Session 31

It would be great if you can share the actual meaning of Shiva Lingams. There are a lot of theories floating around and I would like to know what those Shiva Lingams are actually?

They are very, very interesting. And I would also like to know what are these theories that are floating around. We are born in this country, but it is amazing that hardly anybody knows what these things are. Yes, people worship them. They have become a part of the religion, Hinduism. There are probably countless temples, and still, nobody has any idea what it is. It is called Shiva Lingam, but the Shiva itself is a very broad concept. And that's what I know about this word Shiva. Some say Lingam is a rocket in which Shiva came. That is fine. But why is there a need to worship the rockets or replicas of the rockets? And some say nuclear reactors are shaped like Lingam. It is a cylindrical shape. So many things are Lingam, you see. The cylinders in our car are Lingams only. You must have guessed by now that most of the theories are not satisfactory.

It is symbolic. In this age, the Lingam has been reduced to a symbol. It was a device, as far as I know, because my knowledge is very limited here. I have a few interpretations of Lingam and Shiva. Shiva has many connotations, there are many meanings of this word and the most basic meaning is that which is not, that which is not here. ‘Shav’ in Sanskrit means a dead body and ‘Shiv’ means that which never existed. Nobody really agrees with these interpretations, except a few who are hardcore seekers, who have not invested emotionally or religiously in that kind of terminology, they will accept this thing. And according to me, the word Shiv means pure nothingness, pure emptiness. That is why Shiv Lingam is always black. It is always made up out of black stone, black granite or something like this. Shiv is seen as the destructive force also. And there is another meaning of the word Shiv, which is Yogi, a being, an ascended master who is then anthropomorphized, who is then personified as this Yogi of dark skin, who sits in the Himalayas. There are many stories around him, he has a wife and has two children and that is another meaning of the word Shiv. And in the Vedic culture, there was a deity called Rudra. Rudra is nowadays interpreted as Shiv. So we have so many Shivas now, which one are you going to choose? Which one is your favorite? Choose that.

There are two parts of the Lingam. One is the Lingam itself, the male part and the Yoni, the female part. Now Yoni represents Shakti, the wife of Shiva. And so Shiva-Lingam is a union of Shiva and Shakti. That is beautiful, isn't it? It represents the Yog, it represents the Advaita, the non-duality, that is, there is no consciousness and there is no form separately. Consciousness is the form and that is being represented in the Shaivic traditions by using Shiv-Lingam. What is happening when these male and female parts unite? As you very well know, creation happens, birth takes place. What is created? The creation of this experience that we are having. So Shiva Lingam is a representation of the male and female energies of existence, the consciousness and the movements of consciousness, the vibrations of consciousness, they come together, they unite and give rise to a creation. That is what it represents. That is what it is a symbol of.

A spiritual seeker, especially on the path of knowledge, would be very happy to interpret it like this. Now those who think that it is the tamasic nature of existence, they like to associate Shiv Lingam with creation as well as destruction because Shiv is the destroyer. So, it takes on another dimension. It now represents the creation as well as the dissolution of the whole Srishti, of the whole creation, of the whole manifestation. There is a little bit of difference between existence and manifested existence, which by now you can guess what it is. Existence includes the unmanifested as well as the conscious part, the sat-chit part and manifestation include only that which can be seen, that which can be experienced. That is also called Shakti. If you remove the Lingam from the yoni, now everything is destroyed. If you put it back, it can be created.

So, we arrive at the most interesting interpretation of Shiv-Lingam, which is that it is a device to create, and it is a device to destroy. That is mind-blowing, isn't it? So, in five minutes I have given you so many interpretations, now choose anything that you like. You can interpret the stories that concern the marriage of the Shiva with Parvati. Everybody must have heard these stories. If you don't know the stories that are written in the specific text called Shiv Maha Puran, which is like an encyclopedia, it is like a combined volume of stories about Shiva and Parvati and Ganesh and Karthikeya and demons and whatever. You can interpret each story given in the Shiv Puran or other Puranas, which mentions Shiva, to mean something. There is some kind of spiritual knowledge or even occult knowledge that has been encoded into these stories and these stories were passed on through mouth to ear kind of teaching. They were written down very late in history, when the writing became available to many people and the stones were not the only way to write them down and there were hides and the Talpatra and paper and so on. They started writing down these things and the Puranas were written down. But these stories go far back. They go far beyond this cycle. This cycle of creation is very new, and this knowledge is coming from the previous cycle, which happened before the destruction. You can estimate the time of this cycle as starting around 12,000 years ago. Sometimes people say 15,000 also. It is as old as that, conveniently you can say, 10,000 years old stories. The Shiv lingam is this old, this is an ancient concept.

The Shakti is called by many names because the Shakti takes many forms. The Shiv has no form. Shiv is formless but Shakti has many forms and depending on what she is trying to do, she is represented in many forms. Kali will be the destroyer form when the Shakti withdraws and destroys the worlds, it is called Kali. The form that is associated with survival is Kali. Saraswati is the form associated with knowledge and arts and Parvati is probably the highest kind of form. There are intermediate forms, the Durga and there are nine or ten forms depending on which part of India you live in. You can safely assume that these different goddesses are forms of the Shakti, the creative principle. That is what the Yoni is representing, the female part of the Lingam.

Now let's talk about the Tantric meaning. In Tantra, the Shiv Lingam is always a symbol of power, Siddhis and you will find that from the time period of 10,000 to around 5,000 years ago, Shaivism was developed and almost the whole world, almost all of the equatorial world, was covered with Tantric temples. They were not temples, they were not places of worship, they were places of experimentation. They would experiment on different aspects of creation and therefore the Shakti tradition was born because they immediately found out that Shiv has no use. It is a destroyer only, you see, when you reach the Shiv, nothing is left. But Shakti is useful, Shakti can help in day to day survival and in giving powers, fulfillment of desires, rising above nature, which is what we are doing nowadays in modern science and technology.

We are worshiping Shakti in the form of science and technology. The basic philosophy, the basic truth of existence is forgotten, in science we don't care about truth. The philosophy is just a pastime of idle minds, technology, yes, that is where our focus is. We have so many forms of energies, we are controlling heat, electricity, nuclear energy, and so on. This is worship of Shakti and that worship or that fascination with the Shakti was even much more in the ancient times, and they set up these labs to control the powers or the Shakti. Probably they control the gross powers also, which science is now contributing to, but the more emphasis was on controlling the subtle nature of energies, the energies that give you supernatural abilities, more emphasis was on that. And the Lingam was only a tantric device, it was reduced to that, you can say, the Lingam started as a symbolic thing, but as you know, the tantra is all about occult, they converted this into a device for manifesting things, for destroying things, for controlling the creation as well as destruction and thousands of temples were set up.

Temples are not places of worship for a seeker, especially the Shaivic temples, the Shiv and Shakti temples. If you see Durga sitting in the temple or you see Saraswati or Kali in the temple, these not to be worshipped, if you want to worship, worship Ram, Krishna and all those deities, worship Narasimha and worship Vishnu, these are deities to be worshiped and the Goddess is not a thing of worship. Goddess represents energies, they are things to be used, but obviously since they're great, they have immense kind of power, you should respect them, respect these energies like we respect electricity and heat, fire and nuclear energy. We don't mess with those energies because they are extremely powerful. When they are milder, you can control them, but when they go out of control, then they control you. So we think that we are controlling the electricity, but look at your nervous system, electricity is controlling you. So we have a little bit of respect for these energies and when I say use them, it does not mean exploit that thing, it means do not simply worship, do not simply sing songs in front of that, you need to know what these energies are and only then you can use them. Use them for your benefit, use them for the benefit of humanity or for your spiritual progress. Explore. They are not simply to be worshiped and they are not the objects of devotion.

There are Shiva temples all over the world, like Cambodia, millions of shivlings, even the rivers are full of shivlings and most of them are in a very bad situation right now, they were bombed out of existence by modern humans, more “civilized” people, they like to destroy these things. It is all destroyed now. People started worshipping these symbols because there is a tribal memory in all of us that these things were useful, these things granted us our wishes, these things fulfilled our desires, made us almost gods. This tribal memory is still there, this memory persists in the remaining humanity after the cataclysmic destruction that happened like 10 or 15,000 years ago. These technologies of the mind predate history. You can conveniently say that there was a civilization which had an immense amount of power, in terms of mental powers, which existed from 25,000 to 15,000 years ago. The landscape was different, the globe was different, creatures were different, probably there were more species of humans. After cataclysm I think only two remained, the Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens and we actually managed to kill off the Neanderthals and mixed a little bit with them. This is how the fall happened. People saw these Shiva lingams and because the remaining memory was there but nobody had any idea what to do with them, they started worshipping them, some stories were passed on. In the past cycle everything was destroyed, the writing was destroyed, the books were destroyed, whatever means of information storage was there, it was all destroyed, the only thing that remained was stone, nothing else remained.

Another thing that remained was stories that were passed on, mythology remained, the Shiva Purana, Mahabharata and Ramayana remained. There is a very interesting writer, his name is Graham Hancock, he says that mythology is humanity's way of preserving knowledge, the knowledge is encoded in stories and they are stored in the minds of people. There are flood myths and myths of destruction, the myths about comets, the mythology about these powers and flying machines and the great capabilities of destruction that people had in the past. Some people will tell you that the war of Mahabharata happened with atomic weapons, probably something bigger than that. You say who knows these are myths. They are just storage devices, some knowledge was encoded in them and they were passed on because some very intelligent people from the last cycle, they knew that everything is going to be destroyed, everything will be corrupted, so the only way to preserve a little bit of it is in the forms of stones, and great big buildings. Because the bigger it is, the more effort it takes to destroy it. The stories, mythologies because that is what people are going to remember after cataclysms, they are not going to remember formulas and mathematics. Some of the knowledge was encoded into etheric bodies and astral bodies and astral structures which took them beyond physical and they were saved. It was downloaded back into the minds of people.

So there is a very interesting myth that people will tell you and that is regarding the Shiv as the yogi, Shiv as that form of human who lived in the Himalayan region of the current cycle, “he came down” - these are the words used to describe his appearance on Earth. He came down actually, he was already kind of mysterious, nobody knew from where he came, but he was covered with ashes and had serpents around his body, had a very big army of spiritual beings and then he chose seven rishis, seven wise men in Himalayas and he then downloaded the knowledge of the Vedas into these seven rishis. They are also called the saptarishis and we have a constellation devoted to these seven rishis, you know, the saptarishi constellation. This is in mythology, how the Vedic knowledge came down on the physical plane. And you can now interpret it because now you have the background, the knowledge that was stored in the astral plane in the form of a seed, lingam. Lingam represents the seed also, that is why it is shaped like a seed. It was downloaded into these rishis and the rishis then wrote it down or translated it into Sanskrit language from the astral language

The Vedic knowledge is not of the Earth, that's why we say it is not from this plane. It was developed here but to prevent its destruction, it was sent above. Shiva came down and gave it to humans and after that the Upanishads were written and many more commentaries were written because nobody can read Rig Veda, it is kind of very cryptic, that's why the Upanishads were written, they are simply a commentary on the Rig Vedic knowledge. Because ordinary rishis and ordinary people, ordinary seekers could not decrypt what was written in this very ancient language, Proto Sanskrit, they wrote down the Upanishads. If you go and read RigVeda or Atharva Veda or others, probably you will not get anything, probably it is just very beautiful poetry, almost heavenly poetry there, you won't understand it but you will like it, that's beautiful. But if you read Upanishads, they are for common man, you can understand them. And then commentaries on the Upanishads were written by Shankaracharya. North India was ruined but South Indians, they preserved this knowledge. By Shankaracharya, and interestingly he also is called Shankar which means Shiv, the Vedic knowledge was revived, and we have a date for that, it was revived just after the death of Gautam Buddha. So it was restored, everything which got corrupted, everything which was destroyed. Whatever we call Advaita Vedanta, is actually a reconstruction of this knowledge which happened about 3,000 - 2,500 years ago.

Manish is saying, when there is no method to record things in writing, but only human memory can be used, we are compelled to use poems, the reason being very simple, it is easy to remember poem compared to prose, as a result everything ancient is in matter of prose but they are 100% scientifically accurate.

Excellent, yes, that is what I was saying that the Rig Veda are mnemonic, short form, they are extremely shortened. I mean not even a single point is extra there, even a single dot, a single mantra was not put extra there because they knew the advantage of compressing knowledge. That's what modern people can handle. The modern man was reduced to animalistic nature after the cataclysm and became a hunter-gatherer and that was the limit of their memory and intelligence, so they condensed it, like it was zip file and it was encrypted so that people could not decode it till time was right and that also prevented the misuse of it. So I think that about 80% of the Vedic knowledge is still hidden in the verses of Vedas, it is not manifested yet.

Acharya is definitely a title. We attribute the written form of four Vedas to Maharshi Vyas, but Vyas is also a title, probably many people don't know this, Vyas means compiler of text, this is the Sanskrit meaning of Vyas. That is the characteristic in India that names are not important, the text is important, who wrote it is not important, authority is kicked out, the meaning is retained, it is exactly opposite of what we see today in the modern world, authority is worshipped, whatever garbage they are saying is taken as truth. It is said by an authority so it must be true - stupidity. A seeker is exactly opposite, does not care who is behind that knowledge, gets the knowledge. That is our nature, that is the nature of the seeker, and we like it short and sweet, we like it condensed, we don't want a thousand-page book on Advaita. A seeker is a very practical man, a seeker is down to earth. And has no interest in academic stuff. But some like to talk about it, some like to debate about these things, some like to establish its validity and so on, so they become the Pundits, they become the Acharyas.

Corruption happened later where one community was given the rights to preserve knowledge and everybody else was barred, it has its own advantages and disadvantages. If you let the knowledge lose, well there are chances that either it will be misused or it will be corrupted and if you restrict it too much, then there is a chance that it will be lost with the loss of the community. The community that is preserving the knowledge, for example, in the western culture there is this concept of Freemasons, the Freemasons are just like Brahmins. They are said to be the preserver of ancient knowledge. What has happened there, the community shrank or became disguised. They are not as forthcoming as Brahmins and all, so the knowledge is rotting away, the knowledge is gone now. They know what the symbols mean, they know what these things mean. And there are no practitioners. A lot of knowledge was lost, that includes the knowledge of occult regarding the Shivlingam and how to use these temples. Now people are blindly worshipping things.

If you explore ancient temples, you will find that sometimes there is a door in the temple, the door is a false door, almost ornamental, looks like a fake door and is highly decorated. There are statues, sculptures of gods and goddesses and a lot of symbolism around it. But the door cannot be opened, it is a stone door, it is a fixed door. You will find these doors in many temples in India and surprisingly, these false doors can be found in the Persian region, in the Egyptian ruins, in the South American ruins, the Mayan ruins, there are false doors, sometimes there is just a big hill and a false door is carved out of that hill. It is amazing. Now what do these things mean, what are these stupid things? I need a door, but I need it permanently shut, made up of heavy rocks, you see, 500 kg, 1000 kg rock will be my door?

These are prehistoric constructions, that door is not a physical door, the door exists in the mind, the door exists in another dimension. This stone door is carved there just to remember the location, although you see, non-physical locations do not mean anything, but the physical location will directly connect you to the non-physical plane if it is properly consecrated, properly energized, you can say by the local practitioners, by the tantrics. These permanently shut doors are doors to other planes of existence and you do not use them to enter the temple. You use the other normal door to enter the temple and you encounter the deity there first. It can be a lingam, it can be a deity. You take the permission of the deity. The deity is responsible for opening or closing the doors.

They were very smart people; they did not give the password to these doors to common people. Common people, they are going to make a mess out of it, so the deity was installed there, it can be Rudra, it can be goddess also, Kali or something like this or Ganesh. Ganesh is always at the door. Why is Ganesh always on the door? Or there is this serpent or Kaal or Kaal Bhairav or something like this which guards the door, why? Because humans cannot be entrusted with this knowledge, you see, so the deities are astral constructions, they were constructed by yogis and tantrics to guard these invisible doors. They were visible only in the form of stones, but they do not open, amazing, isn't it? Now once you start peeling the layers of the onion, you will get the knowledge. It is buried beyond layers and layers of mythology, and idiotic stuff which is what the modern educated people think about these doors. Oh the doors were kind of ornamental, they just wanted a beautiful door there, well, that is stupidity. Nobody goes through this kind of effort to build these huge temples on top of big hills with the technology that we do not have right now these days. And the educated people think that these were built by primitive tribes, and they were built for the sole purpose of worshiping some deities which are obviously superstition. So why did they take the trouble to worship a deity by constructing such huge scientifically accurate, mathematically precise buildings which had specific kind of sound resonances, which had specific kind of airflow, directions were very specific, and they had all kind of symbology like the false doors and all these things?

Once you enter the spiritual path, the doors to knowledge will open for you, just like at the temples from prehistory. I don't want to waste your time with the modern temples, the modern temples are just for business. The ancient temples will tell you the story, the story of knowledge. Decode the temples, it has been encoded in the temples.

The knowledge got corrupted, it was an attempt and it was a partial success, not everything was lost, but a major portion of it is lost. Whatever was preserved, then was deliberately destroyed by religious groups, like they looted and burned all these temples down, even the things like the library of Alexandria and the Roman temples, they were all destroyed, looted by the current modern humans, it is still going on. That's why we say ordinary people do not like knowledge, they cannot be trusted with these things. You can use the minds of ordinary people as a storage device because these are beautiful songs, beautiful poetry, you can educate them and let them memorize it all, tell them that, look this is important, look this is godly, divine, you need to preserve it. You need to run away, or you need to kill your enemies who are trying to destroy it. And that is how the fundamentalist religions were born. People saw this threat from the attackers, and they became kind of violent preservers of knowledge. So, yes, it is a mess now, it is a big mess, you can see it. Fortunately, we have some things, and we can rediscover other things.

Now it is up to you. You can take all these clues, the half-cooked knowledge, and you can rediscover it, uncover it. And it can be done in different ways also. There is no need to use the same symbols, there is no need to use the stone gates to enter the other planes, because you do not know the password. That reminds me of the Lord of the Rings movie, when Gandalf forgot the password to enter the hidden palace or something. It is something like this, you see, we have forgotten passwords to the higher knowledge. All these hidden societies, these Rosicrucians, or what have you, are all kind of gone now, you can safely say that is useless now, only the symbolism has remained. Now, it is not totally a waste of time. People in the theosophical society tried to decrypt it. A lot of techniques for astral projection and lucid dreaming come from the attempts of theosophical society to decrypt all these magical rituals. That is how we have all these techniques. Now, they are floating on the internet, they are common knowledge. Sometimes common people are the best way to store the knowledge. If you entrust somebody who is in charge of the knowledge, well, forget about it, it's not going to go away. It will become Wikipedia where people manipulate everything according to their will. Nobody else is allowed to edit it. It's kind of unfortunate. Whenever you make a specific kind of person in charge of knowledge, whenever you make an institution or organization in charge of the knowledge, it is almost guaranteed that it will be corrupted and misused. Wikipedia is a small example, but you can see this happening almost all the time in history. People are misusing the great scriptures also like the Quran or Bible. People are misusing all kinds of texts for whatever purposes. It is always survival, isn't it? It is always, I need to live and you need to die. I need more money; you need to be poor. It is the lowly tendency of human beings that is responsible for destruction of the knowledge. This fight is going on in our minds all the time. It is not only out there. What you see out there is a reflection of what is inside us. This survival tendency, the animalistic tendency is fighting with the higher layers of the mind, with the intellect, with the spiritual awareness. It is trying to take over. It is trying to destroy that higher intelligence that we all are capable of. So, the same fight is being manifested on the physical level.

As below so above. The same fight is going on in the higher planes. It is the fight of ignorance versus knowledge. So, what we do here on the path of knowledge is we leave history as it is. We leave the prehistory. We leave the rituals and symbols and lingams and deities, goddesses as they are. They have served their purpose. They were useful for some kind of civilization, but now we are left with our own minds. You cannot change the world now. It is gone, destroyed, but you can change yourself. You can win this battle that is happening within you. You know, it sounds like preaching. What options do we have now? The knowledge is accessible. You need to simply pay attention. You can rediscover it. The essential knowledge is not hidden. It is obviously here. The Vedic knowledge is within you. You are the source of Vedas. So, it's pretty much up to us now. What am I doing here, I discover myself, I am diving into the depth of this ocean of the mind, and I bring you these gems. You can do the same. Reinvent, rediscover and rejuvenate the knowledge. This is our passion. On the path of knowledge, what else is there to do? Once you know your essence, once you know the non-duality, nothing more remains in your life. The worldly life, you won't be able to tolerate that. Whatever remaining time is there, you can use it to serve, in spreading knowledge. So, we are doing it. Everything that I do, you see this satsang and videos and all. It is a service. It is a free service.

I am not interested in history or who ruled or what people were there. I am interested in what knowledge they had. Where is that knowledge? We are always hunting for even tiniest bits and pieces of knowledge, which you will not get in your schools. You will not get that in the academic institutions. Whatever they are preaching there is just survival. Nothing else but survival.

Parveen is saying, you talked about post enlightenment syndrome, after knowing the self, seekers tend to live freely in a thoughtless state. However, this mind bounces back again in different forms and plays all sorts of games to make sure seekers don't continue with seeking. How to deal with this?

Do not continue with the seeking then. What are you seeking? Post enlightenment syndrome means enlightenment has already happened. What are you seeking now? There is nothing important to seek now. Let the mind play the game that it is playing. Is it troubling the seeker? Destroy the seeker then. The seeker need not be there. What is the seeker doing after enlightenment? Enlightenment is the destruction of the seeker, isn't it? That which is seeking finds himself as not existing. The one who is seeking finds himself as not existing. This is enlightenment. Now, what is the seeker doing there?

This should take away this difficulty that you are facing, but there is another part of the story because this is a spiritual thing. It is never so simple. You will say that okay, enlightenment, but I still have a body and I still have this mind which is probably not going to go away very soon. There will be more births and there will be more levels of existence after this. So, what to do? And here the seeking comes back. Now, you cannot do anything stupid with your life, so you decide that okay, I'll take care of the body, I'll take care of the family and I'll take care of my business or whatever. Plus, I'll do a little bit of R&D. I'll try to refine my mind and so on. So, you knowingly decide to play this game and resistance of the mind, the activity of the mind is a part of the game. Now, there is nothing to worry about.

When the seeking is over, there is nothing to do really. Even the next birth will not happen if there are no strong tendencies there. So, it is a complete death. It is total liberation from limited existence. I'm not saying there won't be any existence. The existence cannot be destroyed. But it will be the end of bondage of the mind. So, while it is ending, while the fan is spinning down, you utilize this time for something useful. Get more knowledge. You got the essential knowledge. Now, get the specialized knowledge, which is also called the Vigyan. It is not Gyan, it is Vigyan. It is specialized knowledge, which will be mostly about the knowledge of how the illusion works, how the Maya works. We take interest in that and usually that interest will also go away as soon as the body is dropped. Now, everything is open before you. Now, what are you going to know there? It is all a play. Anyway, it is all a play of consciousness. So, whatever you know here has absolutely no use. The knowledge of Maya is useless because it is not real, you see. It is just a play. Once you know something, oh, this happens in this way, you are going to find something which happens in exactly the opposite way. Because, why not? All possibilities are there. So, what use is this knowledge that the X happens in the Y way? So, what use is this knowledge which is not certain, where every possibility exists. Where are you going to use this knowledge? You know it as a play and so you play. You play without worrying whether I know something or not. You drop the certainty also. Learn to live in uncertainty. That is what there is.

The knowledge that the Vigyan or the specialized knowledge that we think is so certain, is an ignorance. It looks certain because of our own limitations. For example, you know that water always flows down or when you throw a stone upwards, it always falls. Well, this is not true really. It is true only in this dimension, in this limited experience that we are having. If you take this knowledge to the higher planes, for example, or anywhere except this physical universe, you will find that it was totally useless. It is of no use in other dimensions. So, some other things are true there, you see, which are not useful here. So, it is mind. In the mind, everything is true, everything is false, and everything is not true, and everything is not false. It's kind of a useless activity and that's why we call it a play, simply because it is entertaining anyway. There is nothing else to do. The whole existence is my play. That is what a seeker is doing.

You will say that, okay, you give all the knowledge on the first day on the path of knowledge, on the direct path, now how am I going to spend my life because I wanted to spend it in seeking. You killed the seeker on the first day. Now what? And that is where this concept of play comes in. We like to play with knowledge. That's all. And if the mind is troubling you, you already know that there is no mind. The mind is an illusion. The trouble it creates is also illusory. So, that gives you a place to stand and play. Do not get carried away. Do not be blown away with the wind of the mind. It is like a hurricane. It will pull you in. You need to stay on the ground of knowledge. That is how you deal with it. Remain in awareness. Remain in your true nature and play. You know the seeker is not there. Invent a seeker. Do something with it.

That is not the only way to spend time. You can encourage others. You can enlighten others. Spread the knowledge. Just like one lamp lights the other lamp without diminishing in any way or without any effort. The other lamp catches fire. This lamp does not do anything. It takes no effort. This is the proper service. You don't do anything. It is acting without actions. But still, you get positive results.

You can say, why can't I do both? So, there can be two-fold purpose. That is what I am doing. I keep researching. I keep seeking, fully knowing that seeking has ended, and I keep sharing, igniting the lamps. It is a pleasure. This is the only pleasure in this play. What else is there? You are me already. If you are ignorant, you are still me. If you are enlightened, you are still me. You do not become something else, you remain me. So, it is completely useless. But that is the pleasure. That is the play here.

Pravin is saying, Shakti only is everywhere and needs to focus on Shiv. Once realization about Shiv is there, no value of knowing anything about Shakti.

Very, very true words. We do it anyhow. We accept the Shakti also. We see that Shakti is playful. And the Shakti is mischievous. The Shakti is all illusion. It's all lies. So, it is a make-believe. But we like it, you see. We accept it. You are also me. Shakti is also me. So, if you reject Shakti, then it's kind of a problem because the married life of Shiv and Shakti is in trouble now. So, you accept Shakti also. Play with Shakti. You know you are discovering something totally useless. It is like the child playing on the beach, he makes a castle or digs up some crabs or something and leaves them again in the ocean. It is a totally useless activity. But that is what the child likes. That is what he enjoys. It totally depends on what you enjoy.

People ask these questions: what should I do in my life? They keep asking this question even after enlightenment,even if they know their true nature. I know it now, what should I do now? And that is the essence of the post-enlightenment syndrome. So, there is a very simple answer to this question. Do that which you like most and do that which you think is necessary because that is what is going to happen anyway.

You already know there is no doer. So, why are you asking this question? But no, the mind will pull out a doer from its pocket, you see. Look, here is the doer. Okay, now give something to the doer. And what will doer do? Because there is no doer, things can only happen. And what things can happen? That which are preferences in the mind, that which are set in the mind, the settings, they drive the mind, they drive the actions. What are those settings? Likes and dislikes. What else is going to happen? That which the mind thinks is necessary. The mind says, oh, it's necessary to keep the body alive. Okay, keep the body alive. Oh, it's necessary to have some kind of pleasure, I'll go and eat outside today, probably that is what you like to do. Do it. It's all allowed. After realization, everything is meaningless, and everything is meaningful. There is nothing to worry about now. The meaning has lost its meaning. This is the essence of Maya. It appears meaningful but is hollow. There is nothing there.

Mukul is saying, the child knows when the play is over and comes back to reality and that is not true for the adults.

Pretty clever. Yes, the adults are lost in the play. That is what we call identification. They have taken the play seriously. You see, even children do that. When they break their toys, they start crying. But then they are engaged in another play. They start playing with another toy. They even forget what they did yesterday. It is spontaneous, isn't it? Very innocent and spontaneous activity. But adults do not do that. They remember what happened yesterday. Oh, you said this to me yesterday. Now I'm going to take revenge today. This is what has happened to the adult mind. We have lost this ability to play. So, it is all attachment. It is attachment to this body which we think is real, which we think is me. It is attachment to the possessions, and it is attachment to the other people. Cut all these attachments and it will become a play. Then the mind will rise above the play. Currently, because we are in the body, it may not be possible to appreciate that it is a play. So, what you can do, a practical advice, just start cutting your bondages.

We are adults and this adult is probably thousands of years old. It is not only this body mind. It is the causal body that is trapped in the existence. The body does not know bondage. The body is a free expression of this physical plane. It just rose out of the dust. It is going back to dust. It is not going to complain. The mind is the troublemaker. Surrender. There is no “your will” because there is no you. With the surrender comes real experience, which is a spontaneous arising, impermanence, which is purposeless, meaningless, pure play, Leela. That is the real fun there, isn't it? You are not bothered what comes and what goes. I succeeded in this thing, it is as useless and meaningless as saying that I failed here. Why does it look like an extremely serious life? Because of ignorance, because of the attachments. So, whenever you find an attachment there, just cut it down. You can still play. Why not? Without attachment. Attachment is the cause of suffering, not this body, not this mind, not the maya or not this existence, not other people. They are not the cause of your suffering. Attachment. You think it is serious and meaningful. It is all meaningless. Meaningless in a good way. You are not even bound by the meaning because if you give it a meaning, then it cannot have any other meaning. That means it is bound. It could have infinite meanings, but now you reduced it to one meaning and that is surely going to cause problems because that is not the nature of the maya. Maya does not like to be limited like this. And so, we fall into ignorance by assigning a meaning. That is the problem. Be meaningless. Be purposeless. Be free. It is a free expression. Why are you limiting it? This limitation is the cause of suffering.

So, it was a great idea to be born as a human being or monkey or lizard or fish or insect. It was a play. Now, you are attached to it. That is what has gone wrong. Now, spend some time detaching. That's all. Go back to freedom. Nothing is important here. That will unburden you, nobody has ordered you to carry the burden. Throw it away. You can walk without the burden also. Travel light and enjoy the scenery. Otherwise, you will be busy taking care of your burden. You will be burdened by it so much that you won't be able to even look at what is happening around you. You will be like the donkey that carries the burden, instead of being the owner of the donkey, who is enjoying the scenery, who is enjoying the travel, we are all travelers here.

What are you accumulating here? Yes, it is very good that you are accumulating. Accumulate experiences because nothing else is going back with you. Like when we go to a beautiful place, in the beautiful mountains, rivers, snow-covered peaks and pretty resorts and lakes. Do we bring them back? No. What do we bring back? We bring back the photographs. Because we want to bring back the experience. We want to bring back the memories. That is what we are here for. This earth is a tourist place, isn't it? We are not the residents here. This is not really our home. We came here to experience and then we need to take back the photographs, the memories, the good experience. This is an intelligent choice.

What kind of experiences are you going to take back? The bad ones or the good ones? If you are in ignorance, it will be a very bad experience. It will be like the donkey carrying the burden kind of experience. If you are free, if you are in knowledge, you will utilize this experience for enjoyment. There is no other purpose here. Even enjoyment is not a purpose because what are you enjoying? I am playing a game of hide and seek only. I pretend that I do not know what this world is, what is this Maya and then I get engaged in it and then when I come back, I know it was all false. It was just a dream. The enjoyment is also false. What did you really enjoy? It's kind of meaningless. It’s like going to a movie theater, watching a movie, pretending that the movie is real. The monsters and the villain and the pretty girl, they are real. They are all a show, that is make believe. When the movie ends, you come back and what did you really enjoy? Was it real? Was there anything worthwhile to enjoy? Can you call it even a play? Yes, you can. It provided a tiny bit of entertainment while you fooled yourself into believing that something was happening on the screen. The fooling is the source of enjoyment, a temporary suspension of disbelief. That is the correct technical term which allows us to enjoy a drama or a movie or a story. We won't be able to enjoy them if the camera showed up in the movie or if the director and the staff showed up in the movie. Then the illusion breaks down.

Now you must be wondering why some people are engrossed in this illusion. They don't even want to know that this is an illusion. Go and tell anybody on the street -look, you are in an illusory world. It is a dream, and he will laugh at you. He will think you lost your marbles or something. They don't want to know the truth. It is like the camera showing up in the movie. I don't want to see this. Cut it out. I want to see the unreality. That is more engaging. That is more entertaining.

And so, we do not see the ignorant people as ignorant. We see them as if they are pretending. Your time will come when you see the camera in the frame. Don't worry. Enjoy it as much as you want. Your time is coming. Ordinary ignorant people are not inferior. They are busy enjoying. They don't want to listen to you because they want this experience. The experience is possible only if you fool yourself into believing that this experience is real. It is all perfect already. Nobody is in ignorance. Nobody is in error. And we are not the big ones who are out of this dark pit. It is not like this. Ultimately it is all me. Some parts of me are busy in the Maya. Some parts are coming out of it. Some parts are already out of it. It is all okay. It is all perfect. And that will give you relief. This kind of realization will free you from anxiety. Remain like a child. That is the answer.

There was a question, how many years will it take to become enlightened or become self-realized after I know these concepts theoretically?

And I was wondering, how many years will it take? And it is very interesting because the person has assumed that the self can be known theoretically, can be known in words. That was the assumption behind the question. And there was another assumption that probably I know it already, and I know it theoretically. Now I probably need to do something, some practice or something, to really know it. How much time will it take? And yes, it is a very common question. Many people ask this question.

Is there any possibility of theoretical knowledge of the self? What will it look like? If it is simply words, meaningless words, which you cannot find in your experience, then can you call it knowledge? Can you even call it a theory? Can this statement, I am the consciousness, can it become a theory?

Parveen is saying, it depends on how long the seeker wants to play. As Ishwarpuri says, all time is folded into zero time.

Yes, ultimately the knowledge does not take time and once you know, you know that there was no time. It was a play. It was a timeless play. It's an eternal play. My ignorance never existed. Isn't this our knowledge? How come the time came into it? How did the theory come into it? Once you get it, all these concepts are destroyed. The time is destroyed. The theory is destroyed and obviously the one who thought these things are true is also destroyed, is gone. And the destruction is not like this, that it was there before, now it is not there. It is not like this. It is not a change. It is a realization that these things never existed. It is a realization that these things were illusions, temporary concepts in the mind. Can you have a theoretical realization?

Mukul is saying, Vedanta, it ends everything.

I can see why this kind of question can arise. Because of our education, probably the schooling system, why do we think like this? That there needs to be theory first, then there needs to be practical. I need to first memorize stuff and then somebody will show me these things. Why? Because this is what we are taught in the schools and 90% of the time the practical never happens. You see, except in your chemistry or biology class, you never had any kind of practicals. Probably a little bit of physics, like you bend the light through the prism, end of the school education. Yes, it is our conditioning that knowledge can be theoretical. Theoretical knowledge is not knowledge. Please remember this thing all the time. The only knowledge that can be is one which comes through direct experience. There is no other knowledge. Theory is not knowledge. There cannot be theoretical knowledge of self. And no, it's not going to take more time. I mean, it's kind of a meaningless statement. I am ignorant, how long will it take me to become not ignorant? This is a meaningless question, isn’t it? If you want to know, it can be done now. Just let me know. Just fix a convenient time according to you, according to your busy schedule. So many important things to do except spirituality, isn’t it? Fix up a time and I'll convert your theory into practical in one minute, one second, and then you will enter the timelessness. Then you will not complain - It took a lot of time. I suffered - All these things will be dropped. Therefore, I am also not in a hurry. Tell me how much time you want between theory and practice.

So, it was kind of funny but I thought it was worth mentioning. There was recently one fellow in the Mooji Satsang. Mooji is now in India in Rishikesh and every day there are almost three hours of videos of Mooji talking. It's kind of awesome. So, I was listening to one of the videos and a seeker said, I know about this self, Atman, the consciousness, but I cannot see it. I am still the person and Mooji in his own style, slaps his forehead. “What is it that is seeing that you are a person?” And the seeker still does not get it. Most of the people in the Mooji Satsang cannot get it. He says, can't you see that this activity is being perceived? “No, but where is me? Where is I?” And he says, no, the perceiver cannot be perceived. The eye cannot see the eye. But they cannot get it. Because, you see, just like he said, the mind is playing. The mind doesn't want to go out of existence. It wants to defend itself. Show me where? There are some people who will think that I'll get it somewhere. I'll get it someday. If I do this kind of ritual, if I do this kind of practice, I'll get it. And they devote their lives to that kind of activity. And some people just convert the words into something else. Now the self becomes the God. I'm looking for God. I'm searching for God. Have you found him somewhere? Oh, no, he's not on earth. You will need to go to heaven. You will need to die first. And if you behave badly, you will never meet him. Only if you are a good boy, will you meet him. What are those good things? Okay, follow my instructions. This is how you enslave people. They are all lost. Because they are searching somewhere else. They do not know that what is being searched for is the one that is a witness of this search. The mind is searching. The one that you are searching for is simply looking. The mind is giving it names, giving it places, giving it all these kinds of names and forms and then goes on for a search. “I can’t find it”. Well, you will never find it. You are the one who is watching this drama. Where will you find yourself if not here? When will you find it if not now? What are you doing with theories? What kind of theories? It's all mind. Don't you see this? A theory is a mental activity. Who is witnessing this mental activity of theorizing? Where will you find that thing which is witnessing? No amount of thinking, no amount of looking, no amount of searching will bring you there. Self-realization is easy as well as difficult. It is easy when you know where to look or where not to look. And it is difficult when you don't know what you are doing. Even the words of the Guru, even the biggest Guru like Mooji will not be able to shake your beliefs.

Parveen is saying, Ravindranath Tagore wrote, I was desperately looking for God for so long when suddenly I found God's house. My hand was on the doorbell, but then all excitement was lost when a thought popped up -What if it is really God? All the fun of seeking will be lost. He quietly ran away from God's house and then kept searching forever again.

Yes, those who are not ready will not open the door. They don't want to look. They will pretend, I know everything. I am the greatest scientist. Don’t you see this PhD and ABCDEFG after my name? That means I know everything. Mind is shutting its doors. Don't want to look, I already know. Oh, it is superstition. You see, the mumbo jumbo mystical stuff. Probably you must be laughing. This is the trickiest thing under the sun. In my whole life, I have never seen anything which is so simple as well as so difficult. This paradox of all paradoxes. Many people get the glimpse. Many people come to know; oh I am that. But the mind is not happy because it wants the enlightenment to be something extraordinary, magnificent, heavenly stuff. Your nature is pure emptiness. The mind is like wind, you are like space. No, no, no, that is too boring. I want it to be otherworldly. Like I want to become God myself. No, but you're God. No, I want to become the God that is written in this kind of scripture somewhere. I want to become that. I want to see that thing. And the mind keeps playing. We can call it stupidity, but it is something more, you see. That's why I call it resistance of the mind. It knows very well that it will be discovered and will be killed. So, it is resisting. Mind will make it so elegant, the quantum theory of physics, it states such and such things. And now I know, consciousness cannot exist. So on. I belong to this religion, and it clearly states that God is here. Now, I cannot show you, but this is the truth. It will make it into anything that it likes. It will believe anything. Even the most stupid thing and even the most intelligent thing, the most sophisticated thing, are equal. They are all ignorance. It is the resistance of the mind.

What can you do when you are trapped in this kind of mind? Gurus are so able. The gods and goddesses are so powerful that they can simply raise their hand and boom, everybody gets enlightened tomorrow. But this never happened. This never happened in our whole history of this planet. Where are these powers? Where are these great intelligences? What is a greater mind doing? Is it sleeping while everybody is suffering? It is the mind. It wants to enjoy the movie. That's all. Do not turn on the lights, I am watching a movie. You are interfering in my entertainment. You see, that is the reason. And when somebody says something like this, then you don't want to interfere there. You give him that which they are searching for. Oh yes, go to the Himalayas and go to this Swami in this cave and you will know the God. And they go there. The movie is the fun part, isn't it? The end screen is not. You are not going to skip to the end screen when you are watching the DVD. You want to go through the whole movie. So don't worry. Theory is fun also. Have theoretical knowledge. Nobody is stopping you. I am also not in any kind of hurry. So the Guru lets the seeker play and actually plays with the seeker, waits patiently for this movie to be over, for this energy of mind to be exhausted. Probably the guru will mess with the mind a little bit so that it happens quickly. The Guru has other work to do, you see. He is not going to wait forever. This is the fun part of spirituality.

Session 32

Nick is asking , is the experience of shunya, is the experience of the self?

The self is nothing but shunyata, emptiness. You can see it right now also. The experience of shunya is not really an experience. It is that place from where the experiencing is happening. You can look at it right now also. What is there to experience in the self? And if you can experience it, you can categorize it as an experience, not the experiencer. The self is defined as that which experiences. The self is the experiencer. Keep this in mind always. On the path of knowledge, the success lies in this discrimination. Discriminate between what is experience and what is experiencing it. That which is experiencing is the self. Always discriminate.

So when you say experience of shunya, it is an impossibility because experiencing happens from shunya. It cannot be converted into an experience of any kind. It is that which is taking in the experiences. And since it cannot be experienced, it is also called shunya, which means zero, which means emptiness. You cannot call it nothing, can you? Nothing cannot experience anything. Although sometimes we say it is nothing. But it is best to call it emptiness because it is empty of all experiences, empty of all feelings, empty of any content.

That place which is experiencing right now, that place which is aware of all experiences, aware of our feelings, thoughts, mental activity, is even aware of the concept of emptiness. So you will find a concept of emptiness that is in your mind. The mind is thinking about emptiness. What is emptiness? Where can I find it? And there is an emptiness that is looking at the mind thinking like this. So it cannot be known intellectually. It is impossible to know shunya intellectually. It is impossible to experience the shunya. Don't even try because it will always be the place from where the experiencing happens.

And you will find something extraordinary - that which is being experienced is also shunya. You are experiencing your Self. Self with capital S. The emptiness is experiencing itself and these experiences appear as illusory forms. Like flimsy images and sensations and so on. This is what we call the mind. What are we experiencing? We are experiencing a mind. We are not experiencing a world. You are not experiencing people. This voice is not a voice. It is just mind. It is simply appearances of various kinds. Even the thoughts that happen, even the emotions that happen. You are planning your desires, your intellectual abilities, the skills and whatever. The impulses and everything that you are experiencing is a mind. What is that mind? You can take a metaphor like the space and the wind and the air if you want. Take a space, a room which is empty and there is air in it. When the air is in motion it becomes wind. Then it starts producing an experience. Things start changing when the wind blows. If the wind is silent, if the wind is standing there, there is no experience.

You call it the experience of space or the experience of the shunya. When the movement happens, the wind blows. We call it mind. Is there anything which is separate from the air? Are all these things different from each other? The still air is the same as the moving air. Only that the moving air produces an experience. When it is still you cannot see it. Still air is space. It occupies the whole space. There is no difference between space and air

when it is still. That is the stationary mind. That is no mind. You can compare still air with no mind. And no mind is my real nature. The mind which is not moving is shunya. That is what the word emptiness points to.

But it is not going to happen very frequently. You will need to pay attention. You will need to discriminate between the wind from the air. This discrimination is important. That which is watching the wind blowing is the self. And it is space. It is emptiness. The wind is mind. It is an illusion. It is just taking shapes, forms, vortices. And sometimes it becomes a storm. But who cares? It is just wind. Patanjali says in the yoga sutra - chit vritti nirodha is yoga. That means when the mind stops you can see the union. Union of what? The experience and the experiencer. The space between two thoughts where the wind is not moving. Close your eyes and sit and think about something. And the thought comes and the thought goes. Wind of the thought stops for a split second between two thoughts. That is what is the meaning of dhyana practice. You will need to sit and see that the mind is different from the space that is experiencing. That is what is the essence of the practice of dhyana. Which is the seventh stage of ashtanga yoga. Which is trying to discriminate between the activity of the mind and the one that is aware of this activity of the mind. Discriminate. And the eighth step is samadhi. That means you incorporate the activity into space itself. The wind is nothing but air in motion. That is shunyata.

The forms that appear in our experience are nothing but the experiencer in “movement”. Since the experiencer is empty space, the empty space moves but it does not make it real. When it starts moving, it becomes an experience. That is why we call it non-duality. Advaita. Oneness. Because it is one thing. That is appearing as two things. Dvaita is happening in Advaita. The wind is blowing in the space of oneness. When it stops it is all one. When it is in motion, it is still one, appearing as two. Everybody should be able to discriminate. All you need to do is look at your experience right now. Right now you must be experiencing something like my voice, the sound, the birds around here or anything that is happening. You are seeing the visions, you are seeing the objects and people around you and the sensations of the body and thoughts and all. This experience is happening on the background, on the screen of consciousness, which is pure emptiness. These events are the movements. These experiences are nothing but mind. Mind is nothing but the activity of the mind. Mind is not a separate object which you can experience. The activity of the mind is all that you can experience. You can experience only the moving wind, not the air. This wind is nothing but the same emptiness that has taken on a dynamic form. Appearance. All there is is this dynamic experiencing.

Don't try to still your mind because the still mind is the same as the moving mind. Discriminate simply - it is moving now, it was still. The space between the thoughts is still. The wind of the thoughts and perceptions and feelings and emotions starts, impulses, desires and then after a few seconds drops down, again comes and then again starts. So it is futile to stop the activity of the mind. It is the nature of the existence to move. We cannot stop it. So realize the shunyata in the movement also. In the movements of the mind is shunyata. There is no experiencer besides this play of stationary mind and moving mind. Actually the mind is never stationary. It only drops down to a level where it becomes imperceptible. It does not even stop after death. It won't stop. It simply goes beyond the range of physical senses. Then it sprouts back with new activity. So this is the message of Advaita and Buddhism. Both are the same.

Yes, the experience of shunya is the experience of self. In rough words, in the words of an ordinary person you can say it. But the language of a gyani is different. Do not call the shunya an experience. It is that which experiences. That is all there is. There is no experience separate from the experiencer. You can see it right now.

Parveen is saying, but no mind can be only observed with the mind only. So this no mind experience is for a very short time.

The activity of the mind can be observed. And when you are observing a silent mind, then also there is a subtle activity of observing and deducing that it now became silent. So it reduces activity. That is all. The activity of the mind is necessary to know the presence of the experiencer. Otherwise, the experiencer will never know what it is. Now, that answers a very frequently asked question about why there is an experience. Why? If I am the self, I am the Nirgun Brahman without qualities, without activities, why did I have to take this trouble of creating the experience? And the whole trouble is so that you know your presence. You know it by the activity of the mind. It is not a useless thing. The mind becomes useless only when it is producing suffering, when it is in ignorance. A mind that is purified by knowledge is a blissful thing because it is giving you experience of being yourself. What can be more beautiful and complete than knowing what you are right now, right here? Can there be any other experience that is more beautiful than that? Yes, when it is entangled in stuff that the wind of the mind is producing and there are millions of varieties of things that it is producing, it is creating the experience for our entertainment, you can say. The mind itself gets tangled in it, which is also called the Samsara or the Maya.

When suffering arrives then it does not know what is happening. Like a fearful lost child. There is activity, there are so many people, thousands of people, so many things are going on. But the child starts crying because he cannot see his mother. He does not know where his home is. The fear takes over. That is the fear due to ignorance. I have nowhere to go and I do not know what to do now. Nobody is taking care of me and I need this, I need that. This is the condition of an ordinary person who is not on any spiritual path. Lost child in a fanfare of some kind. Lost in the activity of the mind. That is why we call them as lost in the Samsara. They are kind of trapped here. They do not know what to do. And they will remain like that till the Guru shows up.

It happened to me also, it happens to everybody. We are born here, that means we are lost already. Otherwise, why will you choose this physical life? We are here, that means ignorance is there. The Guru will show up one day. The Guru will show you that you were never lost. It was just an activity of the mind. It was a movie playing before you. You thought you were lost in the movie. Look at yourself. You are home. You are the mother. You are the father. You were never lost. All you need to do is turn 180 degrees. Look at that which is experiencing this drama, this madness of the world. Look at that thing. It is you. That is your home. That is your mother. That is your father. There is nothing else except this actually. Where are you going to get lost? You got lost in your home only. You think that I am lost because there is probably darkness in your room. Turn on the light. Light of the awareness. The darkness will be dispelled. This will happen when you meet a Guru. That's what happened to me and many people here in the satsang. I always get emails and messages from people that they have suddenly woken up to this. They have turned on the light in their room. No more lost now. Now the movie of the mind can play as usual. There is nothing wrong with that. It is perfect. Even the suffering is perfect. Even the pain is perfect. Even whatever you call your troubles and burdens etc, everything is okay because it is just a play.

You cannot say it is not real. It is real when you are in the play. Isn't it? When you sit back and observe the movie then it is a play. When you are involved in the movie it is real. We call it Maya, call it an illusion. But illusion is the only reality that you will ever experience. You cannot experience any other reality which is more real than this activity of the mind. Look at the activity of the mind. It is real for all purposes. Now the only ignorance is if you get trapped in this activity. If it starts producing suffering, now you will need to remind yourself that look, this is not real. Maya and the concept of illusion are like medicine for the sick. If you take it too seriously, get too involved in it, the suffering is too much. A little bit of suffering cannot be avoided because it is our choice. If it is too much, that means the darkness is too much, now medicine is given - Look, everything is unreal. And when the mind heals a little bit, the Guru will tell you - there is no other reality except this. Maya is unreal if you are ignorant. Meditate on this thing.

Nick is saying, Samadhi and Self-realization are the same?

Well, these two words come from two different traditions. Samadhi is the word that is used in Yoga tradition, Sankhya tradition. Self-realization is you can translate into Sanskrit as the Atma Gyan or self-knowledge. Knowing what you are. Which comes from the Advaita tradition. If you want to compare them then I see the Samadhi as a result of Self-realization. Self-realization needs to happen only once. How many times are you going to know who you are? Only once. And then the result of this knowledge is sitting in between the experience and the experiencer. When you sit in between the experience and the experiencer that is Samadhi. Samadhi means balanced intellect. Sam means balanced, dhi is intellect like in Buddhi or Bodhi. When you are in this state, that means the intellect is not going too much into the experience, not very much involved in it and is not also hunting for who is experiencing. Who is there? That is madness also. Then it is in between. It is sitting nicely, comfortably in between dualities. Which means we know, we know there are two dimensions here. The duality is here. But we are okay with it. Which is accepting the experience as the experiencer. Look at it. It is just you. It is just you appearing to yourself and then abiding in this situation.

So let us not compare apples and oranges because Samadhi is a state. Self-realization is a realization. It is knowledge. Realization happens only once and it should happen only once, you see. It cannot happen every day.

But you can come in and out of Samadhi. According to me, according to what I have realized, whatever conclusions that I have arrived at after going through all these Samadhis and realizations and all kinds of knowledge, is that we are always in Nirvikalpa Samadhi. We are Brahman and the fundamental quality of the Brahman is no quality. You cannot use your mind to know this thing. So do not try to use intellect to know this thing. The Brahman is fundamentally Nirgun, which means without qualities. What does that mean? It is a state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi all the time. The activity appears as an illusion. That means it does not actually take the Brahman away from Nirvikalpa Samadhi. I am always in Nirvikalpa Samadhi. This is my realization. It will be very difficult to see initially because you will say, no, at most I can go to the Savikalpa and then deep sleep and death. But the Savikalpa is happening on the background of Nirvikalpa. Saguna is happening

on the background of Nirguna. Where else can it happen? Do not think that Nirguna is a separate state. There is no separation of any kind, you see. If you make a separation between Savikalpa and Nirvikalpa, that is also ignorance, according to me. That is also called the Agyan. All you can do is discard the ignorance. Everything else is already here. Samadhi is already here. Discard the ignorance that you are separate, that you are the mind or the body or any other experience. And look at that which is experiencing. That which is experiencing is empty. Is Shunya. Is Nirvikalpa. Is Nirguna. You won't find anything there. All you will find is appearances which you should not take too seriously. That is not the nature of the Brahman. The nature of the Brahman is Nirguna. Emptiness. Whatever appears is also emptiness, is also Nirguna. The guna appears because you take it too seriously. You think it is real. That's why the qualities appear as real.

Stay in the middle of the experience and the experiencer, always 24 by 7. And this is not possible if you do not know what you are. If you do not know what is your essence. So the first step is always knowing what you are, knowing your essence which is also known as the Self-realization.

Don't go into this mess of Samadhis of all kinds. There are hundreds of kinds of Samadhis now. What is the use of that? Look at you. You are already in Samadhi. You are already in all kinds of Samadhis right now. You are in Turiya right now. You are not in Turiya also right now. Everything is here at the same time.

Activities of the mind, they can take different forms. It can become very, very subtle. It can become almost imperceptible and invisible. The wind can almost stop, but the Brownian motion does not stop. The microscopic activity of the mind does not stop. Nobody believes me when I say these things. I know, it is very difficult to believe. People will claim, I am a yogi, I can stop the mind. But you are back here. You are back

here saying this. That means the mind never went away. The stopping is not stopping. It just becomes imperceptible. When the car is moving, it is moving because of the energy that is being pumped into its wheels. But when it stops, can it start moving? You will say, yes, just turn on the engine. But you see, it needs something to start again. There is something that is going on there. Somebody will need to start it by turning on the engines. Now try to do this for the mind.

Assume that it has stopped. What starts the mind? Is there anything else? No. The only conclusion you can reach is the mind starts itself. You see, there is nothing there. This mind is all there is. The Brahman is all there is. It starts itself. What can you conclude from it? From the total stillness, motion cannot come. When the car is stopped, somebody needs to get into it and start it. So, from total stillness, the car is not going to start moving by itself. There needs to be movement somewhere to cause it to move again. When you say the mind stopped, something should restart it. You can conclude that only the mind can restart itself, which means that it never stopped. There was some latent tiny motion there which was just waiting to move it back into its ordinary state.

The essence is that - to stop the mind, it takes the mind. Only the mind can stop the mind. But it cannot stop the mind because you need to come back and say that my mind was stopped, which means there was some activity going on there waiting to restart this gross activity of the mind, like imperceptible activity of the mind.

And simply because you don't remember what happened in between or you cannot perceive it, it is beyond the range of subtle senses also, that does not mean that it was not active. It is always active. It is always moving.

And if you are confused, go back to your direct experience. That's where you should be anyway. How can you be, how can you stay away from your direct experience? How can you stay away from not knowing while intellectualizing? That kind of intellectualizing is like hitting in the dark. It's like driving in total darkness. You don't know where you are going. That's why I say, knowledge cannot be intellectual. It's like driving in the dark. It must come from the present moment. It must come from the state of samadhi only. Otherwise it's not knowledge. Otherwise what are you talking about? We do talk like that sometimes. Things which are not in the experience right now, we speculate about them, which is okay. Then you come back. Come back to that which is experiencing the speculations and intellectual activity. You realize that this is all mind created stuff. It's all language only. So from sanity to insanity and back to sanity.

Ajay is saying, intellectually I can say I am the experiencer on the subject of witness to the mind or experience. But the trouble starts when it is said that there is no experiencer, no experience. It seems contradictory and the mind always fails to look at experiencer because the mind can only attend to a form. But experiencer has no form. How to stay in the experiencing?

I will give you a trick. Try to stay not in experiencing. Try to do it for five minutes and tell me. Right now, stay in not experiencing. In other words, drop the awareness. Stay in unawareness for five minutes. And then we'll come back to your question.

Nick is asking, is moksha dissolving of the individual mind? Does the mind still exist after death?

Two questions. The first is moksha dissolving of the individual mind? Yes and no. The individual mind is not here already. You are already a mukta. You are already in a state of nirvana. If you see the individual mind, that means it is because of ignorance. Moksha is not dissolving of the individual mind because the individual mind is not present. It is always the universal mind or always the whole that is present. Moksha is the dissolution of the ignorance that there is an individual mind. The destruction of the ignorance that there is a separate mind or a separate individual in any form at all. Body or mind or causal body, or bigger minds. It does not exist. Destroy your ignorance about the individual mind and it's gone. That is moksha. That is liberation. Now you will say, no but the body is still here. The mind is still here. I can experience it. So the moksha is not destruction of experience. It is only the destruction of the bonds that we had with this experience. Experience of the body, experience of the mind.

If there is a linkage between you and these experiences then that is called bondage. Otherwise there is no bondage. Like a new born child there is no linkage there. It is all just happening. And the difference between a new born child and the one who has attained moksha is that the linkage is also seen as a form of maya. The bondage is also seen as an activity of the mind. That is true moksha. And then we don't mind what the mind is doing. We let it do it because there is freedom behind the bondage. Destroy your ignorance that there is an individual mind. Do a self enquiry. Is there an individual at all? What do you call an individual or a person? And you will find that it is simply concepts in the mind. And you come to the conclusion that the individual is sometimes called the body, sometimes called by name, sometimes called by a relation, gender, race, religion or profession, I am an artist or I am an engineer or I am a doctor or I am a politician etc. So the individual is all these mental concepts including the body. The body is an experience which keeps changing. The individual keeps changing.

There is nothing in-dividual about the individual. “Individual” means that it cannot be divided. But the body is just an accumulation of many parts. It is already a collection of things. There is nothing individual there. Which part of the body is the individual? You won't be able to tell. And the final thing that you will realize is that the concept of an individual is only a concept. It is in the mind. It is created by the mind. There is no individual hence there is no bondage for the individual, because it's not there. And there is no liberation for the individual, because it's not there. Liberation is dropping this idea that there is a thing called an individual.

The one that you are actually, the experiencer, the self, the shunyata is not bound by anything because it is all there is. There needs to be two to bind it. One thing binds the other. There is only one. It's not possible to bind it. It is infinite. And it is emptiness. Infinite emptiness. Can the emptiness bind something? Can it be bound in something? No. And you can look at your direct experience also. What are you bound with? You say, no, the body cannot do this and that. But that is the body. The identification shifted to the body. And therefore, you can say no, I'm going to die anyway. And that is the body again. And then you will say I am suffering. That is mind, not you. You are the witness. The witness is not bound.

The things that you are experiencing are necessarily bound. The nature of the experience is limitedness. It is always bound by something or the other. Do not try to liberate that. It's kind of impossible. You can purify

that. You can purify it through self-knowledge which means dis-identification with that which is bound. That will produce the experience of unboundedness which you already are. So whenever there is this feeling of being bound it is always a result of identification with that which is bound. Break the identification and you are back to infinity. Unboundedness is my real nature. Simply saying that I am unbound or I am already liberated, is not going to do much. It is again a thought. You will need to see it. Do a self-inquiry session. Sit down, find out what is bound. If the bound thing appears, if the bound thing can be experienced, it is an experience, it is not you. I am the self, I am the shunyata. The appearances will be bound. You cannot do anything about appearances. Accept the limitedness also because it's not really limited. There is nothing which is limited. It is expressing itself as a limited thing for a while, while being unlimited.

Now I will give you another metaphor - take a black cardboard, black page and make a pin hole in it, a tiny hole.

Now look through the hole and you will find that you cannot look at everything at once. You can see only one thing at a time. Now answer this question - whether the eye is limited or whether the view is limited? The view is limited, isn't it? If you remove the black cardboard, it is unbounded already, it can look at anything it wants. So that is the metaphor of liberation. Remove the narrow view. The things that block your view, that is the only ignorance. Remove the ignorance that you are limited. It may appear as limited but it is not really limited. That which is looking is not limited. That which you are looking at appears as limited, but it is also unlimited.

Does the mind still exist after death? Death is for the body. Death is an event in the mind. There is no individual so the individual never dies because it was never born. What was born is this experience, a limited experience and the limited experience goes away because that is what is the nature of the experience. The experiences do not stay. They keep changing. So death is a change, another experience, that's all. There is no death actually. Remember the mind is consciousness in motion. So did it die? Was it born? Can it do anything at all? No. You see, death exists as an idea in the mind. The mind cannot exist after death because it was not there before death. It was not there before birth also. You see it is an illusion and the idea of death and birth, reincarnation and rebirth are all ideas in your mind. There is no birth, there is no death, there is no rebirth, no re-death. It is a continuous experience. A person cannot die because the person is already a non-entity. It is not present. What will die? The body changes into dust because it is an accumulation of the dust. The body is an illusion, a limited experience that comes up on the screen of consciousness and it will go away just like any other experience.

If it comes up, it's okay. If it does not, it's okay. If it takes another form, another body, fine. It's all an illusion. You think that death is going to stop the mind. No. Death is an event in the mind. The mind is primary. Mind is more fundamental than the things that it is creating. That is why we call it the universal mind. There is no individual mind. Root of this ignorance is that there is birth and death and the mind depends on this body or the consciousness depends on this body. The root of this ignorance is a lack of knowledge of the self. You do not know what you are. That is why you are identifying with these passing experiences and that is why you see some kind of relation between these experiences and you conclude that I am that and when you see the experiences disappearing you say that I am also disappearing, and that becomes death for you.

It simply points to the lack of knowledge about what you are. Self-realization is the cure of this ignorance. Self-realization will cure death also. Death will disappear when you realize what you are. Can the emptiness die? Was it born? When was it really born? And who saw it taking birth? Because if there was something which saw the consciousness appearing that means the consciousness was already present. Otherwise how can it be seen as appearing? If somebody saw the consciousness disappearing that means the consciousness was already present watching the disappearance of the consciousness. Isn't it? So logically it is impossible to die. However when you are identified with any experience of these kinds, let's say you are identified with the physical body or the subtle body or the astral body or the causal body or any kind of body, death is sure. It is 100% guaranteed that death will happen because these are experiences, they appear and disappear.

Whole of your experience is just a flow of activities. It is never still and it will never be still. It was also never born, the experience will also never stop. So you can again use logic to see that if the experience stops that means there is an experience there which is of starting and stopping of experience. It is self contradicting because this whole thing is now an experience. The experience appeared - one event, the experience stopped - another event, no experience - another event. This is the total experience, isn't it? Logically it is impossible for the experience to stop, logically impossible for the experiencer to disappear. When I say the experience disappeared, you will find that it is only an idea in the mind. Castles in the air. It is not your direct experience. It is not the reality. It is an idea in the mind that oh the experience will go away. But nobody has seen the experience going away. Because if you have seen it, that means you are experiencing it and you came back to tell about the experience going away. That never happens. Everything is in the mind. Cooked up stories in the mind. Illogical activity of the mind. We see what is really there. We use logic and rationality to find out what the mind is saying. We discard everything the mind is cooking up. So no mind before death, no mind after death. It is all an illusion. Death happens as an event, an experience.

Session 33

Nick is saying, what will be the powers that realized one gets?

Very tricky question because it totally lies in the domain of the Maya. All powers that you say are powers are actually Maya. It is an illusion. We have some powers right now also, without realization also. For example, the power of language, speaking, no other animal has this. And the power of intelligence, highly developed intellect and there are few more powers like walking upright and we have almost controlled the world, the physical world is totally in control. At least we think so. By the power of the intellect, logical and rational thinking. There is the power of becoming aware also, spiritual insight, knowledge and there are some more powers which people do not recognize that we already have. One power that I usually say is that we have the power to take birth, take a physical form. It is something which we are hardwired to do now. This may not be the case for all the beings out there in the Maya, in this universal mind. Some are never embodied. This is a major power and yes the use of intellect and language are also major powers.

The thing is because now we have them, we have lost any kind of wonder for them. There is no sense of wonder for that and when somebody progresses on the spiritual path a little bit and gets a little bit more abilities, we think that is a big deal and the ones that we already have, we don't want to use them for some reason, or they are happening automatically. There is a suggestion here, the new seeker should do a study of what abilities we already have, that should be done first instead of running after other new abilities. It is okay to go and search for new abilities but first make a list of your existing abilities, are you using them totally, fully? Because you don't have the other powers. They will come whenever they come or they won't, everything is okay here but whatever we already have that is most important right now. So what I did was, I made a list and that is in about 12 or 13 articles on my blog, all have this title: The extraordinary abilities of the mind. You know when I started on this question what abilities can the mind have, the answer was obvious, it can have unlimited abilities but whatever we have today, right now right here, those we need to use first. I have seen that if you saturate those abilities, the new abilities start emerging, that is the natural progression of the mind.

Manish is saying, Look at the question, it has two words - realized and get, now the meaning of “realized” is that it was there all the time, so getting powers is actually illusory, power was always there, the only thing that changes is realization that one has power.

Absolutely yes, perfect answer and he says but these powers are dangerous and trapped on the path of moksha, mukti, freedom, that is also another aspect of powers. If you pursue a spiritual path just to get the powers then you become a slave of powers. That is not really freedom, because you are attached to something, you want something. Not only do you want that which we are enabled to have but also that about which you have simply heard from somewhere, that is a big trap. That is getting lost in the illusion or the ignorance again. So my suggestion is always that - we have extraordinary abilities already, we don't realize this. Make a list of your abilities. Just now I gave a few examples, the ability to choose correctly for example, the ability to attend, pay attention to something, the ability to relax our attention, these are some examples. The ability to affect the

universal mind using our intention, using our thoughts, the ability to think. How are we using these abilities? What are we doing with them?

The biggest ability is - we have a physical body, we are in this amazing virtual reality where very few beings get

a chance to be. The unborn ones, they are jealous of what we have because it is a big thing to come here, from their point of view. It has become a habit for human beings and we are trapped here, we are progressing but we are doing it slowly, but for those that are waiting for human birth, they are waiting to get this power and enter into this virtual reality game to do whatever. They think that we are extremely powerful because we can do that. So what are we doing with the body, what are we doing with the world, these are big powers, and in this relative reality, we already have big powers, power to create, power to destroy, power to communicate with other beings using this machine of the body. What are we doing with these powers?

The mind is evolving, so as it evolves, it is shedding its limitations, the limitations that are a consequence of attachment to the body and to the world, and to these five senses, the vishay, it is a very beautiful word, vish means poison, whatever the senses take in is like poison for a seeker, we are poisoned by the senses. We are actually disabled by our own powers here in this world, this is kind of unfortunate. So a seeker is the one, a realized one is the one who has recognized his true nature, that is the definition of self-realization, that individual has realized his or her true nature, that is the start of shedding of limitations, because as the Atman, you are infinite, you are all powerful already, you are the whole existence already. Now what else do you want, now the ego wants some things for itself. The ego wants a long life, young body, healthy body and immortality and the ability to manifest anything, the ability to fulfill any desire. Desire fulfillment is the goal of the ego, whatever desires that pop in the mind, it wants to fulfill them, it owns them, it says it is my desire and I wish to fulfill it. So it looks into its own abilities first, if the desire cannot be fulfilled or it takes a lot of trouble and hard work, then it looks for extraordinary abilities. There is no limit to what can be done, in the illusion there is no limit, because if I am limited to only these abilities that means I am not omnipotent. Omnipotence is the characteristic of Self, I am already omnipotent, I don't know it because right now I have chosen to play here as a limited being. There is no limit to the abilities of the mind and that includes the ability to manipulate the whole world, the ability to generate universes, the ability to destroy the universes and everything in between, everything is possible.

Right now only some things are possible, to which we do not pay attention, we are capable, very powerful things, we are not utilizing them because we are taking it for granted. It is the nature of the ego that whatever it has, has no value and whatever somebody else has or it does not have, it wants that, it runs after that. You can see this very well in children, you give them 10 toys, they will play with them for exactly 10 minutes and they want something which you are holding, which their mother or father are holding. When you give it to them, they want something else and this is the nature of the ego. A child is nothing but a manifestation of pure ego, very innocent ego. You will see the same thing in adults, a big house and a big car, not enough, I want something more than my neighbor has. This much food is not enough, I want to eat all day or one partner is not enough, I want everybody in my town to be my partner. This is the hoarding tendency of the ego.

Whatever powers we have right now, we are not using them, just like toys, we have thrown them away and we

want something which we don't have. That is the problem and the ego thinks that if I can do something which nobody can do, that will be a survival advantage, so it is hankering for even the tiniest amount of advantage that it can get in the society. It can be a big hurdle for your liberation because the goal of a seeker is exactly opposite, it does not want to do all these things, it wants freedom from all these activities of the ego. The ego is the biggest hurdle for a seeker. When the ego gets powers, what do they do? Misuse it, nothing else but misuse, you must have seen it, some people get some powers, they use them to kill people. I want power over other people or they get entangled into sensory pleasures which simply destroys their body and mind completely. That sets them back a few births, now they need to come back to this more purified state of the mind and it can take three or four lifetimes to get back. Yes, you can behave badly without powers also but in this case the consequences are tiny compared to what you can do with powers. Because the potential is big, the potential of destruction is also big and if the ego is not in control, well, that is a death sentence for that causal body. It will do all, that is guaranteed.

We utilize our powers to purify the mind first, purification of the mind brings the power automatically. What is purification? Destroying our limitations. How to destroy the limitations? Everything starts with knowledge of what you are, self-realization. Once you see what you are, you will see the mind as an object, ego as an object, a process, body as another use and throw object. Then you start getting control over them or you stop worrying about them and the mind progresses, because of the knowledge of the mind. Some people may want to accelerate the progress, accelerate the purification of the mind and once the ego is subdued, well, all these abilities are acquired but no use is made or the person or the individual does not remain in the physical world to use them. There is no use of them in the physical world actually, that is the realization. If these powers appear without realization, e.g. because of occult practices and all, or because of the dependent kind of practices where somebody who is out there in the universal mind has more powers than you and you worship that thing and that serves you with these extraordinary abilities, that is the dependent kind of occult practices. If people use that, it is almost guaranteed that they devolve into animal nature, back into something lowly, they lose their human status also. That is almost guaranteed because ego plus power equals corruption, this is a universal law, you cannot escape this law. When the powers are in service of ego, disaster happens, that is the law.

We start realizing what we already have and we start purifying the mind, purify it of your lower nature, let go of the fear, anger, hate, jealousy, lust, whatever you see, the attachment to stuff, wanting, desiring, all this should be surrendered and then new abilities appear and then there can be some use in your own spiritual evolution plus in manipulating other minds like minds of other seekers. If you become a guru then you get this ability to affect other minds with positivity. You can transfer your own state of awareness into the seeker. You must have heard this, some gurus can do that or you can do a surgery on their mind and cut off their karmic substance a little bit, cut off their impressions a little bit, which cuts down their future births or makes them easy. A guru eliminates the past karma a little bit, he has this kind of ability. Anyhow, the more powerful you are the less powers you use, this is again another rule.

Ganesh is saying, I think the ability to discern and to choose are the greatest powers?

Yes absolutely, the ability to know what is right, what is wrong, what is good for my liberation, what is good for my progress, what is bad for ego. You should know how to kill the ego. These things are of more value in this physical life. We are here to complete a mission, don't worry about other people, we don't know why they are here, but a seeker is here for a specific reason. Sometimes I say there is no purpose, there is no meaning, yes that is true, but a seeker has assigned a meaning, assigned a purpose to the human birth, which nobody else has done, they are simply living, but seeker has a specific mission here and we are born with the abilities to fulfill that mission, otherwise we wouldn't take the mission.

Somebody wants to climb the Mount Everest, they know that they are able to climb it, they come with all the gear, they have the abilities to withstand that kind of cold and harsh climate and lack of oxygen and their bodies are strong enough to climb. Fear is absent from their mind, they have the skill and then they start climbing, that

is their mission. We are already born with the required abilities, start using those abilities, don't get distracted. The abilities that we already have, the ability to gain knowledge, the ability to find truth, the ability to abide in awareness, in samadhi of any kind and the discernment, we have the ability now. Probably you were not born with it, but because of the grace of the gurus, we know how to purify the mind and clear the karmic substance from there, so that we escape this entrapment, we can defeat this darkness of ignorance, we have all these abilities.

What are we doing? We are going forward with whatever we have and slowly we know more, knowledge is the

real power, you don't need anything, you are all powerful in every possible way, but when you don't know it, then it's of no use. I was listening to somebody on YouTube and he said, it is like your bank account has a billion rupees in it, but you don't know that you have that bank account, you are living like a beggar on the street. The situation of an ignorant person is like this: he is a billionaire, he does not know it. As soon as we shed the ignorance, we can withdraw from this account. Or on the path of knowledge, you can say I am everything, why do I need to own a tiny bit, I am a trillionaire already or even infinite amount of wealth is there, I am the whole universe, I am everything already, I don't want a tiny part now and it is a play, it is all virtual, it is not real, it is like my dream, it is created in my dream. If I am awake in the dream, do I want to change anything? No, it is business as usual, there is nothing wrong with this dream. Or if any other dream starts, well it is also good, I will watch that. This is the perpetual thing that is happening in my own being, why do I want anything specific? Wanting is bondage, letting go is freedom. When you let go you get everything, when you want you get only one tiny part,

a tiny bit of dust. So these things we realize and then we stop worrying about all these powers and all. Sometimes the ego will say oh I wish I could do this or that, you just watch that also and yes, you will do that someday, that is also learning.

Why is there a limitation? Just to have this experience, it is limited, it is very useful, it is fun also. Now from the point of view of the path of knowledge, the limitation is seen as ignorance that is all. When you gain knowledge that is as good as dropping the limitations, once you destroy the ignorance you become everything. Therefore we are not too worried about abilities which we can use and once we know what we are well this all this childish behaviour about manipulating what is already here, of changing it according to the preferences in the mind, it falls away. It can happen slowly because the mind has a kind of inertia so it keeps wanting, it's also ok but discernment, discrimination, we should see what the mind is wanting and train the mind. The mind is training itself, that is the process of growth, maturation of the mind is happening and then when time comes, when it is fully realized in terms of experience also not only in terms of knowledge then this wanting stops, abilities are seen as dirt, they are seen as nothing. That is why sometimes I say that you will get a glimpse of this kind of existence. When you are dreaming, become aware in the dream, now it is your own dream so you can manipulate it in whatever way you want. You are the all powerful being there, nobody can see you in the dream, nobody knows what is happening there, they think it is as usual. You change things in the dream but what are the dream characters going to think? It is normal, this is how the dream is.

It reminds me of the movie Inception, the manipulator there, the designer, the architect is changing the dream and buildings start folding, turning upside down and people start walking upside down and cars climb the wall and they start going on the roof upside down and nobody notices anything unusual, it is business as usual for them. I can go ahead and say that this is happening right now in this world also, there are some really strange things here which should not be there but for us they have become normal. We do not see it with this kind of amazement because we are in the dream, we are dream characters, the people who are not awakened for them the dream is a reality even though it is the strangest kind of dream in the existence. I encourage people sometimes, go and manipulate your dream, you are the god there obviously, the people in the dream won't come to know what is actually happening. You can even take a body there in the dream, any kind of body which is a big power and you can tell them, look I am doing this. But nobody will pay attention to you, dream characters may pretend as if they are afraid but you know it is only you, the dream character is also you, the one who is changing the dream is also you, the one who is folding the buildings is also you, the one who is walking upside down on the road is also you and as soon as you awaken to this truth, the attraction fades away, the play becomes boring.

I am telling you it will take only two or three dreams to drop this kind of childish behavior. It happened to me actually in one of the dreams, I was busy manipulating, playing with the dream, after five minutes probably, who knows how much time went there, but finally I lost all interest in the dream. This is the lesson that you will learn if you manipulate your dreams and then you will lose all interest in manipulating the waking state also. Which happened to me unfortunately, because sometimes it can be premature, sometimes such a person will enter depression and the disidentification will happen prematurely which is also called identity loss because I am not this character anymore. So the ego will start behaving in a very strange way. Anyway that is a good exercise if you want, bring your awareness up in the dream state, see what happens because you get your wishes fulfilled there. Detachment will happen, nothing else will happen.

Nick is saying, I am completely aware in a dream, in its total span of dream but I don't know it's a dream, I am thinking as if it is also the waking state. What to do in this situation and how to know it's a dream in the dream?

You are aware in the dream that means you have access to the waking memory. Can you recite your name and telephone number and address and names of your mother, father, wife, child anything, is it possible for you in the dream? If you have this access to the waking memory which you should have because if you don't have access to your waking memory in the dream state that is not a totally aware dream then, because you are busy in your dream memory which is kind of fleeting, it does not last even for two seconds.

Nick is saying, I am completely involved in the dream, I don't know it's a dream.

Well, if you are completely involved in the dream and you don't know that it is a dream, this is not an aware dream. You don't need to do anything, continue, it is simply state of the mind, however if you are aware in the dream and the confusion happens that probably it is real thing, then extend your awareness, that awareness is not good enough, extend your awareness so that you are reminded of your waking life in the dream. That can be

done by practice, like whenever you become aware in the dream a little bit, now you try to remember what you are actually and then the waking state memories will flood in, then it will cause confusion, whether the scenery that I am watching is real, whether all these dead people that are here, my grandfather, grandmother, everybody is back, there will be confusion whether it is real or not, at that time you can refer to your waking life and compare the scenery around you with your waking memory and you will find discrepancy obviously. The cars are flying and your grandmother is here. Question all this, because she is dead now, she should not be here and that will give your intellect a pointer that it is not the waking state.

I do not call it the real world anymore actually, I call it waking state and dreaming state, that is the proper word. We are not in the real world and the dream is not a dream world, the real world is a dream and the dream world is also a dream. Any state of the mind when you project your consciousness there is dreamy state, do not call it as reality, there is no reality here, its all illusion, the more we are accustomed to this illusion, the more real it becomes because that is what is in the memory now, nothing else happens, only that which is in the memory happens. It is like a crystallization of the dream, the waking state, it has crystallized a little bit, it is not totally fluid now, like the dream state and that is why I say, dream state is like a blessing, it is a boon that we have, otherwise there was no way to know that the waking state is also a dream. If the mind did not change states, there was no way to know, not even with gurus, not even with all the gods and goddesses in heavens, there was no way to convince the mind that this is not reality. So you can thank the dream state, it gives us an opportunity to compare waking and dreaming and then we can suspect that oh this is also a dream and there are only levels of dreaming there. The night dream happens in the daydream, daydream means the waking state, so it is a small glimpse of what can be done when you awaken here in this waking state, small glimpse. Like the causal memories will flood in for some people, it must have happened for many. For me it flooded in in the form of - I am wasting my time here, I don't belong here, this is not my home and it can cause a little bit of depression also, you see, it's normal. This body is not real and all these things, it comes back. These are our causal memories. Don't think that the causal memory means that you will know all of your lives, past lives. You will know the essence, that is all is needed. You don't need to remember all the tiny details of all kinds of bodies and lives that you lived, while in dreams, although it is possible, nothing is impossible here, but that is useless, what we want to know is our causal memories, they will flood in as soon as you become aware in the waking state, you will know your purpose here, you will know your mission here and your basic tendencies will start manifesting. For me I can tell you that whatever I am doing now, this satsang, the books, the podcast, the videos, it is a manifestation of the basic tendencies to share knowledge, to bring everybody out of darkness, but I know that is not my mission, you see, that is a different thing, the basic mission is to bring myself out of darkness, this mind, out of ignorance. That is what is happening, the awareness, the self-realization will trigger your causal memories to download into the waking state.

Just like I said, if you want to become totally aware in the dream, you need to download your waking memories in the dream, then you will get power over the dream. That's why I gave you the links to the communities, there are many, if you search lucid dreaming, well on Google, and there are you know, tons and tons of groups and communities to hang out with, and what is the use of that, you will come to know others experiences, that is the use, and you will come to know the language that the occult people speak, so your questions will become precise, probably there won't be any questions after one month or two months, you will become at par with the community, and then small questions will vanish. If there is a big question, well I will make sure that it goes away. Even these communities on the internet do not know that much, which the yogis or gyanis know. You will find these kind of descriptions there, this is the real world, and when we enter the dream, that is the dream world, and I need to find evidence that that is also real, so I will try to cause something in the real world, and then I will find evidence. This kind of things are going on in the lucid dreaming or projection communities, that is because they have the experience, but the knowledge is lacking, they do not have this knowledge that the current state is also of dreaming, which only yogi can see. It needs a little bit of spiritual attainment to see that, and they do not have it. They think that whatever experiences they are getting are real or controversial. Ultimately I say that it is kind of useless, if it destroys your ignorance, if the mind gets relaxed and peaceful after these experiences, then it is of use, if it gets trapped in those experiences, well it is worse than what our current situation is. It looks like the mind is trapped here, isn't it? We don't want you to get trapped in any other world, any other bodies for 2 or 3 million years, that is not our mission, our mission is to awaken in all the dreams. Actually I don't worry about any dream now, don't want those dreams, what I want is end of this waking dream, that is our mission, to come out of this repetitive existence of the physical world. That is the mission that was downloaded in the waking memory, now it is happening, it is getting executed, however slowly, it is okay, it is fine, we have the time. But if you are in suffering and ignorance, then you don't have time, then you don't want to waste time in that kind of state, once you are above that, once you know what you are, your essence, the suffering will be dropped, the anxiety will be dropped, there will be peaceful state in the mind and then you have all the time in the universe, then you can do it for eternity. It's okay, it's fine, because you are already liberated, you are waiting for the dream to end, you can do some things to accelerate this, to come out of the physical existence, then that is a totally different topic.

Nick is saying, no, I am aware in dream, I remember everything in dream, it's like waking state, but I know it's a dream only after waking, not in the dream.

Okay, extend your awareness and start comparing your waking state with the dreaming state, that way you will be able to identify stuff which is out of place, should not be there in the dream. I gave you the example, probably your grandmother is in the room, probably it is a different house, like when I used to go to this dreaming states, I used to end up in a house where I spent my childhood, because probably that has bigger impression in the mind and mind creates a house like it was 20, 30, 40 years ago and then I could remember. I could compare it with my current house where I am living, it does not look like my current house, it looks like the past house and that was a big trigger to grow the awareness that it is a dream and as soon as you know that, you can start experimenting,

exploring. You can play out your wildest imaginations there, it is all very, very “real”.

Nick is saying, but there are no two to surrender. How to surrender?

The surrender is not to the other. The surrender is to the self. Just like you must have read that article on surrender and I'll go into it a little bit. I've said that there are two or three stages of surrender. The first is surrender to your parents. That is traditional, but as a child or as a teenager, you should surrender to your parents. Their wish is the only wish. And the second surrender is surrender to your guru. That is the one who is teaching you. Without surrender, you won't learn anything. Without accepting the guru, you won't learn anything from the guru. And the third surrender is surrender to God. What is God? That which is manifested. And the fourth surrender is surrender to the Self. There are no two. Yes, you are absolutely right. Surrender to the Self, which means give up this duality that you assume is the truth. Giving up the concept of duality is surrendering to oneness. Realize the oneness. It's very simple, actually. The other phases are difficult. Once you surrender to the Self, well, the rest of the surrender will happen. Now you see everybody as myself.

Stop worrying about the powers and what the Shakti is doing and not doing and manipulating the world and making it a better place. It is a perfect place. Obviously, guru is your own form. The guru has given you the knowledge, so that surrender should come out of respect and love. So, guru is the topmost. For a gyani, at least on the path of knowledge, guru is the highest. There is nobody higher than the guru. And about the parents and the elders in the tribe and all, that is put there by the teachers, by the great masters, so that the child gets a proper path from the beginning. So, once you realize oneness with everybody, well, you are not going to disrespect anybody. How can you disrespect anything, anybody? How can you disrespect the elders and mother and father? Now, this is Kaliyuga. So, mother and father are expected to be ignorant. That was not the case when these stages of surrender were recommended. Those times were different. So, you need to surrender to mother and father to an extent that is permissible by your guru. Sometimes you need to do this kind of circus. Guru is your parent now. That is why your parents are so terrified of you joining the ashram because they know their control is gone as soon as the guru takes over. So, that is, the age of darkness. So, even the parents are in the dark. And you can see a lot of gurus and so-called swamis, they are only slaves of their egos. Even if they have an extreme amount of knowledge. Even if they are extremely brilliant. They know everything that is written in every kind of book, but slaves of the ego. So, you will need to take a little bit of precaution there also. Surrender to a guru with whom you have a long-term relation only. Do not surrender to any guru whom you find on the street. Also, I have written about that in the article. There is a podcast episode also about the surrender, where I have gone through these pitfalls of the surrender.

Session 34

Nick is saying, What is your message for the one whose death is inevitable because of Corona?

The same message which is for anybody else, that death is a part of life the reason for death does not matter, it can be a virus, it can be a parasite, it can be cancer, it can be heart disease, it can be road accident, plane accident, war, it can be your enemies it, can be your own relatives, it can be suicide, the reason is not important the death is inevitable. As soon as you know that there is death, try to find out why there is death, what is it that dies, what is it that lives, what is it that has taken birth in this perishable form, impermanent form. That is our mission here, that is what a seeker is.

We should be thankful to death because death shows us the reality. Death gives us an opportunity to seek. Look at all those evolved creatures, they do not know death in heavens, they do not have this kind of chance, they do not know the suffering of the body. Their bodies are very evolved and very light, so they do not need to eat also, so they are trapped there in this pleasure heaven, pleasure park. We are fortunate because we have the right mix of pleasure and pain. Pleasure of living keeps us going in this world. There's so much to see, so much to do, so much to learn, but death, disease and these weaknesses in the body or old age forces us to find out the meaning of life.

Don't worry if your ticket is given by corona, it's fine, there's nothing to worry. What you have done in your life matters more than how you die. That is immaterial. Yes, that does not mean that we should carelessly invite death. No, stay away from death as long as possible and make use of life, that is the message to everybody, not only to the patients, it can be any kind of patient. I myself have gone through many kinds of troubles because of the body and I always thought only if I could get a body which is free from all these troubles, that would be so nice, but that is only a dream. The body is perishable, it will cause pain, it will become old, it will be eaten by all these viruses. It is the destiny of the body. Do not be attached to the body, use this body as long as you can and then let it go. Let it go, it is just an accumulation, it will go back into the atmosphere because it came from the atmosphere. You cannot stop that, you cannot stop the cycle of birth and death, you can transcend birth and death. It is possible to rise above birth and death. Once you rise above birth and death then these things will not

trouble you, these things will not become an issue for you. That does not mean you become reckless, careless, it simply means that you become peaceful, instead of panicking you accept, instead of throwing yourself in the mouth of death, like many young people do, those who drive very fast, for example, or those who are in the risky games or those who like to participate in wars, like to kill others and so on, they are just throwing their bodies into death prematurely. A seeker is exactly opposite. We stay away from danger, we stay away from disease and make some use of this experience. The best use is to know what you are. That is how you rise above the forms, and once you rise above the form, the form won't trouble you anymore. The suffering is gone, death is gone. Then death is just another event in life, birth is another event in life.

If you are interested, if you have the luxury to do this kind of practice, you can also transcend pain. The body will not cause pain. There are ways to do that. Unfortunately that knowledge is corrupted nowadays but you can reinvent it. It is all mind, it is your creation, so why not, you can manipulate it. That is the path of tantra/occult, plus it is possible to extend the life of this body two/three/five hundred years. It is possible to do that if you want at all. Now I'm diverting a little bit. Death is natural but if you want to play with the creation, if you want to play with the maya, you are most welcome. There is nothing wrong here, just don't get attached to this thing. You can experiment here. So it is possible to keep the body young and healthy for four/five/six hundred years. It is possible to do that because it is all me, the body is also me, isn't it? Just my form only. You can manipulate the form once you know the source code of the form. Because it is decaying, there are natural processes that are causing birth, death and rebirth or old age. You can take control of this process. It is possible to do that and if you have a mission, the universal mind will assist you in that. Gurufield will assist you in that.

Many people have done that. Nobody believes it nowadays. There are some great people who died and came

back just to show that there is no such thing as death. And if you are interested and you have achieved this transcendence from the death, you are above death and birth, now you can experiment on this robot, this form that appears here. With proper maintenance you can keep it going for as long as you like. No virus can touch you. If the body gets destroyed, you can always come back. There is no shortage of bodies here, eight billion bodies, and you can always create a new one. The only thing is - you do not know how, and that is why you are afraid and the reason for fear is not these viruses, not your enemies, not these motor accidents or whatever, the real fear is your ignorance. You do not know.

Just like I have done, dedicated my life to knowledge, you can also do it. Find out. And it is not necessary that your goal will be immortality or continuity of the body or even a very healthy life, even if it is a limited life. It may not be that, but your goal should be knowledge. Always, your goal should be knowledge, because it may or may not extend lifetime, it may or may not do something good for the society but it will get rid of fear, it will get rid of the egoic tendencies. That is what you want. Knowledge brings happiness, it may not bring long life, it may not bring amazing experiences, but it will always bring peace of mind, which is what we want.

Nick is saying, for me the problem is not my death, I'm ready for that. I have a little bit of discomfort in mind thinking of sorrow, crying of parents, family who will see my death.

It is not your death. Why are you owning the death? You are a witness of birth and deaths. You are a witness of the biological life of this body. You should not own it. It is not your death. And sorrow, well, what does it mean? Who will be sad? Other people will be sad, yes. So don't worry this comes and goes. There were probably hundreds of deaths in your extended family. People do not even remember all of them and they will forget you also. You mean this creature that is born here, this body. Sorrow is also impermanent. Crying goes on for one

week only. I have seen, it is back to normal after that. If you have dependents then it can be a problem. If you have a wife and a child or your parents are dependent on you, just make sure that they don't remain dependent. Make them independent, they should fend for themselves, they should get their own bread and butter. Once you make this arrangement, they won't feel that kind of insecurity about your death.

So the real sadness that is felt in a family, especially the sadness that is felt in those people who are dependent on you, is the insecurity that death of the person on whom they are dependent causes. If you are really a hardcore seeker you won't have a family. There will be nobody there who will cry after you. A sannyasi is the one who has nobody, who has no relations, attachment to nobody, no objects, nothing at all, not even to his body. He is the true sannyasi. He can be one of your relatives, one of your colleagues, one of your neighbors, it is possible. One who has given up everything in the mind. The bondage is in the mind only. If everybody in your family is ignorant they will see death of this body as some kind of loss and they will become terrified and sad for a time being, because of their ignorance and they return to normal, that is again ignorance, life as usual. They do

not learn from the death of anybody here. Nobody is a Gautam Buddha here, only he learned from by seeing this kind of damage that happens to the bodies. Nobody else has this kind of intelligence here. So imagine if

everybody in your family and the society were enlightened, if they had the knowledge, then will they cry? No. Will it produce some kind of sorrow or pain? Will they grieve for many months? Will they feel insecure? No. So the cause of these things - sorrow, crying, insecurity in the family, especially among the dependents, is not your death, it is their ignorance.

Death is very natural, the drama that happens around it is artificial.

I am not saying leave your parents, I am not even saying that try to educate them, try to make them see, probably that time has not come. Do not worry, that is my advice. Things keep happening here. People forget the dead. People forget the living also. They are in some kind of sleep here. Sleep takes over. This zombiness, unconsciousness takes over the mind. Nobody really suffers here, it is all ignorance. They are living in some kind of fog, they cannot see clearly, and they are holding on to some things. When this support is taken away they become insecure, they become fearful, they get terrified. This causes this kind of drama around deaths.

I think it is much better in India compared to the western countries. There death is a big issue. Indians are now getting converted into that kind of culture where death is seen as a loss. It is not a loss, it is freedom. Death is liberation. The problem is, you don't want to go away, because you do not know what is behind the death. What experience lies after death. You do not know that. Nobody tells you also. They will tell you there is nothing after death or some will tell you - you will go to hell and you will be punished. Well it's okay then I don't want death, I want something permanent then, where there is nobody left to be punished. Therefore you will remain trapped in death and birth. Nobody knows these things, nobody makes an effort to find out the answers also. It is not that we are incapable of finding the answers, it is not that we are incapable of knowing what is beyond death, what is before birth. Why do I need to endure this birth in the human form and endure all this mechanical happiness and mechanical suffering which looks real? This illusion of suffering, being trapped and being released. Why do I need to go through this? It is not that we are incapable of knowing this secret. We are fully capable, but nobody seeks. Nobody wants to know. This is not something which can be told by words. It is not a matter of knowing the words, it is an experience and nobody wants to get that experience, they prefer suffering, they prefer stupidity and the pettiness of the world instead of knowledge, instead of knowing their real nature, instead of knowing what this mind is and what this world is, how to manipulate the world, how to manipulate the maya, nobody does this kind of effort.

Unfortunately, we are born in this kind of time and in this kind of society and so we are destined to suffer, just like they are suffering, it's fine. Slowly you will gain the knowledge. As soon as you're born here, your first job is to question everything and the second job is to find a guru. After that nothing needs to be done. This is the only thing to do. Our societies are geared towards exactly opposite. As soon as you're born they will dumb you down with all kinds of beliefs. They won't let you question also. They will call you stupid if you ask a question. They will oppose you going to a guru because they “know” who is the proper guru for you - it is your school, it is your college. They will give you the knowledge to stay alive in this world and that's all you need. So we are born among the blind and they will destroy your eyesight also, by poisoning your mind. They won't let you see also.

You are fortunate that at least you got this ability to question everything. I do not do anything in the satsang, I do not say anything in the videos or the podcast, I simply give you a question to think about, that's all I do. How can I give you anything, you need to get it yourself. Your experience is your knowledge. I can only give you a question. The question is this - why are you here? Who are you? Now find out. Now go to any guru that you like, they are all the same. Seek anywhere you like, any tradition you like, get into any kind of practices you like. All these roads are different but the goal is the same. Once you know these things, which should not take a long time, it will take as long as you are resisting it, as long as it takes for your resistance to drop, it will take only that much. You can drop it today, you will know everything today. I'm ready as soon as you are ready. I'll give it to you, I'll show you.

Why are you so afraid of it? It is my drama, it is my movie that I'm shooting and watching at the same

time. The problem is you think you are the character in the movie and the movie is going to end. Yes it will. Who wants a movie that goes on for many years. We want to end it, that is why we programmed death in it. You probably don't remember this, but you are already very wise, because you're born here, you are already very evolved. Try not to look at it from the human point of view, try to look at it from a higher point of view, like the point of view of the causal body, which has a bigger intelligence than human intelligence. You knew that once you get trapped here in this physical world, the matrix, there is no way out. You can remain here for as long as you want, it is your creation. So you made an arrangement to get out of here. What is that arrangement? You programmed the event of death here. It is not like this in any other universe, only in the physical universe. It is called Mrityu Loka for a reason, which means the world of death. That is not a bad thing, it is a door which you have opened here because you knew that it can become a problem if we get trapped here. You can forget because that is how we come here, we come with a total forgetting of our real nature. You were smart enough, you landed here with a return ticket.

We are here with a return ticket, your booking is limited here in this hotel of the world. You cannot extend it now. So it is a very smart thing to do. Whenever you enter an experience which will be a dreamlike experience, you should go there with a return ticket, otherwise you're stupid. We enter our dreamworld in the night time but we enter there with a return ticket. Have you noticed? What is the return ticket? The activity of the body. You do not wake up from the dream, it is impossible. The dream character will never be able to wake up from the dream. The body calls you back to the physical world from the dream world. Body has completed the sleep cycle, now it needs to get up, it needs to eat, it needs to go to the bathroom, it needs to do something, your boss is calling you, every five minutes your phone is ringing, this will bring you back from the dream world, nothing else. Survival will bring you back, that is your return ticket. Imagine people in coma, where senses are not functioning or the internal circuits are broken somehow. They're functioning but not able to break the dream and they are dreaming for many years sometimes. That is a nightmare, that is even worse than death. At least this kind of suffering will not be there after death, after destruction of the body. Imagine being trapped in the body and not knowing what to do, that is a bigger suffering. You don't want that and therefore you came here with a return ticket.

Be thankful to yourself that such an arrangement exists. See the situation of those creatures who are not in the world of death, who are eternal, they're immortal, they are trapped in some kind of heavenly prison now. What brings them out of it? I have no idea actually, but all ways of their progress have been blocked because they do not have the return ticket. So I see death like this. I have a very strange way of looking at deaths because there is a bigger picture there, which I found out through my own experiences. If you have forgotten, nobody's stopping you from recalling. Know your real nature, know the nature of the mind, know the nature of the world and you will be thankful for the death. You will not be fearful. An ordinary person is exactly opposite, prefers ignorance, clings to people, clings to objects in the world, does not want to get out of this body. Because of that they're suffering, terrified of death. We don't want to be in that situation, that is why we are seeking.

Nick is saying, isn't renunciation/sannyas also a bondage?

That depends on how you define renunciation. If you define renunciation as getting rid of all the objects, all the relations, and all your belongings, then it is a bondage only. That is not real renunciation. The real sannyasa is when you detach from these things, while keeping these things. There's no issue here, you need things to keep the body alive. You need to be in the society because the body depends on the society. It cannot survive without the society, not for long or if you are very hardcore you can live outside the society. Somebody will come and kill you because that is how society is. You need society for protection, for food, for reproduction or whatever you do and the real sannyasa is doing all these things with total detachment, fully knowing that it is not you who is in the society, it is not you who is in the world. You are not of the world, you are in the world.

You dive in the lake without getting wet. It is not so difficult, nobody will even notice that you are a sannyasi if you live here skillfully in the world. How will this kind of detachment happen? Not by miracle of some kind, it comes only by knowledge.

Your body is just a collection of cells, most of them are just microbes that are living with this body. That should produce a detachment from that. If you think this is my body or this is me that should produce a detachment there. The more you study, the more detached you will get. It's not a big deal, it does not even take a lot of intelligence.

Death is a feature present only in this physical reality and it has its own purpose, significance. Wishing not to die is like saying - I want to remain in class-1 all my life, I do not want to pass and get out of the school. Life and death are like school classes. We enter the repeated lives to progress, we are not here to stay actually and death is like a summer vacation. We close down the schools for summer and that is like death. We go back to school but in a higher class, higher standard, and we learn more things. There is the process of incarnation, the process of rebirth. The phenomenon of rebirth isn't of any use if you are devolving. Our schools will not demote you to a lower class, it very rarely happens, I think it does not happen in India, they will either kick you out of the school or they will keep you in the same class, but this universal mind is a bigger school, it is a different school, it will devolve you, it will send you in the lower classes. It does not waste its resources. We are the resources of its evolution, so it recycles that kind of person back into the lower classes. If you have this kind of ignorance that no I don't want to go from here, I want to stay in the same place, which is the tendency of many people actually, they do not want to change, they do not want to progress, they think they know everything already and their beliefs are ultimate truths, such people will remain in the same class and actually the universal mind will ensure

that they devolve, so that it gets a chance to clean up the mess that has happened in this person. It has stagnated. We don't want stagnated minds, we drain that mind down. Like stagnated water starts stinking, we drain that thing out and then let the fresh water come in. Similarly the universal mind will devolve a causal body actually.

There's nobody present there to do that, it happens automatically. This is how this play is set up. It's very beautiful. The causal body will take a lower form but not immediately. It tries, struggles a bit, it wipes out everything then takes birth again and tries to come up a little bit, but if it is trapped in a stagnant society that is going on in ignorance for many hundred years, then it will devolve into something lower. It will even take a

form in the primitive societies, primitive cultures, tribal cultures here, not very civilized societies so that this junk that is collected gets a chance to be washed out. And if there also it does not purify then it devolves further into the lower creatures, it will become a cow, it will become a dog or bird or something, and even there if there is some trouble, it goes even lower. That rarely happens but it happens.

Now, I cannot prove it. This is what it looks like. I sometimes give this materialistic metaphor that imagine if the monkeys, the apes, decide one million years ago that no we don't want to evolve, we want to keep this body, the monkey body, long tail, I love my tail, and they invent a kind of medicine that keeps them alive, and now you can guess the results, for millions of years we have only monkeys, no humans. What has made us evolve? Death. They did not really die out, they reappeared in a refined form, which is humans. Even before the lower forms there were lower avatars, lower forms of the universal mind. It does not want to stay at one place, and when you go against death, nature will resist it, and will cause death. But you see everything is allowed here, you need to have that kind of knowledge to manipulate this rule set. You can bypass the rules sometimes, without harming your evolution. For example, when you take your evolution in your own hands, you become a siddha, you become a very powerful tantric who knows how to evolve.

That which is witnessing the evolution, that which is witnessing the death, birth, life, rebirth, redeath, everything, the progression of the causal body, progression of the universal mind, and all that, is eternal, that is timeless, that is not subject to any kind of change because it is pure emptiness, pure nothingness, without any qualities and there is no time also there, and it is infinite, is already free, it is already liberated, and I am that.

Nothing is really happening here, nothing important is happening. So with this knowledge comes freedom, peace of mind. Then you let whatever is happening, happen. These tiny whiny things, viruses, animals, people, wars and whatever, they are not going to trouble you now. You can see it as a learning opportunity and if you do not survive it is your ticket now.

What will happen to a mind which is completely spiritually evolved and what that mind will do after that?

There is no such thing as a complete spiritual evolution. It is endless, it goes on and on. We can guess a little bit because evolution is like a widening of the mind. It is not that one thing changes into the other, it keeps all the layers, which you can witness in the physical world also. We have all the layers from the inert matter onwards. If you know my model of the layers of the mind, all these layers are present here right now. The inert matter is present, the active matter is present, single cells are present and all kinds of evolutionary artifacts are present here. We also have this tiny thing in the corner of the eye which was once a transparent eyelid which covered the eye, when we were sea creatures, we were living in the water. We still have that, a vestigial part. Nothing is actually removed, that is the characteristic of the mind. It is arranged in layers, nothing gets removed. So it is simply widening. New layers are added on the top of old layers. Ultimately it expands so much that it becomes a bigger mind. It starts producing its own children, it produces its own causal bodies. It's a cell division like process. They reproduce and then they start their own incarnation cycles and this bigger mind then expands into a universe, it produces many many universes because the forms need a playground in which they take experience. And then it becomes a greater mind by itself. This collection of the greater minds is called the universal mind.

The universes are dissolving also but where are they going? Nowhere actually, there's nowhere to go, there's only one place, which is here and now. It is an open-ended change. Evolution means simply change, it does not mean

becoming superior from inferior. It is simply some kind of change like water boiling. What is happening there? Water is not becoming superior by getting converted into steam, it's simply expanding. The bubbles form, they rise to the top, they expand and they become clouds, they fall down. This is going on, it is evolution. We see it as change only, we do not see it as an arrow-like thing, which comes from one place and goes to another place. No, evolution is not like that. It is exploration of infinite forms, there are infinite possibilities. The mind is exploring all the possibilities. Sometimes it looks like it has taken a trajectory, it seems we are on a trajectory, but it's only exploration of the forms, which will happen forever. According to me, at least, there is no final stage of evolution.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, if you had this kind of belief that I'll become something great after evolution is finished, no, you're already everything right now right here. The evolution is not happening to become something big, we are not evolving to become something better, it's a play, exploration. The only thing you should be aware of is that, do not make this into a suffering, that's all.

Mahachitta is what we see around us, just look around, this is what you will become when you evolve. You will create your own universe and it has already happened, we are the same substance, same memories that are appearing back in the greater mind, the mahachitta. It will continue to happen, there is no end to it. Nothing ends here because nothing started really. Time is an illusion. It is exploration in the time domain of the infinite possibilities and they are already here and now. In the end, evolution is also an illusion, nothing is really evolving.

Session 35

Someone is asking, is there any way you can reveal about your life?

Yes. You can ask anything specific about it, if you like, because it is extremely boring. Nothing really good or great happened in my life. I did not do any kind of adventures except the adventures in the mind which I have

shared everywhere. This biological life is extremely boring. Nothing really happens here if you see it outwardly. I do not even talk for many weeks sometimes. So you can imagine nothing is there in my life. This body is waiting to become a pile of dust. That is all my life is. If you want I can explain this same thing in one hour but you will be bored. And also, nothing really bad happened in my life. I was born with this drive to be free. My all actions are geared towards freedom only. There is nothing else I do. I can earn as little as possible and stay at one place or I can go anywhere, pack up my bags and disappear anytime. There is no bondage of any kind here. Any spiritual seeker would dream of this kind of life where there is nothing much to do. Be in meditation all the time. You are born for this and therefore you want to do this. There is an internal drive in you to isolate yourself from others. You do not really like being in society. It is a burden for you and if you have made this kind of mistake that you have a huge family around you, well nothing can be done now. You will need to strike a balance there.

Anil is saying, situations around these days compel people to think about death, and they fear it.

If you are in society, you will always be afraid. I have seen this. There are many many fears there. Something will happen to me. Something will happen to my family. Something is happening to my community and religion. People are trying to kill me. Something is happening to my country. There are so many enemy countries around this country and the politicians are going to pour petrol in this fire of fear. They keep people afraid all the time because a fearful person is very easy to rule. Your boss keeps you afraid. If you don't do this work, I will write something bad in your report, or worse, I will kick you out of the job. Many people work only because of fear, not because they like the work. There are a handful of people who can say I like my work and I would like to spend my life in this company. They are just slaves. You start driving on a city road and you will be afraid of death. It can hit you from any angle in India, you see. There are no rules here. When you live in society, you live in fear. It can be a fear of many things. Ultimately it is the fear of death. People do not know their lives. They do not know what death is, obviously. They spend all of their lives in fear and bondage. This is what actually pushed me out of society.

If you see it, there is nothing wrong in society. You can have fun there. But it turns around very quickly and it turns into something ugly. It turns into something disgusting because your drive is not to stay in the society. Your drive is not to stay in the bondage. I have turned the relation of myself and society into something which I can enjoy. I found that sharing my knowledge is very enjoyable. It is a real pleasure because you are not asking anything in return and you are not losing anything also. People throw these parties and all. Why? Because they want some pleasure out of people. They do not make others happy. They want to make themselves happy and so they invite people to their house, they eat, drink, laugh and dance. They think that it is pleasure. What kind of pleasure is it? You are dependent on people for this pleasure. If everybody leaves you, you cannot have that party, you see. That is a fear that comes in your mind. Oh nobody will come to my house. Nobody will make me happy. Nobody loves me. Nobody likes me. People do stupid things to make them lovable and likable. Like, they cover themselves up in gold and expensive clothes and stuff. Look at my mobile. Now talk to me because I have an expensive mobile. I am worth talking to. They call it enjoyment. How is that enjoyment? How is that freedom when every second of your life is dependent on something? It is dependent on the approval of others. So I saw this. I was born with a little bit of light. This is difficult to understand. Krishna asked me what was special in your life. This much probably - There was a little bit of light there. I could question things, which nobody could, I could see things which nobody could and that is a positive thing. But it made my life kind of terrible because I did not fit in there. I always feel like I am an alien here. That pushed me into escaping to other countries. But very quickly I came to know that this is the best country. The situation outside India is the worst. There is a lot of advertisement and honking going on by different countries, but you can see, they are now breaking down actually. All the hell broke loose in the most rich and beautiful and cleanest of countries. It is not the outside that is the problem. Inside is the problem. The problem is in the mind.

Parveen is saying, maybe you are an old soul, who did every material thing at various times in previous life.

There can be a little bit of truth in that and I think the people in this group are also very very old. Not by body,

soul time. So I can see glimpses of it when they talk. Glimpses of these past life impressions they are carrying in them. Almost everyday I see it. Obviously because nobody else will be attracted to this kind of meeting, this kind of satsang, this kind of group.

So we are all very old actually. We are very ancient. Millions of years old. We have done everything millions of times and if you have a little bit of light there, light means a little bit of awareness of what is happening, you will conclude the same one day and then you will become detached. You will lose interest and that opens up the door to a new adventure, new experience. If you keep doing the old, no chance of progress.

Anil is saying, boredom is reaction by the ego else things are always as they are.

What you call boredom is actually a doorway to spirituality. Let us assume you give a person everything that he demands. Make his life heavenly. Eventually there will be boredom because that is the nature of the mind. The kings and queens are the most bored people in the world. We wonder why they attack other countries, kill other people and enslave children and women. Why do they do that? Occasionally every 10-20 years they launch a war. They are bored. Not enough. Heaven is not enough for them. One palace is not enough for them. And it is because the mind is like this. So once you get terribly bored, new doors will open to you. The boring life that I led is actually a blessing because nothing was attractive here for me, and I tried many many things. Do not underestimate the stupidity of the mind. Sometimes I went to extremes to enjoy, but no, it always turned out to be a bitter fruit. The fruit looked very attractive and smelled nice. As soon as you bite it, it's disgusting, you vomit it out. So yes, boredom is your gateway to new adventures. Instead of attacking people, killing people, abusing people, abusing your mind and body for pleasure, just turn inwards. There is an almost infinite amount of knowledge and wisdom in worlds inside you, in the mind itself. Within you is everything. There's nothing outside actually. It is all repetition of the same thing if you look outside. Within you is an infinity to explore.

That is what I've been doing for the last 15 years I think. I've explored many corners of this mind. It is no longer a dark place now. There is an immense amount to be explored here. So that is why people in the ancient times developed the spiritual technologies because there is nothing in the world to see. You hunt and grow and eat and sleep. That's all. Nothing of value happens here. So they turned inwards and developed these techniques to explore the whole existence. You can do it sitting in a chair, lying down in the bed. You can have that kind of power. You don't know it because you are totally affected by the poison of the senses.

Ajay is saying, is it okay to pray for suffering? For me it works because whenever I suffer, because of whatever reason. I became a hardcore seeker, then again some sort of relief comes in life, then again I start taking spirituality as a secondary thing or I get attracted towards this world.

This can happen in a cyclic way. Like you detached a little bit from the world and then you find an amazing, great experience and then the mind pulls you back into the world - Look, we need to have some kind of fun in the world. We need to achieve something and the mind will pull you back in the Maya, in Samsara. So it can happen in cycles. No issues. Ajay, you are progressing. If you know what is happening, that means you are progressing. You are not trapped in the cycles. If it repeats and you do not take any corrective measure, then you are trapped. If it repeats and every time it repeats, you learn something, that means you are progressing.

Should we pray for suffering? No, do not ask for suffering. Do not do that. Once you are awakened, once you are aware, you do not need suffering to progress. That is my experience. Suffering is for those who are not awakened, who are not aware. If you have the light, there is no point in praying for suffering. We are not born here to endure suffering. I don't think that is a good thing. The suffering will come by itself. If you do something wrong, there will be consequences and suffering will be there. It arrives unexpectedly without any invitation and it troubles you. So if you say, okay, I want more suffering, please send me the suffering. Probably you will suffer, but then you won't be able to learn anything from it. It will be just an unnecessary struggle. You have already suffered many times, many lives. Why do you want it?

You should ask for knowledge. You pray for knowledge. You pray for enlightenment. You pray for freedom. That is what you can pray for. Suffering will happen if it is really needed. But you need not make your spiritual path into continuous suffering. That is not wise. It can be a very peaceful and blissful experience. Once you know how to keep the suffering away and the exploration of the mind and exploration of consciousness is a very beautiful, pleasant experience. Now the suffering also looks like a play because you know you are not losing anything. There is no fear. Whenever there is fear, after the fear is over, you will know, it is all a product of the mind, product of the conditioning. And every time you go through unconscious times, there is a learning there. A lesson is served to you. So keep doing whatever you are doing. You are doing good. No need to invite suffering in your life.

Anil is saying, isn't a survival de facto mode for a Jeev? Fear is entangled with this survival instinct subconsciously.

Even if Jeev is aware of his true self, the survival instinct always exists as a layer of the mind. That is very true. And the Jeev has a tendency to survive and anything that threatens the survival appears as a fear. And fear is a motivator for action. A motive force, which means it springs the organism into action. So yes, it is very necessary for your survival. But if you are surviving nicely, if your food is on your plate and there is a roof over your head, and if there is fear, that means it has become a pathology. It has become a phobia. You can see them. Once you become aware, you can see this tendency of the mind.

Anil is asking, how can a Jeev ever be without fear?

No, the Jeev cannot be without fear. You are the one who is without fear. You stop incarnations and then there is no fear. That is why wise people have recommended that we eliminate the cause by the root. Do not try to treat it like weeds. Ifou cut only the leaves, the weed grows again. You need to uproot the weed and then your garden will be clean. Uproot this root cause, which is incarnation. It can take some time. But realizing what you are does not take time. And that one that you are is without fear. There is nothing there. It's pure emptiness, the conscious existence, consciousness observing itself in the form of Maya. That is all there is. And there is no fear there. Fear is a part of experience only. Nobody is afraid. It is an experience that comes and goes. It is perfectly okay. Now you can accept it. But if there is a preference in the mind that I do not want to experience any kind of fear, then you will need to stop the incarnations because as long as there is a need to keep the body and mind in a specific form, there will be fear. There will be a corresponding process there, which will try to maintain this form. And that is the emotion of fear. There is nothing wrong with it. It is just like any other emotion, just another activity of the mind that is going on in this structure, which we are experiencing. We are experiencing all these processes that arrange this structure and keep the structure alive. And we are experiencing everything that is dissolving the structure also. So nothing wrong in experiencing anything, as long as you are not entangled in that experience. If you identify with this emotion - oh, no I'm afraid. I don't want this - that means you are trapped in the mind.

Nick is asking, is the mind infinite?

Why don't you try to explore it? If you see a boundary in the mind, let me know. You will find that there is

always a potential in the mind to become more. So you can say it is expanding at an infinite speed already. There is always a potential for it to become more. And that is why we call it finite. But I've never found a boundary actually. There is no boundary to it. The manifestation is perception. Perception is experience. Experience continues, never stops. There is no end to the experience. There is always a potential to experience more. Whatever is experienced is the mind and therefore the mind is infinite. Although always trying to become more infinite, you see. You can always add one to the infinity and it still remains the infinity.

So it is something amazing which the mind itself cannot grasp. When you ask if the mind is infinite, you will need to provide a definition of the infinity. And there is no definition of infinity. It is something which the mind cannot comprehend. You can say unlimited potential there.

Nick is asking, is everything happening for a reason as a divine plan or it could happen just randomly without any motive?

What do you mean by “randomly”? Nothing is random here. Only when the causes go below your perception, when you cannot find what is causing it, you say it is random. That is the definition of randomness - when you cannot find a cause of it. If you cannot find it, it does not mean that there is no cause of it and ultimately there is no cause of anything because all the effects in the universe cause one event and that one event affects all the events coming after that. So ultimately there is no cause. There is complete randomness you can say. Or you can say that everything is caused. Everything happens as a result of whatever has happened before it. So you can see it is now beyond intellect.

There is no motive here. There is nobody here to motivate any event. So the divine plan is nobody's plan. When it is nobody's plan, we call it a divine plan. It happens in a perfect way, the most perfect way possible. Even randomness is perfection. I've thought about it for many years. Why things happen and who makes them happen and all these things. And the conclusion, the bottom line is that nothing is actually happening. If you see it, nothing is happening. There is no motive. It is not random, it is not arranged. These are all concepts in the mind. It is our ignorance. We label it like this. You find that there is nobody there. There are no individuals. There is no bigger individual called God. There's nothing. So it is our ignorance that we assign reasons, causes, motives to things or randomness to things which we do not comprehend. We'll never comprehend these things. Nothing is happening and that is in the bottom line actually. Do not try to know the existence through your mind. You are the existence and it is very strange. It is mystical.

Mukul is saying, when there is no point of view, what remains?

All points of view remain. Look at Existence. How many points of view can it have? A lot. You are restricted to one point of view because of your conditioning. When the conditioning is destroyed, you are free to adopt any point of view, which is what I have already done. I am observing myself through many points of views, infinite points of views. I am doing that right now. The whole existence is me. Aham Brahmasmi. And in the Brahman exists all possibilities, all points of view. When you let go of one point of view, you get everything in return. It is amazing, isn't it? Now, when you start knowing these things, the mind will start becoming more free. Now, I have seen my tendency in my mind that I can get into the shoes of anybody and I can look at anything from any point of view.

Nick is saying, are all emotions, sensations, experiences same but appear as different if you observe them deeply?

To me, everything looks like a vibration of some kind, a change of some kind, information of some kind. Everything, everything that happens in the mind is a change of some kind. What is changing? The memory is changing. The mind itself is changing. Everything is mind ultimately. So if you observe everything deeply, it becomes you. It becomes your modulations, like the ripples on the pond. Is there water or are there ripples? You can choose to look at the ripples, the waves on the pond as separate happenings. But no, it is only the water that is moving. Similarly, you can try to look at all that is happening, all of your experience, the world, the objects, the people, the emotions, your thoughts and intellectual things that you do from a separate point of view. You can look at them as separate things that are happening. But if you look deeply, broaden your attention, you will find that it is only me. I'm appearing to myself as everything.

I see everything as patterns. That is all I see everywhere. You see, it's very much like a scene in the movie The Matrix, when he says that I do not see the code. I see the women, I see the buildings, I see the cars and I see agents. What is there on the screen? Just scrolling code, some strange coded language. So I can get involved in the world if I want. But when I broaden my attention, it is all patterns in myself. It's highly boring.

Nick is saying, is this statement right? Brahman is the only thing that exists but Brahman doesn't exist.

Yes, it is true. Existence and Brahman, they are the same. Both words point to the same thing, synonyms. So, can we say that there is no existence? Yes. Can we say that there is existence? Yes, we can say that. It is a combination of nothing and something. It is a superposition. It is a possibility only. Because there is a possibility of everything, it can appear as anything. Then we say, okay, there is something but since it is appearing out of nothing, there is emptiness behind everything, we call it nothing. There is nothing substantial at all. The consciousness also appears when there is something to be conscious of. Otherwise, it is nirguna, which means without qualities. The experiencer is seen only when there is an experience. With the experience and the experiencer appears a third thing called the mind. If you have the mind in your experience, then it will look as if there are two. The experience and the experiencer are differentiated. If you remove the mind, they are one but then there is nothing to experience.

In one of my videos in the transmission series, I have taken the viewer through an exercise, an experiment called - self-destruction of the memory. You go through this thought experiment, you destroy your memory and when you reach no memory, when you cannot remember even one millisecond of experience, you will find that there is no experience. Nothing is there. It is emptiness. Sometimes it appears as forms. Sometimes it appears as experience. It is all an illusion. The funny thing is that the illusion is the only reality. There is no other reality except the illusion. Do not think that there is an existence. It is me. It is pure emptiness that is conscious of itself.

And now you can see the mind cannot make head and tail of it because the mind knows only duality. Mind knows only existence and non-existence. It does not know what happens when both blend together. You can do it in a complex way also. Like you can try to find out what this world is, which is what scientists are doing. So when they tried to find what this material world is, they found that it is made of elementary particles. What are these particles? Well, ultimately it is energy. What is energy? It is some kind of change. Some kind of motion, vibration. So ultimately the conclusion is that there is nothing there if you are not looking. You see, whatever I said in two minutes, they took 200 years to find that out and what does that mean? There is nothing there really if it is not being observed by a conscious observer. As soon as the consciousness appears, the duality of the observed and the observer appears, which is only an appearance.

That's why we call it Maya. Sometimes we say that that which is observing is the only truth, the Self is the truth, the Atman is the truth, which is partially right, which is correct. Because you cannot even say what is true beyond that. The ultimate truth is that - there is the experience and there is the experiencer. The experiencer is experiencing itself in illusory forms. This is the ultimate truth. Because beyond that, the mind cannot distinguish between what is true and what is false. Beyond that, everything is true, everything is false, everything is not true and everything is not false.

Like the Avadhoot says in the Avadhoot Gita - “Why are you worried? Why are you running around after the truth? I am this unknowable nothing”. That is ultimate freedom, isn't it? You don't even need to know what these things are. You already know that whatever you are going to know will be false, will be either an illusion or some creation of the mind. You can simply label it as true or not true, depending on your personal criteria. The arbitrary subjective criteria that you form to label something as true and false. In Advaita, we have this criteria - whatever is changing is false, whatever is not changing is true. It is another subjective criteria but it is very strict. It is the ultimate criteria. You can have an inferior criteria also. There are many lower criteria. So what you call truth, ultimately is subjective. It is the construction of the mind. There is no truth anywhere. We can make such statements because we are on the spiritual path. We don't need to be right all the time because we know that whenever we utter something, it's bound to be wrong, is bound to be limited, bound to be relative in some sense. So either we sit silently or we are happy with saying the wrong things also, no problem. Sometimes I will say, yes, the Brahman is the existence and sometimes I say, well, nothing is happening and I am okay with both the statements because I know both are meaningless.

Change is an illusion, and it can be seen by letting go of the memory. But does experience exist then? All the experience is an experience of change. If there is no change, there is no experience. You can see it. Why is there a change? Because we can compare our present experience with the past experience. That is how we know that something changed. Why do we have a past experience? Because it is recorded in the memory. So ultimately, memory is responsible for experience. Ultimately, the change is born out of memory. What is memory? Memory is mind. If you remove the memory, there is no past. Nothing changes. So if nothing changes, nothing is experienced. It's very simple. That is what I tried to show in this detailed exercise by destroying the memory step by step. Probably, if I say it like this in one sentence, you may not understand it. If you do not, just rewind and listen, you will get it. Nothing exists if there is no memory. And that is why we say that all the experience is the experience of the mind, memory, and its processes. That is all experience is. I am not any experience. I am not the mind. I am not anything that changes. I am that which observes these illusory changes, the virtual changes. And I am unchanging. That is the only truth. That is what I am.

There is another way to arrive at what I am. What is my real nature? It is emptiness that is witnessing, witnessing consciousness, which is empty, not a form, not an object, not an experience, not this, not that. So another way to arrive at self-realization is by seeing the nature of the mind, by seeing the activity of the memory. When there is no mind, there is yoga. It does not take long. It takes two minutes. And that is the end of knowledge. You will never know anything more than this. And you will say what kind of knowledge is that? There is nothing. And yes, knowledge is also an illusion. It is simply refined ignorance. There is nothing to know here. Some minds will not accept this. They will keep trying. You will know that you don't know. There is no possibility of knowing. You need to let go of the knowledge. Every day you should let go of knowledge. And you will find that by evening the knowledge builds up. This is an accumulation of some kind. Sometimes I say let go of the Advaita also. It is not true. And you can build it up in 10 minutes. It is possible. It is an accumulation. That is true freedom. That is true happiness. That is true bliss when you don't even need to know. You are not bound by ignorance. You are not bound by knowledge.

Nick is asking, how will the world be if every human is self-realized? What will be the consequences of that?

It will be exactly the same. The consequences will be exactly what you are seeing right now. Nothing will change. If you realize that there is nothing here, there is all emptiness and form, that is not going to change the illusion. Whatever you are calling the world and humans, what are they? They are in the dream. They are objects, the cardboard set in the dream. They are puppets in the puppet show. Why will it change? The Maya will continue. The Maya does not disappear with self-realization. Everybody is a form of the same self. Did that change anything? No. Remember who was the most advanced form here. Remember who was the most advanced, self-realized human. Krishna. Did he change anything? He was killing, quarreling and fighting and destroying stuff. But the world is doing its business as usual. There are many. They changed nothing actually. And whatever they changed was in the dream. It was a part of the dream. The dream does not change. What are you going

to achieve by changing the dream? Yes, this dream can be transformed into some other dream. It's possible. You have the power. What is the use? Because it is another dream. So what we do is, we do not aim for changing people or the world. We aim for getting rid of it. Our goal is to get rid of the repetitive change. How many times are you going to change it? It self-arranges into some other kind of chaos, some other kind of world, some other kind of universe. There is bondage. So we are asking for freedom from that which changes and you will see that you are already that. You do not change. You are the witness of all the changes, no matter good or bad, positive or negative.

There is some kind of joke in saying that every human can be self-realized. It is a big joke. I heard it from somebody. The same question was asked to Raman Maharshi. What will happen if everybody is self-realized? There are Bodhisattvas and all great souls out there. They are trying very hard to enlighten all people. Raman Maharshi laughed. When Raman Maharshi is laughing, you can guess that it is a big joke. Now I will tell you why this is a joke. It took me some time to realize that. So imagine that you are dreaming in the night, the ordinary dream. There are dream characters in the dream, obviously, and they are all ignorant, savages, worldly people, doing whatever people do, usually. So you are the one who is self-realized. This is a dream. I am the one who is dreaming. Wake up, wake up, wake up. Whom are you telling? You are telling this to all the dream characters. And the dream characters, they are going on like zombies. Okay, okay, you are right, sir. You are a great guru. You are the master of the world. You are the Bodhisattva. Is there any realization there? Is anybody waking up in the dream? You are the creator of those characters. Remember this. Whatever you are calling the world and humans is your dream. You are thinking that they can be self-realized, just like I am. Look at you. There is no you also. You are also a dream character. If you are identified with this body and mind, you will think like this. Because I am self-realized, anybody else can become self-realized. And that is the joke. That is the dream character trying to wake up the characters in the dream. What do you need to do to make everybody enlightened? Well, wake up from the dream. Sit up in your bed. That is the end. It is all you.

Whom you are trying to enlighten. Who is there to enlighten except you? Remember the definition of enlightenment. There is a very good definition of enlightenment. The enlightenment is not of the individual. Disappearance of this belief that there are individuals is enlightenment. Death of the ego is enlightenment. That includes all the egos. There are no egos. There are no individuals. There is no identification. It is a dream. Wake up from this dream. Nobody realizes anything. Nobody gets self-realization. There is nobody here to become enlightened. That is my direct experience that it is simply a realization that there is no individual. That is the whole essence of enlightenment. Is the dreamer present in the dream? Yes. The dreamer is not the individual who is saying this to all people. Look, you are in the dream. The whole dream is the dreamer. The whole world that you have constructed in the dream is you. You are already present. So where are you in this whole world? The whole world is you. Are there ignorant people? Yes. Who cares? Is the virus biting everybody and everybody is dying? Who cares? It is you only. You are the virus. You are the disease. You are the cure. You are the vaccine. Do you want to change it? Sure. Go ahead and change it. There is nothing wrong with that. Fully realizing that it is a dream. It will remain a dream. You cannot destroy the dream. You see, you can wake up from the dream. You can realize that I am the dreamer. That is all you can do. There is nothing more to do here. It is so simple actually. That is why these great masters are not trying to save the world. Great masters do not interfere in the dream because it is meaningless, once you are out of the dream, which does not mean that you will go out somewhere else. Nobody will wake up. You wake up from the illusion of being somebody.

Session 36

Manish is saying, is it important to have a guru? Isn't guidance enough?

Totally depends on the student actually. If the student is brilliant, if the student has got talent then even the books are the guru, even the YouTube videos are guru, even the life experiences themselves are guru. It depends on the qualities of a student. A little bit of guidance here and there, one email here and there, one call and that should be enough to get the basic knowledge, to get the essential knowledge and then it depends on the aspirations of the student also. Suppose you want to learn something which is complicated, you want to learn some tricks of the mind and something which is not found in books, in that case you will not even know that such a thing exists if you don't approach a guru. In that case sometimes it is dangerous to do those practices without consulting anybody, without the guidance of the guru.

The person who is guiding you is actually a guru. The definition of guru is very broad in our culture. The culture here is so rich that they have classified the gurus. The guru actually starts from the mother, mother is the first guru. After that the school teacher, after that the people who teach the Veda and all those Upanishads and all those scriptures teaching, there are gurus who guide you on the occult paths, they show you the world that you cannot see and then there are gurus who initiate you into sannyasa and such practices, and then there is finally the Sadhguru which means the true guru who introduces you to yourself. That is called the true guru here. Usually you will need all these gurus in your life. Yes, you can have them and then you can leave them. That is another matter. The guru is considered higher than parents because he gives birth to knowledge which is something much greater than this pile of organic matter that your parents have given birth to. That is why the guru is placed at the top. Without the guru you cannot know who you are and therefore you cannot know what this existence is. Everything starts with the guru actually. My view of the guru is that it can be anything, even a rock or a tree or an animal can be a guru because the final teaching comes from the gurufield. This is the concept that I am developing these days that the person that you see, the walking talking creature that you see, is not really the guru. The guru is something which operates through that person. The guru is there as long as there is a question, as long as there is a need, as long as a student is sitting nearby and then the guru leaves if there is no need. There is no thing called a permanent guru. The guru does not act like a guru all the time and that must be your own experience. There are gurus that act like ordinary people but as soon as you ask them something which is of spiritual nature or demands knowledge, the guru appears. The gurufield starts speaking through that person. It can be anything actually. It can be one of your family members also. The suffering that you receive is your guru. So my concept of guru is very broad actually. It takes some time to understand these things.

Krishna is saying, guru helps in walking on the path like a GPS, guru positioning system.

Yes, you will be totally lost without a guru actually. People ask this kind of question: do I really need a guru? Why can't I do everything by myself when everybody is most welcome? Yes, why not? But it is like asking do I need a teacher to learn A, B, C, D or to learn counting? Yes, you can invent your own alphabet and your own number system and mathematics and everything. You see, it's possible. It's not impossible. It probably will take many lifetimes. The same thing can be done in one day when you have a guru. So it is wise to get as many gurus as you need. That is another tendency of the people that they stick to only one guru which is not good. One guru may not know everything, may not have all kinds of expertise and probably it is very risky because these days there are fake gurus everywhere. So you need to sample many gurus. All of them will teach you the same thing in different flavors, in different forms. The teachings take different forms depending on the different traditions and the minds of the gurus are different a little bit. But you will need to find something which is most suitable for your ignorance. Remember, I am not saying knowledge. I am saying ignorance. You will always find a guru that matches your ignorance. If there is too much ignorance then you need a specific kind of guru who first of all breaks that ignorance before even giving you any kind of knowledge. So mostly people find such gurus. The real guru gives you no knowledge actually. That is my experience. The final guru has no knowledge, has nothing to teach you because that is the purest state of the mind. The purest mind has no knowledge and has no ignorance also.

So a real guru or a sadhguru simply clears the ignorance, does not teach you anything additional. I have found that such gurus are of the highest kind who do not claim to know anything, who do not claim to teach anything. They simply go on cleaning your mind. That is the best knowledge. You can get a taste of it and then you will not need a guru. Initially you will need somebody to put you on this path which about this cleaning up of ignorance. Once you get a taste of it, you can clean it yourself. You can question your own beliefs and just trash them seeing that they are not true. That means your self is your own guru. That is the highest guru. The self when it shines, the light of consciousness when it shines, clears all ignorance and that is the ultimate guru. Because the external guru is also going to take you to the self only. The external guru is not going to give you a lot of knowledge. The guru only points, all knowledge comes from the self actually. It is your own experience and not only the experience, it is that which is behind the experience that gives you knowledge. The realization or understanding happens when the mind stops and the knowledge shines. This is the trick.

Fortunately I have learned this trick. I have found that essentially many gurus are doing only this. They point out your ignorance, they point out where you are wrong and they show you how to find the truth which is how to clear ignorance. Clearing ignorance is knowledge. There is no other knowledge here. There is nothing to know. Knowledge is the problem actually. That day I was talking about this thing. You need to get rid of your knowledge also. You will not progress further if you don't get rid of all these things that you know. Clean your mind. You know empty your cup and there is another saying that clean the mirror that reflects. There is dust of knowledge on the mirror. Now it is reflecting something which you cannot clearly see. So as soon as the mirror is cleaned, well then the job is done. You are your own guru now. You can see everything very clearly as it is and it is not knowledge and it is not ignorance.

Manish is saying, Osho always spoke about the field he was trying to create. Is that the gurufield you are talking

about?

No, I don't know what field he was talking about. The gurufield cannot be created. It is already there. The gurufield according to me is the sum total of all the knowledge that exists in this manifestation. It is in some kind of memory which I also call the guru memory or the part of the universal mind where this knowledge is held and the knowledge trickles down from time to time, it appears here. We do not know anything new. Nothing new is there to know. The old knowledge gets destroyed and then the old things reappear as techniques, knowledge, philosophies and all these darshans, or scriptures. Nothing new is ever told. It is already there. Many people will not agree but this is how I see it. It is bigger than our intelligence can grasp. You can have an experience of the gurufield. It is very easy. All you need to do is have a strong intention and start talking to the gurufield. You will get the direct download from the gurufield. You will get direct help from the gurufield. Even Shaktipat etc. comes from the gurufield. If you probe them deeply you will find that the gurus who do the Shaktipat say they did not do it. It comes from somewhere. I am only a medium like I am only a channel and the Shaktipat flows through me into my students. All knowledge is like this and seeing that there is no person, there is no individual. It is an illusion. How is it even possible that the person gets the knowledge? It is impossible. It is kind of illogical to say that the person holds the knowledge. No. The mind holds the knowledge and the mind is always universal. There is no individual mind.

This individual chunk of mind is tapping into the gurufield. Initially when the ignorance is very deep there is no connection to the gurufield. And the gurufield leaves such a creature to roam around. There is a free will kind of thing here. Okay you don't want knowledge then be happy in your ignorance. That is why we are here to be happy. But as soon as you do some kind of effort, I also call it the Sanketik Prayas. In English it will be “symbolic effort”. You try to find what you are looking for. You will never find it in the world. You will never find it in books. You will never even find it in the gurus, in the person that is acting as a guru. It always comes from the gurufield. Whether it is language, whether it is music, whether it is painting, whether it is engineering, whether it is scientific discoveries, mathematics, spiritual discoveries, realizations, experiences. Everything comes from one place.

Krishna is saying, in the initial phase of the seeker he may face a lot of challenging questions that need great clarity. Guru is the best option. Who can substitute many books, condense the time of finding a solution. If it

takes time the seeker may start to disbelieve and revert back.

Yes, that is a very good point. I have seen that without direction, without guidance, people consume knowledge from inferior sources such as newspapers, TV, their relatives, their parents, their friends, internet nowadays, the forward messages on WhatsApp, that is their source of knowledge and it is disgusting to see what kind of

knowledge is being served in our societies. It is actually a regression. It is not a progress. When you are born, you are born pure without knowledge, without ignorance. But society corrupts you because your sources of knowledge are inferior. You must have seen that if I meet somebody, my first questions are very basic and among those questions is what are your sources of knowledge? What is your means of knowledge? That is the first question that we ask on the path of knowledge. I want to know from where you are getting these things that you call knowledge. I am curious about that. If it is a guru, who is the guru? Actually as soon as the person starts talking, you can see that their sources of knowledge are of different kinds. You can see that somebody is talking from experience, or somebody is simply parroting the guru and there are some other people who simply repeat whatever the society says without critically thinking about it.

A person who talks from the experience, direct experience, needs very little guidance. I have actually met such people, I am very fortunate. They start talking directly from their experience. Yes, there are tiny bits of ignorance there, which needs to be removed. There are some misunderstandings because the person has done his own thinking. So obviously cannot be perfect and the most difficult kind of students are those who are repeating what the society has told them. Among them, the religious people are the most difficult because they have very hard beliefs. They are like a coconut. The others are like a watermelon and I cut through it directly to the core. Coconut, very difficult. Such people, they suffer a lot. They actually make others suffer because of their ignorance and because of their inability to drop their ignorance. The mind has a big resistance because society has totally ruined that mind. Society has totally corrupted that mind. Actually, the job of the guru is only this,

to remove this corruption. That is all. And then it takes the skill of the guru to remove that corruption. And I have seen that it is best to leave the close-minded person alone. The more you try to feed him knowledge, the more closed he becomes. He becomes like an animal in the cage. Anyway, we are not going to go there. But that is what society will do to you. Society is poison. Do not take knowledge from society. Your sources of knowledge must be very authentic. So everybody knows the sources of knowledge here, I hope. The direct experience is the first. The logic is the second. The guru is the third and fourth is the scripture. There is no fifth. There are actually two or three more, but many people do not think that they are sources of knowledge. So, for example, in Advaita, we have six. And I have adopted only the first two. I do not consider the guru and scriptures as sources of knowledge because this is Kalyuga, you don't know who has written what in the scriptures. They are not the

source, really. They point to your experience. And again, Kalyuga, that means fake gurus are everywhere. They are teaching all kinds of things which are not true. And they are doing it for manipulating people and for money and to get more views on their YouTube channels. I have seen this new trend, people want more views, so they put all kinds of crap in their YouTube channels. Sensationalization, very bad. And they call it knowledge. That is

another twist on it. At least a newcomer should not take the gurus and scriptures as the sources of knowledge. That is my suggestion. You can actually, it is your choice, but always verify them through your direct experience and logic. It is very simple. If it is not your experience, it is not your knowledge. If it sounds illogical, then it is not knowledge.

With time, with practice, and with your experience, as you gather experience in the spiritual field, you will surely come to know who speaks what. You will surely come to know who is fake, who is not. Sometimes it takes only two words to know that this person knows nothing. Or it takes at least, you know, it takes only five minutes of listening to the person to know that he is doing it for money, or he is doing it to fool people, to gain power. It is a manipulation of some kind. It takes only that much time. Don't worry, you will arrive there very soon. It does not take time to know the fake from the real. The only thing is you must learn to use proper means of knowledge, experiment and falsification. This is the best method.

Parveen is saying, does a guru always by default operate from the gurufield? There are chances that a guru in a personal mind can start operating on ego too. At times, a seeker can ruin learning by offending the personal mind of a guru by asking a wrong question or commenting from a seeker's personal mind.

Yes, why not? It is not possible to be always in connection with the gurufield. It is an art by itself, isn't it? So, for example, if the seeker is asking something which the guru has already answered a thousand times. Now, he does not need to access the gurufield. The answer is in the personal memory, the smaller memory here. He simply repeats the answer. And then you see, it depends on the seeker also. Sometimes the seeker is able to trigger the ego of the guru. If the guru is not attentive, if the guru is not established in the self at the time of speaking, sometimes he gets irritated by whatever is going on because the ego cannot handle it. And there is nothing wrong with that. It is very natural. So, that is why there are some set protocols in our culture on how to approach a guru. You always approach with a banana or a fruit or in the old days it was firewood and oil, something essential for the life of the guru in the ashram, useful for the ashram. That is how you approach the guru and you just sit there till the guru says something, the guru asks you out. It can take many hours to many days to sometimes many years. There are stories like this. And then the transmission happens. I don't think anybody has this kind of patience these days. And so we see that the protocols are not being followed properly. And that is why sometimes the ego is triggered. It can get triggered because the guru-person, not the gurufield, the guru-person is never 100% purified, never 100% free of ego. So you will need to approach the guru in a proper way so that the ego does not come in the way. That is also known as the surrender to the guru. Like I speak of surrender of many kinds. This is the surrender to the guru. You approach the guru with surrender. Without surrender, there is a chance that the egos will clash. And then the seeker thinks, oh, he's not a guru. He got offended by me. He got angry. But it is always something in the student that triggers the guru.

Krishna is saying, guru is like a pole in a pole vault, helps you jump the ladder of knowledge. And then at some point you leave the pole.

That is another good point. You will need to leave the guru. You will need to become the guru, become your own guru. The guru is not going to do hand holding and spoon feeding for a long time. You will need to become independent of the guru. Realize that you have a connection to the gurufield. You are the gurufield, yourself. So self is the guru. If the guru is trying and trying since many years, now it is your job. Let go of the guru. Try to see

where you are wrong. What are your weak points? Guru is trying, but you are not seeing. Something is wrong somewhere.

Parveen is saying, how can a seeker know that he is being initiated by a gurufield? Any signs to identify this call from gurufield?

There are some pointers. There are some things that you can immediately see when you connect to the gurufield. The first thing is you will realize things which you know you are not capable of. You will say things which you know are not your sayings and your ignorance will start dropping. It will clear up. It will be like a washing away. It will be like seeing clearly. Obviously it is not a miracle. It is a very subtle, tiny effect in the mind. You will know it. You will know that this is not being done by me. My mind is not capable. That is why we ask the students to sit down and meditate for long periods. So when this cyclone of the mind stops, the gurufield gets a chance to implant an idea there.

Krishna is saying, in my opinion, guru does not initiate. It is my own self-initiative.

An initiation ceremony is just a tradition. As soon as the student reaches the guru, as soon as the student is talking to the guru, initiation is done. Your first question is your initiation. Nothing else needs to be done. The ceremony and all are done just to make a good foundation. You see, if you know the occult practices, a very good intention is very necessary. So this ceremony gives body to the intention, gives solidity to the intention. And now you are my guru and here is the coconut. Anything, any kind of initiation ceremony that solidifies the intention that I have accepted you as my guru. And this is a memory tool also because the guru meets so many students, forgets easily. So this ceremony is like a small party, it solidifies the memory that oh he is my student now, I need to teach him. Anyway, that is my opinion. Sometimes there are things that are done in the initiation, like the guru mantra is given or the Shaktipat is given or something else is given. That depends on the path that you have chosen.

Sometimes you need to test the student also. If he is walking into the ashram and wants to know everything in one day, is he that kind of student or does he really have some student qualities? There are qualities of the student that need to be cultivated first in the student. And after that, the student becomes ready for knowledge. Patience is a very big quality. The students should have patience. I was impatient, I did not learn anything for many years. You cannot tell me this thing in five minutes, I'll switch to somebody else. I was like this. I see this tendency in many people. Actually, if the YouTube video is too long, more than 30 seconds passed, he has not said the thing which I want. Well, I won't watch it. I'll watch something else. So such people do not progress much. Such people do not deserve knowledge. Actually, the guru is not going to waste his time with such people. I've seen that this one year wait is still happening. There are many gurus who will act as if they are teaching within the first five minutes. They have given you everything within the first five minutes. A guru is a very tricky person. He plays a lot of tricks. So they do that just to catch hold of the student, to get the attention of the student. The student thinks, oh, I'm getting something. You offer a toy to the child and then you send the child into school. I have seen such tricks being played and the real knowledge comes after one year. If the student is ready for it, if the student deserves the knowledge, then it is given. Otherwise, fluff is told in the first year and do this, stand here, do this yoga, do this kind of exercise and all this garbage is given to the student, which is simply testing the student. Especially this happens in the occult paths, because there you cannot take a chance. Universe can get destroyed because of your little error there. You don't want to do that kind of thing. So the testing goes on and on for many years, actually, in such a path where the risk is more. For essential knowledge, here the risk is only that the person will return totally ignorant. That is the only risk. That is also a big loss, actually. We try to somehow keep the student around because we don't want the student to return empty handed without realizing anything. I also do that sometimes. You will never come to know. Don't worry.

Anil is saying, does the illusion of doer have a direct correlation with doing? Does the doing change if one identifies as a doer?

A very good question. You will see that the doer comes after the doing. You must have seen this. This must be your own direct experience. If you have not paid attention, you should see it very closely, how the actions of the body and of the mind happen first, and the doer appears later as another action of the mind. It is very interesting. For example, your heart is beating, but you do not say, I am doing it. Why? Move your hand and grab a glass of water. You say, I did it. Why? Both are actions of the body, both originate in the memory and are then executed. Now, why is it that one action creates a doer and the other actions do not?

There are some in-between actions, about which the mind itself is not sure what is happening, like going to the toilet. Well, it is an action that the body does, but you will see that actually there is no control over it. You simply let go and that action, excretion happens. Pay attention when you are doing this. And you will find the mind has a little bit of difficulty saying whether I did it or whether it happened. But it will sometimes say that I am doing it. For example, sneezing. Sneezing happens and the person says, I am sorry, I sneezed. So the doer appears after doing. That is the correlation between the doer and the doing. But sometimes it refuses to take responsibility for it. For example, I am just running around and I hit something and it breaks. I am not going to take responsibility for it. I will say, well, that was a mistake. I didn't do it intentionally. The doer is refusing its involvement here. The mind can see that I didn't do it. The intention was never there to do it. It did not see the intention first and then the intention becoming the action. It did not even see the action and everything was done. The mind has no need to invent a doer there.

So the actions do not really change when there is a doer. The doer appears as a side effect of the action. It appears sometimes. It does not appear other times. It is very flimsy. I can say, okay, you are identifying with all the actions of the body. Now identify with everything the body does, you should say, I am the doer. But no, we do not do this. There needs to be a clear intention or clear desire in order for the doer to become solid. You will find that 99% of our daily activities happen without intention. We do not need to even think about these things sometimes. Only if there is a situation which is new, we bring in the mind, we bring in the intelligence and then we think and ponder over the situation, what to do. And the doer is very, very strong there. It is also coming from memory. But because now this causal chain is formed, it is very clear. The doer appears very strongly. This happens only one in a hundred times in your day. Otherwise, life is going on as it is, in a mechanical way. And for 99% of people, their entire life is without a doer. It is all automated, especially for simple people, including their marriages, their children, their jobs and whatever they do and say, is totally automated. The doer never takes hold of them. They are very innocent people. You will see this in the tribal people. The doer is hardly present there, hardly any ego there. They are very spontaneous people. What does that do? Well, their progress

stops below the level of ego. It does not even go to the level of the ego. So the doer is a necessary step to progress. That is another paradox, you see. You need the doer to appear. You need self-identification, this separate self to appear. And then you need to transcend it. You need to cross it. Then you again see that it is mind created. This is how evolution is happening, actually. I can tell you in a lot of detail about this, but probably some other time. Does the doing change if one identifies as a doer? No, because the doing happens before the identification.

Nick is saying, is everything “one” happening?

Yes, you can say that. Yes, oneness means one happening. It is all happening at one time, at once, actually. There is no time. So without mind, no time. And everything has already happened. So what kind of experience it is, you already know. There is no experience there. If there is no mind, there is no experience. So everything happening is equal to nothing happening. Now you can see that you cannot grasp this using logic or mind or rational thinking, because that is the nature of reality. Everything is happening at the same time. It appears as nothing. It has infinite potential of appearing as anything. One of the potential is the processes in the memory. That is what we call the mind. As soon as there is mind, there are divisions. And now a single experience is included, excluding everything else. That is why I said the mind goes into the fabric of reality. Actually, it is all mind. We cannot see it that deep. Sometimes we can. If you are meditative, if you pay attention, you will see this happening at the most basic layer of the mind. It is attention only. Attention is the biggest ability of the mind. If your attention is very, very sharp, you will see that it is picking and choosing an experience out of infinite experiences. That is what the attention is doing right now.

Where is your attention? It is on the physical senses. Where are the physical senses? They are one of the potential in an infinity of potentials. There is a potential of having a body and having physical senses. This appearance is a potential appearance. But as soon as the mind has projected its attention there, it excludes everything else, this one possibility becomes the reality. Drishti is the Srishti. Attending is creating. You will see this very, very clearly when you are in the subtle states of the mind or in the dream states of the mind. In dreams, we don't have this control, but in the projected states of the mind, the extraordinary states of the mind, there is some control and whatever you intend, that becomes the reality. You will see it very clearly there. Right now also the same thing is happening, but because there is a lot of ignorance, we are under a spell, we are lost in our own dream, in this illusion, our own virtual reality, which we are projecting. So that is the whole mechanism of creating a reality out of nothing. That “nothing” is full of potential. That nothing is infinitely potent. And the mind is the one that brings out a tiny bit of experience, one experience at a time. Because of the memory, there is this illusion that it is happening in a linear way, one after the other. This illusion is also created because of the mind, because there is memory.

Now people can ask, why is there memory? Why is there a mind? Because there is a possibility. There is no causation there. It is being. At some point you should drop the causes. It is uncaused.

Anil is saying, doesn't identification with being a doer help in changing karmic impressions?

Actually, the karmic impressions form even without a doer. How did we evolve to this point of the ego being? Not without karmic impressions. This no-doer is also evolving and is evolving due to the karmic impressions. So as soon as the doer appears in this, on this path of evolution towards unified mind, the universal mind, the karmic impressions keep happening. It goes through three stages, according to me, first there is no doer or there are only karmic impressions. Then the doer appears as a result of these karmic impressions in the journey of evolution. And now the doer says it is my karma, it is my action and that is a fall into ignorance. Before that, there was no ignorance, no knowledge, nothing. This is the fall. So as soon as there is identification with the action, the doer has appeared and the karmic impressions become stronger. There is a reason that it should appear. It is there to make the karmic impressions stronger and to tag them so that the individual appears, the individual is realized because of the karmic impressions, because of the identification with the karmic stuff, the actions. Now in the next stage, the third stage, the doer disappears, which must have happened for many of you and the karmic impressions are dropped. Not me, I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am not anything that the body mind does. And I am not a product of the body-mind. The body-minds are my product. A reversal happens from the doership and that is liberation from the karmic impressions. So now there is knowledge. No knowledge, no ignorance, to ignorance and then back to knowledge. Without the doer, without this in-between stage, you will find that it will continue as a play of karmic impressions, as lower life forms, as rocks, trees and rivers and animals. Only in humans, this ego is present and that is why the human being is considered a very critical step in this whole evolutionary chain because we are now given ego, which means the doer. The doer has many names, ego, karta, individual, person, all these things point to the same thing - that which takes the responsibility of the actions of this instrument of body-mind, that is the individual. So it is necessary evil, you can say that. And we spend many, many lifetimes here, thousands of lifetimes managing the doer, learning what the doer is, learning how to act. And yes, it changes the track a little bit, not a little bit, it changes it a lot. We rise from animal nature or mineral nature to something bigger, something more conscious and more individualized being. So that is our struggle, isn't it? Because there is human birth, there is the struggle with the ego. Now you can join the dots of all of it. You need to transcend the ego. If you kill the ego, you will devolve back into the lower forms of the mind. If you transcend the ego, you will progress above these forms. That is why the whole teaching revolves around the ego, finding that there is no ego, finding that there is no doer but not killing it,

letting it do whatever it does, distancing your real nature from it. That is, create a distance there, discriminate between what is you, what is not you. That is an important step in spiritual progress. If you climb this step, well, it is a big step. It's a giant leap for the causal body.

Ajay is saying, where thinking is involved, a sense of doership is found. Like I thought then acted. True, sir. After the event happens, doer appears.

Yes, a very good realization. It should be your own experience. Just pay attention. You will get rid of the doership. Some things make the doer more solid. Some things make it not so tangible. A simple example is that if you're walking in the crowd and somebody bumps into you, hardly any doer there. You just walk away. There's nothing. But if you're standing someplace and somebody comes to you and hits you, say, he wants to rob you or something, immediately a big ego will arise, will try to defend the body, will try to defend the mind, try to throw the insults back and so on. So you can actually connect the doer to survival. The doer is there so that we can survive better. That is why humans have survived better because of this higher ability to identify with the body and the mind. So we can plan ahead because we know I am there. We can plan for 10 years, 20 years in the future. Even higher animals do that. But look at the ant. The ant has hardly any doer. The ant is simply roaming around randomly wherever the sense of the smell takes it, goes there. No planning there. But higher animals know I am here and I need to go there to drink water and I need to fly to this tree to get the fruits. Something like this is going on. And in humans, it is more evolved. It is the outcome of the survival process. It is kind of complicated.

Anil is saying, does intention appear before the doer or a doer manifests the intention?

Again, a very good question. My experience is that the intention appears before the doer. The doer is the last thing to happen. Always. From where is the intention coming? You will find that the intention appears out of memory. The karmic impressions. That is the memory. That is why it is called the causal body. It causes things. Karan Sharira. It is the karan or cause of all actions. The causal body is just a memory. As you know somebody has compared it with DNA. DNA causes this whole body. Something like this. The causal body is the DNA of the mind. So all things are appearing out of the causal body. And the doer is the last thing that happens. You will see this if you pay attention. The intention is another word for desire. When the desire is stamped by the mind as mine, my own, it is called intention. And the desire simply floats out of the memory. Nobody does it. It is a mechanical action. So whether the doer manifests the intention? You can try this experiment. Try to manifest the intention. Now what manifested the intention to manifest? This is the puzzle for you. Answer this question.

Mind can trick itself into many things. Do not underestimate the mind. It has created the whole universe. Sometimes we call it Maya because she does these kinds of things. All you need to do is cross question. Whenever the mind traps itself in its own doing. You question it. Like an advocate. Like a lawyer questions the subject. Did you do this? Did you have the intention? If you argue like this in your mind, you will find that you will win the case. The mind always loses. The mind claims many things. Cannot justify them. Cannot provide evidence for them.

Anil is saying, but karmic impressions never stop even on the third stage. Just identification is dropped.

Yes, another good observation. Some people have this kind of delusion that if I disidentify with the doer, the doing will stop. No. Look at it when you were a baby, you were just born. Who was breathing? Who was crying? Who was drinking the milk? Who was babbling? There was no doer there. You don't even remember because your memory goes up to the point of the doer. Have you noticed? The mind does not even want to recall the things which it did not claim to do. So was there action or not? Yes there was. Because you learn to walk and talk without a doer. These are what? Karmic impressions. So this belief that the doing will stop if I disidentify with the doer is wrong. You can see it in your own experience. There are very good cases in the psychology, psychiatry where it is called depersonalization. The person does something and when you ask who did it? He says I don't

know who did it. Like a little baby. And sometimes he is doing it. Who is eating the food? He does not know who is eating the food. That is some kind of pathology. The doer has escaped somehow. The process of creating a doer is faulty in that mind. That is a very curious case, isn't it? But very educating.

Amnesia is different from depersonalization. The person remembers everything but won't say that I did it. If you point out - look you did this and he will smile because he does not really understand. He does not really grasp what it means to do something. So if anybody is interested please go and study those cases. There is a complete loss of ego there. But yes “the doing is happening”. The karmic impressions are there. The person will learn things also. Learning is forming karmic impressions only. New experiences impress on the mind. Training happens. It changes the brain, changes the mind, changes the causal body. You will find there are cases or claims of rebirth where a person is actually afraid of a specific thing. For example a person will be afraid of running trains. Probably he got killed in a train accident. Who knows. A person is afraid of flying in the plane. Probably got killed in a plane crash. People will say it is a past life memory that is manifesting here. Now if you ask that person why are you afraid of trains? Why are you afraid of tracks? He won't be able to tell you anything. No, I never did anything, nothing bad happened to me in trains. But why is there this impression in the mind? Nobody knows. And there are positive cases also like people are born with extraordinary talent. If you ask them how can you play this musical instrument so nicely? How could you learn this in one week? And no answer there again. He will say no I didn't do it. All these experiences are indirect evidence of there being no person but there being the karma. On the path of knowledge you can get direct evidence of it if you pay attention to the working of the mind. It is possible to know it directly. You don't need to read these books and you don't need to do the studies on rebirth and all. Even after the doership is gone the doing is still there. It will complete its job, complete its evolution. The only thing is there will be purification of actions, which is another topic.

Anil is saying, depersonalization is a trap within a trap.

It is very unfortunate. What must have happened in that mind to cause that kind of tragedy? Now you will think that, well, he is a fortunate person because he does not need to go through the struggles of the ego. No, that's not right thinking. We should not think that this is a good thing because you have been given this task to kill the ego. You have been given this task to see the non-existence of the ego and you find it is not existent in this kind of mind. And you say, what a fortunate person. But no, that is not the correct way. The correct way is to transcend the person. That is my understanding. Seeing that there is no person and then allowing the person to be is transcending the person. That is why I said it purifies the mind. The actions get purified. Nothing unnecessary will happen after this. And that is progress. Killing the ego, it brings you back to the level one of the game. Now in the next incarnation, he will get a healthy ego. The mind will develop the ego. Probably the fear or whatever trauma that kicked out the ego, killed it, is now forgotten or cured. The causal body recovers from these things through incarnations. And now the proper ego will be established. A healthy ego is necessary for survival and you progress only when you survive as the body-mind. Otherwise you don't progress. The way of evolution is by taking forms, by appearing as forms.

What are we evolving into? In the same place where we started. You can make this journey. You can take a shortcut from the back door, you see. You can go there or you can take the longer path. It's fun and

entertaining journey. The only thing is, you do it in knowledge. Do not do it in ignorance. Then it is entertaining. Otherwise it is suffering. The difference is of suffering and happiness. Otherwise you don't need a spiritual path. You can see it's all set up very nicely. It is in a perfect movie directed by a perfect director, the Maya. One and only. She knows how to make good movies. Only thing, get rid of the suffering. Get rid of it. That is all you want to do. One way is to realize that there is no doer. That is the very short and sweet way. And then it becomes a pleasure. Whatever happens is a play then. It is not depersonalization. Many people confuse it with that. Yes, you take drugs. You drink alcohol. You abuse the mind and body. Yes, that can cause this kind of symptom. Seems there is no ego. But that is unhealthy. You are going back, stepping back. So do not do it.

Manish is saying, right now when you are speaking, everything is clear. I am not the doer and I know it. But in real life, I forget. Is there a way to keep it in remembrance in daily life?

Yes, like Mukul said, self-remembering. That is our whole practice of awareness. You do it, no matter what. As soon as you get lost in the doership, when you come out of it, you remember that there was no doer of whatever actions happened. At the time, there was a doer. Right now, I can see that there was none. This is the first step of remembering. If you recall my article on the stages of awareness, this is the first stage. You be the doer and do whatever is necessary to be done. You want to survive, so you should do things. This is life. Our waking state is mostly survival. So you do. But as soon as you come out of life, you sit down in one place, you had your dinner and all. Now give up everything that you have done in the daytime. See that there was no doer. This is the first stage in the awareness. Bring up the awareness of who you are. Remember what is your nature. The second stage is you will become adept in this. You will start remembering more often. Like instead of once in a day, you remember twice in a day. Then you remember every hour. Then you remember every minute. This is our practice. Remember as much as possible. Now this is like a training of the mind. You can see it's another impression on top of other impressions in the mind. It is also a karmic impression. But this is the impression that will dissolve the impressions that are below in the hierarchy. It is the boss, boss impression you can say. So train your mind like this. Once you reach every minute stage or even every 10 minute stage, remember what is your real nature. That is the practice of awareness, being aware. No doer. I am the witness. Everything is happening. I am witnessing. This is my real nature. Stay there as much as possible. Then what will happen in the second stage? This will become a continuous experience of being aware. Then the doer will very rarely appear only in very extreme circumstances where there must be a doer. When there is doing and it is about survival, the doer takes the front seat, it takes the wheel. It won't let you drive now. So let it happen. It's okay. Then when you come back in the silent time, again, no doer.

And the third step is - even before the action happens, even before doing something, you pay a real close attention to what is happening in the mind, it does not mean you forget about the world and the body and other people. No, include all of them. This is inclusive attention. This is what I talk about in awareness practices. Inclusive and exclusive attention. Your attention should be inclusive if you are practicing awareness, also called mindfulness. So once you see that, oh, this intention, it simply appears there in the mind and then it forms a causal chain up to the external action. It can be speech, it can be action through the body, etc. Even before your action happens, you will be aware. The awareness will come first, the action will come later. That is the ideal state to be in. That is what we call waking Samadhi. Then there is never a doer.

This will free you from birth and death. Why? Because birth and death is also an action. It is also an experience created by the causal body. So as soon as the causal body intends to take a birth, there is a long list to do things in the physical world, but the awareness is present there and the awareness gives the causal body the power to stop. Remember, there is no better practice than this. You want to stop the physical existence or probably want another existence which is much better than human. You want an advanced body, like a light body, an illumined body, something like this. You must have heard this. There you can choose between the intention to take a birth here or if there is an impression in your causal body which desires for a heavenly existence, that choice can be made simply because there is awareness.

You have spent all your life thinking about liberation, isn't it? Probably that is the only useful time in your life where you thought about spiritual progress and liberation. So, you don't want this opportunity to be lost when you are in the seed form, in the causal form. So, you keep the awareness there. That means you keep your original intention alive. You don't get distracted by the mechanical wheel work in the causal body that is pushing you into one more birth, one millionth time. There is no use. Hopefully, there will be a preference like this. It is perfectly okay to take one more birth because you are not that. So, why worry? But sometimes we have this, we want to progress further now. We are in a hurry now. We don't want to get trapped here. That is another aspect of spiritual progress. They are all interconnected. The no-doer will give you more control over the doing. It's kind of paradoxical. You must be thinking, if I solidify the doer, probably I will get more control. No, it is exactly the reverse. The realization of non-doership will give you more control over what happens in your life, in your whole life, the greater life, not only the human life.

You can set up some reminders. In the old-fashioned way is wearing a ring, wearing a mala, wearing clothes with the names of gods and goddesses on it. Nowadays, you can print out a T-shirt with some message on it, so that you are always reminded of it and hang the photos of the gods and goddesses and whatever gurus you like. Turn your surroundings into opportunities of remembering. You can do that. Old-fashioned way is also good. If your attention is always on your car, you put the reminder there. You put a sticker on the car. If you have a big family, and you cook all day for the family, make everything in the kitchen a reminder. Stamp everything with awareness, messages. If your job involves PCs, well, put everything there. If you are buried in the phone, well, do it there. You see, install the reminder application, whatever they allow nowadays. Do it.

Manish is saying, just out of curiosity, this means I should ignore both guilt and pride too, as I am not the doer.

Do not ignore them, but realize them that these are mind created also. If you ignore them, they will continue happening. If you become aware of them, then let them be, it will not produce a secondary action because you will get a choice to not act on the guilt and you will get a choice to not act on the pride. That means the unnecessary or the stupid things will be dropped. Do not ignore it.

It is a healthy mind that brings up guilt and pride also, a healthy ego, but an even healthier mind is the one who does not act on these. You can say tendencies in the mind are not ruled by guilt and pride. You can see that you are not the doer and that means the other is also not the doer. Nobody is a doer here. It is all happening. So there won't be any guilt and because you did nothing wrong, there won't be any blame also because nobody is doing anything wrong. You can drop it after taking necessary action and pride will also drop, pride will have no legs,

like they say. It will not have any wings to fly. So right now these tendencies of the mind are ruling you, but with awareness, they will be there, but they won't rule you. You will get more choices there. That means more freedom.

Session 37

Parveen is saying, what else do you wish to do before leaving the body?

Well, the first thing is, I was never in the body. That is not a big problem nowadays. There is no body. I am not in the body. I am not in a hurry to leave it or inhabit it. I used to think that I've got a limited lifetime and I need to do everything in this limited time. But nowadays that anxiety is totally gone. No more defined by the body now. Now as long as there is the body, the body centric things will happen and if they do not happen, who cares, then they do not happen. Whatever I am doing is probably independent of the body. That is the whole spiritual work actually. You need to get rid of the identification with the body, get rid of the dependency on the body and then do whatever you wish to do and you should do only that. Do not do anything else except that. So that is the first thing. No dependency on the body. Second, the wish. There is no more wish. I do not do anything because there is a wish. I do something only because it is necessary, only because it feels like a need, otherwise I do not do it really. There is no wish to do anything. Even if there is a wish, tiniest of the wishes, I can see it and I can see the consequences of wishing it. So most of the wishes or the desires are simply burnt away, simply by looking at them. Whatever I do is out of necessity, is out of a need, including these satsangs and whatever I am doing in the spare time, including the jobs that I do for earning and including the daily routine. It's all because it is needed. It is not there because I wish. There is no wish now. At least it is not mine. If the wish is there, it is like clouds in the sky. It is a universal wish, not my wish.

So Parveen must be thinking that this is all spiritual stuff, isn't it? Bookish stuff. But I do not have any other way to describe what is happening here. Actually I see everybody else doing the same thing that I am doing. They do not wish anything and everything that happens in their life is because of a necessity. You can do this kind of meditation, observing people. Everything happens in their life because it becomes a necessity. Whatever they wish that rarely happens, when the wish becomes the need, then only it happens. Then only they start doing it, otherwise not. That is why your life goal should become a need. It should become a necessity. If it is a wish, okay, I wish this also. I wish that also and I hope that this will happen, then it will never happen. That is what I see. That is what I observe in everybody's life and this life is not really different from any other life. The only difference probably is that there is a little bit of awareness now. I have seen that the same thing used to happen in my life also, in the past. Same thing is happening now. Even if there was a belief that I am the body and my life is dependent on the body, it was not really like that. It was only ignorance. So you can say nothing really changed except the way of looking at these things. Nothing major happened except the dropping of that which is totally unnecessary, that which is totally unnecessary is being dropped. So what is the last thing that will be dropped, which is totally unnecessary, is the body. That is what we are waiting for. It is not a suicidal thought. It is a spiritual thought.

Krishna is saying, I try to be alone within the crowd of the family.

That is a very poetic and beautiful statement. Even if there is a crowd, you will see that there is only one. That is me. The crowd is also me, isn't it? We are always alone, or probably alone is not the proper word. We are always one, there is only one. There is no loneliness, there is oneness. That is the difference between day and night actually, how you interpret the word “alone”. There is only loneliness here, there is only aloneness here. When you recognize this, then you are no more alone because loneliness takes at least two people. You are lonely because there is nobody else, but that is the truth of the existence, there is nobody else.

Then we drop this kind of tendency of the mind, actually I am totally at peace when I am alone. There is a lot of peace when there is nothing, nobody here. And I am okay when there is a crowd or when there are people. I do not feel a disturbance in the peace. That is a major achievement, isn't it? So Krishna is already there. And please do not say to your family that you are a “crowd”, probably they will not like it.

Anil is saying, why do we have a body in the dream as well?

If you are talking about the night dreams, then you will notice something strange that there is a body only when you pay attention to the body. That means the body is created on demand. The body is created only when it is needed, otherwise there is only experience. It is very peculiar, it is a very strange experience. I had dreams where I was looking in the mirror, for example, and the face in the mirror was not mine or the face kept changing somehow. And if you look at other people also, their faces and personalities, they keep changing sometimes. It was beautifully captured in the movie Inception, where this one fellow had this ability, super power to take any body, to change his face, I forgot his name.

All dreams are like this actually. If you have awareness in the dream, you will see that the body will be created on command instead of demand. You can create a body on command and it will be a fleeting body, like it will start changing as soon as you create it, but it is a very fun-filled experience. You can have any body you want in the dream. But why do we have a body? There can be any reason, there is a need or it is habitual, the mind likes

to see itself as operating through a body. The mind is habitual of it, cannot grasp being disembodied in the dream. So it imagines a body. There is a very interesting technique in occult. If you want to see your past lives, how you looked in your past lives, or if you want to get some information, probably everybody knows this technique: you put a big mirror in your room and turn down the light so that your image is barely visible, you cannot tell who is there in the mirror. The light should be very dim. It should be barely visible, like it should look as if without color. So you should have a very faint image. And there should not be anybody in the room, there should not be any other light in the room, there should not be any background, it should be pitch black. Sit in front of that mirror, just staring at the barely visible face there. Now you will find something amazing, which is not really magic, but probably in the old days, ancient days, they thought it was magic. You will see that the face changes in the mirror. The face is going to change just like it changes in the dream. The same mind is operating here also, you see.

In the absence of a very clear image, in the absence of sufficient light, the mind creates its own image. Imagine if you were living on a planet where there was a very dim sun, if it was very far away, probably it was like Pluto, where there is hardly any light, just star light and it was always like this. Now imagine that race of aliens, they would never see their face or anybody else's face because their mind would always morph the face every time. What does that tell us? Nothing is concrete here in this world. It's all mind created. Sometimes these kind of experiments and imaginary scenarios tell us a lot about what kind of reality we are in. It is mind created. So this technique was being used by many people in the ancient times. I do not know whether they use it these days or not because there is always light in our houses these days. 24 by 7 there is intense light. We switch off the light only when we switch off ourselves. That means we go to sleep. But in the ancient times, there were times when there was pitch black and they saw their images in the water or mirror and they came to know this happens. And some of them had the intuition well developed so they could see things in the mirror which nobody could see. And that is why the mirror became a very useful tool in witchcraft, in the occult circles. It is still a very important tool in the occult.

I tried these experiments and I could see many faces. Sometimes people are afraid because the mind is going to produce a very gross face there. It will look like a demon because the mind is not really that great artist. It produces a face somehow, you see, resembling a face that reminds me of the Google dreams. Go and Google the Google dreams experiment. The AI they developed, dreams up the images and they are beautiful but very frightening sometimes, sometimes it produces stuff from horror movies. So that is why people do not use it.

And you need a very good grasp of the occult to see anything in the mirror. It's called mirror gazing. Later it developed into scrying. Scrying is now an advanced form of mirror gazing. The mirrors were replaced by crystals for example. You do not actually need a mirror. You can actually sit in front of a wall and the mind will produce something on the wall.

I remember a time when I was a kid, I used to simply sit in front of a wall, a totally blank wall with a dim light and I could project anything on the wall like a movie. And then slowly I lost this “ability”. But it was so clear, the projection was so clear that I thought probably everybody does this but when I told some people they started laughing, said you are crazy and some people thought I am losing my mind. So I stopped it and when I stopped it, the ability went away. But I can still see there are some people like this. There are some artists who will sit in

front of a blank canvas and visualize what is there on the canvas and it appears in like magnificent colors. After that the donkey work of actually painting it starts, because the mind creates in a few seconds but the body takes a long time, say, a month to bring that image in the material form, to materialize it, to realize it. You can try this experiment, don't be afraid, it is all mind created.

Parveen said that, boredom is there, even if there is this information that everything is me.

You need to go beyond information and make it a knowledge, there is a difference between information and knowledge. Information means somebody told you everything is me. Knowledge is you know it, you know it as your own experience. If you want this kind of experience, we have the Satsang exactly for that, the Satsang is not for chitchat. Turn the information into reality and then you will get rid of boredom once and for all. Then you will never get bored in your life. This is another advantage of spiritual life, there is no boredom here, every second is new.

Krishna said that information is boredom, transformation is bliss, beautiful.

Manish is saying, you have also said that the body is there to put our indriyas, jnana indriya and karma indriya. It's like if we have a camera and mic, where will we connect all the stuff, thus the body is needed.

Yes, the body has a purpose, the purpose of the body is to provide an experience. You are right, the body is needed. Although in the dream state, the senses are functioning already, even without a body and that is why we call it a dream body or the sukshma sharira. There are invisible senses there, you can see these senses which are hosted on the body, there are invisible sense organs or you can see non-physical structures in the mind that provide us the dream. Actually they are the same as these structures which are providing you the experience of

the world in the waking state. Exactly the same senses are involved and that is a big subject, isn't it? Do some research on it. It is not that a different set of senses are created for dreams, no, the same thing is used. Why is it so sketchy, like flimsy, because the constant input is missing from the physical senses. So the mind has a tendency to overlap things on it. That is what the mirror gazing or wall gazing experiments, they will show you this tendency

of the mind. There is a lot to be learned about how the mind functions, how it creates, and you can access other areas of the universal mind by simply wall gazing or mirror gazing in the dark environment. Maybe you will become so good that you no longer need a mirror or wall and you can do it in broad daylight also. That is the ability of clairvoyance, duurdhrishti in Sanskrit or divyadhrishti. Our capabilities are vast, right now we are limited to the body.

Anil is saying, it's just a tendency, does it mean the sense perception happens beyond the body?

Yes, that is a kind of interesting topic, you see. The body limits sense perception, the body is not the source of sense perception. Can you understand what I am saying?

The body limits sense perception, the body is not the source of sense perception. The job of physical sense organs on the body is to limit what we can sense and the side effect of this limitation is that the experience is stable. It does not waver, there is no room for it to shift too much. So the more you focus, tighten this aperture of the senses, the sharper the experience becomes. And that is why the physical body is an instrument for training the mind. We are training ourselves to perceive one thing at a time, they are like the wheels for a baby, the baby starts walking, you give the baby support wheels. The physical body is like that. We are training our minds to perceive properly. Perception is creation, isn't it? So what are we doing? We are training our minds to create properly.

The real sensing happens in the mind in the subtle senses. That is why I said the senses are one and the same.

And that is why, the ancient people called the brain as a sense organ. The brain was called Indra. It was adopted as it is by the Buddhist people, from the Vedic people. The Indra became their God in Buddhism, Indra is a very major God in Buddhism. I don't know about today's Buddhism, but it was hijacked from the Vedic culture. Why? Because they saw the importance of Indra. And you will notice something strange about Indra. Indra has a weapon in his hand which looks like an electricity bolt. Why? How could they know that the brain works on electricity, electrical impulses?

They saw that the energy in the brain is the same as the energy in the clouds. The weapon of the Indra was an electric bolt. Nobody pays attention to these things. Nowadays nobody worships Indra, even though he is the king of the gods. He is really the king because these senses were pictured like gods and goddesses. The structures were personified into gods and the energies were personified as goddesses. The total system of the body, the nervous system and the body, the sensory system, sensory motor system was personified for whatever reasons, to memorize properly or to keep the knowledge alive or something, codification of it. And then an explanation was provided on site, it was not given out in the book. The guru used to show you your experience. Look, this is Indra. Look, this is this goddess. All the gods and goddesses are in the body. They would show it as a direct experience of the student. Nowadays this is not there. People blindly worship these things in a fan boyish way. Yes, the sense perceptions do not happen in the body, the body limits the sense perception. That's why people want to go out of the body. They want to do astral projection and these techniques because the senses are then amplified 100 times without the limitation of the body. It looks like you own the whole universe. It is extreme freedom. That is why people get hooked on it.

Just today morning I was looking at a video, I keep checking what people are doing in this field and there was one person, very young man, he said, I learned about this thing from internet and I tried it for two or three months and one day I was suddenly out of my body and I was shocked like, is it even possible? And then I was hooked on this experience. So much so that I made it my life to study astral projection and to educate people about it. I mean, it was so life changing for him, a few seconds out of body. Can you imagine? So that is why we recommend such kind of experiments, even though it is kind of crazy experiment.

Manish is saying, you also said that body is there to limit our range of experiences. It's like decreasing our range of experiences like ear listen only from 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz without the body. It will be all frequencies without this limitation. All will be either black or white.

Yes, exactly. You are listening to the talks very carefully only that 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz is a physical limit. The mind has a different kind of limit about which we'll discuss some other time. There is nothing physical here.

He's saying, yes, there is a meditation called Tratak. Keep looking into the mirror. Yes, there are yogic equivalents of mirror gazing, wall gazing or gazing into the candle or a lamp or into the eyes of the deity, eyes of the Guru, the picture of the Guru, let us say, I don't think people recognize the importance of it or I don't think they even know how to do it. It is kind of unfortunate. The name Tratak has survived. Actually I've seen some people do it correctly also, but others, they will report a headache when they do these things. They will say, I just had a headache. Did not make me progress on my spiritual path. It did not give me superpowers. It is not there to get superpowers and it is not really a spiritual path. It is an occult method and it is there to make you familiar with how the mind works. It should be done under the guidance of a teacher. You cannot simply read the book and start doing it. It's kind of useless.

He is saying, many people have reported that they saw a face different than their own during Tratak.

You will get this kind of result in two minutes actually, very easily. Only thing is that you may not be able to interpret what is happening. You may not get any knowledge. It will be like a fun-filled adventure. Sometimes there will be demons and ghosts that will appear around you and so on. Many teenagers try these things and they never look at the mirror again. There was some superstition in some communities, some cultures. I don't know whether it's in India or some other part of the world. I just read about it. When death happens in a family, they cover up all the mirrors. They put dark clothes or heavy clothes on all the mirrors in the house. Why? Because people start seeing the dead person in the mirror and they freak out. But the mirrors are innocent. Mirrors are just objects, simply reflect stuff. The mind tunes itself into the non-physical sometimes and because there is an attachment, because there is this trauma of the death, the images of the dead person appear. Everybody calls it superstition or coincidence or craziness. If you study these things, you will gain an enormous amount of knowledge about what kind of world we are in.

The memory has this property that it works on association. Our memory is associative memory. It is not a random memory, not a random access memory. You can research further why it happens.

Anil said, instead of face on mirror, if you have a word there in the dimmed format, your mind will automatically shift it to other words of similar structure.

Yes, it will. It will even start telling you the things that are buried deep inside the mind. It is like that inkblot test.

I forgot the name of the test. They use it to bring out the real tendencies of the mind. So yes, if you want to know what is buried deep inside your mind, you can do these kinds of experiments. You see, it is also called divination or something like that in English, trying to get information by non-physical means. Who brings the information? Mind brings the information. And these defects, the glitches, they show us how the mind works. They show something very important that everything is being created as it is perceived. It is not that there is TV out there or there is room out there or there is space out there or there is solidity in the structures. It is not being constructed out of nothing. It is being constructed out of the data that the senses are sending. What is it that the senses are detecting? And it's very interesting and mind blowing. They are detecting me. They are perceiving me. It is me. The room is me. The TV is me. The space is me. Everything is me, actually. I am appearing to myself as vibrations of myself. And the whole scene is created out of this data, this naad, the vibration. It is not a vibration of matter. It is not the vibration of something. It is the vibration of consciousness, pure consciousness, the Brahmanaad.

We are perceiving the Brahmanaad. That is amazing. That is what you will come to know when such glitches happens or you do it intentionally using the yogic practices. Something similar will happen if you do it brutally, like force it using drugs or some other devices. And it is so mind blowing because you see it shatters our illusion, shatters our dream, which we have mistook as reality. There is no reality. Reality is probably a very strange word. It negates itself. It is a negative word. Reality means that which is not. Therefore the proper word for reality is maya, mithya. That is what we are perceiving. There is nothing else here. There is only you, the nirgun consciousness, qualityless and infinite. Why infinite? Because infinite potential, you see. You are seeing a tiny slice of this potential. You are seeing one out of a trillion part of its potential. It is also mind-blowing, actually. It's kind of very impressive, this show.

Session 38

It is simply not possible to experience death without dying. That is the most logical thing, isn't it? If we are experiencing death, that means we are already dead. What we can do is we can approach this kind of state and try to know what happens when we forget the body, when the experience of the body is not present. You can simulate death, but I do not really recommend dying to experience death because that experience is going to happen anyway. We are obviously not in a hurry to do that. It will happen and then it will be experienced. If you have the awareness at the time of death, then it will be remembered.

I have some techniques to experience a state which is almost similar to death. All you need to do is withdraw your attention from the senses. Right now you are in this world. The reason is because your attention is focused on the senses. If you withdraw your attention to something else like imagery in your mind or a voice in your mind, which is non-physical, which is not coming from your senses, for example, a mantra or any music, imaginary music or a sound such as OM and you forget your senses completely, which happens automatically when we go to sleep. When we are in the state of sleep, there is no memory of the body or there is no awareness of the body. Same thing, but with full consciousness, with full awareness and you will get a glimpse of existing as a disembodied mind.

You can say that this happens already in the case of dreams, but a dream is another state of mind. Actually, it is a creation of the mind where it gives you a world and a body to be in. And there is no awareness in the dream. There is no made up experience in this state when you withdraw from the body. I can tell you that it is like pure awareness without any content. It is like a blissful state with no content there. There is just a state of there being me and that's all. And you will find that sometimes the contents, they come and go, they fly through the screen of the consciousness. But because you have decided to not to fall out of the awareness, you will let it go. You let it fly through your consciousness and you will be back. Some people like to call it Void. That is a scary name. Some people call it 3D blackness. And that is also my experience that it is mostly like infinite space where there is only

consciousness. It looks like that. When you say dream, it is another state of the mind where it is now not conscious. Any kind of experience, if it appears, that automatically means that I am now a beholder of the experience. So that will be a dual state now because as soon as there is an experience, you will see that there are senses that are required to experience it and the senses cannot simply float in the air. So the mind creates a body and your plan to experience the state of death is now ruined because something else has appeared here, not the state of death.

So anyway, this is also not the state of death as you can come back to the body as soon as you remember the body, it is not going to last for a long time. Body pulls you back there. So either you will end up in dreaming or sleep or you will wake up in the physical world. But this gives you a glimpse of what existence is like without a body. And it is kind of blissful. From the point of view of the ego, it will be very boring. Ego must be thinking, what is the fun in that? What is the fun in staring in the Void? But if you go there, the ego is also dropped. The ego arises when there is a body, when the body is created to experience something. So when there is no ego, what remains? You remain and you are pure bliss.

This is the state that you will usually go to when you are astral projecting. For example, you want to do some experiments regarding the other areas of the universal mind. The first step to reach other areas of the universal mind is to get away from this area of the universal mind, which this physical body is tied to. And that is why your awareness is tied to the physical world right now. This happens naturally while we go to sleep. But the thing is, it is without awareness. It is like a mechanical state change of the mind. And there is no memory of when this happens. And according to me, all the different states of the mind are always present. Only that some states are

more obvious than the other states. It depends on the needs of the mind. In the waking state, the mind is mostly engaged in survival. So there is a need to attend to the body. And that is why this state is present in the daytime. When this survival is not a concern, the mind withdraws from the senses of the physical body. And then while going to other states in between, it rests for a while in the Void. It is a natural state. You can extend this and that becomes the Yog Nidra. That becomes the aware sleep, the yogic sleep. And it is like floating in the void, conscious void. And right now you won't be able to even imagine what it is. Because you never experienced it. So there is no way to imagine it. It has to be experienced to be known. It is not even floating because the floating implies that there is a body and there is a sensation of floating. Void implies that there is a space, but it's not even space. Very blissful, a very beautiful state.

If you are astral projecting there, you can go with an intention. That intention can be to meet somebody, to explore some other areas of the universal mind and so on. To meet your guru or to experience your past lives or future lives or whatever. Or you do any kind of healing work on yourself or on the world or on somebody else. People do that. And as soon as there is this intention, this void collapses into an experience. The knowledge turns into ignorance and the mind is now engaged in action. This is the fall. Now the question is, whether I'll end up in a void after death or whether I'll end up in some other state of the mind after death. That is why I say that these kinds of experiments do not give you the actual picture of death. Where you will end up, in what kind of mental state you are going to end up after death, totally depends on your mental tendencies. If you have lived an aware life, like 24 by 7 you are aware in Samadhi of one kind or the other kind, full awareness, mindfulness, then there is a very big chance that you will end up in a conscious experience. If you have led a totally unaware life, full of desires, full of suffering, full of wanting, full of actions of all kinds, then you will slip into a dreamlike state, probably after some time. And your next kind of experience will be taking a birth.

Because life was unaware, the birth will be unaware and you will slowly gain awareness only after two or three years when the brain and the body grows up and provides you with an experience. Only then you will start getting hints of your own presence. The presence is in the form of the ego now. I am this body. I am this person. This kind of awareness arises. These are the two extremes and there can be in between states. For example, those who have done a lot of yogic practices, they may end up in another world, which is more conducive for your spiritual growth. They may end up near their guru. Mostly those who are of spiritual kind, usually have a guru on the other side or they have many guides on the other side. Those who are in the sangha, that means those who are in the community of seekers, the whole community comes and receives them. There is some power in being in a spiritual community or group of monks with whom you have spent many lifetimes. They will always pick you up and stop you from doing something stupid. Like they will pump the awareness up and so on.

Sushant's question, does everybody have a guru?

No. Actually, this is kind of a misconception that everybody is born with a guru. No, you are born alone and you die alone, unless you pick up a path, unless you wish for a guide. You don't have a guide. Some people have a tradition they're born into. For example, if you're born in India, you will surely be born into a tradition. And that tradition has a deity attached to the tradition. The tradition has ancestors attached to the tradition. I think this also happens in other ancient cultures like South America and North American cultures. The original population there, they have this these kind of tradition setup since thousands of years. But I can tell you about Indian culture. When you're born in this land, you're born in a tradition. It is kind of 100% sure. And they have their ancestors and what you call pitra and the deities that take care of that family. They are attached to that family or that lineage. So when you die, these people are there to help you or to receive you there on the other side. But no, they are not gurus really. They can show you a few things. But if your tendencies are too strong, like you cannot be bothered to take directions from anybody, then they leave you to do whatever the mind does. Such a mind cannot be communicated with. It is totally closed for the influences. Even though you are born in the tradition, even though you have default helpers available, sometimes it is not possible to communicate with the dead mind. It is not a dead mind actually. The mind that was owning the dead body.

It's a misconception that everybody has a guru. No, you need to ask for a guru. Ask for a guru while you are aware and alive. Mother nature takes over after death. There is nobody to interfere in your matters. There is a free-floating mind. If you do not have a good relation with a guru, a bond with the guru, then even if you have a guru, the guru will not be present there because you never asked to be helped. So the guru leaves you because the guru already knows what is going to happen to this mind. Usually it goes into a spiral of births and deaths again. So request for help. For that you will need to take up a spiritual path. If you are seeking alone, no problem. You can always call for help and there a guru will be provided for you. This is the system in the universal mind. The guru is the interface to the universal mind. It appears whenever you invoke the guru. I call it the gurufield actually. Not everything in the universal mind will appear before you, only the gurufield, or some part of it will appear. And if you are under a guru, then request that guru to pick you up on the other side. Like you request your friends or your relatives to pick you up when you land in some other town or some other country after a flight. You will need to request somebody. And if you are in a tradition, well, everybody will be there to pick you up. Only thing is you need to maintain your awareness, have the willingness to be helped. If you say, I don't care about this community, I don't care about the sangha, I don't care about my tradition or the kuldeva, the family deity or ancestors. And this is the condition of most of the people nowadays in this age, this total absence of awareness and total ignorance about what these things are because they think that death is nothing. They think that I am the body and the world is a materialistic world. There is only matter here. A lot of ignorance is there. Nobody wants to even explore because they already know. Blind beliefs are present. They believe this blindly. They don't even want to collect evidence before believing it. So with this kind of mind, well, it is purely a mechanical circle of birth and death.

It is a bigger cycle that happens in 24 hours. You go through this cycle every day. Actually you're born every day in the morning. Then you go back to the place of nothingness or pure consciousness every night. And then it goes into the mind-created realms in the mind, the seed body. It creates stuff for you. And then you are born again the next morning. This cycle is repeated in the bigger form during the cycles of births and deaths. It is a bigger sleep and this waking state is a bigger waking, the birth. This is how it is. That is why when we do this practice of remaining aware in our 24 hours of our day to day existence, that actually is equal to being aware in the cycle of births and deaths. When I say stay aware, it is not a small thing. It is a purely spiritual practice. It has some side effects in day to day life. It makes you happier. It makes you more free and reduces suffering, but remaining aware is kind of the key thing. It is the key practice for your spiritual progress. Otherwise you repeat the same thing which you have been repeating since millions of births. Repetitive existence leads to suffering, devolution, which you do not want. This may sound like a fairy tale to many people who are not on a spiritual path. But your experience is your truth. Explore, find evidence for yourself. Do not believe my words.

Leyla is saying, so before astral projecting, request to meet guru?

Yes. Keep this in your mind all day. If you are doing such practices, if you are trying to go into Nirvikalpa or you are trying to explore some other area in the astral worlds or in the universal mind or you are planning to meet your gurus or guides, keep this all day in your mind. Make this intention and then even if you don't want to, you will meet your guru on the other side. Remember the guru is already in your contact. You cannot see them because you never made an intention, but they know each and everything about you. If you have a guru, if you are practicing since many births, you will have a guru. Otherwise, if you are totally new, well, start now.

Sushant is asking, how can we continue on this path while catering to current responsibilities of family life?

Now, Sushant, please tell me which of your responsibilities tells you not to continue on this path? Which of your responsibilities is pushing you to not remain aware? Is your job telling you to dwell in falsehood, not find the truth? Or is your wife or parents, are they forcing you to do something which is non-spiritual? Anything like this? What responsibilities have you got which are forcing you to not do meditation or not read books or not attend such meetings, satsang or not to watch the videos. Which one of your responsibilities has changed you, is commanding you to not do any kind of spiritual work? Let me know. Because this is a satsang, I can do it interactively instead of giving you a kind of canned answer, you see. I can be very specific to you.

Sushant is saying, I feel there is a limit in time and I get distracted. I feel that I am not putting in enough time.

You see, that means the problem is there in your mind, not outside, not in the responsibilities. If you think your time is totally taken by all the responsibilities, all the jobs, try to reduce that which is unnecessary. You cannot reduce that which is very necessary. For example, you watch news for two hours daily, which many people do nowadays. Now, two hours is too much. You need two minutes to get the news that you really want, that is unnecessary. Cut that down. If you go and meet your friends every Sunday, then you can cut it down. You can meet them every month. They are not running away. Similarly, some people go shopping almost every day. Do your shopping every month. Get whatever you need in one trip. If your job demands that you stay in office for 12 hours, leave that job. Do some other job which is not a big deal. Even on a job, you can remain meditative. You can remain very aware while doing the job. Even if it is 12 hours or 16 hours, you can stay aware. That is

all the practice is. You can listen to the satsang. You can listen to the videos while travelling. If you go by bus to your office, that takes one hour. It happens in most cities that it takes one hour or half an hour to reach. Well, utilize that time and try to do everything as a spiritual practice. That is the key.

You are in a situation where you are totally involved in the world. It is your own doing. You have chosen this kind of lifestyle where there is not even one minute for yourself. It is totally a life full of distractions. When I say become aware in every act of your life, that sounds like a bookish thing. Practically, you will need to do an effort

to remove some of the distractions. Do not take up new things which are time-wasting. Do not engage in activities which are not spiritual, although there is no such thing actually. For example, if your job demands a lot

of travel, either you can utilize the travel time for some spiritual practice or if your practice involves sitting at one place, you don't want to travel, then leave that job. Do a job which involves staying at one place. There can be many examples like this. What I recommend is you make a list of activities that you do every day and that which is necessary do it first and the activities that are totally unnecessary, cut them out and then decide I am not going to do this again. That will cut down the distractions. But about time, well, that is only our perception that I do not have time. We have a lot of time actually. We are not aware in that time and that is why it slips. Do whatever you are doing with full awareness, being what you are, which you cannot be, you cannot be what you are not, it is impossible.

Avoid forgetting your true nature. Do everything from a place of awareness, and you will automatically find some things start cutting off from your life. For example, I have seen that I speak very less and that saves a lot of time. I mean, that is my nature. But when I started practicing awareness, even that time which went into talking to others was reduced to almost nothing. Have you seen people, whenever they meet, they start talking like a radio and they go on talking for hours. That is the condition of some people. And now they wonder why I don't have peace of mind or why I don't get time for practice or anything at all. Because something unnecessary has taken over the mind and this habit has been acquired because of unawareness. If you are aware of what you are saying, you won't say anything more than needed actually. This will happen automatically. This happens to me. If you are aware of doing what you are doing, you won't do anything which is totally unnecessary. That gives us a lot of spare time. Now, once you get the time, if you have no spiritual work to do, then you will again get distracted. Have some spiritual goal in your life. Do something or sit in satsang, do some social work, help your ashram, help your guru, anything. And that will snatch the time from your distractions. We do that which we give importance to. Nothing will really happen if you do not give it importance, make it the first priority in your life. This is how the mind works. This is how the body works. This is how the world works. It must become a need. It becomes the highest priority. And why are you going to give highest priority to spiritual work? Because you are interested. Because you realize its importance. If it is not important, if you're not interested in it, it is guaranteed that it will not happen. It will disappear from your life.

Leyla is saying, it's difficult when raising small children.

Yes, probably. Actually everything that is worth doing is difficult. We innovate. We improvise. When your child is sleeping, you do your dhyana practice. When you are taking care of the child, do it in full awareness, and take help from others in raising the child. And if you have a child, then the child is your spiritual practice. We are also learning from life experiences. You have taken up this kind of job to raise the children. Then that is your spiritual practice that is going to give you a lot of lessons. You will need to improvise. You will need to innovate, find new ways. Do not think that my job is a distraction or my work is unnecessary or it is giving me trouble. You will need to improvise and turn the worldly action into a spiritual action. Do it with full awareness. Do it as a service. A child is like an investment. You are making an investment for the future. So how would you like the child to grow up? What are you inculcating in the children? That becomes your practice. After two or three years, you will be free again. So, yes, everything that happens in our life is a lesson. It should not be seen as a distraction. If it is totally unnecessary, then it is a distraction. Yes. But I don't think children and family are unnecessary. Your job is necessary and even your social life is necessary. You cannot remain isolated for a long time. You will need to speak to people sometimes. But yes, I've seen that awareness is the key. If there is awareness, if there is acceptance, if you're learning your lessons, then the worldly life is spiritual life.

Ashish is saying, so is it possible and advisable to give your full attention to the task at hand, but also maintain awareness of being?

It is not impossible. You will need to merge with the task. That is what happens. That is what is called awareness. The awareness of being is not different from the awareness of the experience, is it? There is no me here of which you are aware. You are simply being aware of whatever there is. So whatever you're doing, become fully aware of that. You need to merge with what you're doing, become one with what you're doing. There is awareness there. You need not stop doing and then, okay, let me see what I am. No, that is not possible. You won't be able to do both if you do this. Merge with the action, become totally involved in the action. You can practice non-doing by sitting and not doing. That is one way. This kind of belief comes from this kind of practice when you see a monk or a yogi sitting there doing nothing. And if you ask him, what are you doing? He will say, I'm practicing being. That is one way. But there is another way. You can be what you are while doing also. You can be fully aware while acting also. Like you are listening to me. Are you not aware now? Have you given up listening to become aware of what you are? My voice is your awareness. This experience is you. Now, do you need to get out of the way or something? No. Do you need to stop experiencing to remain aware? No. It is even easier than breathing.

What you're thinking is I am an object and I need to become aware of that object to become aware of myself. No. Awareness has a “ness” in front of it. N-E-S-S, which means it is a state of the mind only. It is not something which you can grasp using your experience or using your mind. You are already that. What happens is when there is identification with the mind or the body, then this is forgotten that I am pure awareness. That means something is distracting you. Something is forcing you to forget. It is causing a gap between you and your experience. And it is obviously the mind. The mind comes in between the awareness and the action. So all actions are possible in awareness. While performing your day-to-day responsibilities, while you're tremendously busy like a cyclone, you can be fully aware. You can be present. What keeps us from being aware is ignorance or this habit of the mind, habit of attaching with that which I am not.

It is simple. Do not remain as somebody else. Do not remain as something else. Do not identify with this experience or that experience. What remains when you don't do that? What is the result of that? Yes, you remain in awareness. How can a white cloth remain white? Do not make it dirty. Do not put another color on it and it will remain white. Whiteness is the nature of the cloth. It is very easy. You cannot make it white, it is already white. How can you become that which you are? You cannot. Stop coloring it with something else. That is all. And every time this happens, you will find that there is dissatisfaction. You are kicked out of bliss. You end up in one or the other kind of suffering. Or, it is an uneasy state. Those who are practicing awareness, taste it. I mean, it is like nectar. It is very sweet. So as soon as you fall out of awareness, you will experience bitterness. You will

experience dissatisfaction, uneasiness of some kind. And the mind will automatically come back into awareness. This is the nectar of Samadhi. You must have heard this thing that those who taste the nectar of Samadhi, they cannot leave it after that. Once you taste awareness, it will become very difficult to fall into unawareness.

So people who are asking this, they are probably newcomers. Let us say you're feeding a child with ordinary food, which is tasteless bland food. One day he tastes the ice cream or tastes the candy. Now he is not going to

eat ordinary food. Now he is going to demand for the candy every day. He will cry for it. Similarly, once the mind tastes awareness, once it knows how blissful it is, it is not going to fall back. And if it falls back, it will be alerted automatically because it is suffering. It is bitter. It is kind of boring to remain unaware. This will happen to you. Right now, you are on the other side of the fence. Come to this side. I think it's better here. The grass is greener here, really. And once you come here, you won't want to go to the other side. So practice, practice, practice.

Ashish is saying, isn't this Neo-Advaita philosophy like that of Ramesh Balsekar who said, events happen, there is no doer and hence you are not expected to do anything. Things will happen as they are supposed to happen. Just be. Even if you do or don't do it, it doesn't matter. All this is controlled by the consciousness.

I don't even know what Neo-Advaita is. I don't know any philosophy, actually. What I know is my own experience. Now, if Ramesh Balsekar has said it, probably he must have said it through using his own experience,

because I know that person. He talks from the experience. Now, whatever people say, other people interpret and it becomes a philosophy. They give it a name. Look at your own experience. That is all you need to do. Is there a doer there? Isn't everything that is necessary and according to the preferences in the mind already happening? It is only happening, it is not being done and that brings peace in whatever is happening and purifies it. Whatever is happening is purified automatically. So, yes, it is true that things will happen as they are supposed to happen. Yes, it is kind of 2 plus 2 equals 4. This is a formula. Things will happen as they are supposed to happen.

What's supposed to happen? These kinds of statements are not very meaningful. They do not help a lot. We do have this kind of belief that, oh, this happened and it was supposed to happen. What is the meaning of saying this? Isn't everything supposed to happen in the way it happens? So, remove all these extra words that you are adding here like expectation, doer, whether it is supposed to happen or not, whether I am supposed to do something else not this. Well, these are all layers of ignorance that are covering up that which is happening naturally. If you think that something wrong has happened, it was not supposed to happen, then it is a mistake, then it is a lesson and the lessons are supposed to happen actually. How are you going to learn if they don't happen? Mistakes will happen. The thing is they will become less and less. Many things happen and then you learn from it. Do not even abide on that for one second. Oh, it happened. What is the correct measure? Do it. Continue. Continue in awareness. You did not do it intentionally. So, whatever you do intentionally is also not your doing. The intention is present as a universal action. You are a witness of all the intentions also. The intention appeared. Is it necessary? Well, if it is necessary, it is going to happen. You continue in awareness again. That does not mean that all the actions will stop. No, the nature of the body-mind is activity. It will continue. The actions are purified. The actions do not stop. It is impossible to stop the mind. Yes, it can be biased towards producing more blissful actions. By bliss, I do not mean happiness or joy or pleasure. No, forget about that. It's not going to happen. Bliss will happen. Bliss is absence of clinging to the outcomes of our actions or of the universe also. It is the absence of being affected by everything that is happening around us, including the actions of the body-mind. That is bliss.

Ashish was saying, even if you do or don't do, it doesn't matter. All this is controlled by the consciousness. Well, there are some beliefs here. Nothing is controlled by consciousness. Consciousness is the witness and that must be your own experience. You simply witness. Consciousness simply witnesses. It does not control anything. It does not do anything. It is the witness of all the controlling that happens, which is a kind of illusion. Nobody is in control here. All activity that you see around you, all the experience that appears on the screen of the consciousness is happening according to the laws of the mind. The mind is the law of the mind. There is no separate mind apart from the laws of the mind. So, nobody is in control, really. So, when you say just be, there is no other option. You cannot just not be. It is impossible for the consciousness to be not conscious.

Anil is saying, but if there is no individual, those karmic seeds, whose karmic seed is it and why do you want to reduce them? Why is there ownership with karmic seeds?

A beautiful question. Why should I reduce that which is not mine? This is total surrender. The seeker is not even trying to reduce something. There is no want to do it. What I said is that it will happen. I am not saying that it is your job to do it. Now, you are a spiritual seeker. Now, cut down all your karmic impressions. Destroy all your karmic impressions. No, this is not the goal. The goal is to remain in awareness. The goal is to remain as the non-doer and the rest happens automatically. The reduction in the karmic seed is happening automatically. You are not doing it. That is the effect of awareness. Sometimes the guru will say, look, a lot of suffering is in your life and it is going to continue for many lifetimes. It is your doing. Such teaching is given and then the guru will say, since it is yours, you can change it. You can purify it. This kind of teaching, which is a lower level teaching, has been adapted to the condition of the seeker. The guru is going to give you this medicine and he will tell you to reduce it. Reduce your karmic seeds. Burn them up. If you do these things, it will be burned. Stop doing these things, they will be burned. It will bring a lot of peace and happiness in life. It will reduce the suffering of that seeker. Once the suffering is gone, the mind is now ready to grasp the higher teachings. Now the mind can go to the self-realization or realization of the oneness. When you are suffering, well, you don't want these things. You don't want oneness. You don't want to know the emptiness that is witnessing. What is the use of it? I am poor. I am suffering. I do not have food. And now this Vedantic stuff is not going to make any sense for this seeker. The seeker has come to you for a solution. Now you will need to give him medicine.

Sometimes the teaching is covered up in a capsule of lies and it is for the benefit of the person who is totally in ignorance. There is so much ignorance there that the teaching is not going to penetrate there. So first the purification must be done, a little bit of it. And then when the purification happens, progress can happen. Sometimes I have seen it happen immediately. Sometimes it takes a few months, a few years, like five or ten years also. If the student has accepted the guru as his guru and the guru has accepted the student as a student, then there is a bond, there is a communication and the guru will continue to impart the teaching in higher and higher forms. As soon as the person or the student becomes ready, the higher dose comes. Look, you burnt away the seeds and all that. But remember, they not yours. It is not your karma. I do not own any karmic stuff. It should be clear to everybody. If it is there, perfectly okay. If it is not there, who cares? Actually, there will not be any time in this whole existence when the karmic seeds go back to zero. Nope, not possible. It is always a detachment from the karmic seeds. That is another subject, isn't it? Like the guru told you, well, you can make your karmic stuff zero and you will be freed. Well, this is a lie. This is another medicine in the capsule. Remember this. The tendency of the mind is action. Actions produce consequences. The consequences come back as reflected waves. The impressions form karmic seeds. You cannot stop this. All you can do is drop the doer, drop the individual and then stop caring about this. You will find the experience of the individual is refined in some magical way. It is amazing, isn't it?

Ashish is saying, actually Ramesh added two terms, consciousness at rest, which is Shiva or Brahma of Advaita and consciousness in motion, Shakti or Maya of Advaita. So in my previous comment, I meant controlled by consciousness in motion.

Great. Yes. These are not “Neo”, these are age old notions, actually. These concepts of Shakti or Shiva are very old. Knowledge begins from this thing. So probably Ramesh is trying to explain something in these terms. If you personify the Shakti, then you can say, yes, there is a controller of things that are happening, but no, the Shakti is what is happening. There is no separate one, which is controlling something in existence. Existence is, that is all. Nothing is in control. Nothing is intentional here. It is our ignorance that we project a controller and we project

an intender, somebody who desires things to happen in a specific way. No, these are poetic, probably. These are poetic ways of saying that Shakti is in control. We say it in these words to impart certain teaching. That is all. In reality, nothing is controlling anything.

Nick is saying, isn't it true that as the self from Brahman transcends all things, universe, body, mind, intellect, memory, ego are not useful in experiencing the self?

What you are, which is nirguna, which is emptiness, shunya, cannot be perceived. It cannot be known also. Can you see? Because there is nothing there which tells it that I am. It's the only thing there. Why are there these apparent things? Universes, bodies, minds, intellect, memory. Why are they there? Because this emptiness is full of potential because everything is possible in emptiness. Now there is a little bit of use of that because these experiences are there. The experiencer can say, look, I am that experiencer comes to know of its own existence by reflecting itself as experiences. Isn't this happening already? Isn't this your experience? I know that I am only by reflecting on that which I am not.

Nick is saying, do we need any experiences or realizations to experience the self?

That which is experiencing is the self. You can pick any experience. It is the self experiencing itself. It probably wants to ask, do we need a special experience to know the self? No. This current experience which you are having right now is an expression of the self only. It is the self itself. It is appearing as this experience. There is no experience apart from the experiencer.

You do not need any special, gold coated, expensive experience to know that I am. I am right now, right here, experiencing everything. That is why the gyani is happy with whatever experience there is. The occultist or the tantric is not happy with this current plain boring experience. That is also good. That is also a dance of the existence. We don't mind these things on the path of knowledge. But for somebody who is established in the self, all experiences are a reflection of the self only. There cannot be any experiencer if all the experiences dissolve because they appear together. The duality appears at once in this emptiness. If there is only emptiness, there is no knower and there is no known. Nothing can be said about it. It is not only beyond mind, it is beyond knowledge. But because there is potential for something or the other happening, something or the other happens, the wind does not remain quiet for long. It starts blowing and then we come to know, something is there. Both are required to know the experience of the self, if you want to call it, the experience of the knowledge of the self. Knowledge of the self is possible only by that which is not self. Knowledge of the experiencer is possible only when there is experience. The pure emptiness has no knowledge. The pure emptiness knows nothing. The pure emptiness does not want to know anything. There are no wants there. Pure emptiness has no ignorance also. Remember, one of the names of Shiva Bhole Shankar. The word Bhole means innocence. Innocence is my nature. Not ignorance, not knowledge, I am so pure.

Nick is saying, why is there witnessing quality in the self?

Actually there is nothing but witnessing in the self. This is the nature of the self. The self and witnessing are one. It is like asking, why is there wetness in water? The water and wetness are one. The nature of the water is wetness. So self and witnessing are the same thing. There is no self without witnessing. I hope that clears it. Why is there light in the sun? Sun and light are one. Can there be a sun without light?

Nick, When the self doesn't want to know itself, why did it take a limited form called mind?

There are a few assumptions here. Well, it doesn't have any wants. That is your direct experience. It is a witness of the wants. The wants belong to the mind. Now you are assuming that it took a limited form called mind. No, it did not. The self is present as it is in this pure form right now. The mind appears. Why do you think I am the mind? I am the limited form? Because of your identification with the mind. Let there be a mind. Now is it a problem? No. Let there be a limited mind. Let there be limited form. It's all okay. It did not do it because there was a want to do it. It does nothing actually. It is simply witnessing what is happening. And out of the infinite possibilities of things that can happen, one of the possibilities is a limited mind. And that is why it is appearing. Is it appearing in time? No. We are already timeless. The mind has time. The mind is a form. So it's going to dissolve back into something unformed. Or the body has a form. It is going to die. Dissolve back into something else. The self has no form. It did not take form and so remains what it is. Right now, right here, it is formless. It never took a form. It does not take a form. What takes form is the mind itself. If you identify with this form, then this kind of question can arise. Why am I limited? I am not limited. The form is limited. The form is always limited. If it is unlimited, it won't remain a form. The form cannot be infinite. The form cannot be empty. Otherwise, it's not a form. The form is always bound. It is always a structure. It cannot be freed. Isn't it? It will remain limited. But the good news is I am not that form. I never took that form. I am simply witnessing these forms as they appear.

Why this form only? I am having experience of this form only. That is not true. You are having experience of all the forms, infinite varieties of the forms. This collection of forms are nothing but memories, non-physical, non-material memories, the patterns of consciousness. And all these patterns exist at once, timelessly. These are being viewed through the lens of the mind and senses and bodies. There is only one self that is witnessing all the forms. Why don't I know this? The mind has a limited amount of knowledge. As consciousness, it does not need to know anything. It knows itself only and it knows itself by being itself. The knowledge of consciousness is consciousness.

Sushant is saying, why this cycle of birth and death? What is being achieved with it?

Exactly. Nothing is achieved in this existence. You are already whole and complete and empty and nothing. What can it achieve?

This experience and the cyclic experiences, they are not happening for achieving anything. They are a dance. It is a play. It's called Leela. There is no purpose behind it. There is nothing to be achieved. What looks like a cycle of birth and death is not my cycle. I am the witness of these cycles and is there a cycle really? No, it is an appearance. It's a play. Some people will say, well, the consciousness or the Parabrahma is delighted by this play. No, there is no delight in consciousness. The consciousness is already bliss. It is infinite bliss already. It does not need a play to be amused, to be entertained. No. So what we can do is whenever there is an answer to this question, we can kill that answer. We can bring that answer down by simply negating it. No, this is not happening. It is not happening for a purpose. This is not happening for amusement of something, that something is already empty and bliss, complete, total. Nothing is needed there. So when you ask a “why” question, W-H-Y, you are expecting a reason. You are expecting a cause, but the whole or the existence or the Brahman is causeless. There is no reason for his existence and is not heading towards anything. It has no goals and therefore there is no purpose there. Nothing at all. If you impose a purpose, if you answer this question, then it will be absolutely wrong all the time. Knowing yourself is the end of knowledge. Actually, knowing your essence should end the seeking. The knowledge should be dropped there. All knowledge is ignorance. Once you reach the end of knowledge, the knowledge vaporizes. It becomes meaningless.

Sandeep is saying, we know all this, but why can't the search stop?

What are you searching for? You see the mind has a very peculiar tendency that it cannot stop. A stopped mind is not a mind, is it? It has become emptiness if it stopped. So, once it reaches the end, it turns back and starts searching again. That is the tendency of the mind. So, what do we do? We let it search. What is there to search? What are you going to find? Who is searching? Not you. You do not need to search. There is nothing to search for. There is nothing to know. What is there to search in emptiness? What is there to know in emptiness? Nothing. Emptiness only. You see, you have the goal. That goal is ultimate happiness, which is also called bliss or ananda. It is not the presence of an experience. It is not getting something. It is leaving everything. It is dropping everything. But you are already that. You already have nothing. You already have no wants. You already get nothing. You are the bliss, infinite bliss. You are the ananda. So, what are you searching now? Well, you will find that even after reaching this place, the mind wants to continue and that is the nature of the mind. It's okay. It's fine. So, what do you do? You give the mind to search for something.

What happens on the path of knowledge? Well, there is no path of knowledge really. On the path of knowledge, we do not get any knowledge. We only destroy ignorance. Whenever a question comes up, we see that it is coming out of ignorance. We destroy the question. We destroy the answer also. This is a big disappointment, isn't it? And we remain what we are, very pure without the question, without the answer. This is the true unknowing. This is the true not knowing. It comes only after knowing that I was ignorant and this activity can be stopped in a day. As soon as you know what you are, as soon as you meet yourself, this seeking should stop.

But you will find the mind wants to know many things. The mind continues, keeps asking things. So what do we do? We give the mind a goal. Okay, you enjoy it. You chase after something. Go and know something. And when we do that, we do it fully knowing that whatever the mind is chasing after is meaningless, purposeless,

achieves nothing, knows nothing in the end. But we, as a play, allow it. That becomes the path of knowledge. And the path of knowledge starts at home. The path of knowledge begins at the destination. There is no other destination. There is no going forward on the path of knowledge. It is dropping the search. That is dropped as soon as you know your real nature. As this emptiness, as this Nirguna Brahma. Then everything, all the search drops. Sometimes it may not. And then you give the mind something, like we throw a ball for the entertainment of the dog, and the dog goes and brings the ball back. And then you throw it again. The dog enjoys this game. So you do something similar with the mind. You try to find something. And what do you find? You find everything is meaningless, purposeless, has no goal, has no knowledge there. It's devoid of knowledge, devoid of ignorance. That is what you will find.

But you do it because the mind, as an activity, needs an activity. And you do it fully knowing that it is not worth doing. Your search has already stopped. You see, once you know yourself, there is nothing to search now. So whatever search is happening is probably just meddling in the details of what is and what is not. You're killing time by searching for something. Now there are some people who won't even do that, who won't even throw a ball for the mind. They're perfectly at peace. They're perfectly happy and bliss already. You can simply look at that face of that person and you can say, oh, it's not searching now. One such great person is Anandmayi Ma. You can look at only her photos. Do you think she's searching for anything? No. What is there? Extreme peace and love in her eyes. That's all. Full acceptance of what I am.

But some people, whose intellect is very active, will keep asking. They will keep going and they won't even mind dropping out of knowledge. Sometimes they will drop out of awareness of their real nature, go and find things and they come back because once you are at home, you do not worry about anything. These things that I say, be in awareness etc., are kind of meaningless. You cannot be in awareness. You cannot remain unconscious. Not possible. So we leave home sometimes. We go somewhere for an adventure because we fully know, confidently, that I cannot fall from this highest position that I am already in. You take up an adventure.

Sometimes people ask this question, if I am pure emptiness, pure in all aspects, I'm whole and complete. Why did I take this form here? Why am I in this experience here, which is not whole, which is limited, which is full of ignorance and all. And now you can get a hint of the answer because there's a possibility. We did it because there is a possibility to ignore what I am and go for an adventure. It has already happened. You can do it as many times as you want. It's you only, it's your play. Who's stopping you? If you say, no, no, no, the consciousness must remain like this, like the Nirvikalpa Samadhi kind of state. Well, tell that to consciousness. It is only a thought in your mind and is an ignorant thought. No, it is not bound by that thing.

Session 39

Nick has a question, Is Brahman, self, beyond existence and non-existence?

Definition of Brahman is - All That Is. The word Brahman comes from Vriha, which means big or everything.

So in simple English you can say that Brahman means everything. Whatever word you choose out of your wild imagination, it is also that. Just note that I said “also”, which means it is not one thing, it is everything. Whatever you say, whatever comes out of your mouth, it is also that. There is no scope of it being not something. Even the imaginary things is that, even the lies is that, even the truth is that. Because even non-truth or imagination has an existence. It exists as an imagination instead of the actual thing that it is trying to point to. So remember, all the Maya is Brahman, only that it is not what you think it is. The ignorance is not that we are witnessing Maya. The ignorance is that we think it is real. We think that it represents the actual things out there. This is ignorance. But the Maya is a part of All. Maya is a part of everything. For example, if you watch a movie, the movie has all those monsters and bad guys and good guys and beautiful women and all that. But that is all a make believe. That is all fake, isn't it? They are just images on the screen. But can we say that the movie does not exist? Can we say that there is no movie? It is there, but whatever is shown in the movie is not there. Similarly, whatever you are witnessing is there, but it is not that which you think it is.

For example, you have objects in your house. You have this coffee mug, you have this water glass, you have this pen, pencil lying around. You think they exist as they are being seen. That is as good as a small child, let's say three or four year old child, thinking that the cartoon characters he watches every day, they are actually there inside the TV. It is a case of innocence. But in an adult person, if they say, oh, there are cartoon characters inside the TV, what are you going to call that person? Ignorant has no knowledge. Similarly, these ordinary people around you, they think that whatever they are witnessing is actually out there. What do we call them? Ignorant. They do not know, lack knowledge.

So yes, Brahman is everything. Do not take it at face value. You see, knowledge is also a part of Brahman and ignorance is also a part of Brahman. But the only difference between a seeker and an ignorant person is that the seeker has chosen knowledge. It is not right, it is not wrong, it is not good and it is not bad. There should not be any judgment about it. It is just a matter of choice. We saw that knowledge leads to freedom and happiness and that is why we chose knowledge. If ignorance gives you freedom and happiness, go ahead and choose it. There is no difference between knowledge and ignorance ultimately. It is a matter of choice. We made this choice. So the child will be very very happy if he dies as an adult thinking that Superman and Batman live inside his TV. It is perfectly okay. Although it sounds a little bit cruel because you are seeing it from the point of view of knowledge, that person led a happy life. There is nothing wrong there. But as soon as you know the truth, now you cannot go back to ignorance. It is a one way street. And it feels very sad to see an ignorant person dwelling in ignorance. Just like when you see a grown up adult saying that whatever appears on the screen of his TV is real, actually whatever the news anchor is saying is perfectly 100% correct. Whatever their politician or any kind of leader is uttering, throwing out, is 100% true. Then we can see that there is some suffering there. There is a darkness there and that causes sympathy in the mind of a person who knows that somebody or something is fooling this person because the consequences of ignorance are always suffering and we can sense that because that was our experience.

So pity, sympathy, love arises in our heart and we say it is my job to clear this ignorance and you will see that you will find something very very strange that people do not want to let go of their ignorance. They find some satisfaction. They find a sense of security in the lie they are trapped in. They do not want to come out of this darkness, this hell of suffering. So you wait because you are out of the darkness. You wait for the right time and when that person becomes frustrated, totally gives up and comes to you and asks a question, only then you open your mouth and tell them. Because if you try to bring an ignorant person out of ignorance by force, by which I mean without a willingness, without a readiness, then it causes more harm. That person is even more retarded.

That person falls into even deeper darkness. Now the darkness is I know the truth and somebody else is trying to brainwash me into a lie. This is the behavior of a religious person, if you have noticed. They are even ready to kill you because you question their stupid beliefs. So a seeker is not interested in telling the truth. There is no interest whatsoever. What we do is we wait because there is a sympathy, there is a pity and there is also a pleasure

that my life was a little bit useful because I could bring somebody into knowledge. That is the pleasure there. That is the happiness out of this activity. Otherwise, remember everything is perfect. Nobody is inferior, nobody is superior, nobody is ignorant, nobody has knowledge. It is all a part of the Brahman, everything. It is absolutely perfect as it is.

Sandeep is asking, does self-realization happen only in meditation or any other state?

Self-realization is the knowledge that I am not an object. It is the knowledge that I am not any kind of experience. You are attached to an experience. For example, any object or this body, which is a special object or the nervous system, for example, some people think I am the nervous system and some people think I am this profession or I am this thought, I am this emotion. What are these? These are various experiences, different experiences. So self-realization means that you disidentify with all these experiences and you say that I am that which experiences, I am not an experience or in other words, I am not the witnessed, I am the witness, I am not the seen, I am the seer. In the seer you will never find any quality there and you will never find any form there.

There is just seeing, you will say. There is just witnessing there. So this is called self-realization and it can happen in any mental state actually.

Because what is a mental state? It is a change of experience. You close your eyes, well, the experience of the sight is gone. If you sit in a silent room, all the sounds are gone. If you sit for a long time, you forget your body. But there are objects, there are thoughts, there are different states of the mind. So the witness is always the same. It does not matter what kind of experience you are going through, the witness is the same. So it is possible to disidentify from the form or from the experience in any state. It doesn't really matter. The error that a seeker can do is think that, oh, this is a special state of meditation. Probably I am this state. No, you are a witness of that state. Self-realization will happen in any possible state. All you need to do is neti neti, not this, not this, not an experience. I am always the experiencer, always come back, fall back into the ground of knowing, the pure consciousness. You can do it in any state you want. You can do it right now also. A seeker is always in meditation, you see, because there is always this recognition that I am not any experience. It does not matter how profound the experience is, it does not matter how magical it is or how ordinary it is, how blissful it is, they are all experiences. I am always a witness.

And this is what we call mindfulness or awareness. Awareness is the knowledge that I am not any other object, I am not any other experience. By any, I mean all. All experiences are not me. I am this formless witness.

Sushant's question, going back to basics, what must be done and how must it be done to walk on the path of Gyan?

First thing, you need to establish your means of knowledge, if you want to walk on the path of knowledge.

Establish the means of knowledge, which means Pramana. What will give us knowledge? We say direct experience and logic, only two means. Once you have established these two means, you say that I am not going to call anything as true except when it is witnessed directly and except when it is totally logical, consistent, rational. These two are your means of knowledge. Then you can start investigating. The next phase is questioning what is existence and all that. That is all you need to start on the path of knowledge. What we do on the path of knowledge is we question everything, we utilize our means of knowledge, which is direct experience and logic, and we arrive at truth, which means we simply destroy all the beliefs that are present in our minds, the beliefs you must have acquired from reading things by listening to others or stuffed by the society, parents or your friends or your teachers in the school. You put a question mark on all of that. It's called inquiry. Find out.

What I usually do is I write down an experience and I question it or if I want to know something, I write it down and then I put all kinds of question marks on it. Is it my experience? What am I really experiencing? Is it logical or not? What can be called logical? And this is how you progress. There is a continuous improvement in your logical abilities and your abilities to destroy ignorance. That is all that happens on the path of knowledge. I'll give a small example. Who am I? If that is your question, let us say, or you have a doubt that probably I am not the body. You start questioning this assumption that I am the body or I am any other object and you use your direct experience and logic to do that.

You can make your own inquiry methods also. Then how can you be sure that your inquiry is producing correct answers? You will need to either consult some other seeker or consult your guru. Initially there can be mistakes, you know, we tend to conclude wrong things initially because this is a new thing for the mind. It gets confusing sometimes. So just like learning anything new, there will be a learning curve initially. And if you pass that curve, if you climb that hill, it will become very smooth for you afterwards. It is like learning any other ability. People start on it and they cannot walk on it because it's kind of difficult initially. So they give up. If this is the attitude, then probably that person will not learn anything new in his life because everything we're doing is difficult, you see.

Nick is saying, are all experiences illusions? Is experiencing non-experience the only real experience of the self?

Yes, all experiences are illusions of different kinds. There is no experience which is the real form and the non-experiencing is the experiencer, it is the only thing that is real and it cannot be experienced. As soon as you try to experience the experiencer, it becomes an illusion. That is what you experience. It is one. The illusion and me are one. I am appearing in many forms.

Nick is saying, scientists say everything is energy, are all subatomic particles and energy made up of consciousness?

No, they are not made up of consciousness, they appear in consciousness. When we say consciousness is the fundamental substance, we say it only metaphorically, it is not really a substance, the concept of substance is totally different. Substance means that which stands below, so it is not the substance, but yes, it stands below everything, consciousness is the foundation. But energy appears in consciousness, it is not made up of consciousness. Sometimes we use this kind of terminology that everything is made up of consciousness, but that is appealing to the materialistic idea that things need to be made up of something. That is not the truth, that is not my experience, things are not made up of exactly nothing, that is why energy is a better word.

What is energy? It is change only. When something changes, we say that there is energy behind it. That is why some people will say consciousness is the energy, raise your energy, new age stuff, isn't it? Vibrate at higher energy, well, this is the intermixing of many many concepts, this is a jumble of words. What I'll recommend is, if you want to take the scientific path, you should be very clear about what they call energy, what they call particles, and remember there is no consciousness in science, it is not present in science. It is totally absent from materialistic philosophy. If you want to marry those things, well, you end up with something totally unrecognizable. If you are on the path of knowledge, hold on to the terminology, otherwise you will get lost, the terms should point to your experience, they should not point to a theory, something written in a book.

Nick is asking, are five elements made out of energy or five elements combinedly called as energy?

Yes, you can use the word energy, but remember that now you are mixing different philosophies, there is no term called energy in Indian philosophies. The closest translation of energy that you can come across in Indian philosophy is the Shakti. Remember Shiva and Shakti, consciousness and its energy, Shakti. But the proper translation of energy as we understand in science is urja. Urja comes from the Sanskrit word ur which means heart, ja means to be born, so urja is that which is born out of heart. What is that? It is the tendency to move, whenever there is change, whenever there is motion, we say that it is being done by an energy which is the urja. Shakti is something different, urja is a form of Shakti actually, energy is a form of Shakti. The five elements are Shakti taking different forms.

Parveen is saying, do we humans exist in a specific frequency only, are there other worlds and different beings in other frequencies? Ghosts or non-human beings may be visible when the frequencies are overlapped, if we can expand our vibrational frequency, can we experience other worlds?

Parveen is using a new age language. I do not know frequencies, I do not know vibrations, my philosophy does not use these things, what I know is layers of the mind. And remember, humans exist in all layers of the mind. Now if you are interested, you can equate the layers of the mind to different levels of vibrations, which is very close. If you say frequency, then it becomes a mixture of science and occult. It is a new age word, so they are always confusing for me, I do not use them. I have a very well established model of the mind, which is layers of the mind, which is the Vedic model actually. It is highly refined, because the Vedic model will mention only seven layers, subdivided into seven more layers, like 49 total, and very encrypted, very cryptic descriptions of these layers. And yes, they will say that most of these evolved beings reside on the higher planes, which is called Lok in Sanskrit, and the lower ones reside in the lower plane. But that is not my experience, my experience says that we or any other creature resides in all the planes at the same time. We do not call humans as lower animals, we call them ignorant creatures, why? Because we exist in all the planes, we exist in all the frequencies, we exist in all the lokas. All the layers of the mind are present right now, right here. What has happened is because of ignorance, our attention is on physical only, although our mind is completely capable of existing on any other layer. Whatever you are calling a ghost is a disembodied mind, when the body is destroyed, it has no option to attend to the physical, because the senses or the body is the anchor to the physical. There is no connection with the physical world, if there are no senses, which requires a body, working nervous system. So the ghost is the one who has lost physical contact, that is all, we are all ghosts, we are in all layers.

Nick is saying, Rupert Spira says, matter is an imaginary theory and doesn't exist, everything we experience is mind and objects doesn't exist.

Exactly, this is everybody's experience, there is no matter. Even a materialistic physicist will say this, there is no matter, but they won't take the next step, which is it is all mind.

Anand is saying, I want your insight on the Vedas, I watched few videos and books over the net, but feel the translations are somewhat not matching with the actual meanings, somewhat my concern is that the meanings may not be apt, at the same time, it is very difficult to learn Sanskrit, as it is an ocean with a lot of grammar, can someone suggest me true translation without much interpretations?

Yes, this is what you wanted to ask yesterday, you sent the message that I want some knowledge, Vedic knowledge, and I told you that you don't need to read anything to know what is written in Veda. Look at your experience and that is what I do, that is what we do in the Satsang like this. So the first thing that I do is to not treat any book as a means of knowledge, although it is very clearly mentioned in scriptures that scriptures are a means of knowledge along with gurus who interpret the scriptures, but we are in dark times nowadays, just like he said, the language is lost, the meaning is lost and a lot of it has been reconstructed out of the commentaries of great masters like Shankaracharya and Gaudapada and many more. The latest being Raman Maharshi and all these people. I never liked it really, because it is open to interpretation, too much interpretation going on there, but the essence is very simple, the essence is that I am the consciousness, the world is an illusion. Only two things, and that is summarized very well by Shankaracharya himself, who is authority on the interpretations.

What did he say? The Vedic knowledge can be put down into two sentences actually, that I am everything, I am the Brahman, which is Satchitanand, which is consciousness, bliss and existence, and whatever appears is false. This is the meaning that is conveyed in the whole volumes of Vedas, actually not the whole volume, most of the Rig Veda is just prayer, there are prayers to various deities, I think almost 90% of Rig Veda is only prayers to these deities that we are talking about. The sun, the moon, these god and that god and so on, they are very beautiful prayers, and they have a very specific structure, and it means something but the meaning has been corrupted now. So unless you are interested in worshipping deities, it is of no use, but philosophy has been embedded into those prayers. For example sometimes it will start talking about the cosmology, sometimes it will start talking about the origin of the universe, sometimes it will talk about the Brahman or Atman or things like that, and the rest of the Vedas, they are also a mixture of many things, like one of the Vedas will tell you how to do the rituals, the Yagya, how to do the sacrifice of animals and how to establish the temples and all these things. One of the Vedas will tell you the conduct of a king, how should the king regulate the population, how should he administrate over people, what are the duties of the king, what are the duties of a soldier and so on. The Kshatriya Dharma and all these things, and the other verses will tell how should a Brahmin behave, these all duties of the four colours, the Varna system. They established the caste system. However, you will find a little bit of philosophy embedded here and there, which was extracted into 108 Upanishads. I will recommend Anand to drop the Vedic stuff. Be an ordinary seeker, you can take them up later on once you get the knowledge, and stick to the Upanishads. You will see Upanishads are also a little bit cryptic and the language is difficult there. I suggest you learn the language, spend at least 2 or 3 years learning Sanskrit. Sanskrit is not that difficult, because we are in India, we have this advantage that we can grasp it very easily. I studied Sanskrit for at least 3 years in my school, but when I started reading the scriptures, well, not even one word made any sense because the Sanskrit that is taught in the schools is very low quality, it is just a translation of Hindi or English into Sanskrit. So yes, when you study Sanskrit which is taught in the schools, you will be able to write an essay on the cow or postman or your country, you will be able to write an essay on your dog, but you won't be able to read Upanishads.

Unfortunate. Isn't it? Unfortunately, this civilization has dropped to a very low position right now. I then started digging for meanings of the words which are useful for me, whatever terms are being used in, for example Advaita Vedanta, which is one of the philosophies that pops out of Vedic literature. I go and hunt for only the meanings of those words and you will almost be overwhelmed because you will find 20 meanings of a single word. This is how Sanskrit is, because it is many thousand years old, so all kinds of meanings are now accumulated in that language. Pick that meaning which corresponds to your experience. Remember this is the key, this is the key to understanding any scripture that it should correspond to your experience.

Pick a meaning which corresponds to your experience. And now you will say if the experience is giving me the knowledge then why should I read something? That is what I told you, your experience will give you all the knowledge that you require. So go through the podcasts, go through the videos and if you want to know that you are the Brahman and everything is an illusion, if you cannot understand this through the material that I have already produced in form of podcasts or videos or articles, then just send me a message, I will schedule a call with you, Hindi or English, no Sanskrit.

I am not going to tell you anything about the Veda or Upanishad, I will tell you what is already my knowledge, it is nothing different from what is written in all the big scriptures. I will give you the names of the scriptures that are much easier than Vedas. These are the Ribhu Geeta, the Ashtavakra Geeta and the Avadhoot Geeta. Please note these three, Bhagavad Geeta if you are interested, Bhagavad Geeta is kind of summary, but these three things, the Ribhu Geeta, the Avadhoot Geeta and the Ashtavakra Geeta, these are much easier and translation is readily available in English or Hindi of these. There are no interpretation issues regarding these things and the supplementary literature is the commentaries of Shankaracharya.

What I have seen is whatever I say, I find it in these scriptures. Another good book is Yog Vashishtha. I started reading Vivekananda, he has very good interpretations, but I found that you will never get a very good understanding by reading these commentaries upon commentaries. There are a lot of arguments there, but they do not show you much. Your experience is your truth. That is what I show, I do not show you what is written in any book. I have not read any book very seriously, so my sources are my own experience as pointed out by the great masters.

Ashish is saying, Tarun sir not sure how to ask this question but very curious, so please don't mind the question, what is your state, is your I merged with Brahman, to real state or beyond, nothing more left to do, experience, prime dharma done?

Well very interesting question and my state is that ignorance has dropped, everything else is as before, that is my current experience. What has happened is that this ignorance has dropped that I am not Brahman, there was an ignorance that I am a separate individual that is dropped. Once that is dropped then what can you say? Has this “I” become merged with Brahman? No, the I itself is gone, the Brahman remains. Now, this is the state of each

and every one of you, there is only Brahman, isn't it? There is only existence, there is only consciousness- existence-bliss, there is only this. “I” is a creation of the mind that is telling you that I am not merged with Brahman. Drop it. Investigate if there is any “I”, if there is a person, if there is an individual. Investigate if the consciousness is separate from the projections of consciousness and you will find no, it is not the case.

That is my experience. You cannot merge with Brahman, you are the Brahman. You can only drop this ignorance, this idea, the blind belief that there is an individual that is separate from the existence. There is no such thing. If you have not realized this, that means the self realization is lacking. Go through the self enquiry again, find out who you are. We think we have a lot of time but no, we have a lot of time to waste, we are really wasting our lives by not doing this 5 minute enquiry about what I am, it should not take more than 5 minutes. So why? I have no idea actually. People become interested in spirituality only through grace. Wait for the grace. I also searched for a long time, but it is only grace that brings you to disidentification.

Remember, you are always in Turiya state. Right now your attention is on the waking state, because that is all you know, you know I am the body and you know the world is real, so your whole attention is being limited by this ignorance and that is why you do not see the other states. You are in the waking state right now, you are in the dream state right now, you are in the subtle state, you exist on all the planes. Turiya means the 4th state, it is a state which corresponds to existence in all the states. Traditionally people will say that there are only 3 states -

waking, dreaming and sleeping. But no, if you have gone through the video or the podcast episode about the states of the mind, you know that I have counted at least 20 states of the mind. So Turiya or the 4th is currently obsolete, this word has no meaning at least for somebody who is advanced enough to recognize the states of the mind. If your awareness is steady enough to recognize that there are many states of the mind.

Have I gone to the 4th? No, I have gone to many and I am already beyond. I is not a state of the mind, the states of the mind appear and disappear in this background of I-ness, I always stay. I do not actually worry about these things, I do not worry about the prime dharma and all, whatever you are calling is purusharth. There is no purush, there is no purusharth, we are not here to do something, you do not have any duties. Now, obviously

this is a bomb blast in front of Indian traditions, but I do not belong to this tradition actually. It does not mean that I do not respect the tradition, why not, you are given the duties and all, do it then, it's not wrong. I see it as another path, but I have bypassed all the paths, I have taken the pathless path, where you are already on the destination, this is the realization.

This is our sadhana on the path of knowledge, to listen, to watch, to question, to think, to meditate. Meditating is not dumbing down your mind, not utilizing your intelligence, it is not that meditation. Utilize all your

abilities of the mind, you were given these abilities, to progress, not to kill them. Utilize your emotions also, without emotions you won't move. If you don't find it interesting, you are not going to read it, if you do not see the pleasure in knowledge, you won't run after it, so utilize your emotions also, refine the emotions. Utilize your anger also. You should be very angry that how come I am so ignorant, you should be very angry that people are feeding you junk. Use this energy to leverage yourself out of this pit of ignorance. I have done that.

Nick is saying, but logic will be based on memory, experience, knowledge, because they are limited, logic will also be limited, so we can't reach our actual abilities and full potential if we stick to only logic.

That is a very good point. Can you tell me what your full potential is? What are your actual abilities? There is an

error in what he has said, that logic is based on memory. No, not based on memory, but yes, it is based on experience and knowledge, that part is correct, if you cut down the memory, the sentence becomes correct. Logic comes from experience only, have you seen that? How do you know that 2 plus 2 is 4, because you take two mangoes, you add two mangoes on it, when you count, it will come out as 4. Now you do not know this from memory. Child needs to be told that 2 plus 2 is 4 and he needs to be shown by counting, look, this is what happens when you add things together. A child is not going to use memory, the child is going to use an experience. And the logic does not depend on the memory. Even if you know something is true, you can always verify it, you can disprove it using your experience right now right here. Logic is based on experience and that is why the direct experience is placed on top. We employ logic only when we do not get the experience and there is the limit, the essential truth is present right here right now, so you don't even need logic. Simply experience it and it is clear as a day.

For example, that day, we were talking about what will be the experience after death, now it is not present right now because it is something which relates to the Maya, which relates to how the mind operates. The mind is going through the experiences serially one after the other, it is working in time, so there will be a time when this particular illusory experience of dying will be there, but right now we do not have access to that experience because we are limited as a mind-body creature. So we use logic. There even the memory is not going to work because you don't have a memory of dying. Such experiences do not exist in the memory. For example, people will ask me what is it like to be out of body, to be free of the body, to project into the other worlds that exist beyond the physical. Now there the logic is not going to work, memory is not going to work, you cannot explain what is colour and what is sun and what is moon to a blind person. It cannot be explained, you can come very close, you can take the hand of the blind person and touch a hot cup, look, the sun is like this, you see? Try to explain it in terms of his own experience, but he will never know, he will not know unless he gets the eyes. You do the cataract operation or whatever, transplant the cornea and suddenly he starts seeing and now he knows what is light, what is colour, what is sun, what is moon. So yes, the logic will take you, in a limited way, to some knowledge which cannot be experienced right now, but the final knowledge will arrive only by experiences.

Things that require experience will be known only through experience, the logic helps to validate the experience. I will give you a small example, where the logic works and where the experience works. It is an old example actually. So you are lost in the desert and you see water, you are very thirsty, you go towards the water, but it is just hot air, it is just sand and heated air, it produces the mirage, the illusion of water. But you will say, no, it is my direct experience that there is water. How do you know that there is water? Well, you cannot simply say that my eyes are telling me that there is water, now you need to validate that experience and how are you going to validate that experience? Again by experience, because whenever you move towards the water, the water moves ahead, you see? It is always two kilometers away in the desert. So no matter how much you travel, the mirage is always far away on the horizon. At that time you must invoke your ability of the mind, which is logic and you put a question mark on it. My experience is telling me it is water, but is it really water if I never reach it? This is logic. And how did you get this logic, through more experience, by experimenting on what your experience is telling you. Hopefully this example will clear the relation between experience and logic and you will find that it is a very clear relation. Logic is derived out of experience. We call this kind of logic as sound logic, the logic has to be sound, which means it should have legs, it should walk by itself, if the logic has no legs, it's kind of useless in obtaining the truth. You will find the logic which is not sound in usually mathematics and theoretical physics, you can use logic there which cannot be found in experience. But we use it sometimes for fun, sometimes to know other things which cannot be known via experience. I do not think it is invalid, but you need a logic based on experience to know the spiritual matters.

Ashish is asking, what is the right word for experience of the state of self-realization, one thing is intellectually knowing about real I and firm belief in the knowledge, but any drastic experience could challenge or create doubt about it, another state is where there is no doubt, now whatever is present cannot make you doubt, it is experience, not a subject object, but a self-illuminant.

I can see a little bit of assumption there, because self-realization is not experience, it is not a state, it is the knowledge that I am not an object, it is the knowledge that I am not an experience. Am I right? Probably I am wrong but this is my understanding of self-realization. What is self? The experiencer, the pure consciousness that is witnessing and can you make a theory of it? Isn't there a witness right now? It is not a theory, it is simply realization, it is called the realization not an information. I am not giving you information that there is a self there which is not an object. No, it is your current knowledge, self-realization is simply realization, it is not possible to know it intellectually.

Even if I give it in writing in Chinese, it is useless. The word realization means that it is real for you, that you are not any object. How to know that I am not an object? Well, very easy, would you like to call yourself as an object or would you like to call yourself as that which is witnessing the object? Would you like to call yourself a subject or would you like to call yourself an object? It is very easy, even a child can understand this, that I would like to place myself always at the end of the experiencer and if you go on doing this you will find that there is actually no object called the experiencer, it is simply a knowing, it is simply a light which illuminates all the experiences, all the experiences happen in the light of experiencer. Now, do not misunderstand light as meaning that which comes out of the light bulb, this is the light of consciousness, in this light we see. That is why we call it seeing and light. We borrow the physical terms, we borrow from the day to day language to explain the realization. Knowing that I am the witness is self-realization, if anybody disagrees, if anybody thinks that no it is something else, please let me know.

The next step in self-realization is knowing that the objects also do not exist, that I find is a little bit difficult, but that is the straw that will break the camel's back, that is the straw that will break all the ignorance really, but we do start at self-realization. Atmagyan is the first step, we do start there, because that is very easy. Actually I got a very interesting question, probably it was one of you, who knows, on the self-enquiry app, and that is, a seeker asked that if there is oneness then why do you tell me to go and find the experiencer, why don't you tell me oneness directly? And it is a very intelligent question, very few people can ask this question, because that means that person is now very clear about what is happening in spirituality. I was also confused as hell, what is this garbage - self-realization? And it becomes clear only when you go through this step number two, and that is what I wrote in the answer, that it means that you are stuck on step number one, which is the self, knowing what you are, knowing that you are not an experience, you are the experiencer, but at the same time you don't know it, because it is formless, qualityless, no extension, it was not born, it does not die, what kind of thing it is, you will wonder. And the answer from your guru will be - oh no it's not a thing, and you should realize this, whatever you have known is not a thing, it is not an experience. Now you are ready for the second step, which is the Brahma Gyan or the realization of the Oneness, also called God realization by the way, it's kind of translation for the ordinary people, but it is usually realization of oneness, that there are no two. And there ends your non-duality. So how do you realize there are no two? First because you have realized that I am not an object, you have distanced yourself from all the objects, now you see objects as your form, and you know that you cannot find a separation between the objects and the witness, you cannot find an experience which says that the objects exist without it. The experience and the experiencer, they are always together, always one, just like two faces of the coin, they always appear together. Why don't we simply say that there is a coin, because remember there are no faces of this coin also, the object is also not present, and there comes the knowledge of the Maya, so knowledge of Maya, self-realization and oneness, they all happen exactly at the same time. If I take you there directly, you probably will never understand it.

What I do usually, you know, I copy my gurus, I copy masters, because they have developed this technique since many thousand years, it works most of the time, for those who are ready, it works. We take them through the unification of the experience. We tell the seeker that everything is mind, all experiences are mind created, that means we give them the knowledge of the Maya first. That takes them out of this darkness of materialism first, that I am matter, everything is matter. As soon as they get this knowledge that everything is really mind, they get a shock of their life, and then they are more open to accepting that I am not an object, I am not this body. When this realization happens, the mind does not resist a lot, because it has already seen the illusion of whatever was already taken as true, it was destroyed. You crack open that mind like this, and that is what I do. I have converted the two steps into three steps. Once you unify the experience, you can try to find that I am not the one which stands in the category of the experience, I stand in the category of that which knows the experience. I am different from the experience, this is self-realization. The third step is seeing that there is no separation between the experience and the experiencer, the separation is created by the mind.

Many people have reached this oneness simply by explaining like this. This is the path of knowledge properly. Now there is an after effect of this, sometimes I call it the bomb blast, and there is this after effect, everything is destroyed. Now you try to create everything again in this light of new knowledge, I call it the fallout, the fallout happens, then you recreate your world view again, and it is a beautiful process. It is still happening for many people.

Ashish is stuck somewhere, what is the resistance that you do not want to go through the trouble of self-inquiry and all? If there is a resistance, let me know, I will arrange a call with you also.

Ashish is saying, when I heard your session on what is my essence, part one, I felt everything was cleared, but then slipped due to some temptation or mind's emotional wave.

Yes, I can see it, there is resistance. I am not saying that it is hopeless, give the mind a chance to settle down a little bit, do meditation or something. You first handle the resistance, question it. Is it not my experience, is it a belief, is it a theory that this self-inquiry is taking me to this realization? Is it some intellectual garbage? Question, question, question, always question your beliefs. Do not believe what I say, do not believe what any other big name out there says, spirituality is not about believing, don't need to believe anything. Belief is a poor substitute for knowledge, somebody great has said this. I fully agree, why believe when you can know. Always demand

knowledge, do not demand beliefs and words, not the job of a spiritual seeker to form blind beliefs about everything, no matter how fluffy, airy, fairy those beliefs are. This has happened to modern spirituality, the new age and the stuff, the occult things or the worship, it is all blind belief. Truth has nothing to do with believing, remember this thing, the truth has to be here and now, your direct experience, it has to be logical, rational, self-consistent, unmoving, unchanging, that is our definition of truth.

Hold on to the highest standards and do not let the mind slip. Remember, there is no such person as a realized person, because realization means disappearance of the person, remember this thing, nobody is self-realized here. Realization is being nobody, so do not take it as a like achievement, do not take it as a matter of competition, do not hurry in these matters, you are the Atman right now, right here, so why hurry? Yes, there is a tiny bit of ignorance left here in the mind. You have achieved this thing that you have come to spirituality, remember, one in a million does that, probably less. You have already won the race by joining a spiritual path, it does not matter how much you are progressing, it is a conveyor belt actually, it's not even a road, you hop on the conveyor belt and well, it's going to take you to the destination where you already are. It will just take you round and round and round and back. It's like the garbage, not garbage, the baggage collection in airports that goes round and round and round, you just stand on that, it will take you back to your home from where you come from.

If you remember when we started this group, I used to do satsang every day, every day two hours, but then the demand dropped, the source is very big, I don't know from where the energy comes, I don't know from where the words come, I call it the gurufield, it is very very big and it empowers this body mind to speak for many hours. We have the time, don't worry, I have the time for everybody and we'll keep doing this, as long as there are interested people, thank you very much for spending your valuable time, it is always a pleasure, thank you very much.

Session 40

If our perceptions are only information, senses can only perceive information, can we or someone manipulate that information?

So just like I said, if you progress beyond the individual and you can access the memory of the greater mind, the mind of which this physical universe is a part, then you will be elevated to a level of perception where your perception will become your reality. Even the physical world will start changing. It will be possible only for somebody who has risen above the individual mind. The individual cannot manipulate the physical world, but if you go into your own domain, like in the dreams, you are in your own domain, you are in a position to manipulate your own memory area. Or in the subtle states like astral projection, you can create a whole world for yourself and then you are the owner of that world and there the perception then determines what happens in that world.

So from the point of view of the individual, there can be a limitation, but from the point of view of the greater mind, nothing is impossible because it is all a creation. It is all just patterns in the memory of the universal mind or the greater mind. And then whatever the greater mind thinks happens. That is what we are seeing right now. This physical world is a mind, actually, it's a part of a much bigger system that we are. And yes, it has tremendous powers, it can do stuff that we cannot even imagine. Right now it is maintaining the world and therefore it opposes anything which is not according to its laws. The laws are called the laws of nature. Everything is already happening according to the wish of the greater mind. People came to know about this thing and they started worshiping this thing. It became the God for the people because yes, it can do whatever it wants to do. You can become that, it is possible to become a greater mind and then you can do whatever you want. But probably it will take a few million years. You cannot do it tomorrow.

Leyla is saying, how do we know that things out there are not how they appear?

Very good question. That is a big mystery. What is out there, and no, we will never know. We will never know what is out there. The first reason is whatever we know is being told to us by the senses. The senses are drawing a picture of perceptions, the signals that are processing. There is no way. If you cut off the senses, then probably you will get everything there is, but it will be totally meaningless. It will be all the vibrations at the same time. And then nothing is perceived without senses. So it is kind of impossible to know what is out there. And second reason, there is nothing out there. There is absolutely nothing out there except what the senses are telling. There is pure vibration. There is this metaphysical memory which cannot be perceived. There is no way to know it directly. And the third argument is, the third aspect of this question is - whatever is being perceived is me, myself, because there is only me, myself. You are perceiving your Self with capital S. Self is appearing as vibrations.

It is very, very tricky. Now imagine an infinite amount of potential that these vibrations are capable of. They are capable of appearing in infinite patterns. Now you cannot imagine what it is. All the potential at the same time is eternally present. Everything that is here has already happened. Everything that is going to happen is already here. Everything that is happening is also here. It contains all the universes and all, all the lives and all the experiences already. Can you imagine such a thing? No. You need to just get a tiny slice of this infinite potential. And that is possible when you limit your experience to, let us say, 0.00001% of this whole possibility. And that is what the senses are doing. They will limit everything into a tiny slice of experience. And now it becomes more meaningful and more stable.

So what-is cannot be known through senses, cannot be known by the nervous system or cannot be known by any equivalent system because the nervous system is just one of the possibilities in this whole existence. So you can set up your own system to know. Then you will experience something else, which happens in the states of the mind, which we also call as altered states of the mind. The altered states, they range from simple daydreaming to full blown subtle body perceptions, subtle body experiences. For example, the experience after death, there are no gross senses, but the mind can still create something. It can still create some senses because the higher senses are not totally gone, they are not destroyed. It can still create some experience. Those who are practicing the subtle body states, they know very well that this may happen and then you will find there is a totally different kind of experience, although it is also limited, even though it is bigger, broader, but also limited. So we cannot see ourselves as a whole, we see ourselves only in tiny parts, which becomes our experience. Hopefully, Leyla will get this bigger picture.

If you are really interested, again, I'll send you to my blog. There is a, there is, you know, the last article is called memory. This article gives you the biggest picture possible. I call these metaphysical patterns, the infinite possibilities as memory. It is a memory actually, because everything is stored there. And traditionally we call it the Akashic record. The Akash is the sky and the record is a memory. Same philosophy, but I've extended it, I've tried to connect all the dots there, our experience connected to the Akashic records. It is highly recommended that you study metaphysics a little, you study the structure of the existence a little. It is called Ontology. This all is a big memory, and in this big memory there are tiny parts, smaller memories and they're almost infinite. And in these tiny parts, there are even tinier blocks of memories, you can say, tiny bubbles of memories, which are called the individual Jeeves, the individual minds. And these individual minds, they appear as forms as soon as they want to experience something, they project the senses in the surrounding memory. This is called the body-world experience. Right now we are having a body-world experience using the senses. There is no other experience possible. Nothing will be possible except this mechanism that I've just given you in one line. It is very amazing.

You will never know the things that are out there because it is you, you are infinite, conscious, nothingness, emptiness. Everything. All that is there is illusions. You know only illusions, nothing else. So hopefully that will take you to a proper path. Study metaphysics, study ontology, study the structure of the mind. I call it the layers of the mind. It is all very neatly explained. It is possible to know all these things by direct experience also and try to experiment, try to go beyond the body-world realms, try to go beyond this individual mind. You're trapped here. We can go beyond this. It is possible. I have done my own experiments and I have written all these things based on my experiments, based on some logical deductions and based on the experiences of the people I trust. Now because this is beyond the individual, so you will need to take help of some experts here.

Since this is not covered in Advaita that much, Advaita philosophy does not go too much into ontology, does not go too much into metaphysics. It is about the self. It is proper spirituality. What is self and what are the implications for this individual - That is all. It does not go into the illusion that much. So when we start talking about the illusion, we have left Advaita and we have arrived into Maya or the Tantra. Tantra is a science. It is not philosophy. It is not spirituality. That means it is experimental and theoretical in nature, just like our physical sciences. But here we study the greater reality instead of studying that which our physical senses are telling. So there's a good scope of exploration there.

Manish is saying, I have a question, though an old one and asked a lot of times, but I still want to ask, why did Brahma devise the world in a way where people can create so much suffering? And as far as I understand, the purpose of the world is to point towards Brahma. So why not design that without giving power to anyone to create suffering for others?

You are projecting your human thoughts on Brahma. No, Brahma does not create anything. You see, there is no creator. Do not project a creator on what is. It is all an illusion. And just like I said, it is the universal memory where all possibilities are there. So whatever you create, you create for yourself. You see, there's nobody else. Brahma is not a thing which creates. It is not an individual who has an intention of creating. Brahma is pure nothingness. It simply observes. It is emptiness. It is simply conscious. It does not create anything. Self is Brahma. You are the self. Are you creating anything? No, you are simply observing. I am the witness. Witness consciousness. I am not the creator. You see, it will be best if you drop the word create/creation/creator from your vocabulary. Drop it totally. I know I also do it all the time. You see, I cannot drop it because it's so much into our tradition to talk like this, but no, this is not happening. There is no creation at all. There is only appearance. Nothing is getting created. Nobody is creating it. Not even the bigger things, you see, nobody has the capability to create anything.

There is no suffering. Realize this. There is just activity of the mind. If that activity tells the mind that, oh, it is good for me, good for my survival, it is called happiness. If the activity tells the mind, oh no, something is bad here, bad for my survival, we call it suffering. This is simply the activity of the mind. It is twice removed from reality. The first level of illusion is the world and the body and the mind. Where things are as they are, natural experience. And the next level of illusion is a creation of the mind, which says this is good, this is bad. This is beautiful/ugly. This is happiness/suffering. This is light/dark. /This is rich/poor. Duality. But true nature is non-dual, everything is perfect as it is. But the mind then divides it. How does the mind divide it into these categories, dual categories? It uses the criteria of survival. This is the egoic function. Now you can see egoic, that means the individual's function, individual mind's function. So it uses this criteria of survival. If something is good for survival, it is happiness. If it is not good for survival, it is suffering.

Once you see that it is an illusion only, the suffering is an illusion. You will see that there is no suffering. People do not create suffering. The source of suffering is not people. The source of suffering is you, your own mind. So the solution for this question, why is there suffering? Why do people create suffering and why is the world suffering? Why did somebody create a world full of suffering? This is ignorance to ask these questions. The solution to these answers is your own mind. Know that there is no suffering, know that there is no creation, there are no people and all these questions will disappear. So Manish needs to start from the fundamentals. You can start from that video that I posted on my channel - the illusion of suffering. Start from there. You will get your answers there and regarding other beliefs, like there is a creation, somebody created it - that means you need to start from the self-realization there. Know who you are first, then all these questions will disappear. If you do not know who you are, you see yourself as a person in the world, then all these questions will come. I am not a person, there is no other person also. And then who is suffering now? Nobody. Because there is nobody. There is just this witnessing of the activity of the mind. Is it suffering? No. We call it bliss. And witnessing is pure bliss. What is suffering? Activity of the mind is suffering. It is pure suffering for many people. And therefore, once you realize what you are, the suffering disappears. The yogi or the jnani is always in bliss. Right now you are in bliss, but you are covered with all kinds of concepts and ideas about yourself. There is darkness in your mind because you do not know who you are. That is why you are projecting this darkness onto everything that you see. You project this creator which you yourself are actually. You are creating suffering, you are creating bad relations with people, you are creating everything using your own karma. You are a product of your own karma, you see. And the whole society is a product of the collective karma of the society. So it is a projection only, projection of the mind on the external stuff. That is innocent. It just exists. Mother nature just exists. It is not here to support us, support the individual. These are all projections.

Get rid of that ignorance and these questions will disappear. And I would like to remind everyone that if you cannot do it by yourself, then please feel free to send me a message, I will set up a meeting with you. In one or two hours, everything will be cleared, everything, all these doubts will disappear for you. Just one or two hours.

So last week was kind of busy for me because so many people called me. It was a fun-filled week actually. It is nice to see the ignorance getting destroyed.

Nick is saying, unless we limit ourselves, there is no existence and nonexistence for us. Then only play happens. The first limitation we take is I. I is the doer for existence and nonexistence, I is the door for existence and nonexistence. Then is the limitation taken by consciousness and it starts with I, separate, individual. What is your opinion about it, sir?

Yes, it's pretty good analysis. If there is no limit, nothing exists. If it is limited, it is already nonexistence only, but it appears. That which is limited is seen, but only seen as an illusion. Do not call it existence, although we say the illusion is a part of the existence and then it boils down to what you define as existence. Existence is consciousness and bliss, that is all, consciousness, emptiness, bliss. If you stick to this definition, you will be able to solve the problem of Maya because all these questions will disappear then. If you take a definition of existence where Maya is a part of it, then it is kind of very problematic and I am not saying don't take it, you can, but you will find another path that opens for you, that is the path of Sagun Brahm and the Sagun Brahm has led to a lot of controversial things as you know and Nick must be knowing this also. It led to different philosophies that are dualistic in nature. For example, the Sankhya philosophy, the Mimamsa and in the present form it is converted into a religion where people imagine the things that exist and start worshipping them. They cannot see these things as myself anymore, right? Why? Because giving this appearance a form of truth has done something in their minds. If you call the appearance as truth, you will take a different path. I am not saying don't take this path, you can. Once you have taken the more pure path which the Advaita and Buddhism has done, then you

can explore the other one. Let me see what is there in the dual philosophies, and ultimately you will find they degrade and they drop to the level of materialism. Materialism is the most degraded form of dualism. That is the other extreme.

So he is saying there is no existence and no non-existence. That is, the language of the Avdhoot Gita probably, they say these things to eliminate this doubt that probably there is non-existence. As soon as I say, look, there is no existence, nothing exists, nothing stands out from you. It is all an illusion. So what is the average student going to say? Okay, then there is non-existence then. So to counter that kind of thinking, they say that look, there is no existence and there is no non-existence also. It is both and it is not both. So the mind is silenced there.

The mind cannot go there. And the student realizes, I am making a mistake here. I am trying to use my mind which is limited, which can know only objects, which can know only experiences. I am using that instrument to know that which is, to know the Brahman. Brahman cannot be known by any instrument, including the mind. Mind is just activity, isn't it? How can the activity know that? How can the wave know the ocean? It's kind of impossible, isn't it? So to counter these kinds of doubts, they formulate the teaching like this. No existence, no non-existence and everything, every possibility is included and denied. So the mind stops there. The mind does not try to jump like a monkey to go there. So yes, your statement is great. It's fine. Just know in your mind the meanings of what you have written.

Ashish is saying, however, I somewhere feel that Advaita is for people who love to think in a special elite category of intellectuals who can handle lofty ideas. Practical or techniques to reach that experience are not captured. Shankracharya borrowed concepts from Sankhya, form the best philosophy of that time. Looks like Vedantasar, which was written to help beginners freely borrow from Yogsutra. Same eight steps and meditation. So is there any Advaitic meditation that we can follow while following the guidelines to rely on direct experience or logic?

There is some truth in that. Advaita became the philosophy of the elite. Actually, they stopped teaching everyone, they thought it was a kind of sacred thing. Others should not know it and they even prevented people from learning Sanskrit language. This was the dark age and a lot of damage happened. The language was lost. The philosophy was almost lost. It was revived for a selected few. And that has some truth in that. Yes, Shankracharya took a lot of ideas from other philosophies, including Buddhism, and he was criticized by the dogmatic people of his days. They accused him of stealing from Buddhism. Some people call him Boudh, which means he's no longer Vedantin. Now he's converted into a Buddhist. So yes, Shankracharya was a practical person because his job was to revive things. And he had only 30 years or something, he started when he was a kid. That was his lifetime. His lifetime was limited. He had to do whatever he could but he revived it.

There is no practice in Vedanta. The only practice is Shravan, Manan and Nidhidhyasan, which means listening, contemplating and abiding. You listen, you read or you observe and then you contemplate, you meditate, which means logical thinking. You do it for hours and hours. You take the help of other people, you can discuss it. That means to keep the mind occupied, to keep the attention focused on the topic, or you can write it down, do it through writing. There is also a kind of loud thinking, or you can do the debates and arguments, which I do not recommend for newcomers, or you do the Q&A, which is the highly recommended form of meditating on the path of knowledge, Gyanmarg. The Satsang is loud meditation. It is a Manan. It is contemplation, introspection only. You don't need to simply listen and then forget. This should echo in your mind what was said, why it was said, and you should be able to relate it with your own experience. Many people simply listen and then they say, well, should I believe this or should I disbelieve this? And they never progress because it is not for believing or disbelieving. Whatever is being said is for contemplating, for introspecting, that is the Manan phase.

You need to think about it. You need to use your rational abilities, use your intellect to see what is said. Use your criteria of truth and on the means of knowledge, the evidence that you have already built up. If you have not, then you won't be able to think. Somebody says, this is true and that is true, but you don't have the criteria for truth. Now, what are you going to think about it? And somebody says, this is my experience, that is my experience, and you have no means of gaining knowledge. So you will just laugh, okay, that's your experience, but why are you telling me then? Simply because they say that my experience is a means of gaining knowledge. So you will need to do the groundwork first and then you will arrive at this practice of listening, introspecting and abiding.

Once you know for sure what is true, what is not, you abide in that. That means you embody the truth, whatever it is, you are free to choose your truth and the amazing thing is everybody arrives at the same truth. If you use the similar criteria for truth or if you use logic and rationality and direct experience, there is a good possibility that everybody will arrive at the same thing, which is what happens most of the time. This is going on since thousands of years. Listening is also a form of listening here and meditating, I do not call it meditation

because meditation has become like a very fuzzy word, it is very ambiguous, not only ambiguous, it has hundreds of meanings. So I have given it a different word, I call it introspection, seeing within and now it is more than meditation. Now you are not simply sitting like a rock there, seeing what it is seeing within and that is why all my articles, when I do this kind of meditation, they start with this word introspection, introspection on self, introspection on suffering, introspection on the world and the body and so on. This is how podcasts and articles are named. There is a reason for that and if you call it meditation, well, it is going to cause a lot of confusion, panic. I don't know your meditation, I don't know this technique, I want to learn this technique. Well, there are no techniques here, it is very free. You can make your own technique if you want, like for abiding there is this practice that we call being aware. You know the truth of what you are, now be aware and that is the practice of awareness. So you can develop your own technique to abide in the awareness or you can borrow the techniques from other teachers and other seekers who have already used them for many thousand years and they work, reminders and all these things.

There is this noodle soup of many ideas heard from somewhere, read from somewhere. This happens to those who read too many books without understanding the book and this was my own condition till I dug a tunnel out of this maze, which is the Advaita, otherwise you will remain trapped there. What is true, what is not true, whom should I trust, whom should I believe and you will never reach knowledge and you will never reach independence also. A seeker needs to be independent, he needs to know how to arrive at knowledge, he should not be told what is knowledge, what is ignorance, he should arrive there by himself or herself and that is what I do.

That is what I do and that is probably the reason for the success of everything that I do under the banner of pure experiences because I begin from the beginning, I do not tell people what is knowledge, what is true, what is false, I never do that, I simply ask them what is your experience, what does your logic say and for Advaita we do not need a super-hi-fi logic, like that of a logician, that logic is mathematical logic that is useful for some other purpose, we need a logic that is based on our own experience. We need something which is very obvious. The experience cannot be the experiencer, simple logic, isn't it? This is the excluded categories of a logician, very simple but people understand this and then you build up. Actually it cannot take more than 10 minutes to build up the knowledge and that is why I sometimes say that if you are confused, if you are in doubt, just throw away all the knowledge and it will take only 10 minutes to build up the knowledge for you, then once the base is solid, once the foundation is there, you will be able to actually get into the noodle soup and make some sense out of it. Get into Maya, get into all the books that people have written and then you will be able to understand why they say the things they say, you will be able to understand even the theological part of the spirituality, you will be able to understand the sciences, the physical sciences also, if you start from spirituality. Everything comes from one foundation and Advaita is the foundation actually, non duality is the foundation, it is necessary to know it. I even recommend you write it down somewhere, make a big poster - these are my criteria for truth, these are my valid means of obtaining knowledge. Clear the garbage from your mind. I am not saying forget about whatever you have read so far, your education, no, it will be useful, somewhere, somehow it can be useful, but if the foundation is missing then you work on the foundation first. Make another poster, write down your criteria for truth, that which changes is true, that which does not change is false, anything, reverse it, it's okay, it's kind of a play in the beginning. I have done that actually, I have a few more criteria for truth, sometimes I am loose about these things, but that means that I am going down the noodle soup route. Sometimes it's fun to speculate and all, so there is a lot of theory also, but you should be very very clear, what is theory, what is speculation, what is pure logic and what is my experience. Set up this hierarchy in your mind, it will serve you a lot, you will say that finally I understand things.

Nick is asking, what is the difference between Advaita and Neo-Advaita?

I don't know actually, many people do not regard Neo-Advaita as a valid branch also. What has happened is they have cut down the non-essential things from Advaita and that is all is taught, Shravan and Manan, that's all, the rest is discarded, you don't need to do any practices, you don't need to do the purification and so on, so probably that is Neo-Advaita, but I never took the trouble to find out what it is. I don't think that is a valid branch of philosophy, so unless somebody clearly defines it and writes a book and a community is formed, a peer-reviewed kind of community, which has happened in Advaita, not happened for Neo-Advaita. I think somebody needs to agree on what are the definitions there, like we have the Vishishtadvaita or whatever there is, they are valid philosophies now. I don't do all these things, it's kind of useless. I think it is kind of an academic thing, if you are a scholar, yes, probably you may want to write a paper on differences between Advaita and Neo-Advaita and how the Advaita has evolved in the last 3,000 years and all. I don't do that kind of thing, it's kind of boring for me, scholarly stuff, what I do is experience and logical deduction and if required, set up theories, proper terminology and all these things, explain things, that is all. That is actually useful. What others think, what is Neo-that and Neo-this and old that, who cares? Who cares about these things, life is short, use it for something that is worth your time.

Jane is saying, you can find Rupert Spira's Advaitic meditations on YouTube, they are very good.

Yes, I have seen that. Mooji's meditations and all these things are there. When you watch those videos, what is

going on there is loud thinking, that's all, they are not going to take you to the seventh sky or ninth cloud, don't worry, the ground of truth is solid ground, where you are right now, you don't need to fly away somewhere in space to find the truth. The Advaitic meditation probably will do that for you, so these guided meditations are for those whose minds are not right now set up for contemplating or introspecting, the minds are too loose, they do not stay on the topic and the minds do not employ the logic, they get distracted by beliefs or imaginations or desires, I want this to be true, something like this. I am not going to think about what other people are saying, because I want my other belief to be true, so I will think about that, it has lost its focus totally. Mind is your instrument, mind is your only means to know, so you need to train the mind initially. These guided meditations are like a baby trying to walk holding the hand of his mother. Whenever he falls, mother picks him up. Same thing, Rupert will pick you up when you start drifting here and there.

Please try them, yes, recommend it, but if you become reliant on these things, you rely too much on the guided stuff, then when are you going to train your own mind? You need to take off the training wheel one day. I have done that actually, I have done it so much that I could not sleep for many days, because it is an addiction also, once you know how to use the mind to know, you will find that things start pouring in into mind, it's like you open the dam that was stopping the flow of the river of knowledge from flowing and then once the floodgates are open, well, mind becomes overactive. The engine will start roaring, like it was never used like this before. You will find that use of the mind goes up for many days. I have seen this happen to many people that I talked to. They could not sleep for one or two days. For one person it happened in front of me, that is, he started concluding through his direct experiences, once the foundation was given to him, he himself started concluding, arriving at conclusions and truths and he could not stop. I said, okay, you can do it at your home, I am late, I need to go somewhere and then I left him. Things like this can happen, once you are self-reliant, when you are independently thinking, you become an independent thinker, you will be able to derive your own truth. That is what we want, we do not want students to depend on somebody else for knowledge. There is a difference between giving a fish and teaching to fish, we are teaching to fish.

Vijay is saying, Is the mind of a newborn, considered partly enlightened, is well known to merely observe but not perceive or interpret any impressions we state as Maya, thereby not contaminating it any further? Is this considered the purest form or the enlightened ones are commonly phrased as the sages with fully developed minds to let go of all thoughts and focusing on their cosmic energy source, are there ways to replicate the prior newborn one with no ability to assess anything as subjects?

A very interesting question there. We do say that the newborn mind is a pure mind, it is the purest mind that is possible and the next impurity you can find it in the higher animals, they have a less impure mind, but the newborn yes, has a pure mind, but we do not say that they are enlightened. There is a reason for that, enlightenment is seeing that there is no person. If you agree with this definition, it is a state which transcends the person and in a newborn there is no person already, you see, so the newborn cannot know, he is a pure mind, but no knowledge there and absolutely no ignorance also, there is no ignorance, except the tendencies, the seed tendencies of the causal body, you can see them in the newborn, he cries and he becomes frightened by sounds

and so on. There is a tendency to breathe, the body is functioning, these tendencies, that is a slight bit of impurity there. In an enlightened person, this tendency is also overcome, the tendencies of the body, causal body and whatever in between, all the tendencies of all the layers of the mind, they are transcended and by transcending I do not mean they are destroyed, no, they function, they function fully, but they are discarded as not me, that is self-realization, that is enlightenment.

The baby cannot do that obviously, now for the baby there is perception, but the baby thinks that it is real, that is again, not a state of enlightenment, so a very pure mind but I won't really call it enlightened, because enlightenment is presence of knowledge, there are very less tendencies in the newborn mind and the whole of the personality is built up, it takes almost 20 years to build it up and once the mind is mature enough, the deconstruction begins and the deconstruction is not destruction, it is transcendence. That is why you need a person to get enlightened, without a person there is no enlightenment. That is why animals cannot be enlightened, because there is no possibility of this knowledge there. Yes they are very pure, sometimes we say the babies and the animals are forms of God and we worship them, but they are not enlightened. The Rishis are enlightened, the Gyanis and the Yogis are enlightened. Those who are abiding in their source, you can call it the source, the pure consciousness, they are enlightened. It is another thing to intellectually know that this will be the condition, but the final enlightenment is, when you abide in the source, then the light is not flickering like a tube light, it is always on like the sun, the sun of consciousness, it never sets for enlightened person.

So is there a way to replicate the prior newborn one with no ability to access anything? Yes, it will be a kind of Samadhi, when you stop the tendency of the mind to name things, then remains only forms, the forms can be

the perceptions or the mental activities of other kinds and you simply watch them, this is a kind of Samadhi. So yes, there is a way. Sit down, stop the tendency of the mind to name things, you can start by naming first and then become aware of that - there is naming going on and then you drop the naming. Actually you will find this kind of meditation somewhere, if you google it, you will find it. If you are interested, do it, but what do we do on the path of knowledge, we see very clearly that even after naming and dividing as subject and objects, there

is this pure background of consciousness present there, it does not go away if the mental activity is present, of naming and dividing. So a better form of meditation is when you let this naming and dividing be there, while you become aware of this tendency also as an object. It is a process that is happening, you can witness it and that is Sahaja Samadhi. Probably I am mixing the words here, but you know what I mean, that is a proper state of gyani, where the experience is not manipulated, we are not trying to manipulate the experience and make it into something else so that we get enlightened. No, we are trying to see the experience as it is, in its most natural form, sahaja means natural, that which comes easily is sahaja, you can say easy samadhi in English. Easy absorption. We are not trying to fix things outside, we are letting what is, including the dividing and naming and including every activity of the mind, in the body. And then we see that it is still one, it is not two, it is still advaita.

Even if you are in a storm of activities, you are doing your daily job with all these highly distracting activities, you can still sit at the center. You can sit very still in the eye of the storm, but around that,tremendous amounts of activities are happening, including the activity of your own body, speech and mind, but you can sit there peacefully in bliss. That is what we call awareness. Be in awareness, if you try to manipulate stuff, well, you will then form a belief that I am enlightened sometimes, but I am not enlightened other times, in my daily life, I am not enlightened and I become enlightened when I am in the satsang or when I am sitting with the guru or when I am meditating with closed eyes and closed ears and blah blah blah. Well, that is dependency on situations, we do not want that. Why do we do that? Because sometimes it is difficult for a student to come directly to the Sahaja Samadhi, so we do it in steps, it is basically training of the mind.

It needs to be effortless, if you find yourself doing effort to become aware, either you are very new in this field or there is a presence of ignorance there, because knowledge will eliminate the effort and this is my experience, when there was a lot of ignorance, I was doing a lot of effort and slowly as the knowledge arrived, effort became less and less. I mean, I didn't plan it like this, it happens naturally. The more knowledge you have, the less effort you will need. On the path of knowledge, we focus on knowledge mostly, the rest happens automatically as a consequence of knowledge. For example, you know that the pure consciousness is there, I am that, I am the Self, no matter what activity of the mind is going on, if you see it once, well, the next time it will be effortless, but if you have a belief that the consciousness exists only when I am not doing anything, only when I sit here with eyes closed, then there will be a lot of effort.

I cannot remain aware, that is because there is a belief that it takes effort to become aware. No, it should not take effort to become aware, that is, presence of some ignorance there. We do the personal surgery in the mind of the student, sometimes I am successful, sometimes I am not, but at least the problem becomes known, where are you stuck, that becomes known. I recommend that you do the introspection yourself, find out where you are

stuck and if you cannot, then ask for a meeting, don't waste your life.

Zing is saying, there was a time when an idea did arise within my mind that is universe has been us, can you speak few words on this, I am quite poor in English.

No problem, universe is me, yes, actually it is better to say that I am the universe. What has happened here is that the individual has disappeared, the individual is seen as not existing and then there is this very liberated feeling of I being everything, because what is limiting us into this tiny individual is the belief that I am this body-mind. Sometimes it is dropped, sometimes it can happen naturally for some people, sometimes with past life practices or even simply listening to a guru or reading in a book. It can happen for a few seconds that there is nobody here really, it is all mechanism, it is all beliefs in the mind, ideas in the mind. There is an individual and then it is discarded, its illusion is seen and then for a second there is an opening and it feels like the identity shifts to this unified perception and it looks like I am everything, which is the same as saying that universe is me.

So yes, it is not only me, everybody is the universe, everybody is the same, the universe appears in me, these are the words that describe this feeling, you may call it the realization of oneness, but it will go away, because the individual comes back instantly. Then you say now I am no more enlightened, now this oneness is gone somewhere, it is destroyed. I is primary, I is fundamental, I is the foundation and the universes come and go, it is very strange, but this is nearer to the truth. It may sound arrogant if your identification is still with the individual, if your identification is shifted to the Self, which means the pure consciousness, then it is not arrogant, that means everybody is the universe, because the consciousness is universal, it is not “my consciousness”, the consciousness is not a property of this thing called me, no, the me is gone, what remains is consciousness and you will instantly see that, this is the case for everybody. Just like there is only one sky seen from various perspectives, for example, it is afternoon here, it can be evening for you and for somebody else, it can be morning or night, but it is one sky, one thing appearing in different colors, say different perspectives. So there is no arrogance in saying that there is one sky, but it is arrogant to say - “my sky”, my sky is blue, your sky is black, your sky is red, that is the ego talking, that is arrogance. When I say I am the body-mind, that is arrogance. It is exactly the reverse. An enlightened person, when he says “I”, it is actually very light, that “I” has no weight in it. Sometimes it looks like he's ashamed of even saying this word “I”, he needs to say it for practical reasons. There is a light behind this I, and it is weightless I, it has no weight of ego there, we know that he will discard this I in next minute, he is not going to stay there, this is the talk of an enlightened person, self-realized person. For an egoic person, an ignorant person, the I is very heavy, I am rich, I own 20 cars, and I am a senator or I am a member of parliament, I prefer only this brand of mobile phones. Here there is arrogance, and it sounds very stupid to an enlightened person, because there is so much ignorance there in this I.

I am not against using the word I, like many people do, but remove the weight from it, remove the ignorance from it, and then it sounds beautiful actually. You can even say mine, you can say these things are mine, and there is a slight smile on your face when you say, and that is very beautiful, because the knowledge is shining through this apparently ignorant language. A spiritual person needs to improvise sometimes, and adapt to the language. When we speak, we speak through the eyes most of the time, which is missing in these kind of online sessions, because the ignorance is seen in the eyes, and the knowledge, the light is also seen in the eyes, it cannot be seen in the language. You're listening to me, and you will say I say I so many times - I was busy, and I'll do

that, and I'll do this. But look into the eyes of an egoless person, they're totally blank, there is no person behind those eyes, even though he's talking just like you and me. You must pay attention when you look into the eyes of a completely enlightened person who is in the natural samadhi, where the ego has been completely dropped. You will find that his language is only for show, and actually he's speaking through the silence, his eyes are very silent, there's nothing there. When you take a look at the eyes of an ignorant person, you can see that from where these eyes are looking, they are dazed, they are in a fog, they are hitting in darkness most of the time.

If you know your mind, you will know all the minds. I saw this in myself actually, that is why I am able to see the other minds, sometimes it is very uncomfortable to be with such a person, because you cannot even look into the eyes of such a person, they won't be able to make an eye contact with you, and whatever they say is totally gibberish, cannot stay on a topic, because all the topics they have in their mind are accumulated topics. As soon as they say two sentences, the third sentence is complete nonsense, it is very difficult to talk to such people.

Zing is saying, when you speak in terms of past life, I get confused with why you pick and use this mysterious word, and I start speculate and found myself middle of a maze or a puzzle.

Whenever I say past life, I'm referring to past memory. There is no life, there is no death, life and death are illusions, but the memory is present, it is another level of illusion, but it continues. When I say past life impressions, it means the memory that continued while this illusion of life and death happened. If you do not understand, don't worry, it's not that important. Whenever you are ready, I'm ready, because I do nothing really except these sessions, and if there is nobody, then I talk to myself, and that is what you are listening to via the podcast and videos. Self talking to the Self. Even if I talk to you, it is the Self talking to the Self, only that different body minds are involved. Ultimately, the realization is the same. You're talking to yourself, right now, also you're listening to yourself only.

Charlie is saying, it's an explosion, mind blown.

Yes, sometimes I use very negative words like explosion, bomb blast, and falling into a valley, falling into an abyss, because it is like that, because actually you don't know anything, after this kind of meeting, you will find that there is no need to know anything, and it is a cleaning up mostly. Don't think that you will know many things after meeting. No, nothing remains to know. Where are the practices? How will I improve my life and all? It is all dropped, it is all garbage, you don't need that, actually, we do not need anything, we do not even need knowledge, we need to drop the knowledge also fully knowing that it is absolutely useless.

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