an illusion. If you want to do anything at all, it is to wake up from the dream. There are no children, and there is no world. Why can't you see this? That is why he laughed. They take this dream so seriously. There is no "you." So, if there is nothing, what do we need to do? Nothing. You can take the example of a dream that happens in the night. Fix your dream, make it a perfect heaven. When you wake up in the morning, what's the use of that? Some people say, "Oh, it was a good experience." Good experience? Yes, just remove the dream totally. You see, no need for a good experience now. So when you try to tell ordinary people like this, because they don't have the knowledge, they will never understand. They will be offended. So what do we do? We pretend and we do social service. We serve the food to the beggars and clean up garbage, don't pollute the environment, and take care of children. You need to pretend as if everything is real. And who is it who pretends? That thing is also unreal. In the illusion, do that which is illusory. No need to bring the truth in there. It does not work. So, it boils down to this statement: "Do that which is necessary."

Rajeshwari is asking, living away physically or mentally or both?

See, if you are not physically away, your mind will always be affected by society. So, I recommend that if you separate yourself physically, the mental part is taken care of. It's automatic. And if you cannot do that, you're badly in bondage of some kind, then try to not get affected. Try not to get involved in it. Throw away your TV. Stop reading the newspaper and magazines, and all these things, and devote your time to something which is your mission in your life. Don't get involved in the affairs of society. Don't attend the marriages. Don't go to funerals. Don't vote. And no birthday parties. Nothing. In that way, you will isolate yourself from society, and there will be freedom from human birth. If you do it physically, everything is taken care of automatically.

You can be physically in society only if you have a strong mind. But if you want a shortcut, get out of there completely. Everything is done already. Yes, those who are in charge of the societies and worlds, they are doing their best, I think. Spiritual people need not interfere in worldly matters. They are doing it very nicely, actually. Whether they're killing people or whether they're fighting the wars, they're doing it nicely. Let them do it. That is what must happen.

Poonam is asking, is climate change only a lot of noise and not the doing of human activities?

You see, that which is already changing, if it is changing by the use of this puppet or that puppet, or by the use of the sun or moon, who cares? That which is changing will change; now let it change. Is there anything here which does not change? One day, the whole planet will be gone. There won't be any climate to change. Now, who did that? Human activity? And if you ask me, there is nothing here except emptiness. Now, what kind of human activity is responsible for making all the experience emptiness? So, it looks like Poonam is totally involved in worldly matters. I recommend that you stay away from the world. It is called Uparati in Sanskrit. Practice detachment.

You see, if you are involved in the world, no progress will happen. Your mind will be filled with all kinds of worldly things which are completely garbage. Then what is the difference between a spiritual person and a worldly person? The worldly person is thinking about worldly matters, like what will be the climate, what will happen to my children, costs are increasing, and who should we vote for next? And, what is a spiritual person thinking? How to end this dream, how to progress further, how to stay in samadhi, and how to bring out other people from the darkness. So, be a spiritual seeker. Don't be a worldly person. And if you like the world, do not come in spirituality. There is nothing here. It's all leaving, cutting away, letting go. In the world also you get nothing. You came empty-handed, and you will go empty-handed. A spiritual person is already empty, completely robbed by their guru.

Parthip is asking, why do you choose to bless seekers with the path of knowledge only when you might be knowing many other paths great masters speak and teach many paths?

I'll tell you my secret. I teach all the paths, but right now, this is the best possibility. For other paths, you need to be physically present in front of me, which you will not be able to do, given your attachment with the worldly affairs, your families, you have children, you have a job, and those who want to leave all that, they can ask for other teaching. But I teach hardly anything except the path of knowledge. There are some selected people who are getting the training in Kundalini and Tantra. There are some people who are getting my guidance on the path of devotion also. They are progressing. It is unbelievable. There is no hope for these people. Where are they progressing towards? The path of knowledge. It is a miracle. So, I don't take the credit for it because it is from the gurufield. You can say it is a joint experiment, this joint project between me and gurufield, we keep trying these things. But publicly, no, I do not teach anything else. There's a big headache. Other paths are very, very difficult, given the time that we are living in. If they are not difficult, they are ineffective. The most difficult of all is Tantra. Probably the path of knowledge is the easiest. If you have the qualities, then the path of knowledge is like a three-day affair. Three-day program, that's all. All the fruits are given in three days, three hours, actually. You don't need more than that.

Rajeshwari is saying, at times it is taken as being egoistic.

We don't need to worry about what the ignorant people say or do or think, isn't it so? If you're concerned about people, that means you're still involved in the world. Oh, nobody should think of me as egoistic, that is bondage, nothing was renounced, I think.

What is the best way? Let them think something which is totally wrong about you. What will happen? They will not trouble you again. This fellow is unethical, this fellow is creepy, crazy. Don't send your children to his house, who knows what he does there. He'll brainwash your mothers and daughters, they will go mad. So as long as they're thinking something wrong about you, you are safe from the people. Spread rumors about yourself, and nobody will trouble you, nobody will come to meet you.

So there are ways to keep people away from your life, and spreading false information about you is one way. So tell everybody that you are egoistic, nobody will talk to you, and what will happen is lots of hours will be left in your day for spiritual work. All your friends are going to leave you. What will happen is that you are cleared of all the addictions that were given to you by your friends. Even your language will improve because your bad language comes from society. All your impurities will be washed away because nobody is making you impure. Your bad image is like an insecticide that will repel these insects, you see. That is why these people who are doing exotic practices, set up so much drama around them that the ordinary people don't dare to approach them. They look so horrible, horrifying that nobody wants to talk to them, nobody wants to marry their daughter to an Aghori. No good father will want to marry his daughter to such a person.

Now, look at their tradition, the tradition of your society. There is a story that Parvati married the ideal man that was in the universe, and the ideal man was Shiva, and he was in the form of an Aghori, naked, covered with ashes from the dead bodies, covered with weapons and snakes, and she said he is the most beautiful. This is our tradition. But do they follow the tradition? No, they will not marry their daughter to such a person. There is something which is totally wrong in the society. They are pretentious people, dishonest people, they just pretend to be traditional, they pretend to be spiritual, they pretend to be devotional, but live at the level of animals. Do you want to do something for them? Good luck. As soon as you try to fix them, they will kill you.

Rajeshwari is saying, leaving also means some kind of bandhan.

Bandhan means bondage. So what kind of leaving is bondage? If you see that the whole world is an illusion, then you don't need to leave it, actually. But when we say leaving, we want to do it in steps. No seeker is ready to accept the world as an illusion. You must have seen this.

“Are you writing on the Path of Knowledge program?” “No, no, I have a job”. “No, no, but you need to finish this lesson on the world as an illusion”. “No, no, the job comes first, it is the real thing”.

So pretension, they are not actually embodying the knowledge there, so what do we do? We allow them. Okay, you leave it in steps. “Okay, did you leave your family, or you're sitting in the lap of your mother?” “I'm still in the lap of my mother”. “So get out of there, cook your food, get a job, leave the family”, and so on. “Are you still in the company? Are you still earning money?” “Yes, I need to earn a million”. “No, out of there also”. Then he starts living in the ashram. “Are you in the ashram?” “Yes” “Get out of here”.

So something like this, we do it in steps. So it always starts with physical separation. If you cannot take that step, good luck. It is not going to happen, you see. Can you leave the whole thing by simply saying it is the dream? Then you will be branded as Gautam Buddha, somebody great. Just saying, but for an ordinary seeker, it has to be a step-by-step process, and then the guru pulls the person totally out of the world.

On the Path of Knowledge, we don't do it because I know you will do it yourself. I don't need to take the trouble. If you came on the Path of Knowledge, you have already left the world, that much I know. The rest is drama. It is very entertaining.

Parteep is saying, Yes, I know. If somebody is worshiping you like a guru, just do one thing which is not like a guru, and they will run away.

It's a good way to get rid of these people, the guru worshipers. I say, “Why don't you learn something?” “No, no, no, I just want to bow down to your lotus feet and lick them.” I said, “What? You need to use the guru on the Path of Knowledge, not worship the guru.” And just to get rid of these people, I also say some things, and they never come back because they are not really interested in the guru. They are interested in verifying their blind beliefs, which means they are not going to progress.

Poonam is saying, Thank you for setting in motion a thought process.

Yes, see, if you keep attending the satsang, it is highly dangerous. You will become like me.

Hiren is saying, Kundalini symptoms like heating Anahata, hearing Anahata, feeling sweetness, having any correlation with Gyanmargis? What is it?

Yes, the Path of Knowledge is also going to alter your mind. All the layers are going to be changed, which means purified, and it can produce similar symptoms. Why? Because Kundalini is also a path of purification. Even yoga is a path of purification. It will produce the same symptoms, and even the devotional path, they produce the same symptoms. If you encounter a real devotee, they have the Kundalini symptoms. So if you want to know more, I'll send you the link. Here you will find two or three episodes which go in detail on this.

Rajeshwari is asking, Do we enjoy our part in drama while being in awareness all the time, or we are aloof, away from illusion and drama?

It totally depends on your personality, actually. Do that which you like. If you are in awareness, you will be detached, which is equal to being aloof and away. And the only danger here is you lose your awareness and get involved there. That is the only danger that creates all the karmic impressions, and you're back in the world next time. So if you want to play, you should be a guru. If you are a seeker, just have one-pointed determination that I don't want the world. Don't plan your trip so perfectly, so minutely. Just have one goal: freedom, mukti. Once you are out, you can think about, what should I do? Should we enjoy it? Should we stay aloof? First, come out of there. This is called a distraction, actually, because the mind is not able to decide what I should do on my spiritual path. Should I go out in the world, enjoy the drama? Should I stay out of the world and so on? It is a distraction, and the guru always has bitter medicine for that. Where is the knowledge? Where is the awareness? Is it there 24/7? No? Then stop getting distracted. Get your goals first. Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Don't milk the buffalo even when you don't have any buffalo.

Session 133

Sweety is asking, when sometimes I sit down and contemplate on these teachings, I get a notion that everything disappears into oneness, also nothing to feel in it. So is it emptiness or oneness?

No, it is just a blank mind. Oneness is not an experience of any kind. Oneness is not your state of mind. Oneness is not something that can come and go like this - when you sit down and think oneness is there and when you don't, it is gone. No, that which is, is oneness. Everything is happening already in oneness or emptiness. It cannot be experienced. You can be it, and there is no possibility of becoming it because you are already it. You are the emptiness. You are the oneness, always, whether you are thinking, whether you are busy, or whether you are resting, whether the mind is blank, and if it is not blank, if it is active, it is all emptiness. So my recommendation is not to form any such ideas in darkness. There is a realization that there is oneness, that's all, it's possible. If you experience something, discard it as an illusion. If you see something, it is wrong. If somebody says something about emptiness, it is all false. So right now, probably, it will be puzzling, what is this thing, emptiness, that everybody talks about? Where can I see it? Show me. And these are all wrong ideas. There is a realization, yes, there is a destruction of ignorance.

Graham is asking, We say there is no I and then say I am the experiencer. Is this a contradiction or imprecise language?

This is intentional. We say that I am the experiencer, fully knowing that there is no I and the experiencer is the whole. Because with the word I, there comes a notion of not I. Because if I am the experiencer, there must be something which is not I. So to clear the doubt, we say, look, there is no I, but we shift the position of this imaginary I to the experiencer when we talk about the I. Because as you know, the position of the I keeps shifting. Sometimes it is objects, sometimes it is body, sometimes it is emotion, thought, or memory. So it is wise to shift it to the experiencer because there is nothing beyond that. That is the ultimate. And by experiencer, we always mean the whole, not the individual. There is no individual actually. So saying that I am the experiencer is equal to saying that there is no I.

This is precise language. Saying that I am the whole means there is no individual I. So the meaning of the word I was changed by saying it. There is no contradiction now. So dropping of the individual is hinted at by this statement - I am the experiencer. And sometimes we go down in the transactional levels, where we use the words like I am sitting, I am talking. And here the seeker should not assume that the experiencer is sitting and experiencer is talking because the context has changed now. Newcomers have this difficulty that sometimes the guru is the experiencer and sometimes he is a human being. So which one is he? So it is just changing the levels of knowledge. In the relative sense, we can say I am sitting, I am eating, I am sleeping, I am angry or I am happy. But an experienced seeker will understand completely that he is talking in a relative sense, in an ordinary sense. So is that imprecise language? No, simply we have shifted our context. Now we do not always say that I am going to change the level now, I am going to change my gear, and I am going to shift to lower gear somewhere where I am the body. It is a waste of time. So we never say it, we simply shift the I. The I is a very shifty word, keeps shifting. Sometimes in one sentence there are two contexts like - “one day I realize that I am the experiencer”. Here the “I realized” is from the human context. So it is possible, and this is a little bit of imprecise language, I can say because there is a chance of miscommunication or confusion. So what do we say? There was a realization that there is no I, only the experiencer. Now this is precise. So if it is understood properly, then we don't mind all this kind of contradictions and all. Those who understand they know anyway, there is no need to clarify anything. So what people say is not our concern. What do we know? That is more important.

Graham is saying, the path of knowledge says all knowledge is ignorance but isn't there useful knowledge that destroys ignorance another knowledge that creates more ignorance? How does PoKP terminology discriminate between those kinds of knowledge? Is it by the term valid means versus invalid means?

All knowledge is ignorance, yes. Why? Because we have defined knowledge as a systematic arrangement, organization of experiences. This organization happens in the memory and all the experiences are all false illusions. So whatever is organized is totally a made up thing, it is an illusion. All knowledge is like this.

How to get rid of this knowledge because it is ignorance only. The useful knowledge is that which clears this structure completely. I don't mean that it destroys the memory, no, it installs another layer on the memory which is called awareness and it says that whatever is below me is false. Like we add a king on the top of the hierarchy, top most layer, which says that whatever is collected below is probably useful for survival but it's all false. This is called the layer of awareness.

And how does that layer arise? By cleaning of ignorance, not by gaining, not by organizing anything, by checking the experience and discarding it. Not this, not that. That is why we call it negative knowledge. Positive knowledge is very useful but negative knowledge shows what positive knowledge is. So useful knowledge is that which is needed for survival. The useful knowledge will be called science and knowledge is that which is totally useless in the world but shows us, shines the light on that which is useful, its use is that, you can say.

The ignorance never goes away, it is simply illuminated and we use the ignorance for many purposes, betterment of the creature, for the good of the person, evolution of this entity, and that is intelligence. If you don't have this layer of awareness then whatever is accumulated creates ignorance. How do we discriminate? We say the knowledge of the illusion vs knowledge of the truth. What is the reality? It is the self, self realization. So knowledge of the self, knowledge of the illusion and knowledge of oneness, they complete all knowledge.

And the knowledge of the illusion is negative, you can say it from the word illusion that it is denying the reality of it. And knowledge of the self is establishing the truth, what I am. And knowledge of the oneness is clearing the true and false completely. It takes us to the unknowable, which is called an agnostic position. There we are not concerned with what is true and what is false, what is knowledge and what is ignorance, we are established in the wholeness of it. Because there the realization is that all these concepts, all these ideas of what is knowledge and what is not knowledge are also mental activity, awareness is also mental activity. The real being, my nature is devoid of these things, I am empty.

Here “I am emptiness” shows that I am not any of these other things, not even the experiencer. So here we don't really know what it means. So we accept, we surrender and we say this is how it is, isness, suchness, that is what it is. And now it is beyond intellect, you have gone beyond intellect and we don't even need the awareness here, there is no use of it because oneness is there, whether there is awareness or not, whether there is knowledge or ignorance, the highest non-dual level is always there.

So giving up all expectation, all knowledge, all wants, wants for liberation, wants for evolution, desires, that clears everything. Now you achieve a pure state, which is the purest. You cannot go beyond that, it's not possible. When you have reached the highest and when you have emptied everything, nothing is possible. So this is the highest achievement anybody can have.

We say that when you go beyond buddhi, you become the buddha, which means beyond the mind. I am that and you are that also. Terminology/language helps in the beginning to establish some facts and truths and then it must be dropped, then there is poetry and the poetry is also dropped, then it is silence. Silence is the language of non-duality. When you become silent, there is nothing more to achieve, there is nothing more to do. So somebody who is on the path of knowledge becomes silent, is silenced. He will never say I have the knowledge. There is no I, there is no knowledge. This is understood and then it is all empty and nothing comes out of this emptiness. It is just a very big silence.

Ranjith is saying, the mind can trick people to attain awareness or being experiencer in many more activities to satisfy spiritual ego and create hurdles in progress. How does one see the real versus the mind and conquer it?

See, if you cannot see there is a trick going on or there is a distortion there, then you should leave it to the teacher. The guru will see it sooner or later. So that is what I keep saying that if the student knew everything, if the student had that much awareness or that much intelligence to know what is happening there, then there was no need for a guru. Why is there a need for a guru? Because only somebody who is outside can identify these issues.

The egoistic seeker will say - I know everything. Everybody else is stupid in the satsang. I get these people a lot and they try to grab the attention of the teacher. They try to keep the teacher busy with them. We come to know these things. Instead of progressing, they start preaching or they engage in debates and totally useless activities, useless questions also. Like they try to pretend to be highly intellectual. You know what is written in this book, in that scripture and all. Let us discuss this matter for two hours. So we come to know something is wrong here and only the guru can cure this thing. If this is happening to the student, the student is helpless. So the bottom line is - leave it to the guru. If there is no guru, they will suffer. It ends in suffering, confusion, mental distortion. That is why we need to practice under a guru. Experienced guru, not because the knowledge is difficult, simply because there can be issues, there can be troubles, there can be resistances or obstacles or mental distortions, megalomania and a lot of things. So the job of the guru is to take a broom and clean the student, purify.

Mary is saying, awareness is also like a mind training activity, so it is also happening in the memory?

Yes, without memory, there won't be any awareness. It is just a higher layer which controls the lower layers. The rule of the layers is very clear as shown in the program that the higher layers know and control the lower layers, but the lower layers do not know and have no power over the higher layers. This is the law of the hierarchy of layers.

So how does the layer of awareness arise? Through knowledge only, spiritual knowledge. And we prefer that activity over other activities. And the other activities are now commanded by awareness. So that immediately reminds you of the command center of the yogic path, the ajna center. It is nothing but awareness which awakens due to knowledge. And it is a kind of intellect. It is a kind of memory only. That is why we always use these words like remember, recall, and awareness. It also has the same meaning like you realize suddenly or you are in that state of realization all the time.

“No, but it goes away in the sleep”.

So what? It does not matter. You don't go away. Realizing this is important. When the state changes from sleep to awake, just recall it again. Very simple. The state changes from death to birth, recall it again. Not a big deal.

“No, but I don't want this state of memory. I don't want this activity. I want to go beyond activity. I want to silence all activities”.

It is not possible, you see. That which you already are cannot be done. Simply realize that I am that which is beyond all activities. So there is nothing to do there. Nothing to achieve. Do not try to destroy the activities. Just install another activity there which makes this person or the individual remember that whatever is going on is okay, perfectly fine. I know what it is. That gives you the power. Power of knowing. This power will leak into your worldly life also. In your speech, in your thoughts, in your actions. Same power and the same truth will be seen. Same precision will be seen. Same systematic attitude. Everything will be well organized and beautiful. No mistakes at all. And if that does not happen overnight, don't worry.

“No, everything is good, but my emotions are out of control”.

Don't worry. Cry when it is necessary to cry. Laugh when it comes naturally. Don't seek a specific emotion. That is what is called control. If it happened, it happened. No problem. Whatever is necessary for life activities, that should go on. Sometimes we don't even think about it. Sometimes we simply allow it without awareness also. Because after it has happened, we realize it was all an illusion. It was necessary. Sometimes it is effortless, but sometimes it is work or effort. Become aware of the work or effort. Your mind is tricking you into thinking that it is effort. Realize this. Become aware of this trick of the mind. You see, awareness is a meta thing. When you put meta in front of something, it is beyond, become aware of the effort that this mind is trying to get into awareness. You will see awareness is behind it, shining light on this foolish activity. Let it work for a while, two minutes, and then it stops. It is very funny.

Rajit is saying, you have mentioned that in lucid dreaming, we can modify the dream or completely drop it. Why does the illusion persist in the waking state? Even when we are in awareness?

The illusion does not persist. Why do you think so? Will the waking state remain forever? Is it not changing every day? What persists? The experience cannot go away. But what is it in the experience that remains in the waking state? Even the waking state does not remain. It remains only for 50% of the time. People think I am awake for 16 hours per day. No, hardly two or three hours if they can manage. The rest of the time is like sleep. The body is working or sitting or talking. They are mostly asleep. Can you tell me what it is that persists in the waking state? Don't tell me that it is slow and it is fast. It does not matter. Time is an illusion. Take the example of the tomato. It stays there for five days and so it is useful. Makes your life very tasty. But do you call it persistence? No. You speed up the time. It is gone in one second. And then you can see that it is a dream. The waking is also a dream. Tell me what are the differences between waking and dreaming.

The whole of the experience is a dream and the waking is a tiny time period which happens in this bigger dream. Dream of the Brahman. Flash of light in this whole darkness of existence. Emptiness. Bubble in the water. The bubble does not persist. And the whole human life is only a few years. Compared to eternity, it is like the blink of an eye. You call it persistence? Think about it. There is a saying in India that the whole age, yugas in this world, come and go in the blink of the eye of the Brahman. They call it Brahma there. Brahma blinks for a while and the whole world, universe appears and disappears in that moment of blinking. And obviously nobody understands what they are saying. I also heard it. And I was curious why. Who is this fellow, Brahma, who blinks and makes things appear and disappear? And then who are we? So finally you have the answer.

You can say waking state is a slow dream. Your night dream is a creation of your local memory. You can say a slightly bigger area of the local memory. Your waking memory is the smallest. Remember this. Check the diagram in the program. The smallest circle in the whole scene of the memory is the waking state, tiniest. And the dream is a little bit bigger, projected - even bigger. But there is something much bigger, that is called greater memory. And this waking state is created from the greater memory. Deep sleep is a state where there is no significant activity that can go in the local memory. There is a lot of activity, as you know, in deep sleep. Memory is always active, but it is not bridged into the local memory of the waking state. Sometimes I call it the waking memory. So deep sleep is another activity where whatever happens there is not stored in the local memory or the waking memory. And so when this state changes from sleep to waking, it looks as if nothing happened. It looks like a gap, but there is never a gap. The gap is also an illusion. You can say sleep is the background in which all the activities happen. That is the state of the universal memory. This universal memory does not go through waking and dreaming. You know, that is a very small part of it. It is sleeping all the time. These bubbles happen, bubbles of the dream. They are momentary. Nothing persists.

Parteep is saying, some people say that the activities this body-mind structure goes through are lessons specifically to let you evolve. Does this have some truth or is it unknowable too?

You can call it a lesson, yes. From the point of view of evolution, the experiences give us a lesson. The whole life is actually a lesson. So this entity evolves, whatever you call as the outcome of the causal body that progresses through the evolutionary track. So it learns to progress somehow through experiences.

It is bringing people to their home. They're lost. So bring them back home. For that, sometimes you need to do a lot of drama. You need to lie. You need to set up a lot of unnecessary things. You need to say these things, trap them and then put them back in their natural habitat, which is silence. So the seeker goes away, the seeking goes away, the guru goes away and silence remains. Some people will say, "No, I don't want to become lazy like this. I don't want to just sit in silence all day." But that is just the ego, you know, ignorance speaking. The silence is full of activity. Silence has infinite potential. So that seeker is always busy 24/7, many lifetimes, no issues at all. When even the universal mind comes back and does all kinds of activities, we are nothing in comparison to that.

Silence is very active. The emptiness, the huge potential is manifested in all forms already. That is me. Am I just sitting in a cave? No. I have been busy since eternity like a hurricane and I'll be busy for the rest of eternity like a hurricane. I am that. So it is just ignorance to assume that the silence means that it will be an inactive life. It will be a lazy life. It is just eating and sleeping. It is a tremendous activity. That is also silence. So never confuse laziness with silence or stillness. There can be an extreme amount of activity in stillness and it is perfectly okay to not do anything at all. That is also perfectly okay. Sit with your eyes closed. The problem is people pretend to be still while their minds are active. That can be a problem. Get up and do something if you want to do it. Don't sit.

Session 134

Discussion on a test follows.

Why is knowledge ignorance?

We cannot have all the knowledge. Whatever we know will be limited, and there is no guarantee that whatever we know will be right all the time. But that is not how we answer on the path of knowledge. We answer on the path of knowledge like this: The knowledge is an arrangement of experiences in memory, and all the experiences are false. So the arrangement is totally false. How is this arrangement reliable then? Why do we even call it knowledge? It is actually ignorance, but ignorance is purified as we progress on the path. We say knowledge is refined ignorance.

We have another layer on top of the knowledge, which actually scrutinizes what is there below it, and it sees that all of it is actually just a compromise of some kind and nothing can be known in the end. So the unknowing is the true knowing. It is all an accumulation of the false, and the purification is simply recognition that which is below this layer of awareness is false. That is why we put the layer of awareness on top of the layer of intelligence or intellect because that shows that the intellect knows nothing actually. Whatever is surely known will be negative, and it will be negative knowledge or it will be purification of what is below.

Is direct experience via senses a valid means of knowledge?

Yes it is, but we need to always test it using the intellect. It is not reliable as it is unless logic is applied to it. For example, we know that there are objects, that is what senses are telling us, extremely unreliable. When logic is applied to it, we know that there are only vibrations; the objects are appearances. But we don't have any other means to get the experience except senses; they are mediums, whether they are physical, non-physical, or internal. There is a sensory spectrum there, as you know, and that is the only way to get the experience. All we need to do is clarify the experience, purify the experience through logic, and then it becomes knowledge.

Can we rely on truth for conducting our actions?

There can be opinions here. Because the definition of the truth is purely subjective and arbitrary. It is my will, what I call true or false, and if I do it using this kind of discrimination, which is totally unfounded most of the time, are my actions reliable? Do they produce results?

The need for truth is to take an action; however, it should be kept in mind that truth is relative. There is a thing called certainty, which is not black and white, which is not one or zero, true or false, there is a gray area in the truth. Whatever criteria we have chosen, can we 100% say that yes, my actions will be right? Most of our actions are based on emotions, not on true or false, not totally reliable, but that is how we act every day. What do you want to eat today? Logic cannot tell you; only your emotion. What do you like? That is what you do, that is what you eat, that is what you will cook today.

The definition of the truth that we have here, is totally useless in everyday world, in the Maya. So what we do is actually we use the false to take the actions, not the truth. The truth is totally useless. We always use that which is false to act. Now, this is a paradox, because an average person will say you are on the path of knowledge, now stop acting on false, act on the truth. There is nothing to act in truth; you always act in falsehood. All our actions are based on false in an absolute sense, but in a relative sense, they work sometimes, only if you are lucky. We don't have any other choice but to build criteria for truth, and whatever is true according to our understanding, we should act accordingly, fully knowing that the consequence or the fruit can be anything. We have control over the action like this; there is no control over the fruit of that action. You can delude yourself that I am the truth, I know the truth, and I act on the truth, it's all useless. Best to drop the truth and knowledge and whatever concepts you have gathered, that is the place of bliss, non-doing, not knowing.

How is the experiencer omnipresent?

It is non-local, and non-local can be understood as omnipresent. “Non-local” cannot be understood as not to be found anywhere. Non-local means there is no pinpoint location; it cannot be pinpointed, and you will find that everything is like this, from an electron to the whole existence, everything is non-local, from a photon like science will tell you, non-local thing.

What is the way to know the experiencer?

You cannot know it. There is no knowledge of the experiencer; you can be it; that is how we know it. We know that I am the experiencer by being the experiencer, not by finding it in our experience, in the sensory experience, or any other experience. It is to be known by being it. The sun does not know itself in a candlelight. The sun is the one that illuminates everything else; that is how we know, "I am the sun."

Where are all the past events when they are not being recalled?

By past events, I don't mean past life, don't go into the past lives, you don't know about it, the present life which is our memory, where are they? What happened to all the events? There are no events right now also, the past is an illusion, there is no past, there is no event in the past, there is no event in the present, and there is no event in the future; there are no events. How can the intellect understand this thing? It does not understand really. The intellect can understand only the illusion; it constructs the illusion of events and past and memory and so on. The vibration is a very pure concept, but still, the intellect could not do better than that. Why? Because the intellect is founded on the illusion. If you try to dig it, you want to find the mechanism, where it is stored, let me go to the memory to find out, you are dropping in the illusion, in the abyss of the illusion; there is only darkness. What is produced when you recall something, is another illusion; there is no event there. Anyhow, think about it, it is very difficult to accept these things, I know.

Establish that the waking state is also a dream state.

First, you need to define the dream, what you mean by that, then you will need to find out if the definition applies to the waking state. That is how we establish things, through logic and deduction and so on, and direct experience also. Or you can say all states are one kind of state, and then you proceed to show that they are dream-like. When we are in the dream, we think that it is real, it looks like a waking state. It shows that there is a common point there between waking and the dream. Once the experience has already happened, we classify it as waking and dreaming, right? Now there is another way to establish it, is to show that the classification is false. The classification of waking and dreaming is totally arbitrary.

It can be established on the basis of memory. Fundamentally, what is the origin of the waking experience and what is the origin of the dreaming experience. By the way, those who are doing the dream state experiments and projected state experiments, they will have no doubts in their mind that waking, dreaming, everything is the same, and they will just laugh at this logical, mumbo jumbo that we are cooking up. These people laugh at us. The experiencer remains as the background of all the states. From the point of view of the experiencer, there are no states. Remember this, experiencer does not differentiate between states, like a child does not differentiate between a cartoon and you; you are also a cartoon for him.

According to our criteria of truth, both the waking and dream changes, both are false, so why do we differentiate? Why is the waking state consistent, why is the waking state stable? There is an illusion here that it is stable and consistent, that's all. Speed of change is different, so a car going at the speed of 40 km/h is the same as the car going at the speed of 100 km/h, we don't say that the reality of the car changed. So the experiences that are streaming at high speed in the dream are the same as the experiences that are going very very slowly in the waking. The dream is produced from the memory, the waking is also produced from the memory, both have a common ground which is the universal memory. There are tiny differences which are non-essential between waking and dreaming. It is amazing.

Why does the memory structure change state?

Let us go to the fundamental state, which is sleeping. There is a potential for something to appear there, and as soon as that potential is manifested, we say that the state has changed from sleeping to dreaming. Sometimes the dream needs to do the job of survival, and then it shifts to the senses that are responsible for survival, which is our waking state. It is mostly survival. So there is a need. You cannot keep dreaming. That is the tendency. But because the layers have organized themselves in this form that there is a physical body now, so the physical body demands attention. The attention shifts from the other state, which has nothing to do with the physical world. You are called back in the waking because of the need for survival.

That is one reason, obviously, which is a very good reason. But the fundamental thing is that states are also change, which means it is a vibration. States are a result of vibration, so it must go up and down. There cannot be a static state. This is the rule here that everything is impermanent and cyclic. There is a cyclic pattern to everything because vibration is a circle. Vibration is cyclic. So the states oscillate, even though I just told you that there is no difference between waking, dreaming, and whatever. This is how it seems to be. It is played out like this. This is how we interpret it. So, according to me at least, that is the reason. The cyclic nature of the memory ensures that there will be state changes. There can be a need, like survival, like we need rest. The mind needs rest, so it shifts into sleep. Then it cannot stay in sleep forever; it will die. So it goes back to the survival job, and so on.

You must have noticed that in the 24-hour cycle, there are tiny cycles of shifts. Like the people in the yogic tradition, they know it. Breath will shift from one nostril to another. They noticed it. Your heartbeat changes rhythm. Your digestion and your mood swings change. Your energies act in a rhythm. So that changes the mood. That changes the states. Sometimes you are creative, sometimes you are not that active. So, they found out that which time of the day is favorable for what kind of activity, when the prana is in sushumna, do this; when the prana is in ida, do this; when the prana is in pingala, do this. This was called Laya yoga. But I think it is not that accurate because nobody sleeps at an exact time. Nobody does it. Those who are awake at night, for example, this won't apply that much. The moon and the sun don't affect them that much. They have broken the circadian connection. Similarly, due to modern life, the periodic reproductive cycles of women are not at all in sync with the moon now. It's broken. You need to see it. The state change, the micro state changes, they are not very predictable. Now you can see that a lot of processes are going on, and their combined effect is state change.

By which process can we merge the experience and the experiencer?

You cannot merge them. You see, they are already one. You can only realize this. Nothing to merge here. Don't try to merge it. Don't use any method, any meditation. Nothing. There is a way to clear the mind. There is a way to just drop the junk in the mind. See the merging. Be the merging. Experiencing is always there. Just try to know that it is always there. Very easy. You can call it a process if you want, but it's not a process because the word process assumes that there are two, then you apply the process to make it one, cook it up. No, simply see. Once you see it, you don't need to do the process also.

When all that is removed, emptiness remains. Is this statement right or wrong?

The statement is false, according to me, because you don't need to remove anything. Why? Because there is already nothing; it is already empty. You just need to realize, whatever I had added on it simply occluded the emptiness. It does not mean that the emptiness will appear when you have removed it; you will only realize that it never became something else. Nothing actually happened after I assumed things on top of emptiness; it remained emptiness. That assumption, that mental activity, the dream of there being something is also empty, devoid of substance. It is not that when I think I can make the substance appear magically. It is not like this; it remains empty, like a dream. It leaves nothing behind. Nothing gets added; nothing needs to be removed then. What are you going to remove? Take the metaphor of waves and the water. Will the water remain when we remove the waves from it? Somebody says, "Remove the waves, please. I want the water, pure water, without the waves." And now you are going to laugh. What? Why are you trying to remove it? Just drink the water; don't try to remove the waves; they are an illusion. Yes, nothing happens to it when you remove something, nothing happens to it when you add something. It is all empty all the time, still whole and complete.

Someone asked, When Sri Ram Krishna saw a vision of the divine mother or when Swami Yogananda hugged the physical form of his Guru when it appeared to him after his Guru's death, in the context of a layered structure of memory, how and in which layer are these experiences manifesting? How can you differentiate these from hallucination or one's imagination?

First of all, we should not comment on somebody else's experiences; how can we do that? And the second thing is, we can only guess what is going on here because everything is possible in the illusion, isn't it? Everything can appear here, divine, non-divine, he saw a vision of it; it is possible. Who created that vision? He himself; there is only Ram Krishna, nobody else; there is no mother separate from Ram Krishna, so he appeared to himself as the divine mother. You can also do that if you want; any day, you are the divine mother.

Now, the physical form of the Guru, now that is more tricky. Somebody appearing in the physical form, now this takes something more than a vision. So what can it be? The Guru had a mastery over the physical world; you can only say this much; he is a tantric, he is an occult practitioner who has gained this spiritual power of manipulating the physical world, which is a big achievement because it is the greater memory. You have hacked into the greater memory, and there you create an illusion of being present, and that illusion will be physical in all respects; you can touch it, you can talk to it, it will be a physical manifestation, which in the occult field is called materialization. He materialized in a physical form, and this is the occult practice. In the context of a layered structure of memory, you will need a mastery over the greater memory here, that which is producing the illusion of the physical world; you need to access it and change it using your intention and impress this blueprint of your old self, which is the human body, and it will appear, like in the context of the movie Matrix, you need to hack into the Matrix and copy your code there so that you appear there. So, that is the occult manifestation.

How can I do that? Making the Divine Mother appear, not a big ability, but this is a problem because this memory is protected; there are safeguards, nobody should do it, it will break the play. So, you will need assistance from the gurufield here. You will need approval of those who are protecting this area. I mean, I always use the software terms because it is so easy to understand, but hopefully, everybody understands that this part of the dream is under protection, and it is just like any other memory; you can write anything into it, and it will appear, manifest here. That is not allowed mostly, and it will take a lot of spiritual attainment, or you can say occult powers to do it, but it is possible. Another example is Mahavatar Babaji; he keeps doing it most of the time. He is like this, and people say he is a man, he is a young person, and so on, but no, totally non-physical phenomena; this is materialization or manifestation. If it is done within margins, like one person is looking at it, or two or three people are looking at it, or it leaves no trace, no evidence, nothing, no photo, then it will be allowed.

Now, how can you differentiate these from hallucination or one's imagination? These materializations can be witnessed by many; they are an objective experience. Well, hallucination is, as you know, a personal experience, subjective. Sometimes you will see that your objects go missing; sometimes the objects are placed back. Now, it can be somebody who is doing simple tantric practices, somebody fooling around with you, or it can be a signal from the gurufield that look, whatever you are thinking is real and are involved in it, is not. It is a projection; it is an illusion. They try to give you a hint so that you start searching for the answer. So why did the guru appear? Assuming it is a true story, he wanted to give him this message that look, this is not real.

I don't believe in these stories at all because this is India, you see, people cook up such stories all the time. There is a lot of, you can say, mythology around these people, even Mahavatar Babaji and all. What can we do about these stories? How can we use them? My opinion is, do not believe them as it is. You will never grow simply by believing things; you will not benefit. "Oh, this happened and that happened" is blind belief. But you can use it to explore. Such a great master is saying this; it has something in it. They will not say it without any reason, so you start exploring it. The master has shown you, it is possible. Now it is your job to achieve it. Go and achieve it. There is no need to do hair-splitting analysis on it. If it is possible, do it. Some people hear these stories and they start worshipping the masters for whatever reason. It is okay to worship, if you are exploring it yourself, if you are not, you are just wasting time. Nothing is gained in worship.

Vipan is saying, can the whole life or births be summed up as having the ultimate desire to survive, to have the ultimate desire to dissolve and in between play?

No, these experiences have no cause or no purpose at all. There is no ultimate desire at all. Desire to survive is just there; it is potential; it is a possibility happening. I don't think anybody has a desire to dissolve at all; nobody wants to be dissolved. This thing that has the desire goes away; that which desires is false. The individual is false; it has no desires of itself. So whose desire? Nobody's desire. The individual never wants to dissolve; it is not possible. It is realized that there is no individual; what is there to dissolve now? What are you dissolving? It is all empty vibration; where will it dissolve into? Think about it; there is nobody to survive.

Graham has a question, It was said in lesson 20 - my current experience of oneness. How is this experience different from other experiences which are false? How do we discriminate between them?

It was said, but that is very approximate. It is said in the response to the question, how can I get the experience of oneness. It is a common question among seekers - “can you show me the oneness”, and the correct response is, your current experience is of oneness. And you should not look at it from the point of view of duality now, because this answer is given in non-duality. It means that all there is, is oneness, and the experience can be only a knowledge of it. This statement is pointing to this experience of realizing it is not an experience of oneness. So in short, we say that look, isn't it oneness? That's all it says, and there is no question of true and false here. It is not false to say that there is oneness, and it is not true also. It is true and it is false also. So when you are in the chapter of oneness, always shift into the mode of non-duality. There the statements are not going to make any sense from the dual point of view. And since our language is very limited, we need to use the dual language. Now this is a difficulty, and so always pay attention.

Graham is asking, in chapter 18, the following is said - what is being sensed is emptiness; some of the potentials are being sensed, and the senses give it a form, so it seems like there is potential in emptiness. So why do we use the word emptiness instead of potential or sea of possibility or unmanifest?

Actually, we use all these words. From different traditions come different words. There is a description of “what is”, and this description involves all these words. So why do we call it emptiness? Because there is no substance as we know it in an ordinary way; that everything is made up of something. We say that existence is not made up of anything; it is emptiness. And the emptiness is not as empty as in an empty jar. The jar is filled with cookies. Same way, we say that it is full of potential. It is not an emptiness that is devoid of happening, devoid of experience; it is full of experience. It is that emptiness which is non-substantial; it always remains a possibility, and that is why we say it is a sea of possibility. It never actually turns into an actuality, and we say it is unmanifest because of the same reason. Nothing is actually manifested; it appears to be there.

So all these words are valid; they can describe existence as it is. So the problem is in saying that please don't call it anything else except emptiness. I don't want you to call it emptiness. Always call it a sea of possibilities. Now, that will be the wrong attitude. Use the words wherever they are required, and then drop all of them because - I don't know is the correct description of oneness; that is silence. Until you arrive at the silence, you need something; for a newcomer, you need to use words, and then you must get rid of the words, all the concepts. “I cannot understand emptiness, but thank you that you have cleared the wrong notions I had about emptiness” - and that is the end of knowledge. Nothing beyond this will be known. You try to know more; you will gather more concepts, more words, and then there will be this kind of struggle in your mind, “which word is the best? He said that day it is a possibility; today he is saying impossibility. Now which one is true?” So dropping and establishing yourself in stillness is the job of this language. It's all negative.

Question by Graham, the only thing I know 100% certainly is there is experience. Logical inference could be corrupted by a bug in processing, but we seem to rely on logic in PoK which is fine, we all rely on it daily life too, but does PoK recognize the difference in certainty between experience and the result of logical inference?

We don't rely totally on experience. If we rely 100% on the experience you know it is a deception, we need to always use the intellect or the logical ability and critical thinking to process the experience, that is how we arrive at knowledge, and we do the same for logic, they are mutually supportive.

How do we form a logical rule? For example, when there is smoke there is fire, and you will see that this rule is based on direct experience only, sensory experience, so logic has experience as the foundation. Let us say 2 plus 2 is 4, how do we know that this is true? We take 2 objects, put them in the bucket, we take 2 more objects and we put them in the bucket, and when we count the total we get 4. That is how we know that my logical formula was correct. Now, we don't keep counting every day; we just use the logic as a shortcut to know that whenever you add these 2 and 2, there will be 4. It is a kind of trick of the mind, the mind does not want to do the hard work, it will say yes it is 4, I know it, this is how it is and it knows it based on the experience only, so it is a constant process of refinement, you need to keep checking the experience and you need to keep validating your logic using the experience.

One day I was giving this metaphor of the mirage in the desert, the senses tell you in the desert that it is water, and you go and find out that it is not water. There the mind learns something that in the desert if something appears as water there is a 50-50% chance that it is water, so that is the logic, it forms out of experience, the experience was a deception but it got refined. Similarly you say that all crows are black because you saw all the crows they are black, now one day you find a white crow somehow, there is a possibility isn't it, experience can be anything, and then you say that look the crows are black only in my region, there is a white crow in this region, so this is another example of refinement of logic based on experience. And this process goes on.

There is no end to it except when you take the reverse path which is of negative knowledge, only negative knowledge is certain, not positive, the positive is always changeable, that is why we will never know anything on the path of knowledge. We will never know, use any means of knowledge you want, all that can be done is dropping of accumulations in the mind.

There will always be mistakes in your logical inferences, there will always be mistakes in your direct experience, and it is the job of the guru to show you that. The guru has made all the mistakes already; he knows. And you can be certain about the negative experience, and that is all we need on the path of knowledge. For example, there is often a doubt that the experiencer disappears in the sleep state, that is a logical deduction - “I know things are because they make an impression in the memory, and in the sleep state, the experiencer did not make an impression on the memory, so it was not there”. And now it is the job of the guru to tell you that - “The experiencer never makes an impression on the memory; do not try to use the object to detect something about a thing which is not an object”. This is how we proceed on the path of knowledge, it is complicated but once you get it you will know that it is a lifelong process.

I have said this about agnostics, they never reject knowledge, they never reject experiment, what they say is no matter what I do, no matter what I know, I can prove it that it is unknowable, that is what they are saying. We are also mostly like this but we have kind of a broader attitude here; we never laugh at people who say there is a world or there is a human being, there are desires and needs, we have a life, we don't laugh at these people, we acknowledge that, we acknowledge the ignorance also, we acknowledge the need for knowledge also, and when we embrace the knowledge, we drop it finally when there is no need for it, we don't carry it on our heads. A broader range here. My role as a seeker on the path of knowledge is broader than an agnostic who is merely interested in this one thing, I am interested in all the things. I am not saying that an agnostic is narrow-minded, no, they are not, but in the end, we don't care. Do that which is necessary, the truth changes, so what, change it, use it, the knowledge becomes ignorance, so what, know something. Nothing can be known, so what, get on the path of knowledge. We have a kind of broader philosophy, non-dualism, not merely agnosticism but it will take you finally there. Now the intelligence is not to stick there, keep doing something, keep knowing something, you will always find that the agnostic is always right, they have already won, you see, there is no way to win over this argument, but there is a way to live which is the spiritual way, which is not that narrow. The denial is then followed by acceptance. Anyhow, there can be more opinions about this because this is not hard and fast, the non-dualism ends it - “this is not true”, and the rest is left to you, do whatever you want with it, no recommendation at all.

Sweety is asking, is it true that only consciousness is known, nothing beyond that can be grasped by the mind?

No, there is no consciousness and if by that word you mean experiencer, then yes it cannot be known. This term is used by today's science, but science has nothing to do with consciousness or the experiencer or any of the spiritual/philosophical stuff. Whenever a scientist is talking about something which is not his subject, it is totally unreliable, like a car mechanic talking about heart surgery. Does not know much. He can tell you one or two things if he is very intelligent, but all he knows is the carburetor, tires, engine oils, and so on. He is an expert in that. So when a scientist talks about things which they don't deal with, they are mostly wrong, they don't know. However, they are very intelligent people, so sometimes they are very right. You should ask about these things to one who is expert in these things. Philosophy is the subject matter of a philosopher, not of a scientist. Similarly, the engineer does not know much about science, but he can tell you how many kinds of screwdrivers there are or what are the nominations of all the capacitors, resistors, the electronic circuits, how many languages are there in software, and so on. And he will not know thermodynamics and all, he may not know electric fields.

It is amazing that you take your knowledge from people or TV, YouTube, mother and father, and your friends who have nothing to do with knowledge. They are not a reliable source of knowledge, but what happens is 90% of people take their knowledge from those who have no knowledge, and most of the time, those who have knowledge, they are completely ignored. That person is sitting on the bookshelf in the form of a book which nobody reads. The extent of ignorance is too much. “The scientist told me about these other worlds”, you see, scientists do not deal with these things, they have nothing to say about the non-physical. The occultist knows. If an occultist is explaining the other worlds, you should listen. Scientist, no, his job is limited to the physical world, you should listen to the scientist if he is talking about the physical world.

Now there will be some people who would like to be in two fields and who are also on the non-dual paths. Many people are from a scientific background, engineering and medical background, you will see, doctor, professor, teacher, software engineer, and so on, on the path of knowledge. Ordinary people don't come here, they cannot grasp it, and this cross-pollination then happens, somebody who knows science will completely grasp what the path of knowledge is telling. Software engineer will completely grasp the layered structure of the memory. Sometimes there is this overlap, but a scientist speaking on the TV or YouTube? No hope here.

It does not mean that he knows nothing at all, he knows something about his own field, he is good in that, and probably he knows a lot which even the philosopher will not know. So the basic mistake is to rely on non-experts, to take their opinion about something which is not their field, and assume it as truth. Because he knows something about his own field, does not mean he knows something totally beyond his field. The mind has this bias to accept something which is said by the same person who is an authority about some other field, about which he knows nothing, he has not done the graduation there, he has not published any paper on consciousness, nothing, but when he talks about it, people simply accept it. This is called authority bias in psychology.

A man in a white coat is shown on the TV to sell you the toothbrush, and you buy it. He is just an actor. Because you have this image of authority in your mind - These doctors in white coats, they always tell the truth. This is how it is projected in your society. Why do these politicians have a photo of Gandhiji behind them? Go any place in India, in any political office, mostly in one of the parties or any party, they have photos of the great people behind them, the photo is very big and they look tiny in front of that poster. Why do they keep it, what kind of tactic is that? Normal ordinary people have no idea what they are receiving. These people have no idea that they are being brainwashed, it is all a big belief, the politician is the most cunning fellow in the society. The photo builds up the trust of that person. Like there is a lot of drama going on on the stage where the politician appears, he will be worshipped like a great master or somebody. Garlands will be put on him, he will be treated with respect and all, although he is a hardened criminal in real life, a liar, manipulative, greedy person. A lot of drama is done there in front of the people, this is called image building, people are fooled by that very easily. He adopts the ideals of a great person or projects it. So authority bias and this illusion of greatness by association and so on is happening here. So the scientist, because he has read some great books or because he has passed the university exam, does not get the power to tell the truth. That is why we dropped the guru also from the means of knowledge on the path of knowledge. We don't trust the guru, we trust only direct experience and logic. Show me, don't tell me. So it is a very, very corrupted society here, never believe the person on the TV, never, use your direct experience and logic.

Andy is asking, Once you realize every experience is an illusion, won't you stop worshipping everything with form, isn't that a natural consequence?

You are worshipping something only because somebody told you to do that. It is not even connected with the illusion. As soon as you disregard people who have told you to do certain actions, you can drop it. You don't need to know that it is an illusion. In fact, you can start worshipping everything when you know the illusion because you know it doesn't matter at all. But you see the worship is imposed, it is indoctrination most of the time. No child is interested in taking up any worship of any kind, probably very rarely. We are not born with this. What are we born with? I need food, water, shelter, and a partner. Rest of the things are indoctrination. So why do we allow these things? Because indoctrination makes us human sometimes. You are indoctrinated to wear clothes, to speak in a certain way, language, and so on, culture, it's all indoctrination. So what will the wise men do? Will filter out that which is unnecessary out of the indoctrination and keep that which is useful. Some good things are also given to us by our parents in the society and we keep them and we remove that which is totally unnecessary, which was given simply because they were ignorant.

As long as you are dependent on your parents and your community who worships things and so on, you do it. As soon as you become independent, drop it. There is no need. If you are dependent on your father for money and he worships a certain kind of god or goddess and you tell him, "Look, Daddy, everything is an illusion. I am not going to worship anything," you know the consequences of it. You know that. So you pretend as if there is a god and goddess and you need to worship him and continue till you get a job, move to your own house and stop doing that stupid thing again. This is a practical and wise way to deal with it.

Question by Abhay, how does one go to the very source of thought?

The source of thought is memory. That is how you go to the source of thought. The thoughts are experiences that are being generated out of memory, and the memory is just a storehouse of the sensory experiences. So ultimately, the source of thought comes out to be the experience. Whatever we are experiencing is stored in the memory, and the processes in the memory keep generating thoughts. Other processes of survival, the intellect and all, they keep filtering the thoughts. So mostly the memory generates these impulses or imaginations or patterns, which are experienced as thoughts. Hopefully that answers it.

Your experiences produce your thoughts. So if you want good thoughts, have good experiences. You will always find that thought is generated out of a previous experience, and you will find that your previous experience has a cause in your actions. So in Sanskrit, we say that you are actually perceiving that which is your own karma. That is why they say your current situation, whether it is mental or physical, positive or negative, is a consequence of your own actions. So in this way, you arrive at the source, that it is me only. I am the source.

Abhay is asking, what is the origin of experiences?

The origin of experiences is the potential in the emptiness. We say that existence is emptiness, and it has infinite potential, and it produces experiences that are illusory. When these experiences are limited through the senses and the body-mind structure, they produce this experience of human lives. There is just a possibility there. And what is emptiness? What is this existence which is doing this? It is me. I am the whole. So again, the origin of it is me. I am the source of not only these experiences that we are having right now, I am the source of all the experiences that all the creatures are having. There is only one source. I am the origin, and I am the end.

Now, how is that possible? This is such a bold claim. How can I prove it? And I will say that you need to prove it to yourself, and the way to do it is to walk on the path of knowledge where it is all systematically provided to you. You will be able to establish these answers yourself.

Session 135

Poonam is asking, what's the way to be accepting of a new guru after one has had a previous guru?

I am not saying you drop the previous guru, never, because you have learned something useful from the previous guru if at all. But when you accept a new guru, the acceptance is not of the person, the acceptance is of the path. Check what he is teaching and if you like it, stick to it. You can consult your old guru, but that will be regarding your old practice. It is totally subjective. It totally depends on your relationship with the guru. If the guru is very strict, he will say no, I don't even want you to listen to your old guru. But if your new guru is open, he will provide you instructions on the old also. But usually, that is temporary until you cross over to the new path.

So, if the guru sees that there is no acceptance at all, you are not ready for this, you will be sent back to the old. Guru is different from a traditional teacher in the school, because the guru needs to interact in a personal manner. In the school, okay, sit down, open the book, read it, do the homework, and yes, you passed, now you go to the other class. It is not like this in spiritual matters. The guru is there for many lifetimes, many births. That's why I said the real teaching is not the program. The program is a filter to keep those who are ready for many lifetimes. Actually, I can see that there are some people who are already there with me since many lifetimes. They don't remember. When we talk about spirituality, it is not a one-year job or six months course. It is a matter of many, many lifetimes. You see, the time in the spiritual field is measured in births. So you have been on the path of knowledge for how long? And when the person says 10 years or 15 years, we laugh because we have been on this path for 10 to 15 lifetimes. It is measured in lifetimes. Can this small program, a few videos, make you like a true seeker or a really advanced seeker? No, it is initiation. It initiates the person on the path of knowledge, Diksha. Not much is expected here. It is a kind of filter. Who wants to come with me? It is like this.

Poonam is asking, how does one become objective and keep the guru separate from the teachings path?

Why do you need to do that? Can you tell me, is the guru causing trouble in your path? Why do you need to keep the guru separate? Is there a teaching without the guru, or is there a guru without the teaching? Probably, I did not understand the question. Is the guru troubling you a lot?

Poonam is saying, "I understood your statement about choosing the path, not the guru."

No, I never said that. You need to choose the path, and you need to choose the guru also. You cannot keep them separate. Who will make you walk on the path? Only the guru. “I chose the path, now the guru can go and do his own business. Sometimes I'll ask him something impossible”. Actually, that is what is happening. I see the comments on YouTube and so on. People randomly come there, randomly watch a video, and ask a random question. Now, this is what I call separating the path from the guru. And they go to another channel and ask another random question there. So, they are on the path of randomness, not a spiritual path, and their life will be random for the rest of their lifetime.

Close association with the guru, following in the footsteps of the guru, will guarantee your progress, will guarantee the success. Actually, the guru is closer than your mother, father, parent, husband, wife. Many people will agree here. It happens like this. When they talk to me, they reveal all that which they have not told anybody. And there is no hesitation there because somehow they know, they are seekers since many lifetimes. They know this, that we should not hide anything from the doctor, from the lawyer, and from the guru. Otherwise, there is no treatment. Otherwise, there is no success. So, if Poonam is thinking about keeping the guru out of her life, just walking on the path and occasionally asking one or two questions, it will be a hardship. It means that a few lifetimes are going to be spent only in learning how to surrender. Those who are surrendered to the guru, it becomes the responsibility of the guru to hold them in his hands, take them out of this mud pool, of the quicksand of the world.

When you say, "Okay, I'll do whatever you want. Okay, I surrender here," and then the guru has no choice. He will take you. If you are stuck here for 20 lifetimes and his progress is beyond the physical, he will come back. It is guaranteed. He will appear here. He will wait for you to be ready, and then he will take you forward. He will keep dropping the hints from the other side also. Many people are like this. They're connected to their gurus forever. He never leaves. Actually, the students get distracted. If you are in the mud pool and you say, "No, no, I'll go wherever I want to go," okay, then the problem is yours.

There can be cases like this. That I've surrendered to this guru, and all he tells me to do is kirtan, sing the song. You surrendered to the wrong guru, the wrong path. So, who is your guru? Where you are happy, where your progress is. Wherever you like it most, wherever you're progressing, that which is benefiting you is your path. It is not a mindless surrender. It is an intelligent action. Like you are in the operation theater. Now you tell the doctor, “Okay, do this, take this knife, cut here. Okay, I need to do something else. Okay, just let me finish my job first. My boss told me to finish something, then you can operate on me.” You see, the doctor will leave you there. There needs to be complete surrender, so much so that the doctor puts you to sleep, anesthesia, and you surrender the whole body to the doctor, complete faith. And now the doctor can do his job. I see the same thing here. Surrender is not there if the patient is running around in the operation theater, and the doctor is running after him with a knife in his hand. "Oh, let me remove this. Let me remove this disease from you." So the guru is running with the knowledge in hand, and the student is running away.

“Welcome to the path of knowledge”. “Okay, Guruji, I'm totally surrendered to you”. “Okay, do the program now. Write here, in clean language”. “No, just tell me the mantra of Kali and Shakti and whatever”.

What kind of surrender is this? The patient is telling the doctor where to operate. Who is the doctor here? So, I see no hope, at least initially. Actually, you don't know what I need to do to tame these people. You don't know that there are lies, there is deception, there is drama, and there's all kinds of ethical and unethical measures that are taken to bring that person on the path. And even that fails sometimes, then it's a waste of time for me. But I have seen one thing that as soon as they touch the path of knowledge, there's already a transformation of some kind. As soon as they hear me talking, the seed is already there. The transformation has started.

I have seen that people always gain something, even if it looks like they're rejecting it, they gain something. At least they come to know that there is something like this in the market of spirituality, a new product. So we hope that after 30 years, they will come back. These behavior issues can be managed very easily, but what cannot be managed are physical diseases and mental diseases. But I can still try. I still try it because of my past experience with my own body and mind. I know a few things, but I don't try it on everybody. Again, those who are surrendered, they get the best treatment. So there are some exceptions, and when people tell each other that, "Oh, Guruji told you to follow this diet, but he never told me. Are you on a different path than me?" No, that first fellow has more surrender than you. That's all. He has accepted the instruction on food. You could not accept simple instructions to attend satsang in the Hindi group only. That's why you are not given more. The instruction says to write down two or three lines of what you understood. You write down two or three words, and they look like an argument rather than an understanding of the content, "No, you told this thing, but why can't I do this thing?" Hardly any surrender. Now I know nothing can be given because nothing is being taken. Those who are surrendered, their physical diseases will be cleared, their mental diseases will be cleared, their obstacles will be cleared, their worldly life will be settled. You know, anything they want, all their wishes will be fulfilled for many lifetimes. This is the power of surrender.

There is a dark side of surrender, that if you surrender to the wrong person, the wrong guru, you will be exploited. And that is why in this age, the Kaliyuga, we never find a true surrender. Like Muni said, the guru pushes you and you need to fall. That is the true surrender. Why is that not happening? Because the gurus are totally corrupt here. They are just businessmen. They are exploiting the students. So, given this age and the drama, the surrender is not possible, especially on the path of knowledge. The surrender is non-existent because the intellect is very, very active here. The intellect never surrenders. So, it was said in the article on surrender, if you read it in my blog, that seeing this age of fallen people it is recommended that you surrender everything except the intellect. Surrender was defined for this age differently, that it is a complete surrender except the surrender of the intellect.

When I started recording the podcast, the first thing that came in my mind was surrender. I need to speak on surrender because it looks like this is the biggest problem in this era. Then I came to know why there is this problem because I had this problem myself. I could not surrender to anybody. So, I'm still struggling with surrender. And I think many are facing this issue in their personal journey. I saw that if you surrender mindlessly, you will be exploited. It is guaranteed. The ashrams, the gurus, the mafia, the cults, the religions, the priests, they are going to exploit you. They are going to totally rob you. And especially women should be very careful here, in the matters of surrender. Should not surrender too much too quickly, especially when there is face to face interaction, when you need to live in the ashram and so on.

When the program was started, it was designed keeping in mind the problem of surrender. Because I know that if I tell you to come here in this place for 15 days, we'll have a brainstorming session on the path of knowledge, where everything is given in 15 days, your whole causal body will be changed in 15 days. But I know that kind of dedication and surrender is impossible. What are they surrendered to? Their job, family, bank account, company, not to the guru or the path. So seeing this, I have made so many concessions in the program. Okay, listen to this. Okay, you need to listen to only 20. Okay, don't do the practices. They're optional. The program was diluted step by step. Next year, there will be another version of the program, and it will be even more diluted.

The thing is, you don't know the real program that is happening. Your real program will continue for many lifetimes. Now you will say, “No, I got the knowledge. What is there now? Where will I progress, if it is the direct path?” You see, the knowledge will end, the path will end. But your life will not end. Your spiritual life is a lifestyle. It's not going to end. It is forever. You are eternal. What are you going to do with this knowledge? There will be cultivation, there will be evolution. You still need to deal with the illusion gracefully. There was a question some time back that, “Do you still need a guru after you get the knowledge?” I don't remember now what I answered. It is your will. Do you want to continue this movie of spiritual lifestyle, or do you want to stop? The choice is yours. If you choose to continue, you will need a guru. Guru is also progressing somewhere. He has a mission. It's not a mindless lifestyle. “I need to give self-knowledge to a thousand people every year”. No, it is not like this. There is some very, very deep joke going on here which nobody can understand, because you will know this thing, that this knowledge is not a necessity. It's not necessary, anybody can live nicely without knowledge. There are many gods and goddesses that are completely enjoying their life like anything. They don't have the knowledge. This is the paradox. So, it is called a play. It is a joke of some kind. If you enjoy these things, if you are after these things, then yes, you will need the guru. And who knows where this journey will take you. Now, it is not about knowledge. Knowledge is only a beginning. It's a starting point. Like you buy a new car, and now there is a struggle to learn to drive it for six months. But once you learn it, there is this extreme freedom to go anywhere. The real freedom started only after you learned to drive. Same way, real freedom starts only after knowing, only after finishing the path of knowledge. It probably takes very less time. What are you going to do with that freedom? That is your real program. And it involves a lot of fun, actually. So, who wants to have fun? They are being filtered through this program. That is the real purpose of the program. It is going to last for many lifetimes, till you get tired of it. You can see the play happening here also. I am not very serious about who gets what.

Bitopan is asking, I need practice to get full control over the mind's activities. Trying to find out what or which will get the full control.

Probably, you mean who will get the full control. There is no "who," but there is "what." So, the mind gets control over itself. It is like a self-learning mechanism. Right now, the activities are given by Mother Nature, and they are running somehow. If you don't interfere in those things, it is pre-programmed, it runs nicely. But humans have a little bit of freedom here. It is a more complex system, it can run in many directions, and sometimes it can go totally out of control. So, the guru tries to fix the mechanisms here, and the system learns to control itself. Automatic control, self-control, self-governing system.

All the practices are simply corrections or purifications. The best purification is knowledge. It is like an acid wash. It washes everything clean. Some hard impurities, they need to be chiseled out slowly. That is the job of the guru. And if you don't tell what you lack, the guru has no interest. You see, people think that the guru is some miracle baba of some kind, and I just appear in front of him, and he will know all my life history, past lives, and future lives. Probably yes, who knows? But who has this kind of time? The guru has no time for this. He will simply ask, "Tell me what your problem is." And it takes two minutes, and the solution takes another two minutes. But they keep hiding from the guru for many, many years. "What will my guru think if I tell him that I have these kinds of thoughts, I have that kind of desire, or I am on this path because I have no other option?" “What will my guru think?”. You see? Be honest. Completely. The guru has nothing to do with your personal stuff. What I see is a lot of impurity. That's all I see. It's not your personal thing which you need to hide. We are kind of indoctrinated to hide. Don't expose your flaws. Like if you have a dark spot on your face, paint it over with makeup. You are not tall, even if you cannot walk, put on high heels. You should not show that you lack something. Same psychology is then taken to the guru. Don't show your impurities to the guru. Just show the best things you have, special powers and all. You can talk to dead people. Okay, show it to the guru. He will be impressed. But I have this guilt. I have this trauma. I have this sadness. No, never talk about it. The guru will think that I am not spiritual. I like to eat this kind of food. Okay, don't tell the guru.

Now, this can become a problem. And the funny thing is, the guru comes to know anyway. If you stick with that person, he will come to know so many things, which you also don't know about this mind-body mechanism. The guru is aware. You are not. This is the difference. The guru is impersonal. You are still a person. This is the difference. You take everything seriously, and everything is a joke for the guru. Difference, isn't it?

The purpose of the experiment is to gain full control. Now, the question obviously comes: who gets the control and what is controlled? So, nothing whatever is given to you is whole and complete, pure, perfect, beautiful already. Social conditioning, because we live in society, has introduced impurities in it. Isn't your body very beautiful and whole and complete, and it is totally that which is needed for survival? Everything is there. Now, the treatment of the body is very bad. That is the social conditioning. Bad food, factory-prepared food, unnatural food, drugs, drinks, and whatever, they keep pouring into the bodies. These impurities are there because we live in this impure society of ignorant people. Even animals don't treat their body like this. They eat their specific diet, and they are very happy, and they only eat what they really need. But, we don't do that. Seeing that this is an impurity, it is removed, and now you feel like you have total control over the body. It is light as a feather. It never falls sick. Its energies are flowing. It's always happy. It sleeps at the proper time, wakes up at the proper time, and so on. You can tell how healthy that person is simply by the smell of the body. People cannot smell it, so they employ dogs to smell the diseases, I read this somewhere. The dog has more ability than a doctor.

Removal of the impurities gives you full control. And what is the best way to remove the impurities? Awareness. If you are aware, you won't mistreat any of the layers. Body is an example, the physical layer. But you see impurities in all the layers. Treatment of emotions is very bad. All kinds of people are pushing all kinds of buttons on you, which you are supposed to push. Somebody else comes and pushes it, and you are dancing. So, who needs to take control? The layer of the emotion. Somebody says something good about you, and you're very happy for two days. Somebody insults you, and you're sad for two weeks, and so on. Anybody can trigger your anger. Anybody can trigger your lust. No control. So, yes, the ego will take the credit. You see, "I did it. I control everything. Now, it's okay." No problem, let the ego also function naturally. Healthy ego. If it is saying that, "I did it," yes sure you did it. But it will not take the responsibility of a mistake. Unhealthy ego. The healthy ego will say, "Okay, it was my mistake," even though nobody made the mistake. The mistakes happen the same way, impersonal.

Go through all the layers, and you will see the layer of pleasure and pain is abused a lot. Only humans do it. Some animals also do it. It is not made for that, for which it is being used. And if something is used incorrectly, it falls sick. It becomes broken. It breaks very quickly if overdriven. The same way, the layer of the intellect is hardly in control of anybody. People get a little bit of knowledge, and they use it to make bombs and kill people for land, or money, or women, or whatever. And they think, "I am smart." There are entire countries like this. The layer of the intellect is highly polluted in these people. Wisdom is to live a simple life, love everybody, be happy, do some adventures. Find out what this illusion is. “No, I am going to make a gun and kill everybody. I'm intelligent, so I can do that”. It is totally out of control. Finally, the intellect learns to control itself. That is called wisdom. I don't think anybody has this kind of control in our society nowadays. At least we know about these things. Ordinary people don't even know that there is something like this. Or something can be done about this garbage they're living in. They think that is ideal. This is very sad.

The actual journey of the body-mind starts only after getting the knowledge. Before that, it is all indiscipline. If you don't know what to control, what are you going to control? Who is going to control? If there is still ignorance there that, "I am doing it," and I know how to do it, then there's no hope. Everything starts with knowledge, knowledge enables control. If you knew that this food is poison for me, would you eat it? No, your TV tells you that this food, this poison, is actually good for you, and you eat it, you drink it. Why? No knowledge, no intelligence. Knowledge fixes 90 percent of the problems, and the rest of the 10 percent are due to Mother Nature, and sometimes you simply accept it. And death cures everything, finally. Shedding of the lower layers is the final cleaning, shiny, like the snake shedding its old skin. Have you seen a snake that is old and retired, a snake on the wheelchair? The snake is always young. You cannot tell the age of the snake. Why? It keeps removing the junk, keeps shedding the old. Death is something like this. Do not carry that which you have accumulated.

Finally, death is the full purification, it leaves you with nothing, except your own essence, which is the experiencer. You cannot give it up. You see, it is already empty. So, it is most pure. On this path, we come to know how pure I am. And on this path, we come to know what is the actual impurity, that which we have accumulated, is the impurity. Only this is what is revealed here. Now, the journey to shed all these layers starts, and you will find that they cannot be shed. They can only be perfected or purified. And there is no end to this game. And so, we play here, and then we see that everything is already perfect and purified, actually. That is another level. So, the game is simply to know and be.

Sometimes you need to tell others, those who are interested, "I found something. Are you looking for the same thing?" "Yes, I am looking for the same thing." "Okay, here it is. Take this." And this is the job of the guru, to find somebody who is looking for the same thing which he has found. And the willingness of the person to take it will determine their success in taking it. "I am the body," guru says. "Okay, let go of the body. It's not you." "No, no, I need to improve it. How? Yoga, gym?" "Okay, okay, I'll tell you something better. A better way to improve it." "No, no, I'll do it my own way." “Okay, then you're not willing”. Here nothing will be given. The guru will move on and find somebody else. It's just a play.

Aslam is asking, I'm having intense pressure on my forehead, which, of course, draws and keeps my attention all the time. I believe this is normal?

Yes, perfectly normal. It's very common, and this kind of experience is what I call a "landslide" experience. Why? Because it did not happen suddenly. It looks as if the teachings made a sudden impact, but it never happens like this. It accumulates, word by word, sentence by sentence, revelation by revelation, realization after realization. It accumulates, and one day, like a snowball, the whole thing comes down, the whole mountain of impurities flattened out, the effect was building up. So it can appear like an instantaneous experience that happened today. I realized something. My mind became silent, and the body became relaxed, and it looked as if nothing matters in this world. And it actually looks like a dream. This is my experience also, and the experience of many people. Suddenly, it is a transparent illusion of some kind. Why did that happen? It is a consequence of piece by piece removal, hammering, blow by blow. Every day, you get a blow on these solidified impurities. So it is perfectly normal. And if you are troubled by the pressure on the forehead, simply withdraw from the teaching, satsang, for a week or two weeks. Do something worldly for a while. Do not read spiritual stuff. Watch movies or something, some distraction like this, and it will go away. But don't worry. It's not going to undo the progress. It will just balance it out.

Why is there a lot of energy in the forehead? Because there is a sudden imbalance. Now the energy, which was wandering, which was moving in the lower centers, now, I'm using the Kundalini terminology here, it was making you act in the world, suddenly that is freed now because the meaninglessness of those actions/thoughts was seen. That is possible only through knowledge, nothing else can do it. Now it is moving in the higher centers where there is still some impurity remaining, and it will cause purification there. So you will say, "Now, how is this pressure going to purify anything at all?" You see, the pressure is not going to purify anything. It is a side effect of what is happening in the higher layers. You think that pressure is physical. If you have this doubt, you can go and get yourself tested by a doctor, and it is almost guaranteed the doctor will say, "You're absolutely normal." He will do all the testing, CAT scanning, and whatever, and will say, "You're a perfectly healthy person." So what is this pressure? It is all non-physical. There is no pressure, actually. It is a non-physical sensation which your non-physical senses are picking up. You have never used those senses before. That's why it's overwhelming. Remember, when you come out of a dark room into sunlight, overwhelming light, you cannot see what is outside. Same way, the non-physical senses are suddenly active, and you don't know what it is. It looks like pressure. It's not pressure. There is nothing in the forehead, nothing beating in the heart region, nothing vibrating in the throat region. These are all areas of the chakras. They are not really chakras. The chakras are non-physical. So some activities are happening. Now, I don't know what is happening, actually. It's not possible for me to know. But what I know for sure is that purification is happening.

Aslam is saying, "Sensation isn't bothering me. It's, in fact, helping me to keep the awareness."

Very good. Then you are the player. The real warrior is the one who, when a spear is thrown at him, picks up the same spear and throws it back. A real warrior kills the enemy with their own weapon. Same way, not getting disturbed by these sensations and manifestations in the layers of the mind is being a player. Move with confidence, so nothing will bother you. This is not known in the Kundalini field or the Yogic field. This knowledge is absent there, and people there panic all the time. Why? The Kundalini is also very fast. It is probably the second fastest after the path of knowledge, but they are not told anything. We know what it is. We know the difference between physical and non-physical. We know the non-physical senses, and we know the cure of it. Other paths don't.

Your process, soon it will become normal, which means that there will be an upgrade. You will never be able to go back to the old. The only recommendation here will be not to try to intensify it more. "Oh, he told me it's good. Probably I need to do more of it." No, don’t. Whatever is natural is the best. So people who think that these manifestations will not happen to me because I am on the path of knowledge, it is a purely intellectual path, my body won't react, I can eat any kind of junk I want, they should be warned. There is no escape from purification. You cannot do whatever you want. And here, you will need guidance; otherwise, you will keep hitting in the dark. You are hitting yourself. The guru is the one who has made all these mistakes already. I hope everybody got the pointer there.

Session 136

Varun: Is intuition considered knowledge?

As we know, on the path of knowledge, there are only two means of knowledge: direct experience and logic. Emotion, feelings, intuition, imagination, rumors, books, gurus, leaders, neighbors, mothers, fathers, brothers – they are not the means of knowledge.

There can be knowledge that I have intuition, but only your direct experience will reveal whether that was of any use or not. Combined with logic, you can say that I gained knowledge from intuition if it is of any use. If it solves your purpose, then use it; otherwise, leave it.

So, what do we consider knowledge? Knowledge is that which comes through direct experience, which means an experience that is not covered up with preconceptions, indoctrination, imagination, assumptions, beliefs, biases. When all these things are removed, and things are seen as they are, that will be the direct experience. The logic or the intellect does the job of cleaning our experience; everything else will be considered as ignorance.

Varun: Are emotions experiences?

Yes, emotions are experiences, but what are you gaining from that emotion except that emotions are seen as an object? Emotions are seen as a mental event, that's all. What knowledge are you going to get from the emotion? The knowledge we get from the emotion is that it is a mental activity that comes and goes. Or you can see that it is a part of the survival process. The emotion of fear appears as a protection mechanism, and anger appears as a protection mechanism. Lust appears as a reproduction mechanism, and happiness appears as a reward. Suffering appears as a punishment. They are all appearances, which are illusions. That will be the knowledge that we gain from the event of emotion. You cannot gain knowledge through the emotion; you can get knowledge of the emotion. We cannot get any knowledge via the emotions. There can be some indirect inferences from the emotions. For example, you meet a person, and you immediately feel bad. You feel fear or anxiety, you feel stressful or dominated, something like this, and you can use logic here and infer from that that somehow I dislike this person, somehow there are some challenges that are being created in meeting that person. It can be my own mind; it can be my own mental affliction of some kind, or there is a real problem with this person. It's not giving me good “vibrations”. Some people may call it intuition, but it's simply a mechanism in the mind. So indirectly, it can be inferred that, there is some problem in meeting this person, I don't like this person, probably this person is dangerous. Isn't that knowledge? Not at all.

Graham has a question: irreducibles were not vibrations. Isn't red a vibration? I experience red, and everything I experience is a vibration pattern from memory, so red must be an experience in memory. What am I missing? Are irreducibles different in another way from composite experiences?

Yes, the irreducible is defined as the minimum experience, the simplest of the experience. Whereas vibration is defined as the smallest change, the simplest possible change. That is the difference between vibration and irreducible. Irreducible is our direct experience, and vibration is a concept, a theory, or you can say a model. Irreducible is what is present right now, and vibration is something that is concocted to explain this irreducible. They are not the same.

Is red a vibration? No, not at all. Vibrations don't actually exist. You can say that red exists as an appearance, and vibrations do not even appear. We say they are vibrations just to explain our experience. Now that red has appeared, that is the irreducible. It cannot be reduced to anything else. It cannot be reduced to any other experience.

Now, how can we explain this appearance of red? A theory is then proposed, a hypothesis is proposed, you can say completely imaginary concepts are given to explain the appearance of red and vibration, vibrating patterns, and memory layers and all mechanisms, the senses, they are all a part of the explanation of that which has now appeared. Can you explain red? What is red? Can somebody explain this thing without using the theory and vibrations? Red is red.

Irreducible is called irreducible because it is the most fundamental experience. Now, there is a funny thing in science. The theory is taken as the fundamental, while the experience is considered derived. It's like they have the cart before the horse. I keep saying this thing all the time actually, that the experience comes first, and then these concepts that explain that experience come later. There needs to be an experience for there to be an exploration of it in the form of vibrations. We never see the vibration, we never perceive it, we never feel them, nothing at all. Senses do not catch the vibrations; it is simply proposed that they do so. They interact with the change.

What do we know? The irreducibles are changing phenomena, and to explain how this is appearing we imagine a process. We cannot explain the “why” only the “how”. We see that they are semi-permanent, so we say there is a memory. What is the definition of memory? That the patterns stay there for a while. See, the memory assumes time, although it is the memory that creates time. But while explaining it, we assume time first, so you can see it is wrong, somehow it is wrong somewhere.

Then the irreducibles seem to be changing, and they change in a cyclic way. The most fundamental things will be cyclic in nature, so we say it is a vibration, goes up and down or goes in circles, rotating change, that's all we can imagine. The interesting thing is, all the experiences can be explained like this in terms of vibrations, patterns, and memory. The explanation is so convincing that scientist or science says that that is what is actually present. The explanation is so mind-blowing; it is so accurate that it has been there for many thousand years now and it has not been replaced by anything else so far.

Graham is saying, "I think I got confused. To make sure I get it now, so purple is purple too, irreducible, even though we can say it's made of red and blue light?"

Yes, the purple is simply an irreducible that is experienced as purple only. It is not experienced as a mixture of red and blue. That is our direct experience. You can have a single frequency of light, which is purple, or you can shine two frequencies of light, which is red and blue. Frequencies measured in hertz, gigahertz, probably in the case of colors. So when we try to explain it as a vibration, we see that either it can be a single vibration of purple light or the same effect can be produced by mixing two vibrations of red and blue light. Which one is the illusion, and which one is the reality here?

Same for orange. Orange is a single frequency of light, although we can mix red and yellow to produce orange. Not only that, we can mix it destructively or subtractively as pigments and produce the same orange, where instead of the reflection of the light, it is absorption of the light. Isn't that amazing that the same irreducible can be produced by different kinds of vibrations?

Those who are in the arts, they know this. RGB is the additive spectrum, CMYK is the subtractive spectrum. RGB, you know, red, green, and blue, they produce all the colors, and when you change their intensity, they can produce the browns and grays and everything in between. Most of the colors, I think, are produced by the RGB combination, only three colors can produce all the irreducibles of the colors. But that is not the case for CMYK, which is used for the printable pictures' as inks, and it stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. K is used for black, so that you know we don't confuse the blue with the black, so CMYK, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black can produce all the colors also by subtractive mixing, which means absorption of the wavelengths, absorption of the frequencies. The eyes or our sensory mechanism will still produce the purple, orange, or any other color, even gray, brown, red. You see CMYK has no red, still it produces a red, it produces a so-called primary color.

Now, how is this magic possible? The only explanation is that this is an illusion. The senses are somehow responsible for transmuting whatever is out there into the irreducible. But we will never know what has been transmuted or what has been transformed to produce that effect, which we call as irreducible, or Tanmatra in Sanskrit. Tanmatra means the smallest measure, and I simply translated it into English as the irreducible. I dropped the measurement also because it's so confusing. Which instrument is being used to measure here? People will ask. Our senses are the instruments.

It is amazing that the violin also produces the same note that a flute produces. Yes, the quality will be different in the violin and the flute, but if it is the same harmonic, it will produce the same irreducible. How is that possible? There are synthetic chemicals that produce the smell of a ripe mango or ripe orange. How is that possible? There is no real mango, there are no real component extracts of the mango. They find a compound that smells like it, that's all. It is completely different, although you will find there are similarities. These are called aromatic compounds; they are all present in your soap and whatever things you eat on the street. So it is seen that the vibrations or the combinations of the vibrations can produce an irreducible. But it is again the horse and the cart situation. There is an irreducible, then we find a suitable explanation for it, and ultimately we see that it is an illusion. There is no red actually, no red at all.

There is a controversial part in the video where I say, "I become the red. " That is a poetic way of saying that the experiencer itself takes the form of red. Existence has become the illusion of the red. Yes, not the vibration, far away from reality. They are a convincing explanation for the intellect, but there is some truth in that. We can feel it, there is some truth, but we cannot say what it is. It does not seem to be a one-to-one relation between our experience and the composition of the vibrations. It does not look like there is a direct relation.

Actually, there are many experiments and many illusions which you can say optical illusions or audio illusions. They demonstrate all these things. For example, a circle made up of dots. You need a few dots on the paper, and the mind is going to produce an illusion of a circle, although there are dots, but your mind will say it is a circle. All you need to do is pack more dots in there, and it becomes a continuous circle. So what has happened here is that the irreducible of the shape of the circle is produced from the hint given to it, simply a hint, and it produces that. And this is seen very clearly in the irreducible of the emotions. Somebody needs to mention the name of a person whom you dislike, and immediately there is an experience of anger or fear or hate. The hint is enough; no vibration entered the mind, the person is not there, no event has happened, the hint, and the whole hate is pulled out from the memory, actually. It is pulled from the waking memory, and we still get the irreducible. Now how is that possible, you will say.

Now we will enter the real paradox here. When you are dreaming in the night, actually, there are no senses. Actually, there are no worldly vibrations, nothing is coming from the outside world to you, and you still see the shapes, hear the voices, and see the colors. There is a brilliant red color there. Now which sense produced it? Your eyes, are they working in the night, in the dream? Is the sunlight somehow entering the brain producing the red? Where is the source of the red here, which vibration is producing that red which you see so clearly in the dream?

Sometimes it's so amazing that there are shapes and people, and even animals that are so lifelike, they are animated also. Now which vibration is producing this? What happened to our theory of vibration? What happened to our theory of the physical world here? The physical world contains the colors, and our eyes tell them to the brain. That is the misinformation that is written in your science books. There is a lot of confusion there. We need to drop all this indoctrination and see it directly as it is.

"I become the irreducible," and as the limitations are taken on as we go from this inner circle to the outer circle of experience, more and more limitations are taken on by myself, the experiencer. Finally, in the physical, it becomes very small, reduced to the bare minimum needed for survival, and the experience can become red under any circumstance, you see, any combination of vibrations or whatever you call it.

Graham is saying, when I get angry I see red, those who are in love, they see everything as green or purple, probably pink, who knows.

There are people who can see colors around the bodies of people. What produces this color? Their non-physical senses are active, and the experiencer is happily becoming red and purple and blue and white and silver colors around the body. It is telling you that, look, there is something here which the physical senses cannot grasp. So this explanation of the experiencer, irreducibles, and an explanation containing the memory and vibrations, that is the complete science, in my opinion. This is derived totally from the Sankhya philosophy, which is very, very old, very ancient. They knew all these things. Nowadays, modern people are totally stupid. Okay, I think that answered it completely now.

Sweety is asking, are the layers similar to that which the scriptures mention as koshas?

The kosha model is a similar model. You cannot simply say that the layers that I show are the koshas. There is a correspondence, there is a relation, similarity, but the kosha model is a bit different. And I don't know where you are right now in the program, but we have explained the other layered models also in brief, like in five minutes, and the rest is your homework. Compare the chakra model, the kosha model, the New Age model, the planes in Hermeticism, planes of existence, and so on. In every culture, you will find a layered model. So whatever we present as the layered model is not a new invention, it's not a new discovery. It is a refinement of the old.

You can also make your own model. Take your direct experience and see that it is arranged in a hierarchy of layers, and the layers that I have given are functional. Now, the kosha model is based on quality, actually. The food body has the quality of the food, isn't it? It has a color, taste, smell, and so on. And the prana body has the quality of energy, movement, sensation, perception, electricity and so on, you see, quality. But my model is based on functionality. That is why it is more accurate and more detailed. So there are more models. There is a Buddhist model. I don't know. It's very difficult for me to grasp it.

Vipin is asking, kindly comment on the relationship between attention, awareness, and memory. Can any of them occur independently? Memories are forgotten in new birth as there is no awareness. Does that mean the past events, when they were recorded, happened without awareness?

No, even if there is awareness, you can forget very easily. I know yesterday I was aware, but I hardly recall what happened yesterday. And this time, if I make a little bit of effort, I'll probably recall some things. But I know I was aware yesterday. Anyhow, let's come back to the first question, what is the relationship between attention, awareness, and memory? Let's go to definitions, and then it will be clear.

Attention is the ability of the mind to exclude all experiences except one. That's my definition. Awareness is the knowledge that I am the experiencer. And memory is a theoretical concept that says that the vibrating patterns are semi-permanent. It can create a copy and so on. It has the properties of memories. It can be played back and so on.

Now, it looks like there's nothing common between these three. Attention is an activity, or you can even say that it is a state. The activity brings on a state of some kind. We call this a state of concentration or dhyana. Awareness is a state of being. It cannot be brought in. If I ask you to attend to my voice, immediately you can do it. Awareness needs the Path of Knowledge program to be there. Memory, by default, is there all the time. Now, the memory is the substrate for the mental activities and also for awareness. Without memory, there is no awareness also. That is the relation. So, which one is happening independently? You see, the memory is independent. You can say, based on the model, speaking in the relative way, scientific way, memory is the independent thing, and the occurrences in the memory, or the activity in the memory, are the attention and awareness. So, attention and awareness cannot happen without memory. They are dependent on the memory, and awareness is knowledge, which is stored in the memory. You see, so it cannot appear without the memory.

Now, attention and awareness. When there is attention, it can be with awareness or without awareness. In an ignorant person it is without awareness. In a person with knowledge, there is attention with or without awareness. There can be two kinds of attention when there is awareness. One is inclusive, and the other is exclusive. I don't think any books mention this thing. It is based on my own experience. That's why it won't be found in books. That is what is actually, and everybody will agree with this, that when there is awareness, it can be scattered awareness, you include everything in it, all experiences, or it can be concentrated, focused awareness, where only one experience is included, everything else is excluded. So awareness comes on top of attention. Actually, it is the topmost layer, while attention is simply an activity, which is found more or less in different people. Awareness is not found at all in ordinary people. So hopefully, that clears the relation.

What happens to the memories of the last birth? Can we say that there was no awareness, so there was no memory? Yes, we can say that. You see, what happens is when you are aware, the attention comes in automatically. You must have seen this. And the more attentive we are, the stronger the impression of the experience. That's why your teacher says, "Pay attention to what I'm saying," when you're lost in your thoughts somewhere, daydreaming. You're not attending, and that's why the impression that is made in the memory is not so strong. We cannot say that no impression is made. Everything is recorded but it is tagged as not important. Here we introduce a little bit of theory to understand the mechanism. When you are not paying attention to an experience, it will be stamped as not important. And that which is not important will not be recalled. So what appears in the next life will be that to which you paid attention. And what is that? Food, mates, and enemies. Nobody can ignore these things. They are attended to. That is mother nature. You see, there is no person, actually. So it all happens automatically. Food, mates, and enemies, and they make the strongest impression. That is what is carried on in your next birth, not your philosophy, arts, sciences, mathematics, not that.

The more stressful experiences and the more intense experiences, they make a bigger impression on the memory. They are tagged as important, and your whole personality of the causal body is created by these dominating experiences, not by whatever happened in day-to-day life. Somebody's attacked. Yes, the most important experience in their life, and the impressions are going to echo for many lifetimes. So the answer is that which is stamped as important, whether it is attended to or whether there was awareness or not, does not matter. It will be carried over in the next life. Not only next life, this life also is spent in the shadow of that experience. The memory cannot be cleaned, it stays for many lifetimes. The whole being is shadowed by these events. Now, what is the role of awareness in bringing back the memories? Awareness says that everything is important. So, those who are aware, they take the impressions more clearly, and although they take on the impressions, the impressions lose their power of governing the future events. Why? Because a tail is added to all the impressions or memories, that they are not mine. They are an illusion, and I am the experiencer of these events, experiences. The tail actually cancels the effect of the impressions. They no longer control the future.

That looks like a big job, but no, awareness is effortless. Attention is a big job, very tiring. That's why nobody wants to do it. Awareness has a sweetness in it. It's a quality of sweetness. It's a background-only state of being, and it requires no effort. And this is how we free ourselves from the karmic impressions, simply called the memory. So there is a possibility that even without forgetting, we can be free from the past. That possibility is brought about only by awareness, and the awareness comes only through self-knowledge, and you get self-knowledge only on the path of knowledge, on the pointing of a guru. Now you can see the importance of all this.

Deep is saying, in awareness personal thoughts are largely absent. People in the family complain that I'm stealing their thoughts because many times I utter it to them before they speak. In the office too, it happens. The question is, can I differentiate desires coming from other structures around? Otherwise, this structure can own other desires, and desires are presented for action. The watching and watching desires—they keep floating. Can I differentiate?

What do you mean by "I"? Experiencer. Experiencer does not do anything. Experiencer does not divide. Whatever you're calling "I" here is the ego, which is an illusion. Whatever is good for its survival, it calls it “mine”. So, how can you differentiate other impressions, other experiences that are coming in from whatever you call as "others"? There are no others, actually. It's a field of vibrations, a sea of patterns. Which ones are mine? None of them is mine, and all are mine, which means nothing in particular is mine, nothing special. So, it will be arbitrary. The ego mechanism, identity creator mechanism, will decide which is mine based on this past association with the memory. This desire has arisen in my experience, it will see only this much. It is not going to see where it is coming from, your son or daughter or neighbor or office worker. That cannot be known by the ego. That is the job of the intellect.

It decides based on familiarity with the past memories. Let us say you usually like ice cream. That is recorded in the memory, that I like ice cream. Now, a thought comes to mind, "Let's eat ice cream." Your ego is surely going to say it is my desire. But a thought comes in your mind that, "Let's eat a crow today." Or “Let’s eat a rat today." You will say, "Something is wrong here." And you will see that these thoughts are coming from your cat. This is how you can somehow differentiate, but not much. And if there is no awareness and if there is no knowledge and the intelligence is low, the person will actually act on it.

This is called small scale possession in occult language. You can say a partial possession, for example, you go to a haunted house and there you get an intense desire to kill your partner or your friends, like in the horror movies. You take a knife and you start chasing the other person in a dream-like manner, possessed manner. What has happened there? The memory linked to that house is so strong, the events are so strongly impressed there that they have infiltrated, they have trespassed into your local memory and have produced that desire. This will be the explanation of the possession phenomena in the haunted houses. So, your cat is partially possessing you when the desire to eat a mouse comes to your mind. When you have such thoughts coming from family members; they are partially possessing your local memory.

So when a guru is teaching a student, actually, the guru partially possesses the student. I don't say these things because they can be scary. The guru field influences the mind of the person. Everything is like this; in this sea of vibrations, there are no boundaries between you and me. As experiencer, we are already one; there is no boundary. There is no question of it. But as the mind, as the memory structure, also, there are no boundaries. Whatever I told you about the ego mechanism, branding it as mine or not mine, is an artificial boundary. There is no structure which can be called a boundary. It is just this mechanism which weighs, compares each and every event that happens in it as me or not me.

It is very easy to implant a desire in the other person and make that person think that it is their own desire. What do you call it? Hint is a Hollywood movie. Inception. It is not Inception in the occult. In Sanskrit, we call it Vashikaran. The most famous case of this kind of intrusion is hypnosis, where the instructions are directly planted in the mind of the subject, who thinks that it is my own desire. It is my will. I'm doing it through my will, and he does it. And that is the demonstration of the fakeness of the will. None of it is mine.

Mesmerism is a more accurate word. Hypnosis is not that accurate because "hypno" comes from sleep. Inception is also a very good word, we should adopt this word in the occult, even though it is from a story. Vashikaran is probably the most ancient form of inception, and in tantric fields it is infamous because some tantrics control women using this technique. Whenever I say Vashikaran people think it is controlling a woman to satisfy your lust. But it is more potent. You see the word "potion" in the occult comes from "potent," "potency." It need not be a liquid of some kind. Actually, the liquids are used in the occult. They are just water or wine, even milk sometimes, bread, but they are charged. Sometimes there is a mixture of all this, but they are charged with their intention, a strong intention. And when the other person drinks it, the intention shows its effect. There's nothing in the liquid, actually. The liquid is a medium that conveys this intention, that holds the intention for you.

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Debankan Roy is asking, How can I find a good guru? As you mentioned in most of the videos, we need one sensible guru to help with progressing in the spiritual path. Is it true that a guru will find the true seeker, or is it that a seeker finds the right guru?

Yes, when the seeker is ready, the guru finds the student. If the student were so intelligent that he could judge a guru, then he wouldn't need a guru actually. That means he has the knowledge, he has the experience.

So, how to find a good guru? In short, the person who attracts you most is your guru. The one you find most interesting is your guru, and whom you can understand effortlessly is your guru. And under whom you are progressing on your spiritual path is your guru.

Before you find a guru, you need to decide on a path, and before you decide on the path, you need to have a spiritual goal. But most people cannot manage all these things, so they go straight to a guru. And it is not a one-day process, it's not like a marriage. You find a person and marry, and for the rest of your life, you are tied to that. But finding a guru is like finding a boyfriend or a girlfriend. You need to change a few times. It has to be a love affair of some kind. So, that much informal idea I can give you. And I'll give you the links where it is given in more detail how to find the right guru.

Parteep asks, As structures can send their impressions, then my local memory can also affect others powerfully if the person is in awareness, without even my knowing. What are the implications of our local memory in awareness?

Yes, if you can get the influence, you can set the influence. Two-way, both are possible. When you're in awareness, nothing wrong can be sent out in the atmosphere. Which atmosphere? Not our air and water kind of atmosphere, the non-physical atmosphere, which is non-spatial, non-temporal, and NPNM space of the memory. In that space, it is sending out all these impressions. When you are aware, you are bound to send good impressions only. You cannot help it. You will always be forgiving and compassionate and loving, and truth will be radiated out of your local memory if you are established in truth. If you're established in knowledge, all these thoughts will be radiated. Actually, they are so strong that they reach the gods and goddesses, it is said. So, you immediately get in contact with these highly evolved beings, and obviously, they are radiated in the gurufield. So, you get the attention of the gurufield immediately. Same mechanism as in a partial possession. How amazing is that?

And you will start seeing all these effects as you grow spiritually, and some people see it immediately. These effects are seen immediately because they have done their practices for many lifetimes. They are already in connection with gurufield and all these beings and guides and who knows what. Actually, when I meet people, 80% are like this. They have their past sadhana with them right now, and probably 50% of you already know me. We have been in connection since many lifetimes. It is amazing. You will come to know all these things. You see, right now, the darkness is too much.

Meenakshi is saying, my son has started to ask a lot of spiritual questions.

Yes, actually, I get amusing stories from many seekers, many students here on our program in satsang about how things are changing in their life. Children are the most affected. If you have a positive intention, you can transform the personality of a child overnight. The thing is, people don't know how to do that, and that is a good thing. Otherwise, you will harm your child because most of the time your mind has garbage and negativity in it. So it is very good that people don't know all these things. As soon as you enter a city or a population, you start getting the influences of people there, and that is why spiritual people don't like cities. That's all negative. It's all animal nature there. One of the authors called it the M-field, short form of the mind field. So it's just like gurufield, there is a mind field in the city. As soon as you enter the physical city, you get in contact with the M-field there, and your mood drops. You become angry, irritated, and impatient, just like everybody else in the city. Similarly, if you visit another country, you come in contact with the M-field there. So that is why a seeker isolates himself or herself from this madness. As soon as you are in solitude, you can stop all that mental noise, M-field noise pollution, the spiritual pollution. You are protected from that.

Rajeshwari is asking, can you put on some protective shield?

Yes, you can do that. Go to the occult section in the Wiki, the Path of Knowledge Wiki. You will get the ritual to protect yourself. Everybody should do it, especially those who are in the spiritual field, those who think their mind is important somehow should protect it, just like you protect your house, your car, your gold and silver, and diamonds. What is the most valuable thing you have? Your mind is your most valuable possession, and you don't protect it. I've never seen people protect it. They allow it to be abused by everything there is in this universe.

Sonal is saying, When transmission happens from the gurufield, does it feel like we know this but don't know?

Well, first try to write your questions clearly, write the question in full awareness so you will come to know what comes from the gurufield. Everybody can get different manifestations of it. It can be thoughts, feelings, emotions, as pictures, sounds, dreams, projections, or direct materialization of a guru. And as you progress, you will get a better and better connection. Right now, the connection will be very noisy, like a bad phone connection or bad internet. It can break, and your ego will insert its own bits and pieces there.

Deep is asking, The spiritual intent to make others get self-knowledge can bring karmic effects?

Yes, you see, giving knowledge also has karmic fruit. Hopefully, it is good. That is why I say if you do anything, like if you impart knowledge or do any kind of transmission, do it under the umbrella of the gurufield. So what happens is, whatever returns or the fruits or consequences you get, they are shared in the gurufield. Like I'm teaching you, and I always say it is not mine. Do I say I'm teaching you? No, I say I'm transmitting the knowledge to you. I'm only a medium, like a postman. I'm transmitting it. What does this attitude do? Even though you don’t know where it's coming from, this attitude just shifts the responsibility to the gurufield. Everybody should do this. And that is why I prohibit people from teaching until they cross step number seven. I say that only those people who have reached step number seven should instruct somebody. Even if it's a small instruction, you can go around and say, "The world is an illusion," and so on. Nobody takes you seriously. You must have seen it. You're branded as crazy. Give them a long lecture for one hour. Nothing will go into their mind. But do the same thing after passing step number seven, where you are put in contact with the gurufield. Your file is sent to them. "Look, this person is joining the gurufield. He or she is interested. Please grant them the necessary ability." The file is written like this, and the file is sent with your name on it. Immediately, you will see that people are now paying attention to you. They're subscribing to your channel. They're listening to whatever you're saying, and your teaching has an effect. Immediately, you will see that difference. It is magic. I know it is magic because it is happening to me. That is enough evidence for me. You see, get your own evidence. I'm going to help you complete the program. Make a very honest intention of helping the guru field. So as soon as you make this honest decision, you will find that you need to take only two steps towards the gurufield, and the guru field will take eight steps towards you. You can't go there. They are very high, but they can come down here.

Sonal is asking, How will I know?

Right now, you won't understand these things. You see, a blind person does not know how the moon and the stars look. Take the experience, don't ask for my thoughts on it. My thoughts, my words are useless. Eat the sugar. I can write a full book on sugar, and you won't know what it is. Just eat it, then you don't need to read the book. So in the tradition, you must have seen the guru assigns the responsibility of spreading the knowledge to a particular student or a few students. He chooses them. Not everybody is allowed to sit on the chair of the guru. Let's say the guru is dying and so on. So how does he decide? Now, the answer is clear. It is not based on his academic ability, his smartness, or his looks. No, it is based on how transparent he is to the gurufield, whether he will transmit the message as it is. That means somebody who is pure. Purity decides, not their knowledge. Somebody who simply communicates the knowledge effortlessly. The question does not finish, and the answer starts appearing. That is the evidence of the gurufield. When you start thinking about it, all the answers are there automatically, one after the other, in the most beautiful language you can imagine. That is the evidence of the gurufield. Do not resist. There are some influences which we should not take, and there are some influences which we should take in order to progress. Otherwise, there is no progress. You are taking my influence right now, right here. I know that it is a job of great responsibility. I should not speak even one word which is off, which is ignorance, which is dark. Even when I fire somebody, it is always for their own good. It looks like I got irritated and upset, but that is what is needed at that time. So nothing is transmitted without this intention of growth of that student. Nothing at all. This is a job of responsibility, and therefore, I choose who opens the YouTube channel. I choose who opens the satsang. I do all that, and actually, I sit with that person for a long time, like one or two weeks. And if I am sure, only then that person gets a chance. Otherwise, they are told to take the certificate. That's all.

I don't know what I'm going to say sometimes. They are not my thoughts. When I'm in the satsang, sometimes I say many things. And then, after a while I'm editing or when I'm listening to it again, sometimes I come to know that I'm learning from it. This has happened so many times. Now, while listening to it again, while editing, I am amazed. Why is there one new thing here? How is that possible? So, it is the gurufield. We are right now in contact with it, and all we need to do is purify a little bit. Purification. Not everybody will be able to receive it, but everybody gets the influence from the gurufield. As soon as you join the community, join the path, join the tradition, whatever, go to the ashram, meet the guru, and so on, you will be influenced. The gurufield is very opportunistic. They are always looking for even the tiniest window. Mostly, people are totally closed. They have a cement wall around them. Nobody can cross it. As soon as they attend a satsang or go to a temple or go to an ashram, a small crack happens in that cement wall. A tiny hairline crack appears, and the gurufield simply throws an intention into it.

There is a saying that progress happens when this ego is cracked, and the light enters through that crack. I don't remember the real quote there, but how does the light enter a person? This wall needs to be cracked. This eggshell around the person is cracked. That is seen as a behavior of surrender and acceptance, trust and love. That is why I say if you have not surrendered to the path, hardly any progress happens. Word soup knowledge will be yours. You will know a lot of words. The depth will not be there. True understanding will not be there. Without surrender, there is no chance. I need one person to surrender, at least one person through which I can enter. And sometimes even that is absent. So when I say that the person is prepared for these things, they are kind of handed over to the gurufield. Now you do your own thing. I say, because my energy is limited. I need to hit these cement walls every day. So those who are ready, are simply given to the gurufield. And you should not assume that the job is over here. This will continue for many lifetimes.

Varun is asking, Are there other gurufields as well?

Well, the gurufield is a common name, the general name, and there are divisions in the gurufield. Like you can imagine a subfield for science, a subfield for mathematics, a subfield for engineering, and a big field for the occult, and a field for black magic, and a field for mesmerism, and so on. Specializations. So the whole of it will be called the gurufield. Like the field for music. All the music masters will be there. You can tap into that talent, get the influence from there.

Similarly, just like gurufield, there are different fields also. Just like I gave you the example of the M-field of a city, for example, there will be a field for all the birds. There will be a field of all the plants in the jungle. There will be a field for a specific kind of plant in the jungle. This one sentence will open Pandora's box of shamanism. You must have seen this. A shaman talks to the jungle. What is he talking to? Not the trees. Obviously, he's talking to the tree field. He takes the influences and he gives out the influences. Not only the shaman, their whole community will sit down and do this work. It's called the shamanic work. If the elephants are attacking their crops and villages, destroying things, they will sit down and do a small ritual with an Elephant deity. What are they asking that deity? To stop this madness. So it was very advanced in the old times. Now it is all superstition. Empty ritual is there. But the elephants don't listen because the connection up there is absent. Have you not forgotten your spirituality completely? You have become only a puppet of the flesh and bones.

Field is vibrations only. The memory which holds the knowledge is the gurufield. And since everything is a memory, everything can be seen as a field. Right now, right here, I have a field around my house, and it is produced simply by doing this satsang every day. Those who are sensitive, they will feel it. As soon as you enter the area around my house, you will enter this field. Immediately, you will get the effect of it. That is why it is well protected. You see, because you are going to affect it also, and I don't have the energy to keep it up all the time. And that is why these gurus and these practitioners and occult people, they live away from society because they don't want the influence of these M-fields there. They want their own field to be most powerful and pure.

Session 137

Ayushman: Experiences are endless, isn't it better we end, put this topic in the category of unknowable? Each coin has two sides because chances are there at some point, death. The experiences may be over or like in the experiment where the experience is still there. I personally think the experiment is maybe wrong because we are already bringing in an observer which obviously means the observer is the experiencer himself. My point is that it is impossible to claim or to prove why I'm in any experiment that these experiences will remain forever or not because assuming that experiences are endless is also a blind belief and according to our criteria for truth and false in the category of false.

So it is a well-thought question here and it looks like the basic doubt is that it cannot be proven that the experiences are endless. We never say endless, we say eternal, which means timeless.

Just like we have done the analysis of the experiencer and we found that it is actually endless which means there is no start in the beginning of the experiencer. It was found like this and we call it not endless we call it which simply means that time has no meaning when applied to it.

What is the smell of the color red for example. Now you can see the concept has been wrongly applied there. The smell has nothing to do with the color red, cannot be applied. Smell is applied to materials and the same way we can say that what is the taste of happiness is not possible. The taste is applied to foods and not to happiness. Same way when we say when is the end of the experience or the experiencer, it is a wrong application of concept. The belief of the time can be applied to an object not to the fundamentals like the experience or the experiencer. So anyhow this is the first thing we should consider whether we can apply our day to day concepts to something which is so fundamental like existence, experiencer, experience or emptiness.

We should not forget that logic is our means of knowledge. Whatever is concluded from logic can be called knowledge. This is our decision to employ logic as our means of knowledge. Time is not experienced. Change is experienced and with the help of memory we form this concept of time, the past, present and future. There is nothing like this in reality. So immediately through direct experience we see that the concept of time cannot be applied to the experience itself. That which is appearing is defined formally as the experience. It is that which is appearing, that which is manifested and that which is manifested is not getting manifested in time. I think everybody will agree with this because if there is already time, then there is already a clock which is ticking and now you look at the clock and you wait for the experience to arrive in time and you keep looking at the clock while your whole manifestation is happening. The existence comes out of the infinite potential in front of your eyes but look at the clock you are watching it, but all these things are nothing but experiences. That means only an event appeared, not the whole experience. It was already there in the form of you watching the clock and whatever darkness, emptiness, empty space, no space, whatever and the experience must come out of some kind of vibrations and potential so it was already there. There is no real experience. It's like a dream. It's always virtual. It seems to happen. And about the end we need to witness the end of all the experience otherwise we cannot say that it ends. So if we cannot say that it ends we can rightly put it in the category of unknowable like Ayushman says. We can use logic here to find out that it will never end or that it is beyond time. We already concluded that time cannot be applied to the whole that which appears. Time is not even an experience actually. It is an imaginary concept. At least the objects are appearing in front of you. At least you can touch it. You can smell it or eat it or you can use it like your body. Very useful. But time is not even appearing. It cannot be grasped by senses. It is totally an idea.

Anyhow, if the experience is ending we need a witness of it. We need proof of it. When we are there looking at the whole manifestation ending then we are there before the end. I am there while it is ending and I am there when it has ended and the clock is still ticking. Because if everything ends then there is nobody to find out whether it ends or not. So the logic says that if it ends that will be only an event that has ended because I will be there. Clock will be there and the experience will be back in potential form. So nothing has actually ended. Only the event has ended. A particular kind of manifestation has ended.

So the logic says that the experience cannot end. Our direct experience says that it is beyond time. The concept of time is not applicable. Just like the smell of the color red is meaningless. Experience ending is a meaningless sentence. Similarly, experiencer ending or starting is a meaningless sentence. Everything must happen in time - this is conditioning. This is not a law of nature. This conditioning forces us to apply the concepts that are applied to the everyday objects in the illusion, not to the most fundamental truths.

Parthik: Awareness in posture bursts the structure in some intensity. Just call it intense energy. The buzzing sound of silence encompasses totality. What is this intensity that appears in posture? But if I go in posture, intensity is regained according to what is happening in layers.

It is the activity of the mental layers. And it is an illusion. Stay in awareness. What is this activity doing? Why is it happening? Don't worry about it. We don't know anything. Anything can happen in the illusion. Especially when it is disturbed a little bit. Your routine activities that are happening in the mind or the mental structure, layered structure, are disturbed by the cleaning that is going on. Awareness is doing the cleaning, the purification. Now you can expect some effects. Just witness them. Just like you go in a room that is closed for two years and it smells. It is damp. And as soon as you open the window, fresh air, sunlight, and now you are wondering what is happening here? Why is this intensity? Why is there an activity/flowhere? It is only natural. The pile of garbage is being cleaned. So there will be some symptoms there. Now become a witness.

There can be two things that can go wrong. The first is assuming that whatever is happening is happening to me. Many people think this. That means awareness is zero. Bring in the awareness and see that this is happening to the mind-body structure, not to me. Second thing, people will assume that it is real and they panic. Nothing is real. It is not even physical. The third thing, a few crazy seekers assume that I am progressing because these things are appearing. Hopefully, yes, you are progressing. But if it does not happen, that does not mean that you are not progressing. You are still progressing. It means everything is going well. Many people do the practices just to get some kind of symptoms or experiences. I say, just hit your head with your hammer. You will get all the symptoms and experiences you want. A lot of stupidity in spirituality also. So, whenever anything unusual happens, just be aware of it. It's all an illusion.

Spiritual people who are sitting for days altogether in posture, if they do it in awareness, like overdoing awareness and posture, what may be the outcome?

Those who are in awareness, they don't do anything. You are doing something because you need it. Those who are not sick, they don't need the medicine. If your awareness is on, why will you need to sit here and there for the whole day? If the guru is making you sit for the whole day, something is really wrong. A lot of ignorance is there. A lot of impurities there. You are in the ICU. So heavy treatment is going on. So, if this kind of treatment is happening to a seeker, eight hours of sitting, do not drink water for three days etc. Do not look at the picture of a woman. Those who are doing it, good luck.

If you are in awareness, live a normal life, enjoy your life, and fulfill your desires. Be good, spread happiness, spread knowledge. If you sit there like a rock, something is really wrong. What is the gain there? So, there can be this delusion that I am doing great practice, but if you look at the great masters, they have never done anything in their life like this, except probably when they were learning. Look at all the great masters, they led very active lives, you can say extraordinary lives. So yes, if you are made to do all these things, you need to think about it.

Rajeshwari is asking, even the satsang, talking, asking, listening, is it all an illusion?

Yes, it is all an illusion. But this illusion, this kind of event in the illusion is meant to remove the illusion from your mind. It's meant to remove the ignorance about the illusion.

Is there anything wrong with the illusion? No, it is what it is. It is only me. But we have considered it as real in ignorance. And the medicine for this is in the illusion only. Because where else will you go to find the knowledge? Everything is illusion. The negative knowledge is the medicine. Negative knowledge is simply a cleaning of whatever was accumulated. In this satsang, let us say, or in the program, you are not given anything. It is all taken away. The path of knowledge is a subtractive path. It takes away. So this is the illusion in reverse. It is still an illusion. But instead of projection and covering up, we are uncovering and cleaning, seeing it as it is.

The illusion is nothing but projection and covering up. We undo this thing and we use the illusion itself to do it. Like I say, we use the mind to get rid of the mind. That is all we have. There is nothing else. We use one thorn to remove the other thorn. We throw away the thorns. We use one stick to burn all the sticks, all the wood. And then we throw that stick in fire. There is no need to go on doing satsangs. There is no need to go on doing programs and reading scriptures and whatever. Practicing awareness also. No need at all. Just throw it away. The illusion will never disappear, but the delusion will disappear. For those who like quotes, the illusion never goes away, but the delusion goes away. The ignorance about it is destroyed. In the end, nothing is known.

Mary is saying, but solving a disappearing illusionary family issue is like the bonus of the program.

It does not promise it, but it will happen. Purification means that this organism changes. In some people, it will change a lot. For some people, the change is very small. So it won't make your family issues disappear. It will make your family disappear.

So if you want that kind of change, yes, non-dualism, do the program. Sometimes the changes are drastic. Some people cannot handle this. We take them back in the illusion. Guru lies a lot. Guru keeps lying all day. Those who cannot handle the truth, they are given a little bit of illusion.

When we talk about karmic bonds and when we talk about debt and ethics, morality, and so on, we are giving a little bit of illusion back to the seeker. You cannot handle everything. Take this. Remember, everything will be taken away. Everything. You will become pure like the emptiness you are. You are the whole existence, Brahman. Now do you need all these families and family issues and all? Look how small you have become because of ignorance.

No, but what about my life? There is no life. The body is an illusion. Human existence is an illusion. It is not going to last forever. Everything will be snatched. Still, everything will remain. But it won't be called mine. It's not that your family will disappear because you did the program. The bonds with the family will disappear. There will remain nobody who can say “my family”. And even if it says, it is like a burnt rope that cannot tie anything. The rope that is burnt looks like a rope but it cannot tie. It will fly away like powdered ash. So those who want to fix things, remember we do this kind of fixing. Probably I should have written there that the path of knowledge is a destructive path, not a subtractive one. It destroys everything that you think is mine or me.

Mary has a question. But at the same time, how is it possible to stay in non-duality in this illusion?

We still have feet on ground and we still react to so many things. The answer is very simple. Stay in knowledge. Stay in awareness. The problem is not that there is a family, there is a body and there is a human life. These are not the problem. The problem is ignorance about these things.

Now how to stay in non-duality? It is impossible to stay in any other situation, you see? There is only non-duality. Now where are you going to stay? You are the non-dual existence. You are the experiencer. Now how will you stay as anything else? Yes, there can be this ignorance that I am something else. So awareness is simply cutting off this ignorance and remembering it always. I have checked it, I have gotten all the evidence, I have refuted everything, I have verified everything and now it comes out to be this - I am the non-dual existence, which is the experiencer or the witness.

Now is there a need to stay in non-duality? No, it is already like this. Now is the illusion troubling? No, not at all because you know that it is an illusion. It troubles you because you think that I am a human surrounded by suffering and survival problems. It is so petty. The pettiness will go away once you get the knowledge. And if it does not go away, no problem. This is the nature of the human being, not your nature. So be on the ground. React when it is necessary. You need to do it in full awareness.

Some people are going to say, but is that all? I need something better. And then evolution is your answer. You don't like human life. You don't like this place called the physical world, the physical universe. We have things that you will like. We have more illusions for you. You will probably like it. Who knows? So evolve out of it. Evolution is the game here. Nothing survives but it evolves. So evolve out of the cycles of human births. Then hopefully there will be nothing to react to. There will be no irritating family members or relatives. There will be no nasty bosses and employees and co-workers. There will be no animals who can attack you or viruses who can kill you. There can be a better kind of existence. That is what is called a heavenly world.

So on the path of knowledge, we don't pay too much attention to it because we know the state of the mind is heaven. If you have a heavenly state of mind, this is heaven right now, right here. If you are in the bliss which you are already, then do you need anything else? No. So as a concession to the seeker because totally beaten up by life, especially if you have diseases in the body, old age and mental issues, mental afflictions and so on, we say, it is the karmic fruit, but I have a solution. This little dose of illusion is given to this person. Sweet pill, not the bitter pill. Something good is waiting for you beyond human birth. So that is also advised on the path of knowledge. It's not wrong to do it.

So there will always be an illusion. There will always be a dream. But there is a choice to shift to a better dream. And the only thing we see is, you know, the illusion is never satisfying. Even if it becomes a five star illusion, you are going to get bored. So ultimately you need to come home. And my home is emptiness. The eternal darkness is my home. You will see that you never went out of home. It was all a dream. You were dreaming while sitting at home. So the path of knowledge takes you home, not by traveling, but by dropping this ignorance that I am not at home.

Debankan is saying, the ultimate goal is to realize the experiencer. But if one is the experiencer himself, how can the experiencer be realized? Experience it then. Will not it defy the logic that the experiencer cannot be an object?

Yes, that is the primary ignorance in Debankan that he is thinking that the realization means experiencing it using your eyes or any other senses or whatever. Then the question will arise - who has experienced it? Who has experienced the experiencer? This is the primary ignorance. It boils down to the inability to differentiate between the experience and the experiencer. You must be able to differentiate. It cannot be experienced. It is not an object. It cannot be called “it”. It is called “I”. So I am that and I don't know anything. I illuminate the knowledge and I illuminate the ignorance also.

What is primary ignorance? That I am something else. I am an object. I am the body. I am a memory. I am the thoughts, so on. So this ignorance is also being illuminated by the experiencer. But then we simply clear it. We do not know anything more about it. We simply clear it, and that which is, shines. Now it is illuminating this knowledge. I am not this. I am not that. I am not here. I am not there. All that was accumulated as ignorance has been cleared. That is how we realize what we are. And now this knowledge is illuminated by the light of the experiencer. It does not know anything. It simply witnesses this knowledge happening. It was witnessing ignorance, for the experiencer, it is not a big problem. But it was kind of a miserable thing for this creature, which holds the knowledge. This thing is not a person. It is just a memory.

So experiencer cannot be known. The only realization is that I am not anything else. I am not an experience. Realization does not mean looking at something and experiencing it. Realization is knowing what is. It's a direct seeing. That which cannot be seen by senses is your essence. That which is self-evident does not require any medium to know. Like we say it is self-effulgent. The sun does not require a candle to know that I am the sun. The sun has the light. Same way you are the light. And so you know the ignorance, you know the knowledge. Nobody gets the knowledge because there is nobody. There is knowledge, but there is no one who knows. Actually the one who claims I know is destroyed by this knowledge. Because if I am the experiencer then who is this other one who knows everything? Nobody knows it. What is known? Only the ignorance is cleared. Nothing is known actually. Not this, not that. Do you call this knowledge? If you want, you can call it knowledge, but it is simply a step towards agnosticism. If ignorance is like hunger, knowledge is like dry bread, unknowing is the most beautiful dinner you will ever have. Very satisfying. That is all that is realized, you see. Can we call it realization? It's a big joke, actually.

Sweetie's question. How can anyone say that because the experiencer no more knows himself, it knows that it is all an illusion. I meant that the experiencer will know that everything is an illusion.

No. Experiencer has no concern about what is illusion, what is not. It is the non-dual reality. You serve it the illusion, it is happy. You serve it the truth, very happy. You serve it with some knowledge, okay. Serve it an illusion, perfectly okay. It is pure acceptance. It never says no to anything. It is like the empty space in your room. You can put anything there. The space does not complain. There can be a pile of diamonds in your room. There can be a pile of garbage in your room. Space never says anything, it accepts unconditionally.

The experiencer never says this is an illusion, that is an illusion. That is the intellect. The intellect has a need to know what is true, what is not. Survival demands that we should know that which is reliable, consistent, does not change, etc, etc. The meaning of the illusion is that it is false. It is not what it looks like. So who needs to know? Not the experiencer. It is blissfully witnessing the illusion because what else is there? So at the level of non-duality, we drop the concept of illusion, non-illusion, true and false. At the level of non-duality, we say that there is illusion and there is absence of illusion. There is both illusion and there is truth also. Now the intellect has nowhere to go after this is said. This is how you are established in non-duality. Not by thinking about it, not by knowing it, by being it, be that which you are. It's very simple.

It comes by letting go, not by grabbing anything. Whatever you have accumulated is the trouble. You have a body, you have education, you have a career, you have money, you have family, you have relatives, you have hobbies, likes, dislikes, you have memories and you have a lot of ignorance in the form of education and you have spiritual ignorance. This is true. The scriptures and pile of words, that is the trouble. What you are is absolutely pure and actually like empty space, it remains pure. It is not concerned, does not bother about what is being piled up there because - impermanence. Whatever is accumulated is momentary. Even the knowledge is momentary. Whatever you call knowledge, it's all negative actually. That is also momentary. It returns to purity and is not affected by impurity. So purification is also part of the dream. Nothing is gained by purification.

The impurities are also impermanent. I have seen some people who say that what is the use of all this knowledge? These all great people became very ill, then they became very old and they died. What is the use of all this? See how much ignorance there can be. So when I hear such questions, I remain silent mostly because no amount of answering will clear it. “Why should I go into spirituality when all my problems are going to remain as they are? I am going to remain poor, jobless, miserable, surrounded by annoying relatives and this government, wars and diseases. Why?” “Okay then, don't. You have a better option, take that”.

“You are doing meditation? Very good, who is your guru?” Nobody, obviously. They saw it on YouTube. “Yes, but why are you spiritual? Why are you doing it?” “It cures a lot of diseases and keeps my figure perfect”. So this is spirituality for ordinary people. They are still trying to accumulate. Obviously, if I say you are going to lose everything, nobody will come here. This whole project will fail. So we lie a lot. “Path of knowledge gives you knowledge. It's a lifestyle which is permeated with knowledge. It will make you blissful, peaceful, brings prosperity and all the diseases will be cleared. All your relatives will become angels”. So we lie a lot. The path of knowledge does nothing. It shows you a mirror. So if you are ugly, you will see it. If you are beautiful, you will see it. Nothing else. Just see it. Whatever we see, it's all an illusion. It's fully knowing that nothing can be fixed, and there is nothing to fix. We still keep doing it. We still are engaged in action, fully knowing that this is a dream, we try to make it a beautiful dream instead of a nightmare. This is intelligence. Spirituality is beyond intellect. It does not know what to do, how to do, or what should be done. Nothing. That which is, is very pure. So just to support the ignorance for a while, it is kind of a disaster if you give up everything. That's what people think. So we lie a lot. Okay, we'll fix it. I'll fix your problems. Don't worry. That which is not cannot be fixed.

Sometimes I give this example of the night dream. You can dream about something where everything is broken. You are broken. You're poor. Your relatives are awful, and you spend 2,000 years in the dream fixing everything. Now it is all perfect. You live in a shiny palace. You have 20 cars and 40 girlfriends and so on. But then you wake up. What was fixed? What was wrong? What was achieved?

It was a play. It was a dream. Anyhow, the dream was achieved. Nothing else. The play happened for a while. You came back from the dream as you entered the dream. Unchanged. So those who don't want to wake up, and they're scared of waking up, they're given something to do in the dream. Otherwise, there is no need to do anything. There is no doer. Why are people asking all these questions like what is the use of knowing this thing? When it is not useful for me, why should I know it? Yes, it's no use. Don't know it, if you do not desire it. It doesn't really matter.

I heard Ramesh Balsekar, he was talking about the same thing. What is the use of non-duality in daily life? And he said it's no use except that it makes you peaceful. So those who are thinking that he means that I will be very, very peaceful and blissful the whole life, no, it's not that kind of peace. The peace is a very active peace. It is full of activity. This peace is not stagnant. It is not like a pool of water where nothing happens. It is like a waterfall. That kind of peace you will get when you look at the waterfall. It is falling peacefully, it does not care whether it is falling, where it is falling, how far away, how far below it is going. Nothing. Tremendous activity in the waterfall but it is there for nothing. No meaning there. No purpose in falling. This is the peace.

So the peace that we get by being spiritual is not absence of activity. It's not a dull lazy life where we do nothing, sit in the cave. It's not like this. It is full of action.

Session 138

Here is a question by Parteep. First time an option is there in front of me in awareness to think or not. Not thinking is coming with small resistance. Sometimes awareness results from thoughts in my case. Please touch some depth in the absence of thoughts and awareness. I am in transition.

This option is the freedom or the control that we gain when there is awareness. Awareness is the controlling mechanism for even the intellect. The rule of the layers is that the higher layers know and control the lower layers and the lower layers do not know the higher layers and do not have any control over them. So this person or the individual is not really a monolithic structure, it's not one, there are many, and these many are many layers that have accumulated as a result of evolution. So far in humans, awareness is the highest, and it can control the layers below it, which are the intellect, which thinks, and the emotions, the pleasure and pain, and the body, and everything else.

Why can't these thoughts stop in ordinary people? Because there is no awareness. In the absence of awareness, it is all autonomous, automatic functioning of the structure. Awareness is simply knowledge; there is nothing special in awareness; it's not magic. Simply, it is refined intelligence, that's all. Just like the layer of intelligence, intellect controls things below it, the awareness can control the intellect also. It means thinking is reduced for any ordinary person, even for a seeker; 90% of thoughts are a total waste of energy, they are nothing important; they are a repetition of what is already there. It is the activity of the memory; thoughts, random playback of the memory, and the thought is an after-effect, actually. The action already has happened when the thought has arrived.

When there is a need to do something, the creature needs to act, the decision is already made, everything is already planned, and then the thinking starts about what has happened, and the ego kicks in and says that I have decided and I am thinking, I am deciding or I am planning. This is the same thing for desires; the desire is already there, and then this process of thinking about it starts, how nice it will be if this desire is fulfilled, how to fulfill and all those thoughts.

When there is time to act, there is no time to think. Many people must have seen this, that they cannot act if they keep thinking because thought or intellect controls the actions. So if it is not done up there, then it will never happen down here in the body; it won't get up and act. So most of our actions are also automated; we think that we are doing it after thinking, but rarely, thinking simply happens, and when the eleventh hour comes, the body gets up and acts automatically. Thinking does not make the body act; desires make the body act. When there is the right time for action, it happens, eleventh-hour action, we say.

With the presence of awareness, the same thing happens; it is all automated but it is possible to stop some of the unnecessary things; the necessary will happen, but all that clutter of thoughts and emotions and desires, that can be silenced, and the more aware you are, the more uselessness of these activities will be seen, and as soon as they are seen, they stop; it is very easy.

Especially those who have never been in awareness, they keep wondering what should I do to stop unnecessary activity. No don't try to do it, the doing is the problem here; just be, if you just be, everything stops. Awareness is so powerful that it can stop the body also; it will reduce breathing rate; it will reduce the heart rate, digestion rate, metabolism, anabolism, and all these things can be reduced. You must have heard the stories of yogis, they can stop activities of the layer of the body. But who stops it? There is nobody, it is awareness detecting what is happening and is unnecessary.

When you are sitting silently and peacefully, when there is nothing to do, you will see that the breathing is very slow; we don't need that much air normally. But when you are agitated, when the mind is not restful, the body thinks it is time to run. Like people in the cities, they suffer from all these diseases of the heart because they are always in a fight mode; they are fighting something morning to evening, even their sleep is disturbed because of all the noise in the city.

When there is awareness, a lot of positive things happen for this memory structure we call a layered structure, which is this whole organism, thinking; it is only the tip of the iceberg; there is a lot going on below, and that is all cleaned, that is all stopped. So what else happens? If there is negativity, if there are negative experiences in life, and they produce negative thoughts, awareness simply cleans it because it is totally unnecessary; the danger is gone, that bad time is gone, now it is totally unnecessary to bring up all these emotions and thoughts again. Many people don't have any kind of real negativity; they have imaginary negativity, like worries: what will happen if?, and so on; a lot of imaginary fears they have, imaginary fights are going on, imaginary hate is there; hate is taken from the society mostly, or egoic problems are there; ego hurts, and so on; heartbreaks, all these useless things are stored there, and that makes their life hell.

Awareness simply detects it, and the thought is like, "Oh, these things are totally unnecessary; it will be so nice if they are absent," and they are gone immediately. The major effect of awareness is that it totally eliminates all suffering, even the pains in the body, they are ineffective if there is awareness.

Some people have complained to me that when I am sick, when I am in pain, my awareness reduces to zero. It's impossible. Your practice is zero; you are very new in this field of practice of awareness, so it looks like that the lower layer is now controlling the awareness, it looks like the rule has broken, but actually the awareness is not stable, the practice is not there, you have not intensified it through cultivation or practice, so you will find that the activity of the body is overwhelming, too painful, so for the system, awareness is not the top priority now, so it is thrown away, but if you have good practice, then the awareness does not go away, it actually controls the pain; the response of the body is controlled. Now you can enter the real spirituality here, where the body can be simply healed by awareness, just like other layers, they repair themselves under the light of awareness; the body is another layer; it repairs itself; that is the secret of healing now; you can get many more so-called powers by simply intensifying the awareness.

Those who are trying to meditate or do some other kind of practice, it is completely useless without awareness; they don't even know what they are doing; mechanical, robotic practices. Some people, you must have seen, are trying to control the breath, but nobody has told them anything about self-knowledge and awareness, so they do a mechanical practice of stopping the breath, which has a harmful effect, it reduces the intellect; these people become dumb. And some people do all these kinds of postures at all, thinking that the body will be healthy; there can be a little bit of an effect of that, because there is movement, but no, it does not become healthy.

So how to get this thing called awareness? The secret is self-knowledge, know that which you are, know your true nature; that does not take many years; it takes a few minutes, and then abide in your true nature, which means simply remember, remember what I am. It is so easy, why this has become difficult, because of the bad habits, the conditioning is too strong, new knowledge is not accepted, sometimes it is needed, but a lot of argumentation. You must have seen many people are like this, and the biggest hurdle is the ego; the ego is the king when there is no awareness, and so the most resistance will come from the ego - "I know everything, I don't need to be taught anything," this is the statement of the ego, or "please teach me that which I already know so that I feel good about it, support me, agree with me" - this is the ego.

And it has very little intelligence. Awareness has the highest intelligence. It becomes less doing and more not doing, be the witness, experiencer, and the awareness grows. Prefer this activity, because awareness is also an activity of the memory; prefer this activity over the other; you can only prefer; you cannot bring it; you cannot force it; there is no switch to turn on the awareness; there must be love for it, and then it comes. And this love for knowledge and awareness and abiding cannot be installed in those who don't have the desire for liberation and knowledge. We say it is grace; when this creature evolves to a certain extent, it gets this desire to know and to be aware; it is simply evolution that is happening, and we know that, that which is evolving cannot force their evolution; they don't know where they are; mother nature is doing it for them.

Anybody who comes in contact with a guru and gets the self-knowledge/self-realization, he is very lucky because he has evolved to this step. You will find that very few people can do it. Awareness is so powerful that it simply destroys this mechanism of rebirth, reincarnation, stops it, because ultimately you will see that it is also a useless activity. We come here to fulfill some desires, and ultimately we see the futility; it achieves nothing here; probably some people will say, "we learn here," yes, but how many times are you going to learn the same lessons? When awareness grows to this extent that all the lessons are learned and everything is recalled, you don't need to even learn everything; the intellect is enough to know through the logical and rational abilities what is unnecessary, what is not required, what is causing the suffering and bondage; you don't need to go through it. We can know it through the logic and intellectual abilities we have.

People say I forgot whatever lessons I learned in the past lives. No, the lessons are manifesting as a greater intellect in this life; there is no episodic memory of past lives, there is the effect of whatever we have learned. Those who are old in terms of spiritual age, they have a very, very advanced intellect; they never complain that I don't remember. They already know why they are here, what they need to do. They do exactly that and they disappear. We are not here to do everything, we are here to do that for which we took this journey. Less intelligence means you will be distracted in this world. There is nothing wrong there; there is learning there also; but these people are not ready for the next step.

Magical thing is awareness. The key is awareness. To get the awareness you need self-realization; for self-realization, you need a guru; you cannot get it from books, from videos, from lectures, or from your neighbor or parents or your government; they give you exactly the opposite; they give you ignorance. Once there is awareness, even the fulfillment of desires is seen as unnecessary and will leave the human birth, will leave the human womb, as we say, move on to the other wombs where your tiny-whiny desires are fulfilled instantly. You can fulfill it right there where it is generated.

Those who think that spiritual knowledge has no use, actually it has no worldly use, it has spiritual use, and the use of the spiritual knowledge is manifested as detachment from the world, not success in the world. We don't get anything in material terms. It is letting go of the lower stuff, for example, the world, the material things, your animal nature, which we call simply as the lower nature. And human nature is finally left, so it has a divine application, not a material application, because people don't know this, they have no clue what spirituality is for. They only know matter, they only know their body. They come here with this hope of gaining something in the material world, like improving their financial status or improving their relations or improving their intellect, "I want to know all the scriptures," and that is simply desire fulfillment. Nothing wrong, at least they came to the right path; now understand the path and don't misuse it because that fails ultimately. You can use it for one thing or the other in the material world, in this illusion of the world, but ultimately it has its own flow; the river of spirituality is too strong; it simply wipes out all the worldly desires ultimately.

If there is awareness, you will see that sometimes you are stuck here in the material domain because of the stored desires, if they are not getting satisfied. That is why this desire fulfillment is recommended; fulfill that which is keeping you here, and awareness gives you this chance to detect your purpose here. Fulfill it, otherwise, you are fulfilling somebody else's desires all the time; you are in bondage; you are a slave of somebody else. Those without awareness don't even know these things. Are you not fulfilling all the desires of rich and powerful people and your parents and your peers? Peers means those who pretend to be your friends, but they are actually controlling you. The game is like this; your community, your religion; they are all controlling mechanisms; they don't let you do that for which you are here. So break the bonds with all of these; let go. Usually it is our own weakness that keeps us bound, and so we keep doing that which others want us to do, instead of doing that which I want to do. My will is suppressed; and this is the trap; this world is a cage where people are happily trapped, and they don't want the inmates to escape. In India, the biggest punishment is not hanging a person or shooting a person or putting them in prison for 20 years; that is not the biggest punishment; the biggest punishment that is inflicted on anybody is to increase their one more birth. Now this is something new which many people here have probably not heard before.

When you know so much about spirituality that you can misuse it. If I am not happy with you, you think the worst I can do is to kill you, but no, that is liberation. You are liberated. What has happened is I am bound by my action, because I murdered somebody. Now my lifetimes have increased. There will be many rebirths where I will keep getting the fruits. The fruit here means consequence. Because of this one action, it is going to reverberate throughout my causal existence. So ultimately who gets harmed by murdering? The murderer, not the victim. The victim is free, is gone, gone back to causal state and will reappear in some other form. Yes, there will be a little bit of trauma and all that, there is a bondage there. This thing happened because of mutual karmic arrangements or situations, so they will experience the suffering also, but not as much as the one who killed that person.

If I really want to punish somebody, I will move on, but I will keep that person hanging in the world. There are many ways to do it. One way is to simply give something to somebody, make them dependent on you. It can be money, it can be food, it can even be water. And if it is given with an intention that you will need to pay it back, then they are stuck here. You can move on, there is no problem in it, those who take, their lifetimes are increased, this much I have learnt. Freedom is not taking, freedom is giving without expectation, this much I have learnt. And the biggest punishment for somebody is to trap them in unwanted desires. Therefore for a seeker, the time of death is sacred. We have converted it into a ceremony. So many people who are kind of religious, blind believers, prefer to die in a sacred place. They don't know why they are doing it, but they do it. Somebody told them, hardly anything happens because they die with the load of desires on their head, it is not effective. So for a seeker, the proper death is in the lap of his guru. The guru will install the thoughts of detachment - don't come here, there is nothing here, look this world is a waste, this body is leaving you, it is not your body, all this positivity will be poured inside that dying seeker. Why will a person do that, why will a worldly person do this kind of madness, they prefer to die in the hospital spending millions on the medicines, “smart” people, but a seeker is simple, he does not want to come back and he knows what kind of conditioning is needed to finally let go and these positive/satvik thoughts in the mind at the time of death are the key.

If you don't have this kind of luxury to die in the ashram in the presence of your guru, and probably the guru dies before you, then other seekers take care of that process. I think nowadays this does not happen, the ashrams have become simply business centers where courses are taught for 10 days or 15 days and they run on the money given by the seekers, it's all about money now. So the best thing to do in this age is to die in solitude or if you have a spiritual partner. The job of your partner is to detach you while dying. The opposite can be done obviously, you can cry and you can make a big drama around the dying person and he comes back instantly in the same family, the same genetic line with the same desires and character. You think your child is someone new? No he is your grandfather, great grandfather, or some other relative, most probably. As you can see the world is upside down.

Kamlesh is saying, in Tibet, the Bardo process is done, is this process done for everybody?

It is a big secret. We don't know all these things because you see it is seen as glorification of death by common people. What are they afraid of? Dying, obviously. So anything that is said positively about death scares them to death. They don't want to hear anything positive about death, so it is kept secret. It happens everywhere in India also. The death of a seeker cannot be like a worldly person, if that happens, that means nothing was learned in this life. At least it has to be peaceful, in a loving environment, that is the minimum. Just say don't come back, say goodbye forever. That does not mean that they leave you. There is always contact, the connection cannot be broken. But we don't need a physical manifestation to remain connected.

Parteep, how did I forget coming here and got lost in my own creation?

Well, this is a tragedy that we forget all these things, and again the reason is lack of awareness. And there is nothing wrong in forgetting because this is the normal process of evolution. Now that you remember, continue from here, nothing to worry. You cannot call the person as the guru, the guru is the gurufield. And you must have asked for the boon at some point or the other, please take me away. You must have extended your hands for help, and the gurufield manifests in many forms. Right now, it is pure experiences online satsang. So, yes, we spread the net so that people like you can be caught, and then we take you away. This is the job of the gurufield, harvesting those who are ready.

Sinha is saying, does one lose bliss while practicing the occult?

No, those who are not in bliss cannot practice anything. Occult also needs knowledge. Occult probably needs more control than somebody who is on the path of knowledge. The tantric requires excellent control compared to the gyani. So if there is no awareness in that person who is trying to manipulate the illusion, complete failure is guaranteed. You must be situated very firmly in awareness to do anything which is occult like healing, manifestation, any kind of magic. There are ways to gain knowledge by occult means, like we are connected to the gurufield, it is an occult practice actually. We have simply adopted it. So instead of connecting to any kind of lowly creatures out there, we choose to connect to the gurufield. We are surrendered there. So is it possible to be in connection with the gurufield without awareness? Impossible. Still, the gurufield can direct, it can instruct you because you cannot see them, but they can see you. By seeing, I mean they know it. You need to have this tiniest will, which is not my will, obviously, it is the gift of Mother Nature, an evolutionary gift. This will appears, the tiny spark to know who am I. Or even if it is not manifesting like this, it will manifest as a desire to end the suffering, a desire to end the bondage. The bondage will force you to ask questions, and obviously, somebody who is wiser than you will provide the answer. You cannot get the answer yourself. So the attraction is there towards the wise person. As soon as that happens, the gurufield takes over.

“Okay, there's one more email in my mailbox”, the gurufield will say, this person has a desire to progress, and now things are arranged depending on his or her resistances. If there is too much ignorance, something primary is sent, and if there is more potential, an advanced guru appears. That is the mechanism. It all starts with the spiritual will, and you must have seen that the Avadhoot Gita starts with exactly this kind of verse that by the grace of Ishvara comes the desire for non-duality in a man. It does not start by giving all these definitions and terminology and technical sounding words. Avadhoot Gita is very simple, it factually states that look this is how it starts. So those who have not read Avadhoot Gita are missing a lot.

I'll say this that everybody should be made aware of these occult or evil practices that are happening in this country. This misuse of knowledge is happening, where people are bound back in the material world at the time of their death or even the old age where the intellect is not functioning properly. After 70 or 80 years, the intellect reduces and that is the right time to install something evil. They get affected, and the other right time to install a worldly desire in a person is in childhood when the intellect is not functioning nicely. Children, you can tell them anything, they will do it. A protection method, self-defense is needed against these practices, and because people don't know it, they're suffering, even some seekers are also suffering.

Add a tail of awareness to every experience. It's nothing new, it's everywhere in all the scriptures. It is the teaching of the gurus, and this is a therapeutic method also. Usually, I tell these people who are troubled by past events that you recall the event as detailed as you can and do it in full awareness. Then add a forgiving sentence or something positive after it. So now the record plays back as usual but then it brings on whatever was added to it, which is forgiving, awareness and positivity. This is a very effective and very old method, and unfortunately, people don't know this. What do they know? To suppress their negativity using pills or distractions or keep doing the same thing hoping for a different outcome.

Oh, the last relation was a failure, bitter. Now instead of letting go, one more relation, this time it will be nice, and this time also it fails. Okay, one more, you see? So that is not the way to fix anything because it is simply like keeping the wounds alive by repeating the same thing or I am a failure in my job, so I'll do the same job some other place. This time I'll be successful, I'll simply get a promotion and do the same job again. Nothing happens in their life, it remains the same, so it is possible to break the repetitive cycles, the mechanical operation of this mental structure by using awareness. If it is past, you can bring it into the present and add awareness to it. If it is present, be in awareness already and for the future decide, make this intention, strong intention to be in awareness no matter what.

Some people have this wrong notion that if I have a lot of work to do, I should probably keep the awareness away for that time. Wrong knowledge there, ignorance. So there is this example of traffic. When you are driving in heavy traffic, there is a crowd around, are you more attentive or less attentive? Do you say that a lot of people are walking on the street, cars are coming from everywhere, so let me just close my eyes and drive, I have no time to pay attention here because too much is happening. I cannot control it anyway, just let me drive at full speed through the crowd? No, that will be ignorance.

The same way a lot of things are happening in your life and you decide, oh let me just go through it without awareness. I'll get to the awareness when everything is finished in my life. And what is that? Ignorance only. Take this opportunity to be aware in all situations. And actually, you should double your awareness when it is needed more, which will be in difficult situations. When you are sitting in your room, you don't need awareness, relax, don't make any effort to be aware because there are no survival pressures. You will be listening to this satsang or the video or doing your program or simply discussing it with somebody on the phone, and the awareness is effortlessly present.

What happens when there are survival pressures, especially difficult people are around you, you have work to do? Then no issues at all. See, you can be aware when you are with yourself, but people are the biggest challenge, especially the irritating people. So as soon as buttons are pushed, you start dancing, no control, there you need to be more aware. In the most difficult situation, you need to be most aware. That is common sense. And what is the complaint? No, I don't get the time to be aware as if it's a job to be aware. It is not a job. It's not an action. It's not work. It's not really a practice. It's a way to be.

When you are doing something critical, like a doctor is doing the surgery or an engineer is repairing some very complicated equipment, will he say today I am too busy to use my intellect, to use my knowledge of this device or this human body? I have no time, actually, this is the important work I am doing and I will just act dumb and do whatever comes. That would be stupidity. That is the time when knowledge and your skill are needed most. Same way when you are in a situation where this awareness is needed most, you decide to keep it away. You decide to turn off all your reminders and everything that you're using desperately to be aware.

Here also, I'll tell you a trick, the guru is very useful. Just remember your guru, and the guru is hopefully the embodiment of awareness for you. Simply remembering my guru brings in awareness, this is my experience. You don't need all these reminders, you see. You don't need the posters and all. What are these posters doing? They are bringing in awareness. And when the face of the guru shows in the poster, there has to be more awareness, that is the trick. Why do people hang photos of the gurus in their room? Not because they're beautiful. They want to use the guru as a tool to get awareness.

Guru is useful in the awareness practice also. He has told you many things, but there is still some use left, and finally, you should call your guru when you're dying. Some people will think that this fellow has an obsession with dying. Every other satsang is about death, and there are so many elaborate podcasts about nothing but death. And to be frank, that is the most important thing a seeker needs to know at this time. That knowledge was wiped out, and what is installed in your mind? Fear of death, not knowledge of death. How unfortunate is that? We should have a fear of birth, not of death.

Remembering your guru is simply a stepping stone to remembering the knowledge that you have in you. And don't keep remembering the guru, it's useless, get to the awareness. So those who get stuck in the guru, they are called guru worshipers, and they get bitter medicine from me. Yes, people hang the string of photos of gurus in their room. One is not enough. Okay, you hang all the gurus in your room, but you see no use if you simply worship the pictures.

Vipin has a question, can it be said evolution just depends on the intensity of awareness? Higher beings, devatas, are nothing but beings with higher awareness.

According to my experience, evolution is a natural process. You can evolve without awareness. Mother nature is doing it anyway, but awareness is a consequence of knowledge, not of evolution. As evolution happens, we come to a point where the intellect is sharp enough to grasp knowledge, where the intellect finally realizes that the guru is my shelter. This is the start. So from there, the evolution speeds up. That is the connection between awareness and evolution. As soon as you are established in awareness, your evolution is going to speed up.

So yes, there are some higher beings that are so evolved that awareness is their only nature, that's what remains. But there are many shades in between that are higher than human but lack awareness. Some of them are very advanced but completely lack awareness. How do I know this? Use the fractal nature of manifestation to conclude these things. It's not wrong, I think it's the law of self-similarity. You can see it here also. There are animals and there are humans. Now, humans are more evolved than animals. Do they have awareness? No, even though they are more evolved, they lack awareness. What do they have? A little bit of intellect, only a little bit. That has given humans so much advantage in evolutionary terms that they appear superior to animals while being animals. We don't even have the superior qualities that animals have, the vision of an owl, the strength of a tiger, and the infrared vision of a snake, or the flight of a bird or a honeybee. We don't have all that. How fast the honeybee flies is amazing, isn't it? And the control is great, even though it's an insect. Do we have that ability? No, we can barely walk on two feet for two kilometers, and then we sit down, we get tired easily. We don't even have sharp teeth, we need to boil our food to digest it. It's a very ordinary animal with a little bit of intellect and it’s called “superior”.

So, same thing, there is a little bit of evolution, and they are like miles ahead of you, and you call them devas. But it's not necessary that they will have essential knowledge and awareness. So if you ask the ancient gurus and all, they will say that all these higher beings come back here to get knowledge because the guru is sitting here. I am not saying that there will be no way to get knowledge in the higher worlds, but they are too comfortable there. Like in the winter days, your bed and a warm blanket is too comfortable. You don't want to get out of there because it is cold outside. The heavenly worlds are too comfortable to be bothered with all this knowledge and awareness, no need there. But this one is perfect here, suffering and happiness is 50-50, like carrot and stick, perfect balance. So I'm here for that, you are here for that. Most of the seekers are here for nothing but knowledge. We have abandoned the heavenly world because it does not look like you belong here, you're too good for this world, you should not be here. Why are you here? To get the final lesson.

The final lesson is, who am I? Now, you don't need to come back, except if you have a project to finish, or unless you're contributing to the gurufield. Now, if the guru says, "Come back," you have no option. Come back. The other option is to be beaten by the guru. The guru simply leaves you alone. That can be a bigger punishment than reincarnation. So yes, the higher beings, they have higher abilities, just like humans have higher abilities, but not necessarily that there will be awareness and knowledge there. Actually, when you read all the stories and all, they keep fighting with each other over something stupid, they keep doing all these things. Even the king of the gods is too naughty to be called a god. Does it look like Indra has any kind of awareness? Hardly, but he is so powerful. But I don't know who wrote all these stories, they were probably meant to show that the actual evolution is possible only in the human form.

But I know Indra does not represent their community. Actually, he is an exception. There are very good gods who are much better than the king. Like everywhere else, it's the condition, your president or prime minister is just a stupid person. There are very good people in the crowd. The rulers are the dumbest of all. So it's a universal law, I think. Yes, humans have privilege because of their higher intellect. What are we using our intellect for? For evolution, for growth, for progress, for the benefit of others, or are we using it in a selfish way? That is what makes all the difference. That is why, the path of knowledge is the best path, because the best ability is used here - the intellect. This opportunity that we have, this privilege, is put to use. That is why it is the fastest. That is why it gives you results. No other path gives you results. They are just traps.

Again, I'll go to Avadhoot Gita, because that is what is in my mind these days. You see, it clearly says that meditation will never make you progress. I fully agree. All other paths are going to keep you trapped in practices only. The path of knowledge liberates. So that's why I say all other paths are simply the footpaths to come on the highway of the path of knowledge. If you are already on the highway, you're very fortunate. They are like village roads that connect to the main highway. And obviously, these people on the other paths, they hate me because I say things like this. But remember, I've walked on many paths. I'm just like you. I've gone through it. And if you don't believe me, do it by getting your direct experience of this path. See it by walking on it, whether it works or not. I know it won't work for many. You see, it requires a special configuration. But there is no harm in trying. This is how you build trust in the gurus. Initially, you don't know what they're saying. Initially, you do not trust them. Cannot believe them. But you see, as you start walking on the path, you see that whatever they have written in the scriptures is coming true. This is how you gain their trust.

So now, if Avadhoot says something, for me, it is almost 100% true. Even if I don't know, he needs to say one word, and I'll simply assume it is true. Just bow down, surrender to that person, because you see, whatever he has said before is my direct experience. Now, there is no reason to not accept the rest. What does this do? It speeds up evolution. I don't need to wait for the experience. I can take action now. So in the end, he says that those who read this Gita will never be born. That is shocking, and I simply believe it. There are many such gurus. One of my gurus says that if you have read my book, if you call my name, I'll be there to help you. There are gurus like this, and I blindly believe them. Why? Because nobody writes these things without thinking.

Parteep is saying, other paths took my 10 years.

Don't worry. It's not bad. Some preparation is needed before you find the real thing. I have seen that those who start here directly, are often not successful. They need to go through this grinding mill of spirituality first. They are ground to powder, reduced to nothing. They come on the path of knowledge because probably it is too simple for them. No fireworks, no decoration, no loud music, nothing here. So I've realized this, and I keep sending some people back. Don't come here, I say. You're wasting your time. They don't like that either. So the relation with the guru ripens as you progress. And you don't trust the guru just because he has a lot of knowledge or he has studied a lot of scriptures and he says all these big words. They do not instill trust. What makes you trust is your own experience that whatever he said is coming true. That brings trust. Nothing else.

Siddhanta is asking, Do you believe in the Big Bang theory?

A theory means that it is a working description. I'm not against any theory. Obviously, it is a working description. It simply describes the phenomena. It's perfectly okay. But do we believe anything on the path of knowledge? No, we don't “believe”. We demand knowledge which comes from direct experience and logic. Theory is utility. It is useful sometimes, that's all, to explain the illusion. What do we say ultimately? We know nothing. There is something beautiful that appears in literature - I do not appear in the world, the world appears in me. That is much better than Big Bang, isn't it? It is the biggest bang that I have ever heard. Like my mind was blown. The real Big Bang is that the universe appeared in me. How? We don't know. So compared to that, the Big Bang of physics is childish. It is all cooked up, all the mathematics there is cooked up. What evidence do we have for a Big Bang?

Now we have shifted to science. From philosophy to occult to science. Science is a branch of the occult only. Behind the belief of this theory is that things progress, they are created step by step. And in my opinion, that is wrong because of the timelessness, for which we have the direct evidence, because in timelessness, nothing can progress. All possibilities exist. There are many theories now, and the Big Bang is the most harebrained theory of all times. I am not saying this. This was said on a show by a great scientist. You can get the YouTube video there. I completely agree. Our view is very simple, that the universe appears in me. The simplest explanation is the best. This is the rule in science. Occam's razor is the best. So, what is the evidence for the Big Bang? Yes, galaxies are moving in expansion, the Doppler effect. Microwave background radiation, MBR. That is the foundation for this theory. That is why Big Bang is a little bit interesting. Otherwise, it's a dead theory. If you explain MBR, we don't need the Big Bang. The noise in my microphone is actually MBR. It is omnipresent.

We do not believe anything on the path of knowledge. Belief has to be abandoned. Evidence is needed. There is no shame in saying, "I don't know." People are ashamed of saying, "I don't know," and therefore, they believe something. There is no harm in saying that I don't know and start investigating, researching, finding. We are the seekers. Seeker means we are trying to find, trying to know.

So, this Maya cannot be known. Let me tell you in advance, it cannot be known. You will find explanations of all kinds, and you simply pick something which works at that time. Science is absolutely like that. We pick up something which works. There is an interesting video on YouTube. Very famous scientist Richard Feynman is teaching, and he writes on the blackboard in the classroom, "This is the scientific method. Now, listen, everybody." He says, "Number one, we experiment. Number two, we guess it's working." And everybody laughs in the classroom because, how can this be the scientific method? We guess it's working? Where is the science here? And he got irritated at that point. He said, "Nothing to laugh here. This is a serious thing. This is how we do it." So if you watch Feynman's videos, you will learn the real science. Other scientists, they are kind of bookworms. Feynman is the boss. So when he says you guess things in science, you don't really know, he is absolutely right. We cook up stuff, and then when we are satisfied with the explanation, we accept it as a theory, a working theory, and it keeps changing all the time, as you know, new theories are coming all the time, and that which changes is false. So all of the science is actually false.

Siddhant is asking, "Are all the deities in Hinduism real?"

How will I know all these things? Anyhow, I'll make a guess, like Feynman said, we can guess these things a little bit rationally. Most of these deities are created by humans. They're imaginary or they are very much an occult practice. Second thing, there is no such thing as Hinduism. There is no such philosophy or religion or anything. There are a garden variety of deities, there are many paths here, various sects. That's all there is. There is no organized religion in India. Whatever religion we find, was brought by attackers. So most of them are imaginary, symbolic in nature, and others are founded by tantrics, advanced practitioners, mostly for desire fulfillment, and the benefit of the people. There are many kinds, you see. There are Vedic deities, nobody worships them now. The Surya and whatever you see, Ashwini Kumars and nobody worships them. And there are tantric deities, yogic deities, Ganesha and Shiva, from Kali to Parvati, the hierarchy of goddesses. They are tantric deities, and probably that is the most effective thing to worship right now in this age. They're effective. Devi’s forms are all imaginary, there is only one Devi. There is absolutely no need to convert her into a form. But we do that, we are humans. So this is the whole story of deities

That which we call gods are actually evolved humans. They evolved from human lineages. Some of them are worshipped, and the last kind of deity is the guru himself. Gurus are worshipped as godly. So this is the whole story of deities. Is it Maya? Yes, obviously, except me, everything is an illusion. Only I am the truth. That must be very, very clear. Now, what kind of Maya is it that can be explained? All human-created. Most of the things we encounter around here, in the physical or non-physical, are a product of humans. If you don't believe me, no problem. Find evidence. You will find that humans have achieved heights of intelligence, science and spirituality in the past. They went very high. Nowadays, what we see is simply a rotten, broken, ruined form of worship or deities or whatever. So this is my view. Nobody likes it. What do people like? Glorification of these things. What is my way? Destroying. I destroy all these things, clean up.

Session 139

Guruji, in awareness, one difference is noted that let's say previously if I watch a movie, then the scenes of the movie will keep on coming into the experience for let's say 2 or 3 days. But now in awareness, whatever experience I go through, then that experience is dissolved then and there. So my question would be that when we were not in awareness, then one single experience keeps on attaching or keeps on repeating again and again. It gets reminded, even very small experiences. But in awareness, the repetition does not occur. So what can you say about that, Guruji?

Probably initially a lot of importance was given to the movies and stories and whatever events happened around you. And now that importance has dropped. Now even your whole life looks like a dream. So it is not important anymore. And obviously the movies and the stories and whatever is of no importance at all. So it stops repeating. The recall is stopped. And because of the awareness, the tendency is to stop the unwanted or the unnecessary. If it is unnecessary, we don't even want to think about it. There is no need to do it obviously. Even thinking about it is dropped because of an increase of awareness. So these can be two or three reasons for it. We prefer more peace in the mind instead of more crowd or more noise. When we see that in the movies or the events or even discussions with people, they don't remain in our mind for long because it was not so important. That which is important, you will never forget. So the energy gets focused on that which is necessary. That which is not so necessary will be forgotten.

Let's say you are in a discussion with somebody and something goes wrong there. The fellow insults you or you say something bitter and they don't like it. And this impression, the bitterness, used to remain with me for a week at least. And now it goes away in probably one day. So more peace happens because there is more awareness. Similarly, the events that gave you happiness will also disappear. It is not partial to only negative. The awareness is impartial. Even that which made you very very happy is no longer so effective. There is no juice in that when you get awareness. So it levels off everything. This is my experience and probably it is the experience of everybody. That you are not excited too much when something good happens. And you are not depressed too much when something bad happens. It is not that you will not feel it. You will feel it. You get it in full intensity. But the awareness also rises in full intensity. You get the intensity in life but you lose the drama of life. This is the fascinating thing.

Some people have the complaint that I will become a rock. I will become a machine after self- realization. Knowing fully that all my emotions, feelings, desires, thoughts are just mechanisms. They are illusions. There will be nothing in my life. And you will see that this is only an ignorant point of view. Because it has not happened to that person. He is simply imagining these things. Assuming this is the point of view of the ego. Because it has known only the drama. But as soon as you enter awareness, you will see that exactly the opposite happens. Intensity of everything increases. Your sensitivity increases. But somehow it cannot affect you. Somehow it is forgotten, forgiven and marked as unnecessary. You smile and walk away. If you do something which you usually do for your happiness, parties and whatever, when you remember these acts, they seem childish. Not much weight is attached to it. We just simply accept it. Oh, it was very nice. And we move on. If it happens again, very good. If it does not happen again, no problem. Something else will happen. Weightlessness, un-stickiness, clarity, light comes in life. Brightness comes in life because of this awareness. And will it fix all your physical problems, mental problems, material problems, family problems? No, not at all. It makes you immune. That's all it will do. It makes you immune. It is not going to fix anything outside. There are exceptions that can happen, you see. But that is a different story. With the immediate effect of awareness, it makes us totally immune to the drama of Maya. And now we can walk very lightly in life.

Actually, since childhood, the exercises and yoga exercises have always delighted me. But in awareness, this interesting thing has happened that even the exercises and any simple things we do for having a healthy body, even the effect of that is also reduced. No such delight and the intensity or the after effects of doing exercises, the pleasure from the body, even the intensity of that is reduced to just like we are drinking water or something.

Yes. Not a big thing. So, it is not that their effect will be reduced. See, if you are going to the gym, you are doing yoga or something to make the body fit and all, it will produce a very good effect. There is no doubt about it. But probably your attachment to it has decreased. Now it no longer gives you that pleasure which it used to give. That is all that has happened. Detachment has happened. But the effect will be there. There is nothing to worry about. If you are doing any exercises or physical fitness training, they are not going to be ineffective. Only that now you are no longer dependent on these activities for happiness because you have found the source of happiness within, you have found the bliss within. Now the mind has no need to run after the external things. It drops them. So, it will happen to many people. It is all very natural.

Now why will I eat if I don't get any pleasure out of it? You will eat. Don't worry. Life will not become abnormal. But if your dinner is delayed by 10 minutes, you won't become anxious. You won't become angry. If your favorite dish is not cooked for dinner that day, no problem at all. You will be blissful. You will eat whatever is served. These things lose all their importance. The pettiness is dropped. It is like our childhood when all those toys were very important. I know I collected shells from the sand. The sand they used to drop for construction purposes. I used to go and dig there for shells. They were very important to me. I collected a lot of them. Then I grew older and I saw the worthlessness of that. It was no more important. It is the effect of growing up. I just threw it away or gave it to other children. There was no attachment to all those things again. So, it is the effect of growing up. As you are progressing on the spiritual path, as you are getting refined, it is similar to growing up. You will lose attachment to all those things which were totally important for you.

Nick : Has anyone become more forgetful when it comes to daily chores, work or other activities? I think there used to be more rumination over these things and thus more vigilance. There is more freedom and happiness.

Yes, there can be a side effect like this that you become so careless that you forget sometimes that you have some worldly duties also. It can happen. The bliss is probably so much that you prefer to sit instead of doing something. Especially those things which look like a burden, we forget them. Not today, tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. So, that can be a side effect but nothing to worry. On the eleventh hour, it will happen. So, you will forget once, twice and then you get bitten by your mistakes and then you will note it down. You will remember it without kicking yourself, without scolding yourself. “Something is wrong with me. I am not behaving properly these days” - Not like this. You will say, “okay, this also happened. I will ensure that this never happens again”.

But I don't think it is a major effect of being in awareness. Actually, the effect should be reversed. Now, you become more attentive. Now, the mistakes don't happen. Now, the forgetting does not happen. And if it happens for minor things, like you forgot to buy something for your kitchen, for your house, it happens all the time. Nothing to worry. But you are going to take a major decision in your life and you are making a mistake there, that will not happen. That will never happen because of this amazing intelligence that has arrived now, and is growing now. Now, you will know exactly what to do without anybody telling you. You know exactly what to do in your life. Plus, you can even guide others. The wisdom grows so much. It is a direct consequence of knowledge. And remember, this will never happen in any other path, only on the path of knowledge. The whole and complete development happens only after knowledge. Not by twisting your bodies or stopping your breathing or worshipping of deities. They don't make you grow at all. It all turns into mindless rituals and superstitions. So, I have seen a major change in myself when I came on the path of knowledge. Before that, it was an endless train of stupidities. Compulsion after compulsion, impulse after impulse, decisions that were stupid and looked very smart, and so on. So, look at the bigger picture. Look at the wisdom you have gained. Forget about the small things, which are tiny effects. I can't remember the movie. No problem at all. You remember who you are. That's all that is important.

Graham is asking, what was your experience with your Guru? How did it help?

Which Guru? Because there are too many. But my experience with most of the Gurus has been positive. And it was always like revelation of one mistake after the other. All the ignorance was revealed. That's all that happened. They never told me that now you have the knowledge. They still tell me that you are stupid, you are worthless, you are good for nothing. So they never let me settle on the path of knowledge. That means I kept growing. So whatever the Guru says about you is always for your good. That is what I learnt. Everything that they do for you is for your good. That was my experience.

They will never tell you anything worth pondering. Nothing interesting will be told. Like we discuss all kinds of things here which are of nothing but entertainment value. And my Gurus never let that happen. Because you see, that simply distracts the person. That caused an immense amount of growth, immense amount of ignorance was dropped in a very little time. And one line answers. Like here I go on talking for a long time when I answer. I never got that kind of luxury. It was a one line answer. “Now go and think about it. Come back after a month”. Something like this.

Like one of my Gurus said, “You have a lot of ego”. I said, “No. I am not an egoic person. I don't have any pride. I don't have any of these things. See, I am not proud of anything. No hubris, nothing”. Because that was the meaning of ego for me. And the Guru said, “Go and think about it. How much ego you have”. And it took six or seven months for me to find out what ego is. Then I came to know it was an imaginary thing. And I had that ego in me. So when it was revealed, it was like a burden was dropped. “Oh, the ego means that. Yes. I have a lot of it, yes”.

So sometimes, some things are not told so that you become independent. Your muscles, the spiritual muscles are exercised by thinking, by meditating on it, by introspecting on it. My Guru said, There is ego. It cannot be wrong. Now, where am I wrong? Where is my fault? And as soon as I learnt to introspect, to see within myself, and not depend on pre-cooked food of the spirituality, then the real growth happened. It is do-it-yourself spirituality that I was taught. Not spoon-feeding. So, yes, it takes a long time. He could have told me that, look, this is the ego. Get rid of it now. But probably he thought it would be less effective.

So many such incidents happened. And whatever I tell here in the Satsang or in the videos is simply the essence of that. Instead of telling you the story from my life, I tell you the distilled version of it. And then you are left to think about it. I know many people don't think about it. So that's why I say, before you ask a question, there must be a proper thinking process behind that question. Then there is a lot of fun in asking that question. Everything is given, yes. I have given all that which cannot be known simply by thinking or even introspecting. There are some things which cannot be known via DIY. They must be given. They must be pointed to. And the rest is left as an exercise. Find out why you are timeless. Find out why you are eternal. And so on. Although we have done that in our program. But hints are given. You are encouraged to verify it. That is why we have step number three. If I remove step number three, well, it will be just memorizing the facts. They need to press the button. And anybody who is intelligent will not press the button without thinking. I come to know who pressed the button without thinking.

Yes, sometimes there is something minor which cannot be verified immediately. Go ahead and press the button. It is a formality only. Why do we take things so seriously? But when you have something fundamental which you think is false, e.g. - “There is no experiencer. I never see it. I cannot experience it by any means. So it is not there. Now it is false. Now I must go and ask in the satsang”. Think about it. Come and ask in the satsang. It will be verified. And you can happily press the button now that I did not cheat. I press the button after knowing. It is for that.

So far I see that people don't come here to verify, clarify. They either leave the program completely or they simply press the button thinking that “I don't understand this but it is probably true because the other things are true. It is my fault. It is my limit. It is my lack of practice. I am not established on the path of knowledge. That's why I cannot think like this. But it is true”. So instead of wasting time they simply go ahead. And I have no objection at all. Because you have your whole life in front of you. What are you going to do in your life? Dig out more details. Refute the things in 20 ways. And establish the experiencer in 40 ways. Do you have anything more to do in your life? No.

There was a question which is often asked: what happens to the experiencer in deep sleep. Now when I encountered this question in the satsang I was totally blank. I don't know what happens to it. And then I asked the guru and they said there is bliss that's what we know, a traditional answer. But it came up so many times that every time it comes up I get a new way to describe it. So now I can explain the deep sleep in 20 different ways. So your life will be like this - more refinement, more confidence will be there. And yes you will know more words also. There is nothing wrong with knowing more words. The only thing is while you are in the program stick to our words. That is the only thing. Just to avoid the confusion.

Parthip is saying, if you can share your experience with parents.

They will do everything to prevent you from going into spirituality. Very fortunately I came to know the importance of secrecy from the beginning. I have been very secretive since childhood. I did not talk much. Nobody came to know what I did, where I went. I considered spirituality as my private affair. Even the worldly things that I did in my life, I never told my parents about going out with girls etc. That helped me a lot because there was no resistance at all. They never came to know what I was up to. Even the occult experiments were done in complete secrecy. I never said anything spiritual to my parents. Because even if I said it, they did not understand. “He was already crazy, and now he is completely crazy” - That was their comment most of the time.

Fortunately, the expectations of anyone’s parents are very small. You should get a good job, earn some money, marry somebody, and produce children. I suggest to everybody - nobody is going to benefit from your spirituality. There is no need to show it off. There is no advantage to anybody else. All they understand is - your money, your job, and your beauty, they are not going to understand anything else. And when you do something extreme, there will be a problem. Like you go one day in your family and tell your wife that I am going to be celibate because my guru ordered me so. Do not make it extreme.

There are complaints like my parents force me to worship a specific deity or something. They ask me to pray. Now play along. While sitting in the pooja you rehearse your arguments on the path of knowledge. Why not? See the drama that is this society. As soon as you rebel too much there will be more pressure on you. The rebellion should be non-acceptance. Who cares? I don't think even the family cares.

Can we remove memories of bad events forever?

There are ways to remove it. But that is not going to cause your growth. Let us take the example of hot pan. You touched a hot pan once. Unbearable pain. But now you are not going to touch it for the rest of your life. Why? Because there is a consequence here. If we remove the memory of that event, there is a possibility that because there is no memory of it, there is a chance that you will touch the hot pan again and suffer the same consequence. So, whatever happens, happens for the good.

If a lesson is removed from your memory, you are back to square one. Now you may face the same failure, cause the same kind of situation. Is that growth? Is that progress? No. So, even though it is possible, it is recommended that you do not repeat it. “It is my fault”, accept it. I am not asking for self-pity. Be an intelligent man, a courageous man. Everybody learns from mistakes.

You remove memories once and you make a mistake again. Now what? Are you going to remove it again? Why don't you remove all of your memory then? Then there is absolutely nothing to worry about, isn't it? Don't worry, that is going to happen anyway. After death, all your memories will be gone, so it all will be cleared anyway.

What is the relation between deep sleep and causal body?

I am reduced to the causal body in the deep sleep. There is only potential left in the deep sleep. Nothing else is there. So although that is a very simple explanation of deep sleep, there are a lot of things that are actually happening in the deep sleep, but they are not recorded in your waking memory. It is not inactivity. Actually deep sleep is a lot of activity, but we are in the causal form at that time. Whatever activity is happening is the activity of the causal body. We say it like this. And it is of no use for our waking state, so it’s gone upon waking.

Actually the dreams are caused by the activity of the causal body. So the dream is an activity of the causal body that looks like a dreaming state, and waking is an activity of the causal body that looks like our ordinary life. The causal memory is very big, so the dreaming memory is bigger than the waking. Waking is the smallest part, and obviously it does not contain anything. So when we are in the waking, it looks like nothing happened in the sleep. And that is actually a good explanation. You can simply assume that nothing happens there because nothing worthwhile happens in deep sleep. What we remember is that there was a blissful state, there was peace. It cannot even be called an activity.

So those who want to have the direct experience of the causal body's activities can increase their awareness in the deep sleep state, and you will find that there is no such thing as sleep. The mind never sleeps, you never sleep, the body never sleeps. Isn't it paradoxical? Everything is in sleep only, where these bubbles of activities happen for some time. Our whole life is a tiny blink of an eye for the causal body. Human life is nothing for the causal body. Just one more dream.

Once you master awareness in dreams, the intellect cannot differentiate between the waking and the dreaming. Before awareness, there was a big contrast. Waking was so solid, real, and the dreaming was fleeting, flimsy, make-believe, cardboard sets. As soon as awareness comes into the dream state, you will find that it is taken as reality. And in the waking state, the opposite happens; it is taken as a dream. Sometimes miracle events happen, extraordinary events, whatever we call paranormal events, they happen in the waking state that convert it into a totally dream-like state.

Like you will find deities rushing around your house, you will find dead people coming to meet you, coincidences, synchronicities, and so on, amazing things. You want to call somebody, and you get the call on the phone instantly. That is a very small thing and is probably everybody’s experience. You have a question and it is answered in the satsang immediately without you asking. So what happens is, now the intellect is totally broken here, the intellect has lost here. What is real now? It cannot decide.

In extreme cases, you will need to do something called grounding. If it happens too much, if it is affecting your waking state, then grounding is prescribed. By grounding, I don't mean anything to do with the ground, no, grounding means coming back on the solid ground of the waking state. Waking state is very solid, it is stable, there is no need to fly away in the dream state really.

You have the experience now, you have no doubt in your mind that waking is a dream and the dream is waking and everything is one illusion. The real nature of the experience is illusion, now you have a solid experience of it, and you don't have any doubt. Now come back to the normal state of waking. Give up the dreaming practices, no need to be aware in the dreams, useless. Come back in the waking, be aware here, that is called grounding, and it is possible by doing some physical work, taking more interest in worldly matters, meeting more people, and having more friends, etc. Do that which the worldly person does, and it involves physical work also, and if you do it on the ground like sports and gardening or farming, or drawing, painting, anything which engages your body in the waking state, you will find that the intellect comes back to normal, and now it can differentiate very easily between the “real” and “unreal” memories.

Many people have this kind of experience because as soon as you enter the program a connection is made between the guru and you. Because 24 by 7 you are now drowned in that teaching. In the dreams also you will hear my voice, why? It is repeating there. So with that kind of connection, it is obvious that whatever I say becomes relevant to you. Do the projected states and all these experiments but then leave them as soon as you get an experience that clears your doubt, leave them because it is going to have consequences, and if you keep awareness on in the waking state, there are only good consequences, nothing bad can happen, but yes one thing is that these things are irreversible, your night life is going to change after this, you will never get back that old darkness which was so comfortable. Awareness makes permanent changes in the mind but that is what we want, we don't want the ignorant state again, we want benefits of the awareness but we don't want too much change in too little time.

What will happen is you will learn to differentiate between states and all those things. Eventually if you are doing intense awareness practice then suddenly it can happen, and then the confusion comes, but if it is done in an organized way, then these problems do not happen. Here you need a guru because the guru has made all these mistakes already. Go slowly, and everything will be ok.

Virendra is saying, most of my actions are driven by the feedback or experience of the chitta vritti. Ideally, what should be the driving force or trigger the action and how to develop that?

First of all, you need the awareness, which comes by self-realization, so try to get that. Second, you should be able to differentiate which activity is important, which is necessary, which is not necessary. This is what we call discrimination ability or the Vivek. Do that which is necessary.

Earlier, whatever was driving you was impulses, compulsions; there was no intelligence to sit down and think, is it really necessary? You never thought about these things. Now is the time, after self-realization, you know everything is me only. Now, sit down and think: What is necessary? What must be done? This is how we develop Vivek, by contemplating on our actions in the light of knowledge. If you don't have knowledge, get the knowledge, very easy. And if you have the knowledge, utilize it to develop your discrimination ability.

Now you will see that your vritti/mental activity will not stop even if you have this refined intelligence. It goes on. It is like mechanisms, a mechanical thing. All the impulses and all these desires will be there. Now you need to be aware of it. “I have no quarrel with those desires. They are not mine, so why should I worry?” Play with them. Let them be there. Watch all the impulses. Do not act on them without thinking.

Someone may say, "Hardly anything is important in my life. Only two or three things are important. Now what?"

So the second part of the teaching is: do that which you love most. Do that for which you are here. Things that you love most should be done, not the things which people love most. Don't do that. Don't execute somebody else's prarabdha or allocation. Whatever is your allocation in this lifetime, do that. Even if you think your discrimination says that no, it is not necessary. What else are you going to do in your life?

But usually we don't place too much importance on the second part, which is do that which you love, because it will happen automatically. If you eliminate the unnecessary, you will get a good amount of time in your hand. You will save 20 hours of your life per day. So what are you going to do? Finish that for which you are here. It can be any desire. Don't worry about being ethical, unethical. These are all artificial things. As long as you are not causing any harm to anybody, it is okay to do it. So that is another aspect of what is important. Doing that for which you are here is also important, and it will be perceived like this. Even though sometimes your intellect will say this looks like a stupid thing, it cannot be that I am here for doing this. But you need to try it. Is it working? Is it productive? Is it taking away the anxiety a little bit? Is it bringing more peace in my life? Yes, then finish it, so that you don't have to come back here again to finish that one thing.

I think I should add that after the knowledge, your priorities are going to change. Whatever you thought was my allocation, that can also change. Knowledge has a lot of power. The whole causal body can change, so the decision must be taken at the right moment. Do not decide it prematurely. Let it come to you. Whatever is the current situation, that will manifest.

For example, you will find that nothing at all is important except being in awareness and spreading the knowledge. The rest of the activities are supporting activities for that. Your earning, your eating, your relations, your technical knowledge, your skills, you will find that they are actually supporting this major activity of being the light and spreading the light. Nothing else will seem important in your life. You will find people like you everywhere, and that's all you will be able to tolerate. Your relations will be with spiritual people only. You will not enjoy anybody else. You will find the sweetness there. You will find your love there. If others are not benefiting from your presence, then you will never enter that place. If you see that with a relation, the other person is not being benefited, there won't be any relation. So ultimately your desires become the desires of the universe. That is what you will find.

Rajit is saying, if this is all a dream isn't the idea of self-awareness for this dreamer character also part of the dream?

Very good question, yes, awareness is the only event in this dream which brings you out of the dream, that is why it is important.

All other events, all that happens in the dream, will take you into the dream, they will engage you. Only self-realization and remembering it will take you out of the dream, that is why it has a special importance although it is totally a part of the dream. It is like the thorn that removes the thorn that is stuck in your hand and then you throw both the thorns. It is the boat that you use to cross the river then you leave the boat.

So what is the use of awareness, come out of the dream, then is there a real need to be aware? No, not at all. Awareness has to be very natural. Like do you remember your name? And you will say yes. How many times do you repeat your name every day? No need, it is there when it is necessary. Somebody asks you to write down your name, you don't have any problems, there it is.

Same way do you remember if you are a boy or a girl, you are a man or a woman, how many times you check it? Know that you are the self which means you are the experiencer, know it well, clear all your doubts, check it once again. But there is no need to be mad for that. Initially we put a lot of stress on awareness. But finally you need to simply let go and relax. Why? Because it's not really important from the perspective of the dream. The knowledge and the ignorance are equal, the true and the false are equal, the victory and defeat are equal, the birth and the death are equal.

So initially just to put the student on the track we put a lot of intensity behind it. No matter what you need to be aware. Once the student is trained for it then you don't need to tell him or her. It is like learning to drive a car. The instructor will micromanage your driving. But do you need the instructor there all your life while you drive? No, once you learn it, it will happen spontaneously.

So that is why it is called an awareness experiment, I don't even call it a practice because people will think I need to do it for my whole life and sometimes they become tense. What do you mean, you told me there are no practices? But the practice becomes automatic after some years, yes it takes many years. We have no hurry given the knowledge, even if it takes two or three lifetimes the seeker on the path of knowledge has no concern, he is totally careless, who is concerned about it? “I am not achieving it” - probably there is some worldly virus in the mind because the world is all about achieving, isn't it?

So some seekers may think that I need to achieve awareness, no, there is no need to achieve anything, just let go of your ignorance, be careless. The existence is completely okay with not being aware, of being ignorant, being in darkness, because there is a knowledge probably there that it is a dual thing, if there is awareness somewhere there will be un-awareness somewhere, if there is knowledge somewhere there will be ignorance somewhere and that cannot be avoided. So knowing that it is a play, we play. We play this game and do not worry too much if there is no awareness, embrace it as soon as it comes, just prefer it more than other activities because awareness is also an activity, it is a layer and who knows what happens to this layer after a significant amount of evolution.

Why do we recommend it? Because you are suffering, if there is no suffering we recommend nothing, don't even get the knowledge we say, probably it will stop your happiness when you come to know that all your money and all your girls and all your pets, dogs, cats, all that you are surrounded with, are unreal. We let that person enjoy it for a while. As soon as we see the suffering, we intervene, give them the knowledge, now enjoy again, don't worry about it. If you are not suffering, let go of awareness and all these practices, experiments, it's all good and your end of suffering will not be like a party that happens for the whole day and the whole night all year, no, it will be like peace, blissful, non- happening. Probably the ego will say I don't want this, I am happy with the party and the drama. But don't worry that will also continue in this background of peace and bliss. Ego does not know it, so it panics, but the party continues, it is seen as moving pictures, enjoy it, complete bliss, you will not become happy and you will not become sad, you will become peaceful and you will become blissful.

This is the non-dual peace which never goes away, even when it looks like that it has gone away, it is simply there as a background. Your attention has shifted, the attention has gone away, not the peace. Know this much and then dive into the world, there is nothing bad in the world. What is bad is ignorance of it, suffering due to that. World is not bad, the illusion is not bad, Maya is good, Maya is me only, I am the illusion also, now don't be partial, be impartial.

You are tired of the marketplace, too noisy, you go away for some time and then you come back because there is nothing else other than the illusion, there is nowhere to go, there is no other reality where you can be blissful and peaceful. It is here and now in this battleground or whatever you call it, it’s a dramatic movie. Nothing changes because nothing needs to change. What needs to change is you, that is simply your attitude. That's all. This knowledge is not too big, the ignorance that you are holding is too big. Drop it. A simple change. You can see there is an extreme amount of carelessness, extreme amount of aimlessness. There is nothing apart from the dream and it is wise to accept this and continue. Never worry about awareness or knowledge etc. “I am not the experiencer today!” Don't worry, it's not possible, you are the experiencer today, you were the experiencer yesterday and you will always be that. Who cares? This carelessness will bring a smile on your face all the time. Whenever you are frowning, whenever you are crying, no problem, it's all okay because it comes and goes. When it goes away, you laugh at yourself - “oh that also happened”.

This is a very strange kind of state and this is what I called total surrender. The path of knowledge does not end in knowledge, it ends in surrender. It does not end in freedom from the dream, it ends in surrendering to the dream. See how amazing this is, how beautiful this is. You can surrender right now also, without this mumbo jumbo of knowledge, but you don't do it. That's why we need to do all kinds of arrangements to bring you to the surrender and after this surrender arrives you think that I should have done this long ago. Why didn't I do this? It is a process of purification and knowledge is also a purification of ignorance, that's all it is. You are not going to become big, you are not going to become wise, you are not going to become a guru or something like this, you will become small, you will become humble, you will become nobody, you will have nothing to do, no aims, no goals, you don't worry about what is true also and you don't worry about what is false also.

There are some people who will stop one step before this happens and they are called the bodhisattvas, they say I know that there is nothing to do here, knowing this fully, I will do that which I think is necessary. They knowingly don't take the final step, fully knowing that there is no final step. Being a bodhisattva is also the final step, they know, this is also part of the surrender they will say. They stay back and they adopt true and false and they adopt knowledge and ignorance and they accept birth and death in whatever form they want. These are extremely powerful people and they teach. This is called the bodhisattva tendency and many people have this tendency. From the ultimate point of view, there is no difference between somebody who is completely dissolved, gone, gone forever, and a bodhisattva.

Satya is saying, will they again start from scratch as ignorant?

They do whatever is necessary, probably we will never understand what they do. It is an extreme kind of play. We are playing a small game of being aware here and there, playing with dreams and states and so on. They are playing with the whole illusion. Coming back as ignorant is peanuts, they are already having a thousand incarnations in all parts of the illusion. That is one way to spend eternity.

Some people object that he is too attached to individuality. But no, hardly any individual there. The individual appears if it is necessary, they are beyond all individuality already. So I cannot call them he or she or they, nothing. Bodhi means knowledge, sattva means essence. It does not mean a person or a title. It is not a degree, it is very similar to the gurufield.

Session 140

Discussion on Q&A for a test follows.

What is the most essential knowledge?

Knowledge of the self is the most essential. It is the biggest, the most important, and ironically, that is the one that is absent from your society.

Why is cultivation of qualities a sub-goal for a seeker?

If you lack qualities, there is no hope for progress on the path of knowledge. You should have as many recommended qualities as possible, or there should be potential to grow them. Cultivation is a sub-goal for everybody who is on the path of knowledge. Cultivate these qualities which are inherent in everybody, everybody has potential. The only reason we need cultivation is so that we can effortlessly walk on the path of knowledge. Or I will say any other spiritual path at all. And these qualities are very important for worldly life also.

Is there an absolute truth or is it always relative?

The existence as we know it, the truth-existence-bliss-witness-emptiness, that kind of existence is traditionally the final truth. True and false are dual. They are in duality. When I say absolute, you need to transcend duality. I was expecting all this kind of difference of opinions. Truth is that which does not change. It is subjective and arbitrary, so everybody is free to define their own truth. But if you are on the path of knowledge, don't do it. Take the definition from our tradition. So never call the existence as the final truth because existence word implies non-duality, especially in the terminology that is used here. Existence does not mean that which appears. It means that emptiness that is unknowable, but you can be it and you are already it. I am that. That is non-dual existence. So there is no truth there, and nothing is false there. It is what it is, it simply is. Now the true and false are introduced by the intellect. It's a division that is made, and it is arbitrary, as you know.

Why do we take up this specific division? Like Muni said, so that we can reach the highest. If you want to use the word absolute, then it should correspond to non-duality only. Non-duality is the absolute, like Vikesh has said, and you should not say it is true or not true. We should say it is unknowable. It is beyond the known and the unknown, like somebody said. So the truth appears at the level of duality only, and there it is very precisely defined as that which is unchanging, like many people said at the level of duality. And you know the duality is not absolute. The duality is also relative. “I am the experiencer, and I am the only truth” - is a dual statement, not a non-dual.

Although some people will say that, "According to my definition of truth, this is the only truth. There is only the experiencer there." So they have left the precision a little bit, but we allow these poetic words sometimes. We're not so mathematically precise about all these things. So as soon as you understand the meaning behind the statement, it's all okay. But as you know, newcomers get confused by these things. So we demand precision in the beginning. Later on, you can drift into poetry. I am the absolute and so on, no problem at all.

Define and establish existence.

It can be done in two sentences, actually. Existence is all, everything appears in it. All that is is existence. Brahman, which means the biggest possible. Given the limitations of the languages, it means that whatever you can talk of, whatever you can think of, the imaginary, non-imaginary, true, false, knowledge, ignorance, material, non-material, theories and hypotheses, and absolute truth and relative truth, everything, the something and the nothing, all included, nothing is excluded. That is the existence. That is our definition.

So that's why I say pay a lot of attention to the definitions, otherwise you will not understand anything. If you carry your old meanings in your mind, you will end up in the wrong direction. Existence can be defined as "what is." It has no qualities. Only direct experience can establish it. There is a way to establish existence, and everybody should know it. That is the seven questions. When we look at it, we see it in the form of answers to the seven questions. That is how we establish it. The only way to establish it is by experience and logic. Is there an experience? Yes, that establishes everything because that means there is an existence. Logical way is - you deny the existence, and this denial exists in the form of a thought or a sentence or a word or a voice, written sentence. There it is, something exists. Its denial is its proof. Things like that are called self-evident.

So, whenever I say "establish this thing" or "that thing," that means I am asking to prove the truth, prove the statement. This is the language of philosophy. So, everybody should know a little bit of technical language here. How do we establish something in philosophy? We give evidence for it, and existence is self-evident. Nobody can say, "I am not there." Who is saying it? Who is saying, "I am not there?" And if I am there, something exists. That is the whole existence. Actually, I am that existence. The existence is saying, "I am" through a human instrument. Established. You don't need a very long, 20-page proof of it. If you need that much proof, if you need to fill up a book to establish the existence, then probably it's wrong.

Everything is, and I am that everything. It is without any divisions, and it is eternal, continuous, non-local, non-temporal, no beginning, no end. And you know all that analysis, that is all there is, and that is how we establish it. Not only do we say that it is, we also remove all the ignorance that is surrounding it. “It is only that which is seen with the eyes, or it is only that which is limited to the physical, or it is only that which is mental”. We remove all that, and we remove all these notions of true and false. Ultimately, we say, there is existence, but don't call it true, don't call anything that appears in it as false. It is what it is. Don't even call it me or myself. Nothing like this. Remove the words, and that silence which remains is the state of experiencing or sahaj samadhi.

If you reach the state of experiencing, then it is established. I mean, nothing needs to be established after that because this activity of establishing something is intellectual in nature. We give up that intellect. We include it in the activity, which is simply appearing, and we don't name it as illusion or non-illusion. It is a non-dual state, so the divisions must stop there in the experiencing, and that is existence. It can be our personal way to establish the existence as it is, without any conditioning, without any overlay of beliefs on it. Simply be.

Elimination method reduces me to nothing. True or false?

There can be problems in interpretation of the word "nothing." So that's why this question is tricky. There can be many answers to this question. What is elimination doing? Think about it. What is it reducing? Is it reducing me? Is it reducing something else? Am I becoming less and less and finally nothing? What is it eliminating? Now I'll get the answers, I think.

Elimination brings us to the essence. It does not bring us to nothing. Remember. Ignorance is reduced to nothing, not me. Elimination tells you that you are not this, you are not that, and that can terrify a person who is not ready to hear these things. That can scare a person. "Look, I'm nobody or I'm nothing." That's why first remove all that which is not, and then we put all that which you are. We give you qualities because the mind cannot accept the experiencer as without any qualities. So it is given some qualities. We call it qualities, but they're not qualities. They're just names like eternal, birthless, deathless, formless, so on. They are synonyms.

What do I know in the end? That I'm the whole, not nothing. I'm the whole, but the whole is empty. But the empty does not mean nothing. Actually, the emptiness includes nothing. We become everything actually, by dropping the limitations that we have assumed on us. "I'm the body, I'm the mind, I'm the memory, I'm the causal body, I'm this, I'm God," or something. You see, all kinds of BS is dropped. And what do we get in the end? The whole. I'm the whole, not one or two things. I'm the one, the same in everything.

If everything is one, how did duality arise in it?

Duality never arises in non-duality. Never. The non-dual does not become dual. Why do we say non-dual? Because we don't know what it is. Oneness cannot be perceived in an objective or intellectual way. So we stop at “non dual”, not two, but we know it is not dual. The duality was never there, that's why we say it is ignorance because it was not there. Otherwise, we would say that it is true that there is duality. And now we need to do something to make it one again. That would be a very long project. It's not possible. Fortunately, everything is already one, and duality or multiplicity or divisions never happened. There is no "how" for it, no process by which the non-dual becomes dual. The question of "how" demands a process. Tell me the step-by-step process of converting the non-dual into dual, and you can immediately see that nothing like that happened. Ignorance is also a part of non-duality. It does not actually divide it. It assumes it. However, in the pure sense, there is no ignorance. Even this assumption is a play.

Is memory real?

Is memory changing or not changing? That's all you need to see. The word "real" here means true. Real and unreal are usually translated as true and false. What is real is that which is true, and what is true is that which is unchanging. Is memory unchanging? No, it is not unchanging. It is the only thing that is changing. That is one answer.

The second answer is, memory is hypothetical, a theory. There is no memory, even in a relative sense. It is a theory that is designed and developed to explain our experience. There is proof for it, yes, there is memory, you see. But what is it? We don't know what it is. We simply say that it is memory and it is a vibration that is stabilized. We go on explaining like this because it's very satisfactory. It's not real, actually. It is hypothetical, but it is so satisfying. It is so accurate. The memory model of the existence or of the experience part, the illusion, can be explained very well using the memory model, computational or the numerical model. It is possible, most successful so far, since many thousands of years.

What is the reason for taking a human birth? Who takes it?

Desire is the cause of human birth, the cause or reason is not related to getting self-knowledge. It is not inbuilt in the organism to know itself. Why do we then make efforts, struggle to know the truth? Because desires give rise to suffering, and ultimately they're never fulfilled. This cycle of desires continues and is never-ending. So, birth is a consequence of this desiring process. This desire is built into the memory itself. Self-preservation is built into this memory itself because if it does not do it, then it will remain random. Nothing will be evolved out of it. These structures are formed out of it. If it does not make a copy, no hope. It is dissolved back because of impermanence. Impermanence is inherent in the vibration, which is memory.

So, you can see now how beautiful this model is. It explains everything. Now, why human birth? It is a consequence of evolution, and evolution is a consequence of these basic processes of desiring, copying, defending. Why are they there? Because there is a possibility of it. Because of the infinite possibilities. And we don't see the other possibilities because they are kind of meaningless for this creature. What is meaningful to us is the life process of organization and so on. So, our life is limited to only this much, me and my life, that's all.

Sweetie is saying, I think as long as we are in ignorance, we keep taking birth.

Don't worry, even the knowledge does not stop it. You see, many great people had the knowledge. Has the process of birth and death gone from existence? What is knowledge? "I am the existence." And after this knowledge, will it stop? It never stops because it never started. It simply appeared to start. So, the process of birth and death and all this manifestation, creation, never happened. It will never stop.

Now, you sit down and think about it. It's very interesting as well as mind-bending. What is going on here? Humans cannot do anything. They cannot start the birth process. They cannot stop it. They are a product, not the source. The source is happy as it is. It never thinks about stopping or starting anything. And that is what is foolish about this whole concept of liberation, rebirth, and re-death. It is foolish.

So, who takes human birth? The causal body is the seed of all desires that are stored since many, many lifetimes. The cyclic process is a storage process, accumulation keeps on growing. So there is no "who," actually. No one takes birth. The question "who" always demands a person, an entity, and we say the causal body is not a person. Causal body is memory. It is latent. It manifests. It is a possibility. Now, truly, we don't understand what it is. We never experience it like an object. We experience it only when it manifests. This is true for all memory, not only the causal body. So anyhow, the person never takes birth. The "who" comes later, probably much later in childhood, in the teenage. The "who" or the "I," the ego, appears. The person is always late. Everything has already happened before the person arrived.

Just like the person cannot take birth, the person cannot die. It was never there. Can we say the body takes birth? No, the body is a consequence. Causal body takes birth. There's some truth in that, relatively speaking. What is manifesting? And truly speaking, we don't really understand. As far as I'm concerned, I know only a little bit about it. There are efforts to explain what is happening. I have never seen a very good explanation. Probably, it needs to be witnessed, which is a possibility, you will be able to witness. Because the witness never takes birth. It is continuously present. And since there is memory, there is a possibility that we'll encounter this experience one day, and then only we'll know, not now.

Graham has a very open-ended question, PoK says that some qualities like curiosity cannot be developed. I have my doubts. I can imagine making an uncurious person curious through some process.

That is not a development of curiosity. That is evoking curiosity. You evoke the curiosity of the person by prompting, but after that, it's back to his usual nature of not being curious about anything else. Then, someday, you come, meet that person again, and you evoke it again. But eventually, he will get bored. I must tell you that it's a spiritual curiosity here. When we say curiosity on the path of knowledge, it is the intense desire to know, not what is in the box or something like this, what is in the neighbor's house, or what is there for dinner. We are not talking about that. That will be a very shallow definition. A curious person is never satisfied. It is not worldly. It is not trapped in pettiness or trivial things. It wants to arrive at the essence. I am not happy with this shallow definition you have provided. A curious person is never satisfied. And you need to develop it yourself. The guru cannot help you to develop curiosity in you. The guru can utilize your curiosity, and then the growth happens.

Doesn't logic fail the criteria for valid means to find the real truth? Shouldn't we explicitly note those deficits and think about guarding against them?

Very good observation. So he has done a real in-depth study of these things. Looks like logic is a function of intellect, and the intellect is always limited. What can be the logic used for? The logic on the path of knowledge is used for negating. Knowledge we get on the path of knowledge is always negative knowledge, so the logic which is used in negating is the one that is useful on the path of knowledge.

Whenever there is a paradox, we say that it is unknowable; the logic fails there, and we arrive at the unknowable. But on the path of knowledge, we don't use logic to know the unknowable; we use logic to arrive at the unknowable, and that the intellect is capable enough to say that it's not possible to go beyond this. Even a lot of effort is not going to take me beyond the known to the unknowable. You can know that tomatoes are red, but you cannot know what is red. That is unknowable. And logic also gives no answer here.

Like that day I sent you the video of Richard Feynman, and he said something very beautiful, "It is possible to know what is not true, but it is not possible to know what is true; the theory keeps changing," he says. "But as soon as we face something which is illogical, we have this capability to detect that it does not fit; it produces wrong results," he says. So everybody should watch that video again. Sometimes I send some videos; there are some specific reasons for sending the videos.

So logic is used to negate; it is used to clean up, to clear. We do not use that logic which is not sound. Sound logic is that which is based on our direct experience. For example, wherever there is smoke, there is fire; this is the logical conclusion. This is sound because the fire and smoke are real things. If the logic is sound, it is reliable; if it is not sound, it is unreliable. For example, applying addition to non-objects like drops of water is an error. Just because two drops of water disappear and become one does not make the logic wrong; it makes the application of the logic wrong because the logic demands soundness that the objects should retain their objectness. You can say, "Add this air in the room to the air in the other room," that is not breaking the logic; it is not applicable in that condition. Here, some other logic will work.

Here logic says that if you mix water, it becomes undifferentiated. If you mix two portions of water or air, they become undifferentiated because they have no boundaries in it. The logic here, in this condition, in this situation, will be a different logic. So if it is not based on direct experience, then you should not apply it. You shouldn't apply that logic, which is not sound. That is the meaning of sound here.

Things which are self-referencing do not belong to logic, which is pointing to simple categories, like - “this statement is false”, this is a self-referencing statement. It says, "This statement." So for that, we use self-referencing logic. Now there cannot be a division here of true and false. A typical computer is going to fail in this logic test, but a human passes this test. Humans can detect that there is a self-reference here, and so the true and false are not applicable. Only a human can detect it, not a computer program. The computer program will hang here; it will get stuck because there is no ability in that machine to detect self-reference.

Mangoes have a distinct, you know, shape and size. They do not merge together, and there is no self-reference there. One mango will never eat another mango, so this is based on our direct experience, isn't it? Mangoes remain as distinct, countable objects. Therefore, the rule "2 plus 2 is 4" is applicable. That logic is very sound in the case of mangoes. Counting and mathematics were developed for distinct objects only. As soon as you apply it to something for which it was not developed, it was not meant, then the intellect has failed here, not the logic. The logic is precise in its place for whatever reason it was used; the intellect has failed.

Two mangoes, add two more mangoes - four mangoes. Perfect logic. Add happiness into freedom, add freedom into, let's say, sadness. How many are left? What is the product here? Intellect has failed here; the soundness is gone. So yes, you can apply these concepts of logic and all wrongly; it is possible. That is what Descartes meant, that there can be an error in the application of logic. How to fix the error? There is only one way: ask your guru, ask the person who has failed many times already and knows how to correct it. Ask your peers, that means other students.

So, on the path of knowledge, logic is used very precisely. I think there is no other philosophy where the precision is so much. How do we have that much precision? Because we have borrowed the logic from the Nyaya and other philosophies. The Nyaya philosophy specifically deals with problems like self-reference and entities which cannot be counted. You can go and read all that, but we have taken a small portion out of it just to arrive at the essential knowledge. What we have taken is - it is possible to negate reliably; it is not possible to form a positive statement reliably. That is what Feynman is saying, and that's all we need.

Your ignorance is all positive statements, you must have noticed, and we simply destroy it. It is a destructive/subtractive process. Logic is very helpful in that.

Apply it with common sense, make it sound, know the meaning of that logical formula first, and then we can apply it. It is applied very nicely in the field of science, actually. Let's say we can add two magnetic fields together. How to add magnetic fields? Now, you see, it is just like water; they merge together. The logic still works. We don't add magnetic fields; we add the intensity of the magnetic field. What are we adding? Measurements of some kind, not the magnetic fields. The same for the electric field, the same for the light. You shine a torch or a flashlight on a paper, and you shine another - how much light? Two plus two, four does not work. You need to convert the light into a number, and the numbers are added; the intensity is measured by an instrument/luxmeter. These numbers are added; now the logic works. We know now that this much light is here, and so on. You see, apply it with caution.

Mary is asking, Does being aware also mean being aware of the body and mind? Why do you do what you do, or does it just mean remember you are the experiencer?

See, there are two or three kinds of awareness. The first is the awareness of our surroundings, what is present in the room or in the world. The second is the awareness of the body, and the third is the awareness of our thoughts, mind, emotions, feelings, and so on. Usually, we do not call it awareness. As soon as your attention shifts from the experiencer, which means the knowledge of the experiencer, to all these things, you've already lost the awareness, we say.

So, how to be aware of the body? Knowing that it is not me. How to be aware of the mind, thoughts, and emotions? Knowing that it is not me. Now, the experiencer is included, isn't it? As soon as you forget your true nature and pay attention to all these things, that means the awareness is gone, even though you are paying attention to everything. You're working, you are doing your job, and you're doing the actions, but you cannot call it awareness because the essential knowledge is lost, that I am not the doer of these actions, that I am not the thinker of these thoughts, I am not the body and its activities.

If you are aware of the body in a way that tells you that I am not it, it is happening, and you are aware of the mind, thoughts, emotions, knowing that it is not me, then that will be called awareness. If you just remember that I am the experiencer, what has happened is the attention has shifted from the world to only this one thought. You cannot shift your attention to the experiencer; you can simply shift your attention to this one thought, that I am the experiencer. This looking is witnessing. Some people like to meditate on this thing; they close their eyes and try to be in this state, and I find it totally useless because if you do this kind of practice a lot, you will find that as soon as your attention is shifted to worldly things, the objects, the people, and the bodies, pains in the body, or whatever, the knowledge is lost, which means the awareness is lost. That's why I have taught both inclusive and exclusive attention.

The inclusive attention must include the experiencer. People will say, "How to include the experiencer because it is always included there?" The thing is, you forget about it. The mind forgets about it; the person forgets about it, even though its whole attention is on stuff, environment, people, bodies, demands of the body, and the mental activities. The experiencer has been forgotten; it must be included. That knowledge must be included. As soon as this knowledge of the experiencer is included in the attention, which we call the inclusive attention, then we say that we are in awareness. Now, what difference does it make? One thing is absent; one tiny piece of knowledge is absent, and you will see that no difference is made in your life. It goes on very nicely, like the life of an ignorant person. A worldly person is living like this without awareness. But you will see a change as soon as you include the experiencer.

What is that change? There will be detachment, a blissful state, like I said, fearlessness, control. You will drop that which is unnecessary, the impulses will be silenced, more freedom, more happiness, although everything will continue as it is. You will continue to do whatever you are doing, even if you do something unnecessary. What does it mean to be aware of everything while holding this knowledge of the experiencer? Abiding as your true nature does not mean that you become lazy and lie down and sit in one place. You'll break your back if you sit for eight hours. Be active; the body is made for action, and you'll lose nothing at all if you carry the experiencer.

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 greatly helping in this task:

Anjali, Muni, Vinay, Raja, Shrilakshmi, Keshav, Pooja, Padmaja and 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