Session 21

A seeker was sharing- I know my essential nature now. I know what I am. I know the nature of the world and the impermanence and emptiness of everything. I know that there is no person, there is no individual and I know that I never had any desires, I never had any relations, I never had any life. I know everything that can be known after self-realization. I do not even have any questions left, but there is no joy in my life. People say that this is enlightenment, I do not see any light! People say that the state is blissful, peaceful, I do not see any change, it is as miserable as before with the added knowledge that it is miserable, will remain so and I do not have any ambitions left now. I do not have any aims, goals, I do not want to do anything actually. All my relations, all my friends are just like strangers and all strangers are just like my friends. I know that this existence is meaningless, purposeless, beyond purpose, beyond meaning, it is total freedom and so I also do not have any kind of purpose now. There are no goals left. I was seeking and the seeking is now over, nothing left to seek. Now this may sound like a complaint, but I am not even complaining and this may sound like a question, but I don't even know whether that is a question and whether it will have any answer. I don't even want to know the answer because I already know the answer. But this is the situation actually, this is not really a question, you can see it.

You will find this kind of description of the life of a seeker after seeking ends. There is a little bit of confusion, there is a little bit of clarity, there are question marks, and they are not sure what to ask. Obviously there is no bliss, there are no extraordinary experiences, there is nothing like oneness with the universe, nothing at all. This ordinary life continues. So the seekers are sometimes baffled and this kind of complaint or this kind of question arises in their mind, if you want to call it a question, probably the question is what should I do next? What should I do now?

Usually I find that seekers are very content. Even if they reach the advanced states, they don't really want anything more, they do not really complain. But once in a while we do see this kind of description and some added questions are thrown in. So I just cooked up a word for it, just half jokingly I call it Post Awakening Syndrome (PAS).

That sounds like a terrible disease, but it's not a disease! The mental state of that seeker is crystal clear. It is a thousand times better than an ignorant person. We cannot call it an affliction because there is no ignorance now, but we cannot not call it enlightened also. Yes, there is no joy, but the suffering has also disappeared. If you are suffering, then something can be done about it. If you are ignorant, something can be done about it. If there is no light, if there is no knowledge of the self, it is very easy to treat that situation. But here everything is perfect as it should be! However, the seeker is confused, but there is no suffering.

I call it a syndrome because there are symptoms that look like they are arising out of ignorance, but the ignorance was cleared long ago. So it is kind of a fake affliction of the mind which the seeker encounters. It is very rare, but sometimes you will find it in some. And this is not so rare on the path of knowledge because here we do not go through all that bells and whistles, and ride in the theme park which the other paths will take you through. We go to the ultimate directly and so it leaves the seeker in a very baffled condition sometimes. Now what?!

PAS is a state of the mind. It is not permanent, it is not going to last. And so the answer to this conundrum or confusion is very simple. Don't worry, it is not going to last! That is the answer. What are you complaining about?

You are the same pure conscious witness which you were before, which you are going to be forever. You are eternally present. You were present even when there was ignorance. You are present now and you will be present forever. You are timeless. So what are you expecting that will change about you? It is the only thing that is unchanging and that is how it is. Now what is this expectation that the so-called enlightenment will bring about a change in me? Can you see that this is just a post-awakening expectation created by the mind after you came to know your nature? Usually these kinds of expectations are implanted in the minds of the seekers. There can be many reasons why this can happen.

You must have noticed one strange thing about my talks, when I start transmitting knowledge. You can call it transmission because that is what I am doing most of the time. Very straightforward way I say that I have nothing new to tell you. I am not going to give you anything and whatever you are going to know is going to be totally useless. I actually spend a good 10 minutes in disclaimers like these and then I go ahead and clean up the ignorance. That's all that needs to be done.

You can call it enlightenment. You can call it awakening. You can call it liberation. Whatever fancy names you have, you can assign it to this event. But let me tell you again, it's totally useless. It's not going to change anything. It's not going to make you something big, Mahatma or Swami or whatever. Now, many people will start disagreeing here because they will say, no, it was the biggest event in my life. Yes, some people may actually experience these extraordinary things because you see when a seeker joins an ashram or joins a path, takes up a practice, joins a tradition, many things are promised to that seeker -

You will become enlightened. You will become great. You will know how big you are. You are immortal. You are eternal. You will be liberated because you are in bondage. You will become this and you will become that. You will have that kind of extraordinary experience which this great Maharishi had. You will experience all kinds of stuff.

You can safely say that this is marketing talk.

There are some things which really happen that are not marketing. I should not be so cruel to these people. Your suffering will disappear. Now, this is true, isn't it? This is not really marketing. Your ignorance will be cleared and this is also true. You will know everything that is worth knowing and that is also true. So some things are kind of disguised as marketing. Some things do actually happen in this journey and these kinds of people, they will simply disagree with me - It was not totally useless.

So I am saying all these things very lightly, it's almost a joke and I can argue that the disappearance of suffering is simply a knowledge that suffering is an illusion. I never suffered in my life because that which was suffering was a fake identity, a person, an individual that was suffering. When I disidentified, it's gone. It was never there. The Self never suffers. There is nothing there to suffer actually. So I can argue like this that it was always the case, now you simply know that there is no suffering. It is the rope and snake situation. However, that is not the point. Even after suffering has disappeared, even after the oneness has been known directly, even after there are no traces of ignorance there, a doubt comes up. This is your state now, but the mind is not satisfied. It is probably looking for all those prizes that it was promised when you started on the spiritual path and now it almost feels as if I was cheated. All the teachings were full of lies. All the practices were totally meaningless, useless, and achieved nothing in the end. So there is a kind of dissatisfaction there. You can see it in the question itself. - Why not this? Why not that? Why this? And why is that? There is a kind of non-acceptance here and yes, this will not stay. This will also pass. That is why I call it post-awakening syndrome. So it's all a joke, but let us discuss this. For some this can be soothing talk. Guru is going to dismiss this if you ask it.

Parveen is asking, how long does it last?

I can make it last only for a second if you want, that depends totally on us. If you want, I can make it disappear in one second or you can hold on to it because that is also a good state to be in, that is also a learning experience that shows us the power of the mind. So that is what we are going to do here, that if you are in this kind of state, then today's talk will probably remove all those symptoms. The syndrome will be gone. That is why I took up this topic. And whenever I take up any topic, the idea behind it, the goal is to completely destroy all the questions regarding it.

Usually when you start on the path, the path is actually just one step. The path is dropping of ignorance. Knowledge is seeing the absence. Knowledge is not seeing the presence of new things. You do not really know anything new on any spiritual path. When I say any, I mean not only the path of knowledge. You will never encounter anything new. You will give up whatever was accumulated. Accumulation is new, you will return to the old. That is what is going to happen. So this is the only step - you need to drop the ignorance of a separate self, of the reality of the world and of the illusion of bondage. Is there anything more to do? No. Everything is as perfect as it should be. You are already eternal, you are already liberated, you are already bliss, you are already love, you are already oneness. This is the realization, isn't it? And it is just one step. But because this is Maya, this world is a twisted place, most of the paths will lead you to it in a zigzag garden path way. When you enter a garden, there is a path in the garden and it leads to various places in the garden. Look, this is the lawn and look, these are the roses and these are the lilies and there is this sitting place and there are swings and a play area for the children. And it goes like this round and round and when you exit, what do you find? You find that the exit gate is just next to the entry gate. It was just one step away from the entry gate. This is the garden path and many spiritual paths will be like this. They take you through a long path only to show you that whatever you were seeking was just one step away. So I'm not saying that it's not a good experience. It is a good adventure and the ego likes it. The person likes it sometimes - I had this holy moly experience and I had this big revelation and so on. Some people are going to enjoy it, because they are going on a path of the garden. They are watching all these birds and pets and monkeys and whatnot that are in the garden and they enjoy it. On the path of knowledge, we simply take you to the exit gate. We do not take you to all that useless stuff. And so here the emptiness can be felt in a stronger way. Is it only this much? - You will ask, is that all? What do I get?

So it is possible that the ego of the seeker will be baffled because it was just one step. It took only one day, probably less. Now what will happen to all those expectations and all those dreams of enlightenment, liberation and all? They are all crushed. They are all destroyed. It looks like that the seeking is not complete and people will keep seeking because that was more fun. “Oh, I don't know this. I need to know this. That guru is great. I need to go and meet that guru personally. And yes, I need to read this great Sanskrit book because it has the ultimate knowledge”. And they keep running. It was an adventure, wasn't it? Every day you encounter something great. And so when you are kicked out of the exit gate, it is not a good feeling.

There is nothing to know? No, there is nothing to know. It is ultimately unknowable.

There is nothing to become? No, nothing to become. You are already that.

I did not liberate myself from bondage? No, you are totally free. Whatever is bound will remain bound and it is an illusion. Don't worry.

And when such answers are served, then the ego does not like it, you see, because it was expecting an adventure. It was trying to achieve something and all these things were shown to be meaningless. Just false expectations, false hope. And then it will start complaining -

“I didn't get this, I did not get that. I did not do that. Let me do it again. I want to know everything. I want to contact this big entity here and there. Self cannot be only this much. There has to be something beyond the Self and now I need to go and search for it. I heard that a Guru said that there is something beyond. And no, this peace of mind, the absence of suffering is not really bliss. It needs to be something great, something extraordinary, which nobody has seen, but it needs to be there. oh, I need more bliss. This bliss is not enough. I can see the activity of the mind. I can see the illusion of the suffering. I can see the Maya that is being created by the mind. I need some better kind of bliss.”

And this is what the ego is going to cook up. That is why, you know, I called it a syndrome. It's the remaining activity. Traces of ego are still active. I'm not saying that it is bad. This is what the ego does. Now it is doing it to the spiritual state of the mind. Now you are no longer an ignorant person. You're no longer a material person or samsaric prani. The ego was behaving in exactly the same way when it was involved in the illusion of life. You can easily see that more, more, not this, not that, not satisfied, never living in the present, always comparing with this person, that person, always comparing with even my past self. I was younger. I was more beautiful. I was stronger. Now I'm not. It was doing all these things, but in the world. Enlightenment or realization will not stop the ego instantly. There is no quick cure for ego. It takes time. And so the ego is doing its usual business. And now the intellect is kind of confused. And you can see there is a little bit of identification here. That's why I said it's not a question because the answer is in front of you. The answer is the same that I just gave. It is the ego or activity of the mind, the remaining activity, which is still going on and it's not going to last. It need not be stopped, let it create scenarios and drama. It's okay because you are seeing it in awareness.

You just watch it. That is your practice, isn't it? I cannot recommend anything else that needs to be done. And so when you watch this activity, after the bonfire is over, you can still see some smoke that comes out. The ash is still hot, it is something like that, we do not need to do anything. You can see that it is over now. The game is over. Now there's the end credits that are scrolling. Watch it. It's not going to last. So it can be ended in this way in one second by not treating it, by not clinging to it, by not giving it any importance. It takes one second, you just need to change your attitude a little, and leave it. Or you can hold on to it, for a while, it’s fun. It's a matter of preference.

Anil is asking- is there a need to manage the sanskaras, vasanas which got carried over after the realization?

Who keeps on holding on to it again, unconsciously? It will try to produce the misery that it is doing since forever. It will do it in the spiritual field now. It will try to adapt to this new condition. So it is mind, yes, it is not going to stop. Some people have this delusion that, oh, my mind will become totally calm, peaceful and it will stop thinking and it will stop producing all those activities. Probably, who knows, for a while it can stop it, but my experience says and I double checked with many people, great gurus, and they also say that the mind never stops. The mind is the activity of the mind, and it is eternal. I mean, how can there be a mind that has stopped? It is not possible. You can say that a car can stop, yes, the car is running and you apply the brakes and it stops. The car is still there. The car has two states, either moving or resting. But for example, there is no such thing as stationary wind. It's not possible. When the air moves, we call it wind, when the mind moves, we call it mind. So a stationary mind is an impossibility. Do not expect it. Yes, the activity slows down sometimes, like in deep sleep or in meditative states, the mind appears to stop. But does it really stop? No, it restarts. It is not something which can be stopped. It is something which can be transcended.

That is the good news. You can simply let it run because it is just a universal event happening in this universe. The only problem was - before realization, you thought it was “me”. These thoughts are mine. These desires, these expectations, these ambitions and whatever garbage was accumulated in the mind, it is “mine”. That was the status before realizing that there is no “me”, really. I am the one without any qualities. I am the one who is nirgun. How can I accumulate anything? So this is the realization. And now these things can keep happening with this realization on the top. If you try to stop it, that means there is still clinging. That means there is a want, there is a desire. You can say, no, that desire is also universal, it is not mine, it is happening. So you look at it, it is like an onion, layers upon layers of mind only. Transcend the mind.

Anil asked, it would mean there is really no need to intervene in the workings of mind, just witness?

Yes, when I say transcend the mind, there is no need to try to stop it and there is no need to make it run in a certain way. What is needed is letting go of the mind completely and then the mind will fix itself. I am not saying that nothing will change in the mind. That is also impossible. The mind is something which is ever changing, so the mind is fixing itself. All you can do is let it fix itself and then just witness whatever is happening. Then the question arises that can just being a witness fix human survival? Well, this can be confusing, but there is no human and there is no survival, there is only witness.

Now, when I say that, it is not satisfactory. So, I will tell you my experience. When I am witnessing, survival happens. When I am not witnessing, survival happens. Actually, it is never that I am not witnessing. When this organism is struggling for everyday survival, bread and butter and whatever, the witnessing is still going on. When it is not doing that, when it is peaceful, sitting silently, the witnessing is going on. There is never a witnessing which is witnessing of nothing. The witnessing is always of some action, some experience. Otherwise, what is there to witness, you see? So, it is a play, it is an illusion that there is a human and I am the human and I need to survive. This is the primordial ignorance. So, being a witness is actually letting this human do its survival thing. It is not stopping human activity. Witnessing should not lead to stopping any activity of the mind also. Survival is also an activity of the mind, and actually survival is the only activity of the mind. It is doing nothing else. The mind is a structure and it is trying to sustain itself. It is trying to preserve itself. Taking up bodies and interacting with the world and all these things, they are just strategies of the mind to survive.

Last time I spoke about psychic self-defense and I mentioned that the mind survives or the mind continues by creating boundaries around it. This is survival. It has entered into an experience of the world and the boundary that it has created in order to experience the world is this body. This body is the shell which is being used to experience the world. There are gates in the body which we call as senses and there are instruments in the body, the karmendriya to act in the world. What is this mind trying to do? It is trying to keep this boundary intact. Although it is not possible, this is impermanence. Body/world is impermanent. So, the body goes, but it is trying its best. It thinks that I am immortal and then forgets about death. Only humans have a little bit of awareness of death, very few people actually. Otherwise, everybody thinks that they are here forever and they try to keep the body going. It is preserving itself and that is the primary activity of the mind in all the states. But, the waking state, because there is a gross body, that is a low vibration body, this activity becomes very pronounced. It becomes very heavy. So, the mind does not do anything else except survival. This should be your realization. It should become your direct experience that this is the mind does not stop. It is like wind, and it is a structure that is here, just because it has sustained itself. Otherwise, impermanence is like a tide and it wipes out whatever is there on the beach. This whole existence is like this. But, the mind has accumulated some things, memories and that gives us an illusion of semi-permanence. Otherwise, without mind, no experience is possible. So, it is doing a great job. Let it do it. You are the witness. Let's enjoy the experience being created by the mind. The mind will survive. The mind will fight. The body will do whatever is needed to keep this experience going. Although, it will not last. So, enjoy the drama.

If you are witnessing it very consciously, it is like reflecting everything that the mind does, which is a practice on the path of knowledge. You are doing this awareness or mindfulness practice. You observe each and everything, every second of it. It is very good. That is sometimes known as witnessing. But, it is just like a dhyana, like a meditation which is done 24 by 7. But, even if you are not doing it, the witness is always there. Just that there is no reflection on everything that the mind is doing. But, the witness is there. It is in its natural state like a baby. Not like a yogi. But, yogi's mind is a little bit different. It is reflecting everything, logging everything. You must have seen these programs that log all the events that happen in your PC or in a program that you are using. That is called the log of the process. So, the mind of a yogi is keeping a log of everything. Every second of it. Sometimes you can say that is witnessing. But, with a different attitude, the mind is not that relaxed. It is always aware and attentive. So, with practice you can make it a little bit loose. But, once you attain this kind of mental state, then it becomes impossible to let go of awareness. You don't want to go into this unaware state that you were before. That zombie-like state. Witnessing was also there. But, without the logging process, without the self-correcting mechanism. You don't want to do that.

So, don't worry about survival. It will happen while witnessing. It will happen without witnessing. We do not have freedom to do anything with the activity of the mind, the mind does it itself. There is no “me” to do anything. I do not have any will. The person is a mirage, an illusion. It cannot will. There is no personal mind also. It is all a universal mind. What can be done by somebody who does not exist? You do not have an option. All you can do is, let go of this notion of control, which is an idea of false control. That is what you can do. That is what is meant by letting go.

Parveen asked, if post-awakening syndrome is also a game of mind, to persuade the personal mind to go back to worldly pleasures?

Exactly. Mind cannot be stopped. It's only tendency is to go back to Maya, to go back to sleep. And that is what it will do. Now you have awakened. Now you have knowledge. Now you have a very crystal clear purified mind. At least the intellect is very clear. But the lower layers are still churning out. They are still like a mill. They are running. There will be byproducts of this activity of the mind. Now you need to simply watch it. Let go of it. I am not saying that it will continue. No, it will not. Because the light of awareness is here. Someday it will transform. It can happen in one second also. If you let go of it right now, you will see the transformation of the mind has happened. Now the power in those processes that are pulling you back into the world, that power will be withdrawn as soon as you let go. As soon as you try to control, well, you are just adding fuel in it.

You can control the mind by not taking an interest in it. That's all you do. This is the practical way to get out of the PAS. And if you are still expecting that after PAS is gone, my life will improve, then no. Let go of expectations also. Expectations are a problem. Expectations are the PAS. Why are you even thinking and expecting? It is the mind, you see. Now it is saying, once the PAS is over, probably there will be a golden pot at the end of the rainbow. Same thing. Now you need to be very careful here, because these things are kind of hidden. This is the spiritual mind. World, pleasures, relations and power and social status, these are illusions, you know it, but you do not know a “spiritual mind”, because you are a newcomer in this field. You expect that the spiritual mind needs to stop and then I will achieve bliss. No, it will never happen. You are bliss. You cannot achieve it. You can only realize that there is no suffering. That is bliss. It is not difficult to see. Your mind is already awakened. It dips and comes back, which you need to watch, which is not really harmful. PAS does not last. If you let it go completely, it will disappear, because you will see it as just another activity of the mind, the activity of a semi-refined mind, almost pure mind.

Anil asked - if there is no freedom there, how does the yogi keep the logs?

There is no yogi either. Anil needs to see this. Yogi is a state of the mind, where that limited mind has realized the oneness. Yogi means the one who has joined. Yuj, the one who is one with everything. So nobody is really keeping the logs, it is happening. The yogi does not choose. There is no freedom there to choose. That is what is the realization. When the individual disappears, the union appears. Was there a disunion or was there a break in the unity when the illusory individual was there? No, it was always there. It was always unity. Only this ignorance provided a temporary experience of duality.

This non-individual is a yogi. The individual who has seen the illusion of individuality is the yogi because now unity appears when this dust of duality is cleared, which does not really mean that there won't be any duality. Duality is seen as an appearance, an illusion created by the mind, and the yogi is happy with duality also. Okay, this is how it is, you see. Who knows why it is there? It's unknowable, isn't it? So nobody is actually witnessing. Individuals cannot witness. Only the witness can witness, and it is always witnessing. When the individual disappears, the witnessing comes in foreground. It's a good feeling, but the mind continues. Now the art of awareness is to accept that this will happen, to gracefully continue like this. Continue in whatever situation you are. You are like an animal, yes, continue. You are like a human, continue. You are struggling for survival, continue. With total grace, gracefully, beautifully.

If you want to use your will, if you want to use your freedom to choose, just do it fully knowing that there is no such thing. This is like graceful acting. The yogi is acting with perfection. Then it will be perfect, then it will be right. Then there are no karmic consequences of that action. Therefore we say that yogi is freed from the karmic impressions. There is no karma for yogi because he has seen that nobody is doing it. So the logging process is also not done by the yogi. It is just another layer of the mind, an impersonal mind, which enables the mind to see its own illusion. That's all it is.

Even without witnessing or being aware or keeping a record of my own activities, I was the same Self. I was the same witness. Whatever the mind does has no influence at all on the witnessing. So it realizes that keeping the log is also purposeless, is also useless. That is also dropped. Returning to the childlike state of spontaneity. Many people will not be able to do this because it is a good situation to be in. Once you become addicted to awareness, you don't want to devolve back into the plantlike state of being. Because your mind will tell you, there is a purpose in this. Now you let that mind act in that way, gracefully. Allow it. There is enjoyment in that game. So you allow the mind to play. Yes, yes, there is a lot to be achieved by becoming aware. And you say, yes, go ahead, become aware. Keep the logs.

Anil asked if this was because perhaps the individual mind has a tendency of the quest for knowledge, hence the logs?

Yes, initially. Why do we take up awareness? To get rid of ignorance. Because when we enter the introspective mode - let me see what the mind is doing, we start seeing. We see it is creating the world out of perceptions. It is creating the time out of memory. It is creating the space out of the objects. And it is creating a sense of me, the ahamkara, the individual identity. It is taking responsibility for everything that this body does. It is taking responsibility for everything that the lower layers of the mind do. Thinking, and all this emoting, and pleasure-pain.

I am feeling good today because I ate this. This is pleasure, isn't it? This is the activity of the mind that followed the activity of the body which was eating. What really happened? A pile of organic matter entered another pile of organic matter and the mind cooked up a story. So there were sensations and all these things. And you can watch all this. And what does this watching/witnessing do? It gets rid of the ignorance that I am doing it. It opens a door for knowledge. What is knowledge? Knowledge is not knowing anything new. Knowledge is dropping that which was accumulated, that which is non-essential, not necessary. Doing and doer, that is a story cooked up by the mind. Projections of the mind. Superimpositions of the mind. Taking the illusory as real. All these things you can see. How can you see it? Simply by keeping the logs. You need to be very fine in that matter. See we are all seekers. We are still learning. We are perfecting these things. So it is expected that the mind will slip many times. It's okay, it's fine. It will not be able to keep the logs sometimes. If you keep the logs of the intellect also, you will find that it is not gathering knowledge. So our tendency is to just get rid of ignorance. Because whenever we do that, we find that actually the real knowledge is the dropping of ignorance.

Real knowledge is like coming back. It's not going somewhere. The purpose is to get rid of ignorance. And how does the mind know that the PAS is an impurity? And how does the mind know that if I do this, I will get the knowledge or I will get rid of the ignorance? It is known only through a Guru. The mind, even after a million years, will not be able to do it by itself. It always needs a Guru. The biggest Guru is the Self. The only Guru there is, is the Self. It is always the grace of the Guru that installs this process. Then this tool is also not needed. But we keep it because the mind has a tendency to slip. So we always keep the guard up. And that is what is recommended. I am not going to recommend that you let go of the logging process. I am actually saying that you perfect it so much that it continues in your dreaming and deep sleep and after death states also. This is highly recommended. We have not yet reached a state where we can safely let go of the awareness practice or mindfulness. That may happen later, but not now. Now the recommended teaching is that you keep the awareness on. Otherwise the mind will take you for a ride again. It's not a reliable thing.

So the one who is above this activity of the mind is the Buddha and one who stays above this activity is the Buddha. Because I can tell you, you are that and you actually for a second rise above the mind. You become the Buddha for a second. But the next second is back in the Maya. Oh, I need to earn money, I need to get these things done, I need to do the shopping, I need to look good, I need to become president, I need to kill all the people in the other countries and it's back. So it's a burden, it's a miserable thing and we want to get rid of this. Buddha is the one who stays above the mind while not interfering in the mind, while letting it be what it is. And the mind purifies itself.

Parveen is asking- is the consciousness vibration of the experiencer? How consciousness gets created by experiencer?

Duality of the experience and the experiencer is also an appearance in this absolute. When there is something to experience, when there is a movement, then the experiencer appears because there is something to experience. When there is nothing to experience, it is in its proper form, which is formlessness. It is Shunyata. So it is always there. Just like heat is always there in the fire, you cannot say how the fire creates the heat. Tell me the process by which the fire is creating heat. Fire is heat. Fire is not creating heat, it is the heat. Experiencer is not creating our experience here. It is that experience. Experience is the experiencer. It appears as two because of the dividing tendency of the mind. These things cannot be known. Even if I tell you how the consciousness gets created, you will not know it. It will be a story, a fantasy for you. And the truth is that no, it is not getting created. It simply is. It is fundamental, existence itself is the experiencer.

On the path of knowledge, all the answers are disappointing. It is the worst path, in my opinion, because you never get any answers. He did not get the answer to how consciousness gets created. Probably he was expecting, I will get a fantastic, great process by which consciousness is getting created. I will witness it. But no, you don't get to witness anything. You don't get any knowledge here. What can create that which is emptiness, which is the only thing? You need a second thing to create the first thing. But it is the only thing. What can create it? I cannot even say that it appears. It is there. What is your mind saying? “Oh, consciousness, it must have appeared just like everything else appeared. And it probably just got created just like everything else is getting created”. This is a linear mind, extrapolating everyday events onto the existence. Drop it. It will lead to confusion only. Go to your experience. Are you seeing the consciousness getting created out of something? No. That is the end of the knowledge. That is all the knowledge that you are going to get from your direct experience.

When you say, is consciousness the vibration of the experiencer? No. Experiencer is consciousness. Whatever it is experiencing is just consciousness only. We call it vibration, but you will find that, that which is appearing is that which is witnessing the appearance. The ocean is the wave. It can be tricky. But you need to see it. You need to rise above the language here and rise above the various intellectual stuff that the mind throws at you. Always return back to witnessing. These questions will be dropped.

We were on the subject of PAS. Even after knowing all these things, PAS. will continue for a while. Don't worry about it. If you get this kind of impulse or desire - “my seeking is not yet over, I need to search more. This experience that I am having right now is illusory. The experiencer is illusory. It is a reaction to what is being experienced. I need to experience more”. If this symptom arises, just let it arise. If your mind is interested in all these things, let it play just like the father plays with his child. You want to climb a tree? Go ahead, do that. Same thing. You do it fully knowing that nothing will be found. Nothing new will be seen. It is completely meaningless, purposeless and useless. It is not going to achieve anything. If you do not take it as a play, you are deep into the PAS syndrome. Then there is no cure. If you try to stop it - “My mind needs to be in a certain state. It needs to calm down, it needs to sit in one place and do nothing”. That is also deep into the PAS. Because somebody has installed this kind of expectation in your mind that your mind needs to be in a certain way otherwise you are not enlightened.

Actually the correct enlightenment is that you leave the mind in its original form. That should be the purest kind of enlightenment. Normally we don't do that because it is not even recommended. We always prescribe this thing or that, keep doing it. And there is a reason for that. Because we are newcomers, we just achieved a state of pure mind and there is a tendency to fall back. That's why we keep doing our practices. Otherwise there is no need. Once you are over this PAS, you will find that no practice is really needed. PAS is not to be feared. Whenever the mind throws up all these things, don't be afraid. Don't try to control it. Don't try to go back to your hopes and expectations. Give up all hope. Give up all the expectations. Otherwise even a lot of knowledge has almost no effect on the mind. So all I can say is have some patience.

Once you reach the exit gate of this garden of spirituality, do not try to enter back. That will be a big mistake. Try to stay away from this seeking business. The seeker is there as long as there is seeking. You drop the seeking. The seeker is gone. Nothing to seek. Some people may say that then we should not even try to give hope to the seekers who are just entering the path. We should not tell them that you will achieve liberation or you will achieve eternity, immortality or some kind of god-bodies, heavens. We should not tell them that you will achieve bliss. We should not tell them anything. And the problem here is that some people have such a strong ego that they are not motivated to take up any practice or even read a book or join a satsang if you do not lie to them. To whom you are lying you are lying to their ego. Just like a child when he does not want to go to school. You say if you go to school I will give you sweets in your tiffin or your teacher is going to give you new toys and then he is motivated and what does he get in the school? Same old stuff which nobody likes.

The guru is going to tell you lies. Remember this. You need to accept them as prasad. Accept them as a favor because it is being done for your good. These expectations, these hopes, these dreams that were shown to you, were only to bring your ego out of resistance, like showing a carrot to a donkey. To bring your ego on the track, on the path. Otherwise it won't. It is happy in this world. So it's not going to even look at any spiritual path. Seeing the miserable condition of the person, the individual or the ego, the guru offers a bunch of lies and then when the ego is trapped, everything is broken. It even breaks the ego itself.

So there is a little bit of necessity there in a practical issue that we need to say all these things. A faint shadow of all those expectations continue in PAS. It may seem rude when I say that you won't get anything from spirituality. You won't become anybody great by becoming enlightened. You will remain nobody that you are. It is horrible talk. Nobody likes this kind of talk. Everybody likes to hear that I'll become great. I'll become something bigger than these ordinary people out there. And I'll achieve something. I'll achieve liberation from births and deaths. These expectations propel the seeker on the path. It is better if you get out of this trap of hopes, dreams and expectations.

What are you dreaming of becoming? You are already everything.

What are you trying to achieve? You are already the highest.

What are you taking your awareness to? You are aware of yourself, nothing else is there.

What are you trying to leave? Are you trying to leave the world? Are you trying to leave the family? Or your job or something? They are already not there. They are already illusions created by the mind. What are you trying to leave? How can you leave it if it is not yours? How meaningless is this activity of acquiring, accumulating, leaving? All meaningless.

What are you expecting? In emptiness you will get only emptiness. You are already that.

What is the meaning of dreams and hopes? What are you trying to become when you are already the absolute?

Whenever your mind enters into PAS. Repeat these lines. They are like magic. I do that all the time. And I still play. I still enjoy the little pranks of the mind. Because I know that resisting the mind is just the mind. It is simply perpetuating the mind.

Session 22

Who is there to witness the mind? In duality, how exactly can we log what the mind did? How to differentiate between thoughts and witness?

If the witness can be identified, only then thoughts can be logged. How exactly can we log what the mind did? That is the correct question because there is nobody here to witness what the mind is doing. The logging is not done by the one who is witnessing. The logging is done by the mind itself. Those who are wondering what logging is, it is just noting, becoming aware of the activity of the mind, also called self-reflection. Now the mind cannot be aware of its activity. It is the activity. It is the machine that is running. It is the program that is executing. The witness notices whatever is happening and this witnessing, this awareness is then reflected in the mind. It appears as an experience and goes into memory.

If you notice carefully, you will see that this is happening. It is not that the mind is thinking and somebody else, something else is noting it down and memorizing it and deciding, now I don't need to do this or I should think like this and so on. No, there is only one thing and that is the mind. It is doing everything. It is thinking. It is acting. Awareness is like a mirror actually. It does not do anything. It is an empty mirror. It has nothing in it. It is simply reflecting whatever the mind is doing. When this is bounced back from awareness, the mind notes it and then this is called logging. Once this noting has happened, then there are more choices in the mind now. This is a very natural phenomenon. When the noting is not there, when the logging is not there, it is bound by whatever it has already thought.

You can see this, and in ordinary language, we call this as awareness, self-awareness. The activity is being done by the mind and the logging also is being done by the mind. The mind has noted what it has done. Then we become aware of the decision process that happens in the mind in the light of this new choice that the logging has produced. Because the mind paused, it got a chance to review what happened and then it came up with a new idea, new decision. This is the logging activity of the mind. Awareness is necessary for this. Otherwise, the mind goes on in a mechanical fashion. What the awareness does is - gives it a pause. There is a silence in the mind and thoughts get reflected back into the mind again. It now has a chance to know what it itself has done. This is awareness. This is the logging of the mind. You can call it a higher, finer intelligence.

Being aware is the activity of the mind that is beyond its ordinary mechanical activities. It produces an intelligence that cannot come from experience alone. From experience, you get knowledge that is repetitive. It is simply impressions gathered from the experience. But with awareness, you get a knowledge that is of the Self, of our own nature, of our own being.

Now, the next question is, how to differentiate between thoughts and witness? It is very easy. If it comes and goes, it is a thought. If it stays, it is a witness. Thoughts cannot witness themselves. Only the witness can witness thoughts. Now, the witness, because it is kind of an infinite thing, it is

a mirror that reflects everything. It can reflect itself also. If you place two mirrors in front of each other, point a camera to its own image, you will get an infinite reflection. This is called self-awareness. This is witness witnessing itself. So it can do that also. It is very beautiful. It stops the mind, actually, while it is happening. Only the witness can witness. That is how you can differentiate between the thoughts and the witness. If it is gone, then it is not the witness. If it stays, when there is no thought, there is witness. When there is thought, there is witness. And when thought is gone or changed into something else, there is a witness. The witness is known as the changeless background, empty background, which is simply reflecting what is going on.

So whenever you get confused like this, - one who is thinking is the witness probably because it just thought about witnessing. No, that is not a witness. Witness is one that experiences what is being thought. Even if there are thoughts about witnessing, it knows that. You can experience the thoughts, but you cannot experience the witness. It is not an experience. It can reflect itself and we can make this error. We can assume that, oh, the mind is now reflecting the witness. The mind does not reflect the witness. There is a very beautiful metaphor which says that the consciousness knows itself by reflecting itself through the mind. The mind is a mirror in which the consciousness is seeing itself as many, many forms, thoughts and emotions, perceptions, objects, people. It is the one that is reflecting everything that is happening. However, please keep this in mind, that which is reflecting, that which is being reflected is also the same thing, is the same reality that appears as experience and experiencer. This should be kept in mind while we dwell in duality.

The witness is always present. The memories come and go. The thoughts come and go. The logging stops and starts. The noticing can dissolve into just being and then the mind wakes up. Oh, I need to notice. This is also a thought. So yes, there can be a memory of witnessing something. It may look as if I logged the witnessing. No, it is only the event that got logged. When you are on the edge of the mind, you can expect weirdness. It is very easy to get confused. Some people may think, oh, the witnessing is simply remembering what happened. No, it is not. It is if it is not in the present, it is not witnessing.

It’s called simran, smaran or remembrance. Remember what you are always. And that cannot be done through memory. You cannot recall, oh, I was that. Remembrance is simply turning your mind towards the self. It is not recalling that I was the self at some past time. That will be a memory, that will be a hollow event without the solidity of awareness in it. Remembrance is not to be confused with recall. Remembering won't happen if awareness is not always already present. When we were little kids, our mother told us that don't steal food, don't lie, don't hide anything, because God is always watching. People told you that you cannot hide anything from God. God is always watching. How is it possible? How can something else, which is outside me, watch what I'm thinking? The religious people will tell you this. Do not think bad of others. Do not think evil, because God is always watching. God knows everything. How is it possible? Because that which is watching is God itself.

You can call it Self. You can call it I. You can call it Atman. But remember, it is Brahman only. It is everything already. Only it can watch. And it is watching. It is watching not only this one, the thoughts and emotions of this mind. It is watching all of the thoughts and all of the minds. So it is not a superstition. It is now misunderstood and got corrupted. There is an entity somewhere else in the sky, a metaphysical, supernatural thing that has the power to watch our thoughts. No. If it is like this, then it is a miserable condition. It is kind of an invasion of privacy. It is only me. I'm watching. I'm always watching. I am the witness in everyone. When there is remembrance, now the watching is being watched. That's all it is. It can become convoluted if you don't pay attention to what is happening. So I hope that is clear now.

And I can recommend a small meditation if you want. Sit down and watch your thoughts. Sit down and notice. And this time, notice what is witnessing the thoughts. Notice that the witnessing will not go in memory. I mean, it needs to be your own experience, isn't it? You cannot believe me blindly like this. Parvin is saying that makes me blank. That makes the mind blank, not you. There must be something that is watching the blankness, isn't it? That is a good thing actually. So many people are trying to become blank. So it looks like you are gifted. That happens to many and to me also. When I sit down and try to watch my thoughts, they don't dare to come. They stop. Now suddenly I have nothing to watch. Yes, that is addictive, a feeling of silence. You see, you can remain in that state because this is a blissful state, for many hours. Some may call it a samadhi of some kind.

So you can remain in that samadhi for a long time. But fortunately, we have a body. The body will bring you back. Something will start to hurt. You will start feeling hungry or you'll need to go to the bathroom or somebody will shout and so on. If you want that kind of bliss, it is available without sitting in silence also. That will be called sahaj samadhi. It means no matter what perceptions are going on, it does not matter what kind of activity of the mind is going on, you can still be aware because the noting becomes continuous with practice. But there is a trick for being in samadhi all the time. You don't need to even sit. Sitting is recommended because we do not have this practice to be aware all the time. Suppose you are becoming aware every hour. Let us say you have a reminder, you have a mala, you have some kind of picture of your guru or somebody else that reminds you to be aware, to remember. Probably it is happening every hour, let us say. All you need to do is increase the frequency. Now do it every half an hour. It can be done using a mantra also. The japa should become an internal japa. If you know what a mantra is, then you will know that it is a device to remember. You play it in your mind continuously. But let us assume that it is discontinuous which means awareness does not remain all the time and most of the time the mind is running in dark. So go on increasing the frequency of remembering. Now let us say it is happening every one minute and to be aware every minute, to log everything every minute will be a very big achievement. Imagine you are driving somewhere, it takes two hours to go there and every minute of it is being logged. It is a big achievement. Probably you don't need to do that but some can. And now increase the frequency to once per second. Now you are always aware. That has become permanent now. The silence is very blissful. All the time you are in bliss. This is the trick.

Increase the frequency of remembering and it becomes so fast that it is almost continuous. You won't be able to find a gap in your awareness. There are no movements of darkness now. I have seen very few people who can do that. I have seen many knowledgeable gurus who do not do that. On the path of knowledge they will tell you it is useless. There is no need to do that because the experiencer is always witnessing whether you note it or not.

You need to make it a habit, if you want unbroken awareness, if you are interested in that. It should become just like breathing. That's why we use breathing as a tool to become aware so that we remain aware just like the breathing is going on. It is a training of the mind. It is now your preference. What do you want? It is your choice. You have tasted the awareness once. That should be enough. Actually something very interesting happens. Once you taste the awareness, once you like being in awareness then you cannot let go of it. And this is also a natural tendency of the mind. If it likes something it wants that again and again. If you like some food you will want to eat it again and again. But there is a limit. You cannot do it after two or three times. It loses its attraction. This is also natural because it becomes too much after a while. But awareness is not like this. It cannot become too much. An experience fades. Its attraction fades. Because experiencer is not an experience. It is being. It will never be dropped by the mind. And you will find this will happen naturally even if you don't want it. Once the mind has tasted awareness, it will go back to awareness even without any effort. When there is negativity, the negativity becomes painful very quickly and then the mind is reminded of being aware. The awareness kicks in and then cleans up the negativity. This is amazing actually. You don't need to do much. Your suffering is gone. It is magic. Those who are not aware, those who do not know this trick of awareness, continue in the suffering mode, they continue in the darkness.

You will find that even if you don't try, your natural tendency is to shift to awareness all the time. And if you assist your mind in that, it will reach that awareness quickly, naturally, with some effort, with some practice. And it will become so much that in all states of the mind, the awareness will be there. No matter what the content is, even if the content is zero, like in deep sleep, you will find that the mind is becoming aware of the deep sleep. It will become aware while waking up and it will be aware in the dream state. It will be aware of the supernatural experiences between dreaming and deep sleep and it will remain aware when the connection with the body is lost finally in death of the body. It will remain aware in the afterlife or after-death, whatever you want to call it. This is Turiya. This is the fourth state.

If you are interested, if you are a seeker, you can reach there quickly by uninterrupted practice. Now, while driving or while doing something which is dangerous, your awareness should be ON but it should be focused on outside content, not inside the mind, not on what the mind is thinking. Otherwise, you will go to sleep. I mean, you will lose contact with the sensory stream and you will end up in some kind of disaster. So, there are two directions of awareness. One is outside, one is inside. Sometimes you need to keep it inside and sometimes, in the waking state, most of the time, when you are working, it should be directed outside. Contents have changed. That's all.

Ajay is saying, the mind can conclude that witness is due to which the mind itself came into existence. And that is the essence of I. The question is, what is the relation between witness and mind? How are they connected?

No, they are not connected and there is no relation. It is not dual. It's not two. The witness is witnessing itself in the form of mind. That is, you can say, a connection or you can say it is a relation of oneness. If you assume that there is a mind and there is a witness that is separate, you will need to establish this fact. How can you establish that fact? You will need to find the mind without a witness. Is it even possible? As soon as you point to the mind, the witness is already here. It's not possible. They never appear separately. But they look as if they are two because of the switching of the attention from the witness and from them to the mind. Actually, you cannot switch your attention to witness. You can switch your attention between the gaps in the mental activity and the mental activity. It is important what I said. That is what gives us the knowledge that there is a witness. That is what goes in the memory. There was an activity that is in the memory. There was a gap. What was there in the gap? There was awareness. And that goes in the memory. And activity starts again. That also goes in the memory. This back and forth gives us an illusion that there are two. There are no two.

You say, how are they connected? You can connect two things, you cannot connect one thing to itself. Remember the mind. You need to pay very, very fine attention there. It's like a tip of the needle kind of attention. Sit down and watch. Make your focus sharper like a microscope. You will find this thing is happening and you will never find the witness. Because the witness is the one that is observing. It cannot focus on itself. It is the microscope itself. So it reflects itself through the mind. It is amazing, isn't it? This illusion is produced that there is a mind out there somewhere. The relation is of oneness. Because of the activity, the back and forth dividing activity of the mind, it looks like there is separation. It's not separate. You will always witness a mind. You will not witness a witness.

Parveen is asking, so Turiya is without memory because there is no continuity. Is it right that Turiya is without memory?

It is right in some way, but I don't understand why you said that there is no continuity. Continuity of what? Experience, I guess. Are you saying that there is no continuity of experience? Yes. The experience can appear to be discontinuous. It can get into the memory. It can be without memory. Like in deep sleep, nothing goes in memory. There's nothing to record, actually. Senses are mostly shut down. What will be recorded is blank memory now. So it looks like there was a discontinuity there because I cannot recall what happened. But when you are in Turiya, this problem does not arise. You know, you are there with memory. You know, you are there without memory. This becomes a solid knowledge. Now, probably I do not have proper words to describe Turiya. It is something which needs to be experienced.

All the states of the mind are actually present right now, if you become aware. This can be done by practice only. It is not something which you read in a book or hear somewhere. This is a conditioning of the mind. Right now, it is conditioned to see one state at a time. And then it is involved in some kind of activity, mental activity, suffering, happiness, who knows what, the samsaric activity. But when you have an immense interest in what is happening, you can see it. We are always in Turiya. The only thing is the awareness is lacking or the noticing is lacking. So with memory, it is there. Without memory, it is there. But once awareness becomes almost continuous, then you will get this solid conviction that I am always there with or without memory. It is very difficult for me to explain. But that is what great masters will say. If you ask them what happens in deep sleep, why there is no consciousness in deep sleep, they will laugh. They will say, who told you there is no consciousness in deep sleep? Because their experience is very different. They are always aware. They know, I was conscious. I was conscious of nothing. What is that nothing? It is also me. It is now not appearing as something. That is Turiya. It is right now also Turiya, you see. Only difference is that our whole focus is on a certain kind of activity of the mind, which is called the waking state. It needs to be confirmed. And this confirmation comes after a little bit of seeing and practicing.

Parveen is saying, after death, memory is not there. So again, who will be aware as the mirror mind is not there?

After death, there is nobody. So who is witnessing? Who is noting? Where is Turiya? Because the mind is not there. There is an assumption there, which you can also note. You are saying that there is no mind there. This is an assumption. Because we are not dead, and because we do not have a memory of past deaths, we cannot really say that the mind was not there. How can we be sure without dying that the mind is not there? So there is an assumption here. First, we need to clear it up.

I want to die desperately to see what happens. Yes, some experiences can be had at only the proper time. Although there are shortcuts, which does not mean you kill yourself. Shortcut means that there are indications that there can be a mind after death of the body. However, this should not be taken as a blind faith. Because you are a seeker, you need to find it out. Otherwise, you're not a seeker. We always find out. We have this burning passion to find out something. Even if it is death, we want to find it out. This will actually be very helpful because this will for once and for all eliminate the fear of death from your mind. Right now, it is afraid because it does not know. Don't worry, there are ways to know.

However, there is a warning here - do not blindly believe everything I'm going to say. I will tell you my own experience of deep sleep, which I found out after some Kundalini experiences. You know what Kundalini is? It is an artificial quickening of awareness. It is forceful, although I should not use those words. Anybody who is practicing Kundalini will get offended by that. So I can tell you in the Kundalini language, it is a krupa. It is a blessing of Kundalini that she will lift you to that state of awareness where you become aware in deep sleep. And she did that to me because I was so much into the Kundalini practice, it caused hyper awareness and that actually caused some bad effects on the body, health and mind. And that is a different story. So if you are doing that kind of super fast kind of practice to get to Turiya or highest state of awareness, then you will find that there is an interesting experience in deep sleep. You will find something amazing that there is no deep sleep. You will find that there is always an activity. Actually, you will witness activity of the causal body in deep sleep.

Now, the activity of the causal body is so bizarre that our waking mind has no way to make any sense of it. I saw the causal body activity and it will sound like an idiot because I really don't know, but I can tell you, and you can laugh at it, that it is like an ocean of thoughts, subliminal, subconscious thoughts. That is what it looks like. Sometimes the deep sleep will change into activity, it will trigger some other part of the mind and will change into something meaningful, something that resembles our waking state. We call it a dream state. There is no discontinuity in experience, actually. It is just a changing experience. It is not that the dreams appear out of nowhere. Activity sometimes becomes meaningful, although dreams are not so meaningful but waking state is also a dream, which is more meaningful.

You can see that even the so-called lucid dreams where you are fully awake are not that meaningful, although they are fun. They are good entertainment and you can learn a lot, and you can meet your gurus and guides also in that kind of state, also called the aware dreams or astral states. So it activates some part of the mind and that experience happens. Some of the experience is remembered and fades away as soon as we wake up. Within a few minutes of waking up, it's gone and then the dream activity transforms into egoic activity, which you can witness if you are in Turiya, or you can call it awareness.

You can witness it while you are getting up. It is a chatter of the mind and very slowly, it will turn into a to-do list. I need to do that. I need to go there and I need to say this. I need to call somebody and what do I have for breakfast? Eyes open up, the world comes in, the body gets up, even the breathing pattern and blood flow and everything will change, different hormones and chemicals, serotonin and whatever, change in blood, the body gets prepared for a waking experience. This all can be witnessed. It is within our reach and it is one continuous experience. Although you don't need to believe me. Kundalini is a crazy thing. It can do things to your mind. But there is another way to experience deep sleep, which is proper meditation.

What is meditation? As good as deep sleep. When everything stops, you stop your perceptions. You stop by closing the eyes and ignoring the sounds and you train your body to not produce unnecessary itches and pains and whatnot. You ignore it and then you concentrate on the mind and it also stops. You get into a dreamlike state and that also can be overpowered by awareness and then there is nothing. That is also some kind of samadhi and it is as good as deep sleep. Now the causal activity will start. The activity of the causal mind, you can stop that also. That is complete mukti. That is complete liberation. If you can stop that activity, you will not wake up. That is mahasamadhi. There won't be any birth now. So this should be done under the guidance of a great master. I have not done it. But I touched it. Probably I'm deluded, who knows. So you will need to do your own experiments. That's why when you see me saying these things that the mind cannot be stopped, it does not stop. Don't try to stop it. Transcend it. There is years and years of training behind these words. Meditating, talking with people, consulting all the gurus and checking out books and all. There is a long study behind these words. So although there is a chance of error here, your experience is your truth.

Session 23

Today I'll show you something which probably was not discussed a lot. I'll show you that there is no creation actually. If I say that there is no creation, then all the questions about creations should be dead automatically. So there are two ways to explain these questions and first is to give a very detailed account of how the creation happens and why it happens and who created everything. And the second way is the most direct which is to show that there is no creation.

Everything starts with a vibration and then everything appears on the screen of consciousness as these vibrations evolve and take form and this does not happen in time. The time happens in creation. Creation does not happen in time. Creation is eternal. It is timeless. Who is creating? The creation is creating itself. There is nobody there to create because as soon as we say there is somebody to create something, then the creation is already there in the form of that somebody. So it leads to infinite regression which means that is the wrong track. We should not go there. That is the wrong answer because it leads to meaningless repetition of the same question. It goes to meaninglessness. So the creation is creating itself.

Parveen is asking- what caused the vibration initially?

If I say there is something which caused the vibration, then you will ask me what caused that thing and it is the same meaningless series as before. The cause will be the creator and you can repeat the formula there. So it is just a mind game you see. We see the creation happening. We see that it is happening everywhere. People are creating things. Mother Nature is creating things and so we want to know what is creating everything and that causes problems because here whatever we see and whatever we call as creation is not really creation. I will simply destroy all the questions once and for all. When you say creation, what do you mean really? Yes, when you say the created, I know what it means. It means the experience, the current experience. That is the creation.

But what does it mean to create? If I simply declare that no creation happened, then it does not answer your questions. You will need to accept that on blind faith or you will need to reject that on blind faith. So let us take some examples of creation. A very familiar example which occurs in all the scriptures of non-duality is clay and pot. The pot is created from the clay and the creator is the potter. So how do we create the pot from the clay? We take the clay, we shape the clay and there is the pot. It appears magically from the clay. Then let us take another example. We want to create, let us say steam or water vapor from water. What do we do? We heat the water and water boils. The steam is created. Let us say we want to grow a tree. We plant the seed and from that seed the tree is created. Again magic. We want to create an ornament or jewelry. We take gold, forge it into the ornament. The ornament gets created. We want to create a work of art, let us say painting. We take the paint and put it on canvas. The painting is created. Similarly, music is created. Similarly, many, many machines and technology and gadgets are created by taking something from around us and changing it in some way. One more example. If we want to create light, what do we do? We turn on the switch. The light bulb starts producing light. It creates the light. So, these are some examples of creation.

Now, let us see what is happening. Let us go deep into creation and see what is happening. You will notice something common here: that we take something and create something else out of it. Something does not come out of nothing. If you take nothing, nothing will come out of it. Always something is needed to create something and the creation is merely a transformation. Things are not being created out of thin air. They are being transformed in some way. So, the simplest example is clay and pot. Clay was already present and somebody simply shaped it into another structure, another shape and that becomes the pot and we call it creation. Similarly, the gold, the jewelry, ornaments, the gold is already present. We simply shape it into some good form, beautiful form and say that this is creation. What is steam? It is just heated water. It is just a form of water and when we heat the water, we are simply turning the water into steam. We are not creating steam. The steam does not appear if there is no water and it does not appear if there is no agency like fire or heater. When we turn on the light and we create light, actually the light is already present there in the form of electricity. Light is energy. Electricity is energy. The electricity flows and it gets converted into light. Same thing. We cannot create light. It is already there in some other form. The energy is already there. When we plant the seed, what happens? Now, this is a real miracle. How can a small seed grow into a big tree? But again, there is a blueprint in the seed and the seed actually only takes material from the environment and assembles it into a tree. There is already material there. It is again converted into a tree. The carbon dioxide and water and energy of the sun appears as a tree. You can do this kind of research. You can try it and you will always find that there is no creation. There is always conversion. When a new form appears out of the old form, we call it creation. There is always a transformation of what already is.

Nothing can be created. Like earth from stardust after a big bang, the dust was already present there. The matter was already present there. It fell into a gravity pit and then this ball of dirt appeared. So, there is no big bang actually because big bang means something is banging. Something exploded. So, something was already there. It is again a transformation and it is a theory. It is a model to explain some observations. Big bang is not true. It is a highly disputed theory actually. Those who know astronomy, they don't believe in it. Only common people believe it because they are fed this in schools like drip feeding. They are fed these things in the name of science. When you repeat something as truth so many times, everybody starts believing it blindly. Students are being fed these theories. There is no big bang actually. The creation is timeless. It did not happen in time. Creation is transformation and transformation is happening always, eternally. Time is an illusion. Nothing happens in time. When something changes, our mind says that the time has passed because it compares the present change with something in the memory which it remembers from the memory. It says that something has changed and the speed of change gives us an illusion of time because some things change quickly, some things change slowly and some things change in a very regular fashion like the clocks. We can use that to measure how fast things are changing.

There is nothing called time. There is only change and change is only there because of the memory, because we remember that something was not like this before. Something transformed. Something changed. If there is no memory then there won't be any change. No change will be perceived. There will be a pure experience. That's all there will be. Moment by moment experience. Nothing will be there to remember what happened. Everything will be new, brand new and there will be no time. It will be one eternity experiencing everything. We won't be able to tell if something changed and so we won't be able to say if something got created. So, time is a play of memory. Creation is also a play of memory because we know that something transformed. It was not like this. The pot was only clay. Now it is appearing as a pot. So, we say that the pot was created. If there is no memory, nothing gets created. It is a play of memory and what is memory? Memory is mind. Actually, the core part of the mind is memory and recalling and comparing their processes in the memory. That's what we call the activity of the mind. The mind is nothing but the activity of the mind.

Without memory, there cannot be any process. Without memory, there cannot be any mind. So,

when these processes happen, we say that the creation happens and therefore sometimes we say

everything that is created is created by the mind. It is a mental projection only. All creation is mental projection. In Sanskrit, it is Maya. It is appearing. Nothing is getting created. Nothing really exists. It all appears because of this game, this play of the mind. The mind itself is an appearance. There is no memory if there is no recall. So, what is recall? A process in the mind. That means it is only the mind and if it is not happening, then nothing is really happening and obviously nothing is getting created. So, no creation. Everything is transformation.

What is being transformed actually? There is nothing actually that is being transformed. There is only change, pure change. What is pure change? It is information. When something changes meaningfully, we call it information. What is information? You can say that it is a vibration of some kind. Like the most basic information is one state changing into another state. For example, zero changes to one, one changes to zero. This is the binary information that computers use. If high changes to low, low changes to high, it is again information. It is a change. This is the simplest change. The binary change is the simplest change. There can be no one state change because one state changes into the same state. So, the minimum requirement is duality. The minimum requirement is two states and there can be more states obviously. If the two states superimpose on each other, they can create many states. So, something changes, one changes to zero and zero changes back to one and then this one-zero can be repeated as a pattern of one-zero. This pattern can also change.

The bigger pattern can be repeated. This is how a bigger wave forms. And everything is waves, everything is vibrations, very complex vibrations that are superpositions of the basic vibration. Those who study electronics, for example, communication, they know that all waveforms like the sound can be synthesized out of simple waveforms of different frequencies. It is possible to do that. All of the voice that you are hearing is actually waves of different frequencies that are superimposed on each other. That is how the wave is and the sound is created out of waves and therefore the ancient people called it sound, naad or vibration. It is a very ancient theory. They must be some great people, probably an evolved species of humans. They knew everything actually. They knew how everything gets created and they manipulated it because once you know the principle, you can use it as a technology. They did that and we are a very dumb, stupid kind of generation here. We do not know much. Even whatever they are saying, we do not understand it completely.

That which is appearing is vibration. What is vibrating? Nothingness is vibrating. Now you can object to this statement. How can nothing vibrate? See, nothing is not really nothing. Now this is the limit of my mind here. I mean, the mind won't be able to grasp it. Nothing is everything. Nothing has the potential to become everything. So this nothing is one. It is oneness. Actually, it is zero-ness because one means there is something but there is no entity there. The emptiness is empty and so we say that it is zero. Now this has a very interesting quality that it can know itself. Because it is nothing, it's in contact with itself. These are poetic words. You should not try to understand these things. It takes a look at itself and it sees nothing obviously and it says probably I should go back to nothing, go back to sleep. It's all poetry you see. These are metaphors. And that is a change. It looks and then it looks away. That is the binary change that is happening in emptiness. That is the source of change. It is according to me obviously. It may not be true. We will never find out about this thing.

What is vibrating? The nothingness is vibrating. It is not a vibration. It is looking and looking away. It is becoming aware and then becoming unaware of itself. That produces a zero-one pattern in itself. That it is the emptiness that is “expanding and contracting”. In what form? When it expands, it sees itself. When it contracts, it cannot see itself because it is the only one. So this produces a pattern. If this happens very quickly and in a number of modes like many kinds of frequencies, it gives rise to all the possibilities. Infinite possibilities are already present in this eternal nothingness and that is beyond our mind because our mind knows only a few things. It knows only a tiny bit and that also is false. That also is crowded with all kinds of blind beliefs. The mind has absolutely no power to know the truth. It cannot be known using the mind. It knows only the false. What we can do at best is to break these beliefs and then remain as we are.

We are vibrating nothingness. The vibrations are not happening in time. All the vibrations are already here. All possibilities are already here. What are we doing actually? What is mind? It is recalling a few things out of these possibilities and they appear as an experience. It is scanning through the possibilities. It appears as an experience. Remember nothing is getting created. It's all transformation and you can see it as a walk of the mind through the possibilities. It is walking through the possibilities that appear as change, that appears as transformation and you can see now how can the mind which is already an illusion, which is also an appearance do that and then you will find that it is not the mind.

It is me. It is the Atman, the Brahman, the consciousness that is doing it because it cannot grasp its own infinite potential. It contracts a little bit and then it scans through what is happening. This human being or any other creature, any other conscious sentient being is this process of scanning through the possibilities.

What are these possibilities, infinite possibilities? We also call it memory and scanning is a process of recall. Memory is within consciousness. I hope everybody can understand me. It is a deep subject. I am not saying it is true. It is just an explanation because this puts to rest all the questions that were ever asked and that will be asked in future by any intelligent mind. Any being that comes here will encounter the same thing which I just told you. There is emptiness. The emptiness has the ability to look or to know. When it expands and contracts like this, it produces a pattern. When that pattern repeats infinitely, because there is no time, all the patterns are present, it forms an infinite amount of potential there of many patterns to be. When it wants to look at what is happening, it limits itself in a form of mind or a limited mind, scans through it. This is the memory of consciousness. It takes a look at it. This produces a momentary appearance of what is there and it produces an illusion of change. Something is changing because it is going through it one by one and that produces the illusion of time. The limited mind takes a form again. It filters out whatever it can and produces a meaningful experience. Meaningful means just a pretty beautiful experience.

Nothing is meaningful here really. It is all meaningless. Meaning is then imposed by the mind on this. So there is this formation of an experience in the form of a limited structure. This limited structure is this body mind. What appears is this world. The scanning produces the illusion of change that appears as time and history. And the brain can anticipate a few things. It is a little bit of a sophisticated structure. It has algorithms and some programs there. It can compute/predict the coming events because if something is happening regularly, intelligence can guess it. The sun is coming up almost regularly so there will be tomorrow and it starts planning for tomorrow. It is all an illusion actually.

This body mind is an instrument of the one, the emptiness, to perceive its own potentialities, to know its own potential, the infinite potential. It cannot be known at the same time so it limits itself into small things. And this limited thing can only see limited stuff. So we see a limited world. There is a way to cross the limits. There is a way to expand beyond this finite very small thing and that is our spiritual journey. That is what we call our spiritual progress. When we realize that I am this thing which is nothing, which is infinite potential, then we can see the truth of what this body mind is and as soon as the mind recognizes that it is limited, and as soon as it knows that there is a possibility of transcending this limitation, it gets to work, starts seeking.

A seeker is born in this way and this process of seeking leads to liberation which means finally realizing that I am already everything. I don't need to do more than this. Everything is happening as it should in a perfect way. If I meddle into it using my limited intelligence, it becomes ugly. It breaks something. You know those people who want to fix some things but end up breaking it and I found that I also do it sometimes. If I want to improve something, I end up breaking it. We are already progressing. Just do not break it. That's all. That is our spiritual mantra. That is our spiritual journey. It will become super fast if you remove all the hurdles that the mind itself has placed in its path of spiritual progress. The whole spiritual practice is removing these obstacles. Everything is already very smooth and fast.

That explains everything. That is the answer to everything. We need to remove these beliefs that there is a creation. We need to throw out these concepts that something can create something. No, nothing can be created. It already is. We can simply experience whatever is there. That is what the mind says is creation. Sometimes you will find me using this word just to explain it in a very simple language. Because our language is a language of ignorance, some people will find these things very difficult to understand if there is no direct experience of what I am saying. For such people, we come down one or two steps and we explain the creation in terms of other concepts. We make it up, cook up the story for such people. But ultimately, there is no creation. All we need to do is give up these ideas that we have in the mind. Then you will see everything as it is.

Now there is no problem talking about creation also, because you know that it is not there. It is an idea. You can talk about how everything gets created. You can also talk about what is creating. So we have done that. If you want to know the details, there is a podcast episode called ‘The Origin of the Mind’. How the creation proceeds from simple vibrations. And yes, it is explained in much more detail on my Hindi channel. The Vedas call it the Brahmanaad or the vibrations of the Brahman. I have given it a different name. I have given it the name of Naadrachana, because it makes it more graspable. Naadrachana means a structure created out of vibration. So there are two or three videos there that explain it very precisely, almost in hyper detail, how everything is being created. Before that, you should clean the slate. Before that, you should know that this is an illusion. Nothing is getting created. And then you can jump into the creation. If you jump into the processes themselves, like for example, science has done, then you will end up in a dark pit of ignorance.

First, you should light up the lamp and then travel. Otherwise, it is very easy to get lost in the creation. We are already lost there. This spiritual journey is an attempt to get out of this stickiness of creation. It is very dense. It is very complicated. It is very limited. We don't really like it. We always want it to be something else. Can you see anybody who is happy with everything? No. The mind is another name for dissatisfaction. Why are there desires? Any desire is a desire to change something. Have you noticed? “Let it be as it is. I am okay with it.” - This is not a desire, you see. This is the mind of a yogi. I am okay with everything. It is not changing. Okay, fine. It is changing. I am okay. It's fine. But an ordinary person, if it is not changing, why is it not changing? It needs to change because the present moment is not perfect. It is not fine. It is not good enough. And if that something comes, oh, it is going away. It is changing back. It is getting destroyed. I want to keep my body like this. I don't want it to age. I want to keep my house like this. But it never happens. Everything comes and everything goes and the mind is clinging to it like a mad man. It is trying to preserve the change and it is trying to create the change according to its wish. Now, this is all perfect. Actually, this is how it should happen, but it should not produce suffering. That is the whole point.

And if you say, oh, it is not changing according to my will, then probably you need to purify your will because it is not possible that nothing will change according to your will. It is your will. Everything changes according to your will, nobody else's will. You are willing it, actually, because you do not know who you are. It looks as if somebody else is doing it because I have separated myself from the whole. And then I wonder why nothing is happening according to me. This tiny thing which you have separated is an illusion. Nothing happens according to it. It does not exist.

This individual does not exist. Only the whole exists. So I am a little bit diverting from the topic of creation, but it is related to creation. We are the creators. We create things using our will. It is only my will because I see myself as the body-mind which is being animated by the will of All. I find that nothing is happening according to my will. This produces suffering. Remember, whatever is happening is already my will. If I get pleasure, it is my will. If I get pain, it is also because I willed it. So all the desires, they are desires of the whole. Why is there a desire? Without desire, the mind will dissolve. There is no mental activity without desire. That is the whole fight of a yogi to burn down all the desires and burn down all the seeds of the desires. He wants to go back to this initial primordial desireless state of the being, which is me, which is the true Self. It is without desire. This play produces desires. Because of the desires, everything moves.

Desire is nothing. It is another name for will. Without willing, nothing will move. The activity of the mind will stop. So will is very, very deep. Will is the reason for creation. Everything is following the same will actually. That is not a human will. That is not this will that arises in my mind which I claim as mine. And this human will is also a will of the whole. It just looks like that it is mine because the ego takes credit for it. The ego takes responsibility for it. It is very complicated. That's why we call it the play of Maya. It is a play. If everything happened in a straightforward way, probably the experience will not be this interesting and probably the creature will lose interest very quickly and will want to return back. That is what has happened in the mind of a renunciate. He does not want anything now. Too much willing. I am tired. I want to go back. This is a liberated person. This is the will of a liberated person and he does go back. That body mind is dissolved. That causal body disappears.

When you use this word will, it is also the cause. Will is the cause. The causal body is the willing structure. It keeps producing desires and then to act out those desires, it keeps producing structures. The structures are limited because there is so much to do. So much was willed. Infinite amount was willed actually because there are infinite possibilities and the willing continues. It is eternal. So this game continues. This play continues to see the desires being realized. This is the whole play. This is the whole Samsara actually. We don't want it. We want to go back to a desireless state. This is called a purified mind. Mind of a seeker is okay with whatever is being willed but does not want to own it. So this desire when it appears in the causal body means the destruction of the causal body is very near. Probably it won't happen instantly but that causal body will be dissolved back into emptiness. That is the end of the causal body.

So enjoy while this play lasts because as soon as this knowledge appears in the mind, it means that the mind has already started its journey towards the nothingness and the egos they tremble when they hear these things. Oh I'm going to become nothing. You are already nothing actually. Whatever appeared must go. If there is a resistance, that means there are unfulfilled desires. Vasanas, the seeds are already there. That means more structures will be formed but if there is this desire to let go or an attitude that whatever is happening is okay, it is happening because there are tendencies in the causal body, if you just let it go then that means this causal body is now declining. That means the causal structures are falling. This is something interesting, because when the causal body is destroyed, when it is no more, when there are no more desires left there to form any more structures or to take more births. Now the matter in the causal body is distributed in the wholeness. You can see it like this that the seed turns into a tree and the leaves from the tree fall down. They have done their job now and they fall down, they dry up and this fertilizer, the dried rotten leaves, they become the body of other plants.

As below, so above. The causal body that is now the simplest of vibrations, just raw material, has become raw material. It feeds other causal bodies and the game starts again. Remember it is not happening in time so you will need to imagine that everything has already happened. So don't worry, everything has already happened. You are already liberated and you already appeared as other causal bodies. It has already happened or you can say that these things are illusions, so nothing has really happened. When I say everything is happening and nothing is happening, it means the same thing. This is the paradox because the mind has divided the one into two. It will appear paradoxical because how come there are opposites now in one? You have divided it into two and therefore it appears paradoxical and meaningless. And in reality it is meaningless. There is no meaning in the whole of the experience, the whole of the creation, whatsoever. When you realize this, the desires will stop coming because the desires are fueled by meaning. Why do you want something? Because it is meaningful for you. If it is useless for you, you won't want it.

Have you seen the little children when they walk on a road for example in a park or some place they start collecting things like tiny stones. They see white pebble with a pattern on it and they take it. They see a chocolate wrapper, they take it, and I also did that as a kid. Why do they do that? There is something interesting that happens there because that little child has never seen anything like this. The little pebble, a round stone, he wants to take it. There is a will there. I want this because the meaning appears, although it is a meaningless event. “Oh how beautiful it is and I will be happy if I get it. I can see it every day”. So they collect these things and when they grow up they keep doing the same thing. Have you noticed? The accumulation tendency is inherent in an ignorant mind. They think I need this because it is going to make me happy. They collect a lot and when that which is collecting starts going they don't want it to disappear. It does disappear, as it is impermanent. It will then appear as the next birth and then another birth. So it is very deep in the fabric of the mind to accumulate, to collect, to cling, to own and the fear of not being able to do this is also very deep. A seeker is free from both things. You must have noticed, a seeker does not accumulate, does not create also and does not want anything. There are no desires left in that seeker and it probably means that the causal body is now declining. It has seen a lot and so his past experience says that it is also useless and meaningless. Just like everything else that I did and that means just a few more births and that those births will be with a very refined mind. Probably just like your guru has nothing, does nothing and simply shows the way to others, who have developed this kind of detachment. Vairagya.

The guru is not actually pushing those who are still attached. You must have seen this, although some gurus are very big tricksters, they trick people into a spiritual path by accelerating their detachment somehow. They will give a lot so we also call them gods for some reason for example there is a very

great goddess Laxmi and there is this biggest festival on earth it's called Diwali, which is worship of Laxmi and what kind of goddess she is. She is the goddess of prosperity. Nowadays people think she is the goddess of money because money is prosperity but no money is not prosperity, money is accumulation. Prosperity is when you have everything that you need. So more money does not mean prosperous. The person can become greedy and then become miserable. Prosperity is when you are happy, as far as the physical part of life is concerned. So you will find everybody worships that goddess, no other god or goddess is so respected and so popular. Why is that? Because everybody wants something and that goddess has an energy that she gives, probably people don't know how to take. People demand money and things like that, but the goddess is of prosperity also called Sri.

But there is a counterpart of that goddess which nobody knows. The counterpart of Laxmi is Alaxmi which means anti-prosperity, so when she gives prosperity she creates a vacuum in that person. This is the same energy actually. She takes away. What does she take away? She takes away the greed, the clinging, the attachment. First she gives it because that works and then what happens? You can see that once you get things and they are repeatedly given to you, you lose interest in them, you want something else. This is the tendency of the mind because it is not happy when it does not have things, it is not happy when it gets things, and it is not happy when things are taken away. The mind is a misery making machine actually so what this goddess does is - it utilizes, hacks into this property of the mind, gives, makes everybody prosperous and then the vacuum arises in the mind. That vacuum will initiate the worshiper of this goddess into a spiritual path. Then the goddess will take away whatever she has given. This happens willingly. The worshiper will give away whatever he has accumulated and it happens throughout many births, so we do not see it happening instantly. Well who knows, sometimes it happens quickly. It also depends on the desire of Laxmi herself. So if you are worshipping Laxmi don't worry, you are not greedy or you are not materialistic, you are accelerating your spiritual progress. She will give and she will take away. After laxmi, Alaxmi comes, remember this thing. It's a long process, we don't want this kind of process. We don't want to depend on gods and goddesses, so we take a shortcut. We cultivate the detachment knowingly.

That is the purest will, because now the emptiness wants to become emptiness again. It is tired of the game that it has produced. It will not stop the creation. It is simply a realization that I'm already empty, I'm already nothing. It is as meaningless as thinking that I am everything, I have everything, I am this and that. All these statements are totally meaningless, there is no meaning in realizing that I am empty, I am nothing. So it is also a play. Therefore we see all these ignorant people as equal to all these liberated people. Actually the one who has realized something is not anything special, just tendencies falling down. The one who has diverted from this realization has wandered away somewhere in the creation. Just tendencies that have taken that form, that structure, that body mind, in that direction. It will come back, don't worry. So we take this shortcut of -don't worry, be happy. We find it amusing, that's all. There is no meaning in it, it is a will to travel into the maya, into the illusion and then it is also a will to come out of maya, to get liberated. Liberation is a purpose that is given by the Guru.

The desire for pleasures of the world is as divine as the desire to liberate. So a new tradition is born for example Shaivism, which I know one sect worships the shakti. Now laxmi is just a form of shakti, there are so many shaktis, so many powers, what are they? They are expressions of this divine will to express itself in the form of shakti. In my mind I do not have these conflicts and so I am free. Those who want liberation like today, they are deluded. Remember you are already liberated, and if you do not accept the play you will become miserable. You will suffer because there is a desire that I want to be liberated. Remember it will happen anyway. If there is a desire that I want to enjoy the world then many births will happen. Both are equally pure. Now why do we keep saying that don't desire too much, don't be greedy, don't take more births, liberate yourself from births and all? There is only one reason for saying this - that is compassion, because we see humans, expression of causal bodies, are suffering. This attachment is producing suffering. That's why we offer a cure - this suffering is because of this and you need to get rid of this and the permanent solution is liberation. We say like this, once you are liberated the suffering is gone. Liberation is a liberation from suffering only. What are you going to liberate from? You are already liberated, so once that is gone then there are no rules. You have become an eternal being, now it will take forms if it wants, and it will dissolve forms if it wants.

If there is no creation it solves the problem. How to get rid of creation? Realize that there is no creation! You are not trapped in the creation because it's not there. This is how you can liberate yourself in five minutes. Did it solve all your questions already? That is a powerful teaching, isn't it? Because when I saw this teaching, when I saw that there is no creation, it silenced the mind for once and for all. This is our direct experience. It is not a theory.

We can see that there is no creation. Really it is a transformation, eternal transformation, because there is no time, also there is no history. Now people will say that there is no time but then why do I see these ruins? I see bones in very old layers of the earth. And I see structures like pyramids and all. When did they happen? They cannot be happening in the present. Why is there this history, archaeology? I also had this question and I got interested in prehistory because of this, because the near history is totally fabricated, it's a bunch of lies made up by politicians and religious leaders, and there is prehistory of which the evidence has not been manipulated so much. It is not really possible to manipulate that and we see amazing things, we see machines, we see very advanced technology, we see some things that resemble magic, and I keep digging out these things.

There are many independent researchers that are doing a lot of research into it and very quickly a pattern will emerge out of history. What is that pattern? That history repeats itself, which every wise man has said. History is repetitive or you can say in Advaita terminology that the time is cyclic, also called the kaal chakra. Kaal means time, chakra means a wheel, wheel of time, it repeats. This was the understanding of all the advanced civilizations. You can very easily understand that time is an illusion but then you cannot understand the history, and you will find that there is a pattern that emerges - cyclic pattern, and that will throw away your concepts of past because there is no past, but there is a memory of the past.

How is it even possible? The memory is in the form of the ruins or the dinosaur bones or the fossils on the seabed, how is it possible if there is no past? It is a mystery and there is a way out of this mystery that this memory is not “my” memory. Remember I am a human with my own mind here, you can call it a small part of the universal mind. History is the memory of the universal mind. It also did not happen, it also is an illusion, it also is timeless. It is a memory of the universal mind also called the akashic records. Infinite possibilities appear as memory when they are recalled, when they are scanned like laser scanner scans through all the products. When we dig out the history we are literally reading the akashic record that is here now.

For practical purposes the akasha is very big, it's huge, it's infinite. We need to form a concept here, that concept is dividing the universal mind into smaller parts. I call it the greater mind. There are many greater minds in the universal mind. It is a combination of all the causal bodies, that's all a greater mind is. Some of the causal bodies have assumed the form of a physical world. This will be very difficult to digest because it's not your direct experience. The liberated minds, they do not go anywhere, they become a universe of some kind, they become a fertile ground for the growth of other causal bodies. It is very amazing, it is almost dreamlike that this is happening. You can see your dreams, you are the fertile ground of your dream. When you go back to sleep, you become nothing. There are no more wills or desires in you, what happens is something appears out of this fertile ground, which is almost dead, where almost nothing is happening. Dream is generated out of that mind, the dream is in the mind actually. All the buildings you see in the dream, all the people you see in the dream are what? They are your memories and they are also formed from your memories. Our 24-hour cycle is a fractal copy, a small self-similar copy of the bigger cycles that are happening. Remember it's all cyclic.

All of the history in your dream was produced there and then from your memory. Let us say you are going somewhere in your dream, which often happens and you find a big building, a very beautiful temple but all ruined, trees are growing out of the temple, monkeys are jumping in the temple and the stones are almost falling but it is very precise. There are beautiful statues, all noses were broken by attackers, and precise construction, mathematically precise, and you wonder in your dream how did that happen. And if you are aware enough you will say that oh it is my dream so probably I am creating this history, I am creating this relic from the past because actually it is from your memory. You saw this somewhere and then it is now appearing as a dream, so your experience has become your creation in this latent state of the mind. Imagine if this mind grows to a very big structure, that's what I call a greater mind.

When this greater mind dreams, whatever it has experienced throughout the time, throughout its experiences from a smaller mind to the greater mind, it will be regurgitated, it will come out as memories. This is what we see as history and remember it is a mind, that means there are so many of greater minds that they have their own memories and they have their own histories. It is all here and now. That constitutes the universal mind. And since everything has happened so many times there is no real history. It is all memory of the greater mind. There are so many histories, there are so many futures, they are all here and now.

I don't expect anybody to understand even one percent of what I'm saying but you can take the first step here. Start researching, start thinking and that will clear some things. When I start thinking like this or talking like this, this talking is also loud thinking. I'm connected to the Gurufield right now, all this knowledge starts downloading automatically, all this understanding appears automatically because we are a part of the greater mind. It is like waking up in the dream and realizing oh these things are being created by me. You will get the same feeling here, I have had the same feeling since I was a little kid. That means this experience has happened many times, it is a repetition. The mind is repetitive, it is a chakra, it is a cycle. Don't worry, you're not trapped in it. It is the nature of the mind, it is repetition. There is no linear time, nothing got created which we are witnessing in the present. It is getting created all the time, eternal creation, there is nothing else, raw creation. Some of it can be accessed as memory of the greater mind that appears as history.

There is no real history, it can be changed. Who knows you wake up tomorrow and the whole history has changed because the dream has changed. That is what we call a cataclysm, cycles of construction and destruction. This is called maha pralaya in Sanskrit which means a total destruction, and everything is dissolved back into the greater mind, and then it goes back to sleep, and everything is created back from the same memory. Who lived here, did you live here? No. Did you get liberated from life and birth? No. Nothing actually happened.

There are infinite varieties of greater minds that are doing that. This is the universal mind. It is so big. You are worried about the environment, amounts to nothing really, speck of dust. Are you worried about the planet? There is no planet. It will be gone very quickly, earth came from stardust, it will go back to stardust. Nothing to worry about. This takes off a lot of burden, this knowledge will free you. Do not worry about anything, it's all a dream.

We all want to know where we came from and the modern people dig out the earth to find out where we came, but the ancient people dug deep into the mind. You will find your origin in the mind, not in the earth. The earth is fake, it is history, it is just a dream. Our origin is in the mind, it can be found right here right now, it is present. We did not happen in the past, we are happening now, and we are always happening now, that is our origin. The origin is the emptiness from which everything is being created. It is simply looking at whatever is being created. Some people may want to say yes then I am the creator, I am creating it but remember there is no creation. Just now we saw it, there is only transformation, there is only change, and then some people will say I am changing and that is also not true, the change is there because of the memory or activity of the mind. Then they will say I am the activity of the mind and that is also not true, the activity is not really changing anything, it is merely scanning through whatever it already is, and then some people will say - I am that which already is, and that is true. I am that, that is obvious, but I am also that which is appearing, I am also that which is manifested, which is sagun, which is created.

I am both, I am One. These divisions are being done by the mind for whatever reason, it wants to understand things, the analysis is being done by the mind. Now you need to synthesize it back that is lacking in many seekers. I have seen they are very good at analysis, break down everything and then try to find the relations between these things. That gives rise to confusion and then some people blindly believe whatever the mind cooks up, that gives rise to ignorance. So synthesize whatever you have broken up and you will find that is all One. There are no parts, therefore we hesitate to call it One. When I say zero then it is equally meaningless, but you need to choose a word so we say emptiness, this is shunyata. That is all it is.

All emptiness is full of possibilities, it is not really empty. One is also empty, it did not really happen in a way that you think happened. There is no point in this creation, there is no meaning in the universe.

It is a dream as meaningless as our night dreams, the meaning is imposed by the mind. Oh it must be meaningful, just like the child collecting the pebbles on the road. The child thinks it's fun, it's a play and it actually gives a lot of pleasure to the child when he collects things on the beach, for example, the shells. Remember that collecting tendencies, accumulating tendencies are responsible for our getting lost in the dream, they are not the tendencies of the child, they are tendencies of the causal body. Purification of the causal body is removal of these tendencies, it is already happening.

The seed becomes a tree, the tree grows leaves, the leaves fall down, and the dry leaves rot, becoming the body of other trees and plants. It is a natural process, you don't need to do much except stop holding on to the creation, stop accumulating and it will go very smoothly. Now you will say what is the meaning of this liberation and all, when I'm already liberated. The meaning is imposed, you need to give it a meaning while it is lasting, give it any meaning that pleases you, just do not give it something which keeps you attached. That is the spiritual path, that is the spiritual goal. While fully knowing that I am liberated, while fully knowing that all this is meaningless and purposeless, I give it a meaning, I give it a purpose. This is my path. I want to achieve this, and that goal is a spiritual goal, not a material goal, not a worldly goal, not a goal that concerns the illusion. I give it a goal knowingly. That is like a rope that hangs in the pit that will take you out of the pit. Because the mind cannot do anything, it must be given a goal, otherwise it remains confused. Don't worry, even if it is confused, the natural process is happening, but when you give it a goal, when you give it a target to achieve, it is happy - oh I have something to do now, and then it accelerates the evolution of the mind.

The evolution of the mind is the dissolution of the mind, and that may sound negative but don't worry, you're already nothing, you're already empty. There is an activity happening in the background of the peace, this is our direct experience. All the activity, all the manifestation, since it is nothing at its root, is happening in the background of nothingness, that is the reason that it is so peaceful. The violence that you see outside in the world is actually illusory, it is a very peaceful violence, nothing wrong is happening, it is a very perfect manifestation, the perfect mind is dreaming a perfect dream. I don't need to meddle in it, that will give this tiny mind, the human mind, a taste of peace of the greater mind. It is sleeping peacefully, what is your problem? Suffering starts because we take the illusion as real.

Session 24

Ashish is asking, who is your guru?

He is no more now. There was a swami in Rishikesh, actually it's a long story. I was initiated into Hatha yoga by Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev who is very famous, everybody knows him. Inner Engineering. Actually that is not where I started. That was a start of madness, you can say, but I started even before that. I was into lots of stuff. I experienced kundalini even before that, but I'll cut it short and I'll tell you the story of Jaggi Vasudev. So I got initiated there and it is purely a tantric path aka inner engineering. If you are interested, go and try it, and sometimes if the body is not ready, if the mind is not ready, it can be harmful also, but you will get some experience, if you are lucky. He usually gives you 40 days of intense practice, there are some kriyas and there is meditation, there is chanting, and there are samadhi like states. So I did it for 40 days non-stop because I'm a result oriented person. I want to get the results, otherwise why put the effort there. I did it for 40 days but absolutely nothing happened, no kundalini, no experiences, no indications at all, and I did not even know what kundalini was at the time. When nothing happened I was disappointed. I decided to give it one more try. And instead of 40 days I did it for six months actually because it became a habit. It feels nice if you're doing something for spiritual progress. Slowly the body started getting tired, slowly the mind became really weird, slowly the sleep patterns changed, the eating patterns changed, I could not digest even the simplest of the stuff and I noticed that my feet are becoming numb now, and there is so much heat in my hands that it feels feverish. Even the fever is cold compared to that.

One day all the hell broke loose, and there was intense heat and a lot of electric current in my whole body. Now I could not sleep, there was so much pain in the feet and whole of the body that I could not eat, could not sit, could not work, I got afraid. That's what happens, you become terrified of this thing, what is happening to me? At first I thought that it was some kind of disease and I caught some kind of virus or something, and straight away I went to the doctor. Doctor checked and said that nothing is abnormal with you, for the first time I saw a stupid face on a doctor. Usually doctors are very smart, they are very confident but this doctor, he was so puzzled. I asked what to do now? And he said sit down, I'll check you once more, and I saw for the first time in my life that an experienced doctor, opened a book right before me and started reading about the symptoms that were happening in my body. He came up with something even more terrifying. He said nothing seems to be working here but I want you to do the blood test once more and now this time also check also for HIV. And I thought that is the end of my life now, it is HIV. I ran and I did the blood test again, and it was HIV negative, no trace of any virus there, the reports were showing a very healthy person. He said I've never seen such a perfect report. There is only one parameter, it is only 0.1 deviation, probably you ate something that day and that's all. I said but my life is hell, what should I do? I can't eat, can't sleep and can't work and there is a lot of pain and even the mind is not functioning.

So I called up Isha and they said okay go and meet Sadhguru now, he is coming to Mumbai so I booked the trip, I went to Mumbai and I saw a crowd of 2000 people there surrounding Sadhguru, and he had no time to meet. He is kind of a celebrity, isn't he? He meets only the big people and I was an unknown fellow who happened to be in the inner engineering. So still I managed to get to one of his assistant swami and he said something very strange. The swami said - “oh it's very normal, continue your practice”. I said, “why do you think it’s normal?” And he started laughing, he was a young swami and I instantly became a kind of spotlight thing. Everybody was looking at me, everybody thought well nothing happened to us, he is the one who is strange, you see. So I did not like it because I'm a very reserved kind of person so I left the group. I never again attempted to meet Sadhguru and or any of his assistants or other teachers.

But I found another teacher and she is going to remain unnamed because she likes privacy, she does not like to come in public so much. But she told me that I cannot cure it but I will tell you one thing - never attempt this kind of practice again, this is not good. I'm going to tell you something else and she tried to initiate me into the path of knowledge, the Advaita path, and I was so stupid I did not understand even a single thing that she said. I stayed there for one week with no progress. Finally I decided that it is good that the kundalini is awake, let us take it all the way. That was the stupid decision that I took and I called up a swami in Rishikesh who was famous for treating kundalini and as soon as he heard me, he said okay come to me and stay with me. I had no job at the time and I was living alone so I packed my bag again and went straight to Rishikesh, and I stayed with that swami for at least 15 days, I think. And I saw really strange stuff there, which is another story for another day. At the time I was so immature that it all looked like magic, I had no knowledge of what is mind, and what is body, and I had no knowledge of consciousness or anything, and because of my science background it was never taught. It is never told in our schools. Nobody knows about these things.

Suddenly these magical things became real for me. His name was Chandrashekharananda Saraswati and he was a very advanced and very experienced person. Now he's no more, I'm sorry, you won't be able to meet any of my gurus because I myself am not able to meet them now. So that's why I never tell these things to people. Otherwise, if I knew a guru who is like a big master of everything, I would be the first to recommend him. But unfortunately I cannot do it right now. Those whom I know cannot help you and my last guru is no more here, not in the body at least. He gave me very advanced practices, he treated me, he gave me ayurvedic medicines and so on. And there was something strange about him that he came to know each and every thought that I had in my mind. He came to know the status of my body better than me. He had knowledge of my past lives and so on, and I was amazed actually. It was all like a dream, like it was happening in a dream. It was not real.

Anyhow the kundalini got cured when I was with him, that is another miracle, you can say, all the symptoms vanished when I was with him, and he said okay now continue the practice that I gave you. He was South Indian so it was a South Indian practice, it was not a North Indian practice. The South Indian practices are in my opinion more pure than North Indian ones. North Indian ones got corrupted a little bit. So it was so strong that when I came back to Pune and started doing those practices, the kundalini reappeared, and I said it is too much now, I cannot handle it. It reappeared with double intensity. I instantly stopped everything, I returned to a normal life and waited for two or three years for it to go away. Finally this madness was over, finally my mind came back to normal and I took the path of knowledge.

So this is the story in short. I got a lot of experience from it and that is why I never recommend this kind of thing to any one of you, otherwise I would simply give it away. Even with so many big gurus I could not handle the kundalini, I do not expect anybody to handle it, I cannot put you in any kind of danger.

Learn from others’ experiences. First, you need a guru. I can tell you there are far better ways to develop the layers of the mind. That is what I'm doing now. There are safe ways and there are more elegant ways. These techniques were developed for kaliyuga actually. In the kaliyuga the darkness is so dense that only the brute force works, so they are at least 1000 years old or 1500 years old techniques. Like mentioned in the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra and you can read it if you want. The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra mentions all these practices but don't do it, who knows! The books do not mention everything, that is my experience, that is what I came to know. Books do not mention everything, they stop at the critical point. They are just a memory aid and the tantric did not write down everything otherwise you could do magic simply by reading the books. It's not possible isn't it? It is all encrypted because they did not want ordinary people to read and attempt these things.

So only the guru in a tradition knows. If you are interested, it is going to be a very strange journey. Normally the minds of people are so crowded with junk that kundalini does not move even one inch. It does not happen, although I met so many people who had very strange stories to tell, and you will never read this in the newspaper, you will never see this on TV even though there are so many people with such experiences. It never surfaces in our society, that is the problem isn't it? Even in India this is hidden, this is kept secret. We are in a better time now, and we have a better path towards liberation.

Kundalini is very fast but it's full of dangers. We do not know which guru will do what and we do not know whether that guru will stay or you will be even able to approach him or find him again, even if you get initiated. There is an attraction towards these things, among seekers, I've seen, and they end up in a very bad situation actually. I've never seen a kundalini practitioner who is kind of happy and liberated and wants to continue it, very difficult to find. Probably if it goes smoothly then nobody comes out. Only if it goes wrong, something bad happens then people come to know. On the internet, the kundalini forums are full of problems. There is a Reddit group on kundalini where I used to go frequently to post there, to help people and I've seen that people have so much ignorance about what kundalini is. They think it is something like a snake or something, no it is not. It is all poetry, it is all cryptic language. You see, the kundalini has nothing to do with snakes.

Ashish is saying - One thing surely good for novice seekers in kaliyuga is that the kundalini path has defined some signs to indicate the progress being made. Some experiences on chakra progress through inside sounds to let you know approximately where the seeker is. Is there some way to define such stages on the Path of Knowledge? Like I started doing awareness practice and after sometime you don't know if you are progressing. One definitely feels peace, calmness and how deep it is to go there.

There are many indications on Path of Knowledge also but they are not as explosive as the kundalini. I'll tell you again from my experience. The first indication that Path of Knowledge is working is that your suffering will vanish, the suffering will be totally gone. So let me know if you are suffering? I mean mental kind of suffering. That is the first thing that will happen. Why? Because you know your true nature on the first day, and you know that the suffering creator is not me, and that brings an end to suffering, any kind of mental suffering. I'm not saying the body pain and all these things will go away or the people will magically start behaving in a good way. No that is far away, so the first thing is that the mind will stop producing suffering and that is a good sign that some progress was made, some realization happened. For example an ordinary person is jealous of many things, they are competitive and they cannot see good in others. It is a very tiny effect, it is a very subtle effect but it is there in everybody, and on the Path of knowledge when the mind is producing jealousy, awareness arises and it stops. So it is an example of suffering and what happens when it stops. You have nothing to do, there is no competition, there is no stupid behavior that arises out of jealousy, and that stops future suffering.

The mind will arrive on the right track. It stops doing the negative karmas right now and it will eliminate the future bad karmas also. Karmas means actions, so the future suffering will be totally gone. There will be past suffering which comes up, the mind will bring it back. There can be intense crying sometimes, there can be intense anger sometimes, there will be changes in behavior because the past is coming up, so the mind will keep throwing out all this junk that it has accumulated. That is another indication, one day you will feel very angry at something, you were not like this before. If you sit down and meditate you will find that there is some very distant memory of something and now the mind is amplifying it. When that goes away, the past life's tendencies start coming out. That has not happened for me fortunately, not yet, but the present life purification is ongoing. That is another indication. There is one more indication that your sensitivity towards certain people and certain foods, certain environments will increase. You will become sensitive to these things. Why? Because the mind's area is now expanding or the awareness is so much now that these things cannot be tolerated. So you will find that your relations will change, your job will change, your partners will change and another thing that I found is, because this is a top-down process, intelligence will rise. Now I consider myself almost stupid but sometimes I say some intelligent things, hopefully. How come it happened? Now we can say that it is the Saraswati's krupa, it is the blessing of the Goddess Saraswati.

Saraswati is a form of kundalini, which simply means that the vishuddhi is now opening up and that layer of the mind that deals with intellect is clearing up. We all have intelligence. It is destroyed by living

in society. Society is the problem, it makes you stupid and dumb, now it is clearing up. I have seen this thing also, I cannot tolerate stupidity now. When somebody does something idiotic, usually we laugh at it or we actually copy those things, that is what ordinary people do, they copy the stupid things. The ‘monkey see monkey do.’ Now you cannot do it, now it will become impossible to tolerate stupidity of any kind, that will change your taste in music, it will change taste in literature. You will stop watching the idiot box and so on. Now you will only like the company of wise people, you will gravitate towards all those YouTube videos and websites and books where they talk about nothing but knowledge.

We do not have that kind of step by step journey here. It is top down, it is direct so I don't think there will be very systematic kind of indications like in the path of kriya or kundalini but there are. The effect of knowledge is that it brings peace, satisfaction and contentment. That is one more indication and probably because it is a top down process we are going to feel it from more subtle to gross. Where does it end? I don't have any idea actually, I cannot tell you what will happen after this because I'm myself experiencing these things. Many things will happen, you will change completely, that is guaranteed. Even the kundalini will change you completely. Sometimes in one day the person changes completely but here it is smoother. That's why I don't practice anything now. I don't even do breathing practice, I don't even do mantras and all, nothing at all because this top down process has taken over now.

All these paths, kundalini and all, come from Shaivism actually. Shaivism is the oldest kind of yoga. It is many thousand years old and they also recognize the top down kundalini, although nobody talks about it, nobody actually likes it. They all like the bottom up kundalini, the one that rises from the muladhara. So there is a kundalini that descends from Sahastrara to the root. It is said in Shaivism that Shiva gets up and goes down to meet Shakti. Now Shaivism, it's all poetry, it's all encrypted. When you get the experience you will understand what they actually mean.

My last guru had a big library, many books on Shaivism and kundalini. I took one very small, the smallest book possible there, it was in Hindi and I started reading it and I could not understand more than two lines of that book actually. There is so much knowledge here, so much science and technology of the mind is present here, but nobody is making use of it. That is amazing. It is all below the threshold of public actually, there are many things that are still beyond our knowledge. Probably you will never know what it is. Only those who practice these things, they know. But I was surprised to see that there is a top down kundalini and it is so much like the Path of Knowledge, and that is why I recorded three episodes on my podcast on Kundalini for Gyanis which is based on my own experience.

You cannot get rid of kundalini actually, it is the fabric of the mind. How can you get rid of it? It is the energy that animates the mind. So it is not possible to get rid of it, it is possible to control it a little bit and the control is better in top-down method. I have recorded these three episodes on Kundalini for Gyanis where I go into a lot of detail on how to push the kundalini like this from top to bottom. It is totally knowledge based, you will need a lot of knowledge of the mind. There are only a handful of people that know the mind like that. It is all a transmission from gurus so if you are listening to that podcast you will never find this kind of information anywhere else, at least I never found it. It is not usually made public, because who knows what can happen if you do those kinds of practices. So those who are interested in kundalini, may go and check how to do it in a top-down way, it is much safer and smoother and you know what is actually happening. When I took up the practices, I had no clue. I was very stupid, immature, and had too much energy, no concepts of any kind, no theory also. So my guru always told me - “you are the most stupid person that I have found so far”. I did not like it at the time, but now I know it really helped to keep the ego down.

Ashish was asking how to maintain awareness 24 hours a day and experience all three states of mind? He's saying, I thought, maybe maintaining awareness of breath could be the first step. And then, being aware of awareness as a step. But then, some stupid act on the impulse of mind happens that then kind of resets to start again, despite the message from intellect that it was done by mind or body, I am not the doer. Real me is just awareness.

Yes, you can start from breath also, but that is again going towards the yogic path, going towards kriya or ashtanga yoga or whatever. Forget about the body. On the path of knowledge, there is no body. Forget about it. If you try to mix the two, then who knows what the result will be. It will be an unpredictable result. So, do not go to breathing. Do not pay attention to the body at all. We do not want to mix the two techniques here. If you are aware, then you do not need breathing as crutches. You do not need any support of the body or any mantras or anything. You know what awareness is, isn't it? Just bring it up. It does not matter if it slips. It does not matter if you do anything at all. Bring it back as soon as it slips. That is the whole practice.

Do not even think that "I am not the doer" or "the mind is doing it" or "it is this and it is that" and "who is the real me?" No, these are only thoughts in the mind. They are useless. Once you know you are not the doer, then there is no need to repeat that. Bring back the awareness. That is the key. That is the magic. And then, look at the mind. That's all there is. If the thinking comes up, observe the thinking. If the thinking is of a spiritual kind, it is also mind. If there is thought, "I need to find out who is me here, who is watching?”, this is mental activity only. Self never says anything. It never does anything. If you're trying to do something, that means it is mind. That day, I told you that the mind appears as awareness sometimes. "I am aware." No, it is not awareness who is saying, "I am aware." It is all mind. And therefore, these things do not work. Actually, breathing does not work. Who is paying attention to breathing? It is a mental activity again. Attention. The awareness is always here. The consciousness is always here. So, let it shine again and again without acting. It should happen. It is an action which is not an action.

Actually, stopping action of any kind is not awareness. If you try to do it, it is not awareness. We do use some tricks, but they should be given up as soon as you get a taste of what awareness is. Like I said, set up reminders, reminders in your phone, reminders in your room, reminders on your body. You know, the jewelry, mala, or photo of your guru, or picture of some deity, which reminds you to become aware. However, they are external things. What does it take to become aware? Does it take a photo or mala or a phone to become aware? No. They are again just supports. Let go of the supports. I've stopped it actually. I used to do that a lot. That app for Android that reminded me every five minutes to become aware, it works. It works sometimes, and then it becomes a distraction. So right now, I do not do any of those things. I do not have any kind of reminder now. Awareness remains most of the time. Sometimes it goes, then comes back. The good thing is, before acting, the awareness is already there because of this practice of bringing the awareness. If I'm not acting, then who cares if it's there or not? Before acting, it is there. That means the practice is working now. Stupid actions, they do not happen mostly. I'm not saying that they will not happen. They will not happen intentionally. Accidentally, it can happen. Many things happen here.

This is a strange world. How can we stop it? If something happens, like you said, that mind does something stupid on an impulse, let it happen, it is not your doing anyway. Become aware after it happened. "Oh, this happened," and then watch all thoughts about it, letting go and unconditionally accepting. Start loving the mind also. Why do we treat the mind as an enemy? Like it's a terrorist? Because there is too much attachment with the mind. With the rise of awareness, this attachment should go away. You should be able to see your mind as an object. Now, it is an event that is happening. It is not a physical event; it is a mental event. But still, it is an event. Something is going on. It is not me; it is not my doing. You are free from karma; you are free from the body. Now, it is a big achievement, isn't it? You're free from the repetitive births. Big achievement.

Actually, if there is even the tiniest of desires, like - I don't want to take a birth, it is like a seed. It will become a tree very soon. Don't worry about it. Don't need to do much about it. This is happening now, and there is a detachment. Now, we treat the mind in a very brutal way initially because of too much attachment with the mind. "I am the mind. Oh, I like this. I dislike this. I need to do this. I need to go there," and so on. All these actions are owned. And sometimes, even the spiritual stuff will be owned. "I need to meditate. I'm not meditating a lot. Look, everybody is doing it. I'm not doing it. I'm good for nothing." What is this? This is jealousy, competition, isn't it? It is self-pity. It is just mind. So, do not do this. Do not become a spiritual mind. It is not good. It is a mind in disguise of awareness. It cannot stop. So, hopefully, you understand what I mean. And do not let the mind pretend that it is conscious. It cannot be. Only consciousness can be conscious. And it does not take effort to remain conscious.

The forgetting also happens on the ground of consciousness. The forgetting that "I am not conscious" is also in consciousness. So, as soon as there is awareness, which means this light of consciousness is shining, it is in the foreground now. Let go of everything. Start loving the mind also. If you have reached this state where you have objectified the mind completely, and there is no doubt there, that this mind is an object, then you can start accepting it. “Okay, just mind. It's not me. It is a natural phenomenon. Now it is happening”. What can we do about it? Just become aware. Next time it will not happen. If you make it an issue, that means it is the mind who makes it an issue. It finds a way to perpetuate itself.

This is a hurdle and it is very rare to get past this, many people are stuck here. It is the granthi, which is vishuddhi in Kundalini terminology. It cannot be broken easily. So, whenever this happens, forgive that and just be in awareness. It is very easy. Simply look. There is awareness. Why do you need to think? Why do you need to make an effort? Now, awareness will do everything after that. It is cutting the granthi. So, you see, that's why we need a guru. Otherwise, you just hit here and there in the dark.

Ashish is saying, Sounds to match closely with what Ramesh Balsekar said. Events happen, deeds are done. There is no individual doer thereof. Let life flow and just be.

Yes, exactly. You will need to accept this imperfection of the body and mind. Otherwise, how will the awareness be what it is? If there is a fight in your mind, how can pure awareness remain there? The awareness is peace. It's bliss. How can mental activity stop if you do not accept what is? These are the words of Nisargadatta Maharaj. Actually, Balsekar is just saying it a little bit differently. Maharaj said, "You see, why should I do anything at all? You want me to stop smoking, you want me to do this, you want me to do that. There is no 'me,' he said. Why don't you see it? This thing is not me.” So he was very much high up there on the path of knowledge, which you can now appreciate why he is so well respected. We are not there yet. When I need to do something, there is instant anxiety. There, the awareness drops, but it's very beautiful, actually. As soon as I start doing it, the awareness is back. Now, I do not say that, "No, I will not do it because now I am aware." That will be a fight. Mind is fighting.

Now, because the seed is there for the karma, the action is going to happen, better to let it happen in awareness. It's much better instead of fighting what is happening. Many examples will be seen in your daily life about this. If you start understanding this, it is an indicator of progress. I can tell you that there is a little bit of light here. You can see it in my talk. Here, I'm starting to understand. I don't claim that I understand totally, and there will be further stages about which I have no idea. Actually, he asked me how to be aware 24/7. I do not take it so seriously, actually. What is the use of that? But anyhow, I recorded these four-hour-long sessions when the Hindi satsang was going on. I recorded it. Many of you attended it, and it is on YouTube. It is broken down into three parts, like the experiments of the waking state, the experiments of the dreaming state, and then the experiments of the subtle body. If you are okay with Hindi, go and listen to it. Extreme detail. I do not do all that, actually. I have done all that already. I know what it looks like to be aware in the dream state. It is fun for a few days, and then it's boring.

Then I know how awareness functions in the subtle body. It is a very much fun, extraordinary experience. But then it faded away, even though I wanted it to continue. So I tried to remain aware by force but then I understood that it is a natural progression. It will happen. You need to simply be aware in the present moment. Where else are you going to find the dream state and after-death state and all those states? In the present moment, isn't it? How can you prepare for the future? However, I've recorded all that. So try it. You will achieve a little bit of success. But this mantra of awareness must be executed, must be practiced in the present moment. If you can do that, then every state of the mind is a present moment.

When is the mind happening? Only in the present moment. There's no other time to become aware. When I say, "Become aware 24/7," it's BS, isn't it? There is no 24/7 for awareness. It is always present. So be aware now, if you are. Because I think Ashish has the past of tantric practices, he's still in that mindset of the path of effort- I need to do something to become aware. That is still there in him. So he is not really practicing awareness then. No problem. You can take up the path of effort because I did that. I've done all that, I know it works. But remember, you will need to give up all that, just like Balsekar or Nisargadatta Maharaj said. You will need to become independently aware instead of depending on techniques. You will say, "I am not aware in the dream state. I am not progressing." That means only one thing, that you are not really aware in the waking state, actually. So instead of forcing it into the dream, try to become aware in the moment, in the waking. Intellect is active in the waking state, so it is easy. We are doing things in the waking state, so it is easy. What is there in the dream state? It is so strange. I cannot even describe it. There is no anchor in the dream state. It will happen, we are not in a hurry. We are not saying that I want it right now, right here.

Ashish is saying, As per my Reiki teacher who did past life regression on me, I was a tantric in my previous life. Maybe that's why the natural inclination towards it.

Yes, you see, we all have a big history really. Sometimes it happens, if I am with somebody for a long time, I can guess about their past. You can simply see the tendencies and say so much about that person or the causal body. It has been through a lot. So sometimes you can guess. It is not always accurate. So yes, if you have that kind of inclination, that means you are a practitioner. I am not discouraging you, try it. And there is the beauty of the path of knowledge and that you can remain aware even while doing that effort. Whatever practice you are doing, do it with full awareness. Because it is a tendency in the mind. If there is a seed of this desire, then it will happen. You cannot stop it, actually. If you stop it now, it will happen some other time. So better to do it in full awareness.

And then that will burn the seed, that will not cause a new seed, a new crop in your mind. That is the freedom from karma. Karma bandhan mukti. Just like I gave you the example of jealousy, let it rise up in the mind, and what happens? It is burnt up, and you say, "No, I do not want these emotions. I will just control the lower layers of the mind. You can put it to sleep, actually. It will come up someday. It will arise very late, it will arise in the weakest moments of your life. For example, in old age, for example, after death, the next life, the causal body will prepare a life which is specifically tailored for this tendency to express. That is a disaster, isn't it?

You must have heard about these big gurus and babas, and they get involved in affairs when they are 70, 80 years old, and all those scandals happen. Why is it? Because they suppressed the seeds. They did not become aware of it when the time was right. They suppressed it using their sadhana and their very strong will power. And now, because of the old age, the mind is now weakening, the energy is no more that strong. So the latent tendencies, they push up, they will deform the mind again. So, it happens. It is a very complicated thing. It is difficult. It is strange. Nobody knows what it is. The more you know, the more you will be puzzled. What is this mind? That is our challenge, isn't it? That's why we are doing all these things. That's why ordinary people are sleeping. It's too much trouble. So nowadays, my whole focus is to make it less troublesome, make it less effortful. If it is too much effort, it's not worth doing it. Actually, I'm leaning more and more towards Nisargadatta Maharaj now. Otherwise, I was a big fan of Patanjali and all these people. Become effortless now.

How to identify fake gurus?

It is a very interesting question and what do we mean by a fake guru. Is it even possible to do that for a student? I can surely say that for a guru it is possible to know who is a fake guru, who is not. There are some pointers that a guru can give you to identify the fake gurus or fake sadhus and fake tantrics. It is a very tricky question actually, when you hear this question you are pretty sure that you will be able to know who is fake and who is not. I did some thinking in my free time and I saw that it is not a very straightforward question. So let me know your thoughts about how to know what is fake here. It is all fake already, isn't it? It is all an illusion. So how can we even say that without knowing what is in the mind of the other person, how can we even say who is fake.

So, yes, it is business these days. Everybody is trying to earn money, even people who are on the internet. They post the videos and there is so much marketing in that video and there is a 20-minute video with five advertisements in between, and he keeps saying, "Subscribe to my channel and like the channel and this and that, share the video." What are they trying to do? They're trying to grow the subscribers and trying to get more likes and more views by hook or crook. Bad thing about YouTube, which I do not like, is that it is totally commercialized nowadays. It is not like the old YouTube where there was so much freedom. Hardly any advertisement was there. At least these kinds of videos were not monetized, not commercialized. Now it is not like this. It is kind of a very ugly scene on YouTube because of this greed. People are trying to earn money by posting the videos there. Yes, if you go to these kinds of people like astrologers, healers, or things like that, where they are serving you the fluff, where they are giving you the superficial info, just like I said, entertainment only.

Some people take spirituality as entertainment. Okay, because everything else is boring. So, this looks magical. Now my guru is bigger than your guru. Yes, that is a new competition in the town. Earlier, it was my car is bigger than your car, my phone is more expensive than your phone. This can become a spiritual thing also. So, I've seen this with my own eyes. If you tell people that you know more or you are progressing more, instantly they become jealous. This society is kind of a rotten place, actually. Your real practice will happen when you get rid of society which does not mean that you leave the city. You just cut your bonds with the people, that's all. Do not advertise your sadhana to people. It is not recommended. It's your personal affair.

So, Pankaj is saying a fake guru is also a real guru when you realize that his teachings are not working for you. The so-called fake guru made you realize what is not working for you. At the same time, you may not have realized it because of insufficient efforts, so it may be just impossible to differentiate between real and fake guru. What is working for you and not working for you itself looks like an illusion.

Very good comment, actually. When this topic came up I said, "Okay, I'm going to take it up in satsang." For a minute, I was so sure that I knew who is fake. But after five minutes, it became all a mess, a noodle soup. So, do not think that you will be able to instantly recognize who is fake, just like Pankaj said, it is more complicated than that. So, I am now hesitant to give any kind of pointers, actually, who is fake, who is not.

There are some beliefs in the minds of people. For example, if a guru lied to you about something, he is fake. No, it is not really true because probably the guru is a realized master. Probably there was some reason for lying. Probably his old habit came out for a while because he's also human. So many possibilities. Does that make all his realization, all his knowledge, useless for you? No, actually. So, it is kind of very difficult. Some people will say if the guru is covered in gold, he is asking for too much money, he's traveling in cars, whatever he says is wrong. This is the conclusion. But that is also not true. Look at people like Osho, for example. It does not mean that whatever he said is false. Does not mean that whatever he said is useless for us. He was a brilliant philosopher. Probably he's the most brilliant mind in India in this century. But, look what happened, he got treated like a criminal. His reputation is so low that the people are ashamed of taking his name. Only shameless people like me keep chanting his name everywhere. Because I do not see him as a fake person. I see him as a fallen guru, that's all. Whatever he says is still right. Whatever he said is still true, especially in his younger days. After he went to America, all hell broke loose because probably people did not like him there. The politicians were against him. So go to Wikipedia and read about Osho. You are not going to even talk about him after you read that article.

Incidentally, I was trying to find the lineage of Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, and accidentally I clicked on the link of Wikipedia there. I thought I'd probably find the name of his guru there. He has no guru, by the way, no official guru. So I was shocked to see a lot of negative things written on the Wikipedia page about Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. Like, he was probably a murderer, and he is hoarding a lot of land, illegal land, in the forest department's land, and so many things. Government gave him Padma Bhushan, a very big title was given by the government of India, and they write that it is because he is a Hindu, and the government has this agenda to promote Hinduism. So much negativity is there on that page about Sadhguru. Now, if you read all that you are not going to listen to him, which means even if it says something useful, something valuable, you will lose this opportunity because now you're biased that he is a fake guru. That is how propaganda works. Those who control all these things – the pages and websites on the internet, and the mass media – they can make you think anything at all. They can stuff things in your mind. I'm not saying that they're always wrong; sometimes it is right also, but that makes it even more difficult to differentiate what is right, what is wrong. You cannot judge the guru by stories, and people don't want to take risks. That's why they always get biased when something negative is said about some guru. It is a tricky situation.

Now, if his teachings are not working, if you find that obviously it is wrong, then obviously he is a fake guru. Some people have this criteria that if he reads from the books, if he simply recites the books, he's a fake guru. He's not talking from his experience. Well, what if he does not want to tell you his own experiences? What if his job is to simply keep the tradition alive by memorizing the books and reciting them and teaching them to disciples? How could we keep all these books alive when every other king and government in the world was trying to burn them and destroy the whole culture? How was it kept alive? By mind-to-mind transmission, oral tradition. It is a very smart thing to do. How can you take away something which is in my mind? So, you turn the whole book into a poem, a song, and then recite it again and again to your students, so even in their sleep, they keep reciting it. That is how they kept it alive.

The Vedas were not written down for many thousand years. They were all recited in a specific way. It was not even allowed to sing them in some other way. That helped to keep the tradition alive, the knowledge alive. Otherwise, we would be stupid people like in other countries. They do not have this knowledge which we have. It is because of these parrots that they taught nothing but words. Are they fake now? See, from all angles, there is utility for everything. What if a criminal says, what if a murderer says, 'Aham Brahmasmi'? What if he comes to you and says this? He is obviously a murderer, but what about the teaching that he has kindly given you before murdering you? A very tricky situation, isn't it?

Whom can you trust? So, I say it will be kind of impossible for you to find who is fake, who is not. Sometimes the fake will work for you. There are stories that people were faking to be gurus, and they gave the mantra and they initiated students, and they were amazed when they found that the student is now realized, has siddhis and whatnot, and they are still fake. So, this is a strange thing, a strange world. Very strange things happen here. Without experience, you cannot recognize the fakeness. When you get the experience yourself, then you are equal to that guru. Actually, only a guru gives everything. Nobody else gives you everything. Which means the student becomes a guru if the guru is the right guru. The student will be brought to the level of the guru, and if the student is very talented, he will surpass the guru. Only then, the discrimination of fake or genuine can be arrived at. Before that, well, it's all a chance.

I can give you a list of symptoms of the fake guru. List of things to look for. For example, asking for too much money. He keeps inviting you to the ashram again and again without giving anything or giving superficial teachings. Or if you are a woman, he is asking for different kinds of favors, not money. Good sign of a fake guru. And if he is giving you made up mantras or made up practices that are no good, they do not work. Has he given you a fake shaktipat? How will you know? Actually, that is another matter. And it worked for nobody, really. Not even the tiniest effect on the purest mind. That means fake. That is why this spiritual path is so difficult. These days you cannot find out the difference between a fake phone and a real phone. It looks as beautiful and works as nicely as this one, you see. So don't worry if you find yourself in the trap of a fake guru. Like he said, it is also a lesson. Next time, you are not going to fall for that kind of guru. With your experience, you will start realizing who is fake, who is not.

I have seen one thing: even the most fake of fakers is useful for some people. There are real gurus that have opened shops and that is unfortunate. How are you going to get the knowledge if all the gurus are selling it? You will need to pay. And how can you be sure that those who are not asking for money are not fake? Probably they just want to be famous. They're not asking for money. Probably it is their pride, who knows? They like to be called intelligent gurus and everybody touches their feet. They like it. They are not asking for money. It is very, very difficult to form a criteria of who is fake, who is not. You will know it by your own experience.

Session 25

It is very interesting that these thousands of year old scriptures are so advanced that once you know what is written there, once you verify it through your experience, then there is no need to even look at anything else actually. This is how precise these scriptures are. There is a quote somewhere that scriptures are useless for the person who doesn't understand them. And scriptures are useless for the person who does understand them. Very true. If you do not have the direct knowledge, through your own direct experience, then the scriptures are merely words. And once you have the direct knowledge, then you already know what is written in the scriptures. So, we don't need the scriptures.

Who needs scriptures? Those who are starting on the path. But I have seen one thing that once you come across the scriptures, you are going to fall in love with them. Not because you do not know what is written there, but because you know that somebody else got the same realization as you did. There is no harm in going and finding what is written in the scriptures. But if there is no effort to realize the things that are written there, then the scriptures are not going to do much.

But my opinion is that we should also write down whatever we know. There are some people who think that, oh, it is already there in thousands of books. Why should I write down whatever I know?

Remember, if they did not write it or did not make songs out of it, because the scriptures are poetry only, they are like songs, if they said the same thing, then we wouldn't get that kind of treasures of the past. So, that is my opinion. Even though there are so many scriptures out there, thousands of books and thousands of gurus, we should also spread whatever we know. Even if nobody reads it, throw it out there. Somebody will pick it up. Somebody will be benefited by that. And all our satsangs and all our content that I am throwing out in the world here comes from this philosophy. Because I got it from somebody, it is my duty to return it back. That is why we hold these kinds of meetings.

A book was 200 years old, and even at that time the author said that too much content was actually confusing the seeker. That is true. If you try to teach nursery students, the stuff of the university or doctorate, then obviously, it is not useful. So, what we do, we do not start with the Vedas or Rig Veda or even Upanishad, we start with simple things like Bhagavad Gita and the Gyaneshwari and these things. So, simplest first. And then, if the student is progressing, if the student is interested, then we introduce them to the more difficult scriptures.

If you get the self-knowledge, self-realization, then it is the key. Now, you can decode every scripture there is. It is the same. It is repetition from many many angles and it is beautiful poetry. And sometimes, we find some rare gems like you come across something which you did not know. And sometimes, you will find practices, practices to purify the mind, calm down the mind or liberate the mind. And that is why these scriptures are called Gurus. They are as good as Guru because they are written by Gurus. There are only four ways to know in our Advaita tradition. That is, through direct experience, logic, Guru and scriptures. There are only four ways. They are all the same actually, different means. Some people come across scriptures first. Some people encounter a Guru first. Some people get the self-knowledge first and they find that others are also talking about it.

There was a question - I have the essential knowledge. I know what I am, but I am living in a lot of discomfort, I am living in a lot of distractions and it's not a peaceful life. So even though I know these things, why has my life not changed?

And many of you will relate to this. Knowledge itself will not magically change your life. You are going to remain the same. The people around you will be the same. And if you are poor, you will remain poor. If you are rich, you will remain rich. And your body, if it is old and not healthy, then it will remain so. Now how to utilize this knowledge? How to elevate myself so that I am not affected by external situations? What do I need to do to actually get to the point of bliss, so that I am not affected by these discomforts, distractions and struggles of life?

They are not going to go away if you are self-realized or if you are a knower of all the scriptures or even if you are a guru. The guru is also going through the same struggle that everybody is going through.

I am also facing the same. Although I have managed to make my life, the external life or the life of the body, as peaceful and as pleasant as possible through many years of gradual changes in my lifestyle. Like I was a city person, I was living in cities and I was doing all those things that the city people do. Their lives are very fast and busy. And it is always about accumulating more, getting more, making more contacts, going to more places and expanding their business or getting promotions in their jobs and so on. So I was on the same routine till I encountered the spiritual teachings and then I reversed it completely. I took a 180 degree turn. It is now about giving up as much as possible. Doing only that which is most necessary. Now it does not mean that if I lack something and it is causing discomfort, I should not go for it. The goal is comfort. The goal is not discomfort. So get as much as you need, that makes you comfortable. Beyond that is unnecessary.

Talk to as many people, make as many friends, as is necessary. Beyond that not really necessary. And do the work which is absolutely necessary or which you like to do. Beyond that there is no need to run after the stuff. Beyond that there is no need to do anything. So I settled down in a very quiet life away from the city. That cut down 90% of the distractions and made the mind more peaceful. There are some pros and cons here, because if you are not accustomed to a solitary life then your ego will backfire. The ego will resist, will become fearful. The ego enters a survival mode. “There is nobody here, what if something happens to me?” And it is a very difficult life outside the city. You will need to handle this thing. That means the fight will shift inside you. Now the other people are not disturbing you. Now nobody is there to distract you. Now there are no goals and targets set by your boss. But the fight shifts inside. Now you will get the distractions from inside you. The mind will cook up something - “you are wasting your life, look how everybody is enjoying it out there. Now go, you are wasting your life, go and do something in the world”. These kinds of distractions will pop up. That is the second level of calming down your mind.

Now again the same formula, letting go. You have finished letting go of the material stuff. You have finished letting go of the people and now you need to let go of the mental stuff also. Check that there are unfulfilled desires and not all of them need to be fulfilled. Only the most necessary needs to be done. And there is no escape from that. If it is necessary for survival, it will get done. If something breaks down in your house, well you can tolerate that for a few days and then you need to call the mechanic to fix it or go and buy a new thing. You can reduce your diet to the minimum possible vegetarian or fruits only. But you need to eat something. You will need to earn money to buy it.

Minimize everything. And in the department of the mind also, minimize. Minimize the demands of the mind. You will find most of them are habitual. You can let go of them. You can simply become aware of these activities of the mind and then let it settle. Because it is accustomed to distractions, our mind has become habitual of distracting itself and it will find something to distract itself. So you will need to become aware. Mindfulness or awareness is the only trick in the town. There is no other way. There is no other method. Because this person asked how. A “how” question means that he wants to know some way, some method. There is only one. That is to become aware of the contents of the mind. And there are techniques to reach the awareness. But ultimately, awareness is the only technique, which is my own nature. Being what I am.

Once you become aware of what is happening, then letting go should happen. It is not that - oh, I became aware of this tendency of my mind, now I need to act on this tendency. No. The second step is stopping the tendency. Check whether it is necessary or not. How to check whether it is necessary or not? If it is necessary and it is not done, it will cause discomfort. It will cause suffering. If it is unnecessary, then it will arise and it will fall. It will go away. So this is how I practice letting go. Check if it is necessary or not necessary. Let go. And bring down your necessities to a minimum also. That does not mean you live like a beggar on the street. It means minimalism. Minimalism is not putting yourself into misery. Minimalism means that you become content and comfortable in as little as possible. So less of the material things, less of the mental things, less of people, less of relations. Keep only those who are near and dear, those who are most important, let go of others. That does not mean you don't talk to them, or make enemies out of them. If somebody comes to you, talk to that person with full respect, love and care, kindness and compassion. If somebody is causing trouble for you, then obviously you don't need to talk to them. Obviously you need to simply ignore that person. And that is a big topic in itself.

So you will find that material things are not a big issue in your life. And you will find your mind is also under your control most of the time. What you will find most difficult, and that is my own experience, is other people. If you want to live in society, even if you are living outside the society, you will still need society for survival. You are not going to dig up the earth and plant your own food. It is no longer possible. We have left that kind of culture a long time ago. We are a very interdependent kind of organism now. So you will need clothes and now you cannot produce your own clothes. It is not really possible. We need to exchange things. That means you will need to work. In today's terms, you will be a part of the economy. You will be part of the system. And you will need to interact with people. And here is the problem - How to handle these people? You do not have any control over them. If somebody misbehaves with you, obviously, that is going to cause a lot of disruption in the peace of mind. If somebody is too much attached to you, that is also a distraction. And if you have too many friends, that is also a distraction because now you cannot sit peacefully. People keep calling you. People will come and drag you out of your house. Let's go and have a party. It is not that people are bad. It is only that they will produce a lot of activity, a repetitive activity. You won't have any time left for your own practices. You won't have time for satsangs. You won't have time to read the books or you won't have time to visit your guru, and so on. So minimize those activities. Do not leave friends. Leave the activities. That is all I did.

But unfortunately, they are people, you see, so they will have their own notions, they will have their own ideas about you. Oh, he does not talk to me, he used to call me every day and now he is not even picking my phone. So they will stop talking to you. I have seen that even before you leave them, they will leave you. It is kind of sad and funny at the same time. You don't have to leave the people. Only you need to minimize the interaction and those who are not of much importance in your life, they will leave you first, because they are not getting that kind of entertainment and companionship from you now. They will find somebody else. That will cut down the distraction to 99% actually.

Now, the people whom you need to interact out of necessity, they are the only remaining and have very nice cordial and loving relations with them but without any attachment. Even if they misbehave, no enmity, no revenge, no jealousy, nothing like this. Very light kind of relation. It should be like a very tiny string of cotton that must connect both of you. As soon as the job is over, the string should be cut. You will need to minimize it. As soon as you take something from somebody, you need to pay it back. That cuts down the bondage with that person. That cuts down the relationship with that person.

What about the spiritual people? Should I cut them out also? There is a trick here. It is a tricky situation. If you are in contact with a spiritual person, that fellow will be the first to keep it light, loving, and full of kindness, compassion and whatever. He will be the one who will not let the stickiness of emotions or the lower mind or our animal tendency to arise in your contact or relation or exchange. You can describe it as platonic because we don't have any other word in English for that. It is a kind of connection. I know what I am, he knows what he is, and both are the same. They are not two things which look similar. They are one. And when you are in this kind of relationship, there is no stickiness in it. There is no complaint in it. There are no demands. It is very unselfish, unconditional. And even if mistakes happen, we know that person is acting through the tendencies of the mind. The tendencies will be purified. The person himself is not impure. There is an accumulation of tendencies that makes them behave in certain ways. And if I am reacting to those tendencies, that means there is a tendency to react here also. I need to clean it first. And that is difficult. Nobody wants to change. They want to change others. Or they want to be around people who tolerate me or tolerate people of my kind. I call them spiritual. But I don't want to change. And there is the problem. You need to clean up your own tendencies first. And then you can complain about others. People are going to be the biggest problem for you because we live in society. For somebody who is on the Path of Knowledge, he/she is smart enough to take care of other things. Jobs or survival or security and all these things. They can live very easily, and you can even take care of the intellectual part. If you do not know something, it is very easy to find it out. If you are in some kind of ignorance, darkness, it is very easy to clear it.

Why are we in a human form? This human form which is social in nature which needs to interact. Who kicked me into this hellish society? It is not hellish. It is our own making, isn't it? It can be a very good experience. But why do I find people who are disturbing me? That is a lesson. Remember this. I chose it. It was my choice, otherwise I wouldn't be here, otherwise I would be free from human birth long long ago. There is a lesson in this. So what I do, I realize now the more you resist society, the more you resist people the more they will keep appearing. It is not possible to get rid of them. Just like I said, get rid of your job, get rid of your broken car, get rid of stuff. It is possible. It is easy. Try to get rid of society. Try to get rid of the stuff that they implanted in your mind. And it is difficult now. The righteousness, the ideals and ideologies and patriotism and your duties towards your family and your caste and your religion. These are all planted by society. Now try to get rid of that, it will be difficult. This is what I learnt. If you resist these things, if you do not let go of these things, do not purify them then they will keep repeating. You will again and again find people who irritate you, who are causing disruptions in your energetic field. You are quiet and blissful yogi-like, as soon as you encounter a person, well, it is all destroyed.

There was somebody, a great person Ramdas who just unfortunately passed away. He is one of my favourite gurus. He is a student of Neem Karoli Baba. He used to say if you think you are enlightened go and spend your weekend with your family. That says a lot. We cannot tolerate even our families. How can you declare yourself enlightened?

That is my personal experience. I was kind of tortured by my own people, my own family. There was a complete lack of respect and love in my family. It was always - I am right, you are wrong, kind of situation. I can say from my experience that it is always me who is wrong. It is always your fault, not of others. Meditate on this thing. We need to clean up stuff in ourselves. If you want to get rid of all the distractions and discomforts, they are not really out there, they are here. According to me that is the whole plan of our birth here. Learn quickly. Learn instantly. Otherwise it will keep happening. So hopefully that will give you some points on how to proceed and free yourself from the distractions.

I remember the time when I used to recite this mantra like people are the problem. Look at this world.

It is heavenly, isn't it? Tall mountains, big sky, lush green jungles, and beautiful animals. What is the problem here? Isn't this heaven already? People are the problem. Wherever there are people there is madness, there is violence, it is dirty, ugliness. Why is it? I used to recite this thing and used to tell everybody that everything is right except the people. I even ignored the teachings of my own gurus. They told me that you are a stupid fellow. You do not understand why you are here. I said yes, I understand why I am here. I am here to fix other people. I am here to cure this cancer that is infecting

our planet, our society, our life. That is the most stupid thing that I thought in my life. That is the most stupid thing that I have done for many years. It is not the solution.

Let me tell you, there is nothing wrong outside. A lot of things are wrong inside. You are here to get rid of them. You are not here to fix stuff. Do not try to fix the stuff. It is perfectly matched to your conditioning, to the things that are in your causal body. The things that are stored as the karmic impressions in your karansharira, the causal body, your life is perfectly matched to that. You are exactly there where you need to be. So utilize this opportunity. I came to know this very late actually. That is the problem. I am still struggling.

Those who are trying to fix others, well they should because that will cause this learning that the problem is in me not in others. There are some more who are genuinely trying to help others to genuinely correct the mentality or behaviour of others. Now I am not saying don't do that, don't tell others but it should be done by setting an example. You yourself should become an example. We do not get this right to tell others to do what we please, unless we do it first. You clear it in you first and do not worry about others because if somebody wants to become like you, they will approach you. They will ask you, how did you become like this? How did you leave all those bad habits, eating junk food and spending money on useless things and bad company. They will see you, they will come to you and they will ask you, you don't need to go and preach anything.

I have changed my mantra that people are the problem. The problem is here. The problem is me. It took many years actually.Now, whenever there is a problem, first I check myself, what is causing that? And it is always me actually. Whenever there is a distraction, whenever there is a disturbance, any kind of disturbance, discomfort, it is always me. So, if you become aware of these learning opportunities, then it will make your progress faster. If you try to always find a cause outside you, then you will get stuck there. I know everything in the world, I know about Maya, I know about Paralok, I know about Swarglok, everything, I have seen everything. But I cannot fix my neighbor. Can you do something? That means you missed the opportunity there. You are missing your life by not interacting with life itself. You are avoiding life. A sannyasi is not the renunciate, is not the one who has left life. Renunciate is the one who is living here in the middle of the Kurukshetra and still is unaffected by everything. He is the one who has conquered himself. That is the first law of sannyas. There is nothing outside in the world. Where are you going? What is there? Did you take birth to watch the birds and live in mountains in a cave and all? Probably some of us did. That may be your mission but the rest of us, millions of people, we are here to learn something from this experience of life.

One of my other favorite teachers, many of you know him by now, Tom Campbell, says that the people or the relations, our worldly affairs is where the rubber meets the road. That is where stuff happens. How can you ignore that? How can you stay away from that? That is why you are here and you don't want it. That means you don't want to change yourself. Change yourself and you will see that situations will change.

The question has some kind of assumption here. How can I elevate myself? Remember you are already elevated. Where are you going to elevate yourself? That means there is a little bit of ignorance left there and “I” is situated in the mind. Are you trying to elevate the mind? The I should be situated in consciousness. The I should be in Atman. That should be my identification. And where is Atman? It is already the highest. Where are you going to elevate it? Where is it going to go? What is above it? It is the highest.

Now, give up this ignorance. Realize what I am and you are all elevated. Now, check what is not elevated. That is causing trouble. That is your own mind. There is something interesting that we say that this world is a dream. And it is very easy to know. Yes, it is a dream. It is being manufactured by the

mind. The Drishti Shrishti thing. Now, the real problem is why this dream? Why is it a nightmare for many of us? There are wars. There are diseases. There is a struggle. There is this rat race. And of course, there are people. Why did I create that through my Drishti? How did I manage to create this kind of illusion, this kind of dream? Why not a good dream? And why can't I change it to something which I want? If it is a dream, why is this like this?

And many people will not be convinced by the answer. World is a dream. You sit in this chair in an air-conditioned room and use these hi-fi gadgets. Yes, you can say it. Just get on the road and you will find out if it is a dream or not. This will be the challenge that will be thrown at you by the worldly

people. You sit in that cave and meditate all day and you just go down the village and beg for food and then you declare the world is a dream. It's very easy for you. Work in the field. Clean the cows or oxen and buffaloes and take care of your family and children. Then you will know if it is a dream or not. That is a very valid doubt. If it is a dream, why is it like this? Why am I getting disturbed in my dream, in this pretty heavenly experience?

The problem with the dream is not the dream itself. The problem is the dreamer. He thinks that these things are real. No, they are not. And that is why we are in the dream. The more you are attached with the dream, the more the dream will drag you. And you can now check your night dreams, the dream that we get in the night, because as above, so below. The one who is dreaming this dream of this character here, this character also dreams in the night. The same thing happens at night. When you are in the dream, it looks like it is real. Only after waking up, you know it was not real. And the more you struggle in your dream, the more nightmarish it becomes. So, if there is a little bit of awareness, mindfulness has penetrated the dream state, then you will find that your dreams will no longer be negative in nature. You can change them as soon as it starts turning negative. Eventually the dream disappears, because there is only awareness now. These are pictures in the mind that float in and they float out. That's all is the turiya avastha, the fourth state. So, you need to be in the fourth state right now, in this worldly existence. Now, it's no longer a problem. It's very simple. There is an ignorance of who am I, there is attachment, identification with this body-mind, the character in the dream and that is why we find it a trouble, that is why we find the whole world as a punishment of some kind.

Why am I here if my nature is something else? We try to come out of it by ignoring the dream. I don't want the world, I don't want this, I don't want that. You will find that acceptance is the key, not rejection, not running away. Do not escape the dream. There is no escape from the dream. Accept the dream. A dream is there for a reason. Find out the reason. Why is this form here? Why this form

is attached to a parent, attached to siblings and wife and children, why? And then, try to learn from it. If you ignore it, if you escape from it, well, it will waste a lot of time, just like I did. I wasted a lot of time and my ego still doubts this. No, no, not a dream, it is real, you need to rise to the Dev Yoni and blah, blah, blah. Okay, but what now? That is the future. What now? What do I need to learn here? What is the lesson here? Again and again you will need to calm down your ego. Rise above the ego. Elevate above the ego, that's all I can say. How can you elevate above yourself? There is nothing above that.

So, the dream is here for a reason, the reason is learning. The reason is to shed ignorance. When it is a dream of your choice, you will get bored. There is nothing to learn in that dream. And if it is a challenge, then you will progress, then you will become stronger. That's why there are challenges, they are taken by us, otherwise we wouldn't take them.

There are some people who will ask such questions - this is a dream, but why is that person without legs? This one cannot see, that one has no hands and he got bombed in the terrorist attack and so on. He suffers from a terrible disease and this little child died. What kind of dream is it? And remember, some people need more challenges than others. Their lives will become simpler and simpler and more peaceful as they progress. Behind these questions is ignorance. People think this is the only life and it should be heavenly for some reason. These are assumptions. It is our own making.

What is causing these births? The causal body will cause exactly a birth in which there is a chance of progress. This is the natural law. And how does it manage it? Well, this is beyond me. Honestly, I do not claim to understand the mechanisms in the causal body, but I know only one thing. The causal body is an accumulation of experiences. Whatever it has experienced in the past, that is all it is reacting to. That is why we say it is our own doing. So, yes, the challenging life situations are also my own doing. Do not try to blame something else. It does not make the illusion into a reality if it is a challenging illusion. That is the bottom line, isn't it?

We unlearn the stuff. That is why I place more emphasis on letting go. It is not doing something. It is non-doing. And that happens by letting go of the ignorance. There is hardly anything to know here. What are you going to know in the illusion? What are you going to learn about the illusion? Nothing. There is nothing here. Nothing is really happening. So, whatever appears to happen is exactly designed by your own higher self to bring you out of it. Because past experiences pulled you deep into it. This is a very natural evolution of the mind. There is nothing wrong with it. So, we got trapped in the illusion now. And the situations will be such that this ignorance is shaded. You do not know anything about the illusion. You will not know anything more than this fact that I am the Self. I am the Atman who is dreaming. But there is nothing more to know here. All you need to do is shed ignorance. Let go of the ignorance that this is real or you need to do such and such actions to become happy or to become liberated. When all this ignorance is cleared, you will find that the discomforts of the dream start disappearing. And one day the whole dream will disappear. It will be turiya avastha. It will be gone. I do not know what is after that. Do not ask me. But there is freedom after that. The ignorance is no more. Now the causal body is not reacting to that ignorance. It is not producing challenges anymore now.

How do I know all these things? You will need to extend your knowing in your daily life to the spiritual field. For example, when I was attached here to somebody or to something, my life was hell. As soon as I let go, as soon as I accept whatever is happening, as soon as I see that it is all mind created, I progressed. These relations, this wanting and this attachment they are all in the mind. They are in the software. They are not out there. So as soon as this virus is removed from the mind - oh yes , peaceful, blissful. Wow. Nothing to do now. Now extend this little lesson to the causal body. Same will happen there. I create my own situations and I am the one who is responsible for coming out of these situations.

Guru can help you. Guru will not take you out of it without causing a learning. What the Guru does is accelerate this process. And there is a problem here. As soon as you meet your Guru, your life will go like a roller coaster now. Why? Acceleration is happening. The good things happen, but you know the bad things and worse things will also happen. So you should accept it as a blessing from the Guru. Sometimes there are very very rare Gurus, who will take up your karmic load on their head, experience it themselves so that you are cleared from it. You don't need to go through that experience. Some Gurus can do that and I don't claim to know how they do that. Probably because I am you, I can do that. If I and you were separate, it would not be possible. So a very high Guru can accelerate, sometimes will cut down the karmic stuff, make your life comfortable. But remember we are not here to be comfortable, we are here to learn. This is not our home, it is a school. We are here for some time, we enjoy it obviously. There are things to enjoy but we are not here to only enjoy, there are bigger reasons.

In the series that I produced on the teachings of Ranjit Maharaj, I was talking about death there

and there is a notion in the minds of people that we are here to enjoy, that's all. So I gave the metaphor of a car because this body is a vehicle, it's like a car. You do not get into the car to merely enjoy it. Yes, there is a little bit of enjoyment, the speed of the car and the scenery that you see and the music is playing in the car, all these little things are enjoyable. But that is not the purpose of getting into the car. You see, if you take your child for a ride, then the child may think, that is the purpose, we are going out in a car, going for a drive. But the adult knows, the matured mind knows that I need to reach somewhere, that's why I am in the car.

Now find out, why are you in the body? Is it just to enjoy? Is it just to watch the scenery, to play the music, eat and stuff? Where are you going? Why did you get into the car? Why are we in this form? Our nature is no form, our nature is no bondage. This will propel you on the spiritual path. Actually this question is so powerful that it will start a spiritual journey for many people. Just remind them, try to know, why are you here? And some people will reach here through suffering. Oh, nothing works,

everything turns into garbage. It is really like a dream, isn't it? Because in the dream everything slips away. Same thing here in our waking state, nothing stays, everything slips away. If it is good, it goes. If it is bad, it also goes. So what are we doing here? Some people will arrive at this question through suffering. Oh, everything turns into nothing. Everything seems meaningless. All my achievements, meaningless. All that I have gathered is meaningless. This is a sign of a mature mind, trying to know where this car is going now. If you are in too much darkness, like a child, that is innocence. The ignorance is very innocent. The child thinks, this is my purpose of getting in the car, to enjoy the ride. There is nothing wrong here, as long as it is not causing suffering. But it ends. Then it becomes a burden.

The car itself becomes a prison. Oh, I want to get rid of this car. I have been riding for the last 10 years. 60 years, 70 years. Same car, same music plays, same food, same scenery goes by, and I am stuck with the same passengers. It is a horrible experience now. It was very much fun when I was a little child, when I was young. So this is the sign of a mature mind, asking a mature question. It is so powerful that it will kick start your spiritual journey. Find the purpose of your life. According to me, at least, it is to learn, to grow out of the experience itself. So the goal of human life is to rise above human life. It is

very, very paradoxical, isn't it? Some people may ask like this, oh, if I wanted to rise above human life, then why did I get into human life in the first place? Is there no direct way? The answer is again, ignorance. If you knew the direct way, why would you come here?

You know about the direct way now, because of that way, and other gurus, it solves your life. Now you have earned it. You have graduated out of this life, because now you know the direct way. If you did not take birth here, in exactly this situation, you wouldn't have received this knowledge. So we are fortunate to receive the knowledge. You know the direct way finally, now implement it. Now rise above human birth. And it is through acceptance, not by fixing the cardboard set and the villains and car chases and monsters. You are not here to fix all that. We are here to learn from that. Rise above it and there is freedom after that.

There are some people, some minds out of their love and compassion and karmic bondages, they come back and teach others. Look, I am above this life, human birth, you can also be above this. Sometimes the greater mind itself manifests here. If the greater mind finds that nobody is progressing here, everything is going down the drain, the greater mind comes down. It's called an avatar. Many avatars happened. As soon as this knowledge disappears, I think it never actually disappears, but sometimes it becomes very low and the avatars, the great people, come down. It takes the form of a person, who comes down to teach. So, that is the purpose. If you are not here for that, then what else are you here for? Are you here to take birth, eat, reproduce, sleep and die? I mean, this does not make any sense. It has to be something bigger. It has to be something more permanent. This short journey is a lot of fun. It's like infotainment, isn't it? Entertainment plus information. Don't forget to enjoy life, but keep the goal in mind. If you do not know the goal, no problem. Life will teach you. Life will put you in situations which will remind you. This is the way of hit’n’trial. But if you have a guru, the guru can see. The guru has gone through all these things. We are mostly the same, isn't it?

The guru knows and he will tell you why you are here. Sometimes there is something very specific. There is a specific attachment. What happens if you do one specific thing again and again? Well, the attachment disappears. That is the root of desire fulfillment. We are here to burn up the desires that we acquired in the past. And of course, there is a side effect. If you are not living an aware life, if you are not using awareness to burn up the desires, then you will end up accumulating more than you burn. So, it is going to cause more births. That's why do whatever you want to do, do it with full awareness. That is what your guru will tell you. There is no other reason for us to be here. We are here for this knowledge. We are so fortunate that we are in the exact country and we met the exact people that brought us to this knowledge. Now what else do you want? What are you complaining about? So that will solve all the problems in your life. Is there anything to achieve? No. It's done.

What are you struggling after? What are you seeking? It's all served here. That's called purification, isn't it? Giving up the ignorance. Yes, your ego will drag you back again and again but the good thing about the Path of Knowledge is we do not really worry about this also. We see it as a play. It is turned into a play for gyani. Okay, they let the mind play. This organism is going to do whatever it does. Why should I worry? I'm not it. So the gyani has already elevated himself. This tendency of letting go will cause extreme detachment. It will stop the next birth. There won't be any birth again. This is like magic. If you know who you are, you will rise up, you will rise above. That's all we need to do in our lives. Don't struggle, please don't make it a bad dream. Utilize the dream. Don't reject it because it's a dream and don't be ignorant that it does not look like a dream because it's so challenging. That is the wrong criteria to classify it as reality. The challenging thing may not be real, but there is a purpose behind it. Make challenges into your goal and then you will find that it disappears.

Anil is saying, I have never seen you talk about astrology. What are your views about it? The nature of illusion seems to be interconnected and there seem to be some gurus like Bhrigu Rishi who have written about this science.

That is a fascinating, interesting question. I did talk about astrology, although it's not going to make you happy if you like astrology. I said, it is also an illusion. I said it's also ignorance, especially the astrologers. I do not trust them. And so I said a lot of negative things about it, but don't worry, there is something positive about astrology. Yes, it is a science of illusion. Yes, it is Vijnan. It is not Gyan. So I'll tell you my views on astrology. Astrology, that it has something to do with astra, which comes from the Sanskrit str, which means a star. It has to do something with stars. But it has evolved into something which has nothing to do with the stars and everything to do with the person. So you can call it the ‘Jeevology’ if you want, if you want to invent a new word, because astrology has now split itself into two branches. First is astronomy, which is a proper science. And the second is something to do with the Jeev. Why is Jeev here? What is going to happen in the life of this Jeev? What did the Jeev do in the past lives? And that is not astronomy. That is ‘Jeevology’. How are these things connected? Now that is the problem, isn't it? That's what nobody knows.

It comes from the ignorance that there is no connection between the stuff that is happening around me and the stuff that is happening in my life. There is ignorance in the mind of people. They think that I am willing and I do my actions and I get the consequences exactly as per my wish. Obviously that does not happen. And then I wonder why it's not happening when I'm in charge of my life, I have the free will, why it's not happening? They do not see the interconnection, that it is all a big mind in which things are happening according to the laws of the mind. And the same laws, they govern all the events in this universe. There is a correlation among the things in your life and everything else. This escapes an ordinary person who has not taken up the study of the mind.

So why am I so negative about astrology and all? Because it has become a business of fooling people.

Initially I will not recommend it. Initially I will say study the mind, do not study astrology. If you do not study the mind, you will not know astrology. This is the bottom line. So if you want, you can call it ‘Jeevology’ and leave the astronomy part somewhere else. Now it remains to be seen how the events in the universe are connected to me. That is all the goal and study of astrology is. First, you start by studying the mind. What is mind doing? Mind is being governed by its laws and mind is being governed by whatever it has accumulated through its past experiences. There are only two things. The planets are not governing you. Remember this thing. Shani does not govern you. Jupiter does not govern you. They are governed by the same laws that govern you. So if you see the activity of the same law somewhere else, you can guess something about you. That is the interconnection. You will need to correlate these things. So how is it even possible that the planets and the positions of the planets tell me whether I am going to get married or whether I am going to get a job or whether the next child will be a son or a daughter? How is it possible? That is the distortion in astrology. Something that was very simple was taken to cross this limit and became superstition. You will know some things through astrology but not everything. How to correlate stuff?

So there is palmistry and there is face reading and there is this Talapatra astrology. We are not going to go there because astrology proper is about planets in the horoscope, the Kundali. How is it possible that astrology works? Again, I will say that without the knowledge of the universal mind and the connection to the Akashic records, which is again, memory of the universal mind, the astrologer will not be able to find out anything in your life. And there is something which I never talk about because it goes into occult but today I am going to say it because I don't want to repeat the old things again. You can go and listen to them. So I am going to tell you something which hardly anybody speaks about openly. That is, there are some astrologers that have disembodied assistants. It is not the astrologer that comes to know about your past or future, the astrologer is told, something speaks in his ears. They are disembodied entities. They have a connection to the Akashic records. There is a pact between the two, but let's not go there. Why did that happen? In one of the lives, the astrologer was a tantric and he rose to that position that he could get the favor of those entities for some or the other reason. Let me tell you, these people are very, very rare and they do not do it for money. If somebody knows so much, why is going to charge you 500 rupees just to tell you that you are a jobless fellow and you're going to die next week. No, they are not into this kind of activity.

And 99% of astrologers out there are fakes. They read the book and they say some things. Now it is remarkable because sometimes it happens as predicted. It is my own experience that some of the astrologers I met, they not only told my past, they also told the future. And I was, like how is that possible? And he then demanded 200 rupees and fruits. I said, how does it make any sense? Remember your mind will not accept it logically. There's nothing logical here. Do not try to use logic when you encounter something like this because the logical mind has a limitation. It knows everything logically as far as its own experiences take it, and as soon as it becomes beyond the experience of the mind, logic is useless. How are you going to apply it to that which you have never experienced? Use your experience. If it is your experience, it is your truth. That means it is true. Now throw away the logic. So, don't worry. You're not going to know much about how this happens. The only thing that is in your capability is to know yourself, know your own mind, know how the mind is creating this illusion. And then you will start understanding the interconnections, the synchronicities that are everywhere. And you will become an astrologer yourself. And why did I say that I do not speak about the tantric path in astrology? Because I do not want people to follow that path. I don't want to take responsibility for that. I'm not going to give you any techniques for that.

I always give you techniques to know your mind. We know ourselves, we know how big this mind is, the layers of the mind, what each layer does, so on, and how everything is connected. We study the laws of the mind and that will turn you into an astrologer. Do not go to an astrologer, become an astrologer.

Why do I call it an illusion? Why is astrology also an illusion? You are a timeless being. There is no past. There is no future. It is all mind created. So what are you going to know? You are going to know only illusion. There is something interesting about this illusion. That it is bound by laws. Very, very precise laws. They are so precise that you can write them down like a mathematical equation. And here we enter the mathematics of astrology. You see, mathematics started in India. It was also there in other cultures, but it was in India that mathematics was fully utilized only because people wanted to know the past and the future. It was taken to the heights so that we could know our own lives. Mathematics was not like a PhD type of academic activity, it was a very practical thing. And you will find that in astrology, the charts are based purely on mathematics. And to know the precise locations of the planets you need very precise instruments. And because it is a large-scale measurement, you will need very big buildings to do that. So you will find in the ancient cultures, there was a big emphasis on planets, the stars, and very precise buildings. Even if it took 20 years, they would cut the stones and they would erect those huge buildings like pyramids. They are extraordinary because of their high precision, the mathematics that is involved there is beyond our imagination now. We do not know how they managed it. It points precisely to certain stars. It is of the same proportions as this planet.

Interestingly, I was watching a video on YouTube about Surya Siddhanta, which is a very old Sanskrit text. And it is so precise that even modern scientists are amazed that how can these people know the positions of stars and planets so precisely. So in astrology, because we wanted to know our own lives, the science of it was taken to its extreme in India and some other parts of the world. This desire to know our future or past is the driving force behind the progress in mathematics and astronomy. So people see these buildings, they see Surya Siddhanta and things like that, and mostly westerners, and they declare it as superstition. They just wanted to worship those planets and so on. They do not know anything about the spiritual side of astrology. They wanted to know the positions of the planets precisely so that they could calculate. I'm using the exact word. You can calculate the future using that. You can even calculate the future of a single person here. So they took it to the extreme. Now, where is this knowledge? It is mostly lost. We are the stupid generation, actually. We do not know all these things.

Parvin is saying that's where people like Nikola Tesla were able to find secrets of the universe using math.

Yes, Nikola Tesla, according to me, was a spiritual giant, actually. He was a Siddha fellow. He had something similar to the superpowers. So all the Siddhas, they are scientists in disguise. They know a lot actually. So I was saying that why is it that this universe follows laws of mathematics, and is precisely governed by equations and numbers. And that is because this part of the mind is organized precisely. It is a self-organizing system. It has organized itself according to the laws. And whatever organization is there, is actually the law. There's nothing external that is causing it to behave in this way. It is organizing itself according to the laws. For example, there is nothing in this universe that tells the planets to follow Kepler's law or Newton's law of gravitation. Whatever the planets do, that is the law, isn't it? We simply write it down as an equation. It is not that there is a law from somewhere and then the planets are somehow manipulated into following that law. No. Whatever the planets have arranged into, that has become the law. Same thing. So whatever the universe is doing, this big mind is doing, is according to the laws. It has fallen into the laws. It has fallen into some kind of self-organization. Some interrelations have happened automatically. And astrology is the science of finding these interconnections. That's all it is.

How will you find the interconnections if you do not know what is this big mind, this universal mind? And that is where the fakeness comes from. The astrologer knows only the books, has never practiced anything spiritual, and so does not know. There are rare people who have this gift from their past lives. There are even more rare people who have connections on the other side. They are connected to their guides and masters on the other side. And there are lower kinds of connections also. These people will tell you about the future. These people can trick you into believing that they are the real deal. No, they are not. They only want money or they have other motivations. Nobody is going to come to you and tell you your future. It's not possible. Sometimes your guru will do that. And that is only to destroy your belief that this world is real and there is such a thing like the future and past. You see, you cannot change the past. And if you know the future, you cannot change the future also. Because then whatever was known will become a lie. That means whatever was known was not the future. So even the future cannot be changed. What does that tell us? That everything is predetermined. And how can it be predetermined if I am the one who is willing it? Well, that means you are not willing it. Nothing is in your hands. Now you are a figment of imagination of something else. There is no individual. And that is where we start. We do not start by telling you the future. We start by showing you that there is no individual and therefore it cannot do much. There is no future for you or the future does not exist. Therefore, all these things, all these efforts to know the future are futile. It is useless. If you think these things are real, then good luck. You will remain in the illusion. And if you already know that this is an illusion, you can master it. Now you can play with it. Now you can know whatever you want to know.

How to know the future, which is not there, which is something predetermined? Let us take an example of a database, or a table, for those who do not know computers. Let us draw a table on the page. And the first column is always a serial number - 1, 2, 3 …. And the second column is a list of events in the future. And there is also a third column, which shows you the position of the moon, sun, and planets etc. Now you will find that there is a pattern there. Whenever something bad happened, there was a pattern in the positions of the stars. Whenever something good happened, there was a pattern because of the interconnections. Now because you can see the table, you can extrapolate the past experiences. And you can predict that a situation is going to reoccur again. I better be prepared because the same combination of the planets is going to occur. And that is how you know the future. It is just an extrapolation, just a guess. And it may happen, may not happen, because planets are not the only indicators, but sometimes it happens. Sometimes our experience corresponds to that. So the more columns you have on the right-hand side, let us say, when you were born, the exact time of your birth, the time of birth and death of your parents and so on, you will be able to predict even more. So that is how the science of astrology evolved. And it became a matter of knowing the times very precisely.

I have heard that in ancient times, they could calculate the time up to nanoseconds in India. Can you believe it? There are some books and articles that will tell you that the Indians had a system of time measurement that went down to nanoseconds. And why did they take that kind of trouble? Astrology. They wanted to know the time very, very precisely. And they erected huge buildings. Most temples that you see today are astronomical observatories. It continued even in the Mughal Empire era. And the British came and they destroyed everything. They took down the whole culture. So in Delhi, you will find astronomical observatories and so on. The ancient people knew how to do that. And they took it to the extreme. And our time system deals from nanoseconds to billions of years. Sometimes, some numbers are bigger than life of the physical universe. They knew beyond cycles creation and destruction. They could read the future beyond that or the past before that. They found it useful. And that's why they took the trouble, which the modern day scientists, archaeologists and mathematicians and these poor people do not know.

If you want to know what astrology is, you will need to become an astrologer. Do not trust other people. They do not know much. So the ancient people, they did write it down, but they did not write down everything because it boils down to your experience, boils down to your subjective experience. How much can you read into that table? Sometimes the formula will also give you a prediction, but it's not the right prediction. You will need to read the Akashic memory. You will need to read that memory where everything has already happened, where there is no future, where there is no past. You will need to have this ability, which is a Siddhi, which is a power. It is not only purely physical science and mathematics. There is the occult angle and most of the scientists in the past were occultists. They had their feet on both sides, mind and matter, both, for example, Newton and like I said, Nikola Tesla. Now we do not see this. Now there is a total corruption of science and the mind stuff is superstition for educated people. So what has happened? The whole technology is lost. That's why you will need to take steps yourself, revive it. I keep doing such things, my interest in spirituality started with occultism.

So he's asking, what is the real difference between a true astrologer and a tantric?

No difference. Tantric also studies the universal mind. There is a tiny difference that a tantric has a bigger goal. The tantric wants to rise. He's trying to evolve, speed up the evolution. This technology can be used to progress faster. So an astrologer is content with predicting the future and earning some money, bread and butter. That's all. And the astrologer is a blend of truth and lies. Learn to read the Akashic memory and everything will be laid before you and you will find there is no past, there is no present and there is no future. It is all an illusion. You can become the future right now if you want. You can relive the past if you want simply by taking a birth in the past memories. You can go in the future and take birth there and that is also possible and because it is an illusion, everything is possible. Now you have the Siddhi, so the physical laws do not apply here. You can twist the time because time is a creation of the mind. If you rule the mind, you rule the time, you rule the past, you rule the future. That is what a tantric is probably trying to do. Tantra is about powers. Get more and more powers and yes, you will know everything. I've personally met people who could read minds, who could read past, who read the future and when I asked, please teach me these things, they said that's what I'm doing. What do you think I'm doing with you? I'm training you. It starts by training the mind. Do not try to find the shortcuts. Do not pay money to become a master of your mind. Do not get into astrology or this lower kind of tantric stuff involving disembodied ghosts and spirits - very dangerous. The only way you can know anything about astrology is by becoming an astrologer. We are all becoming that already. So you can take little shortcuts like our ancestors did. You can learn mathematics, you can learn geometry, you can learn astronomy, which planet and which star is where so that you get more columns in your table. You know how to correlate these events like date of birth and time of birth. Why am I in a specific family? Why am I in a specific country in a specific place? It is all connected to something. It is not without reason. So you will need a lot of data to predict something useful.

Now, this should not be believed blindly. I mean, now we are in the zone of magic. There are some people who have a direct connection to the Akashic record and I had the pleasure of meeting one or two such people. I was very curious. I started with the occult. She was a woman here in Pune and she does not do this business of astrology, but she had the talent and she told not only my past, she told the future also. And I was very much surprised. I don't even know exactly what my time of birth is. I do not know all these things. And nowadays astrologers will even ask the coordinates of your birthplace. They ask the coordinates, latitude, longitude, so that the calculations become precise. But she did not ask me anything. Just saw my face, went home and next day she was back with the results. And I was surprised, very much surprised. Everything that she told, went as per that description. Some things she did not tell me. That was an event that pushed me more into spirituality. Now we want to know all these things. There are such people who will just look at you and their mind forms a connection with the universal memory, which you also call the Akashic records or Akashic memory. The Akash is always here and now. You do not need to alter the state of the mind. Although some people who cannot do it in the waking state, they will need to alter the state of the mind, let go of the senses and all, sit in meditation and they can connect to the memory. And just by seeing the face, you will get a download from the memory.

Once you know how these things turn, you can find it out. Actually, you can see it before your eyes. So such people are called Trikal Darshi. Now we think that this is superstition, but there are such people. All you need is a connection to the Akashic records and you will know it. And according to my own little personal experiments, I could connect to the Akashic records. I could find out the exact things

that were going to happen a few days after. But it was a totally unimportant event. It looked as if I was given a lesson, kind of a demo. “Okay, you want to become something like this? It is possible. I am giving you this demo, learn something. Give up your doubts that there is no Akashic record”. And I was given that kind of experience during my occult practices. So from that day on this doubt vanished. But then I said, okay, another illusion. Should I run after it? What is the use of knowing the future if you cannot change it? What is it that is trapped here really? Now you can guess. Not me. I am not trapped here. I do not have will, but I do not lack will. And I am not going through time. I am eternal. And that which is trapped will remain trapped. Nothing can be done about it unless you liberate it from there.

So probably the utility of astrology is to progress faster. And I tried to do that. This was a kind of stupid attempt, you can say. I went to an astrologer and I asked him, who is the next guru I am going to meet? And he did not say anything. He only took a piece of paper, wrote down - you will know the root, the essential knowledge, in this month, this year. Then he wrote down something else. I do not remember what it was because I was kind of stupid. He could tell me my past. He could tell me my present. But I had doubts because he demanded money. And he looked like a businessman. And he did open the books. There are lineages of astrologers. You will find thousand year old books there. Normally we should not reveal these things. He opened a book that looked like yellow pages and it was almost torn to pieces. And he did some calculations. He found out from the book. And I said, no, the book is about astrology. I don't like him. And I threw away the paper. But the surprising thing is, more or less the same date, which he mentioned on the paper, I came to know the essence and I joined the Path of Knowledge. I got self knowledge. And self-realization happened, which must have happened for many of you. And oddly that is also predetermined. Mukti is also predetermined. And from that day onwards, I'm not taking anything seriously. Really, when you know all these things, how can you be serious about all these things? What is all this struggle for finding a guru? What is all the struggle for the siddhis or powers or to know the future or to liberate your mind? It is all predetermined. It has already happened. Just realize you are free right now. You are beyond time right now. Enjoy the show.

When you are on the Path of Knowledge, you don't worry about all these things. When you are not on the direct path, then these things can be useful. Then you can use them to predict milestones on your path. Or you can predict when you are going to die and prepare for that or run after your guru. You cannot stop death. The purpose of astrology is not to change the events. That is not logically possible. If you changed it, that means it was not the future. So the prediction and will, they do not mix. No, you cannot change anything by worshipping the god or goddess or planets or stars. You can do something which is more magical, you can turn inwards. You can utilize the time to free yourself from the predetermined existence. That is what freedom means. That is the only thing that is possible. Everything else is arranged very systematically.

It's all an illusion. You can play with the illusion. This is possible. Play a little bit like a tantric is doing. It is also predetermined. I was very much impressed by the talks of my Guru Ishwar Puri. He is a big master. He tells all these mind-blowing stories. He tells you that the guru is also predetermined. Exactly the same guru will appear as it is written in the Akashic record and he will take you out. From that day onwards, meeting the guru and the life afterwards, we are free from predetermination. So we say that yogi is a karma bandhan mukta, which means we are not bound by the causal body now. Isn't it true? Are you bound by the causal body? Or are you witnessing the causal body? Which one is true? You don't worry about who is willing. You don't worry about what is going to happen. You enjoy that which happens. And yes, you will know what is going to happen. So what? What's the big deal there? You see, it's like a book. If you want, you can open the last page of the book, check what happened to the hero and heroine and their dog and their beautiful palace. What happened? Who cares? The real enjoyment is in reading the story, not in finding out what happens on the last page. For example, if you want to go and watch a movie, you tell your friends, do not tell me the ending, because that is going to spoil the movie. It’s more fun letting the movie unfold. If you already know the ending, how can you enjoy it?

It is a contradiction. Do you really want to know the future? That is why we assume a form where we are ignoring the future. We assumed a form where there is no knowledge of the future, because we want to enjoy this form, this life. But during enjoyment, we are lost in the movie. We are lost in this illusion. That is also pre-written. It is very, very difficult to digest these things. But that is what astrology is about. That is the philosophy of astrology. If you want to say it that way, there is technology and there is philosophy. And there is mathematics also. It is just like science, now totally corrupted and destroyed, thanks to the Kalyug, thanks to the Dark Ages. We do blame the foreigners and attackers and all, but you see, that is a part of the plan. We did it to ourselves. It is our karmic stuff that came to us in the form of attackers. But you can revive it. It is possible. Do not encourage this business of astrology. It is not for business. Those who are interested, become the astrologer, become the tantric.

Session 26

What is the difference between a self-realized person and a normal person?

Many people ask this because when their gurus tell them that you need to realize the self, you need to know what you are, you need to know what is your essence, there is usually a doubt - what is wrong with me right now if I don't know all these things, I am just a normal person, what difference is it going to make? And they look for differences between a self-realized person and a person who is not so or who is probably on the way, who is trying to have this kind of realization. So they try to guess the state of that person externally by looking at that person who claims to have some kind of realization, spiritual experience, probably.

In my opinion there is no difference at all. From outside they look no different. Yes you can say that some people like to show off their traditions and their beliefs and things like that by dressing in a certain way, by eating certain kind of food, by talking a certain kind of language, having a certain kind of name, they are trying to display their tradition, display their culture and so on. They are not trying to display their enlightenment or realization. That should be obvious. How can you display that? It is kind of impossible, but the funny thing is - that which you are is displaying itself in all the forms. There is no need to display it. There is no need to show it off. How can you look at it? When it is everything, how can a specific thing be that which you are? So when people go on searching for the differences between enlightened people and so-called “normal people”, they do not find any difference and they then question this necessity to be realized. “I didn't find any difference and I found a few people who were kind of crazy as if coming out of a fancy dress party and they spoke some kind of mumbo jumbo which I don't understand. No thank you. I am okay wherever I am. I am not suffering. I don't have any questions. I don't even think about death and other worlds and whether I am bound here or not. I am very very happy”.

So this is what happens as soon as they start inquiring what a self-realized person looks like. So please do not do that. It is not possible to gain anything from the looks or even from the behavior of the self-realized person. It is a realization. It is not a kind of change of form or it is not a kind of change of even attitude or behavior. These things are slightly different from the realization that we speak about. You are already the Self. You are already the realized spirit. You are already the real thing. Now how can you become that which you already are and how will it show up? There is a Self here and it's not there! Is it even possible? So we should not look for the signs of a self-realized person. We should become self-realized. There is no other way and it should not be done in any other way.

“Look, that fellow is self-realized but he is married, he has a child, he does an ordinary job, he lies, he eats fast food and dresses in ordinary ways. What is the use then?”

And this is the thing you see, self-realization does transform the person but it does not transform from outside. There will be nothing for you to see there. The transformation starts from inside. And by inside I mean it is a gradual change that happens in the fabric of the mind. And very slowly the changes seep into external behavior. If you don't have any clue about what is Self, what is consciousness, what is my nature, what is my essence and if you learn it tomorrow, let us say, then you are not going to become something else from day after tomorrow, overnight. It is not impossible but very very rare. And those who change after this realization they change in a very weird way. Like their functionality is affected. These are special cases, a specific kind of mind. They get the shock of their life. If there are more beliefs, if there is more ignorance, if there is a blind belief, there are actually hundreds of blind beliefs in the mind of an average person, when they get this kind of realization, obviously there will be a shockwave, like a quake in the mind and that shows up for some time and the person settles down into a normal life after that. Excluding these exceptions, for anybody else who has had any kind of genuine realization, there is hardly anything to see in that person.

Anil is asking- doesn't realization dissolve cultural identification as it dissolves ego identification?

Yes it does. But this should not be taken as a rule. It is not a necessity. There are so many changes that are going to happen and they are very subtle. Sometimes it will happen that the cultural identification is gone as soon as you know what you are but we keep doing it because the mind has a momentum. We keep speaking the same languages, we are attached to the same country or ethnicity or whatever. And sometimes it is just so as not to become like a freak show in the society, we keep doing those things which everybody is doing. He does not belong to any culture now, it is not a change of culture, it is abandonment, it is a total throwing away of the cultural conditioning. It is kind of dangerous because people become afraid of you if you are different from them. You must have seen this. So if you walk like a sheep, talk like a sheep and graze like a sheep then the sheep are going to accept you as one of theirs but slightly deviate from the norm and you become a danger for them. That is how they are going to perceive you. This is the tribal tendency in an ordinary person, a “normal” person. So we keep doing the old. So yes it will dissolve so many things and it will be an internal affair.

A very smart, a prepared seeker will keep doing the old things without attracting too much attention from everybody, especially their family and parents because they are the ones who are going to be most affected by the changes in that person. So thinking of it as a necessity they will continue their old behavior and from an outsider's point of view, well, nothing has changed. “He went to that guru, this guru, he went to the Himalayas and he came back, nothing changed. What a waste of time”. That is their impression. But remember, there is change. Even if you don't want to, there is change. And there is something about this change that once this realization happens and the mind starts changing you won't be able to go back to your old state. And it is not that your old state was bad, but there is a certain quality that appears in that individual that he or she does not want to go back to the old ignorant state. It is a one way street, the self-realization. People are seen going in it, nobody is seen returning. It is not impossible but very rare.

Charlie is saying, before enlightenment chop wood, after enlightenment chop wood.

Yes, do the same things. There is no need to do something odd, something different just to show off. Your daily life is spiritual. This is what you will realize. I am the spirit, I am the Self, I am Atman and I am Brahman and whatever is appearing here is the same Brahman itself. In an individual it has narrowed down its focus to look at a specific kind of experience. That is what an individual is. It is an impermanent state of the Brahman. It will dissolve. So once this is realized you can see that this ordinary normal world and life is actually a miracle. It is actually impossible. It should not be here and still it is. It is a wonder of all the wonders.

So the realized fellow becomes like a child again internally but he is not going to behave in a childish manner. That is very rare and that is odd. Like a child, very curious. Everything is new again. There is no complaint now. It will fluctuate initially. It will go up and down and then it will settle down in a very normal, ordinary way. So a normal person is also an expression of the Self, a realized person is also an expression of the Self and the only difference is - there is light in the realized person, which is absent in the non-realized person. Even the lowliest kind of human has potential and so a realized person does not see himself or herself as a special chosen one. It is very, very ordinary. There is nothing special in a self-realized person actually, except this light. Here the mirror is showing its face to itself. The mirror is reflecting into itself. It is self-conscious. This is an encounter with the Self. It is amazing but very ordinary.

This kind of language you will find everywhere in non-dual philosophies -

It is this but it is also that.

It is nothing but it is also everything.

It is ordinary but it is most wonderful and amazing.

Why is that? Because such kind of poetry is possible only when you see what you are. Otherwise from the perspective of a logical mind it is meaningless. Once you see what you are then these things become apparent.

I want to just add one more comment here that some people can fake realization by behaving in a certain way. That can be a sign that that fellow is a fake seeker/guru. Talks like a saint and does everything like a self-realized person must do according to the norms set by the society. And people can fake it. If it can be shown in behavior, then anybody can adopt that behavior. So please do not go by the looks. Do not judge the book by its cover and do not buy the product by looking at its packaging. There can be a problem there.

A self-realized person is extremely ordinary. There is only one thing that I have seen in self-realized people that is extraordinary is, when they start talking. When they are talking about other things they are very ordinary. But as soon as a spiritual topic comes up you will find extreme clarity there. It makes perfect sense when such a person talks about spiritual topics. That is the only thing. An ordinary person is not going to see it because they do not know what to ask such people. They do not know what a spiritual topic is. Sometimes they go and talk about the paranormal stuff. If they hear that, some guru is in the town, who is self-realized, they go and talk about paranormal stuff. Paranormal is totally normal for a realized person. Probably they won't know anything about these things.

Do not do paranormal investigation with such people. Self-investigation, self-inquiry, that must be done. Ordinary people, normal people don't know what to ask such people. So when some people take up teaching, wanting to share, they start with ordinary talk and they will gradually bring the listener, even if he is not a seeker, to Self. That is the skill a guru has. So now the question is who is a guru, and who is just self-realized? Necessary condition to be a guru is self-realization. That is necessary. Otherwise what are you going to talk about? And the one who is not a guru, who is not teaching is also self-realized but lacks one thing which the guru has. That thing is called skill, skillful means.

A Guru will start from any topic under the sky and will always come back to something which is related to the Self, which is related to our essence. This is a skillful guru. So gurus will spin up stories just to attract people. Just to get them interested in spiritual matters. Because an ordinary person, a normal person does not even know what to ask. They are casting their nets to gather the interested people. That is the skill that you must have if you want to be a guru who is also self-realized.

Vikranth is saying, I have felt the awareness being transmitted in a guru's presence. How is it possible to experience it without even touching?

Well, I was talking about the skills of a guru. And this is one of the skills, sometimes students get extraordinary experiences. This can happen in the presence of awakened people. Their awareness is so high that it leaks into the atmosphere. But that is only a poetic thing. Remember that we are all one. There is no boundary between you and me. There is no boundary between your consciousness and my consciousness. Your awareness and my awareness. Whatever you want to call it. This knowing space within us is unbounded. So if we say that I am different and you are different, then it is not possible. Then there was no way for anybody to feel the awareness in the presence of anybody. Since we are one at the level of consciousness, we are one also at the level of mind. Because the ground is one. So when you dig very deep into the ground, you can tunnel into the other mind.

Now it will be kind of very difficult for me to put this into words. But the guru or this aware being has, you can say, a gift. Because they did not do anything to get it. They did not practice to gain the ability to transmit awareness into others. Or sometimes it can be called the Shivapat. It's a new word. It is slightly different from the Shaktipat. It is a transmission of awareness. The gift appears. Because the guru is now established in awareness, he can make a connection to the minds of the other people and for a moment they get a glimpse of his awareness.

Vikranth is saying, can we all achieve something like this?

No, we cannot. It will happen to those who are ready. Those who have matured a little bit in their spiritual practices. Sometimes there will be a group of hundred people around these saints or these gurus and only one or two will experience this thing. And it can be something else. Sometimes they experience peace. A very peaceful mind. And they don't understand why this has happened. This is also the same thing. But only the readiness is a little bit low. So they will experience some kind of peace. And others will simply experience some kind of attraction to that person.

You must have heard the stories of Gautam Buddha when he went and sat in a village or something. People were attracted to him for no reason. Sometimes even the deer and other animals, cows and dogs, were attracted to those people. But it cannot happen to everyone. It happens to a few. And the bigger is the achievement of the guru, the greater will be his sphere of influence. I have heard stories about gurus who would go and sit near a village and the whole village would experience his presence there. But personally I have not experienced this. But I do experience the serenity, the calmness that you get in the presence of a realized master.

Just by looking at him, or when he starts talking. And you will experience the opposite when you are in the presence of a totally ignorant person, a totally materialistic evil entity. You won't be able to sit there. You will actually start getting infected by the thoughts of that person. If you are sensitive you will feel it. You won't be able to sit there for a long time. Sometimes even that whole building becomes a trouble for you. So these phenomena happen because of interconnection between minds. We are not separate. The separation is an illusion. So experiencing the awareness in presence of an aware person is normal actually. And the abnormal thing is not experiencing anything. That means you need to purify your mind. You need to grow a little bit. You need to take up a practice and get on a path so that you know what these people are, and what it means to be in the presence of a master.

Like Raman Maharshi, he never talked a lot, very less. He used to just sit silently. This is also called silent transmission. This is most powerful. Guru has the skill to simply make you aware by his presence. It is not paranormal. There is no miracle in that. It is possible because of the oneness. And it is a natural outcome of reaching higher awareness. It is not possible for ordinary people. But if a seeker is progressing nicely, is becoming aware every second of their life, then this will become natural. You will experience it. And you can even transmit it. It is not a big deal. It is like a space in which we all are. We all are expressed in this space of pure consciousness, oneness. There is only one of it.

Should you be in a specific state to experience it or does it differ person to person?

Yes, just like I said, it will be different. Some people don't experience anything because of too much ignorance. Some people have purified a little bit. They know what it is. It is not only peaceful for some people. It is just very very deep awareness. It is not attention. You do not become hyper attentive, it is just a relaxing of attention and settling into the being, settling into the heart. And you do not need to be in a specific state. You can be in any state and the guru will bring you to the specific state, which is this. If you are already in a specific state, then probably the guru will struggle to bring you into his state.

Anil is saying, a lot of what is experienced is placebo.

Yes, placebo itself is an extraordinary effect. How can the mind affect the body? And how can the presence of somebody affect the minds of the other? And probably the atmosphere is very good and peaceful. So it does have an effect for some people and they simply like it. They say, I like this person. I like to be in his presence. He talks about very deep things in philosophy and all. That is one of the other things. And mostly gurus are again and again diverting your attention to the Self, to the awareness and now it is natural to become aware now.

Vikrant is saying, but is it normal to want this thing? Like I feel I want to be able to transmit to people. I know it sounds naive, but the thought is just too strong inside me.

Yes, it is normal for you to transmit this. It is very human to let others know what I am because they are also me. So what else can be more natural than that? It is normal. So no problem. You can keep doing your awareness practice or whatever your guru has told you, and there will be a time without even you asking, because this is a natural phenomenon, the individual has nothing here, there is no individual, so if you remove the individual, the transmission happens. If you remove the ego, transmission happens. And the other fellow, if their ego is a little bit down and is in a receiving state, they get it. So it is most natural. There is nothing wrong here.

Leyla is saying, can we discuss if you have time, difficult people? Are we to always be in service to them even though they bring negativity and bring us to anger? I am always so worried about karma.

That is a good topic to discuss actually. Are we to always be in service to them? Yes, we have to be kind and compassionate to all, to those who do good, to those who are positive, and also to those who are negative, who do bad. There is a slight precaution here that you must take. Do not let people affect you. You will need to learn to maintain a distance between yourself and negative people. That is also kindness and compassion. What is not kindness and compassion? If somebody is negative, you take revenge or you try to get rid of them by hook or crook or you try to teach them a lesson or in extreme cases you kill them, punish them. That is not kindness and compassion. But you need to give them the consequences they deserve. If you don't give them the consequences they deserve, then mother nature will do it and you will become a part of the play. You don't want to do that. You don't want to extend it to that stage.

So don't worry about your karmic consequences. You are in society. You are interacting with the people. So there will be karma. There will be consequences. Can you avoid that? No, we are here to learn from these consequences. We are here to learn from these interactions. So let them happen. The only thing is you need to be aware, become aware of what is happening and then let the correct consequence happen. They are negative and if you turn negative, that is not the correct action, is it?

You need to give them the consequence that is kind of very fast and smart. Like if somebody lied to you, that brings down the trust. Then you do not say that, “okay you are ignorant and I'm awakened, so I'll always trust you. I'm kind and compassionate”. No, this is stupidity. You are not giving the consequence that he is asking for. He asked for it by lying to you. Now you must distrust that person. Do not take his words as truth again. That is not kindness and compassion. That is not service. You are not serving that person. The proper action here will be to distance yourself from that person without causing any harm to that person. Be independent now. Do not trust that person again.

You can forgive the mistake. But how can you forgive something which was done intentionally and was done in a manner to cause harm to you? So, you see, the lesson to learn here is that we cannot trust everybody and the proper action that we must take here is self-defense, protection of ourselves. So let go of that person. And that will produce a proper consequence because a liar will be isolated from good people. He will be left with only liars and then he will get the taste of his own karma. People will lie to him and he will end up in a bad situation. That is his lesson now. You did whatever you could. You learnt your lesson now. You know, this is the Maya. This is the world. It is like this. There is natural justice here. We don't know the exact time it will happen. Sometimes it happens instantly, but sometimes it takes many years, many lifetimes for the effects to arise because this is a complicated machinery, you see, this mind. So don't worry about your karmic consequences. You take the right action. No action is not always good action.

Leyla is asking, is it okay to create distance?

Yes, why not? It's okay. You need to distance yourself from those who do not have good intentions for you or who do not have good energies for you. And then you should leave those people. You should approach those people who are good for you, from whom you can learn, who like to radiate positivity and make you feel good. There are two things here which we should keep in mind that it is necessary to distance ourselves from negativity and it is necessary for us to approach positivity also. Do not live alone. Do not leave everybody in the society. That is not healthy. The mind does not like it. We like company, why not take positive company? There are good people also. Now it may happen that probably we are not at that level. So they will try to distance themselves from you. But don't worry. There is a lesson there. You learn the lesson and again approach that person. And usually spiritual people are kind and compassionate. So when you approach them, they will always receive you with folded hands. They will never say, don't come here. Especially if you made a mistake and you admitted, then they will be more eager to help you. Just like Vikranth said, it is very natural for us to bring the other to our level. People with higher positivity than us will induce positivity in us.

This is the meaning of satsang, isn't it? Sat is truth and sang is company. We seek the company of the truth, which is absolute positivity. If you know the truth, how can you be negative? Is it possible? No.

So I learned this through a lot of hit’n’trial. This is a very natural question. What to do with these people?

There was a joke somewhere that I heard or it was in some book, I think, somebody great said - “we are here to serve other people, but why are other people here?”

Nobody has any idea about it. Nobody knows why they are here. So we are here to serve. The service comes in many forms. Service does not always mean total acceptance. You see, you will hear the stories of the gurus who beat their students with a stick or put them into some menial kind of job. Clean this, do the gardening and all. But they are actually serving the student. They are bringing the student to a proper stage so that they become ready for receiving. Do not mistake the specific behavior with service. Service is something big. It is a very big word.

You can behave as if you are serving, but probably sometimes that is not serving, you see. You will see a lot of people that are running around these celebrities and politicians and powerful people. And it looks like they are serving them. They are not serving. They are just licking the feet of these people. They want something in return. That behavior does not count as service. Service is always impersonal. It is always selfless. You do not want anything from that person. Nothing to do with the person. Look at yourself. Did I do the right thing? That's all. That is service. The correct action is always such that both parties learn. And it is not our business to teach them. It is already happening. The karmic consequences for them are going to happen. We should not hurry it. It is a waste of time. We don't know how all this works. It is a very dense and complex network of cause and effect. It is beyond our understanding actually. So leave it to this very complicated system of cause and effect. You will see the fruits of this practice. You can take it as practice if you want.

You will start seeing the fruits of these practices that your karma will start dissolving. That means the seeds of your actions will start burning if you are doing this kind of service. Doing the right action is the right service. So if you are doing it in such a way that you learn the lesson and you do it in such a way that it leaves no residue of any kind, the bond is cut forever. There are no debts now. There is nothing to return there. You have not engaged there at the level of the ego. Then you will find that your karmic seeds will start burning. And if you are encountering negativity, it means that they are the fruits of your past actions. Otherwise, these negative people won't be here around you. I have seen this happen to me. I had so much negativity that I encountered negative people. When I realized, which was after many, many years, I started purifying from my side because you cannot fix other people. You can fix only yourself. So once I started distancing from negativity, which is an internal work, you will find that the external situations also improve. It is not magic. This is the law of cause and effect. So it will start burning your karmic substance and less and less negative situations will happen to you. So try it. It is an experimental thing. I mean, I can go on explaining these things, but the next situation in your life is your best teacher.

Life itself is a guru. You will know this simply by acting. What is the right action? The action that comes through realization. If you have the knowledge, if you know that others are also me, the right action will materialize. Let us say you insulted a person and you realize later on after a day or two that it was not really necessary, but you see the consequences are coming now. Either the person is going to insult you if he is not aware or he will distance himself from you. Just like I said, this is very natural. They are not going to talk to you again or they are not going to see you with the same eyes again. There will be a distance. There will be only formal talk. There is no heart to heart connection now. So that is your lesson now. Next time it won't happen, if you are aware and intelligent.

And now what is the right action to do? It depends on what kind of person you are interacting with. Do not go and say sorry to a person who does not understand the meaning of sorry. Because if you go to a person who is not aware, let us say has no spiritual bones in his body and you go and say sorry I insulted you, he is going to take your sorry as a gesture of defeat. He will think - oh this fellow is very weak. I can take advantage of this person and you will find a change in their behavior. Now they will start manipulating you. So do not make this mistake. If you do not know that person, for you there is absolutely nothing to do. You got the consequence. Now there is no need to extend the relationship there. If you are feeling guilty, you can say sorry internally. Like saying sorry to the universe and that will be the end of it. But if there is some awareness there, if there is some light in the other person, then you can go and even express yourself, that I am sorry, I did something wrong and that will also cut the bond. That will also dissolve the karmic seeds. So it is very situation dependent. There are so many variables here that I cannot give you a very detailed to-do list. Life will teach you. And there will be situations in your life that are exactly the ones that you need to learn from. Otherwise situations won't occur in your life. You will be freed from life itself.

There is a difference between an aware person and an unaware person, a person who is awakened and a person who is asleep. There is a slight difference if you notice that an unaware person will take all the happenings in his life as a punishment, as a struggle, as something to be overcome, something to win over. But an aware person will take everything that happens in his life as a lesson, as an opportunity to grow. You will notice this. If you are doing this then you are on the right path. Even if you think I am not aware, I am not awakened, I don't have any kind of realization, I don't have any extraordinary gift. They are useless things. Just be a real seeker. Just take everything that life is throwing at you as a lesson. What did I learn today? Where was my awareness low today? What kind of speech I was producing today? What did I say to other people? Which tendencies are producing that speech? What was I thinking? And what kind of internal afflictions are there that are producing that kind of thoughts? These are all lessons. Turn your life into a totally spiritual training. Ordinary people are fighting with life. Make your life your teacher. And that will take away all the suffering. Now it's no more suffering. It's all learning, enjoyment. Yes, you will fail. Don't worry. So what? What is learning? When you fail in all possible ways then you learn. That's all it is.

There is a question that I received a few days ago. And it is very interesting. The person is asking, how to tell the self from the fantasy of self?

It is an interesting question. Can there be a fantasy of the self? Can we imagine ourselves to be pure consciousness? Many people will have this question. Is it even possible to do that? And I can tell you, yes, it is possible. The mind can do it. The mind is a very complex thing. It can do all these things. It does imagine even realization. “Oh, I am realized now. I know what it is to be realized and I need to behave in a certain way to show others that I am a realized person”. This is an extreme example, but there is, there can be a fantasy of the self.

Some people, just like he said, drink entheogen and other kinds of chemicals or hit their head with a hammer to reach certain states of the mind. And they think that I found the self, the self was that extra extraordinary experience. I am that. So this is a fantasy of the self. In my opinion, you are deluding yourself. Now there is no doubt that you are that also. If you hit your head with a rock, you are that also. The kind of experience you are getting, it is also you. This one, the normal, everyday ordinary experience is also you. There is no doubt about that. But do you need to go to that extent to find what you are? Isn't it a delusion? Is it good to assume that, that self was the self and that self is now gone, disappeared? That is not the definition of the self, you see. The very definition says that I am that which never goes. I am that which is the permanent background of all experiences. The experiences come and go. Even if it is an extraordinary experience, it will go. If it is ordinary, it is not going to last also.

What is it that does not change while we are having these experiences? And that is the ground of consciousness. It is always there. It is always this peaceful nothingness. It does not change. There is nothing there to change. So it remains. It is eternal. It is timeless. It was never born. It is not going to die. It is extraordinary in itself that it is there. Why do you need to go anywhere? Why do you need to assume things? I am this and I am that. There is no harm anyway because one day you will come out of this delusion. Because if you simply assume that there is the self or it is a bookish kind of knowledge, it is written in this great book, I am the self and so I am. If it is like this, then you will come out of it sooner or later because it is not satisfactory, you see. Anything that is fantasy, anything that is made up, anything that you had through efforts, by external means, by manipulation of some kind, it is impermanent and unsatisfactory. Because somewhere deep in us, we know what we are. We have not really forgotten it. And if we act as if I found it, that place in us is uncomfortable with this thought. There will be a doubt in your mind. Did I find it? And there will be a story in your mind that is running. It was told by that guru that I am self-realized and these people, they tell me that I am enlightened. But doubt, doubt, doubt. What? What? And there will be darkness there. There will be confusion there. That will produce dissatisfaction. That is not going to end your seeking if it is a fantasy of the self. So how to know the real one from the imagined one? There is no peace in your mind. There is no settling. Seeking does not end if you just fantasize about it. So the interesting thing here is that self is the one that is watching this drama. The real self is witnessing the fantasy that the mind has created. It is the one. It never goes away. Just the mind has tangled itself in these kinds of thoughts. I am this. I am that. I am the one who appears in the presence of a guru. Otherwise I am not there. Etc.

“Sir, when I am with you, I am self, I am pure consciousness. As soon as I go home, it goes away”. People have these kinds of confusions. Remember, it never goes away. Only the states change. These states are states of the mind. In the presence of the guru, you were introverted. You turned inwards. You left the guru, came home. Now the external distractions are distracting you. Your attention is again flipped outside. You are the same one. You are the one who turned inwards. You are the one who is now extroverted. You never went away. Yes, if you are new to the tricks of the mind, then you will find yourself lost. Sometimes I am the self. Sometimes I am not the self. What is really happening? That pushes a person into this kind of imaginary self. I am that one which happens in meditation. I am that one which happens after I take drugs. I am that one which my guru has shown me directly by transmitting his energy. Now I am not that.

This is self-delusion and the mind is doing it because it is trying to find self in an experience. It is trying to find the consciousness in an action. It is not an action. It is the witness of all actions. It is not an experience. It is the witness of all experiences. Right now, right here, you are witnessing something. That means you are there. You are present. It is very ordinary. Presence. Now and here. You can make it into noodle soup kind of experience by doing something to your mind, to your body, to your brain and that is stupidity. It does nothing to the self actually. It just does something to the mind and produces an experience and the self is watching that also. It allows all kinds of experiences. It is allowing everything in the universe. Why will it be amused? Who is amused? The mind, through its ignorance, tries to find something in one or the other experience. Not in this place. Probably I will get it in another place. And this is how they seek, which is okay, you see. You will need to do this for some time and then you will realize it's not a permanent thing. Where is the permanent bliss that everybody is talking about? Why does my bliss come and go? Because people have notions about bliss also. That is also fantasy. They see that this is written somewhere. Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. Okay, I understood existence. I understood consciousness. Where is bliss? It is not bliss because I am running here and there. I found consciousness there. I found existence here. Bliss, I don't know.

Anil is saying, ‘the misunderstand euphoria with anand’.

Yes. Anand is bliss, euphoria is madness. It is not a rule that you should not experience happiness or joy, eruption of joy or blissful states of the body and the brain and the mind. It is not a rule that you should not experience this. But you will find that it comes and goes. That means it's not you. It's not anand. The anand is the one which is looking, which is experiencing the euphoria. He is the anand. Again and again, we make this kind of mistake. We try to find bliss in experiencing something. We try to find happiness in outward activities. Let me act in a specific way and that will make me happy. That will make me blissful. No, it does not. And then there is a slight twist here. Initially the Guru will give you something to do. Because the mind is trapped into this kind of heavy conditioning that everything must be gotten by doing. And the Guru says, okay, sit down. I'll tell you what to do. And they keep doing it. One day the Guru will say, no, enough doing. Now non-doing. See the doer. See what is witnessing the doing. And he will do that one day. He will give you a sugar-coated pill just to settle your mind down. It is called purification of the mind.

He will purify the mind enough so that it turns inwards and stays there. Not distracted by the outer distractions. Actually a perfected mind will be peaceful in any amount of distractions. Even though the organism itself, the body and the mind itself will appear agitated, there will be a background of peace and bliss there. It is possible to achieve that. I know many people want that. So it happens when you let go. There is no other way. So the anand is always here. All you need to do is clean up the stuff that is occluding it. And you'll find it's all mind. It's all fantasy in the mind. The happiness is here. Joy is here. We cannot deny that some things give us happiness, but that is not bliss. That is an experience which is joyful. And it is not banned in spirituality. We should not sing, dance and party - that is not forbidden. But the problem is when you misunderstand that these are the things that I am after. No, this is not your goal. These are actually distractions for many seekers. They are in a hurry. They isolate themselves from all these distractions and they focus on the bliss itself. So they reach there quickly.

We don't mind getting distracted. You are on the Path of Knowledge. You won't be satisfied with distractions. So yes, it is possible to miss the bliss initially. Because the Path of Knowledge will focus on phenomena and mind, maya and existence, consciousness, these topics. It simply gets rid of some other aspects where it is assumed that a person will come to know immediately after self-realization. And these aspects are bliss and love. You can add perfection also. So these three are not emphasized mostly. But it doesn't matter because you will encounter them one day or the other. Just like I said, bliss is here right now. It is blissful. I am blissful. But what about love? How to be loving? Does it mean like she said, serving others? Does it mean ignoring yourself, your well-being and always preferring others? Is it that kind of love like donating all my money to people?

Here again you can make a mistake and think that the love is somewhere out there. That the love is in the relationship or the love is in the social service or to love the environment is the real love because the environment is me. Yes, it is me. But the love is also me. It is not any kind of action. Love is the realization that I am you. Now do I need to love anybody after this realization? Hit it on the bullseye there. There you will find love. And when you meet a person who has already realized this thing, you will find the love flowing. It is a very beautiful moment if you see such things. I am you and you are also me. And this recognition is love. It is not a favoritism. I love my country. What about other countries, man? And that is not love. That is favoritism. That is a bias. I love my wife, my child, and my family. And that is very narrow love. That is just ego sticking to people who fed you, who fulfill your desires. So you will find that the love is there in your enemies also. It is never love until it is effortless. You cannot love anybody, you can only be love. Just like it is not possible to get happiness. You can be happy.

You are already happy.

You are already love.

You are already one.

How much nearer can you get to the other? I am already all the trees. I am already all the animals. Now can you harm them? It is not possible now. At least you won't do it intentionally. You will do it for survival or to save this organism. That is also love. And it is called unconditional love. That means there are no conditions here. I will do this only if you do that. That is not love. You are beautiful, that's why I love you. That is not love. That is selfishness. Somebody is providing you something. And you will find that this kind of love disappears very quickly as soon as the person is not beautiful anymore. Well the love is gone. Because you loved the beauty. You did not love the person. You did not see yourself in the person. So it will be gone.

In the same way people are trying to save the environment. I am taking random examples about love. We love the earth. So let's plant the trees. Well the earth will never say I love you. There are floods and earthquakes and volcanoes and who knows what. The thing is it should be unconditional. It is not by doing. If you are not harming the earth then it is already love. Isn't it? You don't need to do more than that.

And the last thing is perfection. That is also missed. Many people don't know why everything is perfect. Why don't I need to do anything? And there is the lesson actually. I don't want to go into this topic today. I have said this thing many times. So when I say I am the perfect one, I am talking about the sundaram aspect. Sundaram is perfection.

I am the perfect one. I don't need to become something.

And because I am everything else. Everything else is also perfect.

It does not need to become anything. And whatever it is becoming, is also perfect.

Now nothing needs to be done. And you will never find perfection which is out there in actions or in experiences. In fact the mind will color everything into something imperfect. And that propels the mind into doing something. It seems that things are not perfect as they are. And so it does something to make it perfect. It perpetuates itself. The perfect one is here. And it is everything already. Now nothing needs to be done. So if you want to know about perfection. I recorded a very long talk on perfection. How people miss perfection. And how to see perfection in everything.

Like they say. Even the blade of grass and ant crawling there, is perfect. There is nothing wrong here.

And similarly all the evil in the world. All the ugliness in the world is also perfect. It is also me. So if these things are missing from the realization, then it is incomplete realization. It is kind of a fantasy. That I am this. I am that. I am great. I am Brahman. Now I will just sit here. No, that is not non-action. That is not realization. That is mental activity. Realization will bring an end to mental activity. Nothing needs to be said. Nothing needs to be thought. Nothing needs to be done as a result. This is also called inner silence. The inner silence will express and manifest as outer silence. The mind continues. Flow of existence continues. That cannot be stopped. Life continues. The manifestation continues. The illusion continues. And we do nothing about it because it is all perfect.

It is all me. This is silence.

The silence has noise in it.

So what? It is also silence.

I am that silence.

The shabd comes from the nishabd. It is amazing isn't it? All this activity is happening in silence.

When you realize this, you don't even want to be silent. Now you can be active also. You don't have any complaints now. You will love sitting in one place in silence and you will love acting in the world. You won't find a preference there in your mind. And that's why they say it's like a child. The child loves playing with the toys and then gets distracted by something and goes and plays somewhere else.

It is moment by moment. Not much preference there. Not much conditioning there. It is very spontaneous. Live spontaneously. Let everything happen as it happens.

This will be the state of the mind when you are established in awareness, when you are established in the self. So knowing the self and being the self is slightly different. Do not let the intellectual understanding or just a glimpse from the guru or some kind of extraordinary experience distract you into thinking that I know the self. No, it will be fantasy. I am the self. There is no knowing about it. If it is a concept, if it is a set of behaviors, if it is a belief that I need to be something else in order to be called self-realized, then you can be sure that you are not realizing these finer things. Go deeper, find out. Gurus and books are of help. If nobody told me that I am perfection, I would probably never know. I will probably be lost in the mind forever. Which has already happened. We are lost. The teachings help and you will encounter these teachings only when you are in the company of wise people. We know only through teachings. Probably it is possible to know the finer points of self-realization like love, perfection and bliss also by one's own experience. But it becomes faster if you are in the presence of a guru.

Vikranth was saying, oh I have experienced this. Now if you have experienced this, go to the guru again.

Ask the guru, sir what was this? And how can I be in this profound state of awareness by my own effort? How can I achieve this by myself without your assistance? That will be your next step. And do not leave your guru there. You will find love dripping from the face of the guru. You will find love in his eyes. And even his strict attitude is actually love. He wants you to progress. That's why he is strict. So you don't leave your guru because you are very fortunate if you came in contact with such a guru who can simply, without even touching you, like he said, simply by gaze could induce his own state into your own mind. That is a self-realized being there. Do not leave that person. Get into the depths of what it means to be self because ignorance is deep, very deep. Do not assume that I am realized.

If you want to go in depths of this satchitanand, existence, consciousness, bliss, it is endless. These are the basics. All the existence, consciousness, bliss, perfection, love, eternity, activity, non-activity, everything is me. You can go on searching like this, diving like this. Who knows what you will find. I am not saying this is the end. It is not the end. There is no end to exploration. There is an end to seeking. It is called darshan. You have seen it for yourself. Now the anxiety should go. Now it is just exploring. Explore what it is. Exploration brings knowledge. Knowledge changes the mind. Change in the mind changes the behavior and it is expressed as a purified behavior, purified speech through this body. It is again a beautiful happening. You don't need to do any kind of effort to become something great. We are all great. The greatest is Brahman, we all are that. So there is no need to become great. Let it express and this is the process through which it expresses. This is one of the paths through which the expression of greatness happens. So we are all on the path. Self-realization is just the beginning of this amazing journey. But we don't say that I am seeking. We are being the self. Seeking should end when you encounter yourself. Now exploration should start.

What are we seeking? There is nothing to seek. It is an attitude that the mind has taken up. So that it does not become lazy. Mind has a tendency to fall into laziness. So we give it something. We give it a job to seek. Fully knowing that there is nothing to seek. So even though it looks like some gurus are seeking, they are progressing and so on, there are imperfections that you will find. But inwardly they are doing nothing really. Inwardly they are whole and complete. It is the mind. So ‘I am seeking’ is different from ‘mind is seeking’. There is a difference between these two statements which you probably understand by now. So I am a seeker. Yes. That will be one of the expressions of the I am. So this spiritual field is riddled with such kinds of statements which sometimes confuse new seekers. “Oh you are still seeking? You mean you are not realized yet?” And these things are confusing for newcomers. So we seek without really seeking. I am talking about the Path of knowledge. The seeking should end on the first day. That is an introduction to the self. The seeking should end there. If you are still seeking that means there is a fantasy of the self. That means there is dissatisfaction. And then again go to the guru. There is no shame in doing that. We all fail. Many times we fail. So no shame in going and asking again. I am dissatisfied. I don't know. I know what you said but I don't really understand it. And then go and ask the guru again. Keep asking. You will know when it's the right time. When the seeking will leave you. You will know that yourself. Even the simplest words in the scriptures shine like gold. I know it already. It is like this. Scriptures are useless for somebody who is self realized. Because you know everything that is written there, but you read it because it's so beautiful.

There is a place where the guru will also leave you because there is nothing more to offer. What else is there to offer when he has cleared all the cobwebs and all the dirt. Now he says you are a teacher. You are no more a seeker. Another journey begins. Now because the other is also me. I am trying to liberate the other fellow from this kind of suffering. Not knowing produces suffering. So you start another journey. And this is also seeking. This is also exploration. Let me explore what causes ignorance in other people. Let me explore what brings them back to their own nature. Let me explore what works. I found that some tricks work. I found that people understand this kind of explanation. They don't understand that kind of explanation. And so on. So don't think that there is stopping there. Don't think that the end of seeking means the end of actions. No. There is no end of actions. There is the end of the actor. Nobody is acting now. But the actions continue.

Even the universal mind is acting. What is it? It is like infinite action only. How is it possible? And I am this tiny thing here. I am saying I won't act. How is it possible? The action will not stop. The actor will be gone. That's all. The self will take the place of the individual. Then again you see the twist there. That the only way the self can act is through the individual. Accept the individual now. You can see the trend here. It's like unfolding. Give up and then take it back. A very amazing kind of journey which probably will never end. It probably never started also. You were always at home and this is happening. It is all perfect. It cannot happen in any other way. You need to keep digging. If you are not satisfied with your spiritual achievements that means it was a fantasy. You are living in a fantasy. If you are still anxious, if it is not a play, then probably you need to go back to the guru and ask him why there is such a thing if you are telling me that I am self. And the good thing about this journey is you will be able to find the answers on your own because all the questions are coming from the same place where all the answers are.

There was a question- is it necessary to practice perceiving the perceiver?

Now this is about a specific kind of practice. I can immediately say it is not necessary. But if your guru has given you this practice, pay attention to that which perceives. Pay attention to the activity of perceiving. What is it going to do? Will it stop perceiving? Is it going to bring some other kind of metaphysical perception? In my opinion no. The guru must have given this practice in order to bring about some kind of result, to clear something in your mind, some kind of ignorance probably or some kind of habit in the mind. If the mind is always latched into perceptions, then probably such a practice will be prescribed. “Your practice is - perceive the perceiver”.

Now the funny thing about this practice is that the perceiver cannot be perceived. You will never find it because it is the point from which the perception is happening. So if it can be perceived then from where is this perception happening? So this impossibility is there. It is not possible to perceive the perceiver. But you can trick the mind to turn inwards like this. Look, perceiving is there. Look, perception is here. Now what is perceiving it? And this question, which is not really an intellectual question, but a shift of attention will bring up awareness. That's all it will do.

Bring up the knowledge that there is a perceiver which cannot be seen, which is not an object of perception, which is the subject that is perceiving. And that will bring up awareness. And now the perception will be seen in the light of awareness. That is a kind of reminder to the mind. So as soon as the mind enters this state, the right actions will happen. That is probably another reason that the guru has given you this practice. It is not necessary. It is not for all. Just realize what you are. Now what is necessary? Just realize that the perceiver is always there. Because it cannot be perceived, it is fruitless trying to perceive it. Just realize this. Remind yourself. It is not bringing back the memories, it cannot be remembered. Reminding can be there like it's shining of awareness again. Now the right actions will happen because you can see the tendencies of the mind that are causing wrong action. Many of you must be able to see this. If you pause before an action, you will see every mechanism in the mind that is trying to cause that action. And if you think that my action is not necessary or it can have undesirable consequences, then you get a millisecond there to pause. It's not going to take time. It takes a millisecond only and that pause will produce the right action. Either there will be no action which is the best thing to do or if it is really needed, the right action will happen. So this is called living in awareness and this kind of practice can induce awareness.

Look at the looker, watch the watcher. It is also called vipassana. Look back who is watching. You can translate it as “special seeing”. Pashya means “to see”, or you can translate as seeing backwards, vipashyana. You turn backwards, see who is watching, that will bring up awareness. So it is a tool actually. That's why it's called a practice. It's a tool to always remain aware, a mindfulness practice. So you can utilize it. Yes, it's a very good thing. But it can cause trouble because it is only one step, it's not a complete practice. Perception is always mostly through the senses. We are perceiving through the senses and when the senses are not active, let's say you are sitting quietly with eyes closed or there is nothing much to perceive, then your practice will fail because now there is nothing to perceive. Now the reminding cannot happen. You will need to develop an internal sight now. We are using some mystical terms. You will need to open your internal eye. Some people may want to call it third eye or internal sense to perceive everything in the mind. Turn the mind into an object of perception. You cannot do it very quickly and if you cannot then start from the body. Start perceiving the body because the mind is reflected in the body. A very simple example would be - when you are angry, it will be reflected in the body, your fist will start clenching and the teeth will start grinding. Start watching the body, turn the body into an object. It is not me. It is an object. Start perceiving it. That will distance you from the body also and bring in awareness. And since the mind is reflected into the body, sensations of the body, you will know what is happening in the mind. That will jump your attention into the mind. That will give you the necessary pause to bring in the awareness, think and reflect what is going on in the mind.

And the third step is - you can jump into the mind and turn the mind into an object. And this eye that people talk about, the third eye, is just a perception of the activity of the mind. It is not something magical. So you can do this practice of perceiving the perceiver in these three stages. Start by perceiving the environment, people and then body and then mind. That will be a complete practice.

Session 27

I will take a very interesting and a question which is very relevant for many seekers -

What should I do with the desires, because in the end the desire for liberation is also a desire and that desire also propels me to do something, to act in this world, to join this ashram, to go to this guru and to collect knowledge, get the books, do the practices, do the activities, the sadhana, the rituals and what not? How is that different from other activities of the body mind that is survival? And even if I do all these things that are so-called spiritual practices I cannot get rid of the survival activities, they must be done and on top of that I need to do even more hard work.

Earlier my goal was only survival, it was very peaceful life, I was earning, I had a family, I had a job, I had all the things that were comfortable for the life and I wanted nothing more, just the usual things but now you have given me something impossible, something that is so hard to achieve and it is just a big burden of desires to get this or get that, to get liberated, to get knowledge, to become self-realized, to study the mind, to purify the mind and so on. So it is an accumulation, it is not something which is liberating me, please help me, what should I do?

Many people may think like this - my life is okay as it is, why should I take this burden of liberating myself or take this extra workload of purifying the mind or whatever or there is no benefit of self-realization really, awareness is all there is and it is already present, why do I need to do more than that, why do I need to attain the satsangs or read the books, why can't I just be normal? So these kinds of questions arise in the minds of people who are on this path and they are told, look, you need to attain liberation. They are given a spiritual goal. As we know if it is forced on us, we do not like it, this is basic human nature that if a goal is forced on us, there is a tendency to reject it, to resist it. So this question can arise in the minds of seekers who do not have a goal of their own but the goal was given to them by some great master, they just copied it, they checked that other seekers are doing something related to liberation, they are trying to change their character or their behavior, their diet and their body so on, that is what we see externally, we do not see anything that is going on in the mind. They get this goal from somebody else and obviously if it is not your goal then it is not going to be satisfactory, it is a burden, this is the experience of all of us.

If you have this kind of doubt, first check what your goal is. Is it spiritual? Is it material? Is it something else? Are you really interested in achieving that goal or somebody slapped it on to you - liberation is the spiritual goal and you must attain it now, and continue doing whatever you are doing as an ordinary human. You need to continue human life but as an add-on I am giving you something more. So obviously this looks like a big job, this looks like a burden and people postpone it. I will do it tomorrow, I will realize the self next year when that big guru comes to my town and so on. You will see people postponing, resisting and some of them even take up a fake spiritual practice just to please the guru or probably their parents are spiritual and they just want to obey the will of the parents. They take on that kind of, I want to achieve liberation goal, but internally there is no drive, internally there is no desire for liberation. All desires are materialistic and then the materialistic desires are suppressed because somebody else is telling them - don't do this, it is materialistic, it's not good for you, and the result is, they do not get to live a good happy material life, plus they do not achieve anything of spiritual importance, that is a total waste of life.

Obviously I'm not talking from experience here, my opinion and educated guess is that we are all already liberated, nothing can be done to liberate yourself and this must be your guru's opinion also. There are many gurus in that field who will say - what are you trying to liberate, you are already liberated. That is good and fine, but then why don't I feel like I am liberated? Why is there bondage and suffering then? This is where people kind of drop out of the school. This direct path, they say, is no good, you told me I am liberated but I don't really see it. What was done was that the guru has only given you a pointer, that was only a little pointer and the guru is waiting for you to ask a question. The guru is waiting for the ones who are ready and who are going to take the next step. When you see that guru said this, and said that you are liberated, and you did not see that you are liberated, you left that guru, you did not take the next step. For many of us this has happened and that is why we deviated from the direct path, and that is why you still have goals, that is why you are still seeking and that is why you think you are not liberated. Why did that happen?

Why didn't you ask the guru that okay please let me know, let me see how I am liberated? This usually does not happen, people do not take the next step probably because they already know, probably because the darkness is so dense that they do not see the need to question this thing and some of the seekers are a little arrogant. They will say- guru says I am already liberated but what is he doing here then, why is he bound in a body and material world? Probably he’s just lying that he’s liberated, or probably it is just a matter of philosophy, it is written in some book that you are liberated. I was like this actually. I thought that liberation is a very big job and I’ll finish it anyway because I am a kind of dedicated seeker, so I am going to finish it and I started on it, but reached nowhere, because how can you liberate that which is already liberated? You can see people doing this kind of effort and they find themselves in bondage again and again. Probably they do not know that they are liberated, and that's why they are trying their best, and they fail because the question boils down to - “why am I bound”, instead of - “why am I not liberated yet?”

You need to ask the question in another way like - “where is the bondage?” What needs to be done to free myself from that bondage? Who is bound? Who needs to be liberated? Is it even possible to liberate these things that are bound? And this will happen only when your mind is open enough, when the mind is clear enough to ask these questions. Otherwise you will keep seeking liberation, you will keep doing those fake practices, and even if you are not interested in liberation you will keep searching for it. The mind is very peculiar, if it cannot find it, if it is not obvious for it, it loses interest. It's no longer interested in liberation, but now it cannot let go because this goal was given to you. It was imposed on you or it was self-imposed, one and the same thing, and that is why it becomes a recipe of failure. I was in this position. I got frustrated and this question arose: why did that fellow say that? Why does every scripture say that you are liberated, you are infinite, you are boundless etc.? Now you can see, it actually connects to self-realization. If you do not know your own essence then probably you should not try for liberation. If you do not know who you are then the liberation will be a fruitless exercise. As soon as you know your own essence you will find that liberation is already here. So find out what is it that is liberated, find out what it is that is bound, and where are you putting your identification? On that which is bound or on that which is liberated? And why is there this choice in your mind? Why do you want to put your identification on the things that are bound? Why did that happen?

If you are shown your real essence which is this pure witness, the light of consciousness, the background of awareness that is always present, that is timeless and spaceless, the only real thing that is permanent, on the screen of which all experiences are happening, if you are shown that, would you still want to liberate yourself? That is the question. If you are shown your real essence do you find a bondage there? What is binding it? Or do you find forms that float on the screen that are bound by

necessity?

If you take a real good deep look you will find that these structures are not really bound. Why do I

say that? Probably I never said this in our satsang before, let us take a deeper look today on this question. Why should I get liberated? And is it even possible? You say that the body is bound, you say that the mind is bound, the jeev is bound. Have you ever taken a deeper look at how they are bound?

Let us start with the world. You see the world is bound by physical laws, but do you see that the world does not remain as it is? Everything changes into something else. Where is the bondage here? It is on a groove, it is on a channel, like a track but it is not bound, it is expressing itself infinitely in many many forms. Don't you see this? Yes a little bit restricted, there is no infinite freedom in all directions, you can picture it like this - like a river that flows from one point to another point, from a mountain to the sea, the river is free to take any path, bound by the terrain, but still it is free, it is flowing. Put an obstacle there, it flows past the obstacle. The world is like a river, it is flowing, there is a freedom in a certain dimension there, not in all dimensions maybe, it is not really bound, if you see it.

Now take a look at the body and you will find that body has its own freedom. It takes birth, it dies, it does whatever it does, but there is a freedom there in the body also although restricted, but it is in a certain direction. The body can take many forms, it is open-ended, it can take any form depending on the environment, depending on the world. And similarly about the mind. When you check the mind it seems limited. It's limited by whatever experiences are impressing on it. It's limited by the memory and experiences but still there is freedom there, it is more free than the body and objects in the world. If you see the jeev it is a very very free thing, it is doing whatever the jeeves do, take birth and rebirth and process the karmic stuff in them and so on. And if you check the universal mind, can you find anything that is bound there? No. We are all expressions of the universal mind and the universal mind is almost free, it is not infinitely free but it's almost free. So we should do this kind of exercise and we will find, in some ways, even the experience part appears to be free. A really bound thing would simply be there, stay there. We find that we are all an expression of the universal mind which is almost infinitely free. It looks like we are bound because our vision is very narrow, it is like we are looking through a pinhole, and that is what we see, we see limitations. Look at the whole thing, I am not even talking about the experiencer part which is always free, which is unbounded. I'm talking about the part which appears to be bound, but it is not actually bound. It has a flow, it is ever changing, it is ever expressing in infinite forms. The only thing is since it is an appearance, it must appear as a structure, and everything cannot appear at once, so it takes a format of sequence of events that appear one after the other. This is how the mind is perceiving this infinite freedom actually.

We are perceiving freedom in the form of bondage.

Look how beautiful it is that we are perceiving the unlimited in the form of limited, because that is the way. I don't know if there is any other way but that is the only way that I know of, since we are all humans we see everything like this. We do not really see the infinity, we see expressions of infinity, and we need to take a closer look at whatever is expressing infinitely, so timelessly, so there is no bondage here really. And it is only because our view is so narrow we find that the things which we are focused on, they look like they're bound. We see that they are temporal, they do not last, and then we wonder why that is? What is the meaning of all these things? It is bound, it does not last, it keeps changing. What is the meaning here? It is very confusing.

If something is really bound, see that it will never change, it will remain what it is if it is really bound, and there is another way to be bound which is it will go on in cycles, it will repeat the same thing, it will keep repeating it infinitely, although this rarely happens, although it is kind of impossible. Even the repeating things repeat in different ways after a while because it is never the same. Because our lifetimes are so short we do not see the cycles of repetition. We do not see the kaal which is the kaal chakra actually, the time is circular because things repeat ultimately, but they do not repeat exactly because things are flowing, but they flow in a repetitive pattern sometimes. Not everything is repetitive but many things, including our minds and lives, and jeev and the creation, the world, it repeats itself. When we see all these things we find that there is an apparent bondage in real limitlessness, real freedom. That which is free is expressing itself in forms of apparent bondage. Has anybody told you like this before? Probably not.

This is something which we need to do for ourselves, the guru will point to you, look you are already infinite, look the expression of the infinite is an appearance, is an illusion, don't get carried away. But we never look, we do not stop and see what the guru said. That's why when I started the answer I told you that we are all already liberated. There is no need to liberate yourself. There is only a need to see that we are liberated. This was the experience part, there is apparent bondage there, but it is infinitely free. See it as your own experience, confirm it through your own experimentation, challenge this thing. Find something which is truly bound. You will be surprised by what you find. Now the experiencer part which is experiencing is both experiences and experiencer, so the experiencer part is emptiness. You can say it is bound by only one action that it can only experience that which is false. You say that you are not seeing the whole thing, you are not seeing both parts of the duality.

Remember when I said that self-realization is the first step, you cannot jump to liberation before getting self-realization. And self-realization happens in two parts - the realization of my nature which is atman, and the realization of the oneness with everything which is brahman. If you do not finish these two steps, your pursuit of liberation will be fruitless, it will never happen. Usually seekers go to guru - please liberate me, and the guru gives them some practice, okay take this, take that, do this, do that and you will be liberated, and there is so much corruption in these spiritual practices nowadays, they have degraded, they are ineffective, in my opinion. For example, some people go to a certain river and take a bath there, and they think that they are liberated now, or they do certain breathing practices and think that this energy will liberate them, or they worship certain gods and goddess and they think that these higher entities, the higher beings will liberate them. So that is the bottom layer of seekers. There are some very smart seekers who think that I need to manipulate my mind, clean my chakras, and manipulate the kundalini energy, and that will liberate me. There is some truth in that, yes, that progressive path will take you to nothing. The self-realization and liberation happen at the same time which is good because they go hand in hand.

Realizing your true nature is also realizing that you are free, nothing needs to be done. So these aberrations or a little bit of ignorance has entered spiritual practices also and that's why the seeker goes to guru and demands a procedure for liberation. Guru is like a doctor and they are asking for a surgery or cure, so a guru, even if the guru himself is liberated, will see that this darkness is too much, the ignorance is very dense, and instead of giving them the liberation, the guru will give them something to do, till the mind is pure enough to grasp it directly. So here I'm giving you the direct teaching because I feel that it will be useful in today's time. Many are educated, well aware, most of you are now free from dogma. I see many spiritual seekers, I meet them every day. I see a potential there, there is an immense amount of intelligence there, they are ready to drop the old, they're ready to drop the ignorance which is a good thing. There is an increasing number of such people, so I'm throwing all the teachings directly here, without taking you through a circus of practices.

You are liberated, I'll show you why you are liberated. That's all I do. You are already this infinite ocean of expression that is expressing itself in tiny limited parts. Do not focus on the parts, focus on the whole. Do you see any need to liberate this thing which is happening? What are you going to liberate it from, tell me? What is wrong here? Even some people will say the jeev is in a repetitive existence, no it is not. Again you are seeing a tiny part of the life of the jeev, it is ever evolving, it never stops. Only thing is, it is slow, isn't it? From the standards of a seeker especially from a gyani’s point of view they are very very slow. It takes thousands of births to progress a little bit. That is where the effort comes in, that is where the knowledge comes in, that is all can be done. Let me tell you, even if you do not grasp this, that is all okay, it's all perfect. The slowness is not really a problem because it's not happening in time you see. That is not a big problem but some people are not so patient, they want to reach the next stage quickly. Let me tell you there are infinite stages, you cannot reach the final stage. Why? Because you in one sense are already on the final stage.

Can somebody tell me which is the final stage of liberation after which human birth stops? What after that? Is the mind gone? Does the mind dissolve? Will the leela stop because a mind dissolved? Are you not the whole of the mind? You're not the individual mind, right now, right here also. So my views are very direct, and you can even call them very revolutionary. They are more in line with Nisargadutta Maharaj and company, not like traditional people. Traditional seekers are not like that, so I do not recommend progressive path unless there is a need, unless the mind is trapped in the illusion of doing. Unless the mind thinks that I am the doer and I can liberate myself. That is impossible, you see, the mind cannot liberate itself. Only that which is expressing the mind can liberate the mind, this is what we call grace.

Kripa, the grace, is that which happens. You cannot buy grace, you cannot pay the price, let me go to that guru, pay him something and he will liberate me, he will give me grace. Impossible. You see, that means you do not know what these things are. I was one of them actually. I joined the courses and all in an attempt to buy spirituality, like a business deal - you liberate me I'll donate you this much money. It failed badly. It will fail for all of the seekers. You cannot buy liberation, you cannot get it by effort. No practice will liberate you. That is shocking, isn't it?

Let's take a look at the experiencer part, the atman. What is binding it? It is pure emptiness. When the mental activities are taken as me, as I'm doing it, then the result will be bondage, that means there is an identification of some kind there. Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep thinking this? Why are there negative emotions? Why is there suffering and why are desires controlling me? - This is an identification with the mental activity. You are not separating the mind, you are not objectifying it, and that is why the mind has taken a precedence over awareness. Do not allow this, do not entertain the mind, do not let it sit on the throne of ‘I am’. Kick it out. It is a good slave, it is a good pet, it is a good servant, it is a machine which we are using to have this kind of experience, that is all it is.

There are very peculiar things that happen in the mind, there are habits and there is a very big mountain like accumulation of impressions, the sanskars, but they are not you. This is the good news, isn't it? What you are trying to do here is to erase the sanskars, it is kind of impossible. Actually in my view it is best to throw them away. Do not try to erase them, it is already an illusion. Why are you polishing the illusion in an attempt to make this illusion better? Throw it away and the illusion will be gone. I think it was Gautam Buddha or somebody who said that the sanskars are like the himalayas, and your attempts to clean it is like a bird that flies with a silk cloth over the mountain, and every time it flies over the mountain, the cloth will wipe the mountain a tiny bit. Dirt will be lifted by the wings of the bird. And he gives this metaphor, which is very funny, and he says that now compute the time that it will take to flatten that mountain using this method. So what he was talking about is that what we are dealing with here is the mountain of impressions. It is clearly beyond the effort, beyond the capability of this tiny individual. This individual is a result of that mountain. See this - we did not create the mountain, we are a creation of it. “We” means the individuals, the humans. We are a byproduct of this accumulation. How can we fix it?

But I'm not discouraging you, you can keep doing it, there's no harm in that. You will find that miracles will happen if you start purifying the mind, and again it is a misconception that I am doing it. It is doing itself, all you need to do is put the seed of knowledge there, it will do it itself. Although I think it will never happen that it will disappear. It is immortal, it goes on and on, it changes - that is the good thing, it changes and when the seed of knowledge is here it changes faster. Now it goes out of the repetitive existence, it is not possible that it will not repeat things but it takes on another dimension of some kind. You see the structures are because they're vibrations, they must repeat and the repetition is in the heart of existence.

We cannot free the existence from repetition unless we totally kill the naad, unless we totally kill the vibration which you can guess is not the job of an individual. It is not my job, it's beyond me. Who is doing that? Nobody. Nobody is interested in liberating this thing. Actually I have seen that nobody is interested in ending the leela, ending the expression of consciousness, and why then should one end it? And even if you end it, it will start again. It is clearly beyond the logical mind, we do not even know what is this, what are we trying to do here, what are we trying to liberate here? Think about it. It does not make any sense. So the only option that remains before you is to realize that I am already liberated. The pure nothingness which I am, is not bound. There were doubts about the other part of the duality, that which is the expression of the self, and it is also not bound. You can see it is not bound. The unbounded cannot be bound, it can only appear to be bound. The bondage is an appearance, the thought that I am bound and I need to be liberated is ignorance. Now what are you going to do? Which practice will clear this? How is it going to happen through effort? Which mantra? Which meditation will make you free?

Nothing will. You can induce a little bit of change here and there in the expression, and you can delude yourself thinking now I'm free. If this is what you want, it is also okay, it's better than the purely materialistic hedonistic life of an animal. There's a higher goal than that, and so we do not say - don't do this, we never say do not do your purification. Actually I recommend it, I give you tips and tricks to purify your mind quickly, and the only reason for this is I do not see it as a totally useless activity. I see it as another path to realize the same thing, which I said once you do all these things you will find that the mind is still there, the expression is still there, the whole of the experience is still there. A little bit changed because now it is more happy and joyful, because the ignorance has been shed a little bit, but you will find that all these things continue. The whole world, the maya continues. It will keep producing these things. So if the result of the purification, or the practices, or awareness practice, if it does not lead to this realization that I am already free, then you can say it is a waste. If it leads to this realization that everything that was told by my guru was done and nothing happened. When you critically revise your goals, you will find that you will reach this question - is it really possible to liberate these things which I'm trying to liberate? What will it achieve in the end? Some people will say it's okay, but I don't want to be in the human form and I want to end at least this much. You see this is sometimes called the first step of liberation, which is not really the first step actually but it is a result of detachment. Detachment happens.

Self-realization, there is no other way for it to happen, so there is no way to even end the human birth unless you realize what you are, and abide in that, because if you do not abide you just let go - oh he said I'm that, I'm a brahman, or I'm something big, or I'm emptiness, or I'm shunya and then you become busy in your material life. Probably the abidance is not there, and the detachment will not happen. The practice and realization go hand in hand, there is a little bit of practice here, even the gyani is not free from practices. You will need to abide, you will need to do this remembering, you will need to watch your experience in the light of awareness all the time, see everything, your life in the light of awareness, that is the practice there. So if you do not do this, realization will turn into an idea, the idea will turn into concepts and imagination, mere words, and the result is - births do not stop

because the detachment was not there. The mind has no reason to stop and it also means that you did not make liberation as your goal.

So you will find this is very complicated, on the one hand I'll say you guys are all liberated, don't do anything, it is not possible to do it by practice, but next day I'll say okay start the purification now. I'm doing it and these are the ways to purify everything, all the layers of the mind. It starts by knowing the layers of the mind. I keep saying this and it is very confusing. Yesterday you said you are liberated, today you are giving me a practice? Why?

It must happen like this. What can we do? Somebody said that enlightenment is a sudden process which happens gradually. And this is one of the statements. You will find the field of spirituality is full of such paradoxical statements. So what are they trying to say? They have compressed whatever I said in the last 30 minutes into one sentence - that the expression of enlightenment unfolds gradually. You must do it even though you know I am liberated, you must do that effortless effort to stop human births or whatever is your project, you see. Take on a spiritual goal, whatever goal it is and continue seeking without seeking. It boils down to that.

The original question was - isn't that another desire on top of other desires to get liberated? Yes it is, but it is a negative desire, it is a desire to let go of the materialistic desires. You can say positive desire is accumulation, wanting more, but the desire for liberation is a negative desire, you want less. Probably some people may consider the end of human births as the first kind of liberation, but see that it is an ending, it is not gaining, it is not a start, it is a start of something else which is another matter but it is letting go of the human births. It is a negative desire so you instantly get a clue that probably I need to change my desire into something else. The desire for freedom is not gaining of freedom, it is letting go of the bondage. I need to turn my desires into negative desires. That may sound kind of negative but I'm just using this word, you can also say, subtractive desires. So a desire of letting go and become light and become free is also a desire but it is exactly opposite of the materialistic desire which is clinging, which is getting stuck in the mud, in the quicksand, you're drowning in the quicksand and you don't want to come out of it. It is a very horrible situation from the point of view of a seeker. You see it around you, people don't want to liberate themselves, they prefer a repetitive existence, they do not want to change a tiny bit, yes they want everything else to change but not themselves. So this is a very horrible mentality from the point of view of a seeker.

Seeker also wants to change but not other things, only himself or herself, so it is exact opposite of

materialistic desires. If you have taken on materialistic desires no problem. Do not think that the spiritual goals are a burden on top of that. The spiritual goals and the spiritual desires are a device to get rid of the material desires. Sometimes I say that you will need to bend your material desire so that they point to the spiritual goal. How to do that? How not to make my spiritual goal as another burden, as another desire, as another kind of race? I need to get this by hook or crook - how not to fall into this trap? This is not a good situation to be in. So the first step is self-realization. As I said, there is no way to be liberated or even to realize that I am already liberated. If there is no realization of your true nature, that is the first step you should take. Then you will find that you are liberated, then you will find that the mind will start changing itself, and you can now just sit and watch.

Is the desire to be liberated a burden now?

No.

Are materialistic desires your obstacle?

No.

Because they are bent now, you have actually abandoned them, you are not following them seriously, you let them be because that's how it should be expressed. You do not see the desire to live, or end the birth, or take the birth, or whatever as in bondage. You see it as a play, you do not see it that it is something wrong, the identification is dropped. So it is not you who is in repetitive existence, it's not your doing, you did not come here, you are the product, you cannot even stop it, it's not possible. So after this you get the proper insight, after this there is a big light in you which guides you and that is why you will see that the advanced kind of seekers will say my life is now guided by the higher powers. I am no more in charge, I do not actually do anything. What do they mean by this? It is a kind of surrender. Who has surrendered? The one who does not exist, has surrendered himself. So they say I am not doing it. They seem to do whatever ordinary people do. However, there is no doer.

What is the difference between ordinary people and enlightened people? There is no difference actually. They do the same things but if you ask them- why are you doing this, and they will say no I did not do this. It is what should happen and I am an instrument through which it is happening. Yes the individual still arises, the ego says I did it, but that is only for show. In reality, in their understanding, they know that they did not do it. They do not even feel a need to express that I am not doing it. And that is why it is very difficult to differentiate between an ordinary person and a realized person. No difference, because they do not see it as necessary to tell others, and whenever they tell, nobody takes them seriously.

The society is thriving on the concepts of separation and individuality. Without that there won't be any society, and these people know it very clearly, they understand this clearly and so they do not meddle in it. This is also play, they do not meddle in the play. They let everything happen as it is without getting trapped in it. So they are in the world, not here actually, they are witnessing the world. They're not of the world, they're beyond the world. They're beyond society, while functioning in society. Ideally it does not happen like this, in the ideal situation there are some eccentricities that develop in that mind, that is what we see, that is how we come to know that this fellow is crazy, he is a spiritual person, we come to know because of these slight deviations from the ideal.

The ideal is perfect normality, which nobody will tell you. Actually nobody will say this. The gurus will tell you -you need to behave like this, you need to act like this, you need to look like this. Well you can, there is no harm in that, but then you become a center of attention, you become a distraction for others. Well that is a totally different issue from what we are discussing here. So the liberated person does not look anything special, does not eat special things, and does not speak a specific

language, does not live in an ashram. These are all eccentricities, little deviations from normality. What is here is normal, whatever is happening is normal, it's all okay from the point of view of a liberated person.

We are liberated right now. With this realization if you live your life, it is done, there's nothing more to do. The seeds of knowledge will do whatever they do, which is not our doing. If life changes, fine. Sometimes I see extraordinary things happen in the lives of seekers, and we say - so what?, this is natural, this is perfectly okay, nothing extraordinary here, this is what must happen. And if nothing extraordinary happens, plain boring old life, that is also awesome. I did not need to deal with anything extraordinary in this life. So hopefully that will clear some of the doubts of those who have liberation as their goal.

It is a goal which you have already attained. Now you need to fix some things within you, that's all there is. It will happen even if you don't want to because it cannot be done by the individual. The desire for liberation that has appeared in this body mind is not yours, just like every other desire. Let's say, I get up in the morning and I have a desire to eat, we think that it is a material desire, or I have a desire to go and do some shopping, or I need to clean up stuff or need to buy new things. We think these are material desires. No they are not my desires, there's nothing material in that, you simply assumed that this is not spiritual, and you want to do something spiritual, not this, and that is the conflict, that is the problem there. Your ordinary life is spiritual actually, there's nothing non-spiritual in any kind of life, but see the mind has some preferences. Let us say your life is producing suffering. You are in a job which involves lying and deceiving, taking bribes and killing people and so on, then probably your mind will have a preference, oh this is not spiritual. Which is good. Therefore I never said do not try to improve it, and actually nobody will say this. And then I use the ordinary language, give up the material stuff, get out of that life, change your life, redesign your life, you are in control, it is your will you can do it, and so on. You see the motivating stuff.

Once that is done, once the person is freed from suffering that was self-imposed by his own sanskars, his own actions, his own karma, then we reveal to that person - look you are not there, it was not yours, the suffering was not yours, and the happiness is also not yours. You are already liberated. What are you trying to achieve? You are already spiritual. What spiritual life are you trying to live? And then this burden is dropped. This distinction disappears between the material and spiritual, and then you do not see the spiritual desire as the opposite of material desire. However, if the person is in a very bad situation, if he's totally suffering, then you will need to descend down to his level. You will need to speak that language which he understands, time for purification, time for change of diet, you are drinking too much, you are like smoking, alcoholic, and drug addict - that is not spiritual, don't do this. And that's what he understands. Actually that's what an ordinary person understands. I get so many questions about which diet is good. What kind of diet is needed to realize non-duality? Is there a specific diet that is needed to realize non-duality? So when you encounter such seekers you do not want to discourage them, you prescribe them something. I’ve seen, there are some people who are so clear, so lucid in their expression that as soon as they ask a question, I come to know the state of the mind that person is in, I come to know the level of ignorance that person has, and then they get a precise answer instantly. I don't need to guess. I don't need to think, I don't need to do any kind of detective work, but there are sometimes people who do not know what to ask. Rarely the lucidity or the clarity of the question is extraordinary. I get very clear questions from people, but all seekers are not like that, they cannot even put their problem properly in words, and that is where you will need to use tricks, you will need to do the detective work - what do they want, what is their problem and then you will need to go down to their level.

And sometimes you lie, sometimes you tell them things which are not true because they are not

ready to even receive the highest teaching. There comes the paradox then that the enlightenment is sudden but unfolds gradually. You can tell them all these things but probably there will be no effect. So here comes the skill of guru. The guru will take you through a long path instead of a direct path, that is also okay, that is also good. So I support the direct path but when I see that this is not going to work then I drop down, and that should not confuse everyone, that look he answered this question in other way on the website, but now he's answering in some other way which is more complicated, more confusing and that is because there are different levels of understanding. For those who know they are liberated, all this talk is useless, isn't it? What am I really talking about? There is no liberation, there is no bondage, and all this activity to free yourself is foolishness.

Only a fool will make an effort to liberate himself, and that is why these great people like Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ranjit Maharaj and Raman Maharshi, laughed. Even Papaji used to laugh when somebody said I'm miserable, all these kinds of stories people tell to themselves. They are deluding themselves and then they bring that kind of stuff before the guru also, which makes the guru laugh. It is not cruel, it is just like a mother laughs at the silly activities of her child. I was so serious at one point that my guru used to laugh at me and he used to tell me how stupid you are. I've never seen anybody who is this stupid. So it has to be gradual you see. Even after being told that you are liberated, it may not take immediate effect, you may not see it. It's okay, it's fine.

Why is your bondage a joke, a practical joke played by your own mind? I'm going to give you a metaphor which I heard somewhere, probably my own gurus but it is very interesting and it will be eye-opening for you. Imagine you're dreaming, imagine in the dream you're bound by chains and in the dream you don't like it. Obviously nobody likes this kind of dream. Even if it is a dream, you don't want this dream. But in the dream we do not know that we are dreaming. It is reality, we don't want that kind of bondage, it is painful, you are hungry, you are sick and you are in a dark place bound by chains. Now you want to do some kind of effort, you want to do something. At least you shout and signal the people who are up there, who can bring you out of this bondage. Your life is miserable, you're bound. If your dream is too dark then probably you won't even see the chains, which is the condition of 99.9999% people here, you accept the bondage as normal. But once you see the chains, once you see that there is freedom, there is a possibility of freeing yourself, then it becomes unbearable, then you don't want it. It is now real suffering. Before this, the level of awareness was so low that nothing was possible there, which is the state of the mind of a materialistic person here, in this world. Imagine this is the condition in a dream but you know that you are bound in chains. Now what kind of effort is going to free you from the chains? Isn't it foolish? Are you sure that you are bound? Isn't it an illusion? Isn't it only a dream? What needs to be done is - you wake up from the dream of the bondage, that's all. Wake up, don't try to free that thing, a faint image of a person, which looks like it is bound in chains, looks like it is suffering.

You simply wake up and see that nothing was bound, it was my imagination, it was a nightmare, I'm here - free, I'm free to do anything, no chains, no suffering. Not only you will see that, you will see that it was never there, I was always free. That was only a dream, that happened for five minutes and you will actually forget it after that, so it has cleared all your suffering. Simply waking up has cleared all your suffering, all your bondage, all your pain, and it will never happen again.

This little story, this metaphor is actually mind-blowing. It's a signal to those who are trying to liberate themselves in this world, which is mithya, which is a dream. You're not this body and you're not this mind that is trapped in the world. No, death is not going to liberate you, death is a part of the dream, you cannot die. You must have died so many times in your dreams, are you dead? No the dreams are kind of a tiny hologram of the big you, which is this waking self, but there is a bigger one, which is the infinite self, biggest self, which is dreaming this smaller self.

So why don't you simply wake up? It takes one minute. How much time does it take to wake up from the dream? One second. Why don't you do that? What are you suffering from? It's a dream. Some people will say - no I realize what I am and I'm still suffering. That means you're still sleeping. If you take metaphors very literally then this kind of confusion can happen. When you wake up from the dream the entire thing is gone, but when you realize who you are it may linger on for a while. Why? Because this is not your dream, you are the dream character here, if in your dream you're bound by chains and somebody says - you are the one who is sleeping in the bed peacefully, there's no bondage there, you are already free, still the dream is going to continue. As a dream character, you will say no look at this chain, look at this filth, the surroundings, I am still imprisoned. So same thing here, the person has not really woken up from the dream, somebody told him look you are not this, who is bound? No no, it looks like I'm bound here, I'm still in the body. That means there's still identification with the body, that means still there is identification with the person, and you can see now the guru has no choice but drop down - oh you're bound by the body - I'll give you a trick to free yourself from the body, from the births and deaths. I'll give you this mantra to make your bondage a little bit bearable. But you see that is a lie, it is false and it is intentionally done, because the person is not ready to wake up. Slowly the identification will be gone, hopefully through practices, although the practices are kind of fake. They are just motions, mindless actions. What is guru doing? Guru is waiting for the person to wake up which will happen through grace, there's no other way. Suffering goes away, the bondage goes away, and not only it goes away, you do not even carry the karmic residue of it. The karma is also shed like it's gone, nothing was accumulated for you. This is the final liberation, also called the jeevan mukti.

So if anybody wants to clarify anything on this topic, or if anybody is still trying to liberate themselves and cannot, then let us discuss. Let us see if the metaphor of dream of the person in chains was useful for you, because I think it was very useful for me. I mean it shook me really. It is very simple, isn't it? But it really shook me, that well I am the one who is trying to liberate myself, and I am only a dream character, yes this nothing will change here because it is not my dream, I am the dream character here, this is where my identification lies at this time. That was very pacifying and then I dropped all the efforts for liberation after that.

After realizing this some people may ask - why is there even a dream character? What is the need for it if you're not it then who is dreaming? Usually we say the universal mind is dreaming but that's not really true, the one who is dreaming which is you need not do this. Why is it dreaming the dream of bondage? Why am I dreaming the dream of bondage without even knowing that it is me? Who is dreaming? So let me give you the bottom line actually, that do not think that I am the brahman and

I will know why it is doing it. It is not possible, it is beyond mind, at least beyond the mind of this

individual, but you can guess a little bit. First of all it is happening, there is no intention in the brahman to do this, it is simply happening. Why is it happening? Well this cannot be known, it is just there. Eventually everything is happening, nothing can be known eventually. The why question is a stupid question but we can guess a little bit. You see, everything is just happening, it is happening for no reason, and I know this is not very satisfactory but this is what is the truth.

What we do is, we assume that there is an energy in the brahman which is causing these experiences to appear. Because there are experiences, we assume that there is an energy behind it and that is what is shakti also known as Maya or Devi, so many names are there, and she appears as vibrations of consciousness. She has taken infinite forms. The one that is dreaming is so innocent that it does not know that it is dreaming, there is no way for it to know that it is dreaming, and these forms that are ever evolving, they come to know this, and through these individuals, that one which is dreaming

knows about the dream, knows about itself, whatever it is.

And that is kind of very cryptic, isn't it? It is a mystic thing but I don't have any better answer. Our minds are too small, our intelligence is too weak. Hopefully someday we'll know but right now we know this much that the individual has no way to know this, all you can say is that it is a play, it is happening, it's not being done, do not try to impose an intention on the one who is sleeping and dreaming. There's no intention there, do not try to impose a human intention on the brahman, it's not human.

We can make such mistakes and I can only clear such mistakes, I do not have an answer actually. Do not make the mistake of projecting human qualities on that which is para-human. It's not human. You see it is a mind but it's not my mind, it's not human mind, it is a consciousness but not this subjective consciousness. It cannot sleep, it cannot dream. These are all metaphors so when I answer such things do not assume them to be true, they are just pointers. It will be kind of a negative answer, please do not think it is like this or do not delude yourself by thinking that it is somebody who is superhuman, who is sleeping, and now I have to tolerate this trouble of being a dream character.

No. It is all you. That is surrender. That is why we say I do not do anything, that makes this dream bearable, now be less troubled by it. Now you can ask this question - if it is an attempt to know, what I am then? Why don't I simply know what I am? And there is your goal, this is the only goal a human being has - to know what it is to be a human, to know my own real nature. That is why the dream was constructed, that is why it is happening the way it is happening. That is a safe answer. Although I won't put too much weight on this answer, this is the answer your guru will give you to motivate you on the path of liberation. Look at this human life, it is a mountain of mess, do you see anything which is worth sticking to here, which is worth clinging to? Can you call it a home? Can you call this body my body? This flesh and bones, shape of a naked monkey, do you call it yourself? And this mind which is accumulation of the social garbage, do you call it myself? Just realize that this is the purpose of your life, that's all it is, that is all is the purpose of this dream.

That is how we say it. Although in my opinion that is not also the purpose but this is the practical teaching. There is nothing else to do in our human lives, nothing else except realizing that I am not a human. Isn't that paradoxical? Yes this is how everything is, it is beyond mind, do not try to use your mind to make sense of it. It's completely nonsense, it's completely meaningless, there is no meaning here. All you need to do is realize that I am the one who is dreaming and then life will become bearable.

Once you realize you're already free, nothing will affect you, there is no bondage for you once you realize that nobody suffers, there is no suffering here, and ultimately the ordinary human being wants only that peace of mind, a blissful existence. That is where the seeking should stop, there's nothing more to seek. Do not try to find out, do not try to dig how deep it is, and do not try to climb this pole of infinity, it is beyond us, we cannot reach there. Even the one who is dreaming cannot reach there. We can only understand that this is a dream, and to wake up from the dream is the end of seeking. This is the only goal a human life has. If this is not your goal, if liberation, self-realization, realization of the oneness and all the illusion of the maya is not your goal, then it is a burden, then it is a dream which is a nightmare. Then it is real for you. It boils down to this ultimately. You will not know but don't worry, you will give up so much that there won't remain a need to know.

Session 28

Self-remembering, I also call it being aware, and some people like in Buddhism, may call it mindfulness. Some people in yoga can call it Samadhi and so on. There are so many names. Remembering is probably by Gurdjieff, if I remember correctly, he used this word self-remembering.

And what is self-remembering? Whenever I say remember, you go and recall something. You access your memory and you get the information. But self-remembering is not accessing memory. I should clear it up from the beginning, first of all, do not literally interpret this word. It is unfortunate that somebody had to use this kind of word, but there is a limitation of language. So we do have such ambiguous words and practices. For example, in Sikhism, this self-remembering becomes simran, which is Guru Mukhi for Smaran, which again means - remembering. So do not try to recall a memory of what you are. That is not self-remembering.

Be what you are.

Know what you are.

Know the memory as memory.

Know the mind as mind.

Know the body and world as body and world.

And be what you are.

Now, how to “be” what you are? There is no way to be what you are because obviously you are what you are already. You cannot “become” you. So all you need to do is discard any thoughts in the mind or any concepts or ideas, assumptions, or identification with something else other than what you are. You do not identify with yourself, you can only identify with what you are not. For example, the body, the emotions and the intellectual activity of the mind and even subtle actions like flickering of the attention, there are subtle ways to identify. Some people may want to identify with metaphysical entities like the soul, the jeev, the causal body, what you have. Just discard all that.

As soon as you get this idea that, I am sitting, I am tired, I am sleepy - this is body, this is not you. As soon as you get the idea that I am angry or I am jealous, I am irritated, I am loving or hating, it's not you, they are emotions. It's the ego, the lower layers of the mind. As soon as you get the idea that I need to do something, I need to talk like this, I need to finish this job and so on, I need to plan for my next trip. This is the intellect. This is not me. It is a computer which is running. It is either reacting to the situations or just roaming in the future somewhere, or recalling something from the past and reacting to those memories. These are the activities of the mind and body. Identification with them is ego - another activity of mind. What remains then is the awareness of what you are. This is self-remembering.

Whenever the mind slips, whenever the experience converts into a clinging experience, a sticky experience, stickiness to phenomena, the things that come and go, you need to simply drop that. It is like you set up a watch tower, let us say, where your awareness stands as a watchman and as soon as thoughts of identification trespass, you can simply stop them and be the one who is watching, not the one who is doing, thinking or feeling, emoting. So it is very simple, actually. It is simpler than this explanation that I gave you. Because of the language issues, the explanation is long, but it is simpler than breathing.

It takes a little bit of effort to breathe, but to be what you are, should not take any effort.

Discard what you are not and this brings you back to the self. People may like to call it remembering, I just remembered what I am. Okay, but remember that this is not a recall of memory, even though it looks like from the words that we are using because remembering is also used for recalling the memories.

Leyla is saying - I have been practicing self-remembering by stating ‘I am here’ which brings me back to the present moment. Do you have other techniques?

Well, very good. This is a very good technique. Just like I said, set up an alarm clock inside your mind, which occasionally brings you back to your true nature, which is witnessing, which is consciousness, which is the Atman, which is the Sakshi Bhava. You can use other things like stick posters with messages on them in your room, like the wall that you usually look at, make it your wallpaper or make it your PC wallpaper or put it on the front page of your mobile phone. You can write a message like - I am aware now, I am pure awareness, I am not the mind, I am aware of mental activity and so on. You can even set up rituals where you do it five times a day, for example, and there are devotional paths where this is kind of recommended and enforced that you should remember God or whatever it is few times a day, and for that there were reminders that were set up for the whole village or the whole town, like the bells in the church, or the azaan in the mosque, or the bells, or bhajan in the temple.

Now these are all kind of corrupted, empty ritualistic practices. Nobody knows what they really mean.

So for a spiritual seeker, you need to set up your own private reminders. These reminders do invoke memory, but then the memory is a kind of stepping stone and you step into the present moment.

Ajay is saying, I try the ‘I am’ technique, but fails mostly in situations where ego is rigorously active.

No problem. Just like I say, if you scold ego, if you get irritated at ego or if you just feel guilty or you feel a sense of failure, remember that is again a mental activity. The mind is reacting to its own failure.

Remember this. Do not let the mind create another layer of darkness on top of what has already happened.

This non-doing is your mantra, being. The mind cannot fix the mind. It is again a mental activity. So now I just become aware, oh, this happened, awareness is back and we are back in peace instead of the usual activity of the mind, which is now finding another thing to react to, the ego took over and the awareness fell. We don't react to the slippage of awareness. Do not react to it. As soon as you become aware that, okay, the ego took over, which it will, because we live in a society, we live in a world where survival is the greatest priority. Do not underestimate survival. It is required and the ego will take over again and again till there is no need for it to do that. It will happen naturally. You can help it by becoming aware. There is no other way. You do not have any other freedom, remember, there is no freedom there in mind and ego and body. The only freedom you have is awareness.

Abiding as your true nature is not a mental activity, because the mind is in front of you as soon as you are aware. That is the only freedom we get in the survival business that we are having right now. So minimize everything, minimize your interactions, minimize your jobs, minimize your needs and

desires and anything unnecessary. You need to cut them down and you will find survival becomes easy now and the slippage is less and less. And once in a while, once in a week it slips. So what? This is not me, this is not my doing, this is not my mistake, you see. Do not take ownership of your actions, because that is again the karta bhava, the egoic activity, the identity creator, which is saying I am the doer. Do not do this. Let it slip, if it slips.

The awareness, if it comes back after slipping, like non-remembering, forgetting, then it is also okay. Because that remembering will erase whatever the actions that happened. This remembering will nullify the actions and consequences that were done during the periods of darkness. There is no time, remember. So while you are acting, being aware is the same as becoming aware of the action. They are erased from the causal body. You can experiment like this. I mean, this may look like a far-fetched and impossible thing, but you can check it. Do not worry about these things. It is like a child who is learning to walk. The child is trying to walk because the child has seen the adults walking. Child knows if I try, I can walk. He will fall down so many times. But if the child thinks that, oh, this is not my cup of tea, I cannot walk now, or I keep falling, I am so lousy and a failure, I am a loser, I cannot walk, I will just give up, I will just crawl, I will just cry here. That will be an unfortunate situation for the child. He will never learn to walk. You will find what the children do. They fall down, they cry a little bit, they start walking. They fall down, they get up, they start walking because they see that it is possible to walk without falling. So it takes a few months for them to learn these things, a few years probably, and then they are walking without support, without falling. We have all done this thing.

It is not only for walking, we need to train the mind for everything. You will fail a hundred times. So why worry? The process of training the mind is like this, that it learns by failing often. Why are you worried that forgetting happens? It will happen. It is natural. And look at the great masters, how intensified their awareness is. It is possible to transmit that awareness into other people. It is so intense because the mind is connected, you see. So this awareness is not localized, it is non-local, it is possible to do that. So when you see the people who are walking without falling, you should get inspired. I want to become like my guru. If you don't have a guru, check the great masters whose awareness is unmoved, no matter what. In sleep, dreaming, in death, same awareness, contents are changing but same awareness. So we are like children who are trying to walk, do not give up. And there is nothing really to do actually, keep remembering. And frequency will increase, probably now it is once or twice a day, it will become once or twice an hour and then once or twice a minute. And I don't think you need to do more than that, you see, it's a waste. So it will pick up from there. You will find that the mind likes to be in awareness.

Once you are in awareness, you don't want to go into darkness. The preference is formed in the mind without even doing anything. After eating sweets, you do not want to eat the plain stuff. The awareness is the sweetness in the mind. For a while you tasted the bitterness or the disgusting taste of being unaware. Now you don't like it. Once the mind has tasted the bliss, it will form its conditioning.

It will train itself. It is like hanging a carrot in front of a donkey. The mind is like a donkey. The bliss is like a carrot. Now Mother Nature takes care of it.

How aware are you now in your daily life?

I'm only aware for a few moments in the day, but working for more. I am aware in most of the waking state. There are some times when the mind is distracted and I used to react, my mind is out of control, I need to control it. I need to go and do something, a mantra or sit down for meditation. I used to react violently to my own failure, mind's failure, you can say. I stopped that. And now it's peaceful. Mistakes happened. No problem. We'll correct it. Something bad is happening outside. No problem. It keeps happening. So there is an acceptance here, a settling that has recently happened to me. It does not take time.

Once you taste the fruit of meditation, it wants to be there. That is fortunate for us. Do not think that bliss is something which will be an activity of the mind. No. And that is also my lesson this year, probably that I came to know bliss as a neutral background of awareness. That is much better. That is more delicious than the activity of the mind, which comes and goes. There is pleasure. There are different kinds of bliss, you can say, but let's not pollute this word Anand. Anand is neutral. Anand means no activity. So when the mind gets this kind of feeling of bliss, it will not let it go easily. Don't worry if you think that, oh, it is going to become another addiction. Remember, the addiction is of mental layers. There cannot be an addiction of awareness. And if it becomes an addiction, then it's a good thing. You need to be addicted to awareness.

Leyla is saying, there seems to be an internal struggle to get out of that state, I wonder if it is ego.

Yes. Initially, there will be a lot of pressure because of the pent up tendencies of the mind. It is like a locomotive, a thousand ton locomotive train, which has been going since many births now. How can it stop suddenly? Still it is amazing that we can stop it, like they say that one lamp is enough to dispel the darkness of a thousand years. One instance of awareness, one spark of light, all it takes to dispel this ignorance, to stop this locomotive. But yes, sometimes it has a momentum and that momentum will be seen as a backlash of the mind. The mind tries to take revenge. I'm just using a metaphor. You silenced me for five minutes, now I'm going to trouble you for five hours. What has happened is when you silence it, the pressure of the latent impressions grows and when you let it go, boom, everything comes out. No problem. You observe that too. It will happen initially, then the tendencies will decrease.

And if you want you can do something to let go of the tendencies. For example, you have some pent up anger, let us say, or you are not happy with your parents or your partners etc. And it has been going on for many years. Now, whenever you are in silence, the mind will get an opportunity to process these things. We should not blame the mind, it is a poor thing. It is doing whatever it is programmed to do. Minds do that. They will bring up the latent or the past to process, process like it wants to express it. It wants a closure on these things. Oh, that did not happen. I need to do something about it. I need to take revenge or I need to say bad things to the people who insulted me or who did something wrong to me. Or I am poor, I need to earn more money. It can be anything, it is mostly worldly things. Sometimes it can be a spiritual issue. I want this power. I want that power. I want to change the world. I want to become a great guru or something like this. It is all mind. So when these tendencies are there, they will tend to explode initially. You can forgive the wrongdoings of others so that whenever it comes up, you just say that it was my mistake or the situations were like this. He couldn't have done anything else, or they are just robots. They are ignorant people or even I am ignorant.

Accept. Do not try to force forgiveness. People do that. You see this last time I'm letting you go. No, that's not forgiving. You should be involved in forgiving, not the other. That is how the impressions will be cleared. If you do it two, three times, you will find that the pressure of the steam is less now.

So forgive, serve and donate. This is, this is the mantra.

You can do the purification work in the mind because it is trying to process the past. It is trying to process the negativity. It is trying to solve it. It is trying to untangle it. So you can help it by bringing it into awareness and then forgiving, doing a counter action which forms that impression. If you are interested, learn how to forgive, how to donate and how to serve. Just do not make it the mission of your life. That is not the goal of your life. That is not even a spiritual goal, according to me. Some people may disagree. Those who are on the path of action, Karmayoga, they may say, no, this is my mission. So yes, it's probably yours. But on the path of knowledge, no, it's not your mission. Your mission is to remain aware, learn. So these are the tricks. I call them acting without action. There are three articles on my blog which give you extreme detail on how to do this. Just don't make this mistake of doing this forever. If you are forgiving and donating and serving for more than a year or two, something is wrong. That means you're not doing it properly. It should end somewhere.

Sometimes you will find that your latent negativity or the impressions or the karmic residue will be expressed in the body, not only in the mind. And sometimes very rarely, it will express in the world because the world is also a layer of the mind. Strange things can happen. Some kind of sickness will come up, which no doctors can diagnose. It will be like a mishmash of many symptoms. You don't know what is happening. That is mind-created because you are practicing awareness. The purification has intensified and it is now leaking through other layers of the mind. Those who think the body has nothing to do with mind, please experiment like this. You will find the body is another layer of the mind, which is visible to the senses and therefore we call it “physical”. There's nothing physical in any of our experiences. It's all mind. And sometimes very rarely it will manifest in the behavior of others and in the physical situations, like something odd can happen. You are going somewhere and a tree will fall on the road and you don't know why it happened, only when I try to do something specific, strange events happen. Spiritual landscape is full of stories where the intensity of the mind was so great that it manifested events in the world. There is a technical word for this in Western parapsychology - It is called induced poltergeist activity. I cannot recall the exact word, but it is poltergeist activity, not by another mind, your own mind. So if there is extreme anger, like pent up anger from child abuse cases or something like that, the child gets some odd powers to harm others simply by thinking. But this is very, very rare. I'm just bringing it up so that those who are interested, like in metaphysical or paranormal, can investigate further, investigate the power of the mind. Do not underestimate it.

Let's go to the next question, which was by Manish - I would like to know, are the objects around us waves in Vishwachitta? Because if it is so, is their mind watching our mind? By waves, I mean Brahmananda or Schrödinger wave function.

Yes, objects are patterns of vibrations. They are waves. Waves of what? That is the obvious question, isn't it? We say that they are waves in the universal memory. And this memory constitutes the universal mind, which is what he means by Vishwachitta. Vishwa is the universe, Chitta is the mind. So remember, there is no individual mind. This individual mind is a kind of tiny image of the bigger mind. And remember, the universal mind and the individual human mind are not two. There are many layers upon layers, and bigger and bigger structures, which we have discussed in great length, if you are interested in the ontology. So there is a hierarchy of structures, bigger and bigger, and that extends to many physical universes, if you want to call them physical. So everything is made up of vibrations or changes in this memory.

Now you will ask me, what is this memory? And I have defined this universal memory as non-physical vibrations. They cannot be seen. You can roughly say the ether of the metaphysical kind, spiritual masters or philosophers that talk about an ether. We also talk about ether, like ethereal influences, ethereal body or etheric perception. Ether is just one layer above the physical, like we say, etheric sight, like seeing the aura. But I'm not talking about anything physical, or I'm not even talking about non-physical, because you can see the non-physical also, you can see your own memories, you can imagine things, and you can perceive the emotions, feelings, mental activity of the thoughts and everything that goes on in the mind, which is non-physical. So these are also vibrations, and what is causing them, that which is behind these experiences, these perceptions, objects are also perceptions, they are not really objects, they are mental in nature. So what is behind this is non-physical and imperceptible? It cannot be perceived in any way except in terms of qualities, and the mind creates these qualities to make sense of what is out there, but that thing itself, the memory or the changes of the memory cannot be seen as it is.

There is a word in Sanskrit, fortunately, it is called mahat. Mahat is short for mahatattva, which means the greatest substance out of which all the substances and all things are formed. Mahat comes from Sankhya philosophy and the philosophers of Sankhya have gone into extreme detail to explain how the mahat is formed into that which is manifested, that we can perceive through bodily senses and mental senses. So how does that happen, how do these vibrations of nothingness, actually there is nothing behind the vibrations, convert into objects/ physical phenomena? Forces of nature like heat, motion, electricity, nuclear forces, magnetism, how does mahat take these forms? Also they do not stop at physical, they also tell you how the mahat expresses as the navrasa, which is the nine emotions and other mental activities.

Those who are interested go and dig into the Sankhya philosophy, there are mathematical formulas actually, imagine this thousands and thousands of years ago, at least 10 to 15 thousand years ago, these philosophies arose in India or whatever land mass was there, you see, Gondwana land or whatever it is called, Jambudweep, it was not the present map, so it arose in this land and they had probably much better understanding of what reality is than us. We call ourselves advanced and civilized humans, no, we are just monkeys in front of those people who knew these things. I tried myself but unfortunately I do not understand those things, so if you guys understand it beyond just superficial, then please write it down, spread the word and send me the link, record it, make a video or something, start a channel, don't let this great knowledge die out in this madness that you see around us. Stupidity is all around us, let's not be lazy, just throw it out there, somebody will pick up. I did that, in my Hindi series, I have gone into a hair splitting detail of Brahmanad, which is the same as Mahat, Brahmanad is the Vedic term, Mahat is the Sankhya term.

So how does Brahmanad manifest into objects? Everything we can perceive and know is a wave, is a vibration, like the Hermetic philosophy also says, everything is vibration and everything is mind. You can take it one step further and say that it is Mahat, the metaphysical substance, which is getting modulated and it is actually nothingness, from the point of view of the mind itself. It cannot know it as a non-object, so it says nothing, because you see, that is where it stops. Like when you are reading a book, you cannot see the page, because the page is blank, isn't it? Especially if the page is infinite and writing is tiny, you will never see it, so this is how Mahat is, it appears as not existing and so the scientists kind of threw it away. I cannot measure it, well all your measurements and instruments are manifestations of Mahat, how can you measure it? It's like blind men trying to define the elephant by checking its parts, so I stop at mahat because I cannot find a better word than that and then I translated the mahat as universal mind, it is a memory of some kind.

The vibrations have a very good quality of taking on impressions from other vibrations, that is how the memory is formed. Memory is very fundamental, we think that memory is - I can remember some things, some events, some numbers or some books, or who looks like what, and what happened on this day, on my birthday and all. These are your survival memories, these are your egoic memories, the actual memory is universal. Memories are not stored in the brain, actually that is incorrect, memories are stored in every layer of the mind, including the physical, the body, the egoic layers, the lower layers, the higher layers, intellectual layers and the causal layer. The causal body is nothing but a latent memory.

Whatever we see around - the objects, they are patterns in memory, memory of the universal mind. If you can say the universal mind is nothing but me, you are most welcome, yes, it is nothing but you, so it is your memory only, you are observing yourself. These trees, these mountains, these planets, galaxies are in your memory, they are patterns in your memory and they are not static because it has to be dynamic. No change means nothing will be registered because if nothing changes it cannot be registered by the senses, it will not produce this wave of change and it will end up as being not detected. It does not change and so cannot be detected, but it is there. We cannot see it using our ordinary instruments or ordinary senses. You need the spiritual sight to see it and then you will see that everything is vibrations. It can manifest as this clear seeing and it is amazing. It is amazing because there is nothing substantial there, it is all only changes and the changes that are within the bandwidth of our senses, meaning, senses can react to these, only those changes are perceived.

At this time our attention is here on the waking state, that means on the senses, and nothing else is being allowed, so our current experience is a very narrow experience of these changes which are reacting to the senses, everything is right now right here. The whole universal mind is here, we are

sitting in it, the matrix is around you, but we are prevented from seeing the whole of it because it will be too much. We won't be able to make sense of it, so we just get one slice, one tiny slice of it, we get it through the senses. Yes everything is vibrations, patterns of vibrations, the vibrations are not happening in anything. You can call it mahat, mahatattva or ether or universal mind or the memory of metaphysical entity or whatever, but it is me, everything is me ultimately.

The consciousness is being modulated as sequences of events, if you want to say it like that. The consciousness is like a full movie reel, and the mind is like the projector that presents one frame at a time, 24 frames per second. Because the whole movie, if it is projected, well, it will be just black screen. We do not have the ability to see it as a whole. But interestingly, this awareness, this span of attention can be expanded, that is what a siddha is trying to do, a tantric or a yogi is trying to do, he is trying to extend the attention into things which cannot be seen using the senses, and this is your spiritual evolution. So as the attention widens, I am not saying sharpens, it widens, it takes on a bigger dimension, you will find that things that are not in your perception right now, whether it is physical or non-physical, they will start coming in your perception, this is spiritual evolution for you.

You will say that oh, I am achieving powers, I am achieving siddhis, but remember, you are already that, they are simply coming into view now. For example, I can read your mind, that means the sense of reading my own mind has extended a little bit, the circumference has grown a little bit, so whoever comes in my contact and stays with me for a week or something, well, I can know what is happening there and it looks like it is happening in my mind. If that person is sad or depressed then I am going to feel sad and depressed, and newcomers can make this mistake that oh, I am sad and depressed because the identification is still there with the mind, and there is no way to know whose mind is sad and depressed there. Such people are called empaths. They know what is happening in others, and that is probably the first siddhi that you will get. I can see glimpses of it actually, but I cannot claim that I can read everybody's mind. It needs to be a really disturbed mind to form an impression on my mind and if I cannot find a reason why I am feeling the disturbance, then I simply assume it is coming from somebody else. You can call it a kind of delusion or active imagination, fertile imagination, but you will need to experience that to know what I am saying. And that is how your guru knows what is in your mind. The guru has advanced, the guru has widened his attention.

Emotions have probably the biggest impact on other minds. If you think of a number or a symbol, probably I will never know it, probably not now, but when you are trapped in very intense emotions, then this mind here will get disturbed as well, without you communicating or expressing through your body or any other way. Sometimes the emotions leak from the body on a subconscious level and the mind can pick it up. Those who are sensitive, they will pick up even movement of your finger or blink of your eye, they are so sensitive. Those who are not sensitive, even if you tell them in writing on a stamp paper, they won't understand you, so just different levels of evolution of the mind, just that.

These five elements that we hear of they are not elements, some people will say okay the periodic table has taken over now and these five elements are kind of primitive, but no, the five elements are

successive layers of subtleness of the mahatattva. Reinterpret it. I mean, they were not stupid people, they knew what an element is. In the Sankhya philosophy you can create any element you want by combining gunas in proper proportion. Probably they did that, who knows, I cannot claim that, but you can produce elements from thin air if you want. You can produce solid things. Now that is too much to claim, but knowledge brings you power. So the five elements that we hear, the akash tattva is something similar as mahat and the vayu, agni, they are now denser and denser forms of the mahat, till the bhoomi, what is the earth element, which is the densest form. Don't think that the periodic table can replace it, no, the periodic table is a refinement of the earth form, that's all. The earth form comes in many many sub forms, so many kinds of elements are there. I can go on and on like this, but I encourage everybody to see, it is fascinating, do not lose sight of your spiritual goal, I mean these are kind of good utilization of your time, but you know what I mean.

Anil is saying, I never understood why so much significance on symbolism instead of proper forms of communication like you personally try to do with your experiences, too much scope of misinterpretations.

Anil, you are right. What has happened is, it was not that nobody talked about it in clear words, it is not like this, but where are those words? Words cannot be preserved, how much can you write? I think they wrote down a lot, but anything that was understood by the dark forces, you can say, was totally destroyed, it was wiped out. They could not understand the symbolism or they could not destroy all the temples which were symbolic, and they thought all these primitive people, these slaves, are worshipping their gods, let them do it. It was a tedious job for them, they were happy with the gold and diamonds, whatever they could take from here, so these things were left and now we are left with cryptic, symbolic and almost incomprehensible knowledge.

Now it is our job to bring it back, you can bring it back simply by connecting back to the Gurufield. Don't think that I have this life long job of decoding the symbols, no, it takes only one day sometimes. Connect to the proper layer in the universal mind, then the symbols will speak to you, even the Vedic stuff is encrypted, the Upanishadic is very clear, but who knows, there are things. Things like Vijnan, Bhairava Tantra, Surya Sahinta, all these remaining ancient books which number in thousands, and even the Buddhist literature is full of knowledge, we do not understand it because we are ignorant. It is not that people never talked about this knowledge in clear words, but while recording they were recorded in encrypted and symbolic form. So many of our scriptures are very clear like Bhagavad Gita etc., but others are encoded. Especially when they saw that this knowledge can be misused in the dark period that is going to come, they were hidden, probably they were never even written, they are now passed down through the generations, like from guru to student and they are under an oath of secrecy. Once the consciousness clears up on this planet, the knowledge will be back, but that should not stop us from getting the knowledge, I tried and I got it.

I don't claim that I have everything, but I got the fundamentals like what is this world, what is this body, what is this mind, this is the knowledge of the Maya, but it is important. It is also Brahman, so we want to know it because we are on the path of knowledge, we have this curiosity. So you need to connect to the Gurufield. Once you are in connection with your source, then there is no chance of misinterpretation because it won't match with your experience. Yes there are some chances of error, but that should not discourage you from getting that knowledge. It is all mind, it is all changing forms of consciousness, which is me, I am appearing as many things. It is a great discovery that will cause a shockwave on this planet, but so far this has not happened in our time. Once we know that everything is just moving energy, like Nikola Tesla used to say, think of everything as vibrations and energy and you will know everything. Tesla is called the greatest genius in the history of science. I see Tesla as a Siddha Purush, as a Yogi, he was gifted. Check what he has done, he has changed the whole world. Without Tesla there won't be the modern age that we are in, a tiny part of that knowledge that arrived through Tesla and others changed the world. Now imagine if all of it is brought back, what will happen. People wonder how the Kailash temple was built, how the pyramids were built, but I am not amazed anymore, I know how they were built. That is not using today's technology or even the primitive technology like chisels, wood and stones, by half naked people, slaves, that is what we are told. That is a stupid idea.

It is all a changing field of consciousness which has taken form. That is the essence of Tantric knowledge, the Tantric is trying to gain control over all forms of Mahat using his powers, using his ability, that is the path of Tantra. We are doing so by knowledge and ultimately the knowledge is liberating. It will cause a detachment with what is not, what appears. You will see, oh it appears, I can manifest an elephant or a dinosaur or a temple made of gold, a whole building made of gold out of nothing and this causes detachment. But don't worry, it is not going to happen here, it will happen when we progress beyond the physical. So our current goal is not to have this kind of power or not to have the total knowledge of creation, it will come. Our current goal is to just get one step above the trap that we are in. We are trapped in a very narrow, very limited and very dark place called the physical world. What is keeping us trapped are our desires - to do this, to do that, to have this, to have that. Why are there desires, because we think that they are my desires and must be fulfilled. This is a trap, see it. Once you distance yourself from this activity of the mind, which is kind of mechanical, do only that which is most necessary, do only that which you like and gives you happiness and brings knowledge, do not give up your practices, then you will progress out of this dark pit of ignorance. You will get a good birth in a good world, in a good body which is more conducive for the knowledge which was once here. That is our immediate goal right now- to rise above human birth.

Start counting your days here, I mean literally count your days, do not be satisfied by human birth, do not say oh I am okay, I am fine, I am happy, I have everything that I need, and I also have the essential knowledge and all. Well that is the first step, you see. You have taken care of the survival, now you have the knowledge, you have Atmagyan, you have self-realization, now is the time to bring out the mind from the darkness. It will happen to every mind, it is like bubbles coming out of boiling pot, they rise above and then disappear into air, we will rise above and will disappear into the Mahat, the universal mind. Do not try to make logical sense out of it, our minds do not know what this process of evolution of the mind is. It is the flow, so go with the flow, you will know.

Manish is saying - energy itself is moving space, it is just a change in space.

Energy is not fundamental, the basis of energy is change, change is more fundamental than energy. It is actually pure charged space, changing, flowing, that is fire energy. Change in charged space appears as fire energy to mind. Change is more fundamental. What is change? It is vibrations of the mind, mind is even more fundamental, so everything is mind. Now people can ask why is there change? Well there is change and there is not change, both are there, remember this is an infinite thing, it has all the possibilities, ‘not change’ is also there, which cannot be perceived, not manifested yet. And change is also there, because why not, I am infinite, my potential is infinite, omnipotent, so there will be everything, every quantity of everything, not only that. It is multi-dimensional, every form of everything, there is everything here, and it is all in the form of memory, patterns in the memory, and so when there is change, it interacts with other changes. For example the senses or the mind, the sensory organs in the mind, that is the only thing that is seen. That which is changing is the only thing that is seen, and we call it manifested. That which is not changing cannot be seen, cannot be detected, it does not make an impression on the memory. Why do I call this Mahat as memory, because it has this very interesting property of impressing its change on other parts of itself, that is what we call as memory, like impressing your hand on wet sand, you leave an impression there. If the sand is dry, nothing is impressed, or if it changes too quickly, well nothing is there to see. Such things are not manifested, they are not seen, it does not appear as energy, motion, or light, or objects, or taste, smell etc., nothing is perceived. We say that is unmanifested Brahman. The fundamental thing is mind, changes in the memory, when they happen, they are perceived as manifestation. Is it the mind that is seeing the mind? No, the mind is activity of the mind, the mind is memory only, the mind is a changing pattern or change only. That which is perceiving it is you, pure consciousness it knows only that which is presented by the mind.

I keep refining these things, you see, in coming videos or audios or articles or books, probably I will include more. Knowledge is kept alive like this. We discover things, actually we never create anything new. It is called a discovery, because we uncover, dis-cover, what is already there. Don't even think that I am inventing anything new, no, this knowledge is already here, we simply uncover it. That's why the great sages were reluctant to put their name on it, like nowadays, I discovered this, I discovered that, give me the prize, give me the money, I have the patent on this. Well in India people never did anything like this, you don't even know the names of people who wrote the great texts, because they came to know. The fundamental knowledge was there, that I am nothing, the person does not exist, so you won't even find names on it. I have the same tendency, I do not mention it, I do not own any knowledge that I am giving out, it is not my knowledge, it is the same thing which keeps appearing, you can call it the Vedic knowledge, you can call it ancient knowledge or Mayan knowledge. Well these are just places where it happened, but ultimately it is only one field of knowledge, which I also call the Gurufield. We are in the Gurufield right now, just connect to it, you will know all these things.

Everyone may be using a different kind of terminology. Probably I use scientific terms, a philosopher uses something else, and quantum mechanics is going to use something else totally. Like he mentioned, Schrödinger equation, so what is Schrödinger equation? It is just a mathematical form of expressing the potentiality of the change, like everything has a potential to express at any place, any time, the equation simply says this in symbolic form. Mathematics is nothing but a language of logic. Mathematics is not merely numbers, that is only arithmetic. The Schrödinger equation actually describes a field. Take the Schrödinger equation of the universe and you arrive at mahat, exactly the same thing, and that is why when you dig into the matter, you will find absolutely zero matter, there is only possibility of anything being there, if it is not being observed, if a measurement is not being done. Who does the measurement? A sense, sensors. If it is not sensed and presented to consciousness, it does not actually exist, which is ancient knowledge. It is ancient knowledge, nothing was discovered by Schrödinger or all the great minds in the scientific field, the same thing is being discovered and rediscovered again and again. I have collected some quotes of scientists who were fathers of quantum mechanics, such as Schrödinger, Niels Bohr or Pauli, and what do you find, they speak like a guru. They sound like Advaita and many people will say, like Schrodinger said, I always went back to Upanishads to get my inspiration, because you see, it is already done. Everything is already discovered. All knowledge is already here, you need to simply connect to it, you need to simply grab it.

Manish is saying- it is the Garbhodaka Samudra, all waves in one ocean, Schrodinger equations give probability of a certain wave form, Brahmanad, that will manifest and will be found by the mind.

Exactly, when it was discovered that the study of matter leads to mind, well, there was a havoc in the materialist domain and it happened 100 years ago. Since then people are trying to suppress it, people are trying to explain it away. Whenever you are taught about matter in schools, you are shown an atom, like a ball, surrounded by other balls that are electrons, then when you go in the university, you are shown the same nucleus, the wave function of the nucleus and then surrounded by the wave function of the electrons. Well, why is this? Why don't you simply say - there is nothing there? The world is not made up of atoms. Why not say it? Why is this kind of ignorance being perpetuated when it is already known? East, West, North, South, everywhere. When you get this kind of knowledge, there is no limit to the kind of technology that can be developed from this, we will stop burning this oil and damaging the environment and abusing the body and so on. So probably in the commercial interest and political interest are at work and they do not want this knowledge to reach people. Probably it is just ignorance, widespread ignorance. As if the teachers are told - you draw the diagram of the atom like this, tell the student that everything is made up of matter, do not even mention the Brahmanad, do not even mention the vibrations of hermetic philosophy, else we will cut your throat. This has been going on for many, many generations now. I don't think people who make the syllabus in schools or universities even know one word of science.

All they want is rockets, bombs, miracle medicines, so they can earn money. It is all survival nowadays. Science is nothing but survival, a business. We stopped doing science 100 years ago, according to me, mankind stopped at the Schrödinger equation. It is amazing, after that all that happened is application of that knowledge, which was gained around from 1850 to 1950, a short period of time, gained by a handful of people, we are still applying that, we have not finished. You can see, the tiny bit is so much, imagine if all these things are uncovered, the hidden things, it will change everything. So, anyway, spiritual knowledge is about self-discovery, so, first thing comes first, discover what you are, and then, in the remaining time, do the kalyanam. The good work that all scientists did, the great people in the past, all the rishis did that, all the buddhas and bodhisattvas are doing that. We are not erased, only the body is gone, body is like a use and throw thing, it is there for a time being, it is manifestation of the causal body. Once that is purified, you will know, and then you will know how to bring this knowledge back, it is possible to do that. We all have this seed now, it cannot be uprooted, this is the way the knowledge is preserved, in forms of seekers of knowledge.

Session 29

Manish is saying, can you say something about Vedic timekeeping as against Gregorian?

Well to be frank I have no detailed knowledge of how the ancient people kept time exactly. But I have a very good overview of what the differences between the current kind of calendars and watches, and

clocks that we are using, and the instruments and everything that the ancient people employed. So the basic difference between the Vedic and any other system of time is that the ancient people always thought time as cyclic instead of as linear, they had a very good notion that the time is apparent only. There is no real time, it is a part of Maya. It is an illusion created by the mind. They had this very clear understanding. So time is just a measure of changes that are happening around us. Some changes are happening regularly and so we can use those changes to measure what other changes are happening which are not so regular. We can add a timestamp on that. So that is how the calendars

were born and the ancient calendars were probably more precise than what we use today in our so-called modern society.

We have a very inaccurate calendar and that calendar is based on our day-to-day needs. The calendar that we use nowadays is based on our survival only. That is why it is a solar calendar. The old calendar that was used is a lunar calendar which is more accurate. So the Vedic people and civilization had bigger ranges of time that ranged from a few microseconds to probably bigger than the age of the universe. They had the knowledge of bigger cycles than we know of. Ordinary people only know of the solar cycles that's all. There is a 365 day cycle that the earth goes through and they organize their activities around that cycle. But the Vedic people had knowledge of many more cycles, the bigger cycles and they had a good understanding of how these cycles affect our lives, and not only they managed their daily lives according to those bigger cycles, they managed their entire Jaivik lives also. By Jaivik life I mean the incarnations of the Jeeva. They had the clear understanding of times in the future, an incarnation, for example, or they had an understanding that the same Jeeva was incarnated in some other cycle in the past. So you can guess now that the view of the time was huge. It was not like this narrow view that we have nowadays.

The view that we have nowadays is totally materialistic and geared towards survival. The calendars are not being used as a spiritual tool but as a ruling tool. That means the rulers enforce their calendars in order to keep people in control. That is the only purpose of enforcing a calendar on the people, especially the westerners enforced on other cultures their own calendar, and that is because they wanted to keep people under control. They did not want them to know anything except something beyond let us say past 2000 years and a few years in future. That's all. That's why there is no bigger cycle in the western calendars. Even the nakshatras and all those things are not mentioned. So these things were pushed back into the domain of superstition. For example the calendars do not show the position of the sun in constellations now. We have just the earth spinning and it goes linearly, the year increases linearly without taking into account any of the greater cycles of the sun or of the galaxy also. This was not the case in the past. Even other cultures like the Mayan culture had a bigger understanding of the cycles than we have currently.

On the smaller end our clocks show only up to a second. That's all a common man is aware of and probably we do not need a smaller unit than that, but the Vedic culture had smaller units and had their own terminology for it, which you can dig out from the internet if you are interested. But it went to milliseconds and microseconds. So now we can ask why did they need to keep such an accurate time? Why was this accuracy needed? Actually we have degraded our system by adopting an inferior calendar. Now because we cannot see beyond these yearly cycles we do not have a view of the greater cycles. So they needed a precise clock and a precise calendar so that they could keep track of the movements of planets, movements of suns and moons and all those things so that they could predict correctly. And that brings us into astrology which was a very advanced science. Now it is just a business. We have talked about astrology a lot, they were interested in knowing things from a spiritual point of view. They did not want to know what the price of gold would be in the future, for example. That was not the primary motivation for such accurate timekeeping. They wanted to know what will happen to this causal body, how it is progressing, what important spiritual events are going to happen in future, how this human life will progress, and all they wanted to see is that everything is going as per the plan of liberation. That is what was probably their motivation.

So as I said I do not have details about how this was done or what instruments were used or the exact system, exact calendar that was employed, but my broad understanding is that it was based on the bigger picture. It was based on the spiritual understanding, not only on a narrow materialistic view which is based on the rotation of the earth or rotation of the mechanical devices. They had ways to train their mind, ways to install a clock in the mind which was tremendously more accurate than any physical clocks here, and that is how they could measure even the smallest amount of time. Now it sounds like fiction but this is how we understand the Vedic culture.

The concept of Yuga or eons arose in the Vedic age and it is interesting because this is not a repetition of dates only, it is a repetition also of events, and the general atmosphere in the human population or maybe also in the cycles of the planet also. They saw time as a repetition. Obviously it is a repetition and they never thought of it as a linear thing which started at some time, and then goes on and on forever. They have seen the changes that happen as cycles. So many cycles were discovered, the biggest cycle is probably of the pralay or the mahapralay which are the cycles of destruction and creation. They even went to that extent. So you can imagine that it is not possible to count these cycles using ordinary instruments. The instruments do not last more than 10 years or 20 years or probably you can even say that they will not last beyond 100 years if you make a very accurate instrument. They need updating and all so they relied not on physical things but on their minds. Time was kept in the mind and it was known by the mind. It was known by advancing spiritually so that they can arrange their time of birth or even time of death, time if next life. So people who progressed beyond human birth could now take birth at proper time. And obviously they cannot look at a clock and say oh this is my time to take another birth, there was a clock in their mind, they could see what is the proper time. “Is it going to be a favorable situation on the planet, this physical domain, to take birth? Or should I wait?”

You see that was the purpose, that was the main motivation to manage the greater life according to the cyclic nature of the time. The goal was to free oneself from the cycles of the time. Obviously that was the whole game there because when you are in the time, you are bound by the births and deaths. When you are in the timeless, you are not bound by it. It was an effort to control the time itself by knowing the time, and that is why a very complicated system of the time was developed by the ancient people.

You're not in the physical universe, how can you measure time here when you are not here, when you are disembodied or when you are in a form of the causal body? Because if the causal body does not take a birth it cannot do much. It is just lying there in the latent form. It is just a seed, so when it takes form then the time begins. So how is it possible that one could count the time while being in the causal form? Thus it points to a very advanced mind here, it shows us that something more is going on in the domain of time, not only the physical movements of planets and stars. That is not the only thing that is going on, in fact we have a very inverted picture of what is time. These clocks and these motions of the planet, earth or sun, are actually consequences of events that happen in the greater mind. By greater mind I mean this part of the universal mind where the physical universes are. It is being governed by a greater clock. As we know everything is vibration, that means a repetition, and when these vibrations are arranged in a particular fashion, they pile up, which means the vibrations combine with each other to produce cycles. So it can become really long, it can go on and on, and in earth's terms it can go on for billions of years. The greater mind probably has countless years which we won't understand. The consequence of those cycles that happen in the greater mind is seen in the physical domain. The effect is seen here, the actual changes are happening in the non-physical actually. We have lost this kind of knowledge. We do not have that kind of detailed measurement of the non-physical changes now, or at that scale of billions of years, and from one cycle of destruction to the other cycle of destruction. We do not have this kind of bigger picture now. When you progress spiritually you will get access to this knowledge, you will get access to the non-physical time, which is cyclic. Things repeat sometimes, things can repeat exactly sometimes, they don't repeat precisely and you come to know what is going to happen, what will be the state of this planet or the human society at a particular non-physical time, and that is how you enter a birth. As soon as you enter a birth the physical time takes over, which is a consequence of the non-physical time.

I hope I’m making a little bit of sense here because this is not really my subject. I usually dismiss the time as an illusion and abide in the timeless. That is the teaching, probably that is the only teaching that you need about time, that our essential nature is timelessness. We have nothing to do with time actually, the manifestation, concepts of different times, non-physical time etc. and frankly I cannot see the non-physical time. I have a little bit of experience in dimensions which do not have physical time, and it appeared to me as if time goes independently there. If you are out of the physical world for five minutes, it can feel as if 50 years have passed in the non-physical world. Now how can you even relate this thing to the physical? Is there a mathematical conversion or something? So ancient people found it out, they found out the connection actually, that is how they could predict things. Now at least I do not have this kind of calculation. I don't have knowledge of this kind of mathematics. Hopefully somebody knows how to do this and it totally depends on which dimensions you travel to, and the time really becomes very weird till you are at the highest, where there is no time, and all time is at the same time. It is eternal now.

Time is not absolute. We were kind of brainwashed into thinking that there is only one time which is now, which is this one. Our clocks actually show an illusory time. It is not connected to even the greater mind, so we have completely lost the connection. The old calendars had a little bit of connection there, and they were not made by kings or the ruling class, they were made by spiritual masters who had this kind of greater insight. They mapped the greater non-physical times onto the physical times, and we wonder how they could do it. Why is the Mayan calendar so accurate? Or how can they take the galaxies into account while calculating time? Why did they need such a big calendar which spans millions of years, and that is because the people who made that calendar were much more evolved than the current humans. They needed that thing, that's why they invented it and utilized it. The physical time is an effect, a consequence of the non-physical. There is a precise mathematical relation between these times that depends on how far away you are from the timelessness, and they had this understanding. That is why the calendar matches even after thousands of years, it matches precisely with what is going on right now, and that is not possible simply by pointing a telescope here and there. That is an impossibility. It is possible to know all these things only by advancing spiritually and the advancement is of the causal body.

So that is my understanding of the time, which you can see is just puzzles. I cannot even throw light on it except using my tiny experiences of seeing the changes as circular. They are not linear at all. Seeing the time as relative, an illusion, and seeing that there is a proper rule that binds the physical to the non-physical, they are not independent. It may look like that time here is going on randomly, because the planets are rotating according to the physical laws and then it breaks down in the non-physical. Well, there is a relation - our times and changes that happen here are consequences of the greater changes that happen in the greater mind. I am not even going to talk about the universal mind. It is a completely different thing and we don't even have a place to stand and look at the universal mind. We can look into the greater mind only. The greater mind is a small part of the universal mind. There are many greater minds and they operate on the principle of vibrations, that means a cyclic time, and since ultimately it is a timeless existence, everything is deterministic. Everything is completely and totally determined by these cycles. There can be smaller events which may look like they are not determined from the human point of view, but they are determined by a dimension that is higher than this dimension. You can speculate like this. I cannot provide you the proof of it. Some events happen on this physical plane, for example, which do look like they are non-deterministic. It looks like I did it using my free will, or they are random acts. It looks like that this shouldn't have happened and all, but their cause lies beyond physical. They are determined by cycles and events that happen in other higher dimensions. So you can speculate like this. When you move to a lower dimension, it may seem that events are happening randomly here. But no, they are governed by some other cycles. So there are cycles upon cycles upon cycles.

Manish is saying, because it is a circular motion, so a point near the center will move slow as a point on the same radial line but more distance from the center, it will move fast.

When we are at the center it looks almost stationary. We are actually in the center, we exist in all dimensions at the same time. It is not obvious but that is how it is. We may not be paying attention to what is happening up there, because our attention is concentrated on the physical, but the whole existence is right here right now. As you move towards the center, everything becomes less and less governed by time, but as we move further it becomes hardcoded, because it is being governed by so many more events that are happening up there.

Manish is saying, as sthool is farthest from center, hence in fastest time, it is not random and time slows down in fixed fractions. As we move up in dimensions, one day of Brahma, is equal to some 32 million human years.

Thank you very much for that information, you see they managed to calculate the relations of different planes of existence. This was the overall understanding of the vedic period. The people who lived in that age, their understanding of time was great compared to the understanding that we have right now. Even the finest measurements of time in science are very crude compared to those of ancient people who understood the mind, and they had a totally different understanding of reality, which was broader, which was greater. They could manage things much better in human life in the physical domain because of this greater understanding. That is why they could evolve faster. They have left the human lives and physical domain forever. It is our job now to rediscover this, find out the cycles. How the jeeva is governed by these cycles and liberate it from this mechanical existence, rise above the cyclic nature of the time.

On the path of knowledge we take a shortcut and we go to the center first, we see that the center is timeless, there is no time there, you can discover it right now if you want, that the time appears only for that which changes. For that which is not changing there is no time, that is your center. If you have an experience of the causal body it will appear as if it is changing very slowly, probably it changes a bit in a few thousand years. There are cycles that last for a few thousand years, and as you go down, there will be faster and faster changes, like this body, it changes every day.

So this is how you can start researching. By starting from the timeless and then descending into the time where everything becomes more and more mechanical. Spiritual evolution is the opposite of that. It is ascending from a totally deterministic mechanical kind of existence to a totally aware and free kind of existence. So there will be milestones on your path which will show you that you are truly independent of the time. As long as the jeeva is trapped in these cycles, it is not free. And the whole purpose of calculating the times so accurately, preparing calendars that extend for many thousand years, was simply to bring the jeeva out of a fully deterministic cyclic existence. It was a tool for spiritual evolution. Even the calendar and time were made a tool for spiritual evolution.

Nowadays, it is a mixture of religion, culture, tradition, astrology and so on. When we go out of the house or do something important, we check the calendar, whether the muhurat is good or not,

whether the planets are aligned perfectly or not. But do things happen simply because we believe? No they do not. It takes knowledge, and knowledge requires a certain degree of spiritual achievement. Without that you cannot conduct your human affairs meaningfully. There is a little bit of advantage in using mathematics because, just like he said, people worked out the mathematics of it, but since each individual is unique, the causal body is unique for each individual, the jeeva is a very specialized thing, you will need to do it yourself, you will need to calculate your panchang yourself. Yes you can derive a gross panchang or a calendar of your life, for example from your date of birth, and time of birth because it is fixed. You can derive major events of your life from this data point, but since it is dynamic, you do not know what is causing changes in the causal body itself.

This physical plane is not so simple. It actually becomes simpler when you go towards the center, but this plane is a total chaos. To keep track of things here you will need your own spiritual understanding. Mathematics can help a little bit, the calendars can help a bit, this is the proper day for me okay, this planet is the ruling planet that means that the planet is determining your life. There is a correlation between the motion of that planet and affairs of your life and so on. That understanding can be of a little help, but there are more subtle things that are happening in the causal body that involve a greater understanding of the higher dimensions of the spiritual planes. So once you get that, you will find that life comes under your control. Those who are spiritually evolved and the gurus could know precisely what is going to happen in their life. How is it even possible? Because these events are being determined by events in other dimensions. They have correlates in the physical. For example if some event is going to happen in your life, it will be correlated with some greater event in the universe like positions of the stars and planets. Just by looking at those positions they could say that this will be the year when I'm going to die. This will be the precise date, and and so they made preparations, they conducted their life according to that. The only purpose was to know whether I'm finishing my karmic balance correctly or not, whether I'm getting distracted in my life here, whether I'm being attached to unnecessary karmic bonds. I shouldn't have married here, or I shouldn't have taken a job here, and this understanding comes by understanding of the causal body, and the higher planes. There is a little bit of assistance that can be given by astrology, which is I don't really trust these days, it is all corrupted, it is a money-making scheme actually, but if you are interested you can go and read about these things.

There are more ways to find out what is happening up in the higher dimensions by checking the effects in the lower dimension. For example our own bodies are a consequence of the cycles that happen in the higher dimensions, and so you have pointers in your body. There are marks on your body, the shape of the body, the shape of the face, forehead, and lines on your hands are a consequence of what happened in the causal body. Now you can slightly predict what is going to happen in your life, but I don't think anybody can do that. It takes a little bit of spiritual understanding, it takes a connection to the causal body. It takes an understanding of the non-physical time. Even if you employ the most accurate clock in the universe, in the physical universe, it's not going to be of any help unless you understand the non-physical time. How events in the higher planes govern events in the lower planes, if you get that kind of understanding, this life will become a breeze. You are not going to waste this life in unproductive activities or you will not at least fall down, that will be ensured. That is the whole purpose of knowledge of time.

This is a science which evolved out of a spiritual need to progress, a need to liberate oneself from

the cyclic time. Not only there are cataclysmic cycles on the physical plane - the planets arise and they are destroyed, the stars are born and the stars die. It is very precise actually, it is precise just like seasons and they are a consequence of the higher cycles that run in the higher dimensions. This knowledge was encoded in symbolic form, now we have some scriptures also and there are some discrepancies in various scriptures, but you get the bigger picture that they had a very clear understanding of time in all dimensions. Not like the current so-called modern society where there is a very stupid interpretation of time. You can have a broader understanding even if I cannot provide you the details actually.

A cycle is just a cycle. When it is according to our wish we call it creation because I’m getting

something and when it is not according to our stored preferences in the mind, we call it destruction because now I'm losing something. But no, it is not gaining and it is not losing. It is just a cycle. Without the cycle, there cannot be change, without the change, there cannot be an experience. In order to have experiences, we must have cycles and with this understanding comes acceptance of what is happening.

There is no destruction and no creation. The consequence of this knowledge is detachment from what is happening here. Remember - your birth, you did not gain anything. Your death, you did not lose anything. It was the start of an experience, the end of an experience. Do not worry, the experience continues because the cycle continues. The cycles never end. If it were linear then you would worry what now? Everything is going to be destroyed, and now this is a recipe for suffering. What is the meaning of my life? Everything is being destroyed. Don't worry, there is no meaning even if everything is kept as it is. What does it mean then if nothing is changing, if there are no cycles, what is the meaning of life then? There's no meaning then also, you see, do not try to connect the meaning with the cycles of the time, it is illogical. There are questions like what is the meaning of life? I'm going to die anyway, so let me just waste my life in some kind of idiotic thing. Well, the meaning is what we give to this cyclic existence. It is not given to you, we have to give a meaning to it. If it is a linear existence that starts at one point and ends at one point, no problem. There is still no meaning. You will need to give a meaning to it, do not hope for a meaning which will come from outside, no.

It is a cyclic play, there are few choices that we have here, and you see they are not really choices, but let's pretend that there are choices. There is one choice - to remain in the cyclic time, do the same thing over and over like a tree does, when the season comes it grows leaves, when the season comes it grows flower, and when the season happens it grows fruits, and then everything falls back, and it becomes dead like dry tree, and then everything repeats. What is the meaning of this kind of existence? You will see it's actually meaningless. But you have a choice to remain in this cyclic existence, nobody is telling you not to do meaningless things. Simply because it is meaningless does not mean we should not do it, we can do it, we have the choice.

There is another option that you have, in the context of cyclic time, that is to free yourself from cycles and just like we discussed - go towards the center, which you really are, right now right here actually, nothing is taken out of the center, it is all appearance. So all you need to do is give up the notion that I am that which is appearing, and then you proceed towards the center. At the center there is no time. You are timeless, you are eternal, there are obviously no cycles of births and there you don't need to maintain a calendar also. No need to check up on panchang, that is the advantage you see, and nothing to do, so that is the one which is ultimately going to happen. That's why I said jokingly that it's a choice, it's not a choice actually, it's going to happen.

So ultimately everything that is time bound will be freed from the time, and new cycles start, that is again a cycle. Now what can you do? It's fixed that this will be the way, so that is another choice, that we have to become timeless right now right here. And let that which appears appear. It's not my doing, it is just cycles, it has happened so many times, now there is no meaning in it, so let it be. There is a third choice which many people would like to take, because we are humans, we have this kind of curious mind, and that is to progressively go towards the timeless. While evolving through time, we descend in time and then we ascend. This is again a cycle because nothing can be there except a cycle. This was the understanding of ancient times actually, it is not made up by me. This jeeva which you think is bound here, there was a time when it was not bound and then it descended into time, and it collected experiences.

What is experience? Without time there cannot be experience, without change it cannot be experienced, so it has collected all these experiences and then it ascends back in the ascending cycle. So it's ascension. Ascending/descending is also cyclic. We think that I need to do it only once and then I'm done, but there is a third choice there, that you can keep doing it. That is what probably is the most popular choice out there. Nobody wants to be trapped in the bottom most layers, or outermost layers, however you want to show them in the diagrams. That is kind of a very poor choice I think, to be bound in one kind of existence and repeat, repeat, repeat. What we want to do is, we want to ride the cycles as they naturally happen.

Some of these gyanis, some of these ancient seers had the whole vision of the cycles of the Shiva. Shiva is nothing but pure consciousness, the one which is motionless, he does everything. He goes into motion which appears as shakti, and there are cycles of shakti. They understood this thing and they entered a cyclic existence and rode the cycles of creation and destruction with Shiva. Now that is amazing isn't it? That is literally becoming Shiva, that is literally getting into the flow of the creation and destruction, and in that situation you do not see the time and the cycles as cycles of creation or destruction, you see them as a play, play of Shiva, play of consciousness. This is probably a good choice for a seeker, this is our choice. What are we doing here? We are trying to liberate the causal body from the cycles of the time. And then there can be a question: why did I actually enter the cycles of the time? I entered the lower dimensions to experience time, why did I do that if it is so messy? The reason, which you can assume, is that it's a play. We wanted to ride cycles which are naturally happening. We are surfing the tides of universal time, the universal mind. Because the other two options are kind of boring, isn't it? Who knows there can be more options. Keep searching.

Shiva cannot destroy anything because nothing gets created actually, it is all projections of the mind. The energy of creation is manifesting infinite potential and we should not see it as destruction. We should not even see it as creation, we should see it as a play, a dream. And that's why we say they never happened. Nothing really happened, nothing is going to happen. It is amazing, isn't it? The ancient people were at this height, they were riding the cycles of creation and destruction, can you imagine? They had this much knowledge. Now what is our situation like? We are like a mouse trapped in a mouse hole. Do we see anything except darkness out there? Why is that? It may look like we have lost touch with this great stuff that is happening out there, but don't worry it is also temporary, and according to me, probably you will not believe it, we have done it many times.

It looks like we are lost but we were lost many many times. Without losing your way you cannot explore. If you travel the path that everyone travels, you will not discover anything new. We are explorers, we like to get lost, we choose an existence and just project ourselves in it, project the different bodies, different forms, even if it is physical, even if it is the darkest time, even if it is the most weird and strange kind of world, we project into it. It's like we spread our tentacles from the causal body out there, and get the experience, to suck out the experience from that timeless existence and time-dominated existence, even if it is the worst kind, we want it. That is what the explorer is doing, you can see this tendency in many minds that have not chosen a static life, they have chosen a life of exploration and the seeker is just an explorer.

We have done this many times, don't worry you're not trapped here. It is a play, maybe we came here intentionally, we planned this and then chose to forget. Also, because it's not forgetting actually, it is an appearance that I have forgotten. How much I've explored is appearance only. Why? Because if all those memories flood into your current experience you will be confused, you won't be able to absorb this experience efficiently. Can you see what I'm saying? For example, you are doing something on your PC, and there is a TV playing, and people are talking to you, and somebody calls you for dinner, can you pay attention to what you're doing? No, that experience is not optimal, you cannot enjoy it, so you cut down all those distractions from your surroundings, which is like forgetting. Now you don't remember what is happening on TV, you don't remember who is talking to you and you forget about the dinner. You are engaged in what you are doing here. That is how I see my situation right now.

I am not trapped.

I am not bound.

I am not in a mouse hole.

I am not in darkness

I am not in ignorance.

I am playing.

I am exploring.

I am absorbing this experience and I'm learning from it.

And this is how everyone is, actually, this is how we are, although there are some tiny differences. I should not generalize for everyone because I've seen there are kinds of jeevas that are almost trapped, but nothing to worry, the distraction destroys them, the distractions clean them up. Only those who are riding the waves survive. If you become static, well, you will be wiped away by the waves of creations and destruction. You can see this tendency here. Some people prefer a very static life - do not change this, I cannot change what I wear, I cannot change what I eat, no experimentation there. I want to stay with only this one person forever. You see a very solidified mind there, fear of change, and if one day that special program that they have been watching for 20 years on TV is not on TV, well, their life seems meaningless. They want the thing to repeat again and again. If the same festival comes every year and this time they had to go somewhere else, could not celebrate the festival, well, my life is a mess, my life is not worth living, because they want to repeat the same experience. This is a trap, and this is a static jeeva according to me.

They would again and again appear here even though there are cycles of the time that are forcing the

Jeeva to evolve, forcing that causal body to adapt to the changes and ride the changes but they are stuck. The reason is fear. What will happen to me if I change? Don't worry nothing can happen, only destruction and creation happens which are kind of illusory. Then there are other kinds of people you will find who go and camp in Antarctica for two years. What is there in Antarctica? Nothing, you will say, but for them it is kind of a picnic, you see. It is an exploration, they want to go there. Obviously they do not want to live there. An explorer is not somebody who will make a home at some place, they keep exploring. That is the tendency of an explorer. He does not want to stay at one place. We are doing this. We go from ashram to ashram, from scripture to scripture, from one system of philosophy to another, from one guru to another. What are we doing? We are exploring, we do all kinds of experiments in the occult and mental fields. What are we doing? We want to know more things, we are after the gurus who have done something amazing, this is an explorer mindset. It is highly recommended. Then there is a third kind which is also rare but is also good, and that is to leave this play. Be at the center, dissolve your causal bodies for once and for all, then you are one with that which never changes. You become the center of the wheel around which things change. You are the witness of those changes which everybody already is, everybody is shiva. Shivoham. We are watching these cycles of manifestation and destruction and play roles of the jeevas and so on.

So if you ask me, I prefer the middle one, which is playful exploration. There is obviously no tendency to get stuck in anything, which I know for certain that I am not stuck, actually it is a pretension of separation, it is temporary. This is the purpose, to have an experience, that's all, to enjoy it and the purpose is also not to dissolve back although I keep saying liberate yourself. Nobody likes it. What is the fun in becoming nothing, empty? You will become that anyhow because there is this biggest cycle that is happening, which is the shiva goes to sleep, there is no shakti, there is nothing to create/destroy, and there is timelessness. It does not even exist in time but somehow it all reappears, so you know it will reappear. You all know that there is nothing to worry about.

Manish is saying, there is only one stationary thing in the universe, that is the center, eternity, and then time in layers and we are in the outermost layers.

Yes, you can picture it like a circle and our descending is similar to going to the boundaries of the circle. I have an intuition that there is no real boundary here, it is dynamic, you can descend as much as you want. Ancient people found out that there are planes that are lower than Earth, this is exactly in the middle. In some of the philosophies you will probably find this, the layers below the bhulok, below the physical which are called pataals. So there are seven pataals below Earth. The Buddhist cosmology or you can say, ontology has 13 or 14. You see layers below the physical there also. There are a total of 36 or so layers, as mentioned in the Buddhist scriptures. The Vedic scriptures will tell you that there are seven above and seven below the Earth, but you can subdivide these layers. This is the division that is made for convenience, there is no sharp boundary between these cyclic planes, it is a continuous change, the vibration is continuously changing. They have very interesting details about what happens in these lower planes. How is that possible? It is possible because they explored. They did not sit, they simply explored, they sent their causal bodies down those planes and they ascended. So when I say human beings are already ascended, we are already halfway, that is my estimation. It is not the bottom most, there are bottom layers further down. So who is at the bottom? We usually do not call them with nice names. We should not think of these worlds as existing below the surface of the earth. Many people have this kind of superstition that if you dig you will reach the hells that are below. They're not hells first of all, and they are not below the ground, they are below the vibrational plane of this physical universe. They are also part of the greater mind. It is like going to another website on the Internet actually. They are information entities, chunks of information systems, so you will need to simply shift your attention to go there.

The best way to go there is to rise first to the causal and then descend with an intention to take birth in the lower planes. Remember we can do that, we are doing this right now, so you have the ability to do that but probably we have taken all those kinds of experiences anyhow, we want to go up now. We are in an ascending cycle now and you can see some people out there who are in the descending cycle. Now we do not want to insult them by saying oh he's falling, he's going down. These jeevas who take birth in the lower dimensions are also called demons sometimes. They're also called by various names, creatures like nagas and the vasukis, the gold diggers, and whatever. So it is not that they are descending and they are falling, it is not that they are becoming lowly, they are exploring, they want to go down. We should not see them as lower, even the animals that exist in the physical plane are not lower, they are forms of some causal body, that's all, a causal body like ours, same thing. They are all equal ultimately. Simply because they have taken this other form does not make them lower. It is a play, everybody is equal here, everybody is a manifestation of the same pure consciousness. So yes, you have the option to go low, it is possible and they will explain that these are the kinds of creatures that live there, and they then ascend back. There were many human races in the past who ascended from the lower dimensions. Some people may want to call them hells but they're not hells, there is more suffering there, there is more darkness, there is no light of consciousness, so what? It is a play and probably there are no gurus or teachings there, so they are at the mercy of the cycles to bring them out. It is a great adventure, isn't it?

So many races of humans or creatures existed here on this plane which came from the bottom planes, who still retain their names. We are probably one of them. We are probably the surviving race which decided to exist even in the age of darkness. It is a great thing, everybody is doing great and probably the play has more dark parts in those layers, but who cares. It is just exploration in the end, I am at the center you see, in the end I'm actually stationary, and I'm free.

It is very interesting, I still cannot claim to understand everything because my exploration was kind of limited to one or two planes, where I could not understand what is happening, but I could gain a little bit of first hand experience of how we are not the bodies, how the time behaves in different planes, how everything is predictable, how everything is a consequence of the higher changes that happen. And all this essential knowledge was gathered. You can get this in two minutes if you are interested. But to reach those two minutes you will need a little bit of practice and purification first, so that you can withdraw your attention from this form for some time. Two minutes is enough and you will get this essential knowledge, or you can simply have fun, that is also possible. We can go on and on about these things, you see maya is infinite, maya is amazing.

Manish is saying, shri chakra is not only the model of creation of universe but everything else too, it is basically the picture of creation itself.

Yes it looks like that it is an encrypted description of something. All these descriptions were a map of the non-physical worlds, so that you can leave that map for the coming explorers, the future generations of explorers. What I have is my own map now, but it is very small according to my own experience. There is the highest map also which is accessible to everybody, there is the lowest map also which is accessible to ordinary people, and people who are starting in the spiritual field. The middle map is missing, and the extreme things are missing from the map. So we need to explore somehow and the fun of exploration is when we do not know. It is more fun to explore when there is less knowledge. That arouses curiosity. You can utilize practices to continue the exploration and then there is infinite creation. Whatever you want, it gets created. That is another fun part of this adventure, it will be created for you if you want to explore it, otherwise it is not there. That adds another dimension to the meaninglessness. You see, the meaningfulness of life is a joke. If somebody tells you look, you need to live in this way, you need to do this, that is the only meaningful life, it is a big joke. It is not. There is no meaning here, it is all fun.

Anil is asking to share my thoughts about synchronicities - Do intense synchronicities have any special meaning behind them, or are they just side effects of the interconnected nature of the mind?

You can actually see that everything is cyclic. Sometimes events coincide. And the only meaning that you can derive out of that is, that there is a reason for the synchronicity that happened. The reason does not lie in a physical plane, the reason lies in the non-physical and higher dimensions somewhere. Let us say, it happens three times a day, well it is a consequence of something that was set up in the higher planes, somewhere in the higher dimensions, and that is why it happened. If it is like finding a book, finding a guru, meeting somebody or something breaks down at the right time, that means these are consequences of something that has already happened in the higher planes. So if it is intentional like you set it up like a reminder, then you can derive a meaning out of it. It is just an indication of interconnectedness, like you said, it is an indication that there are bigger cycles that are causing this kind of effect. So you can turn the synchronicity into a learning opportunity by deciding to find out what caused it. That will push you into exploration, it will push you into knowledge of how time works. Since it is cyclic, things will repeat, there will be coincidences and so on, it is a possibility. If you do not know this then you'll wonder about it. You'll think that it is magical and now you do not understand anything. Once you know about NP cycles, it's no more magic, it's just an ordinary routine of the whole universe. It operates in cycles and so there will be coincidences and repetitions and so on. This is the lesson and synchronicity is an invitation to explore.

Manish is asking - manifestation is in daily life, cause lies in the seed in the causal life?

Everything was set up in the higher plane, and then we are seeing the manifestations of it, and in my opinion synchronicities are indicators that you have the awareness to notice it, except that, well, they predict nothing actually, or they show that something interesting is happening now because you're noticing them. Some people may not even notice it and some people who have too much of a rational mind will say - oh it's a coincidence, a random event. Those who have awareness can see that there is a reason behind this, something amazing will happen or it's happening already, that's why these things are manifesting now.

Sometimes it is nothing, just a mechanical outcome of the multidimensional wheel of the time. I'm amused whenever it happens. But no need to change anything, continue as you have planned before because nothing else will actually happen. You will absorb all the experiences as they happen and you will return to the source. This is the play, in my view everything is okay as long as it is not causing any suffering. When suffering appears that means things are not happening as you expected, as you planned, when you came here to explore. Only then something needs to be corrected. If there is no suffering, nothing needs to be done, continue your exploration. There are some interesting details about this which I cannot prove to you but I have this intuition, which I've said before, that it is not so straightforward, the causal body does not take only one incarnation. Sometimes it is like a branching, I use the word tentacles, it is like tentacles, there is not only one, there are many. So right now I'm incarnating in many worlds, many dimensions. I'm absorbing all those experiences. Sometimes I'm incarnating as two individuals in the same world and that can cause very strange effects really.

So in western popular spirituality they will be called twin flames, or soul partners. There is this concept in India also. There is a famous belief here that when you marry somebody you are tied to that partner for at least seven lives. Is it even possible? Well for some it may be possible, may not be for all. For many people it is just random lives, you see, they're governed by the higher cycles. But many have planned it a little bit and yes, you and the partner is one causal body appearing as a different incarnation at the same time. It can accelerate your spiritual growth because now you have parallel processing, you're processing your karmic stuff from two interfaces here, you're learning twice as fast. I don't think this will happen for the less evolved souls or the less evolved jeevas but it can happen for the more evolved ones. Jeevas can have multiple incarnations, not only on the one plane here, they can have it on multiple planes and it simply accelerates their progress. And the amazing thing is, this is the natural progression.

Even if you think that I have only one incarnation here, which is all I know of, don't worry. In the future, in one of the futures, in one of the times in the cycles you will have multiple. They perish because everything is impermanent, forms do not last, and when these forms return, all separate experiences are absorbed back into one causal body. The causal body actually forms bubbles of tiny causal bodies, like eggs in it, it divides and subdivides. So ‘as below so above’, you can see life doing this here also. It started as a single cell and then it subdivided multiple into cells, then formed multicellular organisms. What is this? This is a consequence of something which already happens in the higher planes. This is a very natural tendency. The causal body forms groups of causal bodies within itself and it goes like this, and soon there are millions and millions of these children. Now this causal body becomes capable of creating its own universes, and sends these tiny bits back into those universes for more experiences.

You can picture it like a very bright ball in a field, and then many white tentacles coming out of it, and as they go into the field, they spread their roots into the field of creation. When it evolves so much that there are billions and billions of these tiny jeevas in it, it assumes the form of a greater mind. So we are all going to become that. It's amazing. Those who have evolved will have parallel incarnations, but as I said I cannot prove it to you. Synchronicities like you mentioned, brought up this memory actually, that sometimes people have too much attraction or even too much hate for someone. They appear as a lesson in our lives, and you can be sure that either they are from the soul disc, I mean the bigger causal body which has formed tiny parts of it, tiny children in it, or it is your own incarnation and that's why it has a magical effect on our life. Sometimes these things are pre-arranged, I'll meet somebody or I'll get a specific job, and that is a life-changing event. That is all set up and it also means that the causal body is very advanced, very evolved.

It is almost non-human from a human perspective. Let's talk about the human domain. They have experiences of the present form plus past forms when they went through different forms/creatures, that is what is contained there. But those who can do such feats of parallel incarnations, have much evolved causal bodies and now you cannot even call them individual, because usually our view of the causal body is that of the individual but there is no such thing. Even at the level of the causal body there is no individual, it is all a bunch of stored experiences and there are almost infinite numbers of experiences. It is so ancient, it is going on since so many cycles we cannot even count.

Manish is asking - if it is possible that the subtle body can also branch out like the causal body?

We do that every night when we dream. In the dream, the dream character that you are is nothing but an incarnation of the present body. There is a chunk of memory that is manifesting as a dream. So you can see the seeds are already there.

Imagine a branch of the tree, it divides into two then the same branch divides into two again and the same tiny branch divides more, and this pattern continues. Even the leaf, if you check the leaf, there is a middle stem in the leaf and there are branches, tiny intricate networks of branches, self similar. When it comes to incarnations we do it all the time, but the dream body is not permanent, it's very short-lived, very quickly this lifetime is exhausted. Actually it creates the whole universe, it creates people in it, it creates the history, and then projects a tiny individual there who is clueless and is simply

experiencing whatever is there in the dream world. We do that every night. We do not see the importance of this experience. “Oh it was a dream, it was not real”. Nothing is real, this one, the waking state, is also a dream, this one also is a created field of experiences, like virtual reality, where the player is being projected right now. And yes you can have players at many many levels.

Now I don't claim to understand these things totally, but it is possible to project two copies of the same physical body, which everybody must have heard about. We do not believe such things but we keep hearing that a saint or a guru appeared in another location while everybody saw him sitting in the ashram somewhere. Have you heard about these things? It is called Bilocation in paranormal terminology or multi-location, whatever you want to call it. So bilocation is fascinating in itself. There can be many bodies, multi-locations, the physical body appears in many places. You will see a glimpse of that body, it will be exactly like the physical body, and then it disappears. So imagine how advanced that causal body must be, who could do this kind of amazing trick.

Do you think we know everything? No, we know only a tiny fraction of what this existence is, that is why we are exploring. We have this potential to manifest in many forms, many bodies at the highest level. Let's go back to the spoke and wheel picture of existence. We are at the center, which is one, we are all one, and the spokes came out of that wheel in different forms, and the spokes go through all the planes to the last one. Wheel is continuous. There is no boundary, actually the boundary is our ignorance only, we do not know beyond a range and that becomes a boundary. If you start exploring, it descends infinitely, and ultimately everything is a projection, or you can say an avatar of the same one, the one which is timeless, one which has no form. Are you not that right now right here? Are you and me not one right now right here? Projections of the same one I am, that one actually, and the rest is leela, the rest is maya. Now imagination is your limit.

There will be rule bound worlds, but as you go to the center it becomes less and less deterministic, less and less rule bound although it will always be rule bound, but it becomes beyond perception, there is more freedom. This is the bigger picture. Can you see any picture that is bigger than this? Well there is, but it has tiny details in it. The picture will enlarge for you, you can zoom into the picture, like the metaphor of branches and leaves. You can go on zooming, it is like a fractal universe, you can go into the details also, and they do not exhaust, they never stop. So it is possible to branch out from here or there, nothing is impossible.

People have done a lot of strange exploration, which I don't want to mention today, and there are ways to learn these things. It all comes under tantra. Probably tantra is the biggest branch of spirituality that way. Path of knowledge deals with fundamentals, tantra deals with details, like how everything happens, how to control it, how to do all those things. It has two aspects - A mechanical aspect where you do things like mantras/yantras, and the other is spiritual evolution, where you progress on your own. If you keep exploring, you will come to know all these things. You will come to know how big this life is, it is not nine to five torture, the donkey work that we are doing, consuming stuff, watching TV and dying one day in a hospital. Well that is a very idiotic way of looking at what life is. This is what our society is, it brainwashes you into beliefs that you are a body, you started at birth, now do something which I tell you to do, and then die, and that will be the end of it. What is the use of this miserable life? Our potential is almost infinite. That's why an explorer is the most free person. A spiritual seeker is the finest kind of explorer that you will find. Scientists etc. have a very limited

picture actually, their aims and goals are very limited, the spiritual seeker is unlimited. We are not limited by any beliefs. My tendency is exactly opposite. If you tell me this thing is impossible but somebody has said something amazing about it, I'm immediately attracted to it, I want to research it. What did he say? What was the experience like? I try to make sense of it or I want to explore it myself.

Some people are kind of the opposite, they will say oh it's not possible. It is only this much which is written in this book, and you can see that they are descending, they are in the downward cycle. Right now each causal body goes through its own cycle, each causal body has its own astrology, you can say ultimately they are connected, it's all governed by one cycle actually. Even though it may look like some people are going up, some people are going down, there are cycles within cycles. Ultimately we are dragged down if the overall cycle is descending. Even if you are ascending you will be dragged down with that cycle. Because of the nature of the cycles, sometimes you will feel like I'm ascending or I'm progressing but the overall cycle is descending.

Sometimes that is called tribal karma, the overall human karmic accumulation. We all fall together and we all rise together, and within that rise and fall is the rise and fall of the jeeva. Don't think that we are in total control, there is this greater mind that is going through cycles also, and when it descends, like the yugas unfold, we also descend. No need to worry, it is not going to be permanent and it is not going to last too long because the time is totally different, there is no long time and there is no short time. There is no hurry and there is no settling either. Now all of these beliefs are false, they are ignorance only, do not think that I need to progress to the highest in just five days otherwise my life is meaningless. No, you're already there, this is a play, if it is ascending, ascend, if it is descending, descend, ride the tide, go with the flow.

Isn’t this knowledge relaxing? Now are you not feeling relaxed that this is the bigger picture? I was so worried I wanted to finish all the spiritual stuff in one day and go where I know not, there is nowhere to go. This is infinite creation and there is this infinite eternal self, nowhere else to go. Where will you go? Where will I go? You and I are one. Can we even separate? We are all forms of the One. I have many forms, you have many forms. Now think from this angle who is ascending, who is descending, isn't it all a play? It is for enjoyment only, just make sure that you're not suffering, and then all is okay now. It does not mean that we should not have formed spiritual goals, yes we should otherwise how will the play continue? You will stagnate and then you will be at the mercy of the tides. That is what we do not like. We know we are not in control, but we try to do that which pleases us, that is a real explorer.

People doing multiple jobs, taking two or three avatars think they are smart, well that is their life then, that is what they are born for, we cannot say much. I can only point out what you're doing, I cannot tell you - don't do this, don't do that. I simply point out - look you are doing this, when there are more possibilities there, and then you have the choice to come out of that meaningless cyclic existence. And the funny thing is, you will come out of that and enter into another meaningless cyclic existence. It will be hopefully better than this one, it is not a very big deal. Good or bad are just subjective preferences, however for the universal mind everything is just a play. If the cycle is going down and that is not what you want, you want to go up, well it is “bad”, and if it is going as per your preference you say it is “good”. Ultimately, there is no choice but to ride this wave, that is your freedom actually.

Be what you are while everything is going in a wavy fashion up and down. This is what the hermetic master will say. The master rises above the pendulum of existence, the movement of this duality, because there is duality and it is a dynamic duality. It is always oscillating. The master rises above it still keeping his feet in the duality. In the rise and fall he does not want to lose that experience. It's a preference. Sometimes they are on the verge of dissolution and then they come back, “I want to help others”. These are bodhisattvas. Now with full vigor and even greater capability they appear as gurus, they appear as different creatures, books and everything that you are attracted to. It is much bigger, it is more complicated than we think it is.

Hopefully it will inspire you to explore more, it will widen your perspective a little. Even if I could not provide you with any kind of experience, I provided you with enough material so you can proceed. It will take off a lot of anxiety from your mind. Even if your life is nine to five donkey work, don't worry, it is an experience that you chose. There are more forms of you that are having different kinds of life, and they will merge back.

I'll give you a secret, that you can go and see it right now if you want, you can connect to your causal body right now and just download everything in this form. How? That is a topic for another talk so don't forget to ask this question - how to connect to the causal body? It is all possible to experience all those lives at the same time, this is the tantric topic. It is beyond me but I can give you pointers, I cannot give you a technique. I can only initiate you for further exploration. The more you dig the more possibilities will rise up, nothing is impossible, so don't think that your life is miserable and everybody else is having fun. You are the one who is having the most fun right now. You don't know it.

Session 30

How did Adi Shankaracharya affect the meaning of the word Maya as compared to Vedic meaning?

Now it is very difficult for me what Adi Shankaracharya meant by Maya and what was the description of Maya in the Vedic literature. I can tell you my own interpretation of Maya and then you can try to compare it with what others are saying.

Maya according to me is in that part of existence which appears, which is changing and which is our current experience, not only current experience, all the experience that one can have is nothing but Maya. The meaning of the word Maya here is illusion. The only reality there is the Atman which is equal to Brahman and the nature of this reality is emptiness, it is nirgun. It is actually as good as not existing until Maya appears, and the appearances themselves are false and illusory. So if you dig into all these interpretations you will find that essentially their meaning is the same, and even in Buddhism, Maya also means exactly the same. It is emptiness and forms appear in the emptiness, but emptiness is nothing but the form, form is nothing but emptiness. So whenever I hear these things I find that the languages are different but essentially they're pointing to the same concept. They're pointing to a paradoxical situation.

In one of my blog articles I have given a quote from Swami Vivekananda and probably that is the most clear definition of Maya there is. Maya is a paradox—real, yet not real, an illusion, yet not an illusion. He who knows the Real sees in Maya not illusion, but reality. He who knows not the Real sees in Maya illusion and thinks it real.

Now this is paradoxical isn't it? There is also this view that the only reality there is, is the Atman because it is unchanging, but if it is unchanging it cannot actually exist as an object, because only that which is empty can be unchanging. As soon as there is content it must be perceived or it must be experienced. In order to experience something, it is a must that it will change, otherwise there is no experience. So the only reality there is emptiness and it is as good as not being there. And the reality that is apparent is Maya which is also as good as not being there. It is only an appearance so all these statements in my view are the same and they are pointing to something which the mind cannot grasp. Mind cannot grasp reality and the mind cannot grasp the Maya.

Saying that there is no karta, there is no doer, is actually as good as saying that there is no doing also because the doing happens only when there is somebody to do it. So the karma appears only when the karta is there, as soon as karta is gone, which can happen because of self-realization, the karma is gone too. It is seen as not being there. Isn't that our own experience? That as soon as we see the illusion of the doer, the doing is gone, suddenly there is nobody to do anything and nothing gets done really. Nothing really happens afterwards. Whatever looks like is being done is only an illusion, it is false karma. So liberation from karma is the same as realization of the self. That is the only liberation. There is no other liberation. The liberation is not liberation from bondage, it is realizing that there was no bondage.

Because I assume that there is a doer I got all this karmic stuff which is about the individual. The karma forms the individual and when this is seen as illusory then karta and karma, both vanish. When you say that there is karma and it is real, but it is happening in an illusory world, effectively it cancels out. Effectively there is no karma actually which is the nature of reality. It has no such things, it has no accumulations, nothing really is happening here.

I have never encountered anybody who is not engaged in actions. It is impossible to not act. It is possible to give up the doership, that is what every great master is saying. Yes it can happen, people can try to give up the doership but still continue to do things, continue to act, and it has no effect actually. There is no effect because the actor is an assumption. Even if you say that I am not the doer, the doing is going to happen, and even if you say that I have given up the doership, the doing is going to happen. The actions are done by the ego, so the ego continues to be there. The right actions happen not by giving up the actions but by realizing what is my real nature. The right action is not stopping the action. Right action is letting the action happen as it must, that is the absence of the karta, or the doership. Stopping action is stupidity, it does not actually do anything. It is not effective.

When this dropping of the individual happens, nothing really changes. The world continues as it does, the individual continues, Maya also continues, the doing continues. There is a slight change in the jeeva who is now freed from the doing, that's all that happens. It is a very subtle, very small change but very big because it is liberation. Liberation from karma.

Outwardly there is no change at all but inwardly there is more calm and more peace and sense of not being bound which is what happens when you discover your real nature, that it is not bound, and then you stop worrying about all these terminologies, and all these interpretations. We want the bondage to end and we get a bonus when we see that there was no bondage at all.

Not only is the current karma not mine, past karma is also not mine.

I'm not bound by it. The jeeva is bound by the karma and will remain bound by the karma, there is no escape for the jeeva but we are not worried now. We are not really worried because the identification with that which is bound is completely gone. That is the only change that happens, everything else will remain the same. All actions purify a little bit, they become the right actions. Even if it is a wrong action nobody cares. It is not my action, the difference between right and wrong will vanish. It will become a universal action. Side effect of self-realization is purification of the mind that can produce apparently better actions. But in my view there is no good action actually, there is no bad action, there are just illusions. They're not good, they're not bad. These things become meaningless as soon as you realize what you are.

Everything is unnecessary, so there is no point in picking and choosing, so you can be a king, you can dance the dance of creation, you can get involved in the world and still remain a renunciate, still remain untouched by it. Initially it may feel like I'm trapped in the world and then you will need to take some action to get out of here. As soon as you are out of here, you will see that you were never trapped, and then this whole renunciation thing becomes a play.

Initially it may be probably they emphasized that drop the unnecessary, drop that which binds you, but once it is seen that nothing binds me, you can go back to the worldly existence. There is no need to remain like that, so that is what is going to happen anyway. That is what is the tendency of the universal mind. It engages itself in the play. It's called leela, you cannot stop it. Actually nobody can stop it. It is not possible. It stops itself when the time is right. We don't need to stop it, only realize that whatever is happening here has no truth in it, and the only truth there is the Experiencer of these experiences. Even that you can actually let it go, even that is emptiness, the self is emptiness, Shiva is nothingness, that is actually a wholeness which is full of potential, it is not really manifested.

Even if you say that something is manifesting, nothing appears as something but it never actually happened. Nothing never turned into something, nothing only appeared for a while to be something. That is what the play is. Now these things are kind of very difficult to grasp for an ordinary seeker or an ordinary person. Don't worry about any of this stuff, just get rid of suffering.

When I see these scriptures I try to interpret them according to my experience, not according to what others are saying because what others are saying is not really reliable. Even the sayings of the masters are not reliable unless you get the direct experience first. If you once get direct experience then you will find that whatever the masters have said are more or less the same things in different languages. Their circumstances or their teaching skills were different and so sometimes they had to twist it a little bit or they had to simplify it a little bit. When people did not understand they had to go down a little bit. Okay, you do not understand the non-existence of karma, now do something, a practice is then given.

Check if there is any karma, check if there is any doer, check whether these things can stop, see if liberation means what it means according to scriptures, or whether there is no need of liberation. These things will be made clear by your direct experience. The scriptures are totally useless for you. The gurus are not going to help you if there is no direct knowing. The first thing the guru will do is make you realize these things in your own direct experience. And the scriptures are there to solidify your realization, they clear the doubts, because when you see that the great masters have also realized something similar, the doubt goes away.

Knowledge cannot be transmitted using language. The language can only point, otherwise everybody would have understood, everybody would have liberated themselves by now if the language worked.

Why do we see so many people suffering, so many people are in darkness, even when there are thousands of books, many scriptures, there are thousands of masters who are saying the same thing, more or less? Because language does not provide knowledge, language points to it. Those who are ready, they get the pointers and they understand it. Those who are not ready, even if you break your head before them, tell them everything in the most precise language, use the best kind of logic, nothing happens. This is the paradox of all paradoxes.

Everyone is liberated but everyone is not ready to see this. That is why the Bodhisattvas need to wait. They are extremely powerful, they are extremely capable, they are one with the universal mind, why can't they just simply raise their hands like a miracle and cure this suffering and ignorance for once and for all for all the beings? Why haven't they done this? Isn't this a mystery? It is a big mystery. The scriptures do not help, the gurus do not help and that is why I called it by another word, I called it a ripening. It is a natural phenomena actually, the ripening of the mind happens at a particular time. Before that scriptures are useless. Once the mind is ripened it is ready to understand what is written in the scripture, and the guru helps, and at that point that mind turns into a seeker and looks for a guru. And once the ripening is there, well, the guru has to only point, he has to only show.

It takes two seconds actually when the ripening is there, when the mind is ready, when it's time has come, and this is also called the grace, is also called the kripa.

Do not worry about the scriptures, do not worry about what the great masters are saying if you cannot understand, wait for the ripening. If you cannot understand, have a little bit of faith, the faith is not all bad, you see.

So there is a way to accelerate the ripening. Many of the teachers have said that self-realization is a natural event, nothing can cause that event except grace, except the ripening, but you can accelerate the ripening and that is by having an intense desire for liberation. You don't know what liberation is, you don't know what is the self, you don't know the brahman or you don't even know the maya. Have a very deep desire for liberation and hopefully, although it is not guaranteed, hopefully the ripening will get accelerated, and you will become ready in less time. Although this is only a story from my perspective, it is not true, it is only an illusion, time is an illusion. So even if you spend 10 lifetimes or 100 lifetimes waiting, once the realization happens, well it is all washed out. The whole past is gone. So what is the use of accelerating it?

So we do not do all these tricks here on the path of knowledge, we simply state the obvious and those who are ready they get it. That is the whole way of transmitting knowledge. Here the transmission of knowledge does not happen by words, it will never happen by words. It happens through recognition, by direct pointing.

No guru can make you self-realized, not possible unless there is a willingness, unless there is a ripening there. Look at your experience, your experience will take you to the truth.

On the path of knowledge nothing is known, only beliefs are dropped, only that which you know is totally dropped, and that is why the proper description of what happens in the end is silence. Silence is the answer so the greatest teaching is silence. If the teaching can make you silent, stop questioning, then the teaching has achieved its objective.

Now this can be tricky isn't it? Because people can give up, assume things and stop questioning, and then they fall silent. But you will find that the quality of the silence for a self-realized person is completely different from the quality of the silence for a person who is still ignorant, but has decided to give up thinking - I know everything, now I don't need to ask anything. That silence has confusion in it, that silence is not stable, there is doubt in it. You can see it in their eyes whenever they talk.

But the silence of a guru is solid, it is established, and it is still silence even if the guru speaks. That is the paradoxical thing again. The guru says nothing in effect. It is all silence and whatever he says points to the silence. Now it is very difficult for me to explain these things, so what we do is we prepare the student, prepare the student to wait for the ripening to arrive. We try to accelerate it. You can try and then wait for the right moment, wait for the right student to appear, that is what the guru is doing. The right student gets the pointing at the right time, it looks like that it is kind of a miserable situation but no, this is how it should be, this is how it is. You cannot simply wave your hand and turn everybody into a realized master or something.

A comment - Buddha also used this trick. He used to ask people to be with him for a year and then ask their questions, and by the end of the year all their questions were gone.

Yes, even going to Buddha could not do it, he could not enlighten people in one day, it's not possible. So all you can do is wait if you have doubts about scriptures, if you have doubts about what the master says and intensify your longing for liberation. Once you are there everything will be taken care of. There is no suffering, there is also no karma, there is also no bondage, so everything falls into place once the time arrives. Sometimes I make these contradictory statements and the statements are an attempt to silence the listeners, because the mind has this tendency to do all this talking, all day. If I don't put the contradictions there, then the mind will continue talking, the mind will actually weave a net for itself and then get trapped in it.

So every now and then I break all that which I myself establish. One day I'll tell you everything in so much extraordinary detail that your mind will think - oh I know everything now, and the very next day I break it all apart. I'll say what are you thinking, there's nothing like this. So one day I'll talk about how to reduce your karma, how to reduce your karmic debts, and describe it in extraordinary details there. It is a repeat of whatever I've heard, that's all. You see I don't do all these things in my life but I need to catch the fish. When the fish is in the net I just tell them okay all these things are illusory, they are not really there. Can you see it?

If the person is ready, if the ripening is there, everything is dropped, even the knowledge is dropped. The silence happens.

So I need to do both things, I need to sometimes pet the mind, we need to tolerate the mind sometimes, it needs stuff, and then when it is trapped we just clear it off. We just reduce the mind into nothing. That is the silent transmission which many gurus have adopted, including Raman Maharshi. They used to do preaching, sermons, many days the satsang would go on, and then silence. And when the student would get up and ask - what were you talking about that day? No, no, sit down, sit down, and pay attention. That's all the guru will say. That was all junk he would say. If you cannot get the silent pointing, the ripening has not happened.

Have some faith, intensify your longing, ask for it, then you will get it. There is another mechanism that is in place in this universal mind which I can see sometimes, not always, that when the ripening is there, at the right time the student is joined with the guru. The guru simply appears. This saying is very famous - when a student is ready the guru appears.

I’ve seen this happening with my own eyes actually. So it does not matter what the gurus are doing and what the students are doing, what age this is. Nothing matters actually. As soon as there is a case of ripening somewhere, you will find exactly that point, that place, in that time the guru is present, to clear up the ignorance of that person. And this cannot be explained actually. I cannot explain why it is like this, but it is almost mechanical, it's almost like it is fixed, it is fixed by somebody, it's fixed by something.

Why do you think all the gurus are just sitting there? I mean they look so relaxed, except a few, and it seems they're not in a hurry to do anything at all. Oh the problems of the world, yes, yes, let's do something. But when you look into their eyes you find that they are not really interested in the problems of the world. Actually they are not trying to fix it. They are just pretending, while they wait for the right student to arrive there, that's all they do.

That's all that is happening in the world of spirituality. Because no matter how hard you try you cannot get past this mechanism that is there. That can sound a little bit discouraging but don't get discouraged, either you get it or you don’t. You see that is all there is. Everybody has this potential. So you will find that whatever I say one day it is something, other day it is something else, and it is all a trap, it is all lies, nothing is true here in these talks actually, it is an attempt to get the mind on the right track. When it is grabbed you just break it. Silence the mind. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. For many people it worked, for many it worked for a moment and they fell back into their ignorance. There are many like this, and for there are rare few, and without my doing anything, well boom. Someday I get an email that now I understand, and that is when I know, the mechanism of ripening is happening without my doing anything. Same thing happened in my case also.

Aren't these scriptures around us since the day we are born here? We're born among the scriptures, we're born among the knowledge. Why did it happen after so many years? I saw that intelligence has nothing to do with it. It is not a ripening of intelligence. Actually suffering has more to do with it than intelligence. What happens is, suffering brings the mind into a state of meaninglessness, the mind gives up. It has nothing to do or it cannot do much, that is a trapped mind. Now is the right time, and when it hears these pointings, there is a good chance that it will get it.

Once the mind stops, it just disappears. Mind only persists as long as it is moving. The movement it stops, it's gone, and then there is truth. Yes sometimes it will do that without a guru, that is because of his past experiences, you can say, past impressions, they manifest in this lifetime.

So sometimes I start reading a book, I start commenting on what the masters are saying and sometimes I translate the whole book, and I keep doing these things because you need to do something while you're waiting. You're waiting for the right person to appear, and you advertise it like this by talking endlessly, by expounding on the finer aspects of advaita philosophy, and by providing answers to the questions and so on. Look at the satsang, look at this podcast and the videos, I know everything.

It is all useless. Isn't it? It's useless because these things are just packaging, the actual product is silence.

There is nothing inside the box. all these words are empty, they are all lies, they are just a way to find the right person, and it is not in my control what I'll find. Sometimes I find it, sometimes I don't, but that is not a big deal, and I know the mechanism is working, so I continue. And I see all the gurus are doing something similar, they have a big mouthpiece outside, inside there's nothing. They look like they're so busy fixing the world like revolutionizing everything, trying to enlighten millions of people, but they're doing absolutely nothing.

Manish is asking - how does it happen that even when we do not have past life memories but we are still able to continue our spiritual journey?

It is simply because these things do not depend on the mind who has the memories. The mind has the memories, it does not even depend on how old the jeeva is, how many incarnations it has gone through. It does not even depend on what kind of achievement the jeeva had. Probably it is a god now, probably a demon, or probably something really big, but it is still possible that there is no realization there. You must have heard the stories of all the gods and goddesses and they live in heaven, they are in heavenly bliss, but are totally ignorant. And then they come down on Earth, take human form, find a guru and then they get liberated. You must have heard all the stories. What do they mean? The past life has no bearing, whatever jeeva is doing has no bearing on this process of ripening, that's why it is very nicely called grace, very accurately called the kripa.

There is no journey actually, it is not progressive, you cannot progress in spirituality. Either there is light or there is darkness, that's all. Yes, this is all paradoxical, but today is the day for paradoxes. I am not attempting to clarify anything. I am trying to muddy the waters a little bit so that you don't become so sure that I know everything, or you know everything. Now it's not possible to know anything, remember this.

We are all waiting for grace. There is no spiritual journey. What happens after the grace? This journey continues. There is no destination because there is no journey.

A journey has an end, but the spiritual journey is a kind of journey which is endless. It does not end anywhere. If it started, it could end. It did not start, so it is not going to end. So do not worry, because one day you'll realize that there is no journey. There is nothing to be achieved, you never started on a journey. Then you continue wherever the journey is taking you. It will seem as if there is a destination. This is the nature of the mind, it cannot let go so easily even after knowing. It continues and we are perfectly okay with it, we don't worry about the mind. Once you have found that which is above the mind, why will you cling to the mind? Let it continue. We are happy with whatever is there.

The trick is to realize that it is not my mind, to realize that it is not my journey, and it was never my journey actually. It is not that I became nothing, this cannot happen. That I was nothing, this is the realization. I was nothing and so if there is nobody then who is having the journey? Who is doing these things? The mind still wants to go on and then the guru will invent things like the jeeva, oh yes you need to liberate the jeeva, and one day he will say well the jeeva is actually maya, an illusion. What are you going to liberate if it is already an illusion? What is the use of liberating it from illusion? Can it be liberated?

It is mysterious, isn't it? I don't claim to understand anything here, yet very precisely I describe everything as if I know everything. It's not possible to explain anything. Sometimes I say - look at this chair, you don't even know what it is. It is not possible to know what it is. Now that will make any seeker helpless, people will stare at me helplessly, now what? And there's no need to be discouraged by these very gloomy statements. They are not gloomy really, they are a device to stop your mind from trying, because nothing will happen if you try. It is all worthless. So once you realize that there is no need to know, actually why would you know, why is there a need to know what this chair is, what this whole game is? Is there a need? Because I am that.

Once I am that, then there is no relation of knowing myself. There is only being myself.

You are going to naturally prefer being rather than knowing. If you are trying to know yourself then there will always be distance between what you are and what you know. Some people call it intellectual awakening - I know what I am, but are you what you are? Have you given up what you are not? That is the question, isn't it? So there is no question of knowing, there's a question of being. Knowledge is the real trap, we call it ignorance. But we do not worry about the knowledge if it is there. Well, let it be. That is the nature of the mind to know. We say - no it cannot be known and we live with this background of not knowing. This is true liberation. When you don't even want to know. That means you're completely free. You express your freedom like this by deciding not to know.

There is a difference between ignorance and not knowing. If I say something like this, it is very direct. I do not do this because people may stop their attempts to know things, that is the danger here. So we do not say these things very frequently. We always start with - you need to know, you need to remove your ignorance, but sometimes the truth will come out - there's nothing to know. Now stop knowing.

Knowledge is the hurdle. The final hurdle. On the Path of Knowledge, knowledge itself drops.

She is saying, I understood what you said, there is no journey, and there is no one who was born, and we set out on this journey and all, we try meditation, and all will just bring us to this realization that there is nothing to realize. Now I'm confused.

It is a very good state. Sadhguru used to say this. Once somebody said that I'm very confused, and Sadhguru said - well this is the best state to be in. If you're confused at least you do not know, at least you admit that I do not know, which is clear, which is nearer to reality, which is nearer to your true nature of not knowing. As soon as you know, you are in the trap, you are in a net, a web of your own making. It knows a lot, that is the problem. It knows all the scriptures, it knows who said what, and it knows everything, and it is very sure about these things. Why know everything? That is a trap, that is the hurdle.

When you meet a real guru, the guru can sense this sometimes. The guru is not the one who will be amazed by how much you know. If you do not know, the guru will stuff knowledge into you, and if you know everything the guru will clear it away, will destroy it, because that is the final stage. When you are too ignorant you need to attain a balance of some kind, remove the ignorance through knowledge, by knowing what is what, the scripture says this, and this master says this. This is the first step. The next step is destroying all that which you have learned, so you can go to the second step. You destroy everything that you have learned, but that does not really work. That is why we call it a play, it must happen in this way, the ripening happens in this way.

Some people are ready even without knowing much. There are some past samskaras there that make them ready, the mind stops building webs. And it is also paradoxical, it looks like the mind was on a journey. But after realization it is seen that the mind cannot do anything actually. Whatever it does is illusion, it is maya, whoever is doing is illusion, so nothing really gets done, it is not on a journey. Yet there is this paradoxical thing, it needs to become ready, it is all grace. You will see this happening in your life.

The trick is to know that, which is behind the words.

Do not get entangled in the words, that is the mistake that many people make sometimes. The guru is going to feed you with words. But if you stay with that guru long enough, he will dismantle everything. This is the story of many seekers actually, for many seekers it becomes so bad that the student loses all faith in the guru. Sometimes the student will say that my guru has gone mad. He is now talking like insane, his activities are kind of mad, and it is not unusual for the guru to act like an insane person, just to break the attachment of the student to his teachings. It is possible. Sometimes the guru will reveal that I'm not the guru, I do not know anything. Whatever I told you was written in this book, and who knows what this book says. I do not have this experience either.

That totally shatters the illusion of the student, that the guru knows everything and I am in the right place. That leaves the student wondering and confused, not knowing anything, and that can break

the mind out of the web of the knowledge. The guru does all these kinds of circus for the student. I have heard some stories, like the guru abandoned the student. For 10 years, 15 years, there is a very sweet relationship and then the guru kicks the student out - from tomorrow do not come to my ashram, do whatever you want, do not come here. It happened to many people, I keep hearing the interviews. Suddenly the guru shatters their illusion, the illusion of knowledge, that I know. I'll tell you that, you cannot know, you cannot know what you are.

Self-realization is the realization that I do not know what I am.

What I consider myself to be this or that, does not exist. This is the only realization that you will get. You will not get a realization of the self, never. Yes you can be the self, that is guaranteed because that's what you are. Self-realization is the realization of me not being there. You are the Atman - this is a traditional statement. When you say it like this and it delivers knowledge, suddenly you know - oh I am that, that is a trap, isn't it? You cannot know what you are. These are words. I am the experiencer, I am that - these are words. You really do not know what you are. This is the realization actually, not knowing what I am, because you always assumed yourself to be something, this or that.

It is very easy to clear this assumption that I am the body. You can show it through logic and direct experience that you are not the body. Slightly difficult is - I am not the mind. Then even more difficult is I am not the jeeva. People are trapped here in the jeeva for many many lifetimes. And then even more difficult is to let go of the experiencer. Because everybody is saying I am the experiencer. But then that means you did not go deep enough. So ultimately they will equate it with the brahman. You are not this thing which is a witness of the illusory things, you are the illusion also. You see Adi Shankaracharya went to that extent, and Gautam Buddha even went beyond, and he said no self, you do not know anything actually, cannot know anything, it is all emptiness.

And there are bigger teachers actually, there are bigger philosophers than these people, and they will tell you that look even the emptiness is not there, give up the ideas about emptiness. This was said by Nagarjuna and something similar was said by Bodhidharma that do not try to find your true self here or there. It is not an elevated state of mind, this mind whatever it is, is the true nature. What does it actually mean? Do not try to find a meaning there. Try to see, and try to be what you already are. Give up all the assumptions, drop the assumption of the self also, you are not the self.

So different teachers will use different kinds of teachings to bring the student one step ahead. One step because when you give them the whole, well, it is a disaster. Firstly, nobody understands it. Second, they are not ready for it. Lastly, the ripening is not there and the mind cannot accept it. So we do it in steps. We look for the signs whether the mind can give up the knowledge. Yes it can, and now you tell the mind - look don't even try to know what the self is. You don't know what everything is already, you're not the brahman also, and don't try to find a meaning in emptiness, you will never find it. What will you find in emptiness, shunyata? It is only a name. You do not know what shunyata is, do you? Everything appears here, does the shunyata appear? No. So people will try to tell you - look everything is one, they will present all kinds of logic before you, and they will try to convince you. The mind has this ability, it can be convinced. It can see these things logically, but we stop it.

We do not go to “One”, it cannot be known. There is a word in Sanskrit “that which is absent”. In English you can translate it as unknowable. We are that. Now it simply means that do not try to know it using the mind, do not try to know it using the language, it always fails. It is impossible to know it by reading the scriptures, impossible to know it by listening to the guru.

Charlie is saying, all is an illusion, who is having this experience of this illusion?

That is the $M question, isn't it? Is it an illusion that is having the experience of other illusions? We can see, it's not like this, and that's why we come back to the topic of maya. It's kind of impossible to know what Maya is. Is the illusion the only reality there is? The language breaks down here. Can you describe yourself as an illusion? Can you describe yourself as reality?

No you can only be. You cannot know it.

And in the rush of knowing some people will say I know. No, it is not possible to know. It is possible to drop all your concepts about it, including the concept of “illusion” or “reality”. It being this, it being that, it being emptiness, it being not emptiness, it being sagun, it being nirgun. Drop all of it.

That's why I liked the description of Maya by Vivekananda because he came very close. He said it is the only reality. You call it an illusion so that you do not get attached to it. So that you do not think that there is something that can be known here, something can be had here, or that it is meaningful. That's why you call it an illusion. It's not meaningful. You cannot have anything here. You do not get anything here, in the experience, which is equal to the experiencer, by the way.

To clear this illusion of the illusion, we need to redefine the illusion, we need to redefine Maya. Here sometimes I feel that the dualists are at an advantage because they have already accepted the illusion as their reality. The dualist will say that Shakti is real, Shiva is nothing but a background of nothingness. The only thing that we can work with is Shakti. So they have already accepted it. Why can't we accept the illusion? You can reject it if you like. You can say - the whole world is an illusion, all my experience is an illusion, but what are you left with then? Because you have rejected the whole of you, the whole of you is an illusion. I cannot even say that half of it is illusion and half is truth, an experience and the experiencer, and that is not the real duality. The real duality is accepting it. Oh yes there is illusion, and that is the only thing there. We call it illusion because it is meaningless, it is empty, it is only forms and it is impermanent. It is a word that we chose to explain what it is. We will never know what it is.

You can descend into the illusion like we've already done, and you will find that all of it is unknowable. It does not matter how far you descend, the knowledge is ignorance, the knowledge is knowledge of

the illusion, and therefore it is ignorance. That which is real cannot be known. Everything is unknowable. You can only be it, do not try to know it. Do not be certain about it.

As soon as you become certain that means the mind has overpowered the being. It is now rightly in the illusion, because it knows. You need to keep the mind confused all the time. That is what the job of the Guru on the path of knowledge is. He does not let the mind rest in certainty - I know these things, I know for certain and there will be an opportunity for the Guru to break the certainty. He will tell you something which is totally uncertain.

You say I need to bring my mind out of illusion. Is it even possible? You are already out of illusion, isn't it? It's not possible to come out of illusion. We say it is an illusion just to remain uncertain of what it is. That is what is the proper state of the mind because not knowing keeps the mind near truth. Knowledge takes it far away from what I am.

You see these scientists are so certain, the philosophers are so certain, but a mystic says one thing today, says something else tomorrow, is praising something today, opposing the same thing tomorrow. This is the life of a mystic and the mystic is always right no matter what, because he says nothing really.

When you say nothing you're bound to be right. He denies everything that he said. Agnosticism is not knowing. Agnostic knows everything actually, more than those who claim to know. There is a difference between the silence of ignorance and silence of knowledge. And similarly there is a difference between the not knowing of ignorance and the not knowing of knowledge. You will need to go through knowledge to reach the unknowable. You cannot start with ignorance and reach the unknowable. It's not possible, and that's our first step. It is like admitting ignorance, and then we remove the side effects of it. It is just like when a person is sick and gets a disease like a virus etc., a doctor destroys it using antibiotics, which is like a poison. It destroys everything in the body actually, everything that lives in the body, the whole ecosystem is kind of disturbed, and then he prescribes the diet or other medicines to restore the balance. Whatever was destroyed is restored. So something similar, it is like a treatment, treatment for the mind, we first destroy the ignorance, then we bring back the confusion so that the mind does not stagnate there. It remains alive instead of dead sure of everything. That's why an agnostic or the mystic is always right without being right or wrong.

Hopefully it was confusing enough for everybody! It was like causing chaos in the mind which is necessary sometimes. It is good to be confused, you should always remain confused, do not be sure of anything. If you're sure of something, let go of it, drop it. So hopefully it will confuse you even more and it will bring you back into the paradox, which is the real being of ourselves.

If you want to drop dead, know everything for certain. If you want to live then drop the knowledge, also drop the certainty and drop the tags that we have put on everything. All tags - Atman, Brahman, the Shiva, the illusion, the Maya. These are tags the mind is trying to label things, put things into very well defined boxes, and that is stupidity. It's not possible to do that. That's why you need to destroy it. Do not be very sure of anything at all. That is a trap. The only risk there is, if you can do it prematurely, you can reach there without experiencing the whole of it. The whole will happen only when you go through the knowledge, that's why we recommend the journey. That's why we do not say - don't do anything. You will need to go through the knowledge to not know. Start knowing from the beginning and keep the mind busy, because anyhow it is not going to do anything, anyhow it will fail at everything. Don't let it settle. Don't let it become too wise. There is no such thing as a wise mind. The mind is always ignorant. You are the wise one. The one who does not know is the wisest.

Epilogue

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