Session 141

Vinay: I am not able to grasp experiencing. It is unknowable. Can you explain more in relation to existence, experiences, and the experiencer?

Experiencing is the simplest of all you have encountered so far in all of your life. The simplest is the experiencing. What does it mean? It means that it is the most natural state to be in. It means that it is the state of existence. That is what really is, nothing else is. And how to grasp it? It is not possible to use the intellect to grasp it because it is not an object. It is not an experience. It is not even the experiencer, which you can arrive at by elimination method or anything. It is that which simply is, and you will see that your current state is experiencing only. This is also called the non-dual state because the division of the experience and the experiencer is not made here. That means it is beyond the mental activity also, the dividing activity.

How to understand it? Don't try to understand it, just be it. Right now, right here, there is nothing but experiencing. You can see it. You already know that there is no world. It is a dream-like projection of the mind. Then you know that there is no mind. There is no real experience of any kind. It is all an illusion. And then you also know that the experiencer is emptiness only. It is not a separate entity watching whatever is appearing. Now what remains after this knowledge is that which is beyond words. You cannot even call it an experience. You can say there is only being. You already know that nothing is actually happening. And so when you put together all these things, you will see that there is only being. There is no happening which we call experience. And there is no perceiver or the experiencer of it separate from that which is happening. And now this cannot be described in any language, and it cannot be known by the intellect. All there is, is experiencing. It is right now, right here, whatever is, is nothing but experiencing. This is the whole existence.

Normally when we talk about existence, people think that it must be very big and it must be very complicated because there are millions of things in it. I don't know what it is. It will never be possible to experience all of it. But no, existence is very simple. It is nothingness with some possibilities that are appearing as illusions to itself. Existence is the simplest possible. So another name for existence is experiencing. That is how it is manifested. That is how it is present right now, right here. The existence is not something huge which we will never experience. It is the simplest. It is being that which I am. That's all it is. Right now, right here. You are that which you are. And we also call it the is-ness. That's all there is.

To grasp the meaning of this word experiencing, you need to simply see. Sit down and enter the inclusive kind of meditation where the activity is also included in the experience. And see that there is no experiencer apart from that which is. It was not in the past, it is not in the future, there is nothing in the past, it is only memory, it is all present only, there is nothing in the future. And this one moment is all there is. Do not divide it into internal, external. You already know that all these things are false. So when you just simply be, this is the whole existence right now, right here. This is the state of just being, experiencing. So there is nothing else here except experiencing. It cannot be reduced beyond experiencing. There are no components in it. We also call it the is-ness, such-ness, tathaata or sahaj samadhi. So you will find that sahaj samadhi is the only possible state and all other states, all other kinds of samadhis, come and go on this background of sahaj samadhi. So another name for experiencing is sahaj samadhi. This means the most natural state to be in. And I am always in this state, eternally. This one state cannot go because it is all there is. There is nothing else apart from this one state of sahaj samadhi. Whose state is it? Not of the individual, not of the person, not of the body, not of the mind, not of the world, not of something bigger. It is just being. That's all. It will always be like this. It was always like this.

It is very difficult to describe in words, but those who get the knowledge, they enter this state automatically. And entering it is simply a recognition that it was always there. We can also call it emptiness, but it is not really empty. There is a dynamic movement in the emptiness. That movement is appearing as illusions. So you need to see beyond the illusions to recognize that there is nothing but simply this emptiness with a dynamic quality in it. There is no other word, so we are using dynamic, but it's not a movement in time. It is very static actually, but dynamic at the same time. It is paradoxical. It is actually nothing, but it is the whole existence. So again it is paradoxical. So whenever you encounter this kind of paradoxes, you know not to use the intellect here. The intellect is useless here because the intellect can only grasp the objects which are illusory. And at most it can go up to the experiencer. That is what is possible, but it cannot go to the experiencing. There you need to surrender it. Surrendering of intellect brings you into experiencing. Experiencing is occluded because of the rise of intellect. If you remove the intellect, there is what isness. Now nothing needs to be said. When the intellect comes back, you will see that it was the whole existence actually. And this is the simplest thing that is possible. There cannot be anything simpler than this. So those who are trying to know experiencing as the most complex thing there is, the biggest knowledge there is, will be disappointed because there is nothing big in it. It is the simplest, it is the smallest, it is the tiniest of tiny. Most fundamental, nothing can describe it. Even the words are made for describing complex things, but there is no word to describe what is being. So I am doing the impossible here, I am trying to describe experiencing. Just be. There is no need for any word here. Words are only pointers, the words are asking you to give up, let go of everything. Just be what you are.

Next question is by Graham. I know we are saying existence is everything and experiencing includes everything, but we are saying the experiencer is everything or is only experiencing and experience everything.

These all are names of one. Existence, experiencing, experience, and the experiencer are one, non-dual. Sometimes it is seen as the existence, the whole, sometimes it is seen as the state of experiencing, that is the whole only, then it is seen as the experience, which is its own form that is manifested and that is the whole also, and it is seen as the experiencer, which is itself. Existence itself is the experiencer. It is whole again. So if somebody thinks that all these things are different, that means a lot of ignorance is there. Everything is non-dual; this is the conclusion of non-duality. So no matter what words you use, everything is one already. It does not matter which word is used, all points to the one. So we can take the example of the clay pot and the clay; we can say it is clay, yes, we can also say it is a pot, but we know they are not two; it is non-dual. So it does not matter what we say. It always remains non-dual. The names of this non-dual, they do not really matter. What is, is kind of indescribable.

Graham, I thought we said we divided existence into two for convenience.

The division is made by the mind because it wants to look at one aspect at a time. It does not mean that existence has two parts. It means that we are looking at two faces of it, one at a time. For example, we can look at the clay pot and say it is this round thing or we look at its essence and say it is just clay. Same way, we can look at existence and say it is the experience, and we can look at it again and say that it is the experiencer also. For example, when you look at the tomato, you can say it is red or you can say it is round. That does not divide the tomato into two. The division is made by the mind because it is trying to grasp this thing called tomato, and it is very convenient to divide it like this. Actually, nothing can be said about it if you don't divide it because this is how the intellect works. It works by dividing. It cannot grasp the non-duality as it is; it keeps dividing it. So we reverse the process in the end, and we then say that none of these divisions actually exist.

Varun is asking, what are the examples of direct experience required for the knowledge that I am the experiencer?

The only direct experience that you can have is that I am not any experience. That is all that is required. This must be directly known that I am not any experience. So whichever direct experience you look at, your intellect tells you that I am not it. If I can look at it, if I can experience it, then I am not that which is appearing as experience. That's all that is required. If you are trying to find the experiencer in the experience, then that is impossible because the experiencer is always the one that is looking. It is always the one that is the seer, not the seen. So which experience will give me the knowledge of the experiencer? Any and all. Anything that you encounter as your experience will show you that I am not it. I am the one who is taking in the experience. I am this, not that. That will be the conclusion.

What is the one experience that will tell me who am I? All of them. All of the experiences tell me only this much, that I am the seer only, I am the witness only. You can bring in any experience in front of you and the conclusion will be the same. You can bring in one particular special experience and the conclusion will be the same. You can bring in the smallest and most humble experience of your daily life and the conclusion is the same. So the knowledge is negative, that I am not this and I am not that, neti neti. That is the only knowledge. You will find that knowledge is simply dispelling the assumptions about what I am. That which remains is the experiencer. Because it cannot go away. That which cannot go away will be called experiencer. You will find that all that appears eventually goes away. So that which changed is not me. That is what is called the essence. The essence is defined as that which never changes or it is defined as that which cannot be taken away. So you will see that all the experiences can be taken away when the experiencer remains. Everything which cannot be taken away will be called the experiencer. This is the essence.

It is not only your essence as a human, it is the essence of all and it is the essence of existence also. Essentially existence is the experiencer. It cannot be taken away from existence. It is not even possible to imagine an existence without there being the experiencer of it. And it turns out that it is the existence itself that is the experiencer. And it turns out it is not the most complex thing. It is the simplest of all. Essence is that which is the simplest. It is obtained by removing, not by adding. And experience is that which is an addition to it. So remove your experiences to reach the experiencer. Remove everything that can be removed, that can change and go away. That which remains is the experiencer.

That is our definition of truth also. The truth cannot change. Unchanging is the truth. And we find that only the experiencer is unchanging. Everything else can change.

For convenience we divide the experience into two or three parts. The world, the body and the mind. It is a very rough division. Ultimately we divide it into ten layers and then we divide the layers further depending on the characteristics, the qualities. But this is childish, you can say, a very simple division of the experiences. World, which is simply objects and people. Body, you know what it is, whatever you call “me” and the mind, which means the non-physical, which is the experience through non-physical senses. So we immediately see that the world is not me. It is non-essential. We immediately see that the body is not me, it is changing, non-essential. And we immediately see that the mental activity is not me. The emotions, thoughts, feelings, desires, memories, they are fleeting. But we immediately see that to which all these things appear is the experiencer. It never goes away. Even in the changing states of mind, it remains. The most obvious, most commonly known other state of the mind is dreaming state. And we see that the experiencer is the same there, one and the same. That which experienced waking is experiencing dreaming. There is hardly any doubt in the minds of anybody, any intelligent person will say like this. We say that the experience changes from waking to dreaming. We never say that I change from waking to dreaming. It is meaningless. Even though we clearly see that the body has changed in the dreaming state. The world has changed, the people have changed. And we also see that memory has changed because there is no memory of the waking state there. There are a few remaining memories. Such as, people still have two hands, two feet, two eyes, one nose, they look like people. But it does not correspond too much to the waking. So we can immediately see that everything has changed there. But we never say that I changed, the dreamer remains the same. So we explore more and we see that in the projected state, the same thing happens. And we explore more and we see that in death, the same happens. So you need a greater awareness as you go successively into different states. That one state change is enough to conclude logically that all the state changes will be the same. One is enough. This is the power of logic.

Why is one enough? Because we know the dream is coming from a memory and we know that the waking is also coming from a memory, the “Greater Memory”. And so we conclude that any other state that will be there will come from a memory. There is no other possibility. And the seer of the memory will be one. That is the experiencer. That is me. That is the existence also. If it changed from one state to another or during one experience there is one experiencer and during another experience there is another experiencer, then all this non-duality will collapse. This is what has happened in Sankhya philosophy. They have taken the Purush as a special occurrence in Prakriti only. What they are saying is everything is one but the experiencer changes. That is what that philosophy says. It assumes duality to be true. Otherwise it's a beautiful philosophy.

So hopefully Varun got his answer. All experiences are examples. Because if I give you one example, then you will say okay, that other experience, who is looking at that other experience which is not given as an example? You will see immediately that it is impossible. All of the experiences are pointing to nothing but a seer of all the experiences. There is a witness of all. So like I say, it is possible to construct the whole non-dual philosophy in 10 minutes. Just see that it is all actually like this. If you keep reading in the books, you will never know what it is. There will be words after words. So knowledge comes first and the description comes later. What I am describing is your direct experience. Do not look for that in the words. Look for that which is right in front of you. Is there an experience? Yes. What is it that knows that there is an experience? That is the experiencer. Which one is changing? Yes, that which appears is changing, not the one which witnesses the appearance. That's the whole non-dual philosophy there.

Now you can see that what is the essence? That which never changes, that is the truth also. Everything else that is changing is false, illusions. You can dig a little bit deeper and you will find the cause of the illusions, the memory, the changing, emptiness, and so on. Everything can be constructed in 10 minutes and everybody should do that. Just before breakfast, deconstruct everything, drop all knowledge you have and during breakfast in 10 minutes you can create the whole knowledge from nothing. Become blank and then simply look and the non-duality, the whole philosophy will be in front of you. All it takes is a direct look, which we call a direct experience. Those whose intelligence is ripe, they can simply look and understand what I am saying. That is what is called grace. They have reached that point where a tiniest hint is necessary, that look what is, a little bit of self-questioning is necessary and the whole philosophy arises. The beauty of this is that even if you destroy it completely, even if you substitute it with something else, you will find that the same knowledge reappears no matter what you do. That is why this was called Sanatana, which means it is forever. It does not matter who says what, it does not matter what kind of civilizations come and go, the whole universes come and go, it will reappear again and again. The Sanatana will reappear, it cannot be destroyed and so we arrive at this grand conclusion that truth is victorious forever, Satyameva Jayate, we say it like this.

It does not matter what kind of corruption happens in knowledge, this will always come back because what is cannot be hidden. As soon as the intellect is mature enough, it can see the garbage that is around, throws it out. When we clean ourselves, we see things as they are. Very simple. This is the whole knowledge acquisition process. What do we need to do to get the knowledge? Clean the garbage, then whatever is, is simply in front of you. You can use any words to describe it. Those who have the knowledge, they can understand any word, any terminology. Those who are ignorant, they will stick to one or two words, they don't know what these words are saying. When you read all the scriptures, you will find that it does not matter from which path they are or which tradition they are, they are all saying the same thing. It does not matter what part of the world they are from, how old or new they are, they are all saying the same thing, but it appears totally different to an ignorant person because he has not acquired that maturity yet.

You will see immediately that our program is doing the same thing. It is filtering out the mature from the immature. What I am doing here is I am hinting, look what is, what you see and those with a mature intellect will actually grasp it and they cross the stages of the program and where the intellect is not matured enough, they get stuck. I can immediately see who will go forward, who will not and I can immediately see who will pretend to go forward because I need to ask only two or three questions to know. This all is very simple. So the program is simply a filter designed for those who are ready. Those who are not ready will fail and that does not mean that there is no hope for them. At least they come across this idea and this idea becomes a seed and whenever they are mature enough, when they are ripe, they will get it immediately. Like waking up from a dream, they will wake up. So the program is also a seeding activity. You don't understand what this is. Don't worry. Take the idea. Think about it. There is no need to cling to it because all these great masters have said this thing, so it must be true. There is no need to cling to it. Explore something else and when that exploring is over, you will find that nothing else will appeal to you except non-dualism. Nothing else will be satisfying.

Who are these people who are on the other paths? They are not ripe yet. They are exploring. The knowledge does not take time. Cleaning up the ignorance takes time. You don't want to let go of the old. That takes time, isn't it? All these people who are still worshipping or doing the rituals or doing all these kinds of practices, meditations and so on, playing with the energies and all, they are going through this process of ripening. They can go through it immediately in one lifetime or they will take many lifetimes. There are some who have not yet started, although everybody has potential. When we start seeing a bud on the plant, we know it will flower and the flower will become fruit and the fruit will produce more trees, more plants. We know it already as soon as we see the bud on the plant. Same way, as soon as I see a human being, I know what is going to happen there. I know what they are destined for. So we don't actually throw away these immature people. We seed them, at least we give them the tools. How to use rationality, how to use logic, how to construct an argument, how to see your faults, how to see your biases, how to see that there is ignorance in you, how to see that there are impurities in the intellect or body or emotions. We keep pointing.

The job of the Guru is to show what is dark in you. Why? Because the definition of the Guru is the one who takes you from darkness to light. The removal of darkness is the kind of clean-up job that the Guru does. And I can tell you nobody likes it. When they are told, there is your fault, that is wrong with you, that is something I found which is wrong, nobody likes it. So the Guru lies - you are the greatest, you are the most intelligent and you deserve the knowledge. All these lies are told so that the ego does not become defensive and I have seen something very beautiful. There are people who are totally surrendered. I am not saying there is no ego, but as soon as they find a Guru, they let go of the egoic process that is defending the old and these ones, they progress rapidly. It is not that they are blindly believing the Guru, but they are ready to hear what is wrong with them on their face.

Actually, this is my story, when there was a lot of ego, I did not even accept that there was an ego. And I was also like this, just tell me that which I already believe, how is that right? Just tell me that I am great because I am doing this great practice. Now tell me how to go forward in this great practice. And what I was told was shocking, that was - I am the biggest fool in the universe. One by one, all that was dark, all that was ignorant, all that was impure was shown. That's all was done. I did not receive any teaching that you guys are receiving, you are getting this luxury served to you. All I got was stones were thrown at me. Every day was a hurtful day. I saw that the progress happened within a few days. You take six months to go through the program, the luxurious program. It took me only a few days to grasp all of it because of this treatment. Those who surrender, which means simply allow the Guru to see you, examine you, to check you just like the doctor. You surrender your body to the doctor, please check my body. What is wrong with it? And the doctor checks and he says, look, there is a problem here, there is a problem there. This parameter is wrong, this blood sugar is wrong and things like that. And you don't mind when the doctor is saying this. You don't say that - you insulted me by saying that there's something wrong in me. No, you surrender there. Okay, I'll take the medicine, you say. The doctor says, we'll try this medicine. If it does not work, come back after seven days, we'll try the second medicine. If it also does not work, we'll do the surgery. If that does not work you can still stay alive with a compromised body.

The Guru also says something like this, surrender, I'll show you what you are, don't hide. And that cleans up the ignorance from that person. Those who don't surrender, the Guru waits. One day, there will be enough intelligence in that person so that he can get checked, get examined, so the Guru can make a diagnosis. Where is the problem? How do I come to know anybody's problems? Either they tell me directly what is their ignorance or I come to know simply by the type of questions they ask. So that is why sometimes I say, I know you more than you know yourself. Again, we can go to the doctor metaphor. The doctor knows more about your body than you know about your body. That must be obvious to you. The doctor has spent whole life studying nothing but bodies and defects in the body. Doctor knows what is wrong with you. Same way the student never knows what the Guru knows. And those who surrender, they are easiest to diagnose. And the Guru is least interested in what you have. What is the interest of the Guru? To cure all ignorance.

Parteep has a question. For me in awareness thoughts could not function, so try thinking of in awareness and it is impossible to speak in awareness.

That is not a good conclusion, the thought that it is not functioning is also a thought. What you are saying here is that the automatic activity of thinking stops. There are thoughts always, the intellect can never stop thinking, don't even try it, it is a machine, as long as there is energy there, it will keep running. Yes, what kind of thoughts cannot be thought? That which were going on without any reason, for example, the suffering, there is some jealousy in your mind from some experience and the jealousy keeps coming back in the form of thoughts, languages, emotions, and so on and you will find that that is happening because there is no awareness and as soon as there is awareness, all this train of jealousy stops. But has the thought stopped? No.

The thought is like this. Oh finally it is gone, looks like that I am silent now, looks like there is peace of mind and if I don't become aware it will come back. All these tiny thoughts are there, even if they are not verbal, even if they don't take the form of language, thinking is always present.

I do say that awareness will stop your thoughts and it does look like that it has stopped thoughts. But no, they resurface. There is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is taking those thoughts again as real. They are not real. Thinking is a reaction, it's not even an activity, it is like an echo, the activity already happened in the mind and then it echoes as thoughts. For example, you like someone and that liking has already happened in you, that attachment or that attraction has already happened and then thoughts appear as a reaction to what has happened. How sweet that person is, how much he cares for me or how beautiful she is, I wish to live with that person, the train then starts as a reaction to what has already happened.

Thought does nothing, it is only an empty reaction, the decision, the desire or whatever activity has already happened. When we are in awareness, this reaction can be reduced, but the activity is never reduced, the activity never stops, it is simply happening in this light of awareness now. A wrong practice is to stop the reactions and hold your body so tight and rigid that it does not do anything. Sitting there for 20 hours, that is the wrong practice. The right practice is simply to shine the light of awareness on it and you will find that it settles down, whatever is necessary will appear and the reaction will also appear. The body will do whatever it wants to do, this is the most natural.

I am unable to digest this expression - awareness is a special kind of mental activity, please guide what am I missing here.

Probably you are thinking that awareness is the experiencer and that I am the experiencer and I cannot be a mental activity, or this thought cannot be a mental activity or this knowledge cannot be mental in nature but that's not true, since it is knowledge it must be in memory and the memory is simply mental activity. Awareness is knowledge, it is in the memory and that's why it comes and goes, the experiencer never comes, never goes, but the awareness comes and goes.

That which comes and goes must be an activity, it starts and stops, so it is simply a reflection of the experiencer, you cannot call it the experiencer, the experiencer is reflected in awareness as “I am that”, “that which is witnessing is me”, this is very pure but still it is an activity, that's why it is a special kind of activity because when this activity starts the other activities are disciplined automatically, now the most natural and the most necessary happens, instead of the chaos of activities that an ignorant person is. They are very systematic and logical now, it is all beautiful now, that whole being, the whole person is the ultimate expression now. But it can go away, and still there will be remains of it, the light does not extinguish immediately, it takes some time and the chaos then starts, it takes some time for the chaos to come at full speed and then the suffering appears because of this chaos and as soon as there is suffering probably it is the reminder to you that something is wrong. Let me see what is happening and that is the reappearance of the awareness and again it takes a little bit of time for everything to quiet down and even if it is not quiet it is all okay because now it is happening in the light.

Gurudev can I say something, when people listen sometimes to the humming sound in the ears, so what could be the difference between being in awareness and if we try to listen to that humming sound because we have paid attention to that one particular object, then also the same phenomena can happen because while we are listening to that particular humming sound, the other activities will take a cue and some kind of control can also be established by listening to that humming sound, so some minor difference must be there between awareness and paying attention to one object.

Just because your attention is on the sound does not mean that the chaos has stopped. You can see it from this metaphor of a torch or a flashlight. There is a power failure in the night and you turn on the flashlight, the torch, and let us say there is a lot of stuff in the house, but wherever you point the flashlight you will see the objects there only. That does not mean that the house is not cluttered with all these objects, it is cluttered, only hidden now. When you simply attend to the sound or any other object, the chaos is hidden, the ignorance is hidden, if you are angry you will see that the anger is going on in the background, although it is not known that it is there, because your whole attention is on the sound, there is suppression of the anger there and actually the good effect of it is that when you don't pay attention to the anger and suppress it, it will not trouble you, that is the good effect and then it stops. You give it some time so it stops, you don't put the energy in it by removing your attention from it. When somebody is angry, we say, “don't pay attention to that, don't think about it, distract that person into something, we are going to have a party now and let's go, we will do our job, that is more important, not this person, don't fight”. We distract that person from that situation so that the anger is not fueled, attention is removed. That does not mean that the person is aware. Awareness is when you see the clutter or the chaos of the mind as it is, turn on the light of the whole room, whole house, not just the flashlight of attention and now whatever happens happens in awareness.

Attention is simply excluding the experiences and awareness is seeing everything in that light of knowledge. Those who are doing the meditation will never grasp awareness, they will never be able to do it. There will be effort required because of the years of training of excluding the experience, hiding the experiences. All they know is where to shine the flashlight, they don't know how to turn on the floodlight. That is why all these activities are not recommended in our program, they are very harmful.

Mary is asking, if thinking is a reaction, does it mean we are always in a reactive state by thinking?

Yes, you see, if your body gets a wound like a cut or a burn, the pain is the reaction. We never say that the wound is the reaction; the pain is the reaction. That means the body is telling you that something is wrong here, something is damaged there, and it tries to draw your attention to that part which is hurt. Same way, when the thoughts arise, they are actually a reaction to what has already happened. They are trying to draw our attention to a desire that appeared in me, or this hurt that appeared in me, or anger that appeared in me. So, they are the signals of what has already happened in one of the layers. So yes, those who think too much, they are always reacting because there is no awareness.

In the case of the body, you attend to the wound. You clean it, you treat it and you go to work. Even if there is slight pain, you say, "Okay, I have taken care of it." In the same way, if something goes wrong in the mind or there is something urgent there, you attend to it. You do whatever is necessary, and then even if there are thoughts about it, you don't worry about these thoughts too much. I have already done something about that which was producing so many thoughts.

Let us say somebody hurt you or insulted you, and it did not go as per your expectation, which will be 90% of your life. So immediately, there is a flood of thoughts. Why did this happen? What should I do? And why do people behave like this? and so on. And these are the reactions. In those who are mentally ill, it takes the form of delusions. “Probably this is happening, that is happening. Probably somebody is trying to kill me, is planning against me, they don't want good for me. This fellow does not love me now. Probably he got some other girl”, and so on. In delusion, the thoughts instead of being a normal reaction, they become an afflicted reaction. They have become a disease now. And if it goes unchecked, we say that now this person is mad. The crazy thoughts are already pointing to the disease that is already there, which is total lack of awareness, knowledge, maturity, intelligence, attention, and all these good things.

When the good qualities of the mental layers are lacking, then all these bad things multiply. They just grow like fungus in the mind. So whenever you are thinking too much without any control, always try to go to the root of what is causing it, and then take care of that thing which is causing it. It can be desire, it can be want, impulse, or it can be something from the past. It can be a fear, emotion of some kind. So this is the proper method to treat the mind. Don't swallow the pill and go to sleep. Look within.

Pandurang is asking, is it possible to be in awareness during intense mental activity?

Yes, mental activity is always intense. You think coding is intense? No, when you are driving, a tremendous amount of activity is going on, and there is no awareness. Yes, you are not paying attention to everything that is going on. Your eyes are looking, the hands are working, your legs are working, and it takes mental activity to do that. Coding also is something similar.

He is saying normally it comes afterwards. Let it come whenever it wants to come. Who is there to bring the awareness? Is there a person sitting there who is in charge of turning the awareness on and off? “Looks like it is dark here. Can you please turn on the light of awareness?” And the fellow goes and turns on the light. No, it rises and falls as per the need. Because sometimes an immature person where there is no knowledge needs to be unaware. Otherwise, many of the activities won't happen. They are seen as unimportant and they won't happen. So, mother nature has this kind of switch in her own hand.

Let us say lust, it needs to appear in the life of a person. So when the lust is there, the awareness goes away for a walk. Okay, you guys do whatever you want to do, I am going for a walk. Because if there is awareness, procreation won't happen. So who does it? You can say mother nature does it or the mind itself does it. If she thinks that awareness is going to stop the coding, she will stop the awareness. So no problem at all. If it allows the awareness again, "Oh, I am the experiencer who was looking at the activity of coding." No problem. That means mother nature has done her job perfectly. Next time the mind relaxes a little bit, it realizes that the awareness is not actually harming the coding process or whatever work you are doing, mental work, physical work, emotional work. For example, acting is emotional work, isn't it? You need to express the emotions through the body and the face and the voice. Now, as soon as you become aware that I am not this character, your acting is going to suffer. So what do they say? You go into the character. Enter the character. Don't even believe that you are this actor, this other person. Become the character, and there the awareness is thrown away. Awareness or self-awareness that I am this other person, not this character in the movie, is thrown away, and now the acting is most beautiful. Now the actor has become the character.

Sometimes it is necessary that the natural processes take over. If there is too much awareness, you won't be able to defend your body also. Somebody is attacking you; you won't be able to kill that person because “I am the experiencer; nothing can kill me”. There won't be any action. As soon as somebody attacks you, awareness will be the first to be thrown away. The second thing that is thrown away is the intellect; the body simply reacts. It has learned how to defend itself via a million years of evolution, so it will do whatever is needed. And once that conflict is over, one of the fellows is dead, the awareness can now come back. "Oh, what have I done?" The intellect now comes back. "I need to call the police now," so on.

So that's why I said, don't try to manipulate. It cannot be done by manipulation. Don't try to force the awareness. You cannot trick it; it is the natural consequence of growth. The mind soon realizes that awareness is not harming my survival. That is the ego only, isn't it? The ego is the enemy of awareness initially, later it lets the awareness stay there. It lets it watch for a while, and as it relaxes more and more, it becomes a pet of the awareness. The awareness cannot hurt me, it realizes soon. And then this is called the process of surrender. The more you surrender, the less resistance is there, and the more awareness will be there.

Mary is saying, where do thoughts come from? I know the memory, but how it appears in mind in a specific situation, for example, being hurt or broken.

Every layer has a reaction process. Thinking is activity of the layer of the intellect where the thoughts appear as verbalization. They appear as words in your mind. There is a non-physical language there, and many people say that this is thinking, and I agree. If you take another layer, for example, the emotions, and it has its own reaction activity, we call it the feeling. When there is emotion, it appears in the form of bodily sensations. If you are fearful, your body will start shaking. When you are angry, your field of vision will become narrow. This is the thinking process in that layer. So that emotion can now get transmitted into the intellect, and the thoughts start arising there.

You will need to know the whole structure of the memory to see what is thought. It is a ceaseless activity; it is always going on, and the origin can be any layer in memory. When you throw a stone in the pond, the waves spread across the pond, the same way when something takes place in this whole memory-layered structure, it disturbs all of them. Each of the layers will produce its own particular reaction. You can sit down and observe this thing. It is very interesting, and if you observe it too much, you will see that the disturbance is not that much. That means your awareness is on now, and then layers “realize” that too much reaction is going on. Energy is withdrawn from it, the activity slows down, and the awareness absorbs the energy instead of letting it flow in the layers. So in the yogic language, we say that the agya shines, and all other chakras, they are aligned properly. The energy is withdrawn from them. So they know all these things, but we can say it more clearly in ordinary language like this - When awareness is on, all of these layers are seen one by one from top to bottom, and you can detect the source layer that is producing all the activity. And you will see the echoes of these activities in other layers. You will immediately see that the body is reacting to something; you will immediately see that the activity is now getting stored in the memory, the waking memory, and it is being recalled again and again. And you will see that the intellect or the rational ability is now thinking about it in words. And you will see that there is a time gap between all these reactions, so on. And it is a very complex process.

Whatever people simply call thought is something which is very complex, and it is not impossible to know it. It is possible to know it by sitting and observing, noticing. You can make a flowchart of it: how a specific kind of impulse in a specific kind of layer produces the whole experience of there being a mind. There is one mind, but there are layers upon layers, and there is highly complex activity going on there. Whatever we normally call thought is simply activity of the intellect because the rest is covered in darkness; we don't see it. There is a complaint from many people that this negative thinking never stops, and they try to kind of cut off the head of the thinking, but the major part/root is still there; it grows back again. “How can I stop thinking about this thing?” No, you cannot because thinking is a reaction; the root is somewhere else. You need to find that root. Is it a hurt or is it an emotion; is it a pain in a layer of the body. The body is also a layer.

So all these layers, they affect each other. If you are not well, if you are sick, then you will see that not only the body wants to rest, your mind also wants to rest. They are all interconnected and because of this interconnection, to an ignorant person, this complex structure appears as one. And because it appears as one, they think I am this mind with the memory. So that is, in short, the process. But if you are interested in more details, you will be given more exercises as soon as you finish your program.

Sweety is asking, would the ultimate source of thought be the UM?

UM is not separate from what you call the memory structure. There is no separate "my memory" and a separate universal memory. It is all one. So UM is always the source, yes, because whatever is appearing as “my memory” is actually universal memory, but it is a very tiny part of it.

There are millions of waves in the ocean. You can say that this is the universal memory with the combined thinking process going on, we call it the activity. We never call it thought. And you can choose to look at a particular part of the ocean, and you can see there are waves there, yes, and you can choose to call it "my ocean," "my mind," "my mental structure," but it's not really mine. The wave appears, and it has a limited view, and it says it is me. But those who have a higher perspective, they can see that the wave is ignorant. It is the universal mind or it is the ocean. A small part of the ocean is saying that I am the wave. But from a greater perspective, it's all one.

So, is the UM the source of thoughts? UM is the source of everything, the source of all the activities. There is no other source; it is the only source, not only ultimate. And whatever you think is "my mind" is only ignorance. There is no "my mind." “I am this limited activity”- This is also a thought, which is an outcome of this ignorance that I am limited, an outcome of this lack of knowledge that I am the universal memory.

There is no division in the universal memory. The activity that says that I am only this much, a tiny part of the UM, is also happening in the universal memory. What is the limitation that you have taken on? It is the limitation of ignorance only. There are no walls in the universal memory. Everybody knows that one of the characteristics of the mind is interconnectivity. You and I are always interconnected. Now, is there a you and is there a me? We are talking at the level of memory now.

You see the experience. Are there two separate individuals that are connected by a cable or something? No, it is one. That is the meaning of interconnectivity. The division is the result of ignorance, and ignorance is the result of a survival mechanism. We don't want that part which is you to influence too much this part which I am calling as me. Why? Because as soon as the influences are uncontrolled, this creature is not going to survive. If it starts getting influences and thought activity from all the creatures, if one creature starts getting all of that immense amount of activity, is it going to survive? No.

So again, bring in Mother Nature. Mother knows what to do here. She erects a forgetting, some people call it forgetting, but I call it a wall. She erects an imaginary wall around this one creature so that it is shielded from all the other activity. But that is an imaginary wall; nothing is really shielded. That's why they call it forgetting because influences enter “your” mind, but are ignored by the mind, the individual mind. In our program, we call it the waking memory. All the influences are traveling through it, but we are selective about what appears there. If that influence corresponds to my past memories, I immediately call it "my thought." If that influence has no relation at all to my past memories, it is not even seen. That is what I mean when I say the wall is of ignorance; it is ignored.

Let us say a thought arises in your mind that "I want to eat ice cream." Immediately a process starts there - whether this is mine or not? We are not aware of that, but there is a process like this, and it sees that, okay, whenever I ate ice cream, it gave me pleasure, and all these events of eating ice cream are recalled. It happens immediately, in a split second, and the mind simply labels it - "my wish." The same thing can come in another individual, can be transmitted to that other mind, and it will still say that it is "my wish" because it corresponds so nicely with the past memories, so it is taken as mine.

Let us say an influence arrives - "I need to eat grass today." And immediately there is a process that will start, "Grass? let me check." And it will see that no, this is not mine; never ate grass, I don't know what it tastes like, probably tastes sweet, but this is not my food, and immediately it will be ignored. It will be removed from the pool of thoughts. Mind does not allow the effect to go ahead and become an action or thought. The effect is allowed only when this influence is of ice cream because it corresponds with the waking memory. The influence of eating grass is ignored.

You will see that it is coming from your pet, your rabbit or your goat or your cow. Those who are sensitive can see from where it is coming. They can differentiate what is mine, what is not. And those who are ignorant, ordinary people who do not know what is spirituality and what is UM and whatever, they will take all the influences. Now you can see the connection with the tantra here; the tantric knows what is mine; ordinary people don't know. They don't even need to go to this metaphysical influences, the NPNM influences. You show them a pretty picture on the TV, and they are influenced. They are simple people; it takes nothing to influence them. But it will take a heavy load of energy to influence a tantric. Not influenced by anything easily; his job is to influence others.

So, he holds the thought, he holds an intention, and spreads that intention throughout the universe. Now everything happens according to that. I gave you a big clue here, how to do desire fulfillment using a tantric method. It boils down to intention; the intention is the NPNM vibration that spreads throughout this UM, bringing about the fruits. All you need to do is hold the right vibration; that is called the mantra. Mantra is a vibration, not words. Before I give you more secrets, I'll stop here.

Session 142

Bitopan is saying, how can we be sure of understanding of non-duality so that seekers do not assume something else as non-duality?

One way is to question that person. Ask questions about non-duality and if they can answer it satisfactorily then we can be sure that they have understanding. And who can ask these questions? Obviously a teacher or somebody who has the understanding already. So that's what we do in the exam. In one or two questions, I try to judge whether there is an understanding or not. That person can say all those things in a mechanical, repetitive manner. That person can repeat the teaching as it was told. Then now those who don't have any experience, they will say that it seems that person has the knowledge of non-duality. But only an experienced guru will be able to probe by cross-questioning or by using tricky questions to completely know that somebody has this kind of understanding. The person himself can judge a little bit because there will be less awareness, peace and bliss.

Anisha is saying, What about people who have multiple personality disorders? Can you say something about those conditions please?

As you know, the person is commonly called the ego, which is the identity creator. So the disorder means that it has managed to create many identities which are sharing the same memory space. Now it is a disorder, so it cannot be called a state. The state is of madness only. This kind of madness has this kind of cause, that's all can be said. It is nothing special. Now as we know that there is only one mind, the memory is the universal memory. So it is possible that there can be other influences there which are causing this presence of more than one personality and that is also an affliction because the protection of the boundaries of the person is not there. So you can call it split personality or you can call it influences of other personalities.

I wanted to know your opinion on what is called as euthanasia or mercy killing because I came across a case, with someone I knew, where their health condition deteriorated. This was a lady nearly 80 years old and she had multiple health conditions and her body was shutting down and she opted for this euthanasia. This happened in the United States when I was there and even there in certain states it is legalized. So I just wanted to know your thoughts on something like this.

This falls under the case of morality or ethical/unethical. Now in some cases, this is decided by the governments of those countries. The wise people, they sit down and make the laws. So whatever is decided there should be obeyed by the citizens. This is our duty to obey that which our laws are saying. So if the law says that it is not good, it is unethical to kill such a person, we should treat them as long as possible. If the law says that it is okay to let go of the body, if it has become irreparable, then we should obey that law. It's not a problem. The problem is when there is no such law or the problem is when the person is not happy with this law.

Now it depends on the belief system of the person. So on the path of knowledge, we say that everybody is free to choose their ethics. They can choose whatever they want to do with this body. That is the teaching of the path of knowledge. And does that make you above the law? No. Whatever your belief is, you should always follow the law. And if there is absence of laws about this, or you are not taking the treatment from the hospital, like nobody knows what is going on with you, doctors are not present, and even your relatives have nothing to say there, only then you are free to decide for yourself.

And no, you don't need somebody else to leave the body. The body will do it for you. It is very easy. Person who thinks that it is totally ethical to let go of the body, leave the body, if it is broken completely, can make it look like a natural death. Nobody will come to know. It is possible. Those who are on the path of knowledge, they should prepare for death. Just like I say many times, there is a proper way to die. There this question will never arise. It is always death by choice, not by laws, not by accidents. That is the best way. So it is not mercy of any kind. It is a necessity on the path of knowledge. It is necessary to die in total awareness.

Hiren is asking, is there any video website in which you shared about your spiritual journey?

All of my videos, all of my websites, they are nothing but my spiritual journey. They are the record of my spiritual journey. Are they not spiritual? Do you want something special, something specific?

Hiren is saying, like a story from your childhood to self-realized person.

There is no such thing as a self-realized person. Self-realization is the end of the person. And the story from childhood to growing up has nothing to do with spirituality. It is the growth of the body and the struggles and whatever it does while it is growing. It is material, family matters, jobs and whatever. The teaching that I received is already there in the videos. If you want a history of all this, when did I learn what, then that is totally useless. That which is given in the videos is not from childhood to right now. It is the accumulated knowledge of many lifetimes.

The problem is people don't appreciate what is given to them. And they are looking for some kind of cheap entertainment in the videos. Please tell me all the stories about you. Then the video will become worthless for you. There is hardly any story that is entertaining. So if you are really interested in spirituality, don't go for cheap entertainment. There is nothing interesting there.

And some people have this kind of belief that all these great masters had very interesting lives. I will tell you the truth. Their lives were very boring. Absolutely nothing happened in their life. What happens is to popularize that master all these stories are created or they are spiced up. I am not saying nothing at all happened. One or two things happened which were critical in their life. And then it is spiced up. It is cooked up to glorify that master and spread the teachings around. So that people get attracted. And as soon as there is a crowd, the master delivers the bitter truth. Nobody likes it. What do people like? Cheap entertainment, stories, whatever miracles happened in the life of the master. They do not judge the guru by his teachings. They judge the guru by how many miraculous adventures he had. And the guru knows it. So he cooks up all the stories. 90% of the stories that you hear about all these gurus are fake. They are just an attempt to gather the crowd. When the crowd is there, teaching is given to them.

It is like your child refuses to go to school. And you say go to school you will get chocolates, you will get sweets, you will get toys and there will be a lot of children, you will get friends. And he goes to school and there he gets all this garbage you call your syllabus. Only on the path of knowledge we stay away from this but not always. There are some gurus who will adopt this method. Especially when the times are like that. When there is absolute darkness, then the guru must fall down into the darkness and adopt something which can be considered unethical. But the darkness is so much that he has to do something about it. Because the children are mostly immature, with very low intelligence. So they can be attracted only by the stories. “This happened in my childhood. A snake came to me and said that you need to go to the North Himalayas”. People like all these things and they think it is a spiritual journey. The real spiritual journey is very personal and it cannot be made into a story. It is always like this you see. Two or three lines I can tell you. I was the biggest idiot in the universe. I am the lowliest of the lowly and if I did not meet my guru I would stay the same. This is my spiritual journey. Enjoy.

Vipin is saying, everything boils down to intentions. Are these purely natural or something can be done to grow them?

Very good question. When we say intentions, they are events in the universal memory. How can they not be natural? Given that nobody does it, it happens on its own. There is nobody. There is no person. There is no entity who is the doer. I am the witness. So yes, purely natural. It is automated. So who is there to grow them? Nobody can. So since there is nobody to make it stronger, it sounds like it cannot be done. But nothing to worry about, it can be done. Without the doer, things can be done.

So how to make it stronger? Refuse to be influenced by others. Go away from the intentions of others. Then whatever you think are my intentions will be stronger. There is no other option then. They will get all the energy. Right now, it is all distractions after distractions, compulsions after compulsions. The desires that are borrowed from somebody else. Those are a product of your TV. And you see all other people who are living a fake life. And you are mesmerized by them when you go after all that garbage. Totally forgetting why you are here. What is your allocation? Those intentions are forgotten. It is because of the influence from the outside. You need to let go of that. Know that for which you are here. And this is how we make it stronger. Even if there is nobody to make it stronger. It is a subtractive process. They are strong already. They are so strong that they caused a human birth. And the problem happens just after being born. Then they are suppressed. This is one way.

The second way is to repeat them. Now we are going into the tantric field. There are rituals to make it stronger. But you will need to change your path. On the path of knowledge we say that they are illusions and we ignore them. Be in awareness of whatever appears as intentions, desires or whatever. And that which is happening is perfectly okay. Nothing else can happen. And there is nobody to change it. It is changing itself. Self-organizing tendency of the patterns in the memory is perfect as it is.

Poonam is asking, to surrender is very much like falling in love. If it happens, it's complete surrender. One cannot force it to happen. It's unfortunate if the surrender is not complete. How would you guide us in the surrender towards the Guru? What's the key to surrender?

Like you said, it cannot be done. It happens. I cannot say - from tomorrow you need to be surrendered. This cannot be done by discipline. So it can only be done by faith. If you have no faith in your Guru, if you don't trust your Guru, there won't be any surrender, and the teachings will be useless. Faith happens by incremental evidence. Guru says 10 things and provides the evidence. Then it is your job to scrutinize it, to verify it. And then slowly your faith or trust increases in your Guru. If you don't do this, if you reject it without even looking at it, then there won't be any faith, and the surrender will never happen.

Again, it comes down to knowledge. How much knowledge you have. And when you say that this knowledge is because of the grace of the Guru, surrender is the most natural state after that. And the more you surrender, the more gain will be there. If you surrender prematurely, that can be risky. There are different kinds of Gurus. Some are fake. So these Gurus know that there is a tendency in people to surrender without checking, and they take advantage of it. So the surrender must not be done blindly. It must be done only through knowledge.

Those who get the knowledge, they have the capability to surrender. An ignorant person cannot surrender. His surrender is mostly obedience. People are sometimes very obedient. Whatever their teacher says, they do it without thinking. And how can we know that the person is simply following the orders? Is there real surrender? Is he behaving in this way because of his stupidity or blind belief? Or is there a genuine understanding that the Guru is telling the truth? You can see it. And the Guru knows how to detect it. The Guru can see it very clearly. He knows each and every one.

To check, what do we do? We give them a test. We tell them something which is incorrect, false. And a surrendered person will not hesitate to say that look Guruji, something is wrong in your teaching. But an obedient person will simply accept it uncritically. That is how we distinguish between those who are surrendered and those who are simply like a cow. You tie the cow here and no complaints. You tie it there and no complaints. So that causes no growth, no progress. Surrender is a real understanding that the Guru is beneficial for me. And surrendering is my only option. And you can see that the Guru is already surrendered. So just follow the Guru sometimes. He has become what he is through surrender only. Take the example. Follow the footsteps. So knowledge is the key to surrender. As long as you have knowledge, it is guaranteed that you will land in surrender. If it is for the Guru, okay, no problem. If it is for the existence itself, you surrender to the universe itself. No problem. They are the same. The Guru is the existence. And the surrender is simply this recognition that I am also that and he was right. So even though it cannot be forced, we can make it happen by simply following the path. Walk on the path. It will happen. Nothing to worry, nothing to do.

Varun is saying, upon pondering upon the distance between an object and the experiencer, using logic, I find that there is no distance between the experiencer and the object. Because the experiencer is the background. However, I feel something is lacking, which I cannot point to. Can you please point that out?

I can try, you see. Although I don't know what is lacking. The problem can be that still there is a little bit of ignorance that I am the body. The mind has a lot of problems letting go of the body. So it keeps saying that look, the objects are different and I am different. Then if that is not the problem, which I think is very basic, it can happen initially, but once you are established in the knowledge, there can be another problem, which many people have said. They tell me that I cannot be the object because it is changing. Isn't it? If I am the object, then the object should have my qualities. That is the assumption. Why do the objects come and go? Why do they appear and disappear? If they are me, they should stay there. Isn't it? Is that your problem? Is this thing lacking? How can I find myself in the objects? People say these things.

When you say that there is no distance between me and the object, you should say it with the total understanding that there is no object. If you don't have this understanding, it will be a puzzle. Like in the 3D program, we draw the attention of the seeker to this fact that they cannot find a separation between the experiencer and the experience. Whatever they are experiencing right now. And they are puzzled by that. Oh yes, almost 99% seekers they tell me a separation in meters and feet. It must be your own experience. When you were asked how far away is the object, you very nicely calculate the distance

between you and the object. And I always laugh because I was like this. And when it is pointed out that look, you are using the body as me, then the person is puzzled. Why can't I find a separation? They say they are clearly out there. Why can't I find the distance then? Where is the object then? It is clearly not separate. And it is like a puzzle.

And the puzzle is there because they have forgotten the lesson that the object is an illusion. Once you recall that actually there is nothing out there then you will see the futility, uselessness of finding a separation. So again it is a dropping of ignorance only. The ignorance or the assumption is that objects are actually there and now I cannot find a separation. How is this possible? Drop this assumption that the objects are there. There are no objects, there is only me. This is your direct experience, isn't it?

Just like the waves are not there. They are just water. Don't take the metaphor of the background and the screen so literally. You say it is just there to make you understand. They are pointing to the possibility that there can exist a changing thing without there being a separation from its essence. The metaphor is telling you this possibility that look, there is a changing thing called waves which is not separate from its essence which is water. There is a possibility like this. There are things like this. And then your intellect has no problem accepting that the experience and the experiencer are also similar. The possibility is made real by the metaphors. However, you need to say it directly. We drop the assumptions. The non-duality will not be seen. Only the duality is seen. But it is also seen that duality is false.

There are people who ask - Please show me non-duality only then will I believe it. And then I say believe whatever you want. There is no hope. It is impossible to see the non-duality. Who will see it? The experiencer appears in duality only. Not in non-duality. And actually it is never differentiated. The intellect is differentiating or you can say the mind is differentiating. And the difference is because of ignorance. Is there any difference between the wave and the water? No. This is how the mind works. We cannot help it. And it is not our purpose to break the working of the mind. It is our purpose to see beyond the mind. See what the mind is doing. Let go of it. Let it do whatever it does. Fully knowing that there is no separation. There is no duality actually. There is no experience separate from the experiencer. There is no experiencer separate from the experience.

When I say this, people think that the experiencer is dependent on the experience. No. Failure of logic here. People say that experience is the cause of the experiencer because the experiencer is never found when there is no experience. And I said it never happens. There is always an experience eternally. It is like saying that one side of the coin is the cause of the other side. Because the other side does not exist because of the first side. And then the logic has failed. You see, the inseparability has been mistaken as dependency. We should not do that.

There is just what is. No object. No witness. You will find very quickly that the intellect has stopped here. The mind has stopped. The activity has almost halted. Nothing there. This is the state of experiencing. It will never become better than this. Experiencing is the whole thing. “No, please show me the oneness.” You are seeing the oneness only. There is nothing except the oneness. I know it is tricky.

Sweetie is saying, could you please say about the desires taking the form of objects.

Desire is the primary movement and objects are simply arrangements of the vibration, patterns, all that. Why does the vibration arrange into patterns? That can be explained in a somewhat poetic way - It desires to do so. There is a tendency in the patterns to self-organize that can be seen as a “desire”. They “want” to do that.

When they self-organize, a repetitive pattern is formed which can be recognized by the senses and the sensory mechanism and the intellect as an object. If it is a random thing, we don't call it an object. It must be delineated from the environment like somebody said. Then it becomes an object. There must be separation that must happen. And the mind can only separate the organized from the unorganized. When I say unorganized, please don't think of it as a pile of garbage or something. Unorganized is invisible. It cannot be known because there is no pattern there. Mind and the senses simply ignore that. That which is not manifested is unorganized and it is not seen precisely because non-manifestation means no patterns. Pure vibration.

The mind has only this one ability - to separate the organized from the unorganized. Separate the low entropy from the high entropy. This is called the dividing tendency of the mind. There is a will there, a desire there to be organized in these vibrating patterns. There is a possibility like this and the job of the mind is to recognize it. When it recognizes it, it calls it an object. The objects are an outcome of this will to manifest. And you will see that all our experiences are simply objects of different kinds. World is a collection of objects. Body is an object. Your desires, thoughts, they are objects. They have a structure. The whole memory is an object. So, yes desire underlies the creation.

Sri Lakshmi is saying, once the body is gone then only emptiness is left which is everywhere.

This is one more method. That you know I am not the body so you imagine the body is not there. Make the body disappear in your imagination. Now what is there? Suddenly you are the whole. The body defines your boundaries because of this ignorance that I am the body. It should not be taken as evidence because it's imaginary but that can help you break this habit of seeing yourself as a body. It is called the headless method. Somebody invented it. I think there is a meditation like this somewhere.

Parteep is saying, after two months now in awareness practice three things have fallen in line. Now my activities have to take permission to start. Inner battle against awareness is over. Nothing can beat this aware state. Body's finding is natural comfort. Just guide me. You know what is best.

Yes, continue the practice. That is my guidance. The practice is very simple, you see. I always get this question - What should I do next? My answer is always this - You are progressing very nicely, continue the practice. Enjoy. Be in bliss. This is the guidance.

I can give you a hundred things to do. But is that according to the path of knowledge? No. That's why you will find I take away whatever you are doing. What is my guidance mostly? Don't do. Don't do this. Don't do that. Relax. Enjoy. Whatever is happening is happening. I know what is best. Reduce. Simplify. Let go. Let go. That is the best.

Some people came to me - I have too much awareness. Now I cannot even sleep. I said, You are mistaken. You never sleep anyway. The body is sleeping very nicely, isn't it? The body is resting for eight hours and you are complaining that I cannot sleep. There is no one here who sleeps. Anyhow, I told them to reduce the practice. I said, Just don't be aware. There is nothing wrong with unawareness. Balance yourself a little bit.

Sometimes the changes happen too quickly and the ego cannot handle this. Ego wants the old life back. Like you always want your ex-girlfriend back. Same thing. It misses the old life, it complains. The awareness has done this to me. Awareness has done that to me. You cannot change and have the old also. Not possible.

Sweetie is saying, when we are in awareness, we recognize that, but are not always able to go against it. It's the old thing, old fashion that's coming up, but we cannot avoid it a lot of times. Why so? Even though I'm in awareness, I know it's here to challenge me. But I feel helpless. Why so? That's my question.

There are no immediate results sometimes. If the old things are coming, let them come. There is no need to suppress it. If you find yourself helpless, become aware of this helplessness also. So the trick here is long-term practice. Continue the practice. It will take some time. If there is guilt, you become aware of the guilt. If there is depression, you become aware of the depression. These are all just reactions from the ego. It is absolutely okay. There is nothing wrong here. So I can tell you - don't be depressed. Don't feel guilty. But that has no effect at all. But if I tell you to be aware of whatever is happening, you will instantly see that all these side effects go away. All these reaction mechanisms, they go away.

Not only you, it happens to many people that they feel bad when the awareness is not there, or they feel bad that why don't I have control. “I have been practicing for two days and I have no control at all.” Two days are nothing. It's going to take a whole life. But you will progress. There's no doubt about it. The knowledge is there, which is most important, not the effects of awareness.

As you know, we don't have any practice on the path of knowledge. This practice is given because the ego wants something to do. Seeing the beneficial effects of awareness, it is given. At least don't forget who you are, that much practice we can do. And if it is happening irregularly, nothing to worry. It is only a luxury. The main thing has already happened. The seed is already there. So now it is not colorful and it has no flashing lights and smoke and mirrors. Nothing to worry. It is not that important. Relax and enjoy the practice. If you are not enjoying it, don't do it.

Well, I truly can't say that anyone would not enjoy it. It's mesmerizing. I think any one of us who sincerely practices would get in the feeling of the magic it holds.

Very good words. And yes, I agree. We do it because it is nice. Otherwise, I'll never recommend anything which is forceful and unnatural. Awareness is our natural state. Unawareness is unnatural.

I am not locked in the body. There is a belief that I am in the body which is very easy to see. It is easy using the metaphor of screen again. It is easy to see that the body is a picture on the screen. I am the screen. So this body is locked in the screen. The screen is not locked in the body. It is totally opposite. You can see how the illusion works. It reverses reality and then convinces you that whatever has been reversed is actually real. This is the trick to undo the illusion. It's always the opposite of how it appears. I am not in the body. The body is in me. It comes and goes.

Even though there is a thought that I am limited by it, I am actually not limited by it. You have taken the limitation of the body to do this and to experience this life, but no, it is a concessional teaching. We have never taken any limitations. By we, I mean the experiencer has never taken any limitations. So when freedom comes, it comes in the form of knowledge only. Freedom is not destruction of the body or any structures. Freedom is the recognition that they are illusions in me. That's all freedom is.

I recommend dreaming practices and so on. I say that go on and intensify your awareness in the dream state. Dreams means the night dream. Not the world as a dream. Night dream. What is the effect of that? You get a direct experience of how everything is happening in you. That is your own playground, the dream, where you get all these experiences that we keep talking about. So where is the dream? When you wake up, you ask this question. Where is it? You will see that actually it was nowhere, but it feels like it happened inside me. I was the dreamer, I was the dream. This is the experience of waking up.

So when you are aware in a dream, you will see that actually everything is me. Once your awareness grows to a certain extent, you will start seeing this in the waking state also. It is not craziness. It is awareness. You are the body also now. Not only this body, you are all the bodies. You are all the people. You are all the animals and birds. You are all the trees and hills and rivers, clouds, all the blades of grass are you. How did that magic happen? Because you have grown your awareness in the dream state. Now the same feeling or same realization is repeated in the waking state.

And yes, if you are not following a path, if there is no Guru, then there is a chance that you will lose your mind. Because you see, the illusion breaks here. The Maya starts breaking. This is not good for this organism, isn't it? Not good at all. It means death. So the Guru holds the ignorance a little bit. Complete your job here. The Guru says, don't leave the waking state. We are in the waking state for some specific purpose. Complete it and then you can let go of it. So your death and your liberation is one event.

For a worldly person, death is something horrible, should not happen. For a spiritual person, death is the door out of the prison. And yes, it is not good to die without doing the spiritual work first. That is not recommended. So returning to the first question by Anisha, should we kill ourselves? Yes, go ahead. First, do your spiritual work. Once you have done your duty, then it does not really matter how the death happens. Like I keep saying that you should die in awareness, you should die in the ideal environment and so on, with the Guru present or other seekers present around you. I don't mean the holy places, it can be an ordinary place. You have done your duty, now there is nothing to worry.

Suraj is saying, I have seen that if a person goes to risky jobs where death is possible, like army, mountaineering, skydiving, families and society can compromise and still motivate for such jobs. But if a person wants to be a spiritual seeker or follow a Guru, why are there enormous obstacles and resistance?

A very good observation by Suraj. You are paying attention in your life. They are not people. They are sheeple, which means a herd mentality, like sheep. Your boy is driving at a speed of 200 km per hour and his father is proud of him. And he goes and chants a mantra or something, everybody is worried - He is going to die tomorrow. So you can describe this behavior very well by stupidity. In the history of spirituality, nobody died because of knowledge. So why are people so stupid? Actually, they are not. They are very intelligent. What has happened here can be described as the doing of the Maya.

So we get into the tantric field now and we say that Devi is responsible here. Devi is responsible for maintaining the illusion and she implants these kinds of delusions in the minds of people so that her domain remains as it is. So, yes, the army and mountaineering are going to do nothing bad for the illusion. It is strengthening the illusion. The stupid people are dying there. So it's okay, fine. But as soon as a person becomes spiritual, when an entity is gone from the prison, this layered structure, which was developed so painstakingly by the Devi, is now gone, left. So she tries to keep it.

Anyhow, I don't think anybody will be convinced by this answer. But this answer is coming from some other path, not from the path of knowledge. On the path of knowledge, we can simply say that it's a belief of the person. Society is full of these oddities, you see. It is okay to show one fellow cutting the throat of the other fellow using a chainsaw on your cinema screen. Perfectly okay. But no, two people in love cannot kiss. Very bad. Kissing is not considered good. But yes, cut the throat of the other person. Take their eyeballs out and cut their limbs and so on. Hang them upside down. Perfectly okay. Children are going to love it. You can see all the games that are made for these people. Tremendous amount of violence. People are killing each other there. It's called entertainment. As soon as there is love and lust and beauty. Women means beauty. No, no, our children, they are going to be spoiled. Bad effect. They cannot see kissing people. Too bad for the mind.

If you enjoy spilling poison on society, you should listen to Osho. He does it much better. You can only see that everybody is standing upside down in your society. Everything that is wrong is actually already happening in society. Herd of stupid people is called society, civilization. That is why a seeker cannot tolerate it. That is why a seeker leaves it. I am not suggesting that you leave it. You will be left. The distance between you and people will increase. Not because you want it, because people are like that. Spiritual progress is automated progress away from society.

You can mix milk and water. It stays like this. But can you mix oil and water? Probably, you see. But if you leave it, they separate automatically. Water below, oil above. You don't need to do anything. Just keep it. It will happen. Because they are incompatible. A seeker is not compatible with society. Only a seeker can notice all these things. Those who are in the world, they will say, what is wrong here? Yes, we need to go to the army. Yeah, skydiving is fun, isn't it? Going to the ashram, who needs it? Unnecessary risk.

I can go on like this, you see. I enjoy this kind of poison spilling. But I have seen that people don't like it. I would like to say that this phenomenon where the perceived risk is seen more in things which are less commonly done is a cognitive bias. This is from psychology. Actions which are commonly done and are risky are seen as less risky because everybody is doing it. Actions that are not so common, even if they are not so risky, the perceived risk will be more. And you can find out the name of this bias, that’s your homework.

Mohan is saying, If awareness is the natural state, why is it so hard to be in it? Mind and ignorance seem to be the most dominant manifestations in our overall cognizing for the vast majority. If we are to be inclusive and live in oneness, isn't accepting this imperfect suchness essential instead of fighting it? In other words, isn't it important to see that this is as good as it gets and reconcile and be peaceful rather than fight it as some kind of an alien evil?

Very good question. I keep saying that you are the bliss, you are anand, you are the whole, oneness, brahman, this is the truth. Now, why is there a struggle to be that which is true? So, the answer is actually very simple, that it is hard because you have lived for a very long time in ignorance. Now, I can give you an example why this is so.

Walking is very natural, isn't it? It's effortless, but you tie down your leg, leave it for six months, then you cut the rope. Will you be able to walk? Isn't walking your natural state? Isn't it effortless? What has happened?

Ignorance is something like this. It has corrupted you so much that the natural state has become unnatural for you. And you don't need to tie down your leg or something. It happens to those who break their bones. They will recognize that after the bone has healed, you cannot move your leg or your arm for many months properly because it was in plaster.

So, we are in the plaster of ignorance since many lifetimes. Now, if you try to become free, you want to fly now, just out of this plaster, there will be resistance. So, although it is a natural state, because of the unnatural ignorance, it has become hard. Habit, conditioning, it wants to fall back. Then slowly it reverses. And those who are in awareness will say that, no, it is not really difficult. And you ask them to go back in un-awareness. Go back in un-awareness like you were when you had no knowledge, when you were not on the path, when you had no guru. Please be in that state. You ask them to do that and everybody will refuse.

When I look back in the past, why was I like this? Why was there ignorance? Why was my state totally unaware, dark? It was like a zombie. It was like a machine. Zero intelligence. Do you want to go back there? Why? Because, you know, that is the most dominant thing so far. No, I don't want to go back. Nobody will accept the old state, even though it tries to come back. We don't like it. Like Sweetie said it feels bad. Continue your practice and that which is so hard will become most natural. It is with every practice, isn't it? When you are driving your car for the first time, isn't it very hard? You don't even know where it is going. Is it on the road or not? You need to check it. Every second. You don't know how to turn it. You don't know how to reverse it. But after 2000 kilometers, you can drive it even without paying much attention. You see, it becomes your natural thing, second nature to drive. So those who are finding awareness hard, they are simply new. Continue the practice.

Raja is saying, Spiritual seeking is bestowed only on a few persons out of the 8 odd billion is purely grace of the supreme. Am I right?

Yes, you are right. Spiritual knowledge comes by grace. This is my everyday experience. You cannot give it to all. It cannot be made like an education system that is compulsory for everybody. You cannot do it. Those who are ripe fruits, they will fall.

Mohan is saying, Is this conditioning analogy with simplistic habit and conditioning will happen whether in cities or jungles, whether with others or alone. This imperfect cognizing seems to be naturally happening in the very domain of manifested existence.

We don't call it ignorance in that case. It is called innocence where there is no knowledge of who I am. There is no awareness, but there is also no ignorance. It is just like animals. Animals are innocent. Do they have this knowledge of who they are? No. Do they have this knowledge that I am the body and so on? They don't even have names. So they are perfectly merged in mother nature. And humans, because we have the potential for separation from mother nature, we get the ignorance. The ignorance is I am the body, I am the mind, I am the memories. These desires are mine and these emotions are mine. The ego is strongest in humans. So, innocence is not a problem. Very natural. Ignorance is the problem.

Why is there ignorance? Yes, there is a potential for it. There is a possibility of it. Since everybody is ignorant in the society, we catch it. Is there any problem in innocence? No, no problem. You see, the happiness and the suffering, they continue. In ignorance, there is only suffering, no happiness at all. And in knowledge, there is only happiness, no suffering at all. This is the difference in the three states.

Imperfect cognizing happens as a distortion of innocence. We are perfect as we are in an innocent state. The child is perfect, isn't it? Nothing wrong with the child. But if the child grows up and says that I am superior, I need to kill other people to survive, something is wrong here. This child, this grown-up man needs medicine, needs treatment. That medicine is called knowledge. Knowledge is nothing, it is the removal of ignorance. Those who are not suffering, they don't need knowledge. They are innocent. Yes, they will make mistakes. So what? So, the path of knowledge takes us back to innocence. Because ultimately, we don't get any knowledge. That must be known clearly that the path of knowledge will never give you any knowledge. Very paradoxical, but yes. Who am I? The experiencer. What is it? Nobody knows. What is the world? Illusion. What is illusion? Nobody knows. I am the existence. What is it? Nothing to know there. Just be it simply. This is called the state of innocence. Nothing is known.

Ignorance is a state of knowing where I know I am the body. Nothing but the body. And I want this, I want that. He has more and I have less. I need to kill that person. I am superior, you are inferior. I am a man, you are a woman. This is called wrong knowledge, Avidya. So, Shaivism is very direct about this, it says - Ignorance is an impurity. Next line. Knowledge is an impurity. It's done. What do you need more? That is the whole wisdom. So, Shaivism started as a non-dual path, actually. Very, very nice. But it is now corrupted. Even Advaita will never say knowledge is impurity, you see. There must be some verses here and there which point to this fact that everything is unknowable in the end. But it is not strong enough to say that knowledge is an impurity. Because, you see, as soon as you say knowledge is an impurity, all your students are going to run away. If it is an impurity, I don't want it, they will say. I am already very impure. Thank you very much. So, we say it in different words that everything is unknowable. Just be what you are. Don't try to know it. Try to unknow. Unknowing is the way.

Some people have this notion that, Oh, but innocence is very primitive. At least humans are more advanced. So, very good, yes. The ignorance, the ego has made us humans. Now, is it bad? No, it's not bad. It is simply a step towards knowledge. Ignorance is your passport to the knowledge. If you simply remain innocent, you will remain like a tribal person who has no good qualities but has no bad qualities also. So, to arrive in the land of knowledge, you need to pass through the jungle of ignorance. This is the natural way. That is why human birth is so difficult compared to animals and so on. Even compared to gods and above, human birth is most difficult because it is a time of transition. The possibility opens up here to go up or to go down. Which one are you going to choose?

Session 143

The fundamental vibration is a binary change of existence. What two states does it change between?

There are no states in existence, there is an apparent change, and it changes between two possibilities. Whatever is possible, it oscillates between these two; that is what we see. If there were states in existence, that would be the state of something, but there is nothing; it is emptiness. Emptiness does not have states; emptiness has potential or possibilities.

Now whenever there is a possibility that is manifested, and because the sum must come out to be zero, it is empty, immediately oscillates back into the opposite possibility. This is what we call binary change. There is nothing in existence which changes; there is a possibility of change, and that change happens in the form of a vibration which is an equal and opposite manifestation of the possibility.

How do we know this? This is our direct experience. These binary changes, they can accumulate and form very complex patterns, but they can be broken down back into binary, and how that is done is explained in the program. I can't remember which one is about building up complex patterns from simple vibrations, but it is all there. The whole science is already established very well. So nothing is vibrating; nothing has states.

Graham is saying, is a possibility in existence, non-existence? I don't mean emptiness, but nothing at all.

It is already everything, which means it is also non-existence. How to understand that using our intellect? It is impossible. The intellect is a by-product of illusion, so it can process only illusions. It cannot know the existence as something or nothing. So all these things are only words for the intellect. It has never seen existence, and it has never seen non-existence. So it is not entitled to say anything about it.

However, it is possible to be the existence, and it is possible to be the non-existence, which you already are. When we say emptiness, it is pointing to total absence, which you can call non-existence. Yes, as soon as we say that emptiness takes the potential forms, it is pointing to absolute presence. Now the intellect cannot grasp it; how can it be both at the same time? So here we need to surrender the intellect because it has gone beyond it. There is a limit to intellect. That is why we say that ultimately it's all unknowable; my nature is unknowable. All that can be known are negatives - what it is not. It is not objects, it is not material, it is not any quality, it is not mental, it is not non-physical, and so on. The negatives can be known. That is why all the knowledge on the path of knowledge is negative. As soon as somebody says something positive, it is bound to be wrong.

Please listen to Richard Feynman again. The principles are the same; they are taken from the path of knowledge, and he clearly says that it is possible to know what is wrong with the theory or what is wrong in that observation, which means experience, but it is impossible to know whether it is right or not. The positive cannot be said. So there is a limit of intellect for knowing something, but there is an ability in the intellect, to filter out that which is logically not correct, that which is illogical, which does not fit. Direct experience and logic are the means of knowledge, but the experience is also negative, and logic is also negative. So it is a purification process.

In the end, the intellect is purified of impurities. If you don't do this, no knowledge can be gained. It is corrupted by positivity. We need to remove it. We need to put negativity in the intellect. It is called critical thinking. And if you are critical of everything, then you will be left with unknowing. This is the purest state of the intellect. Here there is no ignorance. There is no knowledge also. This purity is bliss. It can be attained only by discipline of the intellect, and the discipline of the intellect happens only by following the instructions of your guru. Can you see how important it is? Learn to think.

Graham is asking, what does it mean to say a memory is there forever? I can understand that all the potentials exist forever. Is there a snapshot of each of those points frozen somewhere?

All experiences arise from memory. It is not that the experiences are first and memories form later. It is not like this. What is experienced is actually a memory. So whatever goes away when I try to recall is actually an activity. There is a difference between memory and recall of the memory. Recall is an activity which reads the memory and that activity is imperfect. It cannot read everything correctly sometimes. That is what is called forgetting. That is what is perceived as changing memory. What is there does not change. It is forever. Whenever there is a need, it can be read again and then it is recalled. That activity happens and memory is manifested.

So this is going on in the human mind at a smaller scale, fractal scale, but it is happening in a full-fledged manner in whatever we call as the waking state where the greater memory is being manifested. Where is the memory? It is nowhere. Frozen somewhere? No. It is non-physical, non-mental, non-local, non-temporal. Negative knowledge is important, you see.

Now clearly it is beyond intellect. So there is no use of intellect here. This is how it is. Now try to find evidence that it is so, that all the experiences, they are emerging from the memory. It is not that the experiences happen first somehow magically and there is a place where they get stored and then the humans recall it, no. That is not our direct experience. How is the experience formed? There is no how. It is just there. Then we project it back, we see that it is coming from a memory. Everybody who has done some meditation on this knows this. And we know it using the metaphors and we know it using our different states of the memory which are dreams etc. Where is the dream coming from? A memory. The whole experience in the dream arises out of a memory. So it is very complicated and a copy is also made of the memory. What is that copy? That I recalled the memory. That recall is also coming from a memory. Can it change? Can it be different? Yes, all these possibilities are already there in the memory. The memory is not static.

That is why old masters said - do not try to understand the illusion. You will never understand it. Free yourself from it. This is not the only theory that we have of the working of the memory. There are many more. So those who are interested, they can search other philosophies. Most advanced are obviously Buddhism and Sankhya. These things are not found in Advaita. They say it is projection and deceit and then we discard it. We say the illusion is useless. Stay in the truth, that is useful, they say. Many people are not satisfied by that. They say, no, I want to know what it is. And then science is born. So very elaborate descriptions are there in other philosophies.

There are models, there are tantric models, where the memory is utilized to manifest that which they want. It is possible. If everything is memory and is simply a matter of manifesting what is already there, then you can manifest anything you want. If it is done in a dark corner somewhere where nobody is noticing, everything is possible. Now you understand the reason for secrecy in tantric practices. We are accessing a shared memory. So it is not possible to willy-nilly change it and manifest anything. It is an outcome of many recalls, you can say, at the same time. A combination, addition of all the activities of recall, manifestation.

So it is possible to change a little part of it in total darkness where nobody is looking. When you tell these things to other people, they will say it is your hallucination. Yes, it is that. Only this is your personal hallucination and the waking state is a general hallucination. Everybody is hallucinating the same thing. It is totally mind-blowing. Is it possible? Everything is possible in illusion. Will you find an explanation of what is happening? Yes. Will it be satisfactory? No. It will be beyond intellect. The memory model is the only one that explains everything. It states that everything starts with a memory. We know what it is. It is a pattern that has become stable. Is it forever? It is timeless, not forever. Time is created out of memory. The memory is not in time. There is no clock ticking somewhere which keeps track of how much time has elapsed for that memory. You will need to break all your traditional brainwashing that has been done by society and your education to understand what is said here. Is it already there somewhere? No. The whole thing is manufactured as soon as it is perceived. How is that possible? We don't know. This is called the creation-perception law. That which is perceived is actually created instantly. So all these models, the scientific models and explanations and theories, they are back projection. What do I mean by back projection? First the experience is there, then we guess how it must have arrived there, this is the scientific process.

I sound a lot like Richard Feynman here. Why? Because he belongs to the same path. Everybody who realizes this will start talking like a guru. You don't need to learn what the scriptures are saying. You need to simply see what is there and you will become a guru. You can write your own scripture now. This is how it is happening. Because we cannot have the whole experience of memory right now, we cannot verify it clearly right now, so you will need to hunt for evidence in your daily experience. Try to find out whether the memory actually goes away or not. Let us say you have forgotten a specific event from your childhood. Now one day you are walking through the market and you see a particular candy which you used to eat in childhood. Now because you like it, you buy it and you eat it and as soon as the taste hits your tongue, all the memories are recalled in extreme detail from your childhood when you were hardly two or three years old. When there was no good capability to form those memories. The intellect was not working. Anyhow, the whole movie is played back. Many people have this experience that the smell and the taste trigger the most Ancient memories. Sometimes they will get the memories from the past life when they see something which is special for them. Whatever you thought was lost, actually all is there, including the smells and tastes. There was a fault in the recall process or it was taken as not important. So it was never recalled. The memory is forever.

It is so effective that many people are behaving in a particular way because of many memories that are latent, that are hidden from their view, but they are controlling the behavior of the person. Now this thing is very obvious in somebody who is mentally afflicted. They don't know why they behave that way, but there is a memory behind it that makes them behave in that way. There is trauma, there is bad experience or there is some delusion, some incorrect teaching, brainwashing.

There was a story, that there was a man, there was some problem in his mind and whenever a picture was shown to that man, he used to laugh at it. But there was nothing funny in the picture. And when he was asked, why are you laughing? He said, I don't know why I am laughing. There was a memory which was causing that behavior, but there is no awareness of it. He had no idea where that behavior was coming from. And this is very much obvious in the case of phobias. People don't know why they are afraid of certain things. And that can be traced back to many lifetimes ago actually. The memory is still there. We call it the causal memory. It's never gone. Nothing goes away in existence. Why? Because nothing came. Because there is nothing there, so it never goes away.

How can we understand this paradoxical thing? That which is so solid and is governing our lives is actually not there. Now we have no direct experience of this so we fall back to metaphors, which is an accepted method of gaining knowledge in the tradition of path of knowledge. In the evening, you are seeing a snake and then you ask, I tried everything, but the snake is not going away. Why is it not going away? Because it never came there. It is a projection. It is an illusion. So it won't go away. This metaphor makes it clear, hopefully, that the NPNM is not actually there. So it is forever. It will never go away.

You can scan through it a little bit, very, very small amount, and there is this illusion of forgetting because the intellect is incapable of taking in all. It will go mad if everything comes in. So Mother Nature has made a limitation there, that only this much will be recalled. Only this much memory will govern this behavior of this creature. And this fellow is going to laugh whenever he sees the picture because there is a leak in this process. There is this phobia because the natural mechanism of occluding the memory has been broken. So if there were no defects in the working of the mind, we would never know how it works. This is the basic principle in psychology. Open any book on psychology. First few pages you will find this principle. We know anything at all about the mind because it breaks down sometimes. Otherwise we will never know it. And how do they experiment on people? They break down the mind. They dissect the brain. They remove parts of the brain and see what happens. The process is destructive only. We know that there are external influences because nothing explains the particular behavior of that person. His voice has changed, his language has changed, some ancient language, even his face and eyes have changed. Nothing can explain it. Because this affliction has happened, we come to know that there are things beyond our understanding, beyond our senses.

The human being is so limited that if Mother Nature did not make “mistakes”, actually they are not mistakes, they are just happenings, you see, there is a proper reason why it happened, but if that did not happen, we would remain ignorant. The system is so perfect that it will cause an ignorance that is everlasting. So in many places I have said that we know something at all about the working of the illusion simply because it changes states. Otherwise there was no hope. If it were picture perfect, absolutely like a computation where nothing can go wrong, we will never come to know. If it were only a waking state all the time till infinity, well then, it is the truth, isn't it? According to our own definition of truth, it does not change, so it must be true. But fortunately for us, the same Maya, the same Devi has provided ways to know herself. That is because sometimes she removes the illusion and replaces it with something else. There is no consistency. So there is a possibility to know, otherwise there was no possibility. So hopefully I over explained it, but that is all I have to say about it.

Madhavi is saying, oneness is not a mental activity or any special experience. It is the exact opposite of experience. I did not understand what is meant by this. And also, what is meant by "rise above the mind and see together"? Is there any technique?

Yes, because oneness means merging of the experience and the experiencer. Although the word "experiencing" looks like there is an experience of some kind, which is of oneness, but no, it is simply being. There is "-ing" in front of it, so it is a state of being. The duality is absent here. It is not any special experience. You can understand it like this, that in the state of experiencing, no distinction is made between the experience and the experiencer.

How can we get to this place of non-distinction? And yes, there are techniques, like trying to find the separation between whatever you are experiencing and whatever you call as the experiencer. That which is witnessing and that which is witnessed, how far away is it happening? You will instantly arrive in experiencing if you try to do that. There will be merging there because you cannot find a separation. And you will also find that the mind stops there, the dividing activity stops because it cannot know how to handle this situation now. There is the second technique, which is probably mentioned in the same chapter, which is finding out what is inside and what is outside. And you will find that there is no boundary which defines inside/outside. It is all one. There is no boundary between the experience and the experiencer also. And you will immediately find that this division is artificial. Actually, there is no experiencer separately, the experience is not separate from it. This is what we call rising above the mind because the mind has merged into experiencing. The dividing activity is also taken as a form of experience. The dividing activity is an experience already, but it remains hidden because I think I am the one who is looking. The ego says that I am the one who is here, and the world or the objects or my thoughts or emotions, they are there. But that can be silenced for a while. You need to simply silence it for one or two seconds, and then you arrive in this state of simply being. And it is the simplest possible state, actually. It is not a big state. It happens by giving up. It happens by letting go, not by gaining. It happens by losing. What do you have to lose? Ignorance. See everything as it is.

If your intellect is already purified to that extent, that you are not cooking up something out of your experience, then you will reach this state of pure being without judging, without thinking, without analyzing, without dividing.

Now it is possible to give up the experiencer also. There is no experiencer. It is the existence itself. The name of the existence is experiencer. Everything is happening separately from the experiencer, it seems. So the name of existence is experience. And when it is seen that they are the names of the same one, we need a new name to show that they are not different. That new name is experiencing or you can simply say existence. Then when the mind comes back, it says I am the existence. It is broken and it comes back. It can be extended, but it's totally useless, you see. This is also called the sahaj samadhi. Equanimity. It is possible to remain in equanimity, but it will cause a lot of confusion for the creature, initially at least. If you can train this creature to get into that habit, then it is possible. And it is blissful. The simplest is blissful. Bliss is “lost”, as soon as it is cooked up into a monster of experiencer, experience, illusion, ego, humans, society, desires and need to do something. And the monster is chaotic, it is ugly. If you drop all these things, if you kill that monster, everything is simple and beautiful.

Experiencing is the simplest state, and it is the most beautiful and it is the most blissful. It happens when you include the mental activity of dividing in the experience and see that there is no separation between the experience and the experiencer. See that they are the names of the one. And it is impossible to be grasped by intellect. You will know that this happens only because it breaks; otherwise, it is always there. So the impurity comes back, the state breaks, and we come to know, oh, there is a non-dual state also. But it is always there, however it is clouded by duality. The non-dual state or the experiencing is the ground of all states. It is always there, forever, eternally present.

If I sit with you, you will actually enter that state of non-duality. It needs to be there only for a few seconds to grasp what it is. Although it is not grasped, but we can know it, it is possible. The sahaj samadhi is possible, that much we need to know, and then the knowledge is that it is always there. See the sky is always there, even if it is clouded or even in the night, it is always there. So we don't worry about that state at all. Why worry about that which is always there? Do you worry that tomorrow I will not get the air for breathing? No, it is always there. Do we need to do something to arrange for air? Which practice will bring air into my life? No, it is always there. So that's why we don't have any practice to get into that state, it is useless. The most useful state for our day-to-day living is the dual state, where the experience is not me. I am the experiencer and this is called awareness, not samadhi.

Ishan is asking, What is after the sahaja samadhi?

Exactly that which was before the sahaja samadhi. When I say the knowledge is that, it was always there and it will always be there. So what is there after that? Same thing which was before that. Your daily life, all the happiness and suffering, miseries and pettiness, it's all there. It was before, it will be after, it is now. Nothing needs to change, everything is perfect as it is. We are eternally in sahaja samadhi, there is no need to do any effort, there is no before and there is no after. How will you know this? Obviously, you need the knowledge. And how will you get the knowledge? Follow the instructions, very easy. It is served, now you need to simply eat it.

Graham is asking, Are we saying that removing ignorance automatically results in being fully aware? I am the experiencer, being enlightened. I have my doubts because I know the constellations, like the Big Dipper doesn't exist but I cannot stop seeing the Big Dipper just knowing it isn't real.

It is possible to know that I am the experiencer by removing the ignorance and it is removed by progressive elimination. It is not true that the constellations and stars and sun and moon don't exist. They exist but they are illusions, so it will never go away. The only knowledge we get is that it is an illusion, the knowledge does not make it disappear. Like watching a movie, if you watch it in complete darkness and if you have an immature intellect, or if the intellect is not working properly, you will take the pictures as real. If somebody cries in the movie, you also start crying, you must have seen such people. They are laughing in the movie, they are making a joke, you also laugh. Why? The intellect is gone on a holiday. As soon as the lights are turned on and you are told that look, everything is acting, it is an illusion. The movie is still playing without any effect.

So don't worry, you won't stop seeing the illusion when you get the knowledge. It will be seen as an illusion, not as real. Yes, many people have this kind of question that if it is an illusion, I should wave my hand and it should disappear. But your hand is also an illusion, you are the illusion, your mind is an illusion and all your thoughts are garbage. Tell me what can you do? The only thing we can say is, look this is how it is, accept the illusion, accept the movie. There is no freedom from the illusion. The only freedom is knowing that it is an illusion. Not taking it as real is the only freedom. The dream never ends. You cannot wake up from the dream. There is nobody who can wake up, you see. Waking up is knowing that it is a dream. That is the only possibility. The waking up is knowing that I am the dreamer, not anything that appears in the dream. End of the story.

This is the end of the path of knowledge. In two sentences it can be over. Why do you have problems accepting this? Too much ignorance. No, please show me it is a dream. No, destroy it in front of my eyes so that I know it is an illusion. People demand this kind of evidence that if it is an illusion, make it disappear so that I know it is an illusion. The illusion is not something which will go away. The ignorance will go away. If we could make the illusion go away, then it will be replaced by something which will also be an illusion. That is what is happening. Death is the same. This waking state goes away and will be replaced by something even more strange, although this one is also very strange.

So yes, it takes a special kind of intellect to grasp that this is an illusion. An ordinary intellect cannot grasp it. It takes a pure intellect and so the whole struggle on the path of knowledge is purification of intellect, removal of the garbage that is stuffed in the intellect. Why is there garbage in your intellect? Why can't it think properly? Because of the bad education, because of the indoctrination, because of a lack of abilities and qualities of a seeker. Those who follow the instructions, their intellect will be purified, they will get the knowledge and they will fulfill their life goal. The rest will continue in their brainwashing. Nothing can be done. The rest will continue in their delusion. They may keep calling themselves spiritual but they are just deluded.

Rajit is saying, does that mean the illusory individual will also continue to appear even after self-awareness?

How can it appear? It is not there actually. There is an assumption that there is an individual and you can use that assumption if you want. The meaning of awareness is that I am the experiencer, not the individual. But yes, it can come back whenever it is needed. When you are acting in society, when you are acting among your relatives, you need the individual, otherwise who is there to live a human life. So yes, it can come back but it comes back as a thought only.

The illusion has layers upon layers. We call it the layers of ignorance. The first layer is our sensory layer where things appear to us. When I say illusion, mostly people think about those things. There are so many things that are appearing to us. Why does the food look so pleasant and mouth-watering to you? Is there something in the food? No, there is something in the mind. It causes that food to appear delicious. Your partner appears so beautiful. Is there something in the partner? No, just the same, you know, hairless, tailless monkey. Something in the mind makes it attractive. Illusion upon the illusion.

Same way, there is the layer of the ego which we call the identity creator layer in the layers of the memory. It makes the individual appear out of whatever is the content in the memory. Me and mine, you and yours, not me, etc. is constructed on top of the basic experience. There are more illusions which you will probably never know. There are more layers there. It is like an onion where there is no end. It is like cabbage which you can go on peeling forever. As soon as you think that I reached the end now, there should not be any illusion. More will be created for you. Why? Infinite possibility.

There are stories like this, Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, they go on a tour of the creation and Brahma says, okay, this is my territory. After this it ends. I did not create anything beyond this. And Vishnu says, let us find out what is beyond. They are in their airplane, they fly beyond their territory. And what do they find? There are 20 more creations like that. In all these 20, all those infinite creations, there is a beautiful woman standing and smiling. Who is that woman? Maya, Devi. Everybody must have heard this story. And the pride of these three deities was broken. They start crying. They are tiny in front of Devi, they are babies. They think I am the creator, I am the destroyer, I am the maintainer. No. Just babies of Devi. So how deep it is. That story is meant to tell you that, you see, the illusion is the ultimate. And the experiencer, although it is the true thing, very humble, very simple. There is nothing there. But how vast is the illusion?

I can explain the illusion to you. It is not impossible. But you should be able to sit with me at least for 10 years. The path of knowledge gives you this power. But what is the use of it? No use. And that is why the great masters, they dropped it. They say, okay, it can be explained. Children are playing with science. Okay, let them play for a while. When they are mature enough, they will just bow down to the Maya and the play will be over. Let them play for a while. So those who are immature, they want to know the illusion. They want to know what is in reincarnation, when I will be born, what happened in my last life.

Yesterday we were talking in the Hindi Satsang that I want the same Guru in all my lifetimes. And I was laughing actually and I said, yes, I know a method to do that. I told them the method and so on. But you see how immature that is. The kids like to play. So the Guru participates in the play. Just like we participate in the play of our children, fully knowing that it is just for entertainment. There is no use of it. It is a play and we don't discard the play. We participate in the play. Now however it appears, you need to enjoy the play. Otherwise there is no point in participating. How will you enjoy it? When you know that it is a play, when you have the knowledge, if you are ignorant, you are going to suffer it.

You must have seen that little children when they play, if somebody cheats or they start losing, they immediately get angry, or they start crying and they make a drama out of it because they are losing. Why is that? Because they have taken the play so seriously. And you can see that 99.9% of humanity is like that. They are crying because they are not getting what they want in this play. Who is sitting peacefully and smiling? The one who is on the path of knowledge. Only those who know. Other seekers are also trapped in the suffering of some kind. Those who don't know, they are cursed. When they are winning in the play, they are happy. Will it last? No. They think that it is my happiness but the real happiness is experienced by the one who is sitting and smiling. That is what we call a state of bliss. That is my real nature. Yes, sometimes the play is going to make you laugh, sometimes it is going to make you lose and you cry. It hardly matters. I am always smiling.

Session 144

Discussion on a test follows.

Experiencer is dual or non-dual?

When it is contrasted with experience, it is dual. We say everything that can be experienced is not me. I'm experiencer. So it's very clear that we're talking about a dual thing. But after some more searching, we find that the existence is non-dual and the essence of the existence comes out to be the experiencer, which means the experiencer is actually non-dual. So from both points of views, we should answer this question. And we find out that non-dualism takes us through two steps. In the first step, it is revealed that the experiencer is one aspect of the non-duality where it is simply witnessing another aspect. But then we take the next step and we see that it is actually one. It still remains the experiencer, but now the whole existence is called the experiencer. Sometimes we put the word non-dual in front of the experiencer to emphasize this. Sometimes I say non-dual experiencer. Sometimes I say non-dual witness simply to clarify that, we are not talking about the artificial duality between the experiencer and the experience. Because this duality is imagined, it is mind-created, the division is made by the mind. And we allow that because sometimes it's not possible to directly get to the non-dual. It is possible for probably brilliant people, but for an ordinary seeker, we start from the experience, then the duality, then non-duality.

We have divided the teaching into two steps for this reason, just to accommodate those who cannot directly grasp the non-duality, because there is nothing to grasp there. It's all letting go of the knowledge. It is my experience also, and it must be the experience of many, that it is difficult. We are not Gautam Buddha, we cannot say Shunyata directly, so we need to do this kind of step by step approach. Experiencer has to be seen as a dual first, and then in the next step, it must be merged into oneness. The oneness is the experiencer.

Next question was, how is experience nothing but change?

It looks like some kind of comparison is being made. There is only potential, and one potential gets compared with the other potential. And this is how the intellect recognizes a change. Actually, nothing is changing. But how is experience nothing but change? Well, if nothing changes, then there won't be any experience. This is what logic tells us. The change is apparent. It looks like the experience is something which is changing. But if we dive deeper, we see that change is also an illusion. It appears to be changing. We simply assume that something is changing. But the change is due to memory. If you remove the memory, nothing is changing. It is not even defined. Even the unchanging becomes undefined. Because unchanging is in contrast with the changing. That is how we know what is unchanging. When we remove the memory, both the changing and the changeless, they make no sense. They are meaningless.

What makes the patterns in the memory stable?

He said the standing wave and the resonance and so on. But what makes the patterns in the memory stable is repetition of the pattern. It repeats. Like the melody in a song repeats. The beat of the drum. So the whole beat is actually a pattern and it is stable. But isn't it changing? Yes, it is. It is changing. The music is changing, but the pattern is stable. See how beautiful it is. How was the stability managed? If there is no stability there, there won't be any experience. So we need both. We need a change for the experience, for the senses to grasp something, to react to something. But we need a meaning in that change, which gives us an illusion of stability. Change is an illusion. Stability is an illusion. How beautifully it is put together. When you think like this, it is mind-blowing, it is actually possible. Stability is apparent, just like the change is apparent. In the heart of stability is a repeating change.

Which layers are found in humans?

In intellect and awareness, there is one more layer, which is not found in most of the animals, and that is the emotion control mechanism. I cannot remember the exact name I gave in the layered model, but for now we can call it the layer that is responsible for control of the emotions. In animals and in babies, children, this thing is not developed. When there is an emotion, there is an action. The emotion directly results in action. Even in immature people, this is not present. In mature people, it's a kind of intelligence that they let the emotion to be there without necessarily acting, or they simply say things. They use speech to express it, instead of using your body to express it. So this thing is kind of missing in animals.

Right now, is your state that of waking, dreaming, or sleep?

It is a very funny question. We know that waking is only dreaming. How can we say it is a waking state? How can we say that? It is a dream. But we know that the foundation of all the states is sleep. So the dreaming is happening in the background of sleep.

The whole universal memory is in a state of sleep. And there is a tiny bubble of activity happening in the state of sleep. The state of sleep does not disappear when the dream appears. It is in the background. You will notice this when your awareness arises in the sleep state. You will notice there are bubbles of activity. And the sleep is not actually a dead sleep. There is life in sleep. It is difficult for me to explain it. You will need to see it yourself. It is a sleep full of light. That's all we can say. Not much activity. Because as soon as the activity starts, it is a dream. It takes the form of a dream. Because it's virtual. All activity is nothing but illusion.

So what is there in sleep? Light. Is complete knowing of some kind. Although, because there is nothing to know, it remains simply pure awareness. Existence is simply present there. So that is the background that is happening right now also, right here. Your state is that of sleep in which a dream is appearing. And a part of the dream, you can call it waking. It's an eternal dream. It's an everlasting dream. And a tiny bit of time, which is our human lifetime, is called the waking state. Which is not really waking. As you know, people are sleeping while awake. Only those who have the knowledge, can be called awakened. But then the realization is that the states are one state, the turiya state. That's all there is. All the states that appear separated are due to our ignorance. Actually, it is one event, which is eternal.

See how beautiful it is. When you go deep, it all merges into one and the simplest and the most beautiful. As you go away from the truth, it diverges into many, many things which are very confusing. So an ordinary person is not going to understand when you say - the waking state is a dream. You need this perspective of the Brahman.

Next question is, ignorance is also not knowing the truth and agnosticism is also that. How are they different?

Agnostic person does not suffer. This is the difference. This is a major difference, isn't it? Ignorant person, although he does not know anything, same as agnostic, but he suffers his ignorance. The agnostic person is not going to suffer his unknowing; actually, he is happy in unknowing. It is bliss. This not knowing is blissful, which you arrive through the route of ignorance and knowledge. You cross the desert of ignorance and then you cross the jungle of knowledge and you arrive in the sea of unknowing, an endless ocean of unknowing. Here is your bliss. From the point of view of an ignorant person, it looks like there is no difference between an agnostic person and an ignorant person.

What efforts and practices are needed to establish in experiencing?

None. If you are doing effort or if you are doing practice, then you have no knowledge of experiencing because you are trying to do something which is already there. How is it possible? How much effort does the sun make to shine? Nothing, it simply shines. You are the existence. You are the non-dual experiencer. How much effort will it take to be that? Just let go of that which you are not. Just let go of the divisions that the mind has cooked up, fully knowing that I cannot grasp it, and then let go of the intellect also; it should not take effort. It takes effort to lift a weight on your head. It should not take any effort to drop the weight. Then you feel light; then you are flying. So this path is an effortless path. The only effort that is needed is in learning to let go. Learn to drop your weight, drop your burden. You need a little bit of training. You need the bitter words of the Guru to let go because you are sticking to the burden. You are afraid of leaving it because you have assumed that it is me, or it is important for me, or you have assumed that it is true.

Mohan's question : Why is the vehicle of the body needed to know and pronounce that I am not the body? If it's needed, then why do we say so? Isn't doing so akin to using it and also demeaning it? Isn't the body a part of the whole truth? Whatever we are perceiving and experiencing as that?

Very good question. And I absolutely agree with Mohan here that the body is also me. Amazing, isn't it? After shouting from the rooftops that I am not the body, we come to this conclusion that the body is also me. But Mohan should remember that all bodies are me. Not only this one, which is nearest to your point of view, but all of them. Can we call it demeaning now? No, you see, just like I said, we go through a few steps in reaching the absolute, in reaching the non-dual, and the first step is knowing your essence. What is the meaning of essence? That which remains when you discard all that which can be discarded, which can be removed. So yes, the body can be removed; my essence will remain. You can remove all the bodies if you want. So it is not a contradiction. It is not a misunderstanding. What I am trying to do in step number one is I am trying to find my essence, and it comes out to be the experiencer, the atman, is my essence. And we don't stop there. When we examine that which is appearing, we embrace that as my non-essential part. Why non-essential? Because it changes. The water is the essence, and the waves are the non-essence, although they are water. You cannot remove the wave from the water or let us say the clay pot and the clay. You cannot remove the clay from the clay pot, but the shape of the clay also cannot be removed from the clay. Is it possible? Even if it is lying on the ground, there is a shape; it is an irregular shape, but it is there. So they are never separate; they cannot be separated.

The appearance or the illusion is an integral part of existence, but the essential part is the experiencer. Why do we need the body to pronounce truth? Because you don't have any other instrument. Can you imagine any other instrument to pronounce truth? You are stuck with this instrument only. Even if you can imagine something which is not physical, it is a non-physical body. And we know that this body which appears to be physical, is simply a pattern in memory. Nothing physical about it. So something is needed to express the truth of the experiencer. We have this body which is handy, isn't it? Use this vehicle to express what I am. What is the objection? There is nothing else. The body is an expression of this nothingness, of this emptiness. What is it doing? It is saying, I am emptiness. We don't need any more reason. It cannot happen in any other way. So we say it is necessary. This is happening due to necessity. You cannot have any other way of expressing or the other option is no expression at all.

You will see in the non-duality; the non-expression coexists with the expression. Emptiness does not express; it simply appears to express. So on the path of knowledge, we discard the body as non-essential, and then we accept all the bodies as illusions, as me. So we do not reject it. We preserve it because this is the only vehicle. So the body is a part of the whole; it is not the truth, it is an illusion. But that is how existence is expressing itself. It is expressed in the form of illusion. So we accept it. Yes, let's express it then.

Second question by Mohan. Is it true thoughts will never cease even for those who have attained? They just have skillfully learned to stay uninfluenced by them. In other words, thoughts continue even after we know?

Yes, obviously. Take the example of all these great gurus and masters. They kept writing; they kept documenting and they kept teaching. Can you write and teach without thinking? Is it even possible to make any sentences and rational structures in the mind or to say anything without thinking? When for the greatest of the gurus, the thought did not cease, we are tiny. He is saying those who have attained, attain what? Knowledge, isn't it? There is nothing else to attain. So yes. Is it wrong that there are thoughts? No. Absolutely a healthy state of mind, isn't it? Yes, there is a problem when the thoughts are causing trouble, thoughts are irrational or when they are causing suffering, when there is negativity or when there is ignorance. It is undesirable, but the thoughts themselves are not undesirable. Very useful thing. They will never cease. Why will they never cease? Because they never start.

Take the snake and rope; the snake never came in the rope, the rope never became a snake. So the snake will never leave now. Thoughts are the activity of the memory; they are an illusion; they will never go away. Why? They are not there; that which is not there will not go away, and that which is there and changing will also not go away. So these both dual aspects are eternally present. If they are silenced in one organism, they are existing in the infinity of organisms and because there is only non-duality, the thoughts are already there; there are infinite possibilities. One tiny part of existence was silenced, does it make any difference in the whole? No. It is like there is an infinite ocean of waves and a tiny part, say one feet by one feet part of the ocean says I am calm now, nothing will affect me. Then look at the whole ocean, infinite, that is me.

Cessation of thinking is simply an ignorant viewpoint. Have they skillfully learned to stay uninfluenced by them? No. You are the experiencer; you are the atman; you are the emptiness; you are never influenced by anything at all. The movie screen is not burned by the fire that is projected on it. When people are shooting bullets on the movie screen, the movie screen does not get holes in it. You are that screen; you are never influenced by anything. Who has learned to stay uninfluenced? Who is there? There is no doer; there is no person; there is no individual. So what has happened here? Nothing at all. Is it necessary to react only in a certain way to a certain thought? Is it written in some book that the gyani or the wise person must do only this and this? Nowhere. Masters tell us to be in a natural state. If there is a thought and there is a need for a reaction, okay, do it. Is it unnatural? No. Then why are you trying to stop them or why are you trying to be uninfluenced by them? Who is there to be influenced here? The experiencer is never influenced, and the mind is always reacting and changing in response to whatever is happening there. Everything is perfect as it is. The ignorance is here, which assumes that I am that which is influenced or I am that which stops. I am that which is silent. No, you are not that.

Graham is asking, is being vegetarian important for progress? In general, where does moral behaviour fit into P.O.K.?

That which causes harm of any kind is immoral according to the path of knowledge. When it is moral, when it is done for self-defense, for your own defense, then it is called ethical. That is universal. You will find this not only in the path of knowledge but in every path. Causing harm to the environment, to creatures, to people, and to this body, which you call my body, causing harm to my body or my mind or somebody else's mind is violence. Only non-violence is ethical.

Things or creatures that cause a loss of life, they harm life, including my life, they need to be killed. They need to be destroyed. So you need to kill the mosquitoes because otherwise, they will kill you, you see. So in this battle of survival, if it is absolutely necessary to be violent, we say it is ethical. If it is unnecessary, we say, well, we could have done that without violence. This is what is the opinion here on the path of knowledge, nothing to do with true and false. There's no truth in ethics. Everybody is free to decide their own ethics and then everybody will act according to their own ethical stand.

Even if you are totally non-violent, you will see that you are getting the fruits of your action. You will get the fruits of your action no matter what. So is it important for progress? If your guru thinks that this kind of food is stopping progress, then he can ask for giving up that kind of food and it is not only meat. The guru can ask to let go of even the vegetarian things, like in some paths, onions and garlic etc. are prohibited. They have their own methods to purify the mind and they have found out through experience that it is causing retardation in that person. Too much eating or too less eating or eating this thing or eating that thing is causing some kind of damage to the seeker. So it totally depends on the path. On the path of knowledge, our recommendation here is to stop eating that which causes retardation in intelligence. That is what I do actually. Anything that retards your intelligence, harmful for the person on the path of knowledge. Because this path is totally based on a very, very sharp intellect. We need a lot of intelligence and anything that destroys it, we say stay away from that thing.

For example alcohol, drugs or certain kinds of food, too much food causes a lack of intelligence. Too little food, abnormal growth, impure food - not good. If you are sick all the time, for some reason, when will you think, when will you read and listen to the satsang? There is food that causes a lack of attention, for example, a lot of coffee. A little bit of coffee will help you to focus, but as soon as you drink too much of it, you cannot attend to one thing. So we give up tea, we give up coffee, we give up alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and meat and whatever causes more violence, retardation of the intelligence, we stop doing these things. Now that does not mean that you cannot do it once in a while, you can. Once you get the knowledge, then who cares, but like he said, we should value the body, there is a lot of value in this body. Even after you get the knowledge, the body is useless now, but do you throw it away? No, we use this instrument to enlighten others, we offer it to the gurufield, we say that okay, my job is done, the vehicle is free now, use it, take somebody else to the ultimate place using this vehicle.

So we still take care of the body, but when it breaks down, we are not attached to the body, we let go of it. Does it mean that we should eat only boiled rice every day? No, eat tasty food, eat the spice, eat whatever you like, but not in extreme, taking care that this instrument is not getting damaged. Enjoy the food, we are here to eat. Food, sex, love, art, sciences, these are human desires that bring us back into human life, food is very important, enjoy your food. If you cook it yourself, best, if it is sattvic, which means it is purified and not toxic, eat it, no problem at all.

Strangely, humans are the wisest of all animals, but they have forgotten what to eat, all animals know what to eat, humans don't, probably because they have too much freedom in their food, they are omnivorous, but they are lost.

We should not eat the dead food, and the longest that lives is the vegetarian food, the potato is alive even after it is harvested but that cannot be said about the dead body of an animal, the animal was killed long, long ago, but your carrot is still alive, your tomato is still alive, even when it is in your mouth. Do not eat dead bodies. Humans are very much capable of eating meat, they can digest it, it makes a very beautiful body, it makes a very strong body. Vegetarian food is the same, we are capable of eating it, we need to eat it more, and it takes some time to digest it.

You need to check the evolution of human beings. What has happened is, they arose from omnivorous animals, monkey-like animals, mostly they were vegetarian, and ate fruits, seeds and all these things. What happened is that there was an ice age, and probably there were two or three ice ages while the humans were evolving, and as you know in the ice age, there is only ice, nothing else, so they started fishing, they had to shift to a non-vegetarian diet. It is not that they stopped eating vegetarian food, it became scarce, animals were easier to find and because they have high calorie, in the ice age you require that kind of food. So all our ancestors, they ate meat in the ice age, whenever there was a cold age, especially those who lived near the poles, they had to eat animals, but in the tropical areas, there was no need to eat animals, because they had plenty of food.

So you will find this is still going on, whenever there is scarcity, whenever there is famine or ice age, people shift to eating animals, it is an evolutionary mechanism in humans, not only humans, in monkeys also, monkeys are seen to hunt and kill when the food is not available, same about humans. The pictures shown in your history books are all wrong. What is shown there? The ancient man is always shown killing animals, that is not right, most of the time they were eating vegetarian food and probably milk also, but killing happened only when there was lack of food, nobody wants to kill, nobody wants to run after these very fast running animals, it is very difficult to kill something that runs at the speed of 100 kmph. Humans cannot run, they don't have the strength to kill a deer of 100 kgs, 200 kgs, so it was done only when there was no food.

We still have this ability to fall back into a non-vegetarian diet when the time is difficult, when there is nothing to eat, one must eat animals, if there is plenty of food, human food, good food, eat that, juicy food, tasty food, spicy food, yes. Do we know this? No, nobody knows this, it is all indoctrination. What are you eating? That which your parents told you to eat, you don't know the history, you don't know your own biological makeup. Animals know it, humans don't. Because of this ignorance they have about themselves, also there is some kind of stupidity that that food which is costly is best for me, and obviously the dead body of the animal costs a lot, then meat or rice or fruits are also very costly, but vegetables and all, they are cheap, so these people who have a lot of money, they have this belief that a rich person should eat costly food. So they kill a zebra, kill a python, and then pay thousands to eat that dead body. It is madness of some kind. This fish comes from the Mediterranean sea, a remote part of the world, it is unreachable, and it is going to cost a thousand dollars. A smelly thing on your plate, but yes, I will pay for it because I am rich, I am superior. This cannot be called ignorance, this can only be called a mental disease.

We should not eat something simply because it gives us a false superiority of some kind. Many people eat all those things, because there is a brand name of a very famous company on that food. People buy it and eat it, they are not eating to survive, they are eating to show off, that is what I call a mental disease, and it is there in everything you see. Why do you need a car that costs millions? You can travel in a simple and useful car, but no, they need to show off their mental disease to somebody. Otherwise nobody is going to worship them. Same way in the case of food, they need to show that they are rich, and to show that I am rich, I am going to eat any kind of shit, this is their mental disease. You need only simple food, you need wheat, rice, bread, butter, vegetables, the body is happy with it, it has the full capability to remain healthy, you will remain wise, you will remain intelligent, but what have people done to this body? They have abused this body.

Our unnatural eating habits are because of this disease of the ego to gain importance, to attract attention, and there is a lot of greed also. Sugar is a very good food, but if you consume it too much, it is poison. Nothing wrong in wine, but if you drink it whole day and whole night, well, the alcohol makes a human less than an animal, and what do people do, they are proud of being less than an animal, because they drink the costliest wine, whole day, whole night. I can only see it as a mental disease of some kind, it's not healthy. The body is unhealthy, that is certain, but why is their body unhealthy, because their minds are unhealthy. You go to this person and say, please drink water, pure water, that is our natural drink, and please eat the food that is good for the body, there is no famine, there is no ice age.

We have this fallback mechanism in us, it is very interesting because humans are capable of eating other humans. Cannibalism is found in some places, when even the animals are gone, humans are going to kill and eat their own kind. Mother nature is very cruel when it comes to survival, anyhow, let's not go there. When the time is good, when you have a lot of money and when there is a lot of food, which is the condition right now, people have a lot of money and there is a lot of food, so much food that people throw it away, it is not wise to fall back into the lower programs that we have inside us, killing and eating other animals or humans is a lower program. We should make use of our intelligence and make vegetarian food even richer than non-vegetarian food, there is a potential there, so that we can store it when there is winter or when there is nothing to eat. The mechanisms of mother nature are best, because wheat and rice and other kinds of grains do not rot. They can be eaten by insects but we have the intelligence to keep them for many years. Nothing is wrong in nature, nothing is wrong in the body, something is wrong in their intelligence, humans are very stupid.

Graham is asking, what is the role of exercise in good body postures in POK?

No, you don't need all these postures and all, they are needed in other paths, on the path of knowledge, eat healthy, walk, run, play sports, that's all. You must have seen that if you make your body bigger, your intelligence suffers. I am not going to go into that detail because it is totally unnecessary. You see, you don't need to be a genius, you need a little bit of common sense intelligence.

So intelligence says that no other animal needs postures to keep their body good. It is very difficult to find an old animal in a wheelchair, impossible. So they use two tricks: the first is very good food, natural food, they know what to eat, second, their lifestyle is already active, and the third thing is that they let go when it is time to die. They don't eat, their activity stops. Because of human stupidity, they are incapable of letting go when the time of the body is over, when the expiry date is near. They are incapable of leaving it, and that is also due to ignorance only.

What is indoctrination? That you must live even after the body is totally rotten. Why? So that you can watch TV or you can eat that kind of diet which the body is no longer capable of tolerating now. What causes this madness? Who knows? Everybody is suffering from this, but animals don't suffer from this. When they know their body is broken, the natural programs in the mind are triggered, and they find a quiet place where the predators are not there, and they simply sit there and die. No pain, no hospital bill, no suffering.

So you can see, food, death, sleep, marriage, whatever, these things are all unhealthy in human society. Human society is rotten, totally gone. Not only are they away from spirituality, they are away from naturality also. Unnatural life. And when there is a mountain of suffering on their head, they complain and they pronounce somebody else as the reason for their suffering. Somebody else is not doing good, the government is not good, people are not good, there is pollution, I don't have money, I am poor, you see, it is their own doing. Well, every other creature is enjoying, this most intelligent creature is only suffering.

Ignorance is the disease, knowledge is the cure. Where can you fix it? On the path of knowledge. Not possible without a guru. The guru tells you what the disease is and the guru tells you what the medicine is, very simple. Not ethical or unethical, what is natural, what is intelligent, what is beautiful, humans are supposed to do that. We don't know the head from the tail, how will we know what is ethical and unethical?

Yes, when the time is difficult, when there is no food, kill animals, eat them, kill other people, this is also natural. So an intelligent person dislikes this kind of talk, but a spiritual person knows what I am talking about. An ignorant person is going to find it very insulting, that's why never advise, never tell them what to do, what to eat, what is ethical, what is intelligent. Never do that. I have seen that the more you lecture them, the more you try to fix them, the more stubborn they become. It is like that bulletproof vest, when the bullet is hitting that kind of cloth, it becomes really stiff, like metal. Otherwise, you can bend it slowly. When you hit them with the bullet of knowledge, people resist, the bullets cannot penetrate them, they become like cement. And when you use your kindness and love, be gentle, at least some of them are going to improve. That's what I have seen. The old generation will never improve, they are already indoctrinated, but the younger generation have a little bit of potential, they are not completely rotten.

Sanjay is asking, is it wise to stop the lifelong medications for terminal diseases and allow death to happen naturally?

We discussed this last time, euthanasia, I don't need to repeat it. When people ask me, what is the best death or what is a wishful death, and the answer is, when death comes, let go, that is the best death.

See, it's simple. We don't need a lot of philosophy for this, we don't need too much intelligence to decide. When death is here, go with her, anything else is madness. How to die with full control? Yes, let go of your control when death takes control. We can do it because we know the reality of death. It is an illusion, it's simply another illusory event in eternal life. Life is eternal, death is an event, and it is illusory. It is a change of a dream, like changing your clothes. So is it good, is it bad? It is what it is, let it happen then. It is like asking, "I am very tired, sleep is coming, is it okay to sleep?" Go to sleep now, is it okay to give up all my work and go to sleep? Yes, go to sleep. Same way, death is knocking - “No, no, no, I am busy taking the medicines”. Probably you can manage with medicines, but if the body breaks down completely, even the doctor says that you have only these many days left, even with medicines, even after surgery, then here we should not think too much, the answer is obvious, change your clothes, they are dirty. Why are people so afraid? Ignorance, they don't even know life, how will they know death? They don't know what is alive which stays and what is dead. What always changes forms, it's made out of dirt and goes in the dirt. That which is alive never changes, has no form, and it is eternal.

Everything is solved now, what are you trying to do? You have forgotten that which is alive, and you are trying to keep the dead things alive. Not only do you think they are alive, you are trying to keep them alive. How stupid is that? The body is a pile of dirt, you are trying to keep it alive, and you are eternal life yourself, and you don't know what you are. It's a big problem, the immensity of ignorance. The life form does not know what life is.

Monika is saying, getting over an unfulfilled desire is very difficult. I recently lost a 5-month pregnancy due to a disorder that cannot be healed. I am so much down physically and mentally.

I am very sorry to hear that, and I am not saying that you should get over it. No, everything happens for a reason. Learn from it, learn as much as you can, and then do not hold on to it. Sometimes this suffering is necessary, so experience this suffering and then you should let go of it. People say you always tell me that I am the bliss, but I am not the bliss. Why are you so cruel? And I say, look, you are bliss, and you are suffering. You are the happiness, and you are the sadness.

What has happened is you are attached to the suffering. Check your other aspects. You must have seen these people, right? I am always in bliss, I never suffer. Actually, the spiritual seeker suffers more than an ordinary ignorant person. A saint not only suffers their own sufferings, a saint suffers when somebody else is suffering. There is no difference between somebody who has progressed and somebody who is a newcomer on the spiritual path. As you progress, your sensitivity to suffering is going to increase, not decrease. Please note it down somewhere. This is very important. Why do you come on the spiritual path? To get rid of your suffering. What is going to happen? You are going to become more and more sensitive to it. You drive in the city like mad, all the noise, all the pollution, and the smoke, and all kinds of people. You are enjoying your life like hell. That's why you live in the city. You enjoy it there. But once you become a seeker, once you have tasted the nectar of bliss, the tiniest noise is going to upset you.

So it is the reverse here. You are not going to become a rock when you arrive on the spiritual path. Not only the path of knowledge, any path, same story. You will become ultra-sensitive, like a hair trigger. An ignorant person has a very thick skin. You can insult him, you can beat him up, he does all kinds of immoral things, and he is happy. He is happy in that condition. He is actually insensitive, not happy. A seeker, a person with a lot of knowledge, cannot tolerate this. That's why they go away from the city. That's why they go away from society. They cannot talk to people now. He was talking about non-vegetarian food. It is sensitivity only. Cannot see a dead body on the plate dripping with blood. Cannot digest that.

So my advice to Monika is, you will be sensitive. Spirituality is not magic that will make you immune to all suffering. It will only tell you that this suffering is an illusion. There is nobody who can shield themselves from suffering. It's only seen as part of existence. There is no immunity from suffering in spirituality. There is acceptance of suffering. We accept it as a part of existence. Okay, this is going to happen. Okay, the tragedies are going to happen. Okay, there will be death and disease and the disorders of the body. Fully knowing it is an illusion, we accept it. It does not mean that we suffer it knowingly. Okay, bring on the suffering, I am ready. No, if it is happening or if it has already happened, we do not add to it by resisting it.

The suffering has already happened. There is pain in the body, there is a disease in the body, but the mind cooks a mountain of suffering as a reaction to it. That can be given up. The reaction to suffering, which simply causes more of it, can be dropped. That can be dropped by being in awareness. That yes, existence means duality. There will be duality, apparent or real or whatever it is. It's meaningless now. If you need to experience it, it is real. For this person, for this ego, it is real. It does not understand spirituality or philosophy or anything. The vibrations and nervous system and the ego have no concern with all these things. It only knows that I am suffering. So you can stop that background noise from creating more suffering. That is possible. Bring in some peace and positivity. That can be done. Yes, that is always the most difficult answer. You see, in spirituality, we need to tell the person who is suffering that you are the bliss. That is very difficult.

Graham has a question. I think I know and believe that all is existence and I am it, but my moment-to-moment experience and reactions seem just as petty and selfish as everyone else. Do I really not know, or is it that impurities are blocking realization from manifesting? Either way, how will this change?

Well, you are talking about the changes that happen in the creature, and it takes some time. What can we do? Whatever behavior patterns are going on right now, they are happening due to the past impressions, or we can say it is the old memory that is causing the current behavior. So install new patterns. How to do that? Be in awareness. Use of intelligence and awareness, and then new experiences arrive and impress on the memory, and then most of the actions, they happen from these new patterns and impressions in the memory.

As you can see, it is not instantaneous. It takes some time. What can be done today is you drop that which is totally unnecessary for your life, for your happiness, and for the well-being of your relatives and friends. That can be stopped. The new will take some time to install, but the old can be dropped right now. It is possible only by being in awareness. It is not forcing a behavior change. It is seeing that this kind of behavior is not needed, and we leave it. We do something else. So how to use the knowledge? This is the only way. You will need to do that which is practical. You will need to become angry with those who are troubling you. You will need to defend yourself, and you will need all those functions or the functioning of life. But it should be done in total awareness, total detachment also.

We call it forgiving. If there is an impurity that does not go away, don't worry. It is an illusion. If it is not especially harmful to you or somebody else, not a problem. Let's say you have a habit of listening to loud music, any music, but you want it loud. It is not so violent. People will get irritated by you. You can close your room and listen to it. I cannot let go of listening to loud music - Don't worry about it. It is okay. So if it is especially harmful, then you should drop it today. But if it is tiny, enjoy it.

Overnight changes are possible but we should not expect miracles on the path of knowledge. We are capable of getting the knowledge, it is a miracle. Now naturally and gradually let that change which needs to change.

Session 145

When you are consciously looking at the loops that your life is getting into and the cycles that are repeating, and then you try to get out of it, and then you are observing, you are noticing what things you have done. I mean things that you could have done better or in terms of something that may give you a better result later. So even though you understand the cycles, even though you do the right things, even though you know that it's right for you in the longer term, you are going to have a better feel out of it, but being in that movement, if there's a bit of the feel where you know that is troubling you is something that your body, that your mind is not accepting, and there could be a more comfortable way to do it. So yeah, so we don't do, I mean, we usually, we tend to do what's more comfortable and not what's more of a conscious selection. So being aware of both the possibilities, no matter what you do, the right thing or the less right thing, you always feel stuck there. So what is that kind of, what is that process? Why does it happen?

Very good question. We often tend to be lazy. Instead of doing that, which is most required, we do that, which is minimal. Instead of cleaning the house, we simply move the garbage under the carpet most of the time in our lives. So why is that? Here are natural processes in the mind that are designed to conserve energy. This is the human or animal tendency that we are not built to work too much, more than needed. This is how it is. Mother nature favors efficiency, not hard work. So you will always find this tendency in everybody that they do not do the whole job at one time. They do not do that, which is needed to complete that work or to take that whole step. They do the minimal and that is because every layer in the mind is trying to conserve energy. It does not want to do something which is absolutely not urgent. This is the cause for not doing your best, just doing the patchwork. Everybody suffers from this thing.

What is the solution? The solution is to become aware that this is happening and to take baby steps towards doing that which is most needed to handle that situation, solve that problem or to complete, to achieve, to reach your goal, whatever it is. It may not happen in one day, it may not happen in two days or three days, but you can take one step at a time, fully knowing that there is a resistance to work hard. Knowing this, you simply start somewhere, then take the next step. Slowly you will build up the momentum to do the whole thing properly and it must be done beautifully. It can take some time, but that is most satisfactory. So hopefully that was your question and hopefully my answer was useful.

Yeah, part of it, but one more thing. So if I try to resonate with nature, so nature takes, since you said, mother nature taught us to do things with the minimal actions, but like nature itself built over millions of years and its progress seems to be unmeasurable. So if nature is teaching us and we are trying to synchronize with nature and adapt its characteristics into our life. So instead of choosing the smallest path to do it quickly, shouldn't our body and mind already be aligned in such a way to perform things that take longer and shouldn't we already be having this ability to bear with the time it's taking and not get stressed about not seeing the results?

You're talking about long-term planning, which very few people do. They keep thinking about it, but they do not plan it. There is a difference between thinking and planning. The planning must be broken down into manageable steps, and you can observe mother nature, nature does everything incrementally. It does not do everything suddenly, incremental evolution is the way. Mother nature tries many possibilities at the same time, and whatever is successful, that is given more attention. If you prefer that kind of planning, then break down your goal into small steps and try many things, complete the first step, try a few things, see what works. So that is the natural way, and there is an artificial way that you imagine the whole process exactly and precisely and then you hope to achieve it in a very mechanical way that I'll do this and only this, nothing else. And that usually fails, and that is why people don't do it in such a mechanical way. If there is something to be done, they simply go out of their house first, they say let's try, let's reach that place, and then we'll see what happens and the next step. So that is more like mother nature, and we are built to act like that, we don't plan our whole life in one day and then we take steps to walk on that plan, we never do this. We take things as they come, that is the most natural way. Keep your goal in your mind, whether you are proceeding to your goal or not and then do what is necessary at this time. This is the formula for success.

I am just talking about myself personally here. So I don't want to be successful or I don't have a thought about being successful, I don't have a goal. What all I have is I take 200 actions a day. So my thing is to just take action about things and not have a goal actually because every time I set a goal, it turns out to be a stupid decision to set up a goal for myself personally. And since I stopped setting up goals and just doing things, it turned out to be more self-development but the results are not there, which I am not actually much concerned about. What I am concerned about is if I am taking actions, where are these actions going, I mean where is it being consumed, if I am doing something better for the sustainability, for anything that any kind of betterment I am doing towards nature, so where is it going and if it can be measured. Two or three points there, I have no goal but it seems that I am going somewhere but where am I going and how to measure my progress.

The goal is decided for you, it is happiness and freedom. How to achieve this goal? Do that which you love most and do that which is most necessary, that is how we achieve this goal. And how do we measure the progress on this towards the goal? The more you progress, the more peaceful you will be, the less agitated and anxious you will be, the more blissful you will be, probably you will not be dancing and jumping with joy, there is no such thing, it is simply egoic action, the real progress is measured by the amount of peace and bliss, carelessness that you develop as you progress.

And about this thing that I am not doing anything but I keep thinking that I must do something, that is just some mental activity, if you are happy not doing anything, just rest, be peaceful, if something comes up which must be done, which is necessary, the action will happen and it must happen in total awareness, only intelligent actions, minimal actions must be done, nothing more needs to be done, if you are on your path, you will see that your joy and your bliss is increasing, if you are not on the correct path, you will see that your anxiety and your unhappiness will increase, you will go in depression, so choosing a path is a must and this is how we decide which is my path, the path of my heart is where I get most happiness and most freedom, so think about it for some days and then come back in satsang and let me know.

So one more thing, who decides the necessity? Your necessity could be something else and my necessity could be something else. I might have no necessity for something which another person may feel as necessary for this person to do, so is it necessary to define them?

It is very easy, that which is necessary cannot be avoided, simple formula. And it will be different for different people, yes, but we are not concerned with people, we are mostly concerned with our own life. That which cannot be avoided is necessary, it will happen no matter what, we cannot make a list of necessary things and then we start doing it, that is not possible, whatever comes and if it cannot be avoided, that is necessary. What if we manipulate it? For example eating is something that is necessary, to be able to function properly, but I suddenly stop eating, I am just consuming water. I manipulated the necessity of it, so what is the result? Suffering.

It is very easy to see that if you do not do that which is necessary, suffering happens and that which is necessary can be postponed a little bit, but cannot be avoided, if you could postpone it for a long time for whole of your life, then it is not necessary and if you cannot postpone it for more than a certain time, then it is a necessity for this life. Life has already decided what is necessary, now recognize it and do it, it is very simple.

Graham's question, in awareness practice, we have background awareness of the knowledge that I am experiencer, I believe I feel a shift and positive effect from this, but it is not consistent, sometimes it is a profound shift, sometimes it is just another thought, that has no effect, that depends on the effort I apply, but it is discussed in P.O.K as effortless, am I doing something incorrectly, did I not touch the hot pan and do I not have the knowledge of me being the experiencer?

You are doing the practices since two or three days only, so do not expect miracles here, it won't happen in one day because you are sleeping since many years, many lifetimes actually, so the awareness will not magically come there. Yes it comes and goes, yes it is not consistent, it is natural. Why will it become consistent, as soon as you pass the exam? Will it magically become consistent? Impossible, continue the practice, it is a lifelong practice.

Effort is okay in the beginning, if you think the effort is doing something, yes do the effort, no problem at all. How much time and effort does it take to remember that I am the experiencer and everything else is the illusion? If you think that is the effort, then do it, it is not an effort actually. It is easier than breathing actually. Breathing takes effort, it takes muscles to breathe, you push the air in and out, it is a lot of work, becoming aware is like floating of a feather, it is so effortless, so if you think that is the effort, yes go ahead and do it.

Varun is asking, what is meant by the experiencer being right here and right now? Does "right here" mean the place where we are seeing from?

No, there is no place from where we are seeing. Right here right now simply means the present. There is presence, nothing more can be said. As you must be knowing that the more complex something is, you need a bigger description of it. The simpler something is, you don't need too many words for that. So, as an answer to the question, where can I find the experiencer, we say right here right now, which means the experiencer is simply presence. There is no here and now also. Don't try to find it in an experience which is situated somewhere in some time and some place.

There are people like this actually. Let me go to the Himalayas and sit there for 20 years so that I can find who I am. So what are they trying to do? They are converting the knowledge of the self into a knowledge of the experience. They are still trying to find it in some kind of experience, exotic experience, occult experience, and they assume that it will happen one day in the future if I get a proper guru. Probably they are right about the guru, but if it does not happen right now, right here, it will never happen. Self-realization is right here right now. The guru points it out, and it happens. Nothing else needs to be done.

So this sentence is spoken when people are lost on their way to the experiencer. They are still going out there to find it. Why is that? Because this is our conditioning that whenever we want answers we go on a search outside somewhere. I heard that I will find this knowledge in this place. I heard that it will happen only when I do fasting for 20 days and pray to this deity and so on. This is our conditioning. Or it will happen only when I go to India and meet an Indian guru. This is the conditioning of the people of other countries. Totally useless.

You are here and now, and the knowledge of you is also here and now. Do not try to find it in an experience. Find it within you. You need to turn 180 degrees here. So that's why worldly intelligence is of no use if you want self-realization. Because worldly intelligence is focused on the outside, the world, obviously. The world is outside we say, not here. Here there is nothing. That person says, "There must be something out there," and they go and search for exotic experiences, they take drugs, and they don't know what to do.

I am not an experience. Stop looking for it in places. It will never happen in the future. It is timeless. The past is a memory, the future is imagination, projection of the memory. Without memory, there is no time. So when will it happen? When will that knowledge arrive? Right now, you are in darkness, you are in ignorance. So time is passing for you. As soon as you learn about the experiencer, the time stops. Things are passing now, events are passing, not the time, not you. You are purely stationary. Now where do you want to go? When will it happen? Even from the point of view of stopping time, the realization is - the time was never there. It is not that it stopped now, it was always timeless. I am the experiencer since the beginning and there is no beginning. And I will be the experiencer till the end. There is no end. So it's all NOW. It's all presence. Just see it. Just look. It is the only truth.

We are accustomed to illusion. That is what we are familiar with. And that is where we try to find it. We are accustomed to searching for answers in our experience all the time. That is the only place we know. Thanks to Neti Neti, progressive elimination brings us back. It is a stepping back. You must have seen this, step back from all the objects. That is the first step. In one sweep, we ignore the whole world, the whole universe actually, the manifestation. Then you simply jump to the body. Drop the body also. Jump in layers of the mind. Drop them one by one. It is a stepping back. Because you cannot turn 180 degrees within you. It is not possible. So go backward. It is like coming home. The journey is not to go somewhere. The journey is returning home. All spiritual journeys are like this. We don't find anything. We lose everything.

Benjamin is saying, looking outward, we have to not, we have to say not this, not this, since it's all transient. Looking inwards there is only emptiness. When this illusion of duality of inside and outside falls, bliss and peace will indicate. Before it is like claiming to be the doer, which will produce consequences, good or bad. If the non-existence of a doer is verified, maya will flatter and serve.

Why is this happening, that illusion comes back with full force when you try to avoid it? It's because there is a defense mechanism in all the layers of memory. When they are ignored they go into a defense mode that probably my existence is over. So they bring out their trump card, "Okay, let me try this, probably this creature will be attracted back into the world and my survival will be ensured." Who is doing it? Mind. It can produce extraordinary experiences just to lure the creature back into the illusion.

We are talking about after knowledge, not before knowledge. Before knowledge, it can do the same thing; it produces extraordinary experiences, delusions, imaginations, doubts, and simply to not enter the path because probably there is knowledge there. It recognizes that my days are numbered now. The ego mostly does that. All the layers, they kind of plan this revenge, that okay, so our reality was seen, which is unreality actually, our truth was bared, which is false actually, so let's come back with full force, let's attack. "I want to come back." This is built in all the layers of memory, that's why they are so good at survival. They come back with double force, and it produces an experience that cannot be explained.

When you are not on the path, and the guru is trying to bring you on the path, the mind will produce a resistance. The person does not know that because obviously he is not a seeker yet, so totally on the mercy of this very complex mechanism called resistances and hurdles. That can also produce extraordinary experiences which seem to bend the illusion. It even bends the laws sometimes. Sometimes it is very sad and violent; somebody will die in your house, so that the program is postponed. You are doing the path of knowledge program; the resistance is so much that it will create events. You will develop a lack of trust for the guru; somebody will come and tell you that look, this path of knowledge is useless garbage, and you will believe it without thinking. Then one or two years pass; it postpones it. It has no power to stop your progress, but it can delay the progress. All this circus happens, but once you have crossed the barrier, you get the knowledge. But again it will cause all the darkness.

You are trying to be aware; suddenly you will be attacked by all kinds of desires. "I want this food. I want this woman. No, I don't want this one; I want that one. I want a big car now, a big house." “What is the use of dying without a big house?” So it produces all these effects. Everybody must have heard the stories of great rishis, great masters; they are doing their practice, meditation, whatever, and suddenly these beautiful women appear from heaven; they start dancing in front of them. Obviously these are stories; they are not truths. But what is the lesson in the story? What are they trying to tell?

Similarly, the story of Gautam Buddha, when all these things appeared in front of him, but he sat there below the Bodhi tree without moving. Finally, the demon himself appeared and offered gifts and all, but he was not moved. Nothing could move him. This is a story, but the message is very clear that it will happen; you need to be ready for it. So yes, Maya will run after you. Enjoy.

Ram is asking, could you review how actions arise?

There is this ocean of possibilities, and we say that these possibilities are manifested as vibrations. The potentials are in the form of memories, which are made up of vibrations. And since there is energy in the vibration it keeps producing some or the other kind of activity. Now, what actions are favored? That which assists in self-preservation. If you recall, I had listed a few processes in the memory: replication, self-assembly, self-organization, the constructive process, and the destructive process, and so on. When these things happen out of necessity, they are favored because the more they are favored, the more self-organization happens, the more complex it becomes. So, why is one action favored and why it becomes strong, and the other actions simply disappear? They are not important, they are not seen, they are not even manifested sometimes, the reason is this, and this game is called survival, the game of creation, self-organization, and maintenance, and then destruction and recycling. Nothing is destroyed actually; it is recycled back. The same potential appears in another form somewhere.

So, that gives rise to a specific set of actions that helps in survival. That's all an action is, an action is a movement that produces optimal survival. We are incapable of doing anything else except survival. Humans or any creature, any kind of structure in the memory can do only this. That's why we say it is bound in actions, it is bound in the laws that form automatically as a result of self-organization. These are called the laws of the mind, laws of the memory, and one important law is the law of actions, the karmic law because action is at the root of everything. Actions arise out of memory, and out of actions, experiences are generated, and they are again stored back in the memory. So, it is a loop, action and consequence, consequence and action. It is very easy to get trapped in this loop. This is what I call the attractor. Like the water flows into channels, it doesn't matter where you throw the water; it flows down only in a channel. In the same way, the mind flows in a loop which is already there. So, we are all trapped in these action-consequence loops, that is called the cycle of births and deaths. Only knowledge can bring you out of it. We are out, now there are simply more possibilities. You explore more possibilities, but it will never stop. The laws cannot be broken; you can rise above them, but they continue to operate.

Pandurang is saying, is there a concept of distance and space for causal bodies when they have not acquired any body? How are things separated on a non-physical level?

Very good question. No, the causal body is independent of space and time. Not only is there no space for the causal body, there is no time either. Time appears as soon as there is something to experience. The causal is purely latent, a seed body, so it remains timeless. However, it is changing. It is changing, so there can be a slight concept of time there, but we don't know. We cannot even imagine what it will be. Who will be there to know the time? No one, just some processes running there. Because we cannot think of anything without time, it's pointless.

How are things separated on a non-physical level? They are not separated. How do we recognize one thing from another? That is manifested, and the mind draws a boundary between two experiences. The mind separates them by ignoring one and paying attention to the other. How do you separate the objects from the background? By ignoring the background.

Have you seen the posters of the movie Batman? There are some very good posters there. You will see buildings and Batman standing there. But if you pay close attention to the sky, you will see that the sky is in the form of a bat. This is called negative space in painting. The artist understands that the negative space or the background is as important as the foreground. Because the mind uses the background to make the foreground pop out. The artist knows how to trick the mind into believing that there is an object where we normally see space. So the sky is formed in the shape of a bat. Normally, you won't see it. You will see buildings and some other details there. When somebody tells you, "Look, there is a bat in the picture," then your mind starts searching for it, and you see a huge bat in the background. It is nothing but the sky only. So how does it create separation? The idea of space, the illusion of space, is created from nothing but information, selectively isolating the information. Causal body, does it need to do that? No. So there is no space there.

Akash is saying, The masters obey the causation of the higher planes, but they rule on their own plane. Help me understand this.

Illusion is like an onion. There is a law of the layers. The higher layer controls and knows the lower layers, but the lower layers cannot control and know a layer higher than it. For example, our thoughts and emotions control the body, but there is nothing in the body that actually knows the thoughts and emotions. Similarly, the intellect controls the emotions, but the emotions do not control the intellect. Similarly, awareness controls everything below it. It is the highest layer here.

Masters use this law of the layers. In Hermetic philosophy, they are called planes. It totally depends on where your attention is situated, whether it's on the higher layers or the lower layers. The more evolved you are, the higher will be your point of focus or attention. When you are involved in your survival, your attention is mostly on the lower layer, emotions, and feelings. But when you have progressed a little bit, your attention is now more on the higher layers.

So, this is how the masters progress. They can rule up to the layer they have gained command of, but they cannot control anything that is higher than them, higher than the layers they command. And so they obey those. There is no other way. This is how evolution happens in the mental layers. What are we trying to do? By doing the awareness practice, we are trying to reach the highest level as quickly as possible. Then the lower is managed automatically, which is the experience of everybody who is doing the awareness practice.

Ishaan is saying, People think that it is tough to find a guru, but ask a guru, and he will tell you how difficult it is to find a seeker. Actually, it is a fortunate place to be when you can do guru shopping.

Yes, there are too many gurus, and there are actually many seekers, but it is difficult to find a worthy seeker. Usually, seekers have no clue what they are after, what they want, and how to do the practice. And I say write here, and they do the opposite, they go to the last lesson and start writing there. “That's what I like, Guruji most”. “Okay, but then I am not your guru then. You are not following me.” So worthy seekers, difficult to find. If I find a worthy seeker, I go to his place and give him the knowledge, I go to his house, or usually, I call that person here. So our program is actually a filter to find worthy seekers. All this knowledge is public, isn't it? I am not giving you anything new; it is thousands of years old. It is public knowledge. I want to filter out those who are worthy, and then they are taken to the height. Actually, this is the only program in the universe which has the potential to take the seeker higher than the guru because we hand you over to the gurufield. Nowhere else has this happened.

Pandurang is saying, That was my next question. If we are capable of thinking of the dimension, will it be accurate to say as soon as this body is lost, everything becomes one?

No, everything is already one, Pandurang. Nothing becomes one because it never became two, never became ten. Where is your awareness today?

Session 146

Discussion on a test follows.

The first question was, how is knowledge just refined ignorance?

Knowledge is a tool. What does it do? It simply removes ignorance, goes on cutting down the ignorance till we are left with only the essential and the essential is simply being what you are, be that which you are. So simple. Where is the ignorance? Gone. Where is the knowledge? Throw away the tool. Do you need the tool after that? So knowledge is not an accumulation, knowledge is refinement. What do we refine? Ignorance. And even after knowing what we are, a lot of ignorance will be left, but it is seen in the light of knowledge that I don't need to know all these things, they are illusions. So just refinement of ignorance and then accepting what we don't know. This human cannot know, this puppet cannot know.

Number two, show that all the means of knowledge reduce to direct experience.

It is very easy to show it. So what are the means traditionally? The experience obviously, logic, the books, the guru and non-availability and absence. Absence is an experience of some kind. These things are absent. Non-availability - same thing. The words of the guru, they are his experience only. If the guru is not talking from his experience, not a guru. Then the books are written accounts of experiences of somebody. If they are writing imaginary things in the book, that is a story book. It does not give us knowledge, they are records of experiences. Logic is based on experience. Where there is fire, there is smoke. We always give this one example because it is a sufficient example. How do we know that? Simply by experience. All our logic is sound logic, no mathematical calculations. We see and we say, that's all. So ultimately every means of knowledge boils down to direct experience only and if you drop all other means, go for the direct experience, you get the knowledge. Very simple. Other means have their own problems, direct experience has no problem. Combine it with the logic. There your dropping of ignorance happens. That is what we call knowledge.

What are the best criteria for relative truth?

There are criteria for relative truth also. The criteria for absolute truth is - unchanging is the truth.

What about relative truth? That is day to day truth, I don't have the whole list right now but repeatability, reliability, objectivity etc. They are also useful. Your mother told you that this is true.

Is it true? No. Even in the relative sense it is not true. Or your TV tells you that this product is good. Is it true? No. So in the world also we need to use some specific criteria so that the life goes on effortlessly,

peacefully, happily and we need to find reliable criteria for that. All your relations bring nothing but happiness. Is it true? Never. So find out something which can make your life more peaceful, more comfortable. That is possible by employing good criteria for relative truth also. Knowing the absolute is very easy, the life is difficult, isn't it?

What are the differences between a person and the experiencer?

Person is only a thought. Experiencer is the whole existence. What else do you need to differentiate? What else do you need? Everything that we say, there can be long list of things, it's totally useless, isn't

It? The person comes and goes. The person is a changing entity. Experiencer is eternal and unchanging. Person is born with the body. Experiencer is never born. So on. Everybody knows these things.

Do we necessarily need a body to know what we actually are?

This person needs to know, not the experiencer. So if the person needs to know, there needs to be a person and for that there needs to be a body. Yes, we need a body to know what we actually are. We don't need a body to be what we actually are. Can you see the tiny difference in these two sentences? Knowledge of what I am requires a body. Being what I am does not require a body. I am that what I am without a body also or with whatever bodies are there. It's all an illusion. But an intellect is needed to store the knowledge, to analyze the knowledge, to separate the ignorance from the knowledge, what I am, what I am not, what is the essence, what is not essence. For that we need a working layer of the mind and to hold that thing we need a structure. Necessarily, there will be an area surrounding that structure which is called the body, which limits the structure. Body is a limit on the memory, that's all it is. It is a structure which holds the memory, a container. And it has the senses and it can interface with the world which is nothing but another memory only, part of the memories, I mean parts of the memory. So sense organs are needed to even realize that there can be an experience even though it is an illusion. We need the illusion to reflect what we are just like the mirror needs another mirror to reflect what it is. Same way, the Brahman reflects himself in himself and this instrument of reflection is the body. But you don't need the body to be what you are. You don't have a body also and it is not yours also.

How to find out the essential nature of objects?

Drop all that which can be removed.

What is the third thing in existence besides the experience and the experience?

Nothing at all. And these two things are not present separately, they don't have a separate existence. They are one. Ways of looking at the one.

Are the layers of the memory purely imaginary? What is their evidence?

They are not imaginary but they are theoretical. There is a difference between imagination and theory because theory is based on observation. Imagination can be anything. So what are we observing? Body is one layer. Now the sensory system, one layer, there is a sensory system, there is brain and nervous system. Then you see there are emotions and feelings, yes, there is another layer, thoughts and whatever awareness and so on, causal body. The greater memory - you can see a world around you, that is the greater memory. You can see other people, they are greater memory only. So it is experiential, evidence is there.

And what is evidence? Direct experience and logic, that's all is the evidence. We don't need imagination. So the layers are functional actually, they are not really like a building, one top of the other. We do not see them like this, we see them as functions. The memory is never seen, only the functions are seen. We get different experience and that's why we conclude that there are separate strata

in the memory. There are levels of organization in the memory. Same way, you can look at a program running on your PC and you can tell that there is a structure behind the program, there is a code behind it, which is very well organized. Although you will never see the code, you will never see what is executing the pulses of electricity and all, nothing will be seen, but you can very well tell that it is like this. So that is the evidence - experience and logic.

Layers interpenetrate, it is very natural with anything which is naturally produced, there is never a clear line between anything. Mother nature is like an artist, not like a carpenter.

When everything is impermanent, why do we cling to life and body or worldly things?

The reason is ignorance. We cling to life and body, thinking that it is me, this is ignorance.

Once you get knowledge, what is your duty in this world?

From the point of view of the person here, the imaginary individual, what is the duty

of this individual? Once successfully gotten into the depth of knowledge, when they have achieved that which is ultimate, when their whole life is now solved. Do your best. Do whatever you love, like I said. If you love this job, do it. It is an immense pleasure, actually, great satisfaction. And still, I won't call it a duty. The duty is taken, it's not given. On the path of knowledge, you don't get anything, any duty. Everybody must have realized this by now. I don't give you anything to do. In fact, if I find that somebody is doing something that irritates me, don't do anything. Just be what you are and let that which must happen, happen. The actions must be spontaneous, should arise from your heart. Not because somebody told you, it is your duty. On the path of knowledge, nobody tells anybody anything. We all have the intelligence to know what is needed. It is not like other paths where things are forced on people. There are recommendations. Recommendations are also up to the point till the Guru sees that the knowledge has happened and the Guru sees that stability and maturity in the knowledge has been attained. And there are suggestions, recommendations and instructions, that's all.

Once you get the knowledge, there is nothing to do. Take on a duty if you want and never impose that on others. This is the freedom here, which is not present in any other path. There are some paths which are close to the path of knowledge like the Kundalini path. There also the person is left free to fulfill his desires. They don't need to do anything, they don't need to worship anything. There are some duties in the tantric paths, where you should not abuse, you should not misuse the knowledge, you should not cause harm and so on, because there is a potential there to cause harm, the duty has been imposed, but other paths are totally fake. Wherever you find an imposed do's and don'ts, these paths are simply a way to govern people, a way to control people, that's all. The proper way is to educate the person and let the person do what they want from their knowledge, from their education. Education on the path of knowledge is knowledge only.

That's why we have kept step number 7, which is about spreading the knowledge, as optional, but the Guru has a little bit of expectation that the very talented people who are there in the program will do something, that is the expectation, but it is never enforced.

Varun is asking, can you give an example of verification of a lesson?

It is very easy, let us take the chapter, the lesson - basic analysis of existence. What do I tell in the lesson? It is non-local, non-temporal, non-causal, non-this, non-that. Now how are you going to verify it? Actually the verification is already in the lesson. Now meditate on it, contemplate. He said that the existence cannot have a location, because its definition is whole, so the locations are in the whole, and you try to experience it yourself. Can you find a place where you can find a thing called existence? No, only things, objects can have places. So where is it located? You will never find it. Experientially, I cannot find any location of the whole existence, Brahman. Now use logic. If it is found in a location, then the whole location will be actually existence. The location and the thing that you found in the location will be same existence, because existence is defined like this - it is everything. So it is impossible for the existence to be found in a location, and that is the definition of non-locality.

Same way, time. You will see that it was always there, it will always be there. The bodies come and go, and other things come and go, but the whole remains. So this is the experience of it. In terms of logic, if it started at some point, if it is in time, that means the time pre-exists the existence, and then that in which the time exists will be the real existence. That which is imagined in time is actually some event, not the existence.

Whatever points are made in that lesson, go on checking it with your experience and go on applying the logic on it. And once you have done it for one or two points, then the logic says everything else is correct. That is my logic. The Guru has said ten points and I have verified three or four of them, the rest of them are correct. If I take this shortcut, it's called intuition, isn't it? But those who don't like this kind of shortcut can actually verify each and every sentence. Sometimes, the sentences, because of the limitation of the language, can be taken out of context and then the verification fails. So you can come and ask in the Satsang that why did you say this when in the other chapter you said that. The context must be different there.

There is always an absolute and relative sense and there is always a context of the state of the mind also. In one state something is true and in other states something else is true. So you need to take all this into account and verify it. And even if you cannot verify one or three small things, which cannot be directly experienced or things like that, don't worry, because probably that's not important. That which is important, is it verified or not? Is it true or not? Yes, proceed. Don't waste your time.

The practical person takes whatever is necessary, leaves the non-essential. I'm not saying there are non-essential things in our program, but sometimes depending on the intelligence of the person, it may not be possible to verify everything. And so we take it on faith that today I cannot know it, probably someday I'll know it. And even if I don't know it, that which was necessary is known, that which was essential is known. You are getting a million. Now are you going to worry about one or two rupees, the loose change, leave it. You are already a millionaire. So this is the example of verification, plus I gave you the practical hint here. Common sense also should be used.

Andy is saying, I have experienced that in the state of experiencing, the awareness disappears. Is that what is expected to happen? Should one then be in the state of being or in the state of awareness?

Awareness is the knowledge that I am the experiencer. And experiencing is a merging of the experiencer and the experience. So where is the knowledge? Gone. There is no need for knowledge here. It is dropped. Because awareness is a mental activity only. Knowledge is a mental activity. In experiencing, there is just being. Silence. This is the non-dual state. This state is already there. This is the only thing there. Existence itself is the non-dual experiencing. End of the story. Now, anything that happens here is discarded or it is seen as me only. If there is thought - this thing is me and that thing is not me, this is the experiencer, you are already out of the state. The divisions have already happened.

What do we need to do there? Do nothing. Gently prefer non-doing. Very gently. Leave. Reject. Renounce. Surrender. Don't try to do. “Oh, let me do this. Finally I am in this state now, I cannot let go of this”. Well, all that is doing. Experiencing is non-doing, being. The opposite of doing is being. What people are trying to do in the meditations and all the practices, they are staying away from this non-dual state. That is so sad. You are given a gem and you are now accumulating stones and bricks and garbage. You are the gem. You are the non-dual experiencer, be it. What are you trying to do? That which happens is not done by anybody. So let it happen. Is there anybody to stop or is there anybody to start it? It is a very difficult concept to grasp for an active mind or a deluded mind, but it comes slowly. So the question is, should one be then in a state of being or in a state of awareness? Just be. Forget about the states. Being is natural. You see, there is nothing besides being that which you are.

Sanjay is saying, are past life memories stored in the local mind or universal memory? How to differentiate if these memories are not a product of my imagination?

Who knows where it is stored? There is no location of memories. First there is experience and then we conclude, we cook up a story about it. How to differentiate if these memories are not a product of imagination? You see, imagination is happening. So where is it happening? Can a product produce the original raw material or is the product produced by the raw material? Simple logic. If it is imaginary, what has produced the imagination? Meditate, think about this.

Parteep is saying, as there is no division in UM, it is difficult to perceive one. In awareness too, it cannot be perceived. Separation is ignorance. Please say something about this.

The UM is a concept, it is a theory. How can you perceive a concept? All you can perceive or see is the experience. Then we describe that experience logically and the logic says that there is a persistence, so it has to be memory. It can be recalled, it can be stored and we see that there is no division in the memory. Because if there were a division, we could have seen it. This memory is different from that memory. Nothing is seen like this. We cannot even see the memory which is mine. We only see the effects of it. So not only separation is ignorance, assuming that there is truly a memory is ignorance. It is a convenient model, a scientific model to explain the experience. You can cook up your own model if you want. If it explains all our experience, it is a successful theory. And the UM explains all our experiences. Nothing more is needed.

Sometimes it is confused with the truth, but there is only one truth. That is me. The rest of the things are disposable. Some of the basic things like prana/life-force were not used in POK and also AUM, primordial sound. They are used, but we have changed the names. The primordial sound is called vibration now, just to keep everything neutral and not associated with any communities or things like that. These words were misused, it was non-communal and non-religious and they were not associated with any tradition or any spiritual path. They were taken as pure, everybody adopted it. So we found that there is corruption in the words, so we dropped it. As soon as you find the word has acquired different meanings which are harmful, you leave it. You take another word, there is an infinite supply of words. Vibration is still a very pure word, we don't mean anything else when we say vibration. Now when you say AUM, it means 50 things because perhaps it is 50,000 years old. So every thousand years people have added meanings into it.

Prana (life force), yes it is there, it is called activity now. What is activity? Chittvritti in Sanskrit. The same thing is called prana in yogic literature. Why don't we use all the words? It will confuse you a lot. You will never know what I am talking about because the prana has 50 more meanings. Yes, I can define it, but I have seen that the intellect never accepts the new definition, it clings to the old, which was told by your old gurus or your books, whatever book you happen to read first, you assumed it was true. All books have different definitions of prana and all. So pranayama is control of breath, totally wrong. It is the control of life force. So everybody comes with their own ignorance. Our job is to cut down ignorance.

Whatever traditional knowledge you can think of, it is all there in the P.O.K. Can you tell me one thing which is not there? All Shaivism is there, all Sankhya is there, all yoga and all kundalini, all tantra is there. What I want is, I want you to look at everything with fresh eyes, instead of the colored glasses of all the traditions and belief systems, dogmatism. Drop it all. Look directly and if the words are becoming your crutches or becoming a hurdle for seeing what you must see directly, then we drop the words. That is why I am very strict about the use of language. Do not use any other language except that which I am giving. You don't need to carry the burden of the program for the rest of your life. At least when you are in the program, be disciplined. Otherwise, what is the use of the program? You can simply listen to the videos in one day. It is very helpful to drop your preconceptions, your conditioning. How will you attain pure knowledge, if you cling to all that garbage that you have accumulated in the past? How are you going to see with clear eyes, with a clear intellect?

Graham is saying, can you help me understand how I am not the doer?

There is doing, but there is no doer, we say like this. How can we know this? The first thing is our experience, that we never see anything which can be called a doer. People will say the body is the doer, yes, but you see it is movement of muscles, is the body doer or are the muscles doer? And the muscles get the signals from the nervous system. So is the nervous system final doer? The nervous system is also driven by memory. Is the memory doer? And memory is nothing but a program, storage. Is that the doer? So what is it? It is a system, we say. There is a mechanism, that's all there is. And it is running. If you want to call it doer, very good, that's all there is.

Who is thinking? Not the doer, there is thinking. And there is some interesting process there which says I am the doer. I thought it, I became angry, I became jealous. I did this, I painted a picture or I constructed a house. What is that? That is called the ego, the individual identity. Our experience is like this. The doer is only a concept. All there is is experience of various kinds, something seems to be happening and there is the experiencer. If I am the experiencer, is it seen as doing something? Is there any action going on there? No, whatever action is, is in the experience part. The experiencer is completely empty and silent. Thus, I am not the doer.

Suraj is asking, I have an assumption that I got from society that suffering diminishes just by sharing with others. Is there any truth in this statement? Just to clarify my mind, how should a seeker deal with suffering?

The only way to know is by experiment. If you are sad, if you are suffering. Share it with your friends and family and loved ones and see what happens. You will know the truth. The suffering will never go away by sharing. But there is a lightness that I am not alone, I have somebody to share it with. Ultimately you will need to bear the burden. Sharing it simply calms down the mind a little bit, that's all. And there is a secondary effect of it that people come to know that you are suffering and they try to help you.

So if it diminishes the suffering, go and tell others. No harm in that. But I have seen that whenever I tell my suffering to others, their mood also gets spoiled. I know happiness increases when you tell others sometimes. No guarantee about suffering, but probably you will feel good as you get sympathy. Just be sure that you don't become a sympathy seeker. People start crying all the time because they want sympathy, self-pity. So if that is not happening, then probably suffering will diminish, otherwise you simply spoil the day of the other person.

How to deal with suffering? Get rid of it. Do that which is necessary. If the suffering is physical, go to the doctor. If the suffering is financial, earn money. If the suffering is mental, fix it. And if it is spiritual, like you don't know some things, who you are and all those things, go to the guru. What is happening is, the guru is a go-to person for everything. Why do I have a headache? Let me call guruji. What will your guru do for the headache? He knows what is existence and what is maya. He does not know the cure for a headache. But usually, the guru will tell you something out of compassion and love, ok, ok let's do this and let's do that. Probably it is because you are doing too much practice. So break the practice for two days. Something like this. But then I add, also go to a doctor just to check whether it is really physical or not. So yes, go to the guru. If you are suffering, ask your guru because probably the person who is suffering does not know what to do, how to deal with it.

You always need somebody till you grow up, once you mature in your knowledge, you should take care of it. The suffering is not there. This is the realization. But that does not mean that it will go away. It simply becomes an illusion. Do you want that illusion? No. The illusory person does not want the illusory suffering. So he does that which is necessary to get rid of it.

One of your relatives is making your life hell, say. Now it is not going to help if you simply say that this relative is an illusion. Yes, it will calm you down, it will enable you to handle that situation. But what is needed is practical action. Get rid of that relative, immediately kick him out. So this is the practical solution. That is how we deal with suffering. First, we know that it is an illusion. Then we do that which is necessary. Then we enjoy our free time.

Usually you will find gurus saying that suffering happens because of attachment and aversion. You see, nothing works in practical life. If you have an aversion to something, somebody, get rid of that thing, easier than studying all the philosophy. If you are attached to something, just know that that is an attachment. Yes, it is going to cause a little bit of disappointment when it goes away finally. Every object leaves you and every person leaves you finally. So keeping this in mind, enjoy the moment. Enjoy your attachment for a few days, a few minutes, one night, it's all okay. Clinging is the problem, isn't it? Clinging to that which is causing suffering is the problem. Don't cling. If it comes, comes. If it goes, goes. If it causes suffering, okay, no problem, leave it then. The problem is, you know, I want everything to be as per my wish. And if it does not happen like this, I am going to cry and be depressed. That is the problem. And that is not a philosophical or spiritual issue. That is the issue of stupidity. The intelligence is gone on a vacation. You don't need all this spiritual talk to get rid of suffering, only common sense. So that is what I use in my practical life actually. I don't use the maya and attachment, detachment, aversion, no. What is causing suffering? Okay, kill it.

Monica is saying, recently I had the experience of anesthesia for a minor surgery. I went into that state within 30 seconds. Based on my experience, the senses were not working. No feeling of pain, no awareness, basically no body feeling. So where was the experiencer?

Senses, feeling, pain, awareness and body - all are experiences. So you are saying all of them were gone. Can you tell me whether the experience was gone or whether the experiencer was gone? Yes, experiences go away. Where does the experiencer go? And if you can see it come and go, then you are the experiencer that is seeing it come and go. The experiencer by definition is the one that witnesses the experiences coming and going. That is what is happening.

The experiencer was there before anesthesia. The experiencer was there after anesthesia. It did not go away anywhere. There is no place for the experiencer to go and then reappear. It does not change. The thing is, the knowledge of the experiencer went away, whatever we call awareness, it goes away. So the body was there, probably the pain was there, but it was not felt. The senses were there, the world was there, the doctor was there, everything was there, but there was no knowledge of it. No memory of it was formed. So what was really missing was the memory, not the objects, not the people, not the body, not the experiencer. Only the memory of it is gone and that is the characteristic of anesthesia. That it breaks the working of the memory.

Which memory? Your waking memory, all other memories remain intact. So people in anesthesia report all kinds of experiences actually. For some people, the experience also never goes away. They go into some kind of altered state, projected state, or dream state, then they come back and tell their story. Some other memory got activated accidentally. You could not tell any story, why? Nothing got activated. It is very natural. You left the waking memory, then came back in the waking memory and you saw that nothing was recorded there. People are telling you that they operated on the body but nothing was recorded in memory.

So what do you conclude? The experiencer was gone? You don't remember what happened one week ago. You don't remember what happened one month ago, one year ago, or ten years ago. Unimportant things are lost from memory. So do you say that the experiencer was not there ten years ago simply because you have forgotten?

Anesthesia makes us forget. It does not destroy the experiencer. Very simple. We forget without anesthesia also. That is the problem with awareness practice. People forget. Then they ask, how should I keep the memory alive? How should I always remember 24x7? I keep forgetting. It is a very unreliable thing. The memory is unreliable. You go shopping and you forget at least two or three things every time. That is why it is called practice. Those who practice, even the anesthesia cannot destroy their awareness. Even death does not destroy their awareness. It is a continuous existence. It is very strange because it cannot be described and it will never fit in your waking memory. The waking memory knows only objects in the world, body, feelings and thoughts. That is all it knows. So that which is beyond the world is never recalled in the waking state.

What is spiritual evolution? When all these limitations are bypassed. Don't worry. Someday there will be an ability to be in continuous awareness and then you will never ask where the experiencer was. The experiencer is the existence. Where will the existence be? And if you don't know that the experiencer is the existence, then you need basic knowledge. Otherwise, you will never get the answer to this question. If you still think that the experiencer comes and goes, then it means the absence of basic knowledge. That is why we do not start with experiments of anesthesia. We start with simple concepts. I am not this. I am not that. What is in existence? Experience and the experiencer. Is there a third thing? No. That is the whole existence. Experience is the false part. It comes and goes. Experiencer is the essence. It stays unchanging.

Right now, in non-anesthetic condition, which is the only state good for evidence, we get the evidence that it is unchanging. It never disappears. And in the altered states where the logic and intellect are not working, we do not use those states for evidence. Use the waking state as evidence and then apply that evidence on all the states. Very simple. You have gold, let's say, in your safe. When you go to sleep, what happens to the gold? Wake up and check your safe. Yes, there is gold. So it must be there during the sleep. Same way. Check in the waking state. Is the experiencer there? Yes. Now what happened to it in the sleep? Well, come back in the waking state, check it is there. Yes. Conclusion - It was always there. Ignorance - Thinking that the experiencer is a process or an object which can appear and disappear. Just like the gold never appears and disappears when you are sleeping, nothing else appears and disappears. The whole world is there too.

Coma, sleep, anesthesia, fainting, all these things are similar states. There are different categories of the same state of loss of memory. Which memory? Waking memory. Even a dream is a loss of waking memory. You don't remember who you are in the dream. It's very easy to remember. So, when to get the evidence? In the waking state. What not to assume? Do not assume anything about that where the states have changed, where the evidence cannot be gathered because memory is not working. Common sense, isn't it? And what do people do? They imagine all kinds of things. Oh, the memory is broken, the experience cannot be had and now probably everything disappeared. This is imagination. No, everything is back as normal, you see, so nothing actually disappeared.

In sleep, the world is there, yes. Nobody will say the world disappears because one body fell asleep. The world did not disappear because somebody is sleeping. What about the body? No, it does not disappear. The same body wakes up. You can put a camera and check, the body did not disappear when I was sleeping. The senses, they do not disappear. When your phone rings, when you are asleep, you get up. Why? Because the ears can detect the sound. Somebody turns on the light, you wake up. Why? Because the eyes are still functioning. Your mind does not become dead. Otherwise, you will never wake up, that will be called death. So, nothing goes away in sleep. What is the assumption? Experiencer goes away. Is it logical? No. Experiencer is experiencing the sleep. Similarly, experiencer is experiencing the state of anesthesia. How do you know there was a state called anesthesia? Something must have experienced it. And the assumption is that no, I must experience it in this way only, which I want. No. Mother nature does not obey your wish. When the drug is given, it will do whatever it does. Experience that. That's all. The experience is very simple. No pain. No memory. No awareness. No problem. That is what is experienced now. That is what your knowledge is. Why don't you remember anything? Yes, that is your knowledge now. But I must have remembered and that's how I get the evidence. That is ignorance.

Hopefully, it is clear. But yes, this is an advanced topic. And we don't deal with this topic unless the seeker is mature enough to get a little bit of awareness in other states of the mind. When you are mature, spiritually grown, evolved a little bit so that the awareness can be had in some other state, then the guru will start telling you that it is possible to be aware in this state. It is possible to be aware in the sleep, in anesthesia, in death, before birth, in the causal state. They will tell you all these things only after you mature. So why have we included everything? Because I wanted to give you a hint that the mind is infinite. The knowledge of it is infinite. Do not hurry. Know that which is necessary. When the situation is good enough, when you are mature enough to know the illusion in more detail, a guru will appear and tell you. You don't even need to do the hard work.

Monica is saying, it was a different experience other than deep sleep.

Yes, it is a different experience. So anything which is drug induced is a different experience. And that's all we can say, isn't it? That it was a different state. And that's why in our program also, anesthesia, coma and all those states are grouped differently. We don't call them sleep. We call them afflicted states. Nobody likes the word, afflicted state, because it's not natural. Nobody wants to be in anesthesia, so we call it an afflicted state. And sleep is not afflicted because everybody wants a sleep state. It is healthy for the body and the mind.

The fundamental question is, how to get evidence in other states of the mind or of the memory? Then the answer is very simple. If you are not in that state and there is no awareness in that state, forget about it. Gather your evidence where you can gather it. Look at your gold in your safe whenever you can look at it. When you are traveling, when you are out of your city, don't worry about the gold. It is safe in the safe. When you come back, it will not disappear. You are not sure about the bottle of beer in your fridge. Come back from the travel and it's gone. Your friends have consumed it, but the experiencer is like gold. It will never be destroyed. This evidence must be taken in the waking state. That's why Patanjali says, that only Jagruti or the waking state is the Pramana, and then all other states he discards, no evidence there.

Monika is saying, in dreams, mind works and I know sometimes that I am in the dream.

Yes, because there is a memory of the dream. How do you know the mind works in the dream? Because the memory is carried into the waking state. Why is waking memory able to store it? Because it is similar to your day to day activity. There is a body in the dream, there are people, there are worlds, there are objects which are mostly like your daily objects. Only the events are a little bit puzzling and the rest is the same. So it fits nicely in your waking state. That is how you know it.

The further you go from the waking memory, the less influence it will have on the waking memory and so less will be remembered in the waking state. For that you need something called the memory bridge, about which we talked in the program. How to construct the memory bridge? It is an advanced practice and is well beyond the domain of path of knowledge. It is a tantric practice. There are rituals to form the bridge. As soon as I say ritual, people are kind of terrified, I don't want to do occult practice. It is difficult. All these great masters, they have done it, probably they have talent, a practice of many lifetimes. We are ordinary, we know who I am, that is the greatest thing for us. I am the whole existence, I am the Brahman, well, that is what we need. The rest is very difficult. It will take many years of practice, day and night. Your whole life must support it.

So most of the seekers are not well settled in their lives to enable them to have a formal practice. So where do they look for extraordinary experiences? In drugs, in anesthesia, in sleep, in dreams, in temples, in Himalayas, bottom of the sea, orbit of the moon, because they don't know the proper way. Who will tell them? Those who have already done it, the one who has already done it is your Guru. If I cannot tell you, I will send you to somebody who has done it. You need to show the proper dedication, sincerity. You should be hardworking, you should be honest, and no seeker has time for this. You should devote your life to occult practices. Can you do that? Will you need anesthesia after you become so big? No. You control a whole heaven or hell if you want. You have already crossed humanity now, there is no sleep for you, there is no anesthesia for you, there is no coma for you. You are much above human now, you are a tantric now. Do you need me after that? No.

What we are talking about here is completely beyond our scope, beyond our imagination. Once you have become God, do you worry about anesthesia and what happens to the waking memory? No. Your whole house is made up of gold. Now are you worried about pieces of plastic here and there lying on the street? This is how it is. Wise men say that know that which you are capable of knowing and leave that which you cannot and then progress further. This is how it is.

Shilpa is asking, in some people memory is strong, in others it is weak. Why is it so?

There can be many reasons for that. There is not one reason, probably you are looking for a spiritual reason. In short, it can be a genetic disorder. Some people are genetically better with memory. It can be a disease of the body. Yes, the body affects all other layers. Everybody knows this. When you are sick, the awareness is gone, your intellect stops functioning, they are all interconnected and you can say the environment determines memory. If the child is trained, when the child is very young, he will grow up with a good memory. If the parents are themselves forgetful and don't use their intelligence, the child will become like them. Good upbringing, conditioning and a good diet are necessary. A healthy mind resides in a healthy body.

If you are looking for spiritual factors, those who have practiced in their past lives will be born with a sharp memory. Those who have practiced attention and those who have used it have a better memory. I am in the memory, the memory is not in me, which means the body-mind appears in a memory, it does not possess a special thing called memory. It is a matter of connecting to the right memory and if the causal body has the right impressions, it connects to the right memory, it functions nicely then. So this is the spiritual reason.

Experiencer is so pure, it has no memory. It is beyond memory. Put enough impressions in the memory, get involved in the spiritual life and be aware so much that it forms a permanent impression, like a line on the cement. It cannot be erased. And no matter where you are born, where this memory takes form, it will take that form with full awareness, with all the qualities that were already there. You cannot do much about what has happened till now because there was no knowledge, no awareness, no intelligence. From now on you can be in charge of it. You can control what happens from now on because now you have the tools. Now you know how to operate the machinery of the mind. So don't worry if some of the people have less memory, some have weak memories. It's not the memory, it's the recall, isn't it? Technically speaking, some people have good recall, some people have poor recall. So it can be fixed with enough practice. From now onwards, you can fix it.

Ruchika is saying, more awareness, sharper memory.

Yes. Pay attention, be aware and you will never forget. What is that which you cannot recall? Which was not important, which we never paid attention to.

Session 147

Varun is saying, is experiencing different from seeing, listening, sensing?

Our definition of experiencing is that it is the merging of the experience and the experiencer where there is only a dynamic happening which remains, an aliveness, a presence remains without the division of experience and the experiencer.

Seeing, listening and any other senses, they are experiences, they are differentiated from the experiencer. In experiencing, there is no difference, there is no division between the experience and the experiencer. And how to get to the state of experiencing, we have discussed it many times now. The only thing you need to know is that that is the only possible state. There is only one possibility in the existence and that is to be the existence, that means to be in the mode of experiencing eternally. Whatever states you find yourself in or the mind finds itself in are artificial divisions. The first division is that I am the experiencer, whatever is happening is not me, it's an illusion, this is known by the intellect.

Now the second ignorance that comes up is that I am the causal body which takes birth. And you can now descend even more, illusion upon illusion, the layers of ignorance. They accumulate one upon the other and now the mind thinks that I am a human, no concept of causal body also, with a memory, a life, some relations, some money in the bank, status in the society and I speak this language, I follow this religion, I belong to this country, this race, identity and you can descend down even more and now the ego takes over, that I am the ego, the mind is forgotten, I am this me, there is no definition of me obviously, you can descend even more and the person says I am a body, purely materialistic view, the lowest possible state of the mind is materialism.

Can we go beyond the body? I don't think anybody has fallen that much. So what is happening here is, on this only possibility of experiencing, ignorance has accumulated, like layers of dirt, so you don't need to be in the state of experiencing, you need to simply get rid of the ignorance, one by one, clear the layers, it does not matter where you are. The guru will take you back to the pure state, now you will say how will this creature live if this necessary division is not made, but nothing to worry, even if you don't want, even if the mind doesn't want, even if the ego doesn't want, divisions will be made, this is how it is, all the divisions will persist, all the illusions will persist, they don't go away. All that goes away is ignorance, nothing else changes, there is nothing to fear. What will happen to my wife, my bank balance, my brand new car and all the gold? They will remain the illusions they are. Don't tell this to your wife, they don't like it, nobody likes to be called an illusion, only crazy seekers say I am an illusion.

Experiencing is what is right now, know it, do not try to be in that state because you cannot be that which is already there, how can you be that which you already are, not possible, just know that the overlays are illusory and you can see experiencing happening there.

Mukta Chitta is asking, what happens when a seeker finds Mukti?

The seeker never finds Mukti (Liberation), the seeker disappears and that which is liberated shines. If you don't understand what I just said, there is a lack of self-knowledge. If you have gotten the self-knowledge you will understand what I just said that the one who is seeking is destroyed. It is seen as illusory. No seeker is left after liberation and therefore no seeking. And how much time it takes, few minutes only. So those who want to destroy the seeking and seeker they should get their ignorance cleared.

Graham is asking, do you have any pointers for remembering to be in awareness during daily activities, using electronic reminders?

I know it's suggested but there is a caution again, avoid being dependent on it. Best is to train your mind to remember, it is a mental training, do not depend on physical objects or on your guru, train your mind. The mind trains itself as soon as this intention is installed. Some people have a stronger intention and they are simply after this training thing, awareness training, awareness practice. Some people have a weak intention and they are distracted by the worldly stuff but it does not matter. Some seeds grow very fast and some seeds slow, in many years they become a tree, some are like bamboo or grass, they shoot up. Everybody is different, their mental makeup is different, take your own time, if it is not happening today, no problem, it will take a lifetime. We are not in a hurry.

Why do I then say that, don't delay your knowledge, don't delay your liberation, especially when it takes a few minutes? The reason is suffering, we don't want suffering, especially if it can be removed in one hour, we don't want it to continue. There is a hurry for knowledge but there is no hurry for awareness. I have not set any target for you, otherwise you will fail, the 3 months are an observation period. For 3 months you need to report to me what happens to you. Do you struggle, do you encounter any impurities, any obstacles and then that is my job to fix it and if everything is going smoothly, then you are left on your own.

In the end you are given a certificate which is as good as resignation letter, termination of the program. Resources are released for others when you are given the certificate. Today only I was discussing this, that this program is being run like a modern company. Up to the end of the program, the contract says that you will need to report to me and then whatever happens we will try to solve it if there are difficulties. It does not mean that your practice is over when the program is over, it does not mean that I need to relax now, I need to become lazy. Program is over, which means resources are released now and you need to continue on your own.

Benjamin is saying, when the ignorance is removed, experiencing is. If then the seeker talks to an ignorant person, will the experiencing not somehow address itself in the person?

Not very clear about what you are talking about, experiencing addressing itself, what does it mean? It's a bit too poetic for me, but yes, whenever you talk to somebody, the seeds are planted. Whenever I say to somebody - do you know who you are? Do you know your real nature? There is already a process that has started. Probablyhe is too distracted. That person will just get busy with the worldly activities. But the mind is a wonderful thing, an idea is like a virus, it takes hold, even if it is not seen, it works in the background. And the mind is like a blender or you can say crushing machine, it's a machine of some kind, you feed it something and it's bound to process it. You must have seen this in the experiments of hypnotism, you need a little bit of willingness, not too much resistance, a little bit of interest, and the mind follows the command. How do they do it? I don't know how they do it, but I know why it happens, because it is a machine, it cannot resist that which is fed into it. So seeding, yes, that's why I say, come in the satsang and listen to me, listen to my voice, sometimes the seed is planted non-physically while you are listening, and those who listen to me, even if they don't understand what I am saying, the process has already started. The connection is not only through intellectual knowledge, there is a connection at many levels.

The mind processes emotions, feelings, the mind processes fears, and whatever appears there, the thoughts, The person starts thinking, - he said in one day it can be done, how is that possible, so on. You see, seeding has already happened. So what works with ordinary people is, you need to give a hint and then leave them. As soon as you push your ideas on an ordinary person, the mind senses that. The identity is in trouble now, the old is about to be erased now. It's like a silence before the storm, so immediately it will erect barriers. That's why those who have a lot of conditioning, they have done 50 different programs and they have 20 different gurus, they find it very difficult to let go and adopt the knowledge. The idea of doing nothing totally bothers them - what kind of spirituality is this, where the guru is saying do nothing, where the guru is saying no, you don't have to suffer for 20 years in Himalayas to know who you are, 20 minutes are enough, it's a fake path, it's a scandal, fraud guru, so mind erects the barriers to defend itself. It is best to simply drop the seed and wait, the seed is going to work. I have seen that it is very much like seduction, flirting.

That is why a little bit of faith and trust is needed on the guru because something which is beyond your control will happen. Now if you don't trust your guru, good luck, your mind will create a demon out of the situation. It does look like something has possessed me because it does look like that. The ground is no more below my feet. Unfortunately, resistance has popped up even before the seeding process started, so we need to be ready for all these things.

But yes, some people take it very easy, sportingly. Yes, I always needed this dose of spirituality. Now the transformation has started. I am ready. I have surrendered. Very nice then, very nice. That is why I say, the one you love is your guru. If you don't have any love for the guru, well, find somebody else immediately, because the guru will say no to you, like Anuradha is saying, just listening to your voice gives immense happiness. Yes, then we have a bond. Now your progress will happen. Now you will listen to me, and I will listen to you. The connection is already there, so no chance of demons here, just surrender. See, the guru does not want anything. The guru wants only one thing: that the student listens to him. Why are we taking this trouble of educating people? So those who listen, they are given special importance.

Benjamin is saying, when you have no ideas to hold on, communication improves, and there is no possibility for conflict. Can we say that?

Yes, that is right. People with strong beliefs, they progress slowest, probably no progress at all. Somebody is dogmatic, somebody is religious, somebody is materialist, narrow-minded, pseudo-skeptic, and does not like guru at all or hates guru for whatever he says, because the guru is always saying bitter things. These people don't like it. So if you have this much clutter in the mind, the knowledge simply disappears. It is not that the mind is not going to process it. Mind is like a parallel supercomputer, it does everything in one instant, but the effect is negligible, because there is too much noise from other things, a barrier, too much resistance.

So when I see such a case, well, it's dropped, because it's not that we cannot fix it, we can, but by the time I fix that person, I would have wasted so much time that I could have benefited 20 people in that time. Simple profit loss you see. If I can sell one product in 20 days to one person or if I can sell 20 products in one day to 20 people, which option am I going to choose? I told you this program runs like a company, this is the Kalyug, no special discount. So the guru goes for low hanging fruit, the program is a filter that filters the low hanging fruits, get the easy ones first. The difficult ones, they are seeded and they are sent into the background for natural processing.

There can't be any resistance if the desire is there to be free and who can be better than guru to whom we can surrender and become free, that is my experience.

Yes, that is my experience also, the key to success is finding a guru and surrendering to the guru. You will be taken to the other shore. The difficult part is trusting the guru, that is the difficulty. These days you should not trust anybody. Trust comes with time. Those who have a little bit of openness and intuition, they will get there quickly, the rest need to use their intellect and the trust appears slowly.

So yes, there is no resistance if you have this strong desire, if all those qualities are present, then nothing can stop your progress. What happens is the qualities are not present in many people, that is the whole struggle, otherwise the knowledge is very direct, five minutes. The day I tell you the means of knowledge, it should be over for you. A well-developed intellect, when given the tools, produces results instantly. Like a trained musician, when given a violin or a piano, music is already there. Same way, I don't need to show you 20-30 videos to show you who you are. It is the easiest thing in the universe to know who you are, what is difficult is cultivating these qualities, the trust, the guru, understanding the instrument of the mind, and so on. The training takes time, not the knowledge. Removal of resistances, it takes time. Same way for awareness, it should not take time. Those who are wisest, I have seen one thing, they say, what is the use of awareness also, they have reached beyond awareness. I say, you don't see any use? No, I am very happy already. Practice is also terminated for them, I say, don't practice anything now, what are you practicing?

Manvindra is saying, subconscious activity of mind is a kind of Chittvritti. Can it be controlled and improved?

No, there is no subconscious activity and there is no conscious activity, there is only activity, which is rightly called Chittvritti in Sanskrit or simply Vritti, because all there is Chitta, all there is, is mind, you can drop it, there is no other thing where the Vritti/activity can happen. Is there something like conscious, subconscious, no, only the witness is conscious, and if you call something subconscious, like is it half conscious or is it waiting to be experienced, what? There is no concept like this in Advaita or in even Sankhya where our memory model is based, so forget about the subconscious/unconscious mind, the whole mind is unconscious, you see.

The second part of the question is - can it be controlled and improved, yes, the key is awareness, those who are aware, the mind controls itself. Can it be improved, yes, stop doing the unnecessary, it will improve automatically. See how easy it is, and see how complicated people have made it by using wrong language, wrong meanings, wrong notions. Ignorance only. To control something and improve something, you need to know the nuts and bolts of it, knowledge of the mind or the memory is necessary to manipulate it. It's advanced, but why is it given to you, so that you can control and improve it, otherwise what will you do in step number four, without the knowledge, you don't know what awareness is, so how will you be aware, you cannot do the self-evaluation, how will you improve? Is this taught in any university, any course, anywhere in the world? No, only in the path of knowledge program, which is free and online, a miracle, isn't it?

Graham is saying, I thought you were taking away my meditation practice, but I was tied to my altar, into holding my breath. I feel the world is so much bigger and has more possibilities. I feel like I have so far to go. I feel like I can see an open path ahead of me.

Actually I am not stopping any practice, you are free to do it, once the observation period is over. What do I say - once the knowledge is there and there is enough awareness, the student is equal to guru. What is the difference between you and me? Essentially no difference, the only difference that was there, was of ignorance and knowledge, the ignorance has been thrown away, now what is the difference, no difference, now you are the guru, now do whatever you want, do whatever practice you want.

Actually, you must have seen that I encourage tantric practices, which is a hush-hush thing on the path of knowledge, nobody wants it, nobody wants to even hear about it. I say what will you do for the rest of your life? Hold your breath for the rest of my life? Is it useful? Is it reducing the suffering in the world, in the universe, is it reducing the suffering for any creature? You are making the body suffer by holding the breath, it is not designed to not breathe, the current breathing rate is the proper rate, anyhow if you feel that it is actually doing wonders to the whole universe and just stick to my altar and hold my breath, wonderful all the heavens and hells are rejoicing at my adventure, then do it. Those who have the knowledge they know how unnecessary these things are.

What is necessary? Use the apparatus of the mind-body, surrender it to the gurufield and become the broom, clean it up, clean this universe of all the ignorance, develop the bodhisattva vritti, develop your tantric abilities, the siddhis and all, dive into the maya. What are you doing? You want to sit in the cave because I am the brahman? Look at what brahman is doing, since eternity. Writer, producer, director, actor, he is everything, one-man show. So this little creature after getting the self-realization, I am the brahman, wants to sit and hold his breath. Is it funny? A little bit, hmm. I know many people don't agree, so what is suggested to them, live a simple life. Not everyone feels like diving into the adventure of it, you see, I am not expecting that everybody will have this kind of energy in them, it takes a lot of craziness and knowledge at the same time.

That reminds me of crazy scientists, the crazier the scientist is, the more productive and creative he is, he will just destroy the whole science in one sentence. Nikola Tesla was called crazy, mad, they even produced comics, where the evil scientist looks like Nikola Tesla. Unfortunate isn't it? Crazier you are, there is hope, but what is told to you, live a very nice life, peaceful, sattvic life based on truth, the minimum that is prescribed is - live a good life, simple life, happy life, help others whenever it is needed and don't come back, don't come back here, not useful at all to come back, free yourself from the cycles of birth and death also, you are a free thing, you are the brahman.

So evolution is encouraged, plus simplicity and sticking to only that which is necessary, so that you don't get trapped here. And that is the traditional way, what is there for the crazy who finds this too boring, what do you mean don't come back, what is there in the clouds, do I need to play the violin all day sitting on the clouds, is that your idea of liberation? I say, okay we have another group called the “Crazy path of knowledge”, join it, for such people there is a special instruction - from today you are going to be an uplifter of the universe, something like this, something crazier than that, so you go on an adventure. This is the bodhisattva vritti. You think the bodhisattva is the one who takes repeated births and cares for the cancer patients or poor people, the beggars on the street? No, he is a big joker, he is running the whole circus, I have seen it with my own eyes. Those who are in contact with the gurufield will see how big the circus it is. The craziest thing I have seen in this universe is the gurufield. Everyday I get some experiences, we cannot stop laughing. So no, bodhisattvas are not these boring people who just take birth and then suffer with those who are suffering, no, I don't think so.

Benjamin is saying, sometimes you say that there will be many births for a seeker in knowledge, but when there is only experiencing at the moment of death, how is another birth possible?

You see, if there is this detached state at the time of death, then we can safely assume that there won't be any birth. So why do I say there are many births for you? For some people, I say this because the tendencies are showing. Now, if you go in the samadhi state or aware state, the impact of those impressions will be reduced. There will be, what I call, a controlled birth, instead of a random birth. There will be controlled birth if you are in an aware state during the moment of death.

Now he is using the word experiencing, but you see experiencing is always there, you cannot come in that state. So the correct word to use is awareness. Experiencing cannot be achieved, awareness can be achieved at the moment of death. So yes, death can be controlled, the impact of these strong impressions can be reduced, and all those things for which I won't be able to provide you any evidence because it is totally an illusion. In illusion, many things can happen. Even if I provide you evidence for something, for your case it can be totally different. I repeat these things a lot because I want those sentences to get impressed on your memory. So one of the sentences that I keep repeating, like a broken record, is - just like life is not the same for everybody, death is not the same for everybody. Everyone should note this. Death is not the same for everybody, just like life is not the same for everybody. Some are rich, some are poor, some are ugly, some are beautiful, some are healthy, some are weak. Same way, deaths can be good, bad, and everything in between.

So bringing awareness at the time of death gives you control of the process but not of dying. Don't worry, death is certain. It gives you control of rebirth. When are you going to get the evidence? The proof of the cake is in eating the cake. We are talking totally in the domain of illusion now. Giving any kind of proof is already stupidity here. This is told so that you can experiment on it. Your experience is your proof, it is the real evidence. So if you are in awareness, just like I say, awareness gives you control of all the activity. Death is simply another activity, nothing special. This activity is triggered when the physical layer is damaged beyond repair. It cannot continue. Just like the snake sheds its skin, the higher layers shed the lower layers, you can say outer layers if you want to compare it with the snake. The memory structure is like an iceberg, and the physical body is like a tip of the iceberg. That is dropped.

Why do people cry when this happens? It's beyond me. It's maintenance like a routine activity of the causal body or you can say the memory structure, a routine maintenance. The snake and the family of the snake, they do not cry when the snake sheds the skin. Why is your family crying? Completely beyond them which we are talking about. Can you see the level of ignorance in our society? We are humans, shouldn't we know all these things? No, nobody knows these things. This should be common knowledge. Actually, it was common knowledge in the ancient days. Even those who did not have this ability to know, they simply accepted it.

You will get some control over the process of rebirth. Now can you avoid that which is stored in the causal body? Can you avoid its expression? No, no possibility. What can you do? You can let it happen in a controlled manner. The difference is like a nuclear explosion and a nuclear reactor for producing electricity. Same thing, same energy. When made into a bomb it can destroy the cities, and when it is fed into a nuclear reactor, it produces the electricity, feeds the city. Same way, whatever are the vasanas or the impressions, they can be channeled very beautifully, something more creative. Same Devi, same desires, same will can be channeled in a more controlled way.

If you are a wise person, you can handle your case independently, you don't need anybody. But usually that does not happen. So what do you do? At the time of death, you call the gurufield, call your guru, you know he is in the gurufield, even if he is dead. Nobody dies, you know that. So call him lovingly, and the whole gurufield will appear to you, and they will assist you in rebirth.

So Benjamin got a very detailed answer. If he is ready to move on, if there are desires, they can be fulfilled in non-physical form, there is no necessity to go to the physical plane. Then he will be taken to the Deva plane, whatever you call it. Names don't matter, the non-physical planes. Let us take an example that you have left over desire to eat specific sweets. That can be done in the non-physical, no problem at all, endless supply of sweets will be there. But let's say you have a desire to kill a person who offended you in the physical world. Can it be done in the non-physical? Probably, but your mind knows, it is wise enough that it cannot be fooled now. So then you see, you will come back. Or it is something really physical, then it cannot be done in non-physical. Then there is no way to avoid it.

It is always a bond, it is very important, listen to me, this breaking of bond or the returning of the debt cannot happen in a non-physical way. I mean, there is a possibility, but it is beyond our scope to discuss it. You must return back to pay the debt. If you have taken something from somebody, if you are dependent on somebody, if you have favors on your head and so on, you used, abused people and benefited from people. People are the biggest kind of bond, there can be bonds with pets and objects, but they don't cause a birth actually, it can be a ridiculous thing, but who knows. Our biggest problem here is relations. You will be bound again in the next birth. So that's why we recommend fulfilling unfulfilled desires and the payments that we need to pay back, they can be managed a little bit. If you are facing your death, that can be planned better. That's all that can be done. That's why we say, don't wait for death, you have the knowledge now, start paying now, start fulfilling your physical desires now, and carry over those, which can be fulfilled in heavens. Nothing wrong, you are going to spend millions of years there. There is only one kind of person, who knowingly creates bonds, who knowingly takes the karma, like we say, that is a Bodhisattva. Kind of crazy fellow, you see, how much craziness!

Benjamin is asking, But who is it then, who channels the Vasanas? Can there even be a wise person? Does wisdom not arise only in the absence of personhood?

See, we are talking here in relativistic terms, don't forget. We are talking here about the relative truth. Absence of a person means what? It is the highest level, that is non-dual level or you can say, even the dual level where I am the experiencer. We are not talking about all those things. We are totally into illusion right now. The birth and rebirth happen in the illusion. It does not even happen to the person, that's right, but it happens to a memory bank, which is called the causal body. The causal body projects a person, an individual, so the individual channels the Vasanas. There is no point in bringing the truth into the false. Do not mix the truth into the illusion. This talk is sponsored by Maya. Now, it's all an illusion, you see?

Siddhant is saying, Can you talk about parents' expectations from children?

Very nice question. Why are you born in a specific family, and why are they expecting you to do something specific? There is an endless amount of karmic bondage there, endless. Now, it is not a good idea to discuss the cause of it, we don't know. When I say endless, it means no point in discussing why you are there. Now, when there are expectations from the child, who should understand what to do? Not the child, obviously. The parents must be wise enough to understand that the only way to break my bond with this child, freeing myself and the child at the same time, is to drop my expectations, is to stop governing the child.

The parents need to drop their ignorance. The expectations cannot be dropped, you see. I just bypassed the question of why there is expectation. You can say in one sentence that it is the bondage, it is the karmic bondage. My name is Bond, Karmic Bond. This is the name of the podcast episode. Go and listen if you want all the story, all the theory. So that can be dismissed like this, but how to solve it, how to let go of this bond? The child does not know, obviously. The child simply obeys the parents. So the parents must know that the bond needs to be broken. The parents will know how he will survive. Now teach the child basic survival, then let him loose in the world, release him in the world, in the wild. Do not sit on his head for the rest of your life and his life.

There is a little bit of expectation that is justified. The child should complete his education, learn some manners, learn the language, mathematics, and whatever is required to be successful in the society. But what do they expect? My child will do this thing, my child will study only this subject, my child will do only this job in this country, in this post, in this company, and he will marry a fair girl so that the children are fair, not black. Even if the father is black like coal, but he wants grandchildren to be fair like milk. Those who are not Indians, they won't understand, this is not a racist thing, this is the funniest thing in the world that happens only in India. So always marry a fair girl because that is the expectation of your mother and father. Lots of crazy stuff. He is 30 years old, he is independent, a rich person working in a good company, but because he has no taste in the religious serials that I watch, he is spoiled now, so I need to fix him. That kind of thing we don't want from parents at all. If parents have no spiritual training, if the parents have no guru, they will have expectations, they will continue the bonds. Actually, they reinforce it. They are trapped in it. You are trapped in it. Your parents died long, long ago. Your grandparents and great, great grandfather, they are dead. But their expectations are ruling you from the ancestral plane. I know these concepts are totally absent from the western world, so there are no English words for it. We call it pitru dosha.

Siddhant is saying, do girlfriends, boyfriends cause karmic bondage?

Runanubandha, a lot of bondage, the biggest bondage. Nobody needs to guess it, you know it, husband and wife are the biggest bondage in this universe, you can see its fruits in one year of marriage.

Muni is asking, is pitru dosha a genetic disorder?

No, it is the expectations of your long dead ancestors that are ruining your life right now. So anyhow, it is a kind of advanced concept. And what do people do to solve it? They go to the Jyotishi and all these babas, and they try to solve it. I am not saying it won't solve it, but the ancestor needs to take a rebirth and destroy the bond; only that will solve it.

But there is a fortunate thing because you are one of the parties in this bondage; you can break it from your side and never worry about the other party. What can you do? The ignorance is too much; he is not even alive. What can you do? Yes, those who have the ability can go to the causal plane and fix it. You know, fulfill the expectation, try to convince that creature, whatever that is you see, not to trouble you. So it is possible, and the tantrics, they claim to do it; the Jyotishi, they claim to do it. I doubt, they don't have the basic concept also. So let's not go there.

Right now, right here, in this physical existence with your mother and father, the expectations are ruining your future lives, and the child has no ability to defend. The parents need to be educated. But they don't want to be educated because they consider their child as another object they own. So when you go and tell a mother, "Look, your child is not yours; his formation, his allocation says this; let him do that," which I am telling you, who are you? "I am the mother," and the father will already draw his gun, you know, "Don't spoil my child." I hate gurus. Yes, they hate gurus because gurus speak the truth. Anyhow, Siddhant got his answer.

Satya is saying, some desires are momentary. They are forgotten in time. Do they matter too?

Not much, you see. If it is not so urgent, if it is not so necessary, that means the desire is coming from somewhere else. It is not your causal desire; it is not your allocation. So if they don't trouble you, they are something that you gathered on the way, you see, like the dirt on your shoe. Just wipe it off. And what is that which arises is fulfilled. It can take a million years, but it will be fulfilled, even if it is momentary, even if it is an invisible desire. It will be fulfilled, but don't worry about it. You don't need to fulfill it right now.

Benjamin is saying, about the decision process, the brain scientist found out that the decision was already made, that the tested person becomes aware of it. Can there be any intervention except by intention which stirs the decisions?

No, the decision is already made; now what you can do is, either you can postpone it or you can act on it. The action can be controlled, not the decision. The decision will appear as something which we call a desire, an impulse to act. Now if it is necessary, you need to act, no need to bring in awareness. If it is not necessary, you keep it on the back burner, let it cook for a while. If it is necessary, it will repeat; it cannot be avoided. And if it goes away, it disappears like Satya said, don't worry, it will reappear. But you don't need to handle it right now. That much intervention is possible. If you are on a spiritual path, simply pray, dismiss this desire; it's not mine. It will be done. People on the tantric path, they know how to do this, probably not on the path of knowledge. We can pray for it; it will be done because you say it's not my desire, so it need not be expressed through this body-mind. And so the illusion finds a way to express it somewhere else. You say not mine, and then you get the power, when an ordinary person and an ordinary seeker is going to own whatever appears in the mind and then loses the power. Now the desires own him. Be very careful. Whatever appears in your mind, do not believe it. You don't need to own it or do it.

Vipin is asking, how to remove pitru dosh?

Do you have pitru dosh? I am asking Vipin, do you have it? You don't even know what pitru dosh is, and you want to remove it? You see, we should not tell all these things to people. It's like you are surfing quietly, peacefully, happily, and you encounter the name of a disease, this new virus or something. Then you start searching for it, let me check what this is. Out of ten symptoms, five match your condition. Now immediately you want to go to the doctor and find a cure for it. Same way, I need to simply say that there is a thing - pitru dosh, and everybody wants to remove it. On the path of knowledge, these things don't exist.

Varun is saying, ancestor blame would be a one-to-one translation of pitru dosh.

No, the Hindi word dosh means blame. Yes, we are talking about the Sanskrit word dosh, which means a defect. Chaitanya is saying karmic debt to the ancestors; that is much better. Ancestor curse? No, it is too intense. It is not a curse, simply expectations. “My great-great-great-grandson should do what I once wanted”. Intention spreads in the universal memory. Whom is it going to affect? You are bound by that bond, a karmic bond. It is going to affect you. So what happens to your prarabdha?

Pitru dosh is a dosh or suffering that occurs due to the wrongdoings of our ancestors. The offspring have to suffer for the doings of our grandfather and forefathers.

Very good definition, but it is not wrongdoing. We cannot call it wrongdoing. They have unfulfilled desires, and they are trying to fulfill it through you. If it is not your desire, why should you fulfill it? Why are you forced to fulfill it? Because of the bondage. Who should break the bond? They are sitting above humans; they don't understand these things. Ignorance is there also, you see. Evolution does not necessarily mean the end of ignorance. So since you understand it now, you break the bond. You have a photo of your great-great-grandfather, why? What is your relation there? Still worshipping the photo? Why? The day he died and you offered food to the crows, it should be over, no? The bond should be broken that day. You are worshipping the image of somebody who died a hundred years ago. Why? If I say these things in a traditional family, they are going to beat me up. Too much ignorance, isn't it?

Graham's question. Just curious, is the yogic path backward, or at least the popular understanding of the yogic path, trying to control the higher layers with the lower? How do yamas and niyamas work without the higher layers cooperating? I ask because habits I have been trying to change for years.

Yes, the yogic path is a bottom-up approach. I am not going to explain too much because the whole explanation is there in the purification videos, in step number six. Yes, it's a bottom-to-top approach. We purify each layer through discipline. We are not trying to control the higher layers by the lower. Is it possible? Not possible. The law of the layers is very clear that the higher controls the lower. So what is happening under the instruction of the guru, full surrender to the guru, the student is purifying one by one. Yamas and niyamas are all about it, and I know that these people do not do it nicely. The knowledge is lost. Whatever is there is the experience of the guru. If your guru is good, you are good. If you don't have a guru, your boat is about to sink. Bitter truth.

Benjamin is saying, since there is no time in experiencing, the future could have a similar effect on the living, or is there a law that bonds work only in one direction?

Don't mix the no-time in time. The truth has no bearing on what happens in the illusion, right? The movie is already shot; now you are seeing it frame by frame. The movie, it is already there, the whole of it is already there. Now is there any point in saying that this is timeless and this can be changed and that should be changed? Can there be backward causality? There is no point in saying that. Remember, at the level of no-time in experiencing, nothing is actually happening. What is happening in the reel of the movie is simply kept there. Nothing is happening. What is happening is an illusion. In experiencing, there is no offspring, there is no effect, there is no law, no bonds. There are simply endless vibrations. Nothing can be said. We cannot talk meaningfully. So I think Benjamin is repeatedly mixing the truth with the false. You see, being aware does not mean that you mix the experiencing or the non-duality with the duality or the illusion. No. The awareness does not mean that you bring the truth into the illusion. Understand that it is an illusion, and either study it or discard it. If you want to be on the truth side, you discard it completely, meaningless garbage. This pitru dosha, whatever, ancestors, is there anything like this? No, it is part of the dream. You don't have any ancestors. You don't have any parents. You are not the child of anybody. You are yourself not there, endless emptiness with endless possibilities. What else can you say about it? Nothing. Can you mix it with what appears here? No. Is it meaningful? No, no meaning there.

Vipin is saying, why can't they be born again and have their own desires fulfilled themselves?

Yes, I said the same thing. Why don't they come back and fulfill their desires? No, you see, "I want to go to heaven; I want Deva Yoni. I will use this fellow down there because I own him somehow. He is my child, grandchild, whatever child, my property." Your father also thinks like this about you, probably. Mothers are not that much, you see; mothers have emotional attachment; they want something from the children but not like this. Pitru dosh is mostly a male thing. The worst kind of dosh I have seen is "kill my enemies; I will use my offspring to take my revenge." This is the worst possible. The ancestors are going to rot in hell for that. Are they not doing this? So yes, all the ancestors should come down, get their desires fulfilled, whatever they are. Don't force your child to marry that fair girl, you come down and marry a fair girl. Who is stopping you? Do they listen? No. You do the puja every day. Do they listen? No. Why do you do it? They told you to do it. So a lot of conditioning was installed in people to continue this game of desire fulfillment through other physical bodies. Unfortunate.

Varun is asking, is attention an experience as well?

No, attention is an ability of the memory to exclude various experiences and allow only one kind. It is focusing of some kind. You see, all the senses are already focusing on a particular kind of experience. When I say experience, it is all that which appears. Don't forget the definition. So attention is like a gate which allows a specific sense to make an impression. It is focusing, narrowing down the experience. It's an ability. There is experience, yes, and when there is no attention, there is also experience. When there is no awareness, there is experience. When there is awareness, experience. Experience never goes away, it is constant. But attention comes and goes, so you can see that it is some kind of process that starts and stops.

The most important ability in our memory structure is attention. All your dream experiences, projected experiences, what are they? Ability of attention only. Your worldly success, your awareness, what are they? Based on attention. The awareness follows the attention. Discipline of the mind is necessary if you want to practice, if you want to improve anything at all. And if you want to improve anything at all, attention is necessary. Cultivate attention. Don't even waste your time. Start now. Even your worldly life will improve. The tantric practices will improve. Awareness will improve. Spiritual practice will improve. Pay attention.

Akash is asking, is there any karmic relation to chittvritti? Do some people need more penance to calm the senses?

Yes, first the karmic stuff is going to cloud your mind completely. And you know that our impressions, whatever is in the memory, biases the senses. The senses are biased by whatever is already there in memory. This is also proven by scientific experiments, and you can do it yourself. I use my own experience to get the evidence; you can also get it.

The more stuff is there in the mind, the more they are going to bias the senses. I have seen this with my own eyes. Somebody was told that I am the evil one, and I happened to talk to that person, and although I talk very politely, using the right words, every sentence was misinterpreted. Every word was taken in the wrong context, wrong meaning. Like I said, you must be feeling very good after the disease you had. “What, you wanted me to have this disease? Are you happy that I had the disease?” You see, the karmic stuff in that person could not listen correctly to what I said. So yes, a small example; it will happen. It will happen to everybody, this kind of misunderstanding, and no matter what you do, you break your head on the wall, but they won't understand you. Sometimes they even listen to you wrongly; they will go and tell somebody that, "Look, he talked like this with me." You never said that word; you never said that sentence. They imagine it; the imagination becomes their perception. Borderline madness. Accumulation has an effect on mental activity, no doubt about it, and they can be back-projected into sensory information.

If you hate somebody, that person can actually look like an ugly monster. Everybody's experience, isn't it? He laughs joyfully, but you are going to interpret it as an attack. Yes, all your experiences are biased by what is in the memory. If you have a strong desire to buy a product, that product is going to look like a brilliant piece of engineering, the most beautiful thing in the universe. You know why? Eyes are going to fool you; your own intellect is going to fool you because the pressure of the bias is so much, the impressions are so strong; it is impossible to convince this person.

So what is the cure here? Awareness. Become aware that this is happening. Go meta - meta-cognition - cognition of the cognition process, if you want technical words in English. Or simply become aware of what is there in the mind. How do you study the mind? Read all the books on mind. No, I am joking; never do that. Become the witness of the mind; you will know everything that happens there, including the biases, including the defects, including the karmic impressions. All the processes will be bare in front of you; whatever you call subconscious etc. will be totally visible, nothing will be hidden.

Nothing is hidden in the mind. How do I know this? Experiment. Not only nothing is hidden in your mind, nothing is hidden in the other mind. Can I see your mind very clearly? You see, you know how the food is going to taste by simply smelling the food. What is cooking in the kitchen, you smell it; you know today's dinner is going to be delicious. So whatever you say to me, I know what is cooking inside. Simple. You see, you don't need a miracle for that; you don't need the spiritual powers. I sometimes know more than you know about yourself. How is that possible? Attention. Attend to your vrittis. Attend to your activity. It's okay to call it mine because you're studying it. It's like an adventure.

Session 148

Shireen is saying, I feel Ahamkara is stepping in here and posing as the Experiencer. While if it remained only the sensation, it might be only experiencing. Am I right?

No, the Experiencer is that which is witnessing the play of Ahamkara. It is impossible to pose as an Experiencer. If you can know it, if you can say it in any way, if there is a sensation and feeling, it is not you, it is not the Experiencer. So nothing wrong if the ego says I am this or I am that, but that is also seen. The ego saying that I am the Experiencer does not make it Experiencer. It remains an impermanent experience only. Experiencer never says anything. That is how we know the Experiencer. It is perfect silence. If it is saying something, it is not the Experiencer.

Venkat is asking, Sri Ramana says the Experiencer is felt in the right side of the heart. We know there is no location, but what does this mean?

I have no idea what this means, but I know the heart means the deepest essence of what we are. Ramana Maharishi used the word Hridayam for the Experiencer, which means the deepest seat of knowing, the deepest place where this awareness resides. That is what is the meaning of heart in all the literature that belongs to Ramana Maharishi.

Now the right side or left side, probably it was just to pacify some curious seeker. The Gurus do say these things just to calm down some seekers and if there are people sitting there taking notes, they will write it without thinking. Their job is to simply document. A lot of the literature about Ramana Maharishi is fluff. We get nothing from that talk because these kind of saintly people, they do not have a structured way of teaching. People go to them and they simply sit with the person. That is their way of teaching. Their way is more energy-based and emotional than verbal and systematic.

So the words usually do not mean anything. The words are there to trap the person. That is all. The words are there to simply make the intellect silent so that the person can sit peacefully with the Guru. So we ignore the words. When he says heart, ignore it. When he says - right side, ignore it. Just check what he is pointing to. If you can see that within yourself, then the communication with the Guru has happened. Otherwise you will remain tangled in your mind. See beyond the words.

And yes, this kind of Q&A that goes randomly nowhere does not make us wise. I have seen the same thing with books about Nisargadatta Maharaj. That is much better than Ramana Maharishi because there is some content there and some effort is made to interpret what Nisargadatta is saying. Ramana is mostly free for all. You can interpret whatever you want. So those who know they understand what he is saying and those who don't know they will get tangled in the words.

Yes, the communication is simply pointing. No words. The words are meaningless. And so if the Guru sees that somebody is getting tangled into concepts and imaginary things, the Guru gives a dose to silence it. So we should not read too much into it. He has said other things which are very very clear and precise. They are worth reading. And when you see something totally useless and meaningless, it is because he felt that that will be helpful for the person who is asking the question. It was not for us.

Graham is saying, Looking for more guidance on experiencing not being the doer. I believe I observed teeth being brushed without me, chattering about me brushing up and down. This gave me time to complete, contemplate being the experiencer. Do you think this was beneficial practice?

You cannot practice not being the doer. There is no such practice and it is also not needed. You need to know you are not the doer. How much practice does that take? Nothing. It takes two to three seconds to realize that there is no doer. So on the path of knowledge, our goal is to destroy the practice, not to make it complex or not to burden you with all kinds of practices. There is no doer. Knowing this fully, brush your teeth. Reduce the practices to a minimum. You are not born here to work like a donkey. You are the whole existence who has taken this form, a temporary form, to know what you are. Know that and enjoy life.

Parteep is saying, Further to waking and dreaming in deep sleep, I know I am there, this very subtle knowing. I am also in the deep sleep state. It's awareness. How is this subtle knowing I am in the deep sleep is knowledge. Please help me with respect to deep sleep. I don't know the cause of resistance when the presence of I am is an ending on its own.

You are able to talk about awareness in the sleep state simply because there is a memory of it. What is memory? It is knowledge only. There must be a tiny amount of activity there which we call as the activity of awareness. In deep sleep, there is no sensory data. There is nothing that the senses can grasp but the higher layers are active. The intellect must be active a little bit to tell you that this is the deep sleep and the awareness must be there telling you that I am the experiencer of the state which is almost nothing, not even dark. There is no darkness there. What do we say? There is light in my deep sleep now. Light does not mean something bright. It means your own being is present, which was always present in all the states of the mind, but now there is a little bit of activity to reflect what is present. This is impressed in the memory, and that's why it's knowledge. Knowing that I am present in deep sleep, I am experiencing the deep sleep is knowledge only.

Many people confuse awareness with the experiencer. That is natural because they are very close. Experiencer and the knowledge of the experiencer are like a hair's width apart. It's very hard to distinguish both. How do we know awareness from the experiencer? Awareness comes and goes. It comes and goes because it's an activity of the mind. Experiencer never goes away. It is the whole; it stays. It is the whole existence. Where will it go? Some creature has fallen asleep. Will the existence disappear? So the knowledge comes and goes. That is how we know that it is an activity, and yes, it is possible for it to be there, and then it is possible for it to be lost. But don't run after it. The state of sleep is to rest peacefully. Sleep is not a state where we gain knowledge. If you recall Patanjali, sleep and memory are excluded from the evidence. We don't get any evidence in sleep. What do we get when we are back in the waking state? We get the memory of being aware. That's all we get. Nothing to do in sleep. Just sleep. This is most natural.

There is a time in the life of all seekers when all they want is different experiences. Nothing wrong in that because that is a temporary stage. But if you spend your whole life running after different experiences, then it's a waste of life. Get whatever you can and then rest peacefully. There are techniques to remain aware in sleep, and watching the breathing while you are falling asleep is one of the techniques which I used. Just remain aware of the breathing process because everything will leave you except your breathing. When you fall asleep, everything leaves you. No objects, no body, no senses. Only breathing will be there or the sound in your ear. The sound in your ear will take you to the non-physical worlds. So we do not concentrate there. Breathing keeps us grounded. But the problem is we don't feel like we slept. When we get up in the morning, the body is fresh, but the mind thinks I could not sleep last night because of my practice. It is a disturbance in the sleeping pattern. Although there is nothing wrong, although you will never feel tired, there is no bad effect on the health of this practice. But there is a psychological effect. So this creature needs some downtime, and then this practice must be discontinued once you get one or two experiences. Once you are pretty sure that it is possible to keep the awareness on in deep sleep, a little bit artificially like this, then you should concentrate on the waking state. Again, that is your arena, that is your practice area. The whole of our life happens in the waking state. If you are not aware in the waking state, there is no point in being aware in sleep or even in the dream. It is a waste of time. You will say, no, sleep is already a waste of time, so let me be aware. That will come. The awareness in the waking will extend into sleep, deeper sleep, and then into death. You can accelerate this process, but then you will need the yogic techniques, tantric techniques, and all which are beyond our scope on the path of knowledge. What do we say on the path of knowledge? The natural is the best, and anything that we do to push it will have consequences, as you know. But those who are capable or those who are interested, they can take up a little bit of practice under the guidance of a good guru. Do not do it yourself since I do not teach anything like this. I send them to others. It is just like bodybuilding. The natural body that is given to us is beautiful, good, it works, but there are some people who will go to the gym and build on it. They will make it even better. As you know, there are consequences, and it takes a lot of effort and time, but they are happy with the results. Same way, you can achieve continuous unbroken awareness. It will take a lot of effort, it will take guidance, it will take a lifetime, and then there are consequences. So whatever is natural is the best. We don't need awareness in deep sleep right now. We need awareness in the waking. In sleep, we say that experiencer is in its purest form.

Actually, this "I am" saying that experience asserts itself in "I am." How could it be in knowledge? I am not able to get that, Guruji. Please help a little more.

Okay, it's fine. If you are stuck on the word knowledge, you can drop it. It is the assertion that "I am," but it is not made by the experiencer because the experiencer says nothing. It does not say "I am." So there must be something which reflects the experiencer. That is awareness only. Now you can drop the word knowledge here. You can say that there is an activity there which reflects my true nature no matter what the state is. That is what we can say.

But if, Guruji, some activity would be there then when we say that, let's say in the bliss states, in the deep sleep states, the experiencer in its purest form, the existence is in its purest form. So isn't even a minor activity from outside something additional?

Yes, you are right. When there is no awareness, the experiencer is in its purest form. How does it look like? No mind. So when there is activity, even this subtle activity of "I am-ness," the purity is destroyed. It is not deep sleep now, and a new name has to be given to this state which everybody knows what it is. Turiya state. Now your awareness is unbroken in the three states, so it is given the name Turiya, Fourth, but yes, the experiencer never becomes impure. What has happened is the mind has extended into deep sleep. Previously there was nothing. That was just the being. But can we say that there was nothing? This is our subjective point of view that in deep sleep the experiencer is in purest form and it is nothing. It is emptiness with all the potential.

Yes, but will changing the state of the mind destroy purity? Will it make it not empty? No. While one creature is in deep sleep, the experiencer is experiencing through uncountable creatures. It is never in sleep. The experiencer is never asleep. Only the creature goes to sleep. So its purity is never compromised because this whole being is always the same. A few bubbles here and there and the disappearance of the bubbles hardly matter. So take a look from the universal point of view. Where is the experiencer while one creature is asleep or even if there is a tiny bit of activity? Where is it? It is pervading the whole existence. It is appearing and disappearing as many, many creatures and activities all the time. This is happening since eternity, and that is its purest form, which never goes away. Even the activity is its purest form. So there is this notion that only "I am." The experience is that which only I know. No, the experiencer is that which is the combined knowledge of all the creatures, and it remains the same.

There is always waking. At the same time, there is dreaming. At the same time, there is sleep manifested in almost infinite creatures, in infinite ways. This is how Brahman is. It is complete, you see. Brahman cannot be visualized as a combination of three states. Impossible. The three states are of the person, you can say, individual. It is the individual experience. And what is the experience of being Brahman? No experience. It is undefined. He is always in Turiya. All the states combined all the time. Still remains emptiness.

So now you can see, it is all going beyond the intellect. Intellect cannot capture it now. When you juxtapose the universal view with your personal view, it makes no sense. The intellect will always say how? How is it possible? Where is it when I am not there? The intellect has no authority here because it comes and goes. Because the activity comes and goes. It is an illusion. It has no authority to say anything about what is happening in its presence or in its absence. You see, it cannot say much about the Brahman when the activity is present also. And it cannot say anything at all when the intellect is absent. What can you say about the situation when you are not there? Nothing. What can it say about the deep sleep when it is not there? Nothing. Intellect is not a good way to know deep sleep.

What happens is - there is awareness, there is activity in deep sleep. And the intellect in the waking state can analyze it. And then you should analyze it from both points of view, personal and universal. First you see personal, yes, it looks like I polluted the deep sleep by being aware there. But you check the universal Brahman, the one existence, the non-dual existence. It is like this. It is a combination, overlapping of all the states. If it is one, that means all the states are my states. If I am one, all states are my states and they are right now, right here, present. And if you have seen the chapter on deep sleep, where I say that the final state of the existence is sleep, so that settles everything, you see. There are bubbles in the sleep, which hardly matter. Even if there is awareness in the deep sleep, it hardly matters. So hopefully that is clear for you.

Guruji, when this personal bubble or this causal body in this bubble finally matures and there are no more desires, will dissolution occur? So in that final maturing of the causal body, will this continuous unbroken awareness also leave when the bubble is finally merged?

There is a little bit of misunderstanding here that the desires will be extinguished. No, the desires are not seen as mine. That's all. The maturing of the causal body is giving up of the individuality, not giving up of the desires. Where will the desires go? They are seeds, they remain, but they are distributed in the universal mind. It is like the clay pot breaks, and the clay disperses on earth. It went there from where it came, that is the disappearance of the causal body. Nothing is lost except individuality. That which was thinking that I am this causal body, is now gone. And then all these seeds, they reappear as various other forms. More pots can be made from the pile of broken clay pieces, powdered clay. You can make more of them in different shapes, different statues, whatever shapes you want. Same thing is happening. Nothing is destroyed in this universe because nothing is created, you see? It's always an expression of potential.

So the causal body reappears as forms and they gain awareness. Why? Because there is a seed. There is a possibility there. Why could you gain awareness? Because there was this possibility. There was a seed. And what is your causal body? It is a reassembly of probably thousands of causal bodies which were already dissolved in the universal memory. So there you get the bigger view now. This is explained in one of my Hindi videos more clearly. Probably there is something in English also. But this is what happens when the causal body dissolves. Whatever you are calling the maturing of the causal body is when individuality is given up. Everything else becomes part of the whole.

And you will find that there was never a separation. The wave was saying I am a wave, but it was water only. So the causal body stops saying that I am this individual. I am the wave. That's all. That is maturing. It's a surrender. Whatever I am is universal. And I am an illusion. This is the maturing process. Because the causal body is an impermanent structure, it dissolves. Which simply means that the structure is broken and not the seed. The seeds are always there. We as causal bodies are a product of an ancient sea of causal bodies. You won't be able to imagine what is there. We call them the higher beings, the absorbed beings and so on. We are children of those, you can say, cocktail of those causal bodies.

Why do we have awareness? Because one of the great masters found a way to be aware again in this body. We don't even call them masters. We call them gods. In one of the satsangs, I said that if you take all the gods and goddesses, the higher ones who are maturing, mix them and blend them in the blender. Make a solution out of that and whatever is born out of that are human beings, all the creatures, animals. So this is mostly an occult view. On the path of knowledge, we never go in this depth. We say it's an illusion and we go to sleep peacefully. That is most natural, you see. That is why we can summon the gods and command them. In the occult, this is possible. You must have seen that the terminology is like this. I am summoning the god. In India, we say I am praying, but it is the same thing. You summon the god. You demand because you are the child. You are the child of the soup, which we call the greater memory. We are residing in the greater memory. This world, this physical universe, the galaxies and all, they are manifestations of the greater memory. Just like a child demands from his mother/father, we demand from this greater memory. And our demands are fulfilled because it still has an attachment to the children. You will also do the same. So this is the nuts and bolts of the illusion. It is much greater than we can imagine. Probably I am leaving out 90% of the explanation here. I know only this much.

How will you verify what I said? How can anybody verify it? You will need to go in the occult and summon the gods. There is no other way. You will see them as your own form. It will be seen as a connection. As soon as you are in the presence of that being, whatever that is, you will see that there is nothing but me. So those who are in the energy practices or worship of Devi, they know that Devi is me. There is no doubt. There is no boundary between the Devi and the worshipper of Devi. Who is this Devi? Something from the greater memory. It is non-individualistic. So we do not identify it. We do not even name it. You can name it. That will be kind of a practical thing.

So maturing of the causal body is a big subject and to talk about it is very unconvincing because I cannot give you any evidence. But those who are practicing, they know all these things. Even I know some things. It is not good to tell, isn't it? You will need to do your own research if you are interested.

Guruji, when finally the unbroken awareness penetrates, let us say 24 by 7, then in the final living, even let us say during the continuous unbroken awareness, if that goes into experiencing, then everything will be in just pure silence, is this the end? Something like this. When the awareness practice is finally on its own, when it matures and becomes 24 by 7, then it can easily enter into the experiencing silence for the end, for the Mahasamadhi or something like this.

See, again we need to take two perspectives here. One, the yogic perspective and the second, the path of knowledge perspective. From the yogic perspective, it will be called the Nirvikalpa Samadhi, where there is no interest in any activity. It is a complete detachment. So even if there is a body present, whatever is present is not seen as my body. Nothing is seen as mine. And then the body rots and we see it as death and we call it Mahasamadhi or something.

From the point of view of the path of knowledge, we don't care at all about the activity. You are talking about the final stages though. So it is the same Samadhi which is right now right here, the experiencing which you say. If there is activity, if there is a life process going on, if there is an individual or there is a world, an experience of the world, any world, we don't care at all. We say that which is eternally happening is happening. “It is like this”. Now here is the peace. Here is the peace without the fear that I'll break the Nirvikalpa Samadhi. So this is the end. But is it the end? You see, right now right here also is experiencing. The same thing is there. So what you thought is an end is the end of some ignorance only. End of the ignorance that I am in a different state and I need to be in a final state.

This is final. Right now is the final state. Look at it. You are giving too much importance to the world and the individual and the bodies and your practices and experiences. They don't matter. Do they matter? This has been like this since eternity. Tathata. Is-ness is always there. Sahaj Samadhi is eternal. What are you going to do with the Maha Samadhi/Nirvikalpa? No, it is just a tiny bubble out of countless bubbles. What are you going to do with it? This is the final perspective I see from the path of knowledge. You see, the path of knowledge is always the bottom line. If a Gyani says something, you cannot transcend it. Whatever I said right now about the final state of continuous and broken awareness is final. Can you go beyond this? That is what I like about this path. It is the ultimate. Nothing can be said after this.

So don't run after the bubbles of this and that. There is no final. That which is, is eternal. Practice never happens in time. The ignorance is shed in time. Hopefully it clears. No need to call it awareness. You have recognized that the experiencing is the final. It is always there. It was always there, when this bubble was there and when the bubble was not there, it was there. And now this tiny bubble of ignorance is gone. It is still there. Then do we need to keep up the awareness? No. It is gone. It is a part of the experiencing now. Whatever effort this creature is doing is meaningless.

That's why I say there is no practice on the path of knowledge. Because none is needed. And why do we give this practice of being aware? There is still ignorance that I need to be aware. I need to be aware in all states. No, there is no need. So those who have crossed the awareness, I tell them, don't be aware. Meaningless practice. If you want the end, this is the end. To leave all the practices is the end. Why are they given the practices? They cannot stop doing. The “I need to do” energy is too much. The energy manifests as ignorance. Non-acceptance of my true nature. “I am not good as it is”. That is what the energy is saying. “I am not progressing like other seekers”. That is what they say. We have such people in our satsang. They were told, why are you doing this? “No, no, I need to be aware”. No. You are that which you are. Adding or removing anything from you is meaningless. There is peace. Being without any goal. Goal-less is the final end. If you still have a goal of some kind, it is ignorance.

So yes, relieve ourselves of the need to remain aware. And you will find there is a very funny effect of it. The awareness will want to be there once you let go of this thing. And it will be naturally present whenever it is needed. Naturally present in all your life, after death, if it is needed, it will be there. If all that is needed is darkness, the darkness will be there. This is called a complete acceptance. And in other worlds, in the form of non-individual memories of the greater family and whatever mess is out there. And it comes and goes as per the natural need of it. So that is why I say the path of knowledge takes you to surrender. Not to a final, some glorified state of some kind. Surrender. Simple and humble. Don't have high hopes. That's what I am saying, everybody. You will reach nowhere. There is nowhere to reach. You are perfect as it is right now, right here. Recognize this and be happy. Nothing to do. Surrender.

See, you got the point immediately. But my instruction for you is - continue the practice. When the day arrives, I will check you and I will tell you, now you can give up the practice. Right now, you continue the practice. You heard me. Now this seed will mature someday. Then I will tell you to get off the horses. Where are you going? Right now, you keep going. I am even aware of awareness and its absence. When I am aware that I am not in awareness, I am already in awareness. Look at this. Meaningless, no? Practice is meaningless. Why do we keep telling people to be aware? They don't understand. They need to be ripened a little bit. This ripening process is happening. They are given this job of awareness.

Now, many people are going to drop their awareness practice after hearing this. I don't recommend that. You need to go through it. No, no, I am in the sahaj samadhi. He said it. Well, it will be gone. Do the awareness practices as long as I tell you to do and then it will drop off automatically. I don't sometimes even need to tell people and they say, yes, I am happy as it is, then I come to know that maturing has happened. Some people say, no, I need to be aware in dreams. I say, okay, I will tell you the technique. They are kind of roped into this game of practices. The illusion is unfolding and now it is unfolding in this way that this creature must do the practice. Okay then, let it be so. Then it unfolds even more, you will see. It was useless, but right now there is use of it. So, do not drop the practice. Nobody is there to practice. That drops the practice. How many people know this? Very few. There is always a doer present. So, we give them something to do. We do it.

Actually Guruji, from this that there is no doer, only things are just happening. In the awareness, it can be clearly seen that there are just happenings and happenings which have no connection at all with the individual. So, when that thing is there, only then this question of continuation of the awareness practice comes.

Yes, you are right. When the doer is present, doing is present. Like Ashwin said, when the doer is gone, whatever happens happens. It is clearly seen that I don't do anything. I don't even do the awareness practice. So, the practice is gone and the awareness remains and it does whatever it does. If the seed is there, if a Guru is there, you are good. You are taken care of. The ego relaxes. Oh, there is finally nothing to do. That relaxation is bliss.

“I want this Samadhi of Raman Maharshi, whatever he got”. Okay, I am going to give it to you. And then five years of different kinds of practices are given. “Did you get the Samadhi?” “No, sir.” “Okay, what did you get?” “The doer is gone”. That is the fruit of it. No Samadhi. The doer of the Samadhi is gone. Samadhi was always there. It is the background on which this drama of getting the Samadhis is happening . Look at this. It's very funny.

You will never get anything. I said, whenever the Gyanis say something, it is the bottom line. Yes, you will never get anything. You are whole and complete already. There is an illusion of getting there, but you never get there. Many people are going to spend some sleepless nights, - “whatever I did for the last 10 years is useless”. Yes, but it has its use, you see. It brings us into this realization that practices are just stepping stones. We are not born here to practice.

Graham is saying, it seems impurities are dropping with the practice slowly. I believe it isn't needed on the absolute level, but on a relative level, I have to clean up the layers.

Yes, for Graham, continue the practice. You are doing good. The amount of transformation you have is amazing. So, if it is working, continue. That is what the Guru will say. You go to any person, on any path. If it is working, producing results, yes, it must be done. I sit there for 8 hours, then my back hurts and then I cannot sleep because I rest too much and next day I am drowsy. Okay, stop it, it is not working. If it is working, continue. If you are seeing a lot of progress, that means you are coming from far away. And those who do not see any progress, I say, don't worry, you were nearby. Not much traveling was needed. You were a walking distance away. So, it is amazing. Those who do not see total transformation, nothing wrong. You were already there.

Guruji, what I see is that there is not only silence. Life is just a free float. Just floating freely. Surrendered.

Yes, if it flows on its own, it is the best. If there is effort and struggle and why it is not going the way I want it, that is ego. There is a balance that is needed. I am not saying that let everything go to hell on its own. No, a little bit of balance is needed because whatever the ego is doing is part of the flow also. So, on the path of knowledge, we do not discard the ego. It is used. It is not thrown away. So, when there is a need to do something using the ego, it must happen. That is the more healthy, I can say, wholesome way to participate in the flow is to let the ego do its duty. No, today I won't let the ego do anything and that is again effort. Effort. It has to be effortless. How can you sayI am in the flow when you are trying to keep the ego out of it? No, you are not in the flow then. Ego is a part of mother nature. It must be allowed to function. The body must be allowed to function. No suppression. Do not leave out anything. Yes, if it becomes kind of an afflicted ego, then the guru will see it and something will be given to bring it back in the flow. So, if it is flowing effortlessly, then do not meddle in it. That is what we say.

Guruji, in the free flowing of ego, the situation is something like this. Let's say imagery to eat the french fry or something comes in the mind with the imagery. Then there is a subtle decision of saying yes to it also comes along with that imagery. In the free flowing, that action will be executed by this body-mind structure. But in awareness, one can definitely intervene and see it in the light of awareness.

In this free flowing, the decisions will also be taken automatically. One can just see that this action has been allocated to you, when we see in the light of awareness. Without awareness also it is flowing. With awareness also it is flowing. With awareness there is more control. Without awareness, less control. That's all. There is nobody who intervenes. Just like there is nobody who decides what to eat, there is nobody who decides to intervene and stop the action. It is also part of the flowing and unfolding. So, thinking that awareness gives me control is ignorance. Nobody gets the control. It is a part of the flow. Now the flow is kind of regulated. That's all. Instead of being random impulses, it is more intelligent now. Same thing. It's a refinement of behavior. It is not that getting awareness gives me a better place. No, the me is sent back even more. The ego loses the ground even more. You will see the ego activity diminishing with awareness, not increasing. So, it is a reverse process. That which became unstructured and was not governed at all by anything is now governed a little bit. Nobody did it.

If you are still thinking that I am becoming aware and I am controlling it, it means there is no awareness. The experiencer controls nothing. The experiencer watches and the things “control” themselves. The experiencer is always watching but there is a forgetting that I am that which is watching and that causes a loss of control. That's all that is happening. Nobody is doing it.

So, you see, that is how the surrender happens gradually. Knowing that there is no one to control. What is the meaning of that? Realization of not being in control is surrender only. When I say surrender, it means I am not in control. Let things happen. That is when you are flowing in the flow. That is when everything goes right for you. Even if it is a punishment, even if it is a bad event in your life, you know it is right.

Here we come and enter the karmic field again. Whatever is happening is my fault. It's my karma. Who can say this? Those who are completely surrendered, they can say this. Those who are not surrendered, they think somebody else is responsible for my condition, my happiness or joy or suffering. Somebody else is doing it. That is also ego. So, if good happens in your life with surrender, it is good. When something goes wrong in your life which you do not want, it is good.

You see, when you are suffering from some disease and all, there is some pain while treating it. The operation takes a little bit of effort and some pain is there. But then you are cured forever. Same way, the karmic stuff that was accumulated when the creature was in darkness will manifest when you are in awareness. Actually, it will manifest even more strongly and quickly. It's an acceleration of evolution there. It will look like all the hell is breaking loose on me. Everything is coming. All the desires that were pending, they are coming back. So on. And then you need to surrender even more. Don't try to take control. Some people are joining me, some people are leaving me. Yes, fast forward. I thought I will do this next year. It is happening next week. You will be amazed like this. Surrender is a very amazing place to be.

What is the image of surrender in the minds of ordinary seekers or ordinary people? Boring. They think surrender means just sitting there. Look at me and look at other seekers. Their life is now a typhoon, tsunami of some kind. As soon as a little bit of surrendering has appeared in their life and you can see, all the causal stuff has flooded their lives now. This is how it happens. Do not think that surrender is something boring. This is where life actually starts. Your life before surrender, before awareness was boring. Do you want to go back there? Nobody will say yes to the life that was before their self-realization.

Can I listen to other videos, like Hindi videos?

Those who are on step two, they should not mix the content because you are listening. Listening means it should be pure. Do not listen to everything at once. Sometimes I ban people from listening to the videos on YouTube also because the program needs your whole attention. That's why some discipline is introduced. After you pass your exam, you are free. But if you are doing practices and all, it will still be useful if you keep the purity and discipline. Those who are beyond step number seven and those who have cleared the program, they can do anything at all. No discipline after that. People find that keeping the intellect disciplined is very good.

In Hindi videos, there is nothing new at all. If you cannot find it on my English channel, it will be in the podcast channel. If it is not in the podcast, it will be in the satsangs. There is only this much I know and the same thing is repeated many times. Knowledge is very simple and small. Although when I say small, it means you can easily spend three or four years listening to what I have said. If you listen to one video per day, it will take you two to three years to finish all of it. You will find everything repeats endlessly.

I was a little bit addicted to YouTube videos of different masters and it went on for two to three years. Then I saw that everything is repeating again. Now, as soon as I start some video, I see that I've heard it like 10 times already. So that habit is dropped now.It is also a phase. You will go through it and then you will get tired of it. What do you prefer after that? Peace. Too much content in the mind. The essence of all the words comes out to be silence.

Initially, the mind needs words. Yes, listen to this, listen to that. This fellow is interesting, that fellow is boring, this fellow has depth, that fellow is shallow. It's all good. Then after that, you will want silence. Initially, it will be like fluff talk, very shallow talk that your mind is capable of listening to. Then you absorb all the words and it is deep now. Now you can speak on any subject for one hour and it is useful if it is transmitted to others sometimes. And then after some days, you will find that all this deep philosophy is kind of a burden and nothing deep is in this existence. In that sense, it's very simple.

So you'll find me talking about simple things in personal conversations. There is no philosophy. People say, you don't sound like a guru. No, I'm a guru only in satsang, you see. When recording the video, this drama happens there. In ordinary life, I’m as simple as possible. I cooked this and I went here and this happened and that happened. That's all I like then.

Everybody goes through stages, yes. And I've seen that the simplest is best. As soon as you clutter it, it produces a lot of misery. We start by cleaning the clutter physically. If you are surrounded by clutter, if there is no space in your house to even walk, it’s a problem, isn't it? Then we reduce the clutter in the relations. Very sensitive thing. And then we reduce the clutter in the mind. You keep thinking the whole day, is it good? No. A cleanup process, purification. Getting addicted to gurus is good up to a point. And once you get the point, it’s all clutter. The guru must be thrown out.

It is made clear that knowledge is a kind of impurity. It is ignorance only. But you should not drop it immediately. A sequence must be followed. First you drop the ignorance, then drop the knowledge. Do not say no to knowledge. That is why there is conflict in the teachings. That is why you should never take the answer given to others as your own. Sometimes it is useful, but not always. Especially if the other person is at a different stage of learning. Somebody comes here and says, okay, this is the condition for me now. And I say, okay, don't be aware now. There is no practice for you to be aware. Then everybody should not listen to me. They should not take it as an order for themselves. It was said only for that person. But what will you take from that? Someday I will be there where that other fellow is and I will be given this instruction also. But you should do what is given to you.

There is one thing I need to ask. Everybody at some point of time in their life goes through some obsession. Like the mind is fixated to something. The mind goes through some kind of fixation. Are these fixations only due to pleasure seeking energies or because this body mind structure runs after pleasure? That's why the mind is fixated on some things, the obsessions.

No, on the path of knowledge, we say that the addiction or obsession is because of ignorance. Not because there is a system in the body and the mind for reward and punishment, pleasure and pain. That system, that facility is abused by that person because of ignorance. We don't need to give up the pleasure. We need to give up the ignorance. You can have all the pleasure you want. But if it becomes an obsession, there is ignorance, loss of control there. The pleasure itself is not bad. It is a part of this life-form. It is built into it for some good purpose, you see. That need not be dropped. The ignorance about it should be dropped. That is what we say.

Varun is asking, since experiences are only experiences, then it is an experience saying, "I am the experiencer."

Yes, very good. Saying "I am the experiencer" is an event. That's all. It's a recognition. The experiencer says nothing. The experiencer is a witness of this event, which says, "I am the experiencer." It's very clear. It is also an expression of the ego only. Whenever there is this word "I," it means the ego is in charge now. The ego is on the screen now. So let it say that. There is nothing wrong in it. The recognition that "I am the experiencer" is being, not a knowledge, not a saying, not a memory. That which I am is not a memory, not an event which comes and goes. And so it cannot be described in language. It cannot be also known like any other experience. So it is paradoxical because you see, the screen supports the picture, but the screen is not in the picture. All of your experiences are saying one thing, that "I am the experiencer." Can you realize this? When you open your eyes and look, what is this scene saying? "I am the experiencer." You are listening to my words. What is this experience saying? "I am the experiencer,". All your experiences say only one thing, not only this ego jumping into the foreground and saying, "I am the experiencer." Not only this, all experiences point only to the experiencer. There is nothing else to point at.

Sonal is asking, the path of knowledge doesn't have any practices, but few seekers experience awakening different chakras. Why so?

What is the meaning of awakening chakras? Can you tell me?

Sonal is saying, experience of change in lifestyle or perspective.

Yes, isn't that natural? When you get knowledge, your perspective changes, your lifestyle changes and so on. So it is not a practice, it is a consequence of knowledge. I am not telling you to change your lifestyle or perspective. I am giving you knowledge. You can describe it in terms of the chakra model, but that will be a mixing of paths. You should not mix the paths. If we see that the knowledge has made no difference at all, then we drop back into the chakra model. That means the knowledge has not made any dent on the mind and it does not matter really, but just for completion, just to give that person a little bit of boost in their spiritual practice, we recommend purification practice, which is simply the yogic practice. Nothing else. It is a simplified yogic practice.

The path of knowledge does not have any practice. It has only knowledge. Knowledge has consequences. It has an effect on all these activities and states. That's all. It is not because you are practicing. It is a natural effect and if there is impedance there, only then we force it a little bit. Then the purification practice is given. If the purification also has no effect and I see a little bit of potential there, then tantric practices are given. Sometimes total intervention in the personal life of the seeker is done, but that is very rare. So it is a gradual dropping to other practices. In the pure path of knowledge, there is no practice. We ignite the bomb and we wait for the destruction. Just wait and watch. That's all. That is the practice. So like our video also says that if needed, the guru will drop down to the structured practices. Take the progressive paths, if needed. But I see there is usually no need. And when I see there is a need, I am very lazy about it. Usually they are sent back to another guru. I do it only when some gain is expected from that.

Siddhant is saying, the human population has been increasing exponentially. How does the theory of rebirth and reincarnation fit with this?

Let it increase then, it will decrease suddenly also. Many times it has happened that all of life was wiped out. Not exponentially, but suddenly. In just one day. So everything fits in the illusion. Everything is possible here. In the illusion, everything is possible. So if it is increasing exponentially, fine. The theory of rebirth is only a theory. There is no rebirth actually. There is no reincarnation. You are eternal. You don't take birth. Nothing takes birth. Whatever appears as taking birth and human population is your dream. Now dream anything you want.

Why is it exponential? Because you see, there is a mathematical law there that 1 becomes 2 and the 2 becomes 4 and the 4 becomes 16. Something like this, you see. So it is exponential. It will always increase like this. The doubling is always exponential. You must have heard that story of Akbar, the king and Birbal, the minister and wiseman. One day the king was very happy with him and he said, “I am the king. I can give you anything”. And Birbal said, “I want a chessboard full of rice. But it should be according to this law that every square on the chessboard takes double the amount of rice of its previous square”. And the king laughed, “I thought you were intelligent but you are so stupid. You ask for so little? Okay, today we will fulfill your desire”. A lot of rice was brought in but they could not fill up even half the board. So the trucks and trucks of rice came in. The whole rice in his kingdom was exhausted but did not reach the final square on chess.

This is the power of exponential growth. You think that it has something to do with reincarnation? No, just mathematical law, you see. Even if you stuff the whole universe with people, they can double the next day. A new universe will be created to fit them all. This is an illusion, you see? So the problem is not with the theory. The problem is with our thinking that only some kind of limited scenario is possible, the possibility of infinite potential of the existence is overlooked here.

One day I was just looking at the videos and I saw there is a movie about Ramanujan. It was a South Indian movie. I was curious so I was looking at some parts of that movie and in one scene, Ramanujan's mother is teaching him math, and she says, “it takes 15 days for the pond to fill up with lotus flowers, water lilies. So how many days will it take to fill up the whole pond?” And Ramanujan's father was sitting there, he was laughing, “What kind of stupid questions are you asking my child? It will take 15 more days to fill up the whole pond because it took 15 days to fill half of it”.

Can somebody tell me the correct answer? How much time will it take to fill up the whole pond if it took 15 days to fill half of it? Mathematicians in the satsang?

Yes, one day, it will take only one day to fill up the whole pond. The universe has this law and it knows how to do it. It does not need our stupid theory of reincarnation to function. We don't know how things happen here. Is it growing exponentially? Yes, that is the thing to observe, not the theory, which we don't know what it is. The theory should explain our observation, not the reverse. So what do people think? That there is a fixed number of creatures, fixed number of causal bodies, and only that much should appear? No, there is infinite potential. The whole pond can fill up in one day. You will need to trash your theory that there is a fixed number of causal bodies in the universe. How is it growing then? Well, things are growing except the intelligence of that person.

Session 149

Discussion on some questions asked in a test follows.

How can one detect ignorance in oneself and in others?

There will be suffering. Hallmarks of a person who is suffering is sadness, depression and pain and and negative emotions. Then we can say that there is no knowledge there. There will be different manifestations at different layers. For example the intelligence will be less. The person will be gullible. He/she will be used by others. And there will be confusion. There will be a lack of any goals. Won't know what to do. Simply drifting. And this kind of person also becomes violent and angry very quickly. There is no control over their tendencies. Mostly like animals. You will find 99% of the human population is like this. Ignorant.

Is it necessary to take the path of knowledge if you are already happy and free?

Free in a sense of living freely in the world. Obviously he has no knowledge so he is not liberated. But he says I am free. It's not needed immediately. The happiness and freedom changes back into unhappiness and bondage. The stability, the equanimity is the goal and not these fluctuating tendencies. Path of knowledge may be needed to be truly free. Either this or other path of realization may be followed. Don't just sit there because the happiness will be gone and the freedom will be gone very soon. This is the reality. So as soon as you get an opportunity, as soon as you encounter a guru, take the knowledge even if you are happy and free. There is nothing wrong with that. You get to know something. Your happiness and freedom is not compromised by knowing anything. Ignorance is dropped and now we come to know the real happiness which is bliss like somebody said. Bliss is not a state of mind. It is the background of all states and that makes us completely immune to whatever happens to the body mind knowing that I am not it. Now it hardly matters. This bliss is projected into the body mind also. It becomes peaceful also. Probably not partying every day, not that kind of happiness but there is peace in life. Carelessness. So it is just like you know a person is careless if he has a million dollars in his bank account. He knows not working for some time is not going to cause any problems. Spending a little bit more is not going to cause any problems. Somebody robs you not a big problem but a poor person cannot sleep peacefully. Knowledge is our wealth and it is never bad to get even more of it.

How to know the nature of something?

The nature of something is that which remains when you remove everything that is unnecessary. Non-essential. That which remains will be nature. If you remove that thing then the object is no more or whatever that is is no more. It cannot be defined without nature.

What precautions are needed while choosing criteria for truth?

The main precaution that we need to take is that the criteria should apply in every context. It should not change from one context to another. This is the main precaution that we need to take and there is only one criteria that is like this and that is the changing is false and changing is true. That applies in all situations, all states of mind, all time, all place, all cultures, everything. And he stated reliability, repeatability. Yes, then we need to take care of all these things which are mentioned in the video.

Experiencer knows nothing. True or false?

Remember the definition of knowledge, arrangement of experiences in the memory. So the qualities of memory are being imposed on the experiencer, right? We are assuming that the experiencer has a memory where some storage is happening, arrangement of experiences happening. Experiencer only experiences. There is a difference between knowledge and experience in our terminology. It may not be the case in other philosophies or other gurus or other books. They will say knowing is experiencing. Experiencer knows, they say. And some people will say understanding. Experiencer understands. The intellect knows. They redefine their words. We have done the same thing. Our definitions are very precise. Knowledge is in the mind. Why? It can be wiped off anytime. If it were a quality of the experiencer, essential part of the experiencer, then there was no chance of going back into ignorance. But knowledge can be wiped off. Remove your memories, gone. Who you are, no, we don't know.

Sometimes we say that experiencer knows itself by being itself. It is poetic. It never knows itself. It simply is. And that is sufficient for it. It is just there. Experiencer is the witness. What do you mean by witness? If it is only the witness, that means it knows nothing. It is pure witness. We use this word. Pure witness means simply present, not holding anything, not accumulating anything.

Here, remembering the definitions helps. Know the definition of knowledge. And then find out whether there is something like this in the experiencer. You can redefine knowing as witnessing. Then you see, it's okay. You can redefine knowing as understanding. Then it's okay. Or you can define knowing as experiencing. Then it's okay. But no, we have defined knowing as arrangement in the memory. I say knowledge is also an experience. The experiencer experiences the state of knowledge. And the experiencer experiences the state of ignorance. Who experiences ignorance? Experiencer. Blissfully experiencing it. It is okay with ignorance. Experiencer never says get rid of ignorance. It is okay with suffering and confusion also. Pure witness. It does not need knowledge. So there is no desire there to gain knowledge. Knowledge is a survival process. Experiencer has no need to survive. It is the whole existence itself. It is the essential nature of existence.

Experience appears when a body is born. Not the experiencer. True or false?

The experiencer does not appear. The body appears and then the experience starts. Even that is not the start of the experience. It is a start of the experience of current life. When there are proper conditions,

the world, the body, experience, it all appears.

Can we say the experiencer also appeared at that time? There will be different opinions here now. Some people will say - No it was already present, it was experiencing bliss and so on.

What we are asking here is - the experiencer did it begin with the body. What begins with the body?

The body in the world appears. This is the traditional answer. Once you have established that there is only one experiencer. Then the same experiencer is getting the experiences from different points of views. Now this one more point of view appeared and it started getting the new camera turned on. And now the watchman is getting a new view of the building. That is all that has happened. Take the universal view. How is that known? That is known only when the true nature of the experiencer is known. If you ask anybody who does not know the true nature of the experiencer, they will say these things. Experience and the experiencer appear together.

Body appeared first then appeared experience and then appeared the experiencer - This is the view of

a common man who has not studied what experiencer is, who has no knowledge. What will they say? I was born and then I started watching the world. One day I came to know I am here in the world. What are they describing? The describing and the process of ego. The experiencer is completely absent from this description. The ego appears after a while. The ego says I am here in the world. But before that the body and all the experience is already there. The whole birth of a body is an experience only. What was absent before the body was the memory. You cannot say I was not there before birth. You can only say I don't remember what was there before birth. And I don't even remember what was there till 3 or 4 years after birth. Very few 1 or 2 events will be remembered if they are strong impressions. The memory is not there. Can we say that I was not there? Because I don't remember where I was 1 month ago also. My memory of 1 month is now erased. But can I say I was not there? I mean the experiencer was not there? No. I simply say I forgot what was there.

So birth is a process of forgetting. The experience is eternal. The experiencer is eternal. Memory comes and goes. Or you can say recall suffers because the limitations have been taken on. The area of the memory shrinks to the waking memory. That's all. And so this “point of view”, this individual is blank. But we are saying taking up a physical body starts physical experiences, mental and subtle body experiences were there. The causal body was there. The subtle body was there. The other worlds were there. Everything was there. As soon as the birth happens, everything shrinks into one little point. And it is not true that everything is forgotten. Babies remember a lot. They cannot tell because the intellect is not developed. Language is not there. But they are pure beings. They are something very big when they are born. Some babies, they start telling things. And then we shut them up. It is not that the whole memory is lost. There are some drops of the memory that remain. And they are completely wiped off by social conditioning. Children are not encouraged to remember what was there before birth. If somebody starts saying these things, we just slap them into ignorance. Hit them with a stick

and so they stop telling it. It is not impossible to check the continuity of experience. And when I say the experience appears, a new experience has started. A new event has started.

How to verify all these things? Because what is our experience, I mean direct experience is I don't remember what happened and then both appeared at the same time. The experience of the world, body and the experiencer are known to be present at the same time. Nothing more can be said from the first look. Here the knowledge of the universality of the experiencer is not there. So only this much can be said. But as soon as you know that the same experiencer is witnessing everything from different points of view, then you know that neither experience started nor the experiencer started. So step by step we should be taken to this universal view. Once the universal view is there, you don't worry about the bodies and the worlds at all. You know what is happening. The viewpoint of Brahman, that silences all these questions. Before that there will be total confusion. Before that there will be this yes or no kind of answer. No it's not true, no it's true, no. It will be confusing.

Are you not Brahman? So answer from that point of view. Sometimes. It's good. Or to complete the answer you can write an essay like this. From the point of view of Brahman it is like this. From the point of view of experiencer it is like this. From duality it is like this. From the point of view of the individual, the ego is like this. Social points of views, social opinions in the common people, it is like this. There can be an occult point of view also. There are different views in different philosophies. That's what I said. You can write a book on it. If anybody wants. So it was a difficult question.

What causes self-organization of vibrational patterns?

I say there are vibrations. You can verify it. There is change so there is vibration. There are patterns. Why? Why was it arranged in patterns? Beautiful patterns, complex patterns. The human being is a pattern - Vibrating pattern. Why did that happen? He said survival but I don't agree. Because survival is a process. Survival does not cause organization. Probably he means something by survival but he did not say anything. Probably he had to explain what was really happening.

There is a possibility and then it will appear. Yes. But there is a process there that is causing this organization. Probably survival is a good word but no, I wanted an explanation. Resonance is a process of copying. I have described the copying mechanism as resonance. How can pattern copy to other patterns by resonance? Now we are talking about self-organization here. The answer is - Evolutionary process. What is the evolutionary process? Since there are all possibilities the vibrations are arranging, rearranging, combining, destroying - all these things are going on and in this sea. Whatever remains, whatever sustains for a longer time is that which is organized. Out of all possibilities emerges a structure. Why? Because that which does not organize falls back into the sea as randomness. The patterns that do not self-organize, fall back because of impermanence. This is the basic fundamental evolutionary process. It is also called the struggle for existence in Darwinism. How to sustain only by self-organization? That is done by consuming or replicating and so on.

Take a soup of patterns, combinations of patterns and you will find that it self-organizes into something. Events which do not result in self-organization fall back into randomness. So in the end that which is seen is a self-organized pattern. That which is not organized is not seen. It is not even perceived. It cannot be known.

Simply, you start the game and whatever comes out is a evolutionary process, game of life. That which

manages to self-organize by chance and by probability is seen. It survives. It is retained. That which by chance falls down, cannot organize, becomes raw material for that which is organized. Consumption. So the more evolved things consume the less evolved things. Don't we see this? Yes. The simpler patterns are consumed by the complex patterns and they are incorporated in the complexity. This is

self-organization or also called growth. But it does not last for a long time. It also falls. It is also destroyed. It also gets dissolved in the primary patterns. But not before a copy is made. Mother nature is very smart. She makes a copy of whatever was evolved, whatever self-organization happened. And then she does not care about the original. The original can go to hell then. The new is maintained for a while. Isn't this happening? This is the game that is happening. So the cause is not a thing. The cause

is an automatic process.

Pandurang is saying, isn't evolution a result of survival?

Survival is this game of taking birth, growing, reproducing and dying. Maintaining this game is called survival. Like I say I am able to survive fine which means what? The body is okay. The mind is okay. You are comfortable there. And that is what we mean by survival. Being alive is survival. But evolution is something else. In evolution things change. Like we say they evolve. I know there is a need for some precision here. There is a need for some definitions here. So it is your homework now.

How does knowledge of non-duality lead to surrender and equanimity?

After knowledge all questions are silenced, the mind enters a state of equanimity. And there is surrender because we come to know that everything is perfect, fine as it is. I am whole and complete. Nothing to do now. No fight. Nothing to achieve. Nowhere to go. You are at home and now you rest

in the warm blanket of nothingness. So this is how we get equanimity and surrender. Simply by knowing what we are. What this existence is. And what this colorful experience is. Very simple.

Mukta is saying, When I teach something to someone, my mind works ten times faster. Why did this happen?

Teaching is a much better way to use your intelligence than learning. In learning, it depends on how interested you are. And half of the time, the intellect is asleep. But when you teach it, now you cannot sleep. Now you cannot deactivate the intellect. It is hyperactive. And your attention is 100% because you are teaching it. You are saying it. So that is why I say teaching is 50% learning. When you teach something, you get the most benefit.

Varun is saying how does identification with the body happen? Who identifies? Since the experiencer doesn't, is it something in the experience identifying with something in the experience?

Identification is a process of saying that I am this object or I am that object. And it happens because of conditioning. Your mother and father tell you that you are the body. Because that is what they know. And the body has these and these qualities. The body is angry. The body is healthy. The body is loving. And the body is intelligent. That is what they know. And that is what the child learns. Body and its activity are me.

This impression is stored in the memory. So, yes, it is an assumption only. And there is a natural process also that whenever there is pain in the body, whenever there is hunger in the body, who gets to suffer? There is something. There is an experience of suffering. And the mind says that look, nobody else is suffering. Only this body is suffering. So, I am this. It is like this. It is very natural to get identified with the source of experience. Especially when nobody else can experience it.

The feelings, the emotions, the thoughts, they cannot be experienced by others and these experiences are associated with I. Without knowing that there is an experiencer, there is an assumption that this is me. Without the body, there is nothing, so, the body is me. This is fundamental ignorance. And knowledge is a process of disidentification where we systematically, step by step, disidentify. And we arrive at the true nature.

Dropping the assumptions is knowledge. Making assumptions is ignorance. It does not matter how they are made. Ultimately, it does not matter what causes this kind of identification. What is important is you get rid of it as soon as possible. Because all this ignorance, all these assumptions, they result in a lot of suffering which is unnecessary.

Graham is asking, Is faith useful? I find it helps me to be aware. I am the experiencer. When overwhelmed by illusionary feelings and can't seem to reason or pause. For example, remembering Guruji said, You have my permission, you can say I am the experiencer. Calms the mind and takes me out of identification with the emotion.

See, you need to verify once and then assume that it is true. There is no need to check again and again who you are. You need to verify it once, then use the knowledge. You can call it faith. But that is based on knowledge only. For example, when you check into a hotel, they ask for an ID card. Now they ask it only once. It is not that they are calling you every five minutes and asking you for your ID card. Tell me who you are. No sir, five minutes ago you were something else, now it's possible that you are somebody else. No. They have faith in you. They say, Okay, we have identified this person, we have the record. Then they forget about it. Same way, you know what you are. Now use it. There is no need to call it faith. It is knowledge. What is faith? Not knowing what you are and simply repeating like a parrot what the Guru said. That does nothing at all.

Ayushman is saying, Does processes affect our daily life as well as cyclic, destructive processes? For example, some days we are happy, productive and everything is going well and suddenly the next day I am struggling and problems come out of nowhere. Sometimes you feel like you are stuck in a loop.

There is some problem in the question. Processes are happening at a level where your daily life is not happening. Our daily life is a result of all these hidden processes. But if your mood is not okay one day, we cannot say that it is because of the fundamental processes. One process does not cause mood change, it is a combination of many complicated events. So although all the processes are at the root of all the experience that we are experiencing right now, it is not a direct one-to-one relation. I am hungry today. What is the fundamental process that is causing hunger? No. It is not like this. There are probably a million more things that have happened between the fundamental process and hunger.

I cannot say that I am struggling because there is a fundamental process affecting my life. The fundamental process produces the creation. Whatever happens in the creation is a very complex event.

If you are stuck in a loop, no, you cannot blame a cyclic process for that. There is a mechanism there that is involved, that you are repeating the same actions again and again. Yes, it is a manifestation of some cyclic process, but you cannot blame the cyclic process for that. Probably you will need to understand the whole creation to understand why I am stuck in a loop. What do we do? We use very practical ways. We don't go to the fundamental process to check what is happening here. It is impossible. We use practical methods. Leave your job, leave your family, leave your country and then you start anew, and this loop is broken in your life where nothing interesting was happening. Marry somebody, get into a new relationship, love somebody, have an adventure somewhere. Then the loop is broken, new events can happen. So you don't try to fix a fundamental process. The effect must be dealt with at the same level initially at least. Some days you are happy, productive, some days you are not. That is a manifestation of the cyclic process. But there are probably a million more reasons for that.

Your life is a song, a song where let us say 20 instruments are playing. The whole music is a very complicated arrangement of those notes. Same way, our whole life is a very complicated arrangement of fundamental processes that are happening in the memory.

Pandurang is saying, if the body becomes sick, let's say fever and headache, the knowledge is there that I am not this body. It is just an experience. Can this experience be called suffering?

You already know that in the body there is a mechanism that is informing me that something is wrong in the body, so it cannot become a suffering. What is suffering? I am the body and the body is not according to my wish. Why is it not according to what I want? Crying and then doing useless activities, hitting your head on the wall to cure it, or drinking alcohol, and so on. This will be called suffering. Not knowing what is happening is suffering already. But if you already have this knowledge that I am not the body and there is a process going on in the body of fever and whatever. It is doing whatever is needed to fix the situation. You relax and let it finish its job. Yes, there will be a sensation of pain and there will be a little downtime. Your work will remain pending and there will be a little worry there that this can kill me. You do whatever is necessary and continue. So that will not be called suffering. Experiencing states of the body is not actually suffering. Assuming that they are my states and they should not be what they are is suffering.

Mostly the suffering is a resistance to what is. The actual experience is not of suffering. The actual experience is simply vibrating patterns, as you know. If you tell this to an ignorant person, he will become really angry. “What do you mean? My suffering is nothing to you”. The ego is active here. There is not only ignorance, there is ownership of suffering. It is mine and people are not respecting me. Something like this, you see. It's a hopeless condition. You cannot tell this person that you are not the body. You need to tell this person, look, I am sympathetic about your suffering. I know how it feels when you have a fever and headache. I know the whole day is ruined, and don't worry, I will help you. I will take you to a doctor, cook food for that person and so on. Make him comfortable as a body. Give him the medicines and so on. That works. Saying that you are not a body and these patterns of pain are vibrating patterns, non-physical memory will not help much. So, for ignorant people, words of knowledge do not work. Those who have knowledge, they need not be told. Very simple.

Sweetie is saying, when I am doing the inclusive meditation of the object, usually when the object is a fruit of my choice, I get the vivid taste and feeling associated with it. The question is, can this vivid experience give us the experience of getting the stomach filled?

What you are getting is memory recall. You imagine the fruit and you recall the taste. You are not tasting the food. There is no magic there. For example, if I ask you to imagine a lemon, cut the lemon in half, squeeze the lemon. Now you will be actually smelling the lemon and your mouth will start watering. Make it detailed and vivid, take a really bright yellow lemon in your hand, a wet lemon dripping with water, cut it into two, squeeze it. There is this lemony juice. Now you will find that you can taste it, you can smell it and your mouth will start watering.

The mind can cook up the whole experience from the memory itself. And yes, for a while, it can give you this illusion that now my hunger is gone. It happens when you cook the food. The smell of the food and touching the food actually reduces your appetite. You will not eat much if you cook your food. Because there is satisfaction already. 50% satisfaction happens while cooking. If you simply taste it while cooking, the tongue is satisfied. “I ate something nice today”. There is no need to fill up your stomach with food. And that is the reason the pornography works. You simply watch it and the mind gets a feeling that I am doing it and it is satisfied somehow. It does not give you the full satisfaction. For the moment, the impulse is gone. That is why people keep watching it. People keep looking at photos of beautiful girls for the same reason. The mind can create an illusion of a desire getting fulfilled.

So that was my detailed explanation of what is happening with you. But don't worry, you will feel hungry after the meditation.

Vikesh is saying, From the layers model, I could follow how evolution leads to the formation of mineral layers and how evolution goes on till the awakened layer. But I could not grasp how the causal body is formed. Is the causal body higher than the awakened layer or is it a parallel concept?

Very good question. Actually, to tell you the truth, nobody knows how it is formed. But there are theories. One of the theories says that there is co-evolution. It means the causal part and the physical part, they evolve together. Which came first? No, they both happen at the same time. There is no physical which is separate from non-physical. As you know, the sea of patterns is non-physical, non-mental.

So the seed starts, self-organization, replication starts. Now some of it becomes so complex that it stabilizes, the vibrations are lowered so much that some part of this structure looks physical, and is established in the world. How can it travel to the world and take birth there? No, there is no such thing, you see. Everything is right now, right here. It is seen as being present in the physical world. The physical world itself is a process of birth.

There is a causal body for the whole universe, you can say. So this is how the co-development of the causal body happens. This physical part gets the physical experiences and starts feeding them into the memory layers. So the causal body accumulates. The non-physical or the higher part starts accumulating those experiences in the memory. And when the physical part is shed, which will happen eventually, it's called death, the causal part starts fueling the next manifestation. It connects back into some physical structure and starts affecting it, starts getting the experiences from there, starts getting the influences from it. And so, the cycle repeats again and again. That is called the cycle of birth and death. It is very complicated.

Today I am getting many complicated questions which cannot be answered in one line. People are going too deep now. So is the causal body higher? No. We have shown it as above the layer of awareness in the diagram but there is nothing higher, nothing lower. They are all at the same time. They are all non-temporal, non-spatial, and non-local.

The causal body grows or develops to a point where the structure is now able to comprehend its own existence. I am this. I am human. I am a man. I am a woman. I am the experiencer, finally. So, we say that another layer has appeared in the structure. There was a causal body before also. If it were really higher than the awareness, then there would be a gap between the structures. But it is not like this, you see. In this wholeness of structure, another layer has appeared now. Where to place that layer? That is arbitrary. We can justify placement of some layers above others, because we know one controls the other. Like we place the intellect above the emotions. Because emotions do not produce intellectual activity, but intellect can control the emotions. Same way, the causal layer/body can control the other layers and is also affected by the other layers. So, we put it above the physical structures. You can say it is behind, not above. It is the soup from which these different puppets are arising and falling. They are the yonis, human structure, animal structure and the angelic structure and whatever, subtle bodies and dream bodies. They all come out of this ocean of memory which is called causal body. It is very big. We cannot comprehend how big it is. It is very old. Millions and billions of years old. What does it have? Everything that it has experienced so far. Like a mountain.

This is called the karmic structure, by the way. It is a part of the greater memory which has uncountable numbers of causal bodies. Some causal bodies have become universes, planets, stars. Do you remember that we are told in childhood that your grandfather has died and has become a star. When you grow up, it sounds very stupid. Actually, our metaphysical theories are going to tell you the same. Those causal bodies that are very, very old, they produce a universe of their own. They become the stars, planets, ecosystems and whatever. They become worlds. The babies of them, they sprout out of this new arrangement and become the creatures. That is why the world is shown as a layer of the memory.

A simplified explanation is - initially the patterns produce the causal body and the causal body evolves enough to produce a physical body or connect with the physical body and then mutual interactions produce co-evolution of it. Don't worry beyond that. This one is easy to understand. But Maya is very complicated.

We've been saying, in awareness, the layer of ego is superseded by a layer of awareness. Being the experiencer, there is no doer. In the path of devotion also there is consistent effort to catch the doer and then there is surrender to what is called divine. Is the realization of the absence of doer the whole point?

No. It's not the whole point. In devotion, if you suppress the doer, what remains is a blind faith of some kind, darkness of some kind. The whole point is to know who you really are. Once you know what you are, your true nature, then the absence of doer is a natural consequence of it. I am the whole existence. The human thing is not me with its doer and doing. Now there is light. Now there is awakening. Now there is no blind faith. So devotion is prescribed to those who cannot realize this thing. People of low intelligence and people who are not really interested in knowing. They are engaged in worldly activities, so it is a compromise. But it hardly works. We should start at the path of knowledge. If it does not work, try other paths and the path of devotion is your last refuge where you try to surrender to the divine. Because you don't know anything. Like a good child, like a good citizen, obey. This is devotion. Some people like it because there is an element of love and sacrifice and service in that. So it is good to be a devotee than to remain totally materialistic. But there are problems with it as we know. So all paths lead to the path of knowledge and after that there is nothing. Path of knowledge is the ultimate. Before that you need to twist your body and do this and you do that. You do the Kundalini.

Graham is asking, why do we fight Maya? It seems like it was a lot of work to set this illusion up. Why not just go with it?

I agree with you. So many times I say this. Make Maya your friend. Do not abandon it. Where will you go? Who fights with the illusion, this is not good, it traps me, it is poison? Those who don't know that it is me, I am the illusion also. So they try to escape into the experiencer somehow. Is it possible? No, not possible. So surrender.

In many traditions, people accept this. But some are dogmatic. Because you see what has happened is when you give this liberty to people or even to the seekers that okay, the illusion is good, they get entangled in it. They say oh, my Guru says it is good. The fall happens. All the bad qualities get hold of them again. They are back in the world like an ignorant person causing suffering, and suffering themselves.

So these raw people who have not yet cultivated themselves, are told to stay away from Maya. They are told to stay away from the world. Stay away from good food. You need to beg and eat rice. Stay away from women. Not good at all you see. Stay away from powers and politics and social status. Do not hang pieces of shiny metal on your body. They are told to do that on some paths because the intellect has not matured to have this kind of detachment automatically. Whatever is good is okay. But I don't need to accumulate. I don't need to run after it. I don't need to consume it like crazy. The minimalist point of view has not yet evolved in that person. So they are told by the Guru to follow specific orders.

Some people follow it. Some people fail in it. You know that this is quite a drama. So they see it as a struggle with the illusion. This should not be happening. Desire arrives in their mind - “I am corrupted. I am lowly. My Guru is going to beat me now, because this desire has happened”. No. On the path of knowledge we know it's all an illusion. It has appeared. Yes. It is fulfilled. Yes. Not fulfilled. Very good.

This illusion is appearing. No problem. This is okay with me. So the knowledge makes us surrender automatically and accept. Knowing that the dream will be endless. The dream is eternal. And the dreamer is also eternal. So there is nothing to do now. Knowing that all possibilities will be manifested. Then why worry this is not happening or that is not happening. So go with the flow. That which is, is perfect as it is. Even if it is an illusion, it is the most beautiful, most perfect thing.

Make Maya your friend. She will make you happy. She will give you everything. She will fulfill all your desires. And Tantric knows this. They are utilizing this thing. They are very happy. Hopefully.

Sandhya is saying, detachment is a result of becoming aware that this is an illusion.

Yes. Then the illusion does not matter. It is not going to overpower you. It is not going to cause your fall. What causes fall is assuming that this is real and I am being affected by it. And I need it or I don't need it. I need to run away from it. Or I need to run towards it. Attachment and aversion, both are the same.

Session 150

Satya has a question. Experience appears when a body is born, not the experiencer. If experiencer is the single point of view, it is not the collective view, it is the existence. When there is no experience, all the existence is. Say when the body dies, there will not be an experiencer, there will not be a person to realize, I am the experiencer, there will be just the existence. Isn't it also right to say that experiencer and experience seem together, appear together, although experiencer is always there as existence?

It looks like there is some mix up of the duality and non-duality. So at the level of duality, experience and the experiencer, they appear together and when point of view disappears, it is only the point of view that disappears and it is only our imagination that the experience and the experiencer disappear. They never disappear, only the point of view comes with the body and it goes away with the body.

When there is no point of view, where is the experience and where is the experiencer? That which is appearing is still there, seen from different points of views and that which is witnessing is also still there. Seeing from the non-dual point of view, both the experience and the experiencer are eternally present while the illusion of these bodies come and go. The essential part of the existence and the non-essential part is always present and events like bodies and worlds come and go or it appears as if they are coming and going.

From the dual perspective, the mind knows only the duality, so the mind says that with the body the world appeared and with the world the experiencer appeared. The mind's point of view is first person point of view, so it does not know much, there is not much to say there because before the body appeared there was no mind and after the body is gone there is no mind. It has no authority to say anything about what is before it and what is after it. This is the dual point of view.

The mind can only say this much that I don't know what was there before the body and when the body appeared the whole world appeared, that's all it can say and it projects the future that when the body disappears the world will disappear, I will disappear, so on. It cannot say anything about the experiencer or the contents of the existence which are being experienced as illusions.

So the dual point of view is very very limited here but that is what any average person will get. How to get the universal point of view? There is no way, all that can be known is - I am that, the whole cannot be perceived as whole, it will always be perceived as limited. The worlds and the bodies and the mind and the mental activity comes and goes before the experiencer. It is the witness of all this. It will always be like this. There will never be an experience where all the points of views are seen at the same time.

A particular point of view comes and goes but the wholeness is always there, it is a sea of vibrations that is always there. That vibration is also called the potential, infinite potential. Sometimes it takes form because there is a potential, that's all that happens. So from the point of view of the limited mind, limited person, it is as if something is turned on and the world appears and the body appears and the mind appears and something is turned off and it disappears. The mind projects it like this. Then how do we know what really happens? Self-knowledge is the answer, that it never appears and disappears, which means if the experiencer is eternally present there will be some kind of experience which is eternally present, although it won't be from this point of view, points of views keep changing.

How many points of views are there? Infinite, unlimited. So something or other is always on. The experiencer which is existence itself is experiencing something or other all the time. Although there is no time, but just to convince the mind, we assume a time and we say that it is always like this. But it's not so meaningful to talk about time at the level of non-duality or even at the level of duality or even at the level of mind, there is no time. Only when the world or a regular world appears, regular means with laws and all that, then we can speak about time, a place or something like this, something organized. Before that, there is just raw potential that takes many, many forms. So we say that whatever is happening here is hardly knowable. It's very difficult to know what is going on.

You can call it the natural ignorance that every creature is limited, so we'll never know what is going on. We'll never know the existence as it is. What can be known is only through intelligence. Once it is known that the experiencer is eternal, it does not change anyway, when it is known that it is the universal experiencer, there is only one of it, and then the whole can be deduced logically, then it is like this all the time.

So there are some mistakes in the sentences by Satya. E.g. “When there is no experience, only existence is”. There is never a time when there is no experience. It is always going on through different points of views. Almost infinite points of view are experiencing something. The existence is experiencing itself through billions of eyes, you can say poetically like this.

Some of the eyes appear, disappear, and it hardly matters for existence. Sometimes I give this metaphor of a watchman watching a building from many cameras, many points of view, say a hundred cameras are there. Sometimes when one camera goes faulty, the watchman is still watching via 99 others. Sometimes a new camera is installed somewhere, and a new scene appears on the screen. The only difference between what is happening and this metaphor is that the watchman can watch all the screens at the same time, but the existence cannot do it, because experience is totally subjective. At least a human cannot do it. Human beings are very limited, so there will always be a single stream of experience which appears at some time and then disappears at some time, and that appearance and disappearance is also an illusion. What appears and what disappears is memory.

When the body comes into existence, the past memory is gone, it is disconnected. When the body goes out of existence, it becomes nothing. Then there are experiences where there is no way to communicate to others, because the body is the only way to communicate to others who are in a body. There is often a question that how will I know that the experience is continuous? The answer is very simple, that there is no you, that person is an experience, it can know nothing, that which is experiencing is always doing it, eternally, or whatever you want to call it, because there is no time, so intellect does not go there, it cannot talk about it, there is nothing to talk about. Sometimes we say it like this, that this business of existence is always going on.

There is a question, why cultivate attention and awareness practice to strengthen duality when you can be the bliss of presence, being experiencing? Once you have the knowledge and you realize everything that appears is an illusion, there is no person, all there is just being, isn't that the case? Why get into more activities of the mind and practice anything at all?

Yes, that's what I am saying, why do all these things? Knowledge is enough, isn't it? Having the knowledge is enough. You put this body-mind into some kind of job, to be aware, to behave in this way or that way, it is totally unnecessary. It is totally unnecessary to cultivate any attention or awareness.

What happens is, even after knowledge, there is difficulty in letting go of the person, the mind drifts back into the personhood, it says, okay, all the knowledge is good but I need to live my life, it says I need to make it better, I paid this much for the course, so I need some benefit from it. Or I am spending so much time in spiritual seeking, where is the fruit? This is the ego talking, so as long as this ego is active, something is given, you will get this benefit, you will get that benefit and so on, you see. Promises are made, techniques are given. As long as the ignorance is alive, it is fed something, you can drop it today also, you can just be what you are, in the state of bliss, but many people cannot do that, some minds are too rigid.

Those who have knowledge need nothing at all, they become blissful, they become peaceful instantly, rarely happens. The sanskar or the impressions are so strong that knowledge is forgotten within seconds, you must have seen, the activity starts and then this creature is compelled to do something. So seeing this, the Guru, because of his compassion, provides something, just like a very active dog is given a toy bone to chew, because he goes and chews everything in the house then, so he is given something to play with, but a dog that is well tamed, well disciplined, simply sits or will roam around outside somewhere, will not trouble the master.

So till that happens, it is prescribed, cultivate the mind, this kind of goal is given, now make the mind quiet, sit down, don't do anything, just watch whatever impulses and desires are coming that are pushing you into action. Now this kind of talk is very funny for an ordinary person, why? There is body, there is mind working, why are you telling me to simply trash it, abandon it, to such people something else is given, serve everybody, go do this project. The Guru decides what will be done with the body-mind instrument, those instructions are given. Yes they are totally unnecessary, so most of the time nothing is given, I am also giving people something to do, fully knowing that hardly anything will be done, people don't follow the instructions really. Those who follow, they get nothing out of doing something. Mostly they are told - you have done this thing for this many months, now stop it, still they have a “but” there, then what should I do next? What is the next step? After self-realization and all I get this question, what more can I do? I said what do you want to do? What is there to do now? You reached home and now you are asking where can I go now? Is there another home within the home? You want to travel to that? This is final, but there is “but”, how to spend life? And when they are told that spend it in whatever way you want, they think that this path is not good, Guru knows nothing. My all troubles are same, my relatives are same, nobody is changing, my job is same, salary is not increasing and the whole world is same. Immediate clouding happens. I have children, I have a business, I need to go back and the Guru is doing nothing, so immediately they take up another practice, another spiritual path, mostly it is related to occult practices.

Now everything I know is ok, my job is done, let me do something for the body and mind and there is little bit of ignorance left or probably not ignorance, but the old is very powerful, the old is very strong, it comes back with full force, this can be so severe that people leave the path actually. I have seen this happen with my own eyes. Very good people, doing very good in the program, writing and asking questions and all, when the knowledge is finally there, they disappear. I am not saying that they should sit here all the time, no, they disappear, that means they give up the path, the remembrance is dropped. And I say why are you not in awareness now, the answer is usually - “I am not getting time these days”. This project of self realization is finished, now there is another project to do, then after that there is another thing. I have a marriage in my family or there is a new job I need to do, I need to relocate to some other country. So they fall out of the track, the Guru needs to do something to bring them back on track, so this is your practice, whatever you are doing, do with this practice. Two hours per day and people are happy, they think that I am doing something for my spiritual path while totally getting involved in the world after two hours.

As we know there are no practices on the path of knowledge, nothing at all, but we include the awareness because you see that it has a beneficial effect on the body-mind. That much practical thought can be useful sometimes, but mostly the seeker is required to do nothing. I think it is the end, gradually all your practices are taken away, sometimes not gradually, sometimes even within a day or two I cut back the practices. As soon as I see that there is too much attachment to practices, they are taken away sometimes. There are people like this, in the program also that oh finally everything is heard and everything sounds exactly right, now the real job comes of practicing. There is a problem there, the real job is to be the non-doer, to do nothing at all, because your nature is that and this body-mind will do whatever it is programmed to do. Watch it.

There are some people - “I also want to leave my family, my job, my business, I want to sit in the forest just like you are doing and do nothing”. I said that is not what I mean, do I do nothing? Be the witness and let whatever happens happen. It is very difficult for people to do nothing. Services are given. At least there will be some use of this energy in serving. I am doing the same thing, cannot sit quietly, but whatever practice you do, whatever cultivation you do, or service or anything, it must be done in total knowledge, then only there is some point in doing it. It must be done in full awareness, otherwise live a normal life, there is nothing to do.

Benjamin is asking, lust has been troubling me a lot, but if I fall now, there is no trouble in it, it is okay to let those waves float away.

Yes, perfectly okay. You are the Brahman, what can the lust do to you? Nothing at all. The body functions as usual. You will see that when there is awareness, the unnecessary part is dropped. There is no trouble in letting the body function as it functions.

Some people, they force it. “I want to be celibate. I won't even look at a woman. I won't touch any woman. I look at only the feet of the woman”. That is the trouble, that is the problem. Human beings are not made for this kind of thing. It is a distortion in the mind. That I will fall if I do something. No, you cannot fall. You are the Brahman. You are high up there and you are down here also. You are already fallen as much as possible and you are already the ultimate, because it is wholeness, it is completeness, there is everything, what needs to be done here? Nothing.

Those who are practicing celibacy and all this idol worship and who knows what, they have a tremendous amount of identification with the body. Even after getting the knowledge, there is this idea that something must be done to the body. Keep it healthy, feed it nicely, keep it beautiful, what more do you want to do with it? Same way people think - “my speech must be like this, my behavior must be like this”. It is not you, they forget this.

There are some masters who refuse to cultivate totally, you know Nisargadatta Maharaj is the biggest example, there are more. I have not seen anybody who is very big on the path of knowledge do any kind of cultivation. Either they gave up everything like Gautam Buddha, just begging on the streets, or they lived a very ordinary life. There is a practical way also. We need to just keep in mind that we are not overly unethical in performing the activities of the body or the mind, that's all. It should not be harmful to somebody, that's all. If it can be done without causing harm, yes, go ahead, if it is necessary.

There is a troubling thing in psychology and the mind that that which is suppressed wants to express more than anything else. You can see the children and even animals, suppress something and that is what they want to do. When they are let loose, it loses its value, this is very simple psychology, everybody knows it, I think. So celibacy is like a pressure cooker which is sealed, an explosion can happen anytime. Mind does not explode, it is nothing to worry about. It distorts other activities. Do not let it build up pressure. It is good to control it, yes, but it is not good to suppress it. Nothing should be suppressed. Do not suppress your breathing e.g., whatever is natural is okay. There is no need to breathe in a specific way. Do not suppress your natural movements of the body. There is no need to sit for 8 hours, the body is not made for this. Like yesterday only I was talking about this, how much stupidity is happening in the name of spirituality. There is no need to fast, yes, if there is trouble, you should fast for a day or two, no need to fast for 30 days. Is it needed? No, you are the Brahman anyway, if this body does not eat, you are Brahman, if it eats healthy food, normal quantity, you are the Brahman, now what are you doing?

Andy is saying, I find now there is nothing to do, nothing to achieve, nowhere to go and no one to impress, just be.

Yes, just be, that is what is actually happening anyway.

Graham is saying, the fact you are communicating about there being no path sounds a lot like Jim Newman. I agree it is ultimately correct. From my perspective as an ignorant seeker, as you know I need something to do, and I will continue as you recommend. Can you explain why you teach like you do instead of the radical non-dual message of Jim Newman?

No, I teach exactly the same thing, people don't listen. My first sentence is usually radical, e.g. don't do anything, this is the first sentence, but nobody listens. They want the real meat of the talk, where the techniques are given or something useful is told. But nothing is useful here, like Andy said, nothing is useful.

Now you must have seen when Jim Newman speaks, there is hardly any question, people sit there with mind boggled. What should I ask? And as soon as they ask something, he simply destroys the question. That is what is called radical, and I like it. I also do that, but nobody can handle it, I have seen, especially people in India, they need to be taken through a very very delicious path, something very spicy and curvy, nothing is straight here.

So all the shlokas, mantras, yes, you need that, say it loudly twice in a day, they like it a lot. So when will the ignorant seeker become knowledgeable seeker? What are you waiting for? Is there a waiting list for the knowledge? “Oh, knowledge is coming now, next day, tomorrow, I will remain ignorant till it comes”. Think about it, why is your mind putting up the barrier, there is resistance there. Even after all knowledge is served, the seeker wants to remain ignorant or takes delight in calling himself ignorant. There is some barrier there, change your perspective. Do you want ignorance or do you want knowledge? How much time does it take to get knowledge? Take the knowledge and then keep doing whatever you want to do, you see, there is no rule now. You pass the test, do not wait. You can do something even after getting the knowledge, but don't remain an ignorant seeker. Apparently there is waiting for knowledge, that is a sign of impurities, it is not a big deal. Many people are waiting for knowledge. When they are in the train already, they are waiting for the train to arrive.

So I also don't do anything because they are in the train, and the train is taking them to whatever destination there is. Some people immediately get the fulfillment, they are in bliss and some people are still searching. The “but” comes all the time, he said, it is non-dual existence and it is purposeless, but I have a purpose, I must do something. But I never say don't do anything. I stop them from doing too much, our path is not extreme, that much I prescribe, but it is never said that from today you need to be in robes, shave your head, beg on the streets, no.

Without the “but” this satsang would be all silent, it is already silent, hardly any questions. Anyway satsang is for newcomers, I actually like the silence, nobody has any doubt left, so there is nothing to say, nothing to ask. As soon as a newcomer comes then the silence is destroyed or there is some kind of useless talk like this, you know, how many angels can dance on my thumb, something like this. Everybody knows the truth is silence and the ignorance has manifested in different activities, speaking and so on, even teaching is ignorance, the biggest master has this ignorance.

Satya is asking, what is the difference between Maya and Mahamaya, what is Yogamaya?

I don't know Yogamaya, but Mahamaya is that which is not being seen right now. Whatever you are witnessing right now is simple Maya, plain old Maya. Mahamaya is that which is behind this. So usually when I use this word, the greater illusion, it means Mahamaya. The greater illusion, as you know, is concerned with the universal memory, what is happening in the universal memory. Our local memory is producing an illusion that is very tiny, this is only ordinary Maya. The illusion is infinite, that is Mahamaya. We cannot witness all that right now. There will be a time when this circle of memory increases in size, and a glimpse of the Mahamaya is seen. Not all of it can be seen. That happens when the evolution happens in the layers, more and more of the illusion is seen. So narrowing is devolution, and expanding is evolution. More Maya, the drama becomes even bigger. Even right now it is very big. This world is too big for one person to comprehend. This physical universe is too big. Many lifetimes can be spent observing it. Now you can imagine the size of Mahamaya. It is kind of infinite.

Akshay is saying, I know you are there, and there is silence. That silence is very deep.

Yes, but you see, the Guru needs to break the silence so that the student can become silent. Otherwise, we are happy in silence, but we need to meet students at their level because they like talks. They don't like silence. That is why you must have seen all these big Gurus; they just sit, they don't talk, and the students have no problem sitting there. But the newcomers say, “My money is wasted. He never said anything useful , my time was wasted.” So the teacher cannot afford to be silent, although that is what happens when the teacher is silent. There is internal dialogue for a while. “I should ask this. He should say this. This thing is not told. That thing….” And after 4 or 5 days of sitting silently, all this useless stuff falls away. There is no need to know anything, just be, and the teacher was trying to show this only. When the fuel in the mind is burnt up, it can get a taste of being. What is it? What does it feel like when you just be? Once you get the taste of silence, it is then carried over in activity. That silence is the background of the activity. It is not stopping of activity. When the activity reduces to a certain level, the silence is expressed just like the clouds go away, the sky is expressed. It is clear now. So when there are clouds, no problem, the silence is there, the sky is there. When there are thoughts, no problem, they are happening in silence. They are exactly as empty as the silence itself.

Graham is asking, I know the path is useless, but I thought people who have ingrained patterns of ignorance had to purify. Maybe it could happen instantly, but it doesn't seem to, isn't it? Why things like LSD experience of oneness don't cause permanent change?

Yes, those who need purification should do it. I have no objection at all, and no LSD does not work. That is not our goal. LSD is not taken to cause permanent change of any kind. So what kind of change do we want, depending on that, purification is prescribed. That is what we all do, although it is outside the path. That is true. Purification is not prescribed on the path of knowledge. We say something like this, that knowledge purifies. There is no doer to do the purification. But usually, that is not satisfactory for some people. They want the results today or they want some kind of permanent change like you said. Something is given then, there is a human angle also, you see. So Guru is Brahman, yes, but he is human also. So the human thing is present there. It is all good if it is done with this knowledge that it was good before also. It is perfect as it is also. If it is done with this kind of feeling then it is okay. The thing is when it continues for too long, that means we somehow miss the point. If that person is not in bliss, simply doing purification all the time, that means something is wrong. Either too much impurity or he lost track. I don't even talk too much about purification. There is a whole series on purification but not given to most of the seekers. Hardly one or two people I know were told to watch that series on purification. It is there just for practical purposes.

Raja is saying, one of the qualities of a seeker is good moral values. Morals and ethics are subjective. Surely not that which the society dictates or they ingrained in you. May I get some clarification?

Yes, why do we want good moral values? Because not behaving in a specific way simply causes a loss of time. It wastes time usually. You get in a fight with somebody in the morning, then the whole day is without any listening. The whole day is disturbed. It is violence only. You could have learned something that day. If you are friendly, if you are peaceful, then this time can be saved. So that is the only meaning when we say that we should have good moral values. If you are doing something unethical, immoral, all kinds of troubles will surround you. But if you are living a peaceful life, doing whatever is prescribed as moral, which means non-violence usually, friendly and loving, compassionate attitude towards everybody, everything, not too much consumption, not too little, and so on, and that gives us a lot of time for study. Being moral has no other use. We simply avoid problems of the everyday world and we have enough time left for our spiritual seeking.

Yes, it is subjective and we should not obey that which society is telling us. Completely useless. We should make our own morals and ethics and they should be according to our goal. What do we want? We want a lot of time for whatever spiritual goals we have. For that, we need a specific kind of life and that life is a moral life. Very simple. Don't want trouble. So if somebody tells you that look, this is moral, this is ethical, and it is wasting a lot of your time, realize there is only this one life and you need to finish everything. I need to get self-realization here in this life. And that activity, whatever it is, like worshipping something in the temple 3 hours per day, somebody tells you it is a good thing to do, is it useful? Or for a woman - serve your husband, wash his clothes, polish his shoes, and whatever, be around him like a slave. Is that moral? That is what they are taught. But your life goal is something else, in that case, whatever is fed to you must be thrown away.

Being unethical is good. If you are achieving your spiritual goal by being unethical, then it is ethical. So that is what I mean when I say that we should have good moral values. It is not that which is imposed on you. It is that which makes your sailing smooth. You reach the other shore smoothly using that kind of conduct/behavior. We don't divert too much from the socially accepted norms. Society says, do not steal. We also have this kind of morals. Do not steal, yes, because there are undesired consequences of that, karmic consequences and all. We know all that. So mostly what has happened is society has borrowed the ethics from seekers. People think that society teaches us ethics. No, that is the most unethical place, you can say. Blind, you will get lost. The society is so unethical we cannot imagine.

Can we get any ethical things from there? No, never. Society gets the ethics from masters and spiritual people and then they distort it. They distort it to mean something else. So you will find that there is a shadow of the ethics in ordinary people of what a seeker follows. A seeker follows very, very strong ethics. It is very difficult for an ordinary person to follow that. So who is learning from whom, that should be kept in mind. Do you need your ethics from something which is so lowly, so unethical, like society? No, never take it from others. Make your own. And it is guaranteed that if you are on the path of knowledge, your ethical values will be superior to that of society or any ordinary person. It is guaranteed because your ethics come out of knowledge, even though it may not be acceptable for the idiots in the society. But do we care? No, don't accept them. You are free.

Sometimes a seeker can look like a cruel person from the point of view of ordinary people, but that is what is ethical for that person. When I say make your own ethics, it is subjective, there is nothing like universal ethics. What do they immediately imagine? That he is telling them to be unlawful, illegal, whatever comes in their mind, tiny mind. No, it means there is no limit on your ethics. You can be as ethical as you want, be as pure as you wish to be. But this teaching is taken negatively sometimes - The guru is saying that, “don't obey society.” That is not the case. Obeying whatever these creatures obey is like child's play for a seeker. We obey much more than that which the ordinary person cannot touch. But yes, sometimes they won't resemble society because society has distorted these things. They borrow it from the seekers. We don't borrow from them. We make our own. We are the origin of ethics, not society. They are the followers and they never follow it nicely. Their animal nature takes over.

Don't obey them, not because you are being unethical, simply because you have higher standards than an ordinary person, your family members or whatever. That is when the revolt is useful, as always is the case for a person on the path of knowledge. He is pure compared to others. So he cannot adjust. That is why revolt is necessary. That is seen as a bad thing from society's point of view. That is why I say, if you are not already branded crazy and revolutionary, a spoiled person, and whatever, then you are not progressing. Do exactly the opposite of that which an ordinary person does. You will have good ethics automatically.

So in the society, there is a pretension that we are ethical, but they are just sheep, slaves. Some kind of ethics that is just agreed upon, arbitrary. That is why we never take it from them. That is why the seeker finally, eventually leaves the society, leaves the family, leaves jobs, as and when he or she is liberated from the chains of bondage, they are broken. Simply because the seeker has higher ethical standards, cannot tolerate the society now. So some people are born with this kind of attitude. They are good students. They have good qualities already. Some need to cultivate.

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