Session 41

A question from Sushant. How can I train myself to be aware every time about my true nature while being functional in everyday life?

Yes, a very commonly asked question. I think in every other satsang we deal with this question. Let us define it again. Awareness is the knowledge that I am not an object. Awareness is the knowledge that there is an experiencer. Awareness is the knowledge that this experiencer is everything, is the existence itself. This is awareness.

Just like Ribhu says, once there is this firm conviction then you will never forget about this truth. Once your true nature is known, there is no forgetting. That means this knowledge becomes your foreground. You can drop down to the ignorance which is - I am this body, I am this mind. Whatever the body does is done by me. Whatever the mind thinks and desires is mine. They are my desires. I am the originator. I am the doer. Another aspect of this ignorance is that the world is real, the people here are real, the objects are real and the purpose of my life is to have more objects, is to prove myself better than other people, is to dominate people, is to do whatever the animals do to survive and then die. That is ignorance, and if you have seen your own nature directly through your own experience, not by reading it from somewhere or not by listening to it from somewhere, then that will be your conviction, that will be your truth and then there is no question of forgetting this truth. This is abidance in this memory, in this knowledge, because knowledge resides in memory. Not forgetting, always remembering that I am not an object, I am the whole existence and I do not have any qualities. This body is an experience just like any other experience which comes and goes. This mind is another experience, probably longer living but it comes and goes, and the world is an appearance. It also keeps changing, comes and goes. Living your life like this is abiding in awareness.

Now notice the question says - how to be aware while being functional in everyday life with this knowledge. Can the body and mind stop functioning? Is the side effect of this knowledge a dysfunction in the body and mind? Is it giving up the activities of the body and mind in everyday life? Can Sushant tell me?

What must have happened is you must have heard somewhere that being aware requires me to sit at one place with my eyes closed. You must have heard it somewhere and I say no problem in that, you can do that, but very soon the body will start feeling hungry, feet will start aching, you will start getting calls from your office, your family will require your presence or your assistance in this or that. The regular survival will soon start.

Remember if you have a body, if you have a mind, there will be activity. The only way to stop the activity of the body is to become a dead body and the only way to stop the activity of the mind is to bring about a dissolution of the whole universal mind, the Mahapralaya. Can these things be done by the individual which does not really exist? This is the culmination of the self-realization that there is no individual, there is no doer, nobody is desiring, nobody is doing. This body, mind and world are illusory, ephemeral pictures on the screen of myself.

Please see that sitting in a meditation with closed eyes and closed ears is just another state of the mind that comes and goes. You are most welcome to do it if you want to. Remain as pure awareness while keeping the activities of the body and mind at rest for a while. You can do that, but very soon you will find that the activity starts again. And the good news is - awareness need not be thrown away as soon as the activity starts. The activity can happen in awareness. Now you are listening to me, is there no awareness at all? There is awareness, isn't it? Is there this ignorance back here that oh look I am the body, the body is the experiencer, the mind is the experiencer. Is this knowledge washed out from your mind while you are active here? And how much time does it take to bring that memory back? Or you can say, bring that realization again, because if you take a look at it, it's not even a memory. When I say remember, you don't need to go and scan your memory. When was it that I was a witness? No, remembering is just looking once, take a glimpse of your real nature. Is there an observer there? Yes, that's all. That's all it takes to bring back awareness. For example, if there is daytime in your place, what do you need to do to know that it is day? Look out of the window. That's all. Effortless. Do you need to read a book to find out if it is day or night? Do you need to do a very difficult practice to find out if it is day or night? Do you need to stay in meditation for very long to find out what the status of the sun is? Similarly, we don't need to do anything to know our real nature except look inwards. Once again, I am the observer. I am the experiencer. I am the witness. The body is happening. The mind is happening. The world is happening. They are perfect as they are and if a desire arrives, there will be an action. If action happens, there will be consequences. Simply observe like this. You don't even need to interfere in what is happening there because I said that the mind will correct itself. The mind will purify itself. The body will correct itself and the situations around you will change by themselves. This you can see as a magical consequence of being aware.

For example, when you were not aware, when you had no self-knowledge, and if somebody said something insulting, your usual reaction happens, because that is how the ego is trained. That is how the mind is trained. There will be a very intense reaction in you. Either you get angry or you become fearful or you say something or you do something. You try to teach a lesson to that fellow who is insulting you. This reaction, egoic reaction will happen automatically because that is the nature of the body and mind. You get into a fight and there are consequences after that and this is how life carries on. It's not a bad thing. This is what happens. Now insert awareness here, which is the knowledge that whatever is happening is like a dream. Whatever is happening is an experience that's impermanent. People are my projection. There is a machine there which is operating those body-minds. The core of the other person is me, myself. This is your knowledge and there is another knowledge that I'm here to observe. I'm not here to interfere in worldly matters and there is knowledge because there is awareness. This intelligence has arisen now that if I do something, well it is going to enforce my tendencies to fight or to react or to insult others and if I keep doing that, I'm going to get only such people around me. I'll remain trapped in this loop of doing and reacting. With this awareness shining in your mind, your mind automatically computes an optimal action which can be, here, ignoring what was said, ignoring the insult. There is no person here to take the insult, it passes through you. You become transparent to the activities of others. You listen from one ear and then throw it out from the other ear. This is the purification that happens in the mind as a result of awareness and you get no fruits. The other person loses interest in you because they are now not able to push your buttons, you ignore that person. That means no business with that person in the future. You're not going to see his face again because you have a preference to be with good people. You don't want to extend your interaction with such negative people.

Awareness does a lot of cleanup in the behavior and in the mind. When you go home, when there was no awareness, you used to fight all night with that person in your mind. That person is gone. Now with awareness that the mind is an activity. Mind is another experience. It is not me. No loss happened in the mind, you also go to sleep blissfully. This is the magic of shifting your identity from body-mind to Self. This is magic. How much effort does it take? It's all happening while everyday life is going on. Plus you can do sitting meditation also. Plus you can concentrate on the body-mind and its activity, breathing and whatever you like to observe. You can observe it, which some people may want to do initially in the beginning because the mind is a very noisy thing. For many years it has produced nothing but noise. It is a very inefficient machine because of our conditioning, the social brainwashing that happened. We were never told to operate this machine. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev says that you have the best gadget of the universe. The gadget was given to you by this universe which is your own mind and this body is not ordinary. It is also an extraordinary thing. If you spend millions and billions you won't be able to build this kind of robot. He says - but you lost the keyboard, you lost the mouse and you forgot the commands to operate this gadget. He says it often in his lectures.

Awareness is your keyboard. It is the control center and that is why the center is called Ajna in Sanskrit, the Ajna Chakra. Ajna means command. Once it is awakened, that means once the awareness is on, awareness commands everything that happens in the mind and the body. Actually it commands the mind only, the body follows the mind. For a person who is not awakened, it is exactly the reverse. The surroundings, they influence the body and the body influences the mind and the mind produces actions in darkness. It is a zombie-like existence. That is why they are in control of situations. People are controlling them. They do not have their own will, they do not have their own intelligence, they do not even have a life goal. Whatever happens around them ends up producing a reaction in them. This is how they live for 70, 80 years and they die. I'm not saying it is a bad thing but there are more elegant ways to live this life. There are elegant ways to operate this instrument of the body-mind. That can be done by becoming aware.

Initially you may see that there is a lot of noise there so you may want to adopt a practice to sit down and exclude everything from your perception, like go into a closed room in a dim light, put on music and just observe thoughts in the mind. Seeing them play is like a very good training session but you cannot sit like this for your whole life. It is not that it will make you dysfunctional, no that is good, that is okay but try to carry this awareness with you while you are functioning in everyday life. Just like I gave you that example, while interacting with people, become aware, know your nature. It is easier than breathing, isn't it? It looks difficult, why? Because you have all kinds of beliefs in you that being in awareness means sitting down, closing my eyes and on or doing this kind of chanting, that kind of chanting. Only then I'll be aware. It is possible that it gets buried under this dirt of ignorance that I am the body-mind and the world is real and the people are real and my goal of my life is whatever was stuffed by this society in my mind. Yes, that can dim the light of awareness but truth never goes away. It is always looking, it is always watching, it is consciousness, it is life. You think the body is life, you think the mind is life, thinking is life, eating, sleeping, excreting, reproducing is life. No, they are insentient things. Sometimes we do this kind of discrimination between sentient and insentient just to bring in awareness. Although nothing is sentient, nothing is insentient. It only appears so. It appears that the body and the mind are insentient. They cannot sense. Ultimately that which senses is consciousness. Consciousness is the experiencer. These are experiences. Experiences cannot experience other experiences, and only the perceiver is perceiving, and therefore it is life. Consciousness is the only life there is, and there is nothing except consciousness. That which appears on the screen of consciousness sometimes we call it insentient. There is no life if there is no light of awareness there. Somebody on the path of knowledge is not going to call it a living thing. He will call it an automated insentient thing. It is simply going on as usual, as programmed by mother nature and genetics and social conditioning. As soon as awareness arises, life begins. Otherwise, no life. It is mechanical biochemistry. You think that is life. Pitiable condition, isn't it?

That's why sometimes I say that awakening or self-realization turns you from an animal into a human. Before that, we are not even human. But I don't say it a lot because people don't like it. You called me an animal. What do you think? I don't understand your philosophy that does not make me an animal. People don't like it; we don't say it. But remember this is the reasoning behind this saying which is a very bitter truth that it is all an insentient body-mind doing its own thing unless there is awareness. It got hidden under ignorance. Once this knowledge arrives, which is your typical self-realization or enlightenment or awakening or whatever you want to call it, self-knowledge, how much time it takes to go from animal to human? Five minutes. Why? Because it is not a big achievement. It is not that something was achieved. Only the dirt was blown away. And then how much time will it take to establish in awareness? That depends on how good your conviction is.

I was giving this example when I read Ribhu Geeta last week, of the hot pan which I often give to many people. You need to touch the hot pan only once in your life to know that touching the hot pan is not a good experience. It is a painful experience, and causes harm. How many times do we need to do that? Only once, and it will be often in childhood when we don't know what is hot, what is cold. So you need to touch the hot pan only once and then it is forever, the whole life, not to touch it. The steaming and sizzling pan, I don't want to touch it. It is called one-shot learning. It takes only one shot. It is real, it is so convincing that you are not going to do it again. Sometimes you will even check the cold pan to check whether it is cold or not. It becomes your nature not to touch the hot pan. Whether it takes a long time to become aware in everyday life or not depends on how good your conviction was. Did it give you a shock of your life, or was it like oh I know it somehow but probably I'll look into it next week or I need to join another session of satsang or I need to go and attend the seminar from this great guru to know what I am. If it is like this, then it can take a long time. It will be an effort. How is it possible? I can understand actually. I've gone through this thing. The mind covers the consciousness again and again. All you need to do is bring the light back again and again, and it can be done while doing everything that you do in your daily life. That is what is called remembering.

Although it is not really remembering, unfortunately we are stuck with this word. Bring back the light. You can get rid of the word remembering also because it is confusing, isn't it? Bring back the observation mode again and again. Continue doing whatever you are doing. I go to this length and I say that don't even try to change what the mind is doing. Don't even try to do that. I go to this length because some people will say okay what is the use of being aware then? If I am not changing my behavior, if I am not changing my situations, why should I do it? I say you try it. Experiment like this. Life experiments. Just remain aware and watch the magic. Remember, remember your lesson. Remember your conviction that there is no doer. There is only the observer, and I am the observer. If there is no doer, how can I change anything? How is it possible to even do anything to correct the mind, to purify the mind, to correct the situations, to not take an action, to take only good actions? If there are such thoughts, that means the conviction has not happened. That means the full realization has not happened. Somehow the dirt of the mind is still there. There are remains of the ignorance somewhere.

Let me do the awareness. It's not possible to do it. All you can do is undo. Do not identify with the body mind. Do not bring in the doer. It is happening. This impression is here in my mind. It has produced this desire. Now, the body is going and executing that desire. Watch this. Does it take a fight? No. You are not the doer. Why are you doing? Just watch it. As a natural consequence, what will happen? The intelligence in the mind wakes up. The intelligence looks at the doer. The intelligence looks at the seer and immediately knows what is the right action. It is natural that you don't need to train anybody to do the right action. Do not do the wrong action, simple. There is this natural pragya in all living things. Not only humans. It is there in everybody. The bird knows when to build the nest. Did she read the instruction manuals - How to build a good nest? No. Where is this intelligence? What is the right action? I also know what to do. The body-mind knows what to do. Why does it keep doing something which is disgusting and negative and causes a lot of suffering and violence. Because this intelligence, the pragya is covered up by ignorance. The ignorance got there from society. Society is the major cause of ignorance. Otherwise, humans are naturally intelligent. Humans are naturally aware. We have this connection with the spirit naturally. The time is such that the survival mode, the ego has taken over this intelligence, which is very natural. What to do? What not to do? Very very natural. Why do people defecate on the streets? Even animals don't do that. Look at the cat. The cat goes into a remote place, digs a hole, does his business, and covers up the pit. Look at the humans. They are urinating on the walls on the roadside. Even an animal is disgusted by its own actions. Animals know I should not do this. There is intelligence there. It smells bad. That means I should not do this here. This is covered up by ignorance in humans. Are we lower than animals now? Yes. I am not going to go into this kind of fault finding in humans. This was just an example.

Why do people kill each other? Why do people insult each other? Why do people use each other? Why are people hoarding things instead of using things? Why does some maniac assemble an army and goes on a killing spree, kills millions of people, calls himself a king, Chakravarthy, Alexander the Great. His greatness is killing lots of people, looting lots of money, enslaving lots of children and women. Why is your history calling him “great”? Who writes this history? “Great” people obviously. There is a tremendous amount of dysfunction in society. Everybody is afflicted somehow. There is this disconnection with this natural intelligence, which arises naturally when you become aware. This is the bottom line. Cut the long story short. Awareness is the cure. It is not only going to cure this body-mind's actions, it will cure everything. Because if everybody becomes aware, you will find that this world will become almost heaven. It is already heaven, minus the ignorance. Remove the ignorance, it is already heaven. You don't need to go to heaven.

That was a rather long answer to how to become aware. And yes, I should add here, because some people are going to ask, what if there is a desire in my mind to improve my behavior or to improve the functioning of the mind? What if there is a desire? For example, I want to be less violent, I want to be more compassionate, or I want to give up the habit of lying. I simply want to remain aware that I am lying all the time, but I actually want to speed up in the process of purification. Then my advice is, please go ahead. By all means, do it. If there is a desire in your mind, it has arisen out of the natural intelligence, the prajna. The prajna has awakened. Patanjali calls it the Ritambhara prajna. And there are many names for this intelligence. Remember, it is not only awareness. There is no functioning mind here. It is a mental activity, actually. The prajna is just an intelligence. Instead of doing the stupid things now, the mind has realized something. Please go ahead. If there is this realization that purification of the mind will produce better experiences for myself and for others, if you think that it is worthwhile, do it. No problem. And if there is no desire to do that, just remain aware. This body-mind is a mechanism. It will operate on its programming and then it will disappear. It will be destroyed. With its destruction goes all of the bad things. They were there.

And if your awareness is sharp and strong, because of a lifetime of practice, then there won't be any more body-mind, at least for that causal body. It is not going to cause a birth. Or if there is a birth, it will be in a purified land, which means heavenly universe. Although we don't talk about these things because we have no experience so far. At least I don't have that kind of experience. There are some great masters who have gone through that kind of experience. They return here to tell their experiences. It's another matter that people don't believe them. But that is not the main objective. The main objective is to cultivate awareness in fellow humans. There is a desire there in the mind of that master to enlighten others. There is a name for them, already. The technical name for such minds is Bodhisattvas. They send a tiny portion of their causal body with a specific allotment of karma. They are very precise in what they are doing and they appear here. And don't worry, they do not appear with a label on their forehead that I am Bodhisattva. It can be any ordinary person.

Manish is saying, Namaste. Is it possible for our inbuilt applications in ego to become corrupt? If so, can we repair it?

Yes, that's what I call affliction. Ego is not a bad thing. The ego is just a collection of processes that keeps this organism alive. For example, competition, fear, violence, and lust. Without these things, there is no survival. What happens is because the intelligence has not awakened yet or if the impressions from the society are only of egoic nature or even afflicted egos are around you, that is what the child learns. So the egoic processes become corrupt and the life becomes dysfunctional, which means it is not only full of suffering for that person, that ego itself, others also suffer. So are there corrupted egos? Yes, almost all of them are corrupted in this age. I look at people and I find one or other afflictions there and then I doubt, probably I also have many afflictions. Only that the rays of awareness have not reached those dark corners of the ego yet. You cannot see it. It arises only when the situations are proper.

For example, now you think my anger is under control. I cannot be made angry by anything. Now you will be surprised sometimes that you find some situations or meet some people who then manage to make you angry and you stay angry for a week or two. You thought my ego is healthy. I will become angry only when it is required. My employees not doing my work is telling me lies, is just procrastinating, telling me excuses. My mother died, my grandmother died and actually I had the bad fortune of having such employees and it made me mad that instead of firing those employees, I left the job. That is, that is an overly sensitive ego, isn't it? These people still manage to make me very angry. These kinds of afflictions you will find, they are in everyone.

So can we repair it? Yes, it is also possible. Why are they living their lives in afflicted egos, with afflicted egos? Because there is no awareness. There is total identification that I am the ego. I am the survival machine. I am doing it. When anger arises or lust arises or these things arise, competition, revenge, jealousy, when it arises, you actually become that. There is no distinction between the consciousness and what is happening in the consciousness. Anyway, it is the same, isn't it? But now there is no distinction here. It does not give this natural intelligence movement to even arise, even show up.

It is like direct plugging, let us say, plug a motor directly into the socket mains. There is no switch. There is no speed dial there. And now it is spinning at full speed all the time. That is an afflicted ego. Now awareness is like a switch. You can turn it on and off. It is like super power, isn't it? But remember, it is natural. It comes built in in the system, just like ego is built in. Nobody programmed the ego there. It is always there. You cannot get rid of it. So, awareness is like a control knob. Now when to spin the motor, when to stop it and how much speed you want. This can be done by practice, by delaying your actions and remaining aware for a while. How the mind is acting, what kind of desires and impulses are coming in the mind, from where are they coming? Is it some kind of conditioning of the past?

If there is a fear, is it programmed fear by your society or is it something natural? Obviously, there will be phobias and all. If it is a very, very intense desire, you execute it without noticing the consequences, without evaluating the consequences. Now delay it for some time. Turn off the switch for a while. It means making a division between your action and your mental activity, bodily action and mental activity. Stop. Watch. Watching is awareness. Five minutes are enough. These five minutes will give a chance for this dormant intelligence to get activated. Now you can abort. If it is necessary, well, the intelligence is going to say, okay, continue. It gets out of the way.

For example, you are standing in the middle of the road. It's a boring example but a very effective example. You're standing in the middle of the road and a truck is coming at you at high speed. Do you need to wait for five minutes there to let your pragya, your intelligence rise? Should I go this side or that side or sit here, stand here in the middle of the road? No. If it is extremely necessary, the action will happen. Don't worry, because that can be a worry of some people that if I start thinking, then I cannot do anything. And if it is necessary, how will I do it? Well, it will happen by itself. The whole system has this much intelligence. It bypasses everything.

When I was a kid, I was amazed to learn that the housefly eye has 100 lenses or, probably more than that. It is a compound eye and each of the eyes is directly wired to the wings, connected to motor neurons in the wings. And now it is clear. How can it fly through air zigzag in a split second without hitting anything? Mother nature has done all this short circuiting already. It is there in all of us. Out of 100, one or two instances will be there in your life where you should have acted, but then you chose to turn it off. And that is also a learning experience. Don't worry. Everything happens for the good.

I'm giving you a more practical example now. You just ate your dinner. Now you're sitting there satisfied. Now a desire arises in your mind that let me eat some sweets. What is dinner without sweets? Now is it a necessary action? Watch your mind. How many excuses are there? How many impulses are there? It is hammering this whole system with impulses. Go and eat, go and eat. Open the fridge. Ice cream. There you can delay. There you can watch the drama of the mind. You will practice in such instances. It is a very good learning exercise.

Anil is saying, afflictions of ego-mind are pre-programmed to survival instincts. Identification can be dropped. But I don't feel it is possible to completely let go or change all functions forever. Correct me if I am wrong. Mind could just convince the mind itself of improvements. It is doing for itself temporarily.

Yes, you are right. Although there is a correction I would like to make. The ego-mind is pre-programmed, which means the activities or the tendencies of the ego-mind. You can even find them in DNA sometimes. They are pre-programmed in the organism itself. But the afflictions are acquired. Hardly any child is born with an affliction. Affliction means a disease. It will be too extreme to call the ego-mind as an affliction, but these tendencies evolved in the mind to ensure the survival of the organism. We cannot call everything an affliction. It is very natural, isn't it?

But sometimes it gets distorted. For example, violence. Why? Because if you don't become violent, if you don't kill, then anybody will come and kill you. If the mosquito is drinking your blood, you kill the mosquito. It is a tiny bit of violence. But you are instinctively programmed to kill whatever is causing harm to this thing called the body. It is there for a reason. If somebody charges at you, you have these two programs there, either to fight or flight, run away, depending on how big that other person is.

So these are all there. These are healthy instincts. You see a beautiful woman, the lust arises automatically. It is impossible to continue the species if this tendency is not there. It is very healthy. What happens is, let us take the example of the violence. If you feel like killing every other person on the street, it does not look good. He belongs to another religion. Let me kill him. Let me shoot him. That is an affliction. Or if you have 20 partners already and you want the other girl on the street again, because lust is now afflicted. Or you are so competitive that you are ready to do any kind of lowly thing to win the competition. Affliction. Competition is an egoic action, ego tendency to compete with fellow creatures, to compete for resources and all. But if you organize an army and wipe out millions of people with the bomb, it is a big affliction, it is a big mental disease.

So, Anil is right, these things cannot be removed, but they can be made a little bit more organized. Just drop the unnecessary stuff. Don't go extreme. What is there for purification? You are already pure. Nothing can touch you. What can touch the emptiness, which is the whole existence? impurities are also Maya. They are also illusory.

Yes, sometimes there is a preference in our mind, the mind prefers a good experience. Whatever is the definition of good in mind's view, according to its limited intelligence, it will have preferences. And then it does. Let it do. Let the poor thing purify itself. You don't worry. You are the watcher. You watch it. Pragya or higher intelligence is going to direct the evolution of the mind now. You leave that job to the higher intelligence. There are many names for this higher intelligence. I probably don't even know the Sanskrit name. I call it pragya because buddhi is reserved for ordinary intelligence. I have adopted pragya for its beautiful name. Gya means that which knows, gyan comes from gya. Something which is specialized, which is better is pragya. And that is my understanding. You can call it higher intelligence in English. There is this hidden layer in our mind. It is built in. There is nothing which is not built in. We are discovering. We are not developing anything. There are blueprints in the universal mind for all the layers. when you go from the impure to pure, is it really changing? No. You are simply shifting. The mind is simply shifting to another blueprint. That's all. It is morphing.

Isn't the butterfly built into the caterpillar? See, same thing. The steam is built into the water. Boiling simply transforms the phase. The seven colors are built into the white light. The prism just shows us there are seven layers. It's a good metaphor, isn't it? These things are built in. And therefore, some of the Gyanis will opt for no purification, which I can understand completely. Even then, they are not going to do anything stupid. The power of knowledge is so much that they will do ordinary things, which an ordinary person does. It's fine. It is the old conditioning. Now you will find there are Gyanis who don't worry about anything in this world, but they do not cause any kind of harm. That is the pragya speaking through them. Although they look very ordinary. Although they will have tiny bits of eccentricities here and there. Like one fellow won't go anywhere without a blue shirt. Always wanted a blue shirt. And he is, param gyani. He is the ultimate master. But this one thing is here. He wants a blue shirt in every satsang. That is his conditioning. We don't pay attention to these things much. And I would recommend not to do it too much. Extreme is not recommended anywhere. Even if you have some bad qualities, even if you have some afflictions, continue. Don't worry about it. Because the reaction to the affliction is another affliction. This is again the mind treating itself for its own bad behavior. Punishing itself. Scolding itself for its own bad. That is not purification, that is just a reaction. What will be purification? Continue with full awareness. The train has a lot of momentum. It stops only when all the bogies stop. Otherwise it continues for a while. Just watch it. Watch it going through the movements. It will purify itself. It is a purely mechanical device. Let it do what it is doing. Just be aware. That is the minimal requirement here. Stay as an experiencer because you are that. And yes, the right thing will happen on its own. And sometimes it will fail. That will be the right lesson.

What I've seen throughout my experience is that there are no wrong actions. There are only lessons. Don't think that I'm doing something wrong. Somebody told me that this is wrong. Well, try it. See what the lesson is. There are only lessons. Even if you do something right according to your limited intelligence, you will find there is a lesson. I don't want to give examples of that because people will stop doing good things.

This teaching is not to add another layer of conditioning on your mind. There is a lot of conditioning already. I don't want to add more conditioning by telling you what is right and what is wrong. Have you noticed this? I never tell what is right and what is wrong. I can only tell you what your own experience is. Then you decide what is right and wrong. You have the intelligence. You have the prajna. You can decide it. Who am I to tell anybody to do the right thing? I can only say that what is right according to you is going to happen and it will always be a lesson.

Yoga philosophy and all, they are starting from the bottom. It is called bottom-to-top approach. They first bring the student to a level of understanding which is conducive for the knowledge by removing the impurities first, by bringing the attention, disciplining the attention, disciplining the mind, and then the teaching is imparted which is exactly the same as the non-dual teaching. No difference at all. approach can be different but it is the same thing. You can do that also. Sometimes I say why are you sticking to the yoga marg only? Who is forcing you to not take another marg parallelly and why are you sticking to the gyanmarg only? Why not do something in your spare time? Utilize your life and do some more practice if you want. Who is stopping you? You do the top down and do the bottom up, you do the kundalini. Why not?

But probably, many students are not capable of this much spiritual load. Just like I said, I took a middle path. Sometimes it becomes necessary. Sometimes I do the bottom-top process. For example, I developed sensitivity to milk or sugar or these kinds of things that were very bad for the body as well as the mind. They produce fog in the mind, tea and coffee, these are addictions. For that, pragya was not very helpful because they were deeply embedded. So discipline. Just throw away everything that is in the kitchen that produces this kind of behavior, and it is done. You resolve only once and then it's done. Although it's very difficult. The biscuits you eat have sugar and milk and whatever. The bread you eat has yeast and a lot of sugar and whatever. I stopped taking these things whenever practically possible. No cold drinks at all, only fruit juices without sugar.

So the body adjusts, the mind will adjust to the discipline. It was your conditioning, you remove that conditioning, put on another conditioning. Well, it adapts, it won't complain. So take the middle way. It is possible. Take both. Don't do it mechanically. Try to find out what happens to the mind if I do this thing or that thing. If you're fasting, know what the reason is. Don't do it blindly. Don't do it for Gods or Goddesses. Do it for yourself. Check the effects of fasting on your body and mind. Check how much the body resists not eating, how much resistance it puts up. Check how the ego arises, becomes like a monster if you stop eating. Check all these things. Shine the light of awareness on that and then you'll find after two or three days of fasting, you have the peace of mind which you never found in your life before. The discipline has worked finally.

Beautiful experiences, the only thing is that you can overdo them and then do it mechanically without realizing what you're doing and you do it without guidance causing harm to your body, your mind. That is why I say don't do it. That is why I caution people in my public lectures whenever I talk. I'm very careful to suggest practice. I don't actually suggest a practice. Never do that. But you can. If you have this kind of higher intelligence, go for it.

Session 42

Leyla is saying, I have been noticing I have less interest in things that used to bring me pleasure. Is this something to be expected?

Well, because you have found a better pleasure. Because you have found a refined kind of pleasure. Which is abiding in the self. It is also called bliss. Bliss is a bigger pleasure than the ordinary pleasures of the senses. Of eating or socializing for example. Or talking or gossiping. Or movies, entertainment. These things are less refined. Because they come and go. And there is always a clinging. This is not good. There is always duality in those pleasures. There is something good there, but there is also something bad. Like the five star dinner. Tastes very nice. But it makes your pocket very light also. So, there is a pleasure that the food was good and there is this not a pleasing thing that you had to pay many thousands for. You could have cooked it at your home. And this home cooked food is called bliss. Because it is free. And it is always there on demand, while the pleasures are obtained by effort. And they do not last, always have a dualistic component in them.

So, you are losing interest. It is a good sign. That means you have found a bigger pleasure. That is what happened to me also. Slowly the things that I thought were worth going for, were worth spending time on, were worth spending money on, I am dropping all of them. Slowly. Which is very necessary and is pleasurable also. We do not reject pleasure because it is bad. There is nothing bad here. It is a creation of the mind. The mind colors it as good and bad.

So, yes there is bliss. There is no doubt about it. But bliss takes the form of objective pleasures also. Sense pleasure also. We do not run for that. Because we have home cooked bliss here. Home cooked pleasure here. But whenever it is offered by the grace of the universal mind, we do not say - no, I do not want that pleasure. That is another form of the ego. We accept it but fully knowing that it is not going to last. We enjoy that also. We enjoy what is necessary. For example, this Satsang. It is a pleasure, isn't it? Although it may not be that necessary. But we do not say I do not want this pleasure. We take it.

It is very much expected. That the pleasures of the worldly kind will diminish in their sweetness. And the bliss of the heavenly kind will increase. It is a natural outcome of self-knowledge and knowing that the other pleasures are impermanent. It will happen to everyone. Do not worry about it. Just be aware that this is happening. And if people are expecting pleasure out of you. Then it is your duty. I am not forcing this on you. But you will see it as necessary to make them feel good. Because they do not have the access to the source that you have access to. Other people are still depending on the external sources of bliss. And that is why, understanding this fully, you cooperate with the ignorant people as much as possible. If it goes beyond a limit you say no. It is not worth taking trouble. Because of the dual consequences that these kinds of actions bring. Pleasure seeking actions. There is always a consequence. But the internal bliss has no consequences.

Anand is saying, If mind-memory is based on senses, is there any process to withdraw from senses, pratyahara, any easy way?

Yes, you can say that the mind and memory are based on senses because the senses are the primary way to acquire experiences. Whatever is in the memory is a result of the experiences. Most of them come from senses, especially in the waking state.

So, is there any process to withdraw from senses? You can do meditations like avoiding the objects of senses, first of all. Settle in an environment where there is no sensory noise. There are no noisy people. There is no traffic, and there are no noises of the factories or there are no such things, TV or radios or whatever. That is one way. Pratyahara. The pratyahara word comes from the ahara. Ahara comes from the word hara, which means “to take”. Ahara is to ingest, and pratyahara is the opposite of ahara, which means to avoid ingesting. Whatever we are ingesting, sometimes people think that it is only through the mouth, but no, we are ingesting through the senses also.

Just like we eat clean food, we drink clean water, you take in, ahara, clean experiences. Clean your environment. That is the first layer of the internal purification. Now you will say, no, you just told me to clean up the outside. Yes, but it cleans the inside also automatically. That is the first thing you can do. Avoid impure environments. Check what you are reading. Check what you are watching. See whom you are talking to. Are these impure people? Are these ignorant people? Are these violent people? Is everything that is being thrown at you negative and violent? If you are aware while you are in the environment, you will naturally avoid these things and that will become one part of the pratyahara.

Then the second is your own speech. Look at your own speech. Is it sweet? Is it bitter? Is it unnecessary? Is it necessary? Is it full of wisdom? Is it full of stupidity? Is it impure, bad words? Or does it look like an educated person's speech? Look at your own speech. And then cut down that which is not required. And you will find that you will cut down almost 90% of your speech. You will feel very less inclined to talk. You won't be able to talk all the time. Or whenever you talk it will be a beautiful talk. It will be full of wisdom. Or it will be very sweet. People will like to hear you, no matter what topic you are talking about. This is another kind of pratyahara. Check your own speech. And then check your own thoughts. You must have guessed it by now. Are your thoughts positive? Are they negative? Are they full of hate and fear and whatever? Are they full of desires? Are you living in the future? Are you living in the past? Are your thoughts full of memories only? Good or bad? Or do the thoughts arise only when they are necessary? And whether they are pleasant thoughts? Whether they are full of wisdom, knowledge, rationality and logic? Clean your thoughts also.

So, withdraw from all that is unnecessary. It does not mean that you become a stone statue and sit in the corner of the room all day. No. That is not the meaning of pratyahara. Although in case of afflicted cases the guru will tell the student to forcefully withdraw from the dirt of sensory stuff. That is extreme. But I don't think anybody here needs to do that kind of extreme practice. In some cases the senses are spoiled or the mind is spoiled, it cannot get rid of all these addictions. It is necessary to forcefully bring that person out of that. If you have a guru, the guru will do that. Sometimes the guru will take a stick and clean up the dirt. It is possible. Nowadays I don't think it happens. It will happen if you have a proper guru. If you are lucky to have that kind of guru. Very fast. Very effective. But normally pratyahara will work. The mind becomes stable, more peaceful, calm and intelligence grows automatically. Intelligence is already present in the mind. The mind has this potential. What we have done is we have ignored it. We have fallen from our human nature. We have become just like animals. I blame society for that, but nobody else has to blame. Especially when you are given the instructions. When my guru told me that look this and this is the case. Now what is your excuse now? Tell me what is your excuse to not purify? And I said yes you are right. Ultimately it is my responsibility and the possibility is with me only. Yes we do blame other things, like the environment is bad. The TV is bad. The internet is bad. It is all negativity. But why are you in this kind of environment then? My family does not support spirituality. My friends laugh at me. Why are you there then? Why couldn't you find a diplomatic solution? Because you are stuck there. Ultimately it is me. Ultimately I am responsible for what I take in. Not others. They are not stuffing it in without your consent. Pratyahara is my choice. He was asking for an easy way. Yes, that is the easy way. If you want a hard way I can tell you that also. But you will not like it.

Ashish is saying, I am not the doer and the receiver. Doing is the activity of the mind. But the vritti of bhog is also a vritti. Please explain. Is it not a vritti?

The tendency of the mind to run after pleasures, which is what he means by bhog most probably. Tendency is a vritti. It is a repetitive tendency of the mind. It goes for the pleasures. Actually it is a little bit complicated. Why does it think that it is pleasure? And that is because that thing aided in survival. Now I have a very gross example for you. Killing an animal, draining its blood, cutting it and cooking it and eating the dead body. Can you call it pleasure? It becomes difficult when I describe it like this. But let me say it another way. Would you like to eat the finest kind of kebabs in the town? Now it sounds like pleasure. Isn't it? So if it has an appeal, if it has a survival value, the mind drops everything that does not support its notion of pleasure and labels it as pleasure. So yes, it is a complicated vritti.

Sometimes we simply shorten it to say that the mind prefers pleasures but probably he is asking - Why is that? What is so special about pleasure? And the special thing there is that it helps in survival somehow. Actually everything that we perceive and everything we do is only for survival. The mind knows nothing else. The mind is a survival machine. And by survival I mean not only the bodily survival, the extra-physical survival also, because the causal body is an accumulation. How did it manage to sustain in the face of impermanence? The winds of impermanence are very strong and they will destroy everything that is on their path. How is it even possible that the causal body is sustaining itself and is managing to take births? That is because the survival tendency is built into the causal body. The tendencies of this human body, the physical body are nothing but an expression of the inherent tendencies of survival of the causal body.

We take birth here only for pleasures. That is the hook in the nose of the bull of the causal body. It is pulled by pleasures. This is how it is explained in scriptures. They try to make it disgusting so you don't get too attached. Survival is seen as pleasure. See this. There is no reality called pleasure. It is an activity of the mind. It is Maya, again.

Anand is saying, aware every second is not possible as thoughts are external.

Why are thoughts telling you to not remain aware? Can you tell me? Do thoughts have any control over awareness? Are you saying that I cannot be aware if there are thoughts? Then who knows the thoughts?

Anand, are you not aware every second? It is the ignorance that I am thoughts. I am the body. I am the actions. I am desires. The experiencer is always present as a background witnessing whatever the mind is identifying with. It is not that the thoughts are covering it. It is the ignorance about my real nature that is sometimes present, sometimes absent. You are never absent.

When I say be aware every second it is simply the acknowledgement that I am present, I am not thoughts. And that gives you a chance that delays the mental activity a little bit. You will find that there is a gap now. As soon as I am introverted, as soon as my attention goes to the source, what happens to the mental activity? It stops. And that is not our objective, but that is a side effect. Even your breathing will stop. Even the metabolism of the body will slow down. It's amazing, isn't it? That's why I said awareness is very powerful. It is the only meditation actually. All meditations prepare you for being aware only. Even if you don't see miraculous effects, you will see subtle effects on the mind. The awareness controls the thoughts. The thoughts do not control the awareness.

Anand is saying, my thoughts divert concentration and senses act in another way.

That means you are not aware of the thoughts then. And you are calling them “my thoughts”. That indicates that there is an identification with the thoughts. Otherwise, why would you call them my thoughts? And yes, if they are seen as my thoughts, then obviously they will divert your concentration. They will take your senses somewhere else. Because the awareness is lost here in the identification.

Looks like you are just starting. This will happen all the time. As soon as you find yourself back in awareness, just reflect on what happened. How the thoughts were taken as my thoughts. How the senses were diverted automatically. Become aware of at least this in retrospect. It is not totally useless. Why? Because you will form a new sanskar/impression there. It is just like a training of the mind. You failed in real life, now at least practice it “offline”. This training will show up in real life. What do I mean by real life? When you are engaged in the activity, mental activity or bodily activity or whatever. If it does not show up, if you think that awareness was gone, then do not beat yourself up because you failed. That is another mental activity. Simply come back in awareness. Simply give preference to awareness. Prefer to be aware. Not doing anything else. Not thinking. Not reflecting on how I failed and all that. What do I need to do? Which trick do I need to employ here to get more awareness? No. Simply come back to awareness. We need not make it more complicated than that. What can be easier than that?

Yes, prefer awareness. Sometimes you do not know that you are breathing. But does that mean that you are not breathing? Does that mean that the breathing stopped when you were not looking? No. The breathing is always on. Sometimes we look into it and you will find that breathing is always on. Similarly, awareness as my own self is always present. Only that it is not being reflected to itself all the time. It is not being looked upon. There is no self-awareness all the time. Sometimes the mind is now entangled in other activities, which is fine, which is okay. Mind does this. It is not a mind if it is not doing that. Activity of the mind is the mind. There is no other mind. There is only wind. There is no air. So let it happen. And when self-reflection comes back, you simply abide there. You do not jump back into mental activity. Oh, this did not happen that way. Why is it not happening? What should I do? Is there better practice? Is there a mantra or something? Do I need to change my Guru? It is not working. No. Look, the awareness came back. You are lucky, it came back from the activity. That means the sanskar is already there. Only that it is not strong enough. If you do it again and again, you will progress. Then you will find that you don't need to do more than that. And you remain in the Sahaja Samadhi. That means you don't have to worry about the awareness also. It is done.

Individual cannot do these things. Don't think that I am doing it. Don't think that I am bringing in the awareness. Don't think that I am doing the pratyahara and all. That is not Sahaja Samadhi because doer is present here. Samadhi cannot be done. Only that you can kick out the doer and whatever remains is Sahaja Samadhi. Do whatever you are doing with full concentration. However beautifully you want it to happen, let it happen. And when you come back to awareness, see that you did not do it. Nobody did it. This is Sahaja Samadhi. And then this feeling, this nectar will saturate your waking state also. By waking state I mean non-meditative states, non-aware states. You will find it is not an effort to remain aware now because it has become the background of your existence. It has become a background of your life. Just like breathing is happening in the background. You don't go and check whether I am breathing or not every second. No. If you are doing this, that means there is an effort here. It is an effortful Samadhi. It is not Sahaja Samadhi, which is effortless.

If you need to go and check whether I am aware frequently, that means you are at the first stage of awareness practice. This will happen, no problem. Slowly it will become your nature to remain aware. If there is a thought that I am doing it, you will drop it. There is no need to worry that I am thinking right now that I am doing it and it is wrong. No. You need not even think like this. If you think that I am doing it, then okay, it's fine. One day it will be dropped.

Ashish is asking, does the mind get pleasure when I get fulfilled or I get pleasure in an experience?

It is more complicated than that. Who produces the pleasure? Not the experience. Not the object. The mind itself produces the pleasure or the experience of pleasure. First comes the sensory experience or the objective experience, and when it is according to the preferences of the mind, there is a process in the mind that starts, and it produces an experience of pleasure. We project this experience on the object, and we think that the object is giving us pleasure. It's a fairly complicated process there. But I have explained this in one of the videos. Yes, there is a video called the illusion of happiness. So, happiness is also an illusion. Happiness is a creation of the mind. This is how it is created.

Experiences are neutral. They are not pleasure and not pain. They are not happy not sad. They are all neutral. They are what they are. When the experience arrives, then the mind decides what they are, depending on its biases, depending on its survival needs. And then if it sees, "Oh yes, it is according to my preference," then it must reinforce that action or it must reinforce that experience so that it happens again. Because if it does so, survival is ensured.

A natural mechanism by Mother Nature that is put in there that produces a subjective experience of pleasure or happiness or good emotions, positive emotions, or intellectual fulfillment like beauty. Beauty is also mind-created. There is no beauty in existence. It is both beautiful and ugly. And it is not beautiful and not ugly. It is what it is. But it gets colored in this way to sustain the mind. Because if you do not do this, then the experience goes waste from the point of view of survival.

If you color it as pleasure or happiness or beautiful or very rational and logical, then it reinforces that experience. That means the organism is now going to do it more and more. But only up to a limit, for example, eating something when you are hungry produces pleasure. The pleasure is not in the food. The food is just organic matter. The pleasure is produced as a separate experience after the survival requirement is satisfied. When this pleasure is produced, it produces a mark on the memory again that, "Oh, that gave rise to this very nice experience of pleasure. I need to repeat it again." So the sanskars become strong, and you go for the same food again and again. It is the repetitive vritti. What will happen if you eat that thing every minute, let's say, or if you eat it every day? Now soon the pleasure will turn into pain because the mind now sees it as harmful for survival because it needs to eat other things, and it cannot digest that much food. There is a built-in valve there, you can say a pressure valve. "Oh, you're doing it too much. I gave you pleasure, that does not mean that you do too much. And then the valve goes off, the fuse goes off, and it turns into pain. Now it does not matter how much you like that food. It does not matter how much you prefer it. When this goes beyond a limit, there is a built-in mechanism to cut it back, and then the mind starts producing pain. That balance is maintained. You can see that it is a survival mechanism only.

Happiness and suffering are necessary for survival. Otherwise, they are not there. You will see that a thousand rupees make you happy when you are struggling, when you are poor. But when you are rich, even one million cannot make you happy because that is not the requirement now. So this will be a dilemma in front of the rich people that no matter how much I earn, I do not get that kind of kick, that kind of pleasure that I got when I earned my first salary. Because, well, you are very rich. Now the mind is not going to produce the pleasure for a thousand rupees. There is a bigger intelligence there, which is very ancient compared to your puny intelligence that running after the money is going to give me pleasure. It is your stupidity. It cannot be called intelligence. There is a bigger intelligence already operating this instrument that you think is you. It is refined through billions of years of evolution. You cannot beat it.

I had this ordinary girl as my girlfriend when I was in school. That was the awesome time of my life. But now I have this very rich and beautiful wife, but I don't like her. What happened? You are thinking that the objects give you pleasure. That is what happened. The mind gives you pleasure. The mind manufactures pleasure. It is an illusory experience. And you are doing the slavery of the mind not knowing what is mine and not knowing what is you, not knowing how these processes work. The bottom line is, the reason is ignorance. You never studied it. Well, blame it on society. They did not teach you. But now you have been told that you are not the mind, and the processes of the mind are fully automated like a machine. Now what is your excuse to not know? What is your excuse not to free yourself from the slavery of the mind? And this is the question in front of a seeker, isn't it? We do not study the mind because it is awesome or because you are going to write a Ph.D. thesis on it. Why not? You can do it. But we study the mind to be free from the mind. There is no other purpose there.

There are two experiences. One is that of activity, and another is of pleasure. They happen one after the other. And if you are very attentive, if you are very aware and your concentration is strong, you can see this actually happening . The mental activities can be seen in the mind. When it is seen, it loses steam. There is a side effect of being aware. As soon as this activity is seen, the pleasure is gone. Now it is no more a pleasure because when it was unaware pleasure, it had the force in it. It could make a mark on the memory. In Sanskrit, we say it could form the vasana again because the vasana will now push the organism into action. He will do the same thing because it produces pleasure. And when it is seen, it means you just hit the brakes there on the activity of the mind. And now the sanskar that is created on the memory is slightly weakened. That means the pleasure could not do its job. What does that mean? Now you are freed. There is a tiny bit of more freedom here. And that is why the yogis, the jnanis and masters are unmoved when pleasure and pain hits them. Why are they unmoved? They don't have any superpower. They have awareness, which is a superpower. And for them, all pleasures are just plain boring. For them, all pains and suffering are just plain boring. They do not even pay attention to that.

And like I was saying, I have this natural tendency now to not care about the pleasures. It is because the awareness has woken up. Now it is going to dismantle the mental activities. Don't worry; it's not going to destroy them. It will simply cause separation between the automation and the formation of sanskar. Your sanskars are getting diluted. They are getting burnt away. The past sanskars are going to show up because they happened in unawareness. They will show up as actions, and they will bear the fruits of consequences. But from now onwards, from the time you become aware, awakened, whatever is happening is not reaching the memory. Or if it is reaching there, it is very dilute. They are not going to produce any actions in the future. Isn't it magic? That is why we say there is no karma for a spiritual person. It does not affect them. It is not really magic, but it is almost magic. It is an outcome of the natural process of awareness. You hit the brakes on the mechanism of the mind, and that will free you. You will get less and less karmic stuff. Eventually, everything is burnt out. Some yogis will accelerate this. They will say, I want 20 births in this and this situation so that I can exhaust whatever is remaining. Now, on the path of knowledge, we don't take this kind of extreme practices. If it is necessary, the mind will arrange its birth automatically. As I said, there are billions of years of intelligence already there. The system knows how to do it. This tiny human does not. I am not saying you will never know. You will know. Ultimately, this will happen in front of your eyes and then you will know. Right now you don't even need to believe what I am saying. Your experience is your truth. This is how we become lighter and lighter in terms of karma. When it is finally exhausted, the Jeev sees itself as the universal mind instead of an individual. We do not really worry about the bigger things. If you start the spiritual process in you, your job is done. Your life is fulfilled. Now stop worrying and start enjoying because we are here for that only.

Again and again I say that get proper guidance, do not waste your life. Now you do not have an excuse. You have seen the mind. You have seen the Self. Now do not delay your liberation. It is not a wise thing to do. If you do not have proper guidance, get a guru, get guidance. That should become your priority. If something else is your priority, remember it will delay your liberation. Why is it important to be liberated? It is not important, but that is what we prefer.

Session 43

A comment from Ashish. I know that you stress a lot on knowledge in direct path and using it to remove ignorance and hence no yogic process or breath control or meditations are stressed upon. However for beginners is there something that we should include in our daily practice?

Yes, there is. Actually, I never say don't do yogic practices. I say don't do them without knowing what they are. I have seen people do it just because somebody told them, just because there is interest in those things. They do not even have a clear goal in their mind. What are they trying to achieve by doing this? There are many such seekers. Go ahead and do whatever secondary processes that you feel are necessary, whatever is recommended by your teacher. I do recommend purification, which make the mind less distracted. Secondary practices which help in clearing the mind, which help in keeping the body healthy, which help in keeping your environment peaceful, distraction-free.

I would say that it is not a practice, it is a lifestyle. I have said it many times that when you enter the spiritual field your lifestyle changes completely. It is a lifestyle. It is not something which you can do for 10 minutes and then forget about it. Ok, I have done the concentration, now let me drink alcohol for the rest of my day or quarrel with my neighbors and beat up my enemies for the rest of the day. That is not going to help at all. So that is an extreme example, but I am just giving an example here. Practice should become a part of life. It should not be taken as a 10-minute thing or 20-minute thing that you force yourself to do, that you take out time out of your busy schedule to do. If this is happening then it is almost guaranteed that it is not going to do much. When you enter a spiritual path, the path becomes your life. The other things that you do in your life, they are supporting the path. So this scene reversal, if it does not happen then it is going to take a long time to achieve something. If you have any goals, this question comes later on - is there anything to achieve or not. That will be realized later on but now for the beginner, it should be a change in lifestyle.

Let me give another example that if your environment is very noisy, if there are too many people around you, if there is a lot of distraction, then no amount of breathing will make your mind calm. Because as long as you are breathing with a cotton stuffed in your ears, eyes closed there will be a little bit of peace in the mind. But as soon as the 10-minute session is over, for the next 24 hours, you are surrounded by distractions, surrounded by noise, surrounded by these activities that simply occupy the mind instead of leaving free time for it to contemplate, to ponder and to try to understand or simply abide in awareness. It is because the environmental purification was not done.

A very essential form of Ashtanga yoga is recommended if there are problems in your life. If the body is not healthy, it cannot sit for 2 hours in satsang, then the body should be purified. If there are problems in the body, there is pain in the body and you are always dependent on medicines that dull your mind, make you sleepy or incapable of thinking anything that pertains to Advaita or anything else, then probably the body should be fixed first instead of knowing the secrets of existence.

And similarly, if there are afflictions in the ego, if you are running after food all the time, running after mates all the time, running after social status all the time, then there is no point in looking for spiritual guidance, spiritual books or spiritual practices because that will be your biggest occupation and then you will struggle to find 10 minutes to sit down and do Agnya Chakra meditation. What is the use of Agnya Chakra meditation if the lower is afflicted? How are you going to get the powers if the lower is not conquered? It is like a bird that is tied down by a rope. It has wings and it wants to fly but the ropes are not letting the bird fly. First break the chains, then you can use the wings.

People do not understand the higher yogic processes. They want to do that but they don't want to clear the bottom and therefore they reach nowhere. And on the direct path, we simply assume that the intellect has progressed to a point where it can sit down, listen and contemplate. For example, Chakra meditation, which people have totally misinterpreted. They simply focus on their body, points in the body. That is not bad but it is useless. It is because they are doing it without any guidance. And I have also done that for many years without proper guidance, without proper understanding. I have done the bottom-up processes and I found them partially helpful. When you do these things, it gives you psychological support that I am doing something for my spiritual progress. That is one thing but it is like a placebo. It is like covering up dirt instead of cleaning the dirt.

On the direct path, we assume that there is clarity already in the mind, the mind is capable already, the person has already fixed his goals and the person has already seen what works and what does not work on the spiritual path. Then we also assume that the seeker is more or less free from blind beliefs. Because he came to Advaita, he must be free from blind beliefs. Otherwise, he wouldn't have asked any questions also. When you don't know, then you do not ask. You simply assume that I know it or you do not even know what to ask because you never heard about these concepts at all.

If somebody comes to Advaita or the path of knowledge, let us say, then few things are very sure that there is a threshold that he has crossed already and now he is ready for the ultimate knowledge. Sometimes we take a chance that okay, probably the purification will happen later, let me first give him the self-knowledge or the knowledge of the oneness. Let me find out what is his basic belief and break it. So after that, if that person is a beginner, has no tradition behind him, has no practices behind him, then he can go and join any tradition. Any tradition that focuses on purification is good. There is no specific meditation in Advaita. It is only listening and contemplating/introspecting and abiding. These three practices are there. The other practices must support these three.

For example, you are eating something which makes you very violent and now you will need to give up that kind of food. For example, if you are drinking something which makes your mind numb and stupid, then you will need to stop that because now you cannot sit down and think clearly. Of course, a drug addict cannot do the manan/contemplation/introspection. So these purification practices are supporting knowledge acquisition or abiding. If your lifestyle is not conducive to spiritual goals, drop the spiritual goals, continue with the worldly stuff. There is no problem in the world. But if your spiritual seeking is primary, then drop the worldly. Do one thing, set up a goal and do only that, which does not mean that you don't go anywhere and don't talk to anybody and don't earn money or don't eat, don't sleep. No, everything else should support your goal. Good sleep will make your mind more healthy and peaceful. So you need 10 hours of sleep and good food in a supporting environment. For example, where there are no wars going on around, there are no criminal activities going on, you are safe and sound, there is a good house with all the facilities there, a good body, healthy body. So these are all supporting activities. Do that which is necessary to abide, to introspect.

So there is no specific meditation in Advaita. At least I do not do anything. But if you are interested, you can join the other paths which are not very extreme. The kundalini is very extreme or the hatha yoga is very extreme. You can join other paths like Buddhism, for example, or Jainism where there are purification practices, they are time-tested practices. And if you are doing something extreme, then you need a guru. If you are not doing anything extreme, then you don't need a guru, then your plain Advaita guru is fine or even the scriptures are okay, they have everything that the gurus say.

On the path of knowledge, the goal is to free the seeker from practices. So if you are asking, give me a practice, then no guru is going to do that. Then you will need to find a guru who gives you practices. What we are trying to do is free you from practices. That is the goal, isn't it? Actually, my goal is to stop the seeking completely. If you join this satsang, if you join the pure experiences and if you listen to other things that I am saying, the goal of each word that I am uttering is to stop your seeking. When you call me, my only intention is to stop the seeking for this person. What is preventing him from reaching the ultimate? What is preventing him from dropping all his questions?

My goal is never to set you on an effortful path. Go and do the effort for three years and then come back. Those are other paths. When I see a problem in the seeker, then I usually do not pursue it. You may say, no, this is not good, but then I am not a guru. I have a special kind of activity that I am doing. It is called “the man behind the curtain”. That is what I am. So people who ask for practices should seek a guru who prescribes practices and who is very well experienced, who has at least 10 years, 15 years of experience in practices and who has several students so that he knows what kind of problems can arise.

What I do is if you are stuck somewhere, I try to remove it through knowledge, but when I say that, well, he has not reached to the point where he is able to abide in non-dual self, in non-duality, let us say, or the questions will not stop for this person, then I leave that person where they are, giving some suggestions like, look, you were told this and this. Now the problems are these and these and do something about it. I leave them to their own means. Why do I do that? Why don't I make them practice left and right, like in the military? Because that is not the goal. The goal is to free people from practices.

I think many people must have dropped their practices after listening to what I have to say or listening to anyone who is on the direct path. Sometimes I will prescribe something like the experiments on the dreams or experiments on the subtle bodies. And I see that people can do them even without purification, they are able to do that, but because that is our natural ability, and these practices are not practices, I call them experiments. You need to perform the experiment how many times, once or twice or thrice, that's all. Practice goes on and on for many years and the practices that I am prescribing are not really practices, they are experiments.

Ashish is saying, other practices means loading up with more concepts and more philosophy. The current bend is to unlearn everything and just stick to one practice. So that even this one gets discarded easily.

Well, exactly. The goal is to free you from practices. What are you practicing? What are you practicing for? Isn't everything already whole and complete and perfect in every sense? That is what is shown and then you can drop all practices.

Yes, there can be premature dropping of seeking which is not recommended and when I see such a person, I don't know really what to do because there is a risk that that person will drop the seeking. Knowing that there is nothing to know will simply keep his beliefs intact. So what we do here in this case is either I give up, okay, go and find somebody else or I give them a challenge like find out the answer to this question, your beliefs and so on. Usually that person never returns because such people are looking for something, want to “get” something and I am looking for freedom, my goal is to take away something. Every time you talk to me, I will take away many things from you. People are usually not ready for that. Do not practice, see this and if there is a practice, it should be like a corrective measure. I will give you an example. If you are suffering from something, you go to the doctor and the doctor gives you medicine, a pill, but he also prescribes that, okay, no bitter or spicy food for you for at least seven days, take rest, do not do excessive work in heat and sun outside for fifteen days. What are these “practices”? They are supporting activities that accelerate healing, that is all. Sometimes I will also say, simplify your life, minimize your activities. Do not do those things which are totally unnecessary that simply eat up your time, recommendations are given every now and then, but I do not stress too much on it. For example, if you want to watch a movie, don't want to meditate on some philosophical concepts, go and watch a movie, that is much better.

But then I assume that that student will have the required self-discipline to come back to reading or listening or contemplating after watching the movie. So why not go and watch a movie that is supportive of your practice, that raises good questions. The fiction is also good, most of Indian teachings are embedded into fiction. Some people only read the fiction, they do not even get what is the message there. They are meant to change your lives, people enjoy them like entertainment, but they never learn from it. These are supporting activities that will support your spiritual goal, if there is anything left. Then sometimes I say, okay, your practice is to remain aware 24x7. And then I do not stress on it also. I'll just say it and then leave it. Do it if you want, if you don't want, don't do it, there is no need to remain aware. Why is there a need? Yes, if your lifestyle is such that it is causing a lot of suffering, then as a medicine, you are supposed to remain aware.

That is what the doctor will tell you. Okay, this kind of food is causing you allergies or diabetes or something, stay away from it. You need to do it all the time for the rest of your life. So the same thing. See, you're not happy, you're not blissful, you're not peaceful in your life. So what is the medicine recommended for that? Stay aware all the time 24x7. If there is an onslaught of desires, there are many pending desires that you cannot even sleep, then, you need to extend your awareness into the dreams and sleep and subtle states because that is going to cause births later on. So one thing may lead to another and the student may ask, how can I know all these things that you are telling me? Yes, the knowledge of the Maya enters here. So there are practices to know the Maya. And then there can be an interest in some people to manipulate the Maya, to manipulate the illusion. And then you need to get into some hardcore practices for that, which is beyond the path of knowledge. Experimentation is recommended, but not involvement. Do not get involved in these things.

Similarly, worship is not recommended on the path of knowledge. People are discouraged from worshipping anything at all. But if you have this intention or a desire to manipulate Maya, then worship is the path. So it is discouraged when you are seeking the truth because the worship is going to take you into something which is not true. But when you are seeking to fulfill your desires, then worship is recommended. Totally depends on the makeup of the mind of the seeker.

So sometimes, it can cause confusion to other people like, okay, that day you were telling that do not worship anything. These things are illusions. These things only perpetuate your desire seeking. And today you are telling me that go and worship this and that. So please see that all teachings are not for all. There is no general teaching at this stage. The general teachings are over. You are Brahman, you are Atman, there is Maya, there is Oneness, these are general teachings. As soon as it comes to practices, they are very, very specific. And that is why I started the personal call thing because I saw that this can be misinterpreted. So we check the mind of the seeker. What is there? What does he want? And then recommend something. When I say worship is okay because you want it, then other students should not take it as general guidance. It is not for everyone. Sometimes I say that stay alone, stay in solitude, and this is not for everyone. If you are already peaceful, if you are already not loaded with people and all distractions, then it is not for you. Then you don't need to leave your city and settle in the jungle.

A little bit of common sense is expected. From students, but yes, hand holding is necessary sometimes because sometimes if a student is young or an absolute beginner, then a little bit of hand holding is necessary. That is where you will find me talking about practices. Otherwise, no recommendation at all. On the direct path, there are no corrective practices also. If there are problems in the personality or in the body, nothing is required to be done here.

Ashish is saying, stillness of mind is not coming yet. Keep going in circles where a checkpoint comes to say that who is noticing lack of stillness of mind, go there. Mind stillness or lack doesn't impact me, hence was checking.

Stillness of mind, yes, it will not be there if there are remains of ignorance. So instead of trying to practice stilling the mind and keeping the ignorance, get rid of the ignorance, cut it from the roots. And then the stillness comes automatically. There is no practice to still the mind while keeping the ignorance. Which you do for 10 minutes hoping that my whole life will be peaceful now. But the rest of the 24 hours are spent in impurities. Spend on doing things which ignorance is making you do. Then how can you expect stillness of mind? That is what I liked in the direct path that they attacked directly on the root cause. Instead of treating the symptoms.

When you are calling, then I keep listening to you. Actually, I do not say much when you call. You must have noticed this. I listen because that is what is going to give me the clues about the root problem, the root causes. So it is very easy sometimes. The ignorance shows up in the questions or in the answers or in the descriptions, in the spiritual goals and on. And then it becomes easy. Otherwise, what I do is I simply read the mind of the student. Now let me tell you the secret. Just like I can read your mind, you can also do that. Why can't you read your mind? It is your mind. Why can't you do that? If you do that, you will find out the ignorance hiding behind something or the other, some belief or some desire or some fear. And then you can find a cure for it by yourself. Because as soon as the ignorance is seen, it is guaranteed that it will be destroyed. The ignorance hides in the shadows of the mind and it becomes difficult to remove it. And that causes a behavior pattern or thinking pattern which makes your mind restless.

That is why I never prescribe any meditations for stilling the mind. I have tried it for many years. They do not do anything. At least they never did anything for me. Yes, for some people, it may give them relief for a few minutes. And for some people, like many beginners, when they get this technique, they experience peace. That can be a good starting point there. But the impurities remain. I am not saying that every kind of meditation will fail. Probably you are made for a meditation which is working for you only. So do not be discouraged. You need to explore. Do not make practice your life goal. Your life is not meant for practicing. Once it becomes a lifestyle, well, it is no more practice now. It is a lifestyle. It is how you live. It is not a practice which you do besides your life. Life is going on one track and then you are trying to run on the other track because the practice says so. Is this going to bring peace of mind or a happy life? No.

Session 44

Nick has a comment. How to see or convert anything including me as Brahman, when Brahman is unknowable, non-existent. When I try to do that, everything becomes absent, but I don't know what to do after that.

If you don't know what to do, do not do anything. Your nature is not of the doer, your nature is just being. So what will you need to do to just be? Nothing at all.

Meditation or practices or self-inquiry also is not meant to motivate the person to do something. It is your ignorance that I'll get this or I'll get that out of meditation or some other practice. That ignorance comes because of the worldly indoctrination, the conditioning, because in the world you get something only after doing, only after moving, only after effort, using your mind or your body, otherwise you don't get anything, otherwise you don't get your desires fulfilled in the world, and the same mentality, same conditioning, it is used to fulfill your spiritual goals, fulfill your spiritual desires.

For example, here there is a desire to see everything as me, as Brahman, what kind of effort will do that? No, none. It does not take effort. If it is taking effort, that means it has to do with something else, and that purification or your worldly matters are not solved, the guru has prescribed something as a medicine, but that does not mean that everything will become Brahman for you. It cannot be done by practice, it cannot be done by effort. It is like working very very hard to make the mango trees produce mangoes. It is the nature of the mango tree to produce mangoes, you don't need to do too much. Just don't cut the tree, that is all. Not doing is the essence.

It is good that you don't know what to do, otherwise you would have wasted your time and energy after that thing. Don't do anything to become the Brahman, just like you don't do anything to make the mango tree produce mangoes. It does it by itself. The Brahman is the being, it is the existence. So what can you do to make the existence look like existence? Nothing. So what is this mind doing? It is trying to get something. I don't think that mind knows that there is nothing to get, there is nothing to do. You need to stop getting, you need to stop doing and then what is, is already here. There are many concepts on top of this being, all you need to do is undo. Undo that which you think is going to convert everything into Brahman.

What can we do to convert a rock into gold? Not possible because the gold is gold, rock is rock. And what can we do to convert gold into gold? Now it is even more impossible because, I don't know, by some miracle or by some chemical process you can probably convert rock into gold, who knows. But it is impossible to convert gold into gold. What can you do? Simply realize that it is gold. If it is dirty, if you have dirty glasses on, which is a metaphor for the ignorance, then clean the glasses. If your glasses are cloudy and cannot distinguish what is gold, what is rock, that does not mean that something is wrong out there. It simply means that you need to clean your glasses. That is cleaning the ignorance. It cannot happen by effort or doing. Know that very well. Gold cannot become gold simply by doing something to it. All you need to do is clean up your false belief that it is not Brahman.

There are some assumptions here in this comment, which is a very good comment actually. There are many assumptions that I am not Brahman and I need to convert into Brahman. How is that possible? If you are not Brahman, then what are you? Something outside Brahman, is it possible? The definition of Brahman is everything. All that is, is Brahman. If you imagine something outside of it, the definition covers it into Brahman. The definition itself includes it into Brahman. So how can you convert everything into Brahman, which is already Brahman? Give up your ignorance that it is not Brahman. I mean, it does not require any grand experience. It is just the definition that everything there is has been named as Brahman and it is seen that the nature of the Brahman is consciousness, nothing else but consciousness. Whatever appears in the Brahman is also consciousness, nothing else but consciousness.

Let us define the pond full of water as Brahman and then what do you need to do to convert the water into water? Wash your eyes properly, wake up, open your eyes and see that it is water. It has been defined as water, it has to be water. Now what about the waves on the pond, do you need to convert the waves into water by some effort? No, just realize that, oh I am stupid, I am just taking the waves apart from water. I am thinking that the waves are not water. That is all. How much effort does it take? Nothing at all. Yes, you can keep thinking about it for the rest of your life that, oh the waves are not water, I need to convert the waves into water. Maybe there is some good meditation or technique there, out there, probably I need to worship somebody to get this knowledge that waves are water.

Everybody says the same thing. I have never seen any guru or scripture say that you will find the truth by effort. It is always non effort. There can be effort to reach that teaching, there can be effort to clear your mind in order to grasp the teaching. Once the teaching is here, no effort. Because your conditioning is strong that I must do something to get something, to know something, I must take admission somewhere, I must pay some big amount of money. This is all ignorance. I have never seen any guru say that. Okay, pay me this much and attend my ashram for five years and you will know the Brahman. Nobody says that. What do they say then? They say, you are Brahman right now, right here. And after that is said, all you need to do is, drop your ignorance that you are not Brahman.

How to drop it? By simple self enquiry. I am not an experience. How much time it took? Ten seconds. All experience is illusory. How much time it took? Another ten seconds. There are no two. If you have only two categories here, one - the experience, the other is the experiencer. Is there anything else in this existence? No. Another ten seconds to realize this. There are only two categories. If one of them is illusory, what is left? Not two. Thirty seconds. How much effort does it take? There are only two categories. One is the experience, when the other is the experiencer. You fully know that there is experience and there is experiencer. You don't need to run to the Himalayas to see that. And that out of one, the experience is illusory. There, everything is Brahman. That which remains as the reality, as the substratum of everything is defined as Brahman. It is easier than saying one plus one is two. That takes a lot of effort. You will see the nursery school children, who struggle to write A, B, C, D or one, two, three, it takes effort. How much effort does it take to know your true nature? Nothing.

He has also commented that, how to see everything when Brahman is unknowable? The Brahman is not meant to be known. You only need to know this much that I am Brahman. The Brahman is meant to be, that's all. Being is Brahman, not knowing. Knowing is Maya. Knowing is just vibrations in the mind. That is also a form of Brahman, but you cannot point at the knowing and say, look, this is the whole Brahman here in the thoughts, in my mind. That is knowing. Brahman is being, and therefore, it is not knowable. That which is known is experience, not the experiencer.

And then he adds - unknowable/nonexistent. So if Brahman is nonexistent, how come you are here? How come this world is here? And how come there is this satsang going on? Let us see this very clearly. Brahman is defined as the whole of the existence, and you are calling it nonexistent. Choose your words very carefully. The first two words, convert, see, they are wrong. You cannot convert Brahman into Brahman. You cannot see the Brahman. You can only be it. The second word, unknowable is right, but probably he does not know what “unknowable” means. He does not even know what “knowable” means. And the other word is completely wrong, nonexistent. It is not nonexistent. You can call it empty. Empty is the correct word. Nirgun is the correct word. Nonexistent means you are not there, means nothing is there, means this satsang is not there. Is it your direct experience? Is the nonexistence your direct experience?

What does that show? That there is a lot of listening going on here, but there is no contemplation going on. There is no effort being made to understand the teachings. Yes, he is having the samadhi experiences, he is having the empty mind experiences, he is having the bliss experiences, but they are meaningless for him, completely meaningless. So my suggestion here is that, Nick, you should stop gathering concepts, start seeing. See with your own eyes, is everything absent? Did somebody convert Brahman into Brahman or has anybody seen Brahman? Is the Brahman non-existent? What is the definition of Brahman? Try to see it also.

You heard these things and you have done this since probably childhood, but you never sat down to find a meaning in it. It is all just a pile of words in your mind, that is all. And you desperately try to connect it to something. Hopefully I will get the proper experience one day. Hopefully I will be successful one day to become what I am. And this is what is going on. And not only for Nick, it is going on for many people actually. You have converted the 30 second process into a 30 year project. Spirituality is very simple. It is the simplest of simple things and it is the most ordinary thing in the universe. Brahman is the most ordinary. Consciousness is the simplest. It is so simple that it does not even take intelligence to grasp what it is. Are you having an experience? Yes. Is there a separation between the experience and the experiencer? There is a separation between two experiences, no, the experience is happening where the experiencer is. That is Brahman, took 20 seconds.

What have you made your spiritual practice into? My whole job, endless amount of talking is of actually no use. That's why many times I think that I should stop it, it is useless. The whole thing is to bring you to these 20 seconds, and actually I don't do it in the end. I do it in the beginning. All the talks start like this actually. After that, it is all a cleaning up of the garbage because if there is too much ignorance, then this message is lost in that. And that takes effort, to clean up the garbage is the effortful thing. That's why I sometimes say, don't give up the effort. If you think you can become the one, the only one, there is, which you already are, by effort, then please do it. At least before doing the effort, try to find what effort it requires and who else has achieved the same spiritual goal by effort. At least try to get one example of it.

Ashish is saying, effort only to remove ignorance, nothing new gets created or transformed.

Exactly. The effort is going to show you the same thing which is right now, right here. You come back after the effort of ten years and you will see exactly the same thing which is right here. So even after effort, you will find that effortlessness is the end of seeking, not the effort. Effort will continue the seeking.

Nick is saying, why can't I change physical laws?

What do you mean by I? Have you tried self-enquiry to find out what is “I”? Is I the doer or is I the witness? And is this “I” trying to change anything? Physical laws or something? Are there any physical laws? And if it is Maya, why do you want to change it? Why not just discard it as Maya? It is like seeing a mirage in the desert. I know it is not water, but I want to change it into something else. Isn't that stupidity?

Is there a physical world? The physical world is a mirage, it's a dream. And if you want to change it, there is no I there to change it. The I or the ego or the doer is an illusion. Can one illusion change another illusion? Can the wave change the water into milk or something? This body-mind that you are calling as I are waves in the water. It is a creation. It is itself an illusion. Can this illusion do anything to change other illusions that it is appearing among? The body-mind is also appearing just like the physical world. It is a part of the physical world. It is not real and it seems to be doing many things. It seems to be thinking about many things. Among these thoughts and among these activities is this one thought that I want to change the water out of which I came. The wave is saying now that okay, it's boring, I want to change the water itself. The ego cannot do anything. The ego is being done. It is not the doer.

There is no doer. And because there is no physical world, there is no possibility of changing it. If it were real, then you could have changed something there. Imagine you are dreaming and in the dream you want to change something. You have a small house, you want to construct a big house. So you do the effort/thinking that yes, why not? I can change everything here. So you make a very big mansion. When you woke up, was there a house? Was anything done?

There will be laws there also in the dream. Your dream house will need dream bricks and so on and you will need to spend dream money to get it done. But when you wake up, did you change anything there? Was there anything at all to change? The dream character is thinking, I need to change the laws of the dream. But look from the angle of waking up, there are no laws there. It is all mind created.

What you are trying to change is also mind created. Because it is not there, it is not possible to change anything. What is possible is to drop the ignorance. It is possible to drop this I, that is doing these unnecessary activities. Why is there a doer still there? Because you have not understood the concept itself. You have not understood the meaning of I also. If you knew what I is, you wouldn't ask this question that I want to change something. Because you would know that I am the witness, I am not the doer. And then this question will never arise. Your project should not be to change the physical laws, they are great as they are. Your project should be to change yourself. Drop the ignorance first. That is my suggestion.

Nick is saying, how do I know that other minds exist when I can experience all others also in my mind? Sometimes I feel like maybe solipsism is true, but I know all my mind is an illusion.

This noodle soup is because you do not know the difference between mind and yourself. You are thinking that I have a mind and you are thinking that you are experiencing in my mind. Remember, you do not have anything. The pure emptiness does not claim that I have this. It is the mind claiming I have a mind. Since the mind is an illusion, it cannot claim itself. That is just thoughts in the mind. So look beyond the thoughts, look beyond your thinking process.

Because the I is not known, therefore the ego is claiming the mind also. It is my mind. It is okay to use this kind of language when you are talking to a worldly person, my mind, my body, my house, my car. It is not okay in Advaita. There is only one mind. There are no other minds. Just like you are not there, the others are also not there. Again, go to your dream and see that there are many dream characters there besides you. They are all talking to you. You do not know what is in their minds, but are there different minds that magically encroached into your mind, in your dream? Is it even possible? Because the dream was created by one mind, all the people in the dream never had a separate mind. Similarly, here also, I do not have a mind. The I is a witness of the mind. What is being witnessed is being witnessed through the limitations of the senses and the body. You do not know other minds because there are none.

Anand is saying, throughout life, we listen to and develop the belief that spirituality is difficult to understand. That is what makes my spiritual understanding difficult. After watching your videos, I found the only thing I have to do is just to remove garbage in my mind. Introspect.

Very good. Now this person is truly on the path of knowledge. Introspection is the key word here. Do not simply listen. Whatever is said is in alignment with your experience or not? That which is said, whether it is really there or not. For that, you will need to bite a small bite at a time. Probably you do a marathon of watching videos or reading books without sitting down and trying to see what is actually said there. What is written in the book? What are these great people saying? Have you sat down and thought about it? Even for a few minutes? It does not take hours. I can guarantee you. You get the key word here, introspect. The introspection is fast because it is thinking without thinking. Even breathing takes a little bit of time and effort. It goes at the rate of 20 per minute or something like this. It is effortful. It takes energy. It is just in front of you, actually. Is it really there in front of me? How much time does it takes? The insight arises in a split second. That is because it is already there. Because it is already your knowledge. It was covered up by a false impression that you gathered from society, from parents, from your religions and philosophies. That is possible to break in a millisecond, actually. Yes, if you get stuck somewhere, then you will need to put a question mark there and you think about that question. You check the question also. You need to find out the words that are being used in the question and you need to find out whether I really understand these words behind this question. Do I really understand the “I” word or the “mind” word or the “know” word or the “illusion” word? How many people do that? They don't, actually. Because they have already assumed that I know everything, I don't need to check what words I am using and then it becomes a word soup.

Philosophy means going to the core of things. Like I said, Brahman is unknowable. But he never sat down and thought about the unknowability or knowability. What is knowable? What is unknowable? Actually, that is the first thing that we introduce on the path of knowledge. First we put down the means of knowledge. What is knowable? What is unknowable? What is unknown? Isn't the primary teaching like this, the ABCD? What is knowability? What is mind? So on. The question is there and you cannot find an answer. The reason is an assumption that I already know what words I am using in the question. If you knew what words meant, the question would resolve in a millisecond. That is guaranteed, actually. If you knew what Brahman is, what I is, what mind is and whatever, the question will be destroyed even before it comes up. It is simple seeing. That is what I call introspecting. Simple seeing. Oh, it's like this. Done. You are free for the day now. If your introspection is taking many hours, something is really wrong. That means you have already assumed the meanings of the words. You do not have established means of knowledge. You do not have a criteria for what is true, what is not true. There is a complete failure on the path of knowledge.

Nick is saying - But it's not possible to change anything in all that the mind created.

You are assuming that there is an agent which causes change. Remember, there is no cause and effect also. And there is no agent to cause the change. The change is. The change is not being caused by anything. Whenever you do something, you change something, you think I did it. But isn't that ignorance? Everything happens. That is direct experience. There is nobody to change anything. Remember, nothing is changing also. If nothing is changing, is it possible to change it? Brahman is defined as everything, which means all possibilities already present there. It is the unchanging one. If there are no qualities there to change, what can change there? Nothing at all. What appears as change is mind-created and there is no agent there which is doing it. Remember, the mind is not you. You are only a witness. You are not the cause of changes.

Atman does not cause anything. The Atman is unrelated to Maya. How many people have this kind of notion that I am causing things even when they know I am Atman? I'm enlightened now. I know myself, I know my nature and I'm trying to fix things. Why not? You should try to fix these things. There is nothing wrong in that. But do it fully knowing that there is no causal relation between you and what appears. That which is trying to fix things is a part of the dream. It will keep trying. All possibilities are there so everything is fixed and everything has happened already. You are the watcher of the drama. Why are you trying to do something? Why is a Jnani always in bliss? Because he is not doing anything. As soon as you start doing something, your bliss will be gone. Because now the identification shifts to the doer.

Identification is a part of the dream also. Nothing is really lost here. But once you have finished doing, at least come back to your real nature once again. “Oh, it was a good day. I did a lot of work today”. And then drop this idea also. Drop this I thought also. Just remind yourself that this is happening as an illusion. The illusion of doer appeared for a while. Back to bliss, how much time does it take? You should be in a very flurry of activity, act like a hurricane all day, but at the end of the day, after your dinner, just take a look at this activity and say to yourself, “Oh, that was a nice illusion. Nice illusion of doer”. And then go to sleep.

Non-doing does not mean that you stop everything from happening. That is again ignorance, isn't it? Because I am the one who is stopping everything from happening. Non-doing is not that. Non-doing is simply seeing that there is no doer. That's why they are in bliss, even on the ground zero where things are happening. Isn't that interesting? When you are in the middle of the war in activity, it is real. The ego takes full control. The doer is in the forefront. Nothing is wrong in that. What is wrong is before you go to bed, you assume that everything was real. That is how you go to sleep, assuming that everything that I witness is real. Here is a problem. Some people ask me how to remain aware all the time. Well, if you have knowledge, you don't need to do anything to remain aware. You can't remain aware because probably the conviction is not there. Activity or no activity, I am always present. When I realized this, the awareness came very naturally. In spirituality, less is always more. Don't make an effort to remain aware. Grow in your conviction. I am always there. And then let it go. Realize the change is an illusion. Stop changing. Realize that there is nothing which changes. There is nobody to make a change and clear up the garbage. That is your task now. Clean up your mind because you said it's my mind. So this is your job now. Otherwise you can say it is not my mind and then you can abide, simply abide. Don't do the donkey work of cleaning the mind. It's not yours. Why are you trying to do that?

Anand is saying, I feel cause and effect is a part of my manifestation.

Yes, the cause and effect is also a projection of the mind on what is happening. It simply relates these things and puts a link between them. Whatever you are witnessing is yourself. You are witnessing yourself as deformed by the mind. You are witnessing the consciousness as being projected through the deformation tendency of the mind. What is this deformation? It is also called ignorance, by the way. What is real ignorance? Not this deformation of the mind. It is a consequence of necessity. Assuming that whatever deformations of consciousness are being witnessed are true and separate from consciousness. That is ignorance. Once you start seeing, everything will be revealed to you.

In non-duality, no witness. The whole cannot be witnessed, it is nirgun, there needs to be deformation of what is. The deformation is produced by the senses, which are limited. The senses and the whole mental structure is a possibility in the Brahman. And necessarily, the experience that is given to the consciousness in the states of dreaming and waking, which are one and the same. They are all dreaming states. Even your experience after death and experience of the other worlds and whatever, is a dream. So, in that state, where there is an experience and memory and mind, it is necessarily a deformation of what is. Because the whole, which is nirgun, cannot be witnessed without giving it a color. Like a clear glass cannot be seen. You must have seen those big glasses in the showrooms. Sometimes you cannot find a door. You think it is open and you try to go through the glass. Because it is clear, it cannot be seen. It needs to be dirtied a little bit. You need to put some paint on it. Put a big X mark on it - Do not enter from here.

That is what the mind is doing. It is a necessary outcome of how Brahman is. So, did the Brahman acquire qualities because the state changed? No. There were no qualities. Whatever appeared was an illusion. And it disappears as the state changes again. If it were real, it wouldn't disappear. That is the definition of real in Advaita. It does not change. Remember that. If whatever appears in the waking state or any other state is real, it won't disappear. But that is not our experience. Our experience says that everything is impermanent. Everything disappears. Isn't this beautiful? Out of nothing appears something, which is actually nothing, is taken as something real because of the ignorance present in the Jeev. And the Jeev suffers it or enjoys it. In Sanskrit, there is only one word for suffering and enjoyment. They were extremely smart people. The only word is bhoga. The one who suffers or enjoys it is the bhokta. That's why I did not use that word. I used the word experiencer, which is more neutral. But whatever is suffered and enjoyed is seen as real. This is ignorance. When you drop this ignorance, see things as they are. You are enlightened. The suffering goes away. And the enjoyment also goes away. And now you are established in your nature, which is pure bliss. Isn't it simple? Is it complicated? Do you take 40 years of searching or reading 1000 books to know this much? When Gautam Buddha said, the form is emptiness and the emptiness is form. How much time does it take to know that? No time. He did not say the form appeared out of emptiness by a cause of some kind.

Actually, I am a big fan of Buddhism in this regard. They mercilessly destroy cause and effect. Especially Nagarjuna. Nothing can stand in front of a Buddhist scholar regarding cause and effect. The emptiness is uncaused. End of story. You don't need to find a cause there. The dream state is my favorite state when such things are to be explained. Let's take an example, say in a dream you are hungry and somebody offers you very delicious food. You were suffering from hunger. You are in pain and there is a lot of food there. Now you eat the dream food, and your hunger is satisfied by the food. So you say in the dream, the food caused satisfaction. The food is the cause that I am alive. When you wake up, what is the cause and what is the effect?

Can somebody tell me? In the dream, the food caused satiation. You felt very good and you say the food is the cause of my happiness. When you wake up, was there really a cause? Was anything really happening? Dream food causes your hunger to be satisfied. Did it really happen? And if not, how is it even possible that you came to this conclusion in the dream? Remember, the conclusions about the dreaming state are applicable in the waking state also because the waking state is just a better dreaming state. It is just like you watch a bad quality video where everything is blurry and you don't know what is happening and then you switch the resolution to HD. Same video, now everything is clear. So, your night dream and your day dream, the difference is of resolution but the same principles can be transferred to the waking state.

Where did the cause and effect in the dream come from? Was anything caused? Was there any effect? Or was the cause and effect also illusions, projections of the mind on whatever appeared there? See, the mind is a very tricky thing. Suppose you desperately want a job and you go to that interview wearing your favorite shirt. Let us say it is a blue shirt, a very costly shirt. You go there to impress those people. And what happens is that they reject you, they tell you - you are no good for any job actually. Now, in the next interview, you are not going to wear that shirt. Why? Because the mind says the shirt is the cause of your failure. It's an unlucky shirt. Have you not seen these things? Now, did the shirt really cause failure in the interview? Wasn't it a superstition of some kind? But the mind believes so badly that you are not going to do it for the rest of your life.

If you don't know the mind, then what will you know in your life? Nothing. If you don't know the nearest thing, nearest experience, forget about knowing anything else. It holds on to the cause and effect. It is an ignorance of some kind, but it does it. Because somehow survival is connected to cause and effect. Somehow that is how it is all arranged. And therefore this mind finds it very useful, the concept of cause and effect. I sow the seeds, they sprout and they give me food. Seed is the cause of the crops. So it makes you survive. And I should not touch the fire. Fire is the cause of the pain. And that keeps us alive. Or the wife thinks the husband is the cause of my happiness, survival. She keeps the husband around.

If you try to apply these things which appear in Maya to that which is not Maya, what happens? Apply the things which are applicable in the illusion to that which is not illusion, what is going to happen? It is called madness, isn't it? It is called ignorance. It is like the situation of the shirt and the interview. However, the mind will never stop doing it. Remember, the mind is an experience. It does not matter how much you want the mind to behave in a specific way, it will behave in the way it behaves. Probably the mind laughs at you because there is always this thought that I am the mind. I can do things. Just like he said, I can change things. Go ahead and change whatever you want. This is a free country, isn't it? Cause the consciousness, cause the Maya. Nobody can stop you. However, it does not change anything. Our ignorance does not change the reality. Fortunately.

Ashish is saying, when the ignorance of I is known by the mind, but yet the activities of this Aham are still running, so can the path of Karma Yoga can help in achieving selflessness?

The mind cannot be selfless. This is the first thing. The I/ego is the embodiment of selfishness. It cannot become selfless. All you can do is expand its area of selfishness. Like, now it is concerned with only this body. Expand it. Expand the I to include your family also in it. Now do something for the family. Now expand it to include all your neighborhood and all your village and town also. And then expand it to include all the universe. So use the selfishness of the mind to overcome the selfishness. Although it will never become unselfish. It is like trying to make the fish climb a tree. The fish will not leave the water. There won't be any fish if you take out the fish from water. Similarly, there won't be any mind if you destroy its self-oriented behavior. So yes, that is called Karma Yoga because through the action, through the service, the selfishness can be overcome a little bit. But Mother Nature says it is impossible. You can do it for one mind, next time, next birth. It's the same thing. So what we prescribe as a permanent solution is to get rid of births and deaths. Stop getting incarnated as a selfish organism. There you go. Permanent solution. Don't try to fix that which Mother Nature has come up with after billions and billions of years of evolution. That cannot be changed effectively. All you can do is drop it. If you don't like it, drop it. Nobody is asking you to carry it around forever. Is anybody forcing you into human birth? No, it is your decision. Why is there a human birth? Because of the unfulfilled desires. Why are there unfulfilled desires? Nothing wrong in desires. Your attachment with the desires. You have assumed that they are my desires. That is the problem. And that causes repetitive existence. So what we do is we give up the desires. It is not my desire. And that is the essence of Karma Yoga. And then you can say that it is the higher desire, will of God and so on. That requires a little bit of surrender, which many people cannot do. They do not do it. They have converted this into a business of accumulation. You can see it around. Why do I say it is impossible? Because that is what I see. Millions of cycles have gone by. Thousands of great teachers have delivered their message. Some got killed. Some are getting worshipped. Has the mind given up its tendency of selfishness? No. That is what I see and that is what I say. I do not give you a theory. It is our direct experience that the mind cannot be unselfish. Yes, you can increase its area of activity and assume everything is me. On the path of knowledge, there is no need to assume also. Already everything is me. You will find that the mind-body organism functions in a selfish way. So you accept it. You surrender to that also. And you simply discard this illusion completely. Instead of fixing the illusion here and there. It is like a wooden car. It does not run. And you work on it all day. It will probably run one day. It is a toy car. There is no engine in it. But you expect it to improve it. No. Throw it away. Buy a brand new car. Get a Maruti. With a good engine. Spend money on it. Don't fix the toy car. That is why on the path of knowledge, we drop the Karma Yoga and all kinds of yoga. We get the Maruti. Which is liberation. Get the liberation.

Why are you after fixing these things, these mechanisms? Which have actually stabilized very well. The selfishness of the mind-body ensures the survival of this machine. And this machine is very efficient in providing us a useful experience. Why do you want to fix it? Isn't it perfect? That is the problem. Humans want to do something which nature has already done in a million times better way. Don't do this. If you don't like the mind, you don't like the human birth, you don't like the world, leave it then. It's not yours. Don't be attached. This body is not mine. The mind is not mine. The world is not mine. Where is the scope of improving anything here? No, but in my remaining life, I want it to be comfortable. Yes, that is the practical thing. For that you don't need Karma Yoga or Gyan Yoga or any kind of yoga. Do that which is necessary. That's all. If something is bothering you in this life, well, do something. Clean it up. You don't need to make it a spiritual goal. This is the goal of my life, to fix the planet. No, it is perfect as it is. Fix your goal first.

Ashish is saying, can we live without the thought of the I? Is it possible?

Yes. With the proper training of the mind, everything is possible. But you should ask yourself this question - Is it necessary? What will you achieve by that? Is the I-thought killing you? Is the I-thought causing misery for you? Is it necessary to get rid of the I?

Aryan is saying, the dream state is one phase. Waking state is a different phase. Both states are experienced by the soul. But in both states, ego is still there in the conscious and subconscious mind. And perceiving happens. If perceiving happens, cause and effect will be there.

Very good description. As long as there is illusion, the illusion will be seen as being done through the agencies of cause and effect. Yes. There is some proof in that. Although a Gyani does not see any cause and does not see any effect, an ignorant mind will see it. It is guaranteed that the ignorant mind operates in cause and effect and is bound by cause and effect. That is why we say that an ignorant mind is bound by Karma. Karma is the theory of cause and effect. For a Gyani or a Yogi, no cause, no effect.

Session 45

There was a very good question some time ago on the self-enquiry app and the question said - how to see that the individual is a product of the universal mind?

It is a very good question that many people will ask because sometimes I say that the individual is born out of the universal mind. That is a very approximate way of saying it but we do that in order to save time, we use language of ignorance assuming that people know what it means. But then sometimes those who are not initiated, those who have not seen the false individual, they will misunderstand it. So it is obvious, it is natural to ask.

First of all there is an assumption in the question which says that the individual is a product of the universal mind. It is a very rough way of saying that an individual is born out of the universal mind. A more accurate way will be - an individual is an appearance in the universal mind. That is more accurate. What is the nature of this appearance? It takes form and then it evolves for a while and then it is destroyed. So you can say the individual is an event in the universal mind. It is not an entity. Nature of this event is that it appears and then it changes for a while and then it is gone, destroyed.

What does that mean? It means that there is no separate thing that the universe produces which is called the individual mind or the individual or the organism or the Jeev, the separate self, human being, lower self, there are many names for this thing. It is not another construction apart from the universal mind. It is an event that happens in the universal mind. It is like a wave in the sea that rises for a while and then falls back.

Can we say that a wave is a product of the sea? In a very approximate way we can say that. Can we say that the wave arises out of the sea? Yes, that is also a good description and we can also say that the wave appears in the sea because obviously it is sea, it is water only. Our intellect or the discriminatory ability in the mind which divides things and names things has isolated a thing called wave out of the wholeness called water. That does not mean that the wave exists separately from the water.

So if you picture the universal mind as a sea of changes, a sea of changing memories, then you will find that the individual arises in this sea, is extracted out of, cut out of the background by the thinking ability in this individual itself. That is very paradoxical, isn't it? That which arises of wholeness thinks that I am separate. And then it falls back, the activity ceases in the memory and the memory returns back to its latent nature. So just like the wave cannot be taken out of the sea, cannot be seen as something else produced by the sea, similarly the individual is not separate from the universal. It is an event in the universal mind.

Now the assumption is out of the way. So we return to the question, how to see that the individual is a product of the universal mind? That was the question. How to understand this thing? There is only one way. That is to see that the individual is fake. Returning to our metaphor of the wave. See that the wave is an abstraction that is overlaid on the sea. It is changing sea, it is modulations in the water. And then the mind goes and abstracts a thing called a wave. Same thing has happened in the universal mind, something arises there as a change. It is so complex and evolved that it manages to know about itself. That is probably the only difference between the wave metaphor and the actual individual. The individual takes a form, the sea of memories produces a form, just like the water takes the form of the wave. The only thing is this form is very sophisticated. This form is also called the body.

At the bottom of the concept of the individual is the body that arises out of elements, then falls back into the elements. As soon as the body arises, because it is born in a community, in a society, it inherits not only the genetic material but also some concepts from the society. And the concepts are, for example, you are of this gender, you are of this surname, the family, and your name is this. You belong to this race, you belong to this religion, you belong to this nationality. You are short, you are tall, you are fat, you are slim. It is all based on the body really, but these concepts are pushed onto the little mind and this identification grows.

It is this database of identifications, it grows. It is like a brick house. If you take out a few bricks here and there, the house remains. If you take out a few kinds of identities from the individual, for example, you change the profession or you change the name, you can even change the gender these days, it is in fashion, the individual remains, because a few bricks here and there, if replaced in the house, does not make the house totally different. You will remember it as the same house. If it changes very slowly, you do not really notice a change there. The individual is similar. It keeps on adding bricks and it keeps on removing bricks, although the structure will stay. It is a flowing structure. It is a dynamic structure. And this is mostly a product of ignorance, which is uncritically accepting whatever you are told as truth, not seeing that the body is not me, not seeing that the body is an experience just like any other experience and not seeing that all these concepts were stuffed into your mind by other ignorant people who also have no clue what they are, who also think that they are a body or an individual.

You probably understand what a form is. Names means abstractions, concepts, interrelations. So once these names and forms are seen, the individual is seen as a perceptual form and as a conceptual form. That reveals its falsity, that reveals its fakeness, then the wave is seen as water, just like everything else in nature, everything else in this universal mind. Nature is just another name of the universal mind. Everything here is just a dynamic structure overloaded with concepts.

The concepts serve a very good function to stabilize the individual. For example, form keeps changing, the body keeps changing. But because it is being wrapped up in a name or a gender or a relation, my son, my daughter and my father and on, even after the form has changed completely, there are some wrappers around it that give it an illusion that it is the same form. So this is a trick of the mind actually. Stabilization process. For example, your car is broken and you change the seats of the car. And the seats are of the same color and same material as before, the seats are new now. But you are still going to call your car my car, it is the same car, you say.

Now you change the tires next year. You call it the same car. Then after two years you change some more parts, engine and all that. You install a new stereo and new steering wheel and on. You keep calling it my car. Why? Because it has the same number plate. It is probably the same color. Now when you change the number plate or the color also, you still call it my car because some other thing supports this concept of “my car”. You will say - oh it is a bit changed but it is the same thing. I have owned this car for the last 10 years, you will say.

Similarly, the body is formed at birth, it is tiny, it grows, we keep calling it the same individual. Because there are supporting experiences, supporting factors that keep it tied together somehow. The name remains the same. Even the non-physical things like attitudes, habits, voice, voice is not non-physical but it changes very slowly, at least after a certain age. Even after the face has changed and the overall nature of the person, whether the person is a hater, whether he is a loving character, whether he is sad or always jolly. When something changes in that person, we say that the person has changed. We do not say that a component is replaced in this flowing structure. If you go to somebody and say well a lot of your components have been replaced, you are no longer the same structure. He is going to either laugh or they will lock you up in asylum. Because this idea of an individual is ingrained in an average mind, it is taken as truth.

When you analyze the idea of an individual, you will never find the individual. What you will find is changing events, changing experiences. That is the real nature of the individual. It is a collection of changing experiences, somehow stabilized, threaded together as one entity. And it is also named as I, me. So that stabilizes it even more because identity is like a thread which keeps all these changing beads of different concepts and experiences together. Remove the I which is also fake. It is a non-entity. Once the falsity of the individual is known, you will see that what remains is universal. You don't need to understand a process through which the universal mind creates the individual. There is no such process. Because first, the individual is not a creation of the universal mind. That is only a rough way of saying. It is an arising, the universal mind has no human-like intention to do it. Intentions also arise in the universal mind or any other mind. It's all one mind actually.

And you don't need to find the individual also, how it was produced and on. You need to simply see that there is no individual and what remains in the universal. So if this individual here which is speaking is not real, what about the other individuals? Well, it is very easy. They are also not real. They are also not individuals. It is the same universal mind arising as different forms. It is the same sea in which many waves are being produced, of different shapes and sizes. The only thing is that this wave or this individual has intelligence. It forms these concepts and sees other forms as other individuals. This is necessary to form a bond or a society. Why is there a necessity to form a bond and to organize into a society? The answer is very clear - That is a survival advantage. Those organisms or those forms who had this tendency, they survived better. That is not the only possibility, there are many possibilities. If an organism is incapable of forming bonds in societies, then that organism must better be very strong. Then that organism will be endowed with very good abilities to find food and survive, to find shelter and it will be robust, and will be big, for example, tigers and eagles. Anyhow, for the purpose of mating and reproduction, they need to contact other individuals.

There will be a rudimentary individual there. Actually it is very difficult to find any organism who is not individualized to some extent. Even trees and ants have a little bit of individuality. So this trait is there since the beginning, when a single cell combines with other cells to form a structure, a multicellular organism, some cells, they form the tail and some other cells, they form the eye and so on, as soon as they get together, this whole group is able to survive better than one individual cell. This process of coming together of different forms is inherent in biology or in evolution. As below, so above. Same tendencies are repeated at every layer of organization. Are there such groups, societies above humans? Yes, there are, about which I keep talking, but I never give you any proof or evidence because that is currently not in the experience of an ordinary human. As we evolve, we'll find those higher layer groups. Sometimes I call them the soul-disk or the group minds.

There are higher and higher configurations of these societies and at the core of such groupism is a tendency to survive better. That is the job of any structure in the universal mind. It tends to extend itself, it tends to sustain and grow. Why is that? Because that is not the only possibility. Because there are structures that don't do that, there is no tendency to sustain there. And what happens? Because of impermanence, they are gone, they are not seen. Some are gone in a split second and some are gone in hours or days or even months. Like sand dunes are formed in the desert but there is no tendency in the sand dune to protect itself. It is at the mercy of winds. There is a structure there. It looks beautiful also, but does not stay. So the more complex the structure is and has more tendencies you find for self-sustaining, the more individualized and social it will be. It is an outcome of self-organization of structures. It is very natural and it is by necessity. The universal mind did not decide one fine day that, oh, there is a need for individuals, now let me produce individuals and through an act of magic it started producing individuals. No, this is a stupid belief. It is very beautiful and it is very, very natural that this will happen. It is an outcome of necessity, given all the possibilities. This possibility is the most beautiful, most natural, the possibility of self-organization, individualization and social grouping produces optimum structures.

I will move on to the next question, which is the featured question. It was a very innocent question, looks like it was from a beginner. The question is, why was I born?

Now you can see that this is a newcomer because not only is there a “birth” here, there is also “I” here and there is a reference to the past here. This is a “why” question. Now a seasoned seeker will never ask these questions. I am not saying don't ask, but a lot can be seen from one question here. “Why was I born”? So let's analyze the question.

Birth, there is no such thing. I, there is no such thing. Past, there is no such thing. Why, there are no reasons in existence, it is acausal.

Now you can see the depth of ignorance here, although it is a very innocent question. However, you cannot tell such a person that look, all these things that appear in your question, they are your imaginations and then go home, because definitely a newcomer, an initiated seeker. So you will need to say something which is wrong.

Self-realization is mandatory in order to answer these questions or in order to destroy the question because as it is obvious, there is no answer to this question. “I” points to the individual and we spent the last half an hour destroying the individual. Going back to our metaphor, you can ask the same question to the sea, like - why was the wave born? There can be two meanings to this question - what is the process? How is the wave born? What is the reason? What is the causal factor?

The second is a meaning, a purpose. In the case of water, we cannot say anything. It is the nature of the water to oscillate and the waves are the expression. There is no purpose. There is no meaning. It is a structure that rises and it falls and the causal mechanism, if you want to answer it in that way, is also nothing. It is the nature of the water. It has the energy, it is oscillating. Change is the nature of the surface of water. It changes, that's all. Sometimes some forms appear, sometimes they disappear. Sometimes they create a complicated structure. For example, a whirlpool becomes very complicated. It looks like it is a stable structure, but sooner or later the energy runs out of it and then it returns to water. There was water in the beginning, water in the middle and water in the end. There was no whirlpool, it's only an appearance.

First of all, this thing that you call “I” is not you. There is no such thing as “I”. It is a concept. And second, there was no birth, it is an appearance. The universal memory takes form because there is a possibility, out of necessity, there are all possibilities. There is a possibility for structures to self-organize and form things like bodies and so on. Yes, the body was born, you can roughly say like this. It is not accurate. More accurate will be - the body appeared. There is no body in reality. It is all vibrations, it is all oscillations. And the “I” is then formed as a concept on top of the body, just like we saw a few minutes ago.

Now the problem is as soon as you assume that this structure is me, you will need to find a reason for it. Because everything else has a reason. Why is this thing without reason? The purpose is now required because that is what the mind is demanding. The intellect will not accept anything without a purpose, especially my own purpose. How can I be meaningless? Yes, I can imagine some things and other people, their lives are meaningless, they are good for nothing. But how can I be meaningless? How can I be purposeless? There must be some grand mechanism and there must be grand meaning behind my appearance. You can see that is how the ego talks, that is how the ego thinks. It is always all lower qualities there, pride and self-importance and fear that probably it is not a good thing that I am meaningless and also ignorance that the body is me. So, the ego throws up this individual and the intellect cannot make any sense of it because you can see there is a little bit of light here, there is a little bit of intelligence here that question appeared. In many egos, this question also will not appear. They are in so much darkness there that they do not even ask these questions, they will say it is a stupid question. I know why I was born. I was born to eat more, to reproduce more, to grow more, to become heavier and to command more people, to rise higher in the society. That is why I was born, to enjoy more and if I don't get all these things, I will do whatever it takes. This is usually the “purpose”, and the ego is not bothered about logic. The question comes from the intellect but because there is total darkness there.

When the question arises, there is a necessity to find a reason and it cannot find a reason. That is absolutely good, that should be the outcome actually. That is a good outcome that you cannot find a purpose because if you find one, then it is certainly going to be wrong and then you will live a life directed by wrong purpose. “You” here means this individual, this wave which appeared for a time being. You can see these four kinds of experiences now to find out the purpose for. It is not that it is totally lacking a purpose. For a false thing, there is a false purpose also. This concept of the false purpose, we never speak about, but probably it is a good time to explain it a little bit. What is a false purpose?

You must have seen those toy sets like the kitchen set, the doctor set and the soldier set where there are tiny tanks and toy guns and a soldier or there is this medical equipment and medicines and on, or the kitchen set where there are utensils and LPG gas and stove, things like that. Now, it is very clear that the purpose of the real utensil or the real things in your kitchen is to cook food, to serve food, is to store food and so on. They are necessary. But what is the purpose of these toys? They look like the original. What is the purpose there? You can say play, yes, but look at it from the point of view of a child who is playing. There the purpose of the toy knife is to cut the toy vegetable and to cook it on a toy stove, and then feed the doll, which is a fake doll, to a fake person, feed the fake food to the fake doll. There are a series of purposes and meanings here from the point of view of the child who is ignorant, there is a very clear purpose for these things. Otherwise, the child is not going to enjoy it if you tell the child, look, all these things are fake. No child will like it. You need to pretend.

Look, this is your world and these toys are real things for you and then the child plays and the child plays for many hours without troubling you. You even give importance to those toy sets. You tell the child, look, your friends do not have it, it is important for you, do not break it and so on. Then the child will find, yes, the others do not have those things and they are giving me a little bit more importance and more care and love because I have the soldier set, army set or whatever you have. Now they see me as a superior person. The life of an ignorant person is arranged like this. There is stuff here. Somehow it is important for survival and social life, that gives the whole life a purpose. But it is a fake purpose. Just like in the case of a child, the child is enjoying it and that's what matters. The only thing that matters is it is giving you happiness, not the purpose. And that is why one purpose does not suit everyone. Everybody is doing their own thing, whatever makes them happy, they do it. And the second thing is freedom. Happiness and freedom. This is the hard-coded purpose for any organism.

Look at your own experience. Do not believe me because I said it. The happiness and freedom is the fake purpose for this bound individual because in reality there is no purpose. There is not even a fake purpose. We are not born with a purpose. We are born and then are given a purpose. We take on a meaning which is a fake meaning, which makes this life fake in the end. And that is why an average person is unhappy and bound even after this fake purpose is imposed on him that you need to be happy, you need to be free. And these activities, they will achieve this thing. It fails in the end because it's all fake. There is always dissatisfaction. There is always a feeling of being bound and there is always more to do. We never reach this goal. Never. You always find a lack. You cannot fulfill the lack. Why is that? Because it's a fake lack. Because all activities that you do are fake. It's like a play, isn't it? Actually, play is also a very positive word. It is like a joke, prank, a dark humor, you can say. Because the one who is suffering does not know that it is a joke. This suffering is real for him.

What has happened in the case of a seeker is knowledge that all these things do not matter. I am whole and complete without any purpose, which means completely free. And I am not bound by my desires or objects or relations or people or whatever. I don't have any need for these things. I am not bound by these things, I am already free. There is nothing to achieve and there is nothing to get. This produces bliss, which is real. For the first time, you will see satisfaction in your life, contentment. You are not going to laugh when what comes as happiness and you are not going to cry when it goes away, which will happen automatically. It is the law. Whatever appears must disappear and in the case of a seeker, he is not troubled by these appearances, disappearances. There are no tears and there is no laugh also because of the satisfaction with whatever is happening. There is always a smile, a contentment, a smile of a very wise person. You can see it from miles away. The laughter of a fool and cry of the fool are the same, they are equal to each other because it is all suffering, isn't it? It is all ignorance. These things are coming from the lower layers of the mind, the celebration and the mourning, depression, they are coming from the lower layers of the mind. The smile of the understanding, the very radiating smile comes from the higher layers where there is knowledge, where everything is ok already, purpose is ok, no purpose is also ok, fake purpose, perfect, ok, no problem. For a wise person, life is a play, for a fool, it is suffering. It may look like that both are doing the same thing, they get up in the morning, they do their routine, they eat and they walk and talk, they do the same things which an ordinary person does.

From the outside, nothing needs to change. What do you want to change in the play? Do you want a different kitchen set for an enlightened person and a low-quality kitchen set for an unenlightened person? Do the enlightened people play with golden utensils? No, because there is no need, the sets and props in the drama can be the same. The wise person knows that he is an actor, he is playing it and the fool thinks that he is the character, the wise knows that he is the screen and the fool knows that he is the image. This is the difference, there is no other difference.

Hopefully, this question is also answered - why I was born. It is coming from the depths of ignorance, very dark, deep depths of ignorance. Sometimes I hear these questions and I don't know where to start because I am not a trained teacher, I do not belong to a tradition where there is a very well-established pathway, like a garden path, you need to step on this stone to reach that part of the garden. Many traditions do that, they have this path established, okay you want to know why you were born, sit down and breathe like this, I mean it sounds very unintuitive, it sounds like a stupid thing to do, but they are preparing to uncover this knowledge, thousands of years of wisdom is there behind these practices. The only problem is, these days the practices have become corrupted, they have simply turned into mindless rituals of some kind and even teachers do not know what is the purpose of that. Almost guaranteed that if you follow a tradition mindlessly without knowing what you are doing, you will fail and not only that, you will waste many years of your life.

Because I do not have a tradition behind me, I try to tell them the final truth, which results in a 50-50 kind of outcome. Some people get it, some don't. The advantage in following a path is that there is almost a guarantee that you will get something, if not your answer, you will get some kind of clarity. There are some paths where you will get only very heavy words, concepts. Instead of unloading the concepts, they will load you with concepts. Blind belief enters and it is just like another fake kitchen set, another fake set of toys, spiritual toys.

Sometimes I think that probably I should invent a path, like one thing that fits everyone, but I found that is impossible, everybody comes from different backgrounds and different conditioning, different levels of ignorance, one thing does not fit everyone. Sometimes it is very confusing. How should I start answering this kind of question? If it is a very technical question, then it is very easy, absolutely clear how to answer this. For example, the last question was a kind of technical question, how can the universal mind produce an individual? There is no room for uncertainty there. I know what kind of mind is asking it, I know what must have caused this confusion in that mind, which of the teachings, and I know how to clear it. But the other question, I did not pick it up knowingly, just by chance. This question, why was I born, where should I start now, what should I give him, which medicine will cure this ignorance. Spirituality is a very personal affair actually, based on the unique constitution of an individual mind. That is why I am welcoming personal calls these days, it is like training for me also. Fortunately, 99% of minds are mostly similar because they are the product of the same society, they have the same kind of ignorance, it is possible to do a surgery and remove that ignorance like a tumor from their mind, but sometimes there are unique cases, 1% of people will be very unique, not only there will be ignorance, there will be added afflictions in the mind, added complications in the mind.

I found such people also, and there I fail because it is beyond me now. The good thing is they are interested in spirituality, and one day they will become ready for hearing the truth. Right now, I can give them a placebo, I know it cannot be cured. I don't feel it is right to say such things, and usually I give up. Just a minority, 1% of people cannot be handled, the resistance of the mind is too much in those cases. I don't want to mess with those minds because the result is unpredictable, I don't know what will happen there, because, for example, this question, why was I born, the person is looking for a purpose, probably, who knows, probably there is an affliction there, there is depression or sense of purposelessness, societal tendencies, who knows, there can be anything, that's why this question is coming.

So called normal people do not ask this question, they already know everything. Telling such a person that there cannot be any purpose, it is all meaningless, without knowing their real nature, this kind of teaching will be a disaster for that person. What do you mean, my life is meaningless? That person is not going to do anything from tomorrow, if he is suicidal, he will probably kill himself, so, very difficult.

I don't do anything, but some gurus will do it like this, that they will give them a sugar pill, your purpose is to get knowledge, more and more knowledge. Everybody is born with a different purpose, and your purpose is written here. Sometimes they will become a fake astrologer, palmist, show me your hands, ok, it is written in your hands, the lines in your hands tell me that you are destined to get more knowledge. Now you can see this is going to work, although it is a fake purpose, but it is now twisted by the guru in such a way as to help that afflicted mind, very very ignorant mind with a lot of resistance. That individual finds a meaning, and then makes a spiritual goal, makes a goal of his life to get more knowledge, runs after the knowledge, it is a useless activity, but after let us say 5 years or 10 years, his intellect will mature to a point where he can now grasp the truth, where he will be ready to finally tolerate the bitterness of the truth, bitter pill, the red pill.

I remember my own case, that I was never happy with these sugar pills, I don't know what happened, that a few of the teachers, they tried to set up a goal, you need to do this, get up in the morning, do the Surya Namaskar, and this is the mantra, this is the deity, and so on. But I was never satisfied with these things. The question - what is the meaning of these things always remained in the back of the mind, and whichever practice I picked up, I ended up leaving it without completing it. Although now you can see that the practices themselves serve no purpose, they do not reach a completion, they do not give you anything, they simply prepare the ground, they prepare the mind for the real teaching, which does not require practices, which requires a ripe mind, that's all. A mind which is available to grace. Nothing more is required to know the truth, no practices are required. Practices serve a different purpose, and those who are like me, who are not satisfied with what they are doing, should change lanes, now you are in the slow lane, get on the fast lane. Don't be satisfied with the practices. Sometimes I say that in order to progress faster, you need to do this and that, that is also a language of ignorance. There is no progress, there is simply dropping of beliefs, you can call it progress if you want.

The latest question that went into the featured category was - when will I get enlightenment?

And as you can guess, I answered it just now, you can get it now, that was the answer. Which is very clear why it should be this answer. If you open up the question, unzip the question here, which is when will I get enlightenment, you can see a few things here. There is “I”, obviously, should not be there, there is “when”, which involves time, like future, which is also not there, and there is “getting”, how can I get something, like another object, like another degree or another achievement, and probably the seeker does not know the meaning of the word enlightenment, which is giving up, letting go, not getting anything.

You can see why this question is here, because everybody is telling him to get enlightened. From his past experiences, I was hungry, then somebody told me to get the food, okay, I got the food, I was sleepy, somebody told me to sleep, I got the sleep, I was single, somebody told me to get married, I got married, and similarly, I got my education, and I got my degree, and it all happened in time, similarly, enlightenment, another thing to get, when will it happen in time? I got all these other things, enlightenment must be a thing which I will get. It is like another stamp on my head, okay, he is a man, he is rich, and he is in such and such a profession, and this is the university degree, that is also stamped on his head. Like when you travel to a foreign country, wherever you go, they will stamp something on your passport, visa, he entered, or he left. When you travel through this life, there will be stamps on your forehead. He did this, and he did that, he achieved this. People want a stamp of enlightenment also, I am enlightened now, like the clerk in the office stamps on his head, one more thing you got.

It will be funny to ask these people what are you going to do with that enlightenment, once you get it? Where are you going to use it? Where are you going to spend it? What is it going to give you? It will be fun to ask these people questions like this, but that will be very cruel, because I was also running around to get the stamp of enlightenment. I saw people are getting enlightened left and right, I am getting behind, I am being left behind, I need to get this thing at any cost. I will do whatever it takes to get it, I will spend money also. Your social conditioning, your worldly mentality is the cause of this question. The answer to the “when” question is now, obviously, because, enlightenment is shedding of ignorance, it is not getting. What is this ignorance, that I am something else which I am not, or there is an I which is real, something more than a concept in my mind, something more real than a thought in my mind. That is why it's called darkness, and that is why removal of the darkness is called enlightenment, like turning on the light bulb inside. Those who remove the darkness, they are the gurus, the word guru means remover of darkness.

When can you get rid of the ignorance? This is the real question now, and the honest answer is - when do you want it? When do you want to shed your ignorance? It is like asking, I am carrying a pile of trash on my head, wherever I go, the stinking trash bag is on my head. When will I get a clean life, an unburdened life, a fresh life, a good smelling body? Because the trash is dripping all over you, the rotten stuff, when will I get rid of this? And the answer is very clear, when you are willing to drop this pile of trash from your head, that time you will become clean, you will become unburdened. As soon as the trash bag is pointed out, a way opens up to drop it, and that is the enlightenment.

What is dropped? This is a good question. Instead of getting enlightenment, the question should be framed like this, what can be dropped and when can I drop it? Now, it is possible to do it now, in this very second. All you need to do is see what kind of trash you are carrying on your head, that's all you need to look at, once you look at it, your mind will automatically throw it away. There is no doing involved here, when are you ready, when are you willing to look at yourself, what are you carrying, that time will be your time for enlightenment. Are you willing to drop all these things that you are carrying, or are you attached to this kind of trash, the stinking pile of trash that you have been carrying on your head for many years? And frankly, all of it did not come from your own choice, you don't have a choice here, it was all piled up by other people. A child not only gets food from the society, gets all kinds of concepts and ideas also from the society, and if a child grows up in an ignorant surrounding, he becomes ignorant, that is very natural.

There are three stages of knowledge, first it is no knowledge and no ignorance, which is innocence, the child does not know, the child does not also carry anything. Then there is ignorance. And then the ignorance is dropped, which is again seen as knowledge. Knowledge is always negative, it is in the form of - whatever I knew, whatever I thought, is all wrong. That is all knowledge is. It is not another degree, it is not another book that you memorized, and it is not another figure in your bank statement, it is not an achievement. It is a reduction, dropping, cleaning, letting go. Whole of the spirituality is a negative path, and that's why you will never get anything here, you will leave everything here. It is an adventure in becoming lighter.

The question is, when will I get it? No you will never get it. But I do not say like this because it's kind of depressing for the person. A sweeter answer is - you will get it now. Know the meaning of the word enlightenment and you will get it now, but the reality is that you will never get anything, you get rid of what you already have, that is enlightenment. What do I have? I have all kinds of concepts, ideas, blind beliefs and superstitions about what these four experiences are. There are only four experiences - the experience of the world, the experience of the body, of the mind, and of consciousness. Your intellect is corrupted, is rotten by all the concepts that are stuffed into it. It is better if you don't know anything about these things, they are what they are, but what causes negativity in your life is holding concepts which are wrong. Because many people have this kind of fear that - you are telling me that enlightenment is dropping off the I also, dropping off all my relations also. But no, that is only seeing that they are false, they are fake, they are maya, illusions, you can take them back, there is choice here, but now you take them as illusions instead of reality, that's all. Enlightenment changes nothing really, you can even take on the ignorance if you want, why not? what is wrong in ignorance? But if ignorance produces suffering then it is recommended that you get rid of it, if not then it's okay, it's fine, we don't need to know everything, assuming that everything can be known, we only need to shed this original belief about what I am. Once that is known, nothing needs to be known. It can be ignorance, who cares? On the path of knowledge we are not very concerned about all the details of these four experiences. We are concerned about whether I am attached to any of these theories or false assumptions, false inferences or unfounded logic. More knowledge of illusion can also happen. The only thing that is important to see is that you do not have any attachment to the concepts. One concept can act like a broom to clean the other concept, but then you need to get rid of the broom also, do not carry the broom all the time.

Session 46

There was one interesting question some time ago, that I am very much attached to material life, to the comforts of this life. What should I do to free myself from these kinds of attachments or dependencies? I cannot let go of the physical material comforts in life.

This will be faced by many people who are transitioning from a worldly life to a spiritual life, where they will find that their old dependencies are still very strong. They are not able to let go of their old habits or attachments to a comfortable lifestyle. And I do not see any problem at all here. And nobody should see any problem, because why not? You can have a comfortable life. And the problem is when you try to make it comfortable by hook or crook. When you demand comfort so much that you are bent on doing anything possible to get that. A comfortable life is a requirement for a spiritual seeker. If you are struggling in your life, if you don't have a job, if you don't have a house or food or shelter, security, then there is very little motivation to pursue any kind of spiritual path, any kind of inquiry or if you are on the progressive path, the practices. There is no motivation to do that.

And all the attachment is with securing the comforts for your body. Because worldly life is all about the body. Some people do make it about the relations, but the relations are again of the body. The solution is very clear now. Minimize. Minimize your requirements, the worldly requirements. Slowly give away that which is not necessary. That which is necessary, you cannot give it away. And if you give it away, if you let go of that which is very necessary for a comfortable lifestyle, then you will find that the lower layers of the mind start dominating. The survival issues will not let you progress on your spiritual path. That is why the base comes first.

As in the yogic culture it is known as the Muladhara. The Muladhara comes first. You need to first stabilize your material life. Arrange for your food, security and shelter. In today's life it means doing a job. Probably in ancient times, 1000-3000 years ago, it was fashionable to simply beg. Go on the street and ask for food. And people had a lot of food, they were not greedy or narrow minded and selfish. They fed the seekers. There was no problem. And there were no fake seekers. Probably there were but not many. Like today it is a majority. They had no problem begging. They did not do it because they were lazy or good for nothing. Their goal was spirituality and therefore they minimized their lifestyle like this. Did not do a job and did not stay at one place. Did not demand a house or shelter. They stayed at temples or places built for monks. And then moved every 2-3 months. And that is a very drastic solution. Nowadays it may be impractical. What I would suggest is to settle down in your life. Do a job that fulfills your requirements. And also gives you enough freedom to do that for which you are born. You are not born to do a job. You are not born here to collect money or stuff. And you are not born here to dominate people or rule over them. That is what is known as social status these days. How many people you control and what big positions you hold in society.

We are not here to do all those stupid things. We are here to free ourselves and then go back. That is the goal of the spiritual person. It is not a worldly goal. We are here to get rid of the world. Now the vehicle for that is the body. That is the means that we are employing. And the body has some needs. Otherwise it will die. Fulfill those needs. Body is our temple now. Body is our vehicle. And we need to keep it healthy and fit. For that the body demands some amount of comfort. And that can be had very easily. For somebody on the path of knowledge it should be a child's play to do that.

If you cannot take care of the body also. Then what are you doing on the path of knowledge? It is not for you then. The inability of a seeker shows up in his misadventure in worldly lives. I am not saying that everybody is born with this kind of talent. I have also made many mistakes. Could not take care of survival also. But fortunately I never got into a very bad situation. And there were never many attachments. But comfort is necessary. That is my personal experience. If there is discomfort in life, if the body is not healthy, if there is not enough money and you don't have food and a house, it becomes a big problem. Spiritual pursuit is also impossible in that condition. Minimize. Draw your line somewhere that I am not going to go after material things and comforts after this limit. I will get the things I need, I will maintain them. Because of impermanence, whatever you get breaks down. Whatever you get is lost. You need to keep maintaining. You need to keep getting these things. And then after that you say it's okay. It's fine. I have one house. I have one car. And I have food in my fridge. And I am maintaining this thing. And after that you put all of your attention into your spiritual goal. Don't go for a second house. Don't go for a fifth car. And don't go for social status or promotion or a government job or anything stupid like that. If you are peaceful, if you are happy, you are sleeping comfortably every day. Fine. It's okay.

Now where do other people fit in? Minimize them also. If you have already entered into some kind of permanent relationship then it's okay. You will need to take care of it. But not too much. Do not try to accumulate a big crowd around you. That will be my recommendation. Everything needs to be minimized. And then you proceed towards the higher layers. The knowledge will produce a detachment by itself. Why do you think that I am attached to material comforts? Because probably there is ignorance, probably the mind knows nothing else apart from material comforts.

Anil is saying - If all this body mind has its survival, then how can it ever be free? I think it's stupid to try to make the body mind free. It's a tendency to stay bound.

Yes, absolutely. The body-mind is a structure. It cannot be free. It is wholly dependent on its environment from where it gets its food. It's dependent on the things that provide its security and whatever. Do not try to make it free. Try to make it comfortable. Try to make it last as long as you can. And use it as efficiently as you can. Because this is our vehicle, isn't it?

The body-mind is the means for freedom. You can convert the same thing into a bondage if you are attached to it, if you think that I have nothing else to do except serve the body-mind, except become a slave of the impulses of the body-mind. Or you can reverse it and say that I am going to use this thing - the body-mind to achieve freedom. And now it does not remain an issue. Now it becomes something useful. People who are trying to free their body, trying to free their mind, well, don't bother. These things cannot be freed. That which is free is already free. That which is bound will remain bound. This is the realization. And you don't need anything more than that. Once you realize this.

Then the body-mind can continue doing whatever it does. As long as it is not producing suffering, there is no issue. The body is not mine. The mind is not mine. They are not me. This is the realization. And then you let it do whatever it does. There is no “you” left here to control anything. Whatever is bound to happen will happen. Do not try to interfere and make it do something else. Because there is nobody who can interfere. It is a tricky thing. But you will know it as soon as you realize that these impermanent and bound structures are not my essence. They are not essential to me. Whatever is essential to me is already free, unbounded. It has no attachments. You can see that. The mind has attachments. The body demands things. The body is attached to food and all those comforts. The mind is attached to all these relations and social status and whatever unnecessary things that it thinks are necessary for its happiness. The pleasure and reward functions in the mind is doing its job.

There is nobody there to govern it. There is nobody there to control it. In the light of knowledge, in the light of awareness, the mind controls itself. Or if you are very fortunate, the guru will give you some advice or suggestions. Or the guru sometimes will micromanage your life. If the guru is very compassionate, he will do that. But otherwise you are on your own. By which I mean the mind is on its own and it refines itself in the light of awareness. As the knowledge grows, its own behavior changes. And you will find that initially it is attached, it is clinging and running after the comforts. Slowly it will mature to a point where these things will not matter much for the mind also. The body has very limited intelligence. The body needs the minimum, it does not demand too much. It demands rice, wheat and fruits. It does not demand a five-star meal every day. That demand is coming from the lower layers of the mind who think that I can only be happy if I eat these things that the rich people are eating, the body cannot survive if I don't eat food that costs thousands per day. The body can survive on 20 rupees per day of food also. The body does not complain. The body digests anything that goes into the body. If it is labeled in a shiny container and it is advertised as the food of the gods, still the body is going to digest it. The body knows nothing else. After this awareness dawns, you will find that the unnecessary activities of the mind are being dropped. It will happen automatically. Don't worry that I am attached to the material comforts. Yes, you should worry if the comforts are too many.

I will take up another question from the self-enquiry. And that is kind of a practical question. And it is, how do I train my attention?

Now some people will think, Why do I need to do that? What is the use of attention? It is completely useless. Whenever I need to attend to something, it does it automatically. And that is true to some extent. Attention is a natural ability of the mind. We attend to things that are most interesting to us or that require our presence, that require some intervention or activity, action. The attention flows there automatically. Attention is a problem if you are on the path of practice, if you are on the progressive path, or if you are starting on the path of knowledge and you need to attend long lectures. The lectures go on and on for one or two hours or sometimes three hours. Sometimes if you attend a course, it will be a whole day. And now you find it very difficult to absorb it because your attention drifts into everything else. Or suppose you want to think about something, a spiritual or philosophical question. You want to get an answer to it. And now your mind won't stay in one place. It will want to do something else. Or it will think of other things, which are more interesting according to its limited intelligence. Habitually the mind drifts. Habitually the attention is unstable. This is the natural condition.

Those who are not doing anything in their life, which involves trained attention, they don't need to do any training. It is only for those who have a purpose, who have a goal, that I need to do something which requires intense amounts of attention for a long time, longer attention span. There are ways to train your attention. The most natural way is to become interested in something. You will find that if you are interested in something, then your attention will be locked there. For example, you are watching an interesting movie. And obviously you are interested in the content of the movie, whatever it is, people shooting each other or killing each other and all of your attention is there. For two hours you do not even move from your seat. That is the natural way. If you are interested in your practices, if you are interested in meditation or you are interested in listening to a teacher or reading a book, then you will find your attention is captured by that content. That is how a talented natural born seeker is. These are the qualities of a seeker. He is naturally interested, he is naturally curious. This question of how to train my attention never arises in his life.

This happened to me, I would grab any book or I would listen to even two or three hours of lectures because of a very strong interest. This took priority, not sports, not eating or roaming around or partying or traveling or anything that wastes time. For an ordinary person, these are the utilization of time, but for us seekers, it is a waste. I was interested in all those things, but I would keep them for later. The first thing would be the book I am reading or the teacher I am listening to or the introspection or writing. Writing and introspection, it came later. It is natural, it follows the initial listening phase. If you listen to somebody, something, you will naturally start thinking about it. There is nothing unnatural on the path of knowledge. It follows each other and after thinking, after meditating on it, you will naturally abide in the knowledge. Once you are convinced, once the conviction is very strong that this is how it is, or my beliefs were wrong, you will naturally abide in it and the abidance then refines the mind even more. It is a self-perpetuating thing, attention, if there is interest.

Now, why do people struggle with attention? It is because they have taken up a path which does not belong to them. Naturally, they are not attracted to that path. They have taken it up because somebody told them that you will get something here. That's why people are in the Kundalini or some kind of meditation or some kind of yogic exercises and it is told that you need to attend to this thing or that thing or the guru starts the lectures and theoretical knowledge or whatever and they cannot even listen to that because that does not come to them naturally. These people, they need to train their attention. There is much distraction in their lives that habitually the mind wants to do the other thing, not happy with what is going on presently. There is no patience there, it wants to do other things and therefore the thoughts pull that person away from what is really happening in the present moment.

So, these people lack the inclination towards the spiritual path and these people will face this question. My attention is not stable, how to make it stable? Which pill do I take? What parts of my brain do I need to replace to increase my attention span? Or is there any mantra? Is there any trick to do that? So, there is good news for such people - there is a trick. There are many time-tested practices to train the attention, to train the mind. Attention is the most important ability of the mind. Even for a worldly person. If you are not attentive, you won't be able to do anything and if your mind is flickering all the time, it is a stupid mind. It cannot even think for five minutes. Such people, their decisions are all impulsive because they cannot attend to the problem, cannot find a solution and whatever they do, their actions are impulsive and therefore their lives are a compulsive, impulsive, stupid mixture of nonsense activities. You will find such people. And therefore their lives are very messy, full of suffering and they cause suffering to others also. They make a lot of mistakes. They try to get by somehow. They are dependent on other people. They need to be told what to do and they avoid doing things or knowing things or draining themselves as much as possible. Avoidance is their way of life. They want to keep the mind as lazy as possible. Such a person cannot even look at the spiritual lifestyle, and will not come here. And if he comes because somebody has promised him some kind of fruit, low-hanging fruit, some easy powers or something, he will drop it very quickly because the mind is not attentive.

So, for a seeker, attention is the most important thing. If you are not interested, please take up some other path. It's a waste of time then. But if you think that, no, this is my path and it requires training of attention, which is spoiled by my previous lifestyle, then, fortunately, there are methods to train your attention. Let us go through that method. Let us see if it is useful for anybody who is facing these issues regarding attention, who are convinced that, I am interested in the spiritual path, but my attention is not trained. It is a six-stage practice. It is only a recommendation. It's not guaranteed that it will work. So, let's see what it is.

First thing is, focus your attention on external objects. Exclude all objects except one. Stay here for as long as possible. This is the first step. Start outside. Don't try to do it inside in your mind, some airy-fairy thought in the mind or feeling in there. No, that attention is totally spoiled. So, you need to do something solid first. Start from an object which you like. It can be anything. It can be a picture. It can be a statue. It can be somebody whom you respect, like your guru or someone. And it can even be food, which obviously everybody likes. So, exclude everything else. Do not pay attention to any other object except this one object which you have chosen as your object of attention. If you can do this, you will find that your mind wants to stay on it. It is a challenge for the mind now because you have set up this challenge. Make it a sport. Make it a play. And count how many breaths or how many seconds or minutes your mind stays on that object without drifting into anything else. If the object is complex enough, like a yantra or very complicated patterns, better it is. But do not make it too complicated because the mind will make up a story about it. Make it interesting enough. And so, you will find that the mind hangs on to that object for a while. Make it as long as possible. This is the practice. So, just like weight lifting, you go on increasing the weight so that your muscle builds up. Similarly, go on extending the duration of your attention on the object.

Now, the second step is to include all the objects around you. Physical objects. Include everything in your attention so that your attention does not get trained in one-dimensional way. It needs to be trained in another way also, which is inclusive attention. Now, this is a very less known technique. So, that's why I find it worth mentioning here. Everybody knows the exclusive attention. Hold your attention on one object, nothing else. Blank out everything else. This is the exclusive attention. Nobody knows inclusive attention, which is a requirement on the path of knowledge. How do you achieve oneness if you don't have inclusive attention? You don't. So, include all the objects that you can see. Don't make any effort to go outside your house to include everything. No, that is stupid. Whatever is around you, you should include it. You should do this alternatively. Exclusive, inclusive. Five minutes exclusive, five minutes inclusive. And then, increase the five to ten, and then ten to fifteen, fifteen to twenty, like this. You should be able to do it for one hour, at least. One hour exclusive, one hour inclusive. That will complete step number one, which is to focus your attention on external objects.

Step number two is focus on your body. Now, you have mastered your attention outside. Now, let us move inwards. And the first thing that you will encounter, which is slightly closer to your mind, is your body. Both exclusively and inclusively. What does that mean? Suppose you are focusing on your toes. You are excluding your fingers. You are focusing on your nose. You are excluding your hands, let us say. So, now include everything, all the sensations that the body is throwing at you. That is inclusive attention, which is not taught unfortunately, I don't know why. They will teach you exclusive attention. Join your forefinger and thumb of both hands, and focus on that contact point. They will tell you this. This is very typical, exclusive attention on the body. It's called a mudra, everybody does that. But nobody includes all the sensations of the body in their attention, that is necessary, that is required. Otherwise, your training will be one-sided. It will be like you are lifting weight only with your right hand. And the right hand will become big and muscular, and the left hand will remain weak, skinny. You need to train both. The mind needs to be trained in its whole spectrum of attentions, which is from the tiniest, most exclusive, to the most inclusive, biggest.

We all have this natural ability. You cannot say that, no, I do not have this thing called inclusive attention. But it is there. Let's go to the movie example. When you are watching the movie, you are attending to the picture as well as the sound. Am I wrong? Two objects are there in your attention. Not only that, you are attending to the detail on the screen. If you are reading something, you are attending to that also. I need to grab more chips and something. So, you can include things. It is a natural ability. You can train this ability to include more stuff in your attention. For example, a hunter. This is the old example, not the movie example. A hunter is attending to the deer. He is trying to shoot the arrow at it, but he is also attending to sounds around him because, anytime any wild animal can attack him. A tiger can attack him from behind and the hunter can become the hunted. So, the hunter is very attentive inclusively. He knows what is on his right. He knows there is a valley on his left. He need not stray there. And he knows what is happening behind him through sounds. And he has full attention on the moving target also. This is done in the martial arts. Inclusive attention is also taught with exclusive kind. So, it does not matter who is attacking you from which side. You already know. But this is not being done by spiritual seekers.

You need to focus on the body inclusively and exclusively. Go from the exclusive to inclusive by including whatever the body is giving us to feel or to experience. That is step two. And make it, for example, half an hour long. And you will find that now it is easier because you have trained your mind on the external objects. The body is nothing but an external object only, there is nothing internal there.

And the third step is to go inwards even more. Now focus on your breath. Now it sounds like meditation or a yogic practice. What has happened is people have taken shortcuts. They skip step number one and two. They go straight to the breathing exercises. Focusing on the breathing. This is wrong. If you want to do the training, you should do the full training. You don't go to the gym and lift 50 kg on the first day. You will break your arm. Start by lifting 5 kg for 15 minutes. If you can do that, it is a big achievement for a newcomer. And slowly load yourself. Do not go to the breathing step directly. This is the third step.

You will notice that we are going inwards. Now, include the breathing in your bodily sensations. And then include your surroundings in the bodily sensations and breathing. That will be total inclusiveness. Exclusiveness, only pay attention to the breathing, the flow of air in the nostrils. That's all. Do not even go to the diaphragm or lungs. Exclusive means it will be very exclusive. You can start including other things as a second angle to it. Another dimension of it.

Now, step number 4. Go inwards. Focus on your thoughts, emotions, desires, imaginations. And make it exclusive first, for half an hour. Make it inclusive, for the next half an hour. For a total of one hour you should be able to pay attention to the contents of the mind.

Now, what is exclusive here? For example, there are emotions going on in your mind. Probably you are angry or probably you are happy or probably you are jealous. Focus on that. That will be exclusive. And there will be a string of thoughts. Keep the emotions away for a while and focus on only the thoughts. If a desire comes around, focus on the desire. There is a desire now in my mental environment. Just like you did for the external objects and the body. You do the same to the mental objects. The mind is an object. It is not me. That is the teaching that should be taken from these meditative exercises. And I have seen people do it mechanically like a robot, from 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock. I did whatever my guru told me to do. And now back into business. Open my worldly shop. I learned nothing. That is missing the point totally, isn't it? Why do we do this kind of meditative exercises? The attention exercises. Dhyana. To see that these things are not me. Because I can see them, it is not me. If I can experience it, it is not an experiencer. I am not it.

Not only will it train your attention, it will create a distance between you and the objects, the body and the mind. This is the essence of yogic exercises. Some people cannot sit down and look at their emotions and thoughts also. Because their attention is bad. It goes out into the objects somewhere. Wants to call somebody. Wants to check email or whatever is on the internet or on TV. For such people, go back to step number one. Train your mind from outside. You have taken a shortcut to train your attention on the mental objects. It's not going to work. It takes many years to reach step number four. This is the problem in the progressive path. If you are not interested, you will drop it. Then it is no use actually. Some people do this for a few days and they say nothing is happening. Nothing will happen. Your mind is spoiled by 20-30 years of a bad lifestyle. Now it cannot miraculously cure itself in three days. It's not possible. That's why the progressive path is difficult.

How to focus inclusively on mental objects? Include emotions into your thoughts. Include your desires into emotions and thoughts. Include your imaginations into all these things. Whatever is happening in the mind, include it in your attention span. The wider attention. Do not exclude it away. Like, oh, I don't want this. I am currently on my thoughts only. Don't do this. Let the whole of the mental environment come into your awareness. Attention brings awareness. You are aware of that to which you attend. Awareness follows the attention. Now include your breathing in mental contents. Now include your body in the breathing. And include your surroundings, objects or people or whatever is going on around you into all this. This is the unification of the experience. This is just one experience. There is nothing else actually. There is only one experience. Actually we arrive at this one experience in five minutes. You must have seen this in my other talks where I take you to the fundamentals. We do this in five minutes. We don't actually need training. We have this natural ability to see, unify the experience into one. Isn't it one experience right now? Is the world different? Are the people different? Is the body different? Are the thoughts going on in some other dimension? No. It's all one right now, right here. This is the inclusive attention. To unify your experience, all you need is this one second. Although it does not stay, it goes away and the mind divides everything again. You have seen the glimpse of the truth. That's all you need. You don't need to keep doing it. What is the point in it?

We come to step number five which is to focus on your awareness. What does that mean? Know that there is a consciousness of whatever I am attending to. Whatever the mind is attending to, there is a consciousness behind it. Without consciousness, no attention. This is called awareness. Exclusive awareness, inclusive awareness. There are two kinds. This is the number five. This is the peak of meditative exercises. If you reach here, well, you have graduated from the school of meditation. Include your awareness in everything you are attending. Become aware of everything. If you can do this for one hour per day, it is a big achievement. I actually cannot do this. It happens on demand. Am I aware? I need to ask this and then the awareness shines in whatever I am looking at. Whether it is inclusive, exclusive, there is mind or body, I can unify them for a second and then let go. That is also okay. There is no need to keep it unified for the whole day. What is the use of that? But the interesting thing is you can do it. Many people have achieved this. They are in such a strong state of complete awareness that not only these things that I mentioned as objects of attention, the thoughts of the other people, what is happening on the other side of the globe, what is happening in the other universe, all these things come into their awareness. The inclusive attention is strong. Have you met such a person? No. That's why you don't know the potential of your mind. Like they say we use only 10% of the brain. Actually, probably less than 0.1% of the whole capability of the mind we are using right now. We have limited ourselves to such a tiny, whiny, miserable thing. There is a way to come out of this limitation. It is through attention. Dhyana.

That is why this is the most important exercise in the yogic path. And I am not ashamed of saying this, that you need to do this on the path of knowledge also. Fix your mind. No knowledge without the mind. If your instrument is not good, what are you going to get out of it? If your brush is broken, what are you going to paint on the canvas? Your multimeter is not working. You won't know which is neutral, which is phase, which is 5 volts, which is 5000 volts, it will be a mess. Mind is a mess because we are born in a mess. We are born in a society where the minds are untrained. One in a million has a little bit of hold on his mind and you will find they are very successful people. Attention span of 5 minutes will make the difference of a day and night. Because a programmer can attend to his code for more than 15 minutes, he will become a millionaire. The other one sitting beside him in the same company, same chair, cannot do this for more than 2 minutes and he does not become a good programmer. Similarly, pilots, especially a fighter pilot, no attention means boom, gone. Even in worldly affairs, attention is the most important thing. We do not know this art. We are not taught these things. Your school teacher will say it, pay attention to whatever I am teaching and the students cannot do that. And the teacher will kick you out of the class instead of training you into attentive exercises. Attention developing exercises. Nobody does that. They do it in an ashram but the reputation of ashrams is so bad that you won't get a job if you say that I learned to attend in an ashram for 12 years. Please give me a job. They will kick you out of their company. Because of the system, society is a mess. We have spoiled minds in society and it gives rise to even more mess. You cannot attend to a thing and if you don't attend to something, you don't become aware of it. The whole life goes in darkness. We are born in darkness, live in darkness and then die in darkness.

Step number six is to abide. Abide in all inclusive attention. Combine it with your awareness. This is the sixth step. How do I focus on the self? By not focusing your awareness exclusively on something. And you will find that when you do this, when you do not exclusively attend to something, you will find there is a rise in awareness. There is a different state of mind as soon as you stop this monkey mind. One branch to another branch. If you stop this activity of the mind, sit down peacefully and simply observe all inclusively, not giving importance to anything in particular. Let it drift for a while and then you will find a widening of the field of focus or attention. And you will find there is a rise in awareness instantly. Some people are able to do it naturally. And some people, well, the mind is totally bent, badly bent in some other direction. Crooked mind. Be the Self by giving away the exclusive attention. By letting it go. You cannot turn your lens of attention, turn the direction of attention on the Self. It is not possible to do that. It is possible to let go of that which you are attending to. That means only the Self remains. That is the most subtle state of the mind. Where it is not attending to anything at all, the ground of attention, which is pure consciousness, shines. The Self cannot be made an object of attention. Otherwise it will become an experience. It is not possible. It is the experiencer. Do not try to find an object called Self. Let go of your attention on that which is not Self. It is very easy. Stop giving importance or focusing or engaging or clinging to that which is not the Self. Now you are left with the Self.

Isn't it simple? How many people know this? I have seen people doing meditation since 20 years, 25 years. They don't know this. They are still trying to find the Self in an experience. No, that is ignorance. That means your teacher has failed. That means your teacher also does not know. Otherwise he will tell you the objective on the first day. These six steps that I have given are essential. You cannot cut down even one of them. My attempt is always to minimize. I don't give fluff. These are like bare bones, attentive exercises, dhyana. You can add to it. You cannot remove anything from this exercise. Where does this practice take us? To the Self, Self is the goal. When I say combine all of the above, what remains here? The Self with the experience, which I also call Experiencing. Experiencing remains when you include all of your attention and add awareness to it. This is Oneness. Dhyana or yoga is a path to oneness. Yoga means union. This simple sixth step, actually it looks simple, it is kind of difficult, will take you to oneness, which is the ultimate goal for any seeker. You can go there directly also, just like we do in our fundamental exercises. It takes five minutes. We have done that. If anybody is interested, if anybody wants to revisit, may go and listen to the talks that I have already recorded and published. Or you can ask in the satsang anytime. We can take you to oneness in five minutes. Yes, the mind will not remain there. And for that, you need to train the mind. If that is the goal, that I want to remain as one, the Brahman, then that will happen only by training. Knowing can happen instantly.

Anil is saying, inclusive and exclusive are appearances only.

Yes, they are appearances. We divide it like this just for convenience. Remember that when you are exclusively focused on something, your ears are hearing and all the senses are working. Even your causal body and all those things are working as usual. Nothing changes really. It is an appearance that I am excluding everything else. Nothing can be really excluded from the experience. That which is experiencing is experiencing everything all the time. It is eternally experiencing. We say it is inclusive because now I have included everything. No, it is only a thought in your mind. It was always inclusive. Very tricky ability of the mind which gives us this kind of illusion that I am able to focus my attention. I am doing it. It gives a sense of control, isn't it? But no, it is not like this. It is a very tricky thing. When you go into the depths of the mind, you will find no explanation actually. And that is true for any other ability of the mind. For example, thinking. What is it? It is always going on actually. You think that I started thinking this minute and then I stopped thinking after two minutes. No, it never happens like this. Your attention went to thinking at this time. And after two minutes, the attention slipped away to something else. That is all. When you try to go in depth about how the mind works, you will be really surprised.

We never pay attention to how the mind works. Thinking also cannot be explained like this. It is my doing. No, there is no doer. Nobody does the thinking. It happens and it is eternally present. The thinking is present 24 by 7. If you don't believe me, try practicing attention. Your attention will become strong. Your awareness should mature so that it will continue into the deep sleep state, which is also an illusion. See, there are no different states. I cannot explain it actually. You will see that the thinking continues in the deep sleep also. Many people will be surprised. This is my own experience, in the state of the Yoga Nidra, you will find that all the activities of the mind are on. But you will say, I can attach the EEG equipment and I can attach the squids and all on my head. And it will show a drop in the activity of the brain. Yes, that is what you will see. That is true. One part of the mind has lowered its activity, but the mind is very big. The other parts are now enhanced in activity, which your EEG will not capture.

There is a sleep state in relation to the waking state. If there is no waking state, can there be a sleep state? No. Just disregard the dream state. You say it is another illusion. It is always going on actually. So, this contrast between the waking state and deep sleep is there because of the activity of the nervous system. When the nervous system awakens, the experiences are of the waking state, when the nervous system goes down, the experiences are of the deep sleep state. But remember, the mind is very big. Your focus, your attention is only on the waking state and you have never ventured into the other domains of your mind. All the time there is activity. Sometimes you will find it is meaningless. But for the mind it is meaningful. From the perspective of this limited individual, limited intelligence of the waking state, it may look like it is purposeless.

Do you think dreaming is purposeless? No, it is not purposeless. There is some activity that is producing the dreaming experience and you will find some kind of backup is going on in the mind. It is backing up the memories of the day somewhere. I have seen it myself. It will happen to an ordinary person if the person wakes up suddenly from a deep sleep because of some noise or something. And the body is still coping with sleep paralysis. Like it is shaking - What happened? Eyes cannot focus and all that. It is still coming out of the sleep state. But if your awareness is very strong, if you have done all these exercises, you will notice that there is activity in the mind that is already going on. You wake up with a shock and you will find the continuous activity of the mind is already on. This will not be registered on any EEG or any kind of equipment, not fMRI, nothing. Because this is not connected to your nervous system which is active only in the waking state. This is not brain activity. Brain activity is not mind. You will know it directly. This is not written in any book. There is a pile of garbage called psychology and neuroscience. So, you will know it directly if you experiment like this on your own mind. The language of the mind is alien, it looks like nonsense. If the waking state part tries to translate what is going on in the deep sleep state, it won't be able to do that.

Why is there this activity going on? It does look like nonsense. But it is something which the mind does. And the mind always does something for a reason. The mind itself does not know what it is. We think it is nonsense. There were some dreams, some pictures, some sounds. Probably I should go to sleep. It is nonsense. Those who have the interest, they will pay attention to what is going on in the dream state or other states. There are 20 - 30 states. The mind goes through them in 24 hours. Nobody pays attention to that. You need to be interested in those things. The whole Maya is created by the mind in a very complex way, about which we do not know even 1%. That is because our attention spans are miserable, pathetic attention. Not only are we not paying attention in the waking state, we do not extend it to our internal states of the mind. I am thinking, I am imagining. No, it is all happening. It is all an experience. There is no I. And that becomes a blockage. That becomes like a wall. The “I” becomes the wall. I am the body. I am feeling this. No, it is not you. They are all processes in the mind. You are not attending to them that is why this darkness takes over. The darkness of the I, identification. And therefore we are ignorant about what is mind, what is me, what is Maya, what is illusion. We do not know all these things. Those who pay attention, they know. It is not difficult really. It depends on your interest. A seeker is very interested. Ordinary person is interested in other things. Because there is a majority of ordinariness in the society, there is a dominance of ignorance.

Session 47

A question from Leyla - I was listening to your series on reincarnation, and you mentioned that once gender and race do not change much from birth to birth. Yet I have read that karma determines one's circumstances in the next life. Oppressor becomes the oppressed, etc.

I think both are true to some extent. And what exactly will happen depends on many variables. I personally find it very difficult to make a very strict law that only this and this will happen, nothing else will happen. This kind of law cannot be made. Actually, this is the case in many philosophies, and the Jyotish and Vedic astrology and all, that the next life of the individual or the organism is completely determined by the content of the causal body, which is just accumulation of memories, tendencies, potential memories. That is one extreme. I find it very interesting that people believe in it. And the other extreme is that anything may happen. All the random possibilities are there and any random possibility is chosen and the causal body is manifested as a physical body, controls a physical body, depending on what is your favorite mechanism of incarnation. There are theories about that also.

The question is about the law. What is the law here? Between these two extremes, completely deterministic and completely random, there is a spectrum of possibilities. Maybe it is possible that some things are determined by the conditioning and nothing much changes from one birth to the next. It is an exact repeat or sometimes repeat with some minor changes. Or if the karmic portion is heavier, by which I mean that the tendencies from the last birth are stronger, their influence is much more, they completely determine what happens in the next life. Or if there is no particular bias there, then it goes into the random end, then it is at the mercy of the environment, situations etc.

I see that this is the case whenever the system is very complex, whenever you encounter complexity, then the laws usually fail. We cannot say anything with certainty. Whatever I said is because of my own observation that I find when I encounter such cases and when I look at my own tendencies and by my own I mean the causal body's tendencies. It looks like a carry forward of some kind. It feels like it has been going on since many births. Of course I cannot give you any evidence of why it feels like that. This is strictly a personal affair. It is about the person. What I mentioned there is my own experience mixed with some stories that I found here and there from very reliable sources.

What happens is the majority of causal bodies or the majority of jiva or the individual souls or whatever you want to call it, the storage of memory, they fall in the band of “repeat”. They fall in the band of mechanical rebirths, mechanical reincarnations. That is my impression and there are rare cases where just like she said, the oppressor becomes the oppressed and they get exactly the fruit as per the classic karma system which says, in one line that you get what you sow. There is the classic karma system. Some minorities fall in that category and there are even more minor cases where it is extremely random and accidental. Even tinier portion is of the enlightened beings, where there is a lot of awareness and freedom in the causal body that they choose the circumstances, choose what to do, where to take birth and all. And as you can guess, this is probably one in a billion, depending on the cycle of the time. For example, like in this cycle probably there is not even one such causal body who chooses something. Not even one. All have fallen. That is my opinion. It's very strong because such a causal body makes itself known to the world, it does not remain hidden for long. If it remains hidden then this theory has no ground to stand on because now you cannot say anything. It is happening but it is hidden. That means it is pure imagination. This is as per my own research, there is a lot of possibility there, and I would suggest that do not form a stereotype in your mind. Not even in your own case. Never do that. The mind is very complex, especially the universal mind. The only thing that we can say with certainty about what happens here, what comes out of this process of rebirth and all is - I don't know. That is the most certain thing that you can say about it. The rest is speculation and probability.

Leyla is asking, do you mean in our lifetime right now?

Yes, our lifetime is going through a low phase this time but probably we have seen many cycles of time. The issue of cycles is also very complex. I don't know where I mentioned this but I have shown a diagram where there are cycles within the cycles. Like there is a big cycle going on and in that there are smaller cycles. You can get a rough picture by imagining that the earth is rotating in 24 hours, that is one cycle. Then the earth is rotating around the sun in one year. That is another cycle which is on top of this 24-hour cycle. Then the whole solar system is rotating around the center of the galaxy. I don't know how much it is 25000 years or something. I don't know. Probably millions of years. That is another bigger cycle and the galaxy itself is going around in the local cluster. That should be billions of years. That is another bigger cycle. Something like this is going on. Now it can happen that within a hundred years we may feel a rise of some kind. Sometimes it can happen that it looks like things are rising. Everything is going in a positive direction and then they start falling. Why? Because the overall trend is downwards. The smaller cycle may take you a little bit higher and there the causal body finds a good environment. Like a seed finds good soil, a little bit of water and shade and the seed sprouts. Otherwise it waits for the proper conditions. The causal body is also called the seed body, the bija, is also doing something like that. Depending on its tendencies it waits to express them. Sometimes in the downward cycles there appears a rising trend for a short while and that gives this seed an opportunity to sprout for a while. It comes back here. Sometimes mahatmas or the great souls incarnate in the lower cycles also, in the darkness also. And because their tendency is to spread light, their tendency is to teach and uplift humankind, they deliver their message and probably they get killed or jailed or burnt alive or something like this because others are still lowly in the dark cycle. They go away but it happens. It's very rare but it happens.

I think it is even more complicated because this world is not the only world where the incarnations are happening. There are many parallel dimensions where there are an infinite number of universes. The causal body always finds something to express itself. Or if nothing else it will reappear as an animal or plant or something for a while and then disappear. It is very complicated and it may look like I'm cooking it up. Because yes we don't have a lot of evidence for anything here. At least I don't have any. Whatever I say about that which we do not experience normally comes from three sources. One is my experience, second is logic and third is the teachings from some reliable sources that I find makes logical sense. I do not speak too much about it. When somebody asks me what reincarnation is, my usual answer is - it is an illusion. It does not really exist. You do not reincarnate.

She is saying, is it discussed anywhere how a causal body gets a physical body? I know it's a strange question.

Yes, I recently recorded two episodes on the mechanism of incarnation. It is purely theoretical. It is the best that I could do. The basis for my theory is that the causal body does not create any physical body. If you don't have the background about the nature of the universal mind and how the universal mind functions and the nature of the causal bodies etc. then the mechanism of incarnation will be a tough thing for you. You won't understand anything. This is not to be taken as truth. Honestly I do not know the truth. This is all speculation but it is based on some things which I find true. For example the mechanism of incarnation is based on the obvious observation that the physical bodies are created by other physical bodies not by the causal body.

Why do we say that the causal body takes a form when all we observe here is that the birth happens from parents not from any metaphysical mumbo jumbo airy fairy stuff hanging in air. It is a physical occurrence, the formation of the body. Why do we say that the causal body has taken a form? From where does the memory get a root into the physical body? That is the question, and I tried to solve that question in this theoretical speculative talk in two parts. The short answer is - the causal body never gets a physical body. It is the case of possession.

Whenever I explain something I try to unite all phenomena into it. This mechanism of incarnation unites the phenomena of group mind, possessions, reincarnations and karma, cause and effect, law of the mind and also uses other laws of the mind like the law of interconnectivity, which is the same as the group mind actually. Group mind is nothing but interconnected systems of causal bodies. This is a big subject and I'm pretty sure nobody has any clue in this world. Nobody knows this thing. We see a lot of ancient literature about this and unfortunately nobody can verify it experientially at this time. Anyway in spiritual fields it is always subjective experience that matters. Your experience is your truth.

Do your own research, do your own experiments and you will see the mechanisms, you will see how complex it all is and you will also see that the human mind has a limit. The human mind cannot understand beyond a certain limit what is really going on in the universal mind. This is in the same way that a dog cannot understand an engineering project. Big buildings are being constructed, the electrical wiring is being laid and communication is being set up. The dog understands a few things. There is sand to play on, there are bricks to pee on and a lot of activity is going on and he can smell the food around. That much the dog can understand and it forms a model of what must be going on. Beyond that it has no idea about the purpose and way everything is being constructed. Now that was a very crude example. We are not as stupid as dogs and cats. Probably we are a million times intelligent but the complexity of things in the universal mind is a trillion times more. We may understand a lot but you will find that you understand a little but not everything and it is because it is Maya. It goes very deep, it is very dense. If you ask an Advaita teacher or somebody on the path of knowledge, usually they laugh and say ask something else. I don't want to talk about this. We have giants saying this, big people saying this. I mean I am nobody to comment here. Somebody asked Gautam Buddha about such questions and he said don't even think about the mind. By mind he meant the bigger mind, the universal mind. If you start thinking about the mind it will give you a headache. That's what he said. Imagine this giant saying this. We are nobody to even speculate about these things.

When you go into such an area which is completely unknown and even nobody wants to comment on it then you are left with your own devices. What is my device? The direct experience and logic. There's no other device on the path of knowledge. These questions will not be answered by books or by stories. You will always get question marks there. Even the Vedas and Upanishads have nothing to say here about the workings of the mind. Some things can be learned from the ancient writings but not much. Whatever I learned is already there in the podcast in extreme detail and the second way is experiencing for which you will need to set up experiments and explore the universal mind which is our current project. Fundamental essential knowledge is here already, where most of the doubts are already solved. The truth is very simple. Maya is difficult. The illusion is complicated. Still we want to challenge our minds. We want to challenge our intellect like a dog sniffing around a construction site. I do that. I know it is limited but there is an intense desire to know. Unlike other people on the path of knowledge or Advaita I am an exception. I am interested in Maya. There is nothing to be ashamed of, it is also me. You will sometimes find me standing on two boats. I am also running behind Shakti. I do not like to dismiss her as an illusion. It is not an illusion for me. It is an illusion from the point of view of Advaita.

We have only one reality here in existence and that is the Maya. I like a comment of Swami Vivekananda on Maya - Don't think that it is fake. There are no good words to explain it actually. That's where our limitation of the mind comes in when we try to explain something which we don't understand. It is like touching the elephant with a blindfold and trying to explain what an elephant is. I have written down that comment in my blog in the footnote somewhere that yes we keep calling it a dream. We keep calling it Maya. We forget that our intelligence is so low that we don't know what it is. I am open-minded in that direction. Probably most of the people on the path of knowledge have closed their minds. Illusion - Snake in the rope and then they close the book. But an extremely curious person will not be satisfied with this dismissal of Maya as an illusion. Remember there is nothing else here. The consciousness is empty. Nothing to study there. It is unknowable because that which cannot be experienced is unknowable by definition of knowledge. You get the knowledge only when you experience something. You cannot experience yourself. You cannot experience the Self. What are you going to study there? Yes, you can experience the manifested one and that is a big challenge for a human being and I can guarantee that even the most evolved gods and goddesses also do not know.

Sushant is saying, sometimes I wonder about the power of language. Most of the thoughts are expressed with language. What if there is no language?

This is a very interesting question. What if there is no language? There are creatures without language who do not express too much. But we are pretty sure that they are experiencing. The expression of the experience is language. That will stop. But the experience will continue. You cannot get rid of the experience. You can get rid of the language. There is something interesting about language. That the mind is made up of language. The experience can be broken down into two parts. One is form and the other is name. This is what everybody knows. Naama Roopa. Form is that which is coming through senses. You cannot get rid of that. You will need to get rid of the senses and the body if you want to stop that. The other component is the name. Which does not really mean the name of something or someone. It means the concepts, ideas, interrelations between these forms that you perceive. And this is an inherent tendency of the mind to do that. Actually that is what we call knowledge. We form relations between forms. We study how they behave. We give them names and we invent ideas and concepts. These are not there in the world. It is a mind-created illusion. And an advanced version of that tendency of the mind is language. Humans have been doing this kind of thing since the beginning. And when they learnt to express, the same tendency came out as language.

In Sanskrit the language is called Matrika. And Matrika is a big thing in Shaivism, the mother. Very interestingly, the other meaning of the Matrika is letters, language. not only is Matrika creating this language, it is creating the whole world. It is creating the whole Maya. The whole creation is happening through words and this tendency only. Sushant is very right. It is very powerful. The “word” or Matrika is so powerful that it creates the whole universe. If you go into the details of language, it is not a small thing. We think language is a very superficial part of the whole process of Matrika, but I invite everybody to explore the power of Matrika. How the letters are creating everything. This tendency of the mind is primordial or you can say primary. The whole creation is being created like this. And it is very natural that we have this tendency. The same thing is being expressed through various forms. Languages are an expression of this creative tendency of Matrika.

Now he's asking what if there is no language? Well, you can cut down the superficial thing, but what about the other deeper connotations of language? What about that which is creating the whole illusion? Can you cut that down? No. And what if that is not there? Then nothing will be there. Nirgun is going to remain Nirgun. Vedic language is not suitable to discuss these things. You use the Shaivic language. Shiva by itself is nothingness. He is as good as non-existent, but he's the ground of everything. Everything that is being done is by Matrika or the Shakti, wife of Shiva. It's not also wife, half of the Shiva is Shakti. That is why we have this Ardhanarishvara figure, the one picture tells you the whole philosophy. Just one figure, half man and half woman, half yogi and half goddess, it tells you the whole philosophy of Shaivism, which is, I think, very very old, older than humans, actually. It's a very interesting question. When you ask such questions, you can go down the rabbit hole. It is very deep.

Leyla is saying, is this what is meant by the word?

In the Bible, there is mention of “Word”. I don't know who wrote that in the Bible, but my impression is that they borrowed it from Hermetic philosophy. A more accurate term for it is vibration. All the creation happened from Word, or the vibration, or the matrika, or the naad, or I call it in the Hindi series, naadrachna. And in English, I call it the NPNM vibrations, which means non-physical, non-mental. It is a strange thing now, isn't it? This kind of animal you will never find anywhere. This non-physical, non-mental vibration is a memory and also a process. The memory interacts with itself. They produce patterns. The patterns then self-organize through a variety of processes. At least I have given at least 10-12 processes in my blog. These processes form NPNM structures. One of the NPNM structures is called a human mind. It consists of a self-organized layered structure. And the layers of the mind are the world, the body, the nervous system, the ego, the intellect, and the awareness. And this is only one. And there are infinite numbers of such structures. Names keep changing, but the basic principle is the same. The basic principle is a “change” of some kind. The NPNM memory is also a change of some kind. The word is a change. The mantra is a change. Matrika is a change. The vibration is a change. I have seen in every tradition, the same principles are repeated in a different fashion. The field of probabilities is NPNM, non-local, non-spatial field of probabilities. It is manifested as soon as there is a measurement. The measurement must be done by a conscious observer.

Leyla is saying, I have been practicing being aware. And I am noticing more and more how the waking state is very much similar to the dream state. Things are just happening.

Very good. The Shiv Sutra that I am reading has exactly something like this. There is a sutra which says like this, that when you are established in awareness, the world appears as a dream. You will find that one interesting. Why does the world appear as real? Because we are unaware. Because there is this darkness of illusion that is covering our intellect here, which tells us that this world is the only reality there is. There is some truth in that. But, there is more. And the nature of appearances can be best described as a dream, instead of an independent part of the existence, which is happening independent of me. The characteristic of a dream is that it is not happening independently of me. Similarly, when you are established in awareness, you will find that the world is not happening independently of me.

This will be the description that you will want to adopt instead of a mechanical material reality happening independent of me. This statement actually is meaningless. Imagine an existence without consciousness, without awareness. It does not make any sense because what does this mean? The world is appearing independent of whom? Without distinguishing between the words that say real world or the dream world, without using them, you will find that in a state of awareness, everything is happening, including me. It is not independent of me. I don't know whether you can say it is dependent on me, but it is me. This is the state of oneness that every seeker wants to be in all the time.

Actually, the good news is you are in it right now. You are in a state of oneness right now. Your mind is giving you this kind of impression that you are separate, the world is separate. You stop this tendency of the mind which is called the dividing tendency of the mind. Lakshman Joo in the Shiva Sutras calls it the differentiated perception. It is a very nice phrase to describe it. This is the condition of an ignorant person, an unaware person. The one who is established in their true nature knows that the world is me. There is no independent reality. That is the real meaning of the word illusion. And when I say dream, it is a poetic way of saying the same thing. Everything is a dream. Your night dream, your day dream, your final dream, your dream after death, everything is one thing.

What is that? You appearing as illusory forms.

I want to know about the lower aspect of the mind. Well, where should I start? As, one of the things that I have a great deal of difficulty with is reconciling between expectation and basically appearance. My expectation may be to do this or skew this, or skew something else. But what actually appears is quite different. And I still haven't got time to accept that it is just me happening, that there is no desire behind it. And I don't know for sure. I'm clarifying that I appreciate it very much.

Okay, let us see what is happening here. And I guess the lower aspect of the mind is involved here. There is a layered structure of the mind. Now the desires are pouring in from the higher one, which is also called the causal body. It is a storehouse of tendencies. The causal body keeps creating the desires. You can see it. The desire arrives first. And the job of the lower layers is simply to execute the desire. There is a function in the mind which produces a reward or a punishment. If you are successful in executing the desire, it produces a reward which you think is happiness. And there is a function in the lower layer somewhere which produces a punishment when the organism fails to achieve, fails to fulfill the desire, which is coming from the top layers, that is what is seen as suffering and mental pain.

When you say expectation, that is coming from the top layers. There can be a reason. Usually the reason is past experience. Usually the experience flows from bottom to top and also flows from top to bottom. From bottom to top, it flows in the form of impressions and from top to bottom, it flows in the form of desires. This circle is always going on. There are intervening layers, which you said is the lower nature of the mind. Yes, there are, which intervene in these two flows, if you can call them the flows. The top down, I just described what happens. There is a reward and punishment mechanism.

The bottom to top is a little bit complicated. It reinforces that which produced rewards in the past. It biases the impressions in the direction of reward and it biases the impressions away from the punishment. There is some kind of distortion that happens in between, which happens through the lower layers of the mind. The bottom layers are concerned with the survival of the organism and therefore, they bias the experience in the direction of survival and that is what keeps the organism bound in the world because they allow only that to reach the causal body or the storehouse, which helps in survival. That is the kind of distortion they are producing.

For example, they will favor the experience of eating or mating or dominating others, killing the enemies. And these experiences, when they go in the higher layers, they come back as desires to do the same thing, repeat the same thing because it provided a reward in the past. The reward is survival, it just feels very good. That is the illusion that the lower layers are producing. There is no inherent pleasure or pain. It is all mind created. When they reach the causal body, they form a tendency and that tendency then reappears as a desire to do that thing again.

The lower mind then evaluates the desire again in terms of reward and punishment - a desire is here and now I need to do something so that it also produces a reward. I don't want to do something which I did in the past, which produced a punishment. And they go and execute it again in a biased way so that the outcome is a reward instead of punishment. That is the intelligence of the lower layers. It is limited to only that. Get more pleasure, avoid pain as much as possible. There is no other intelligence there. Even they do not know survival, actually. The pleasure-pain mechanism is dominating. The indirect effect of pleasure-pain mechanism is survival. The lower layers do not know anything about survival. Actually, the whole outcome of the whole process - formation of impressions and execution, formation of desires and their execution, the whole outcome is survival. You will never find a layer in the mind which knows survival. Okay, I need to reproduce more, to produce more babies so that my species survive. No, there is no such intelligence in any layer. It is an outcome of pleasure-pain and other smaller processes in the mind.

Sometimes I say, the mind is concerned with only survival. When you say expectation, it is generated from this mechanism of pleasure and pain. I need to do something which will result in more happiness, the mind says. And it does not always happen. The punishment mechanism comes into picture and punishes the organism. Actually, it is the mind punishing itself for not doing a good job of fulfilling the expectations. You can guess that is a lower function of the mind. It is not in our control. If somebody insults us, no matter how high we are in the spiritual ladder, even if we are saints and whatever, we do feel pain there. Somebody insults this organism, it does not matter how much knowledge you have. The lower layer will do its job. It will produce suffering. It will produce pain there. This pain will be impressed on the causal body. You cannot intervene there. It is all automated. Whenever there is expectation, and it is not fulfilled, it produces suffering. We should not relate it with our spiritual advancement. We should see it as a functioning of the lower mind.

This is only one small example. The nature of spiritual awakening is not destruction of the lower mind, which many people think. Why do I need to control my lower tendencies? I need to get rid of the lower? No. There is no you if there is no lower mind. It is a part and parcel of being an individual. Otherwise, the whole loop is broken. You break the lower mind, nothing will reach the causal body. It will sit there for eternity like a seed. Nothing will happen there. Evolution happens through a series of experiences and desires. Just like I said, survival is the outcome of this. Spiritual evolution is also an outcome of this event. And biological evolution is also an outcome of it. If this loop is broken, nothing really happens. Nothing important happens. Those who know a little about the lower tendencies, they will become an enemy of those tendencies. They want to kill those lower tendencies. But if you understand the mind completely, if you get the whole picture of it, you will see the importance of the lower mind, the animal nature. And then you don't want to destroy it, but you want to overpower it. You want it to do that which is necessary, that which is aligned to your goals. You don't want it to do anything random. Or you don't want it to repeat what it has been doing for millions of years. This organism is doing what? Survival only, nothing else.

As soon as you wake up, you can see what the lower mind is doing, and you take its function in your hands, which means you control the behavior of the lower mind instead of kicking it out. It is not evil. It is just a machine. It is doing its job. You take control of it. Now let it do that which is necessary. Let it do that which is aligned to your spiritual goal. Instead of simply surviving and repeating the same things endlessly. This is a loop. Probably there are more loops, but this one for humans, this is more important. The loop of experiences and desires and the associated reward and punishment. You have experienced the reward and punishment that are associated with survival. That is everybody's experience. You experience it every day when you eat something. The body produces reward. What is body? A lower layer of the mind. When somebody praises you, the mind produces a reward, as you are surviving successfully in society. Similarly, for your intellectual achievements, people praise you or they respect you. That produces reward. And now it is an intellectual reward. Yes, my life is meaningful. Finally, I have done something good. People like me and so on. We have experienced these things. Has anybody experienced anything which was not survival and still produced rewards and still produced punishments? Is anybody here in our meeting who has experienced that?

From being a human with all the lower functions to being consciousness, how to jump to that level? Actually, that is the dream of every seeker, that I want to take control of this process, I want to stay at the top all the time, irrespective of what this human organism is doing, and I want to control it. So, yes, it is a very valid point, it is a very valid desire, and you must have seen it, that it is also a desire. And all the desires are processed in the same loop. Now, I will tell you the trick. The trick is to have a spiritual goal. This trick is to have spiritual desires. You will have all kinds of desires. They do not take permission before arriving in the waking state, this lower mind. They simply drop down like rain. So, at the level of intellect, there is something called discrimination, Vivek, discernment. Use your discernment, discrimination ability, to channel or filter your desires and send only the ones which accomplish a spiritual goal down the loop. Use your body-mind as an instrument to achieve your spiritual goal. This is one trick. How to do that? Always remain aware of your desires.

Remain aware of what desires are present. Do not call them “my desires”. They are not obviously my desires. They are happening in the mind. Now, distinguish between a desire that will produce a worldly reward or worldly pain. Do not entertain that desire. Throw it away, let it go. If you don't give it energy, it will just dry out. It won't make any impression. Allow those desires which you think will help in your spiritual goal. For example, your goal right now is to stay at the top, in the greatest state, ultimate state of union or whatever. So, when these spiritual desires go through the loop, you will find that the same reward and punishment network mechanism is involved. And that is why I asked this question - has anybody seen anything in the lower layers which do the reward and punishment even if it is not concerned with survival? And yes, there is something. If your desires are of spiritual kind, it will produce the same reward and punishment. And let this loop execute and see what happens. Gain the pleasure of seeking and experience the pain of not seeking. For example, you fell down from your ultimate state to some kind of worldly state. Now, it will produce pain. If you have aligned your mind like this, you should feel bad that I failed to remain aware. What will happen is, next time the body-mind will choose an action to correct it and these impressions will be transmitted upwards. And now, a favorable bias will be made in the causal body. Now, there will be more bias towards spiritual desires. It is a desire, but we can use it to progress like this. Mumukshatva. Desire for liberation. Desire to achieve the highest. Desire for union and oneness, to stay as aware, to stay in my true nature.

Utilize your lower mind in the way I explained. Bias it towards your spiritual goal. The spiritual goal can be liberation. The spiritual goal can be a bodhisattva state, if you want. Or the spiritual goal can be even the small goal like I want to progress. I want to become a good person. There's no rule that you should get the highest. Get the best that you require. You cultivate your lower tendencies. Do not despise them. Do not kick them out. You can use them, especially if you do not have a guru. This mental mechanism is your guru. It will reward you when your spiritual goal is reached or you go near it. And it will punish you when you fail in it. Just like a real guru. This is a trick. And I'm pretty sure that this thing is present in all the seekers. It is a natural gift. You can do it by training also. First step, filter out the spiritual desires. Let them pass through all the layers of the mind. See each and every one. And yes, it will not happen all the time because the awareness is coming and going. Your goal is to keep the awareness active. Let them pass through the reward and punishment mechanism. See what happens. The path of knowledge is not about effort. If you really see, it's actually effortless. Awareness takes no effort. If it takes effort, something is wrong somewhere.

And that is not a direct path actually. And therefore, you will never find me talking about such techniques. We let the lower mind be the lower mind. We let the higher mind be the higher mind. Because awareness is a totally different thing. It is rising above the mind. The thing is, if you involve the mind in your spiritual projects, the mind will become a burden. You won't progress that much. Observe the mind. If it is doing worldly things, sit at the place of awareness and observe it. Oh, it is doing the same old thing which survival demands. Observe it. “Well, I'm not spiritual enough. I don't say spiritual things. I don't do spiritual things”. Just observe it. That is the teaching on the direct path. Whatever I said about the mind is too far-fetched. We do not even guarantee what will happen.

Cultivation will work sometimes. Sometimes there is no other option left but the path of effort. And such techniques were designed to get there by effort. Everybody starts with effort. I have also started with effort. No shame in saying at all - do the effort. Involve the whole apparatus of the body-mind. Dedicate it to the spiritual goal. If you do not have a spiritual goal, then it is a big problem. Many people, in this world, do not have a spiritual goal and therefore, the goal assigned by Mother Nature is being executed. Just survival. And that is why their lives are hell. Without a higher goal, we do not even reach the status of humans.

So, yes, effort will be required in the beginning. But if you are on the direct path, you will find that you will direct your effort at the proper place. The effort should be to remain aware. Not to manipulate the mind. The mind will manipulate itself. Which is not our concern, really. I am not the mind. When I know the direct path, should I make the effort? When I came to know the direct path, all efforts were dropped automatically. After that, the efforts do not appeal much. I am not attracted to anything which involves too much effort. A little bit of effort, yes. It's always required. We are humans. We are kind of lazy. But if it is a lifetime of effort, no, thank you, I don't want it. Why? My nature is effortless consciousness. My true nature is pure. Why should it require effort? If it is requiring effort to be what I am, something is wrong. That means, I am trying to stand in a bucket and trying to lift myself. I don't need to do that.

Sometimes I think that the spiritual path is like a cart before the horse. Once you get to the direct path, the horse is put in the right place. The horse is the awareness. The horse is your real nature. The cart is the effort. People have done the reverse. I want to get there by effort. Can the cart drive the horses? Can the mind take you to awareness? These questions are very important. I already know the effortless path. Why is my mind sticking to the path of efforts? The only effort here is to bring the mind to the effortlessness. Why does it not want to do that? Why is it asking for techniques? Why is the cart trying to drive the horses?

If I am effortless consciousness, if I am the Satchitananda, which by definition has no effort there, what will it take? What effort will it take to be that which I am? When I am timeless, when I am eternal, how much time will it take to be that which I am? It's another thing, if you don't know if I am timeless or not, if there are doubts there, then these can be erased very quickly. The path of knowledge involves questions and answers, where the doubts of the mind are cleared quickly. That involves knowing my real nature and any doubts that are arising about the real nature. Once the real nature is known as your direct experience, then the horses are placed before the cart. Then it should not be a big problem.

If the real nature is not known, the Atma Gyan, Atma Sakshatkar, self-knowledge, if it is absent, then people, I have seen, are gravitated to the path of efforts, not fully understanding what they are. They think I will get there by effort. I see it as waiting room music. I don't want to completely destroy the path of effort, but when you are sitting in a waiting room, suppose in a doctor’s clinic or airport, what do they do? They play some kind of crappy music or show something on the TV screen there. Because a person cannot sit quietly these days, needs a distraction, so they keep showing something, keep flashing something before your eyes, so that you sit quietly for 10 minutes. And the path of effort is like this. We tell the student to do the effort till the mind matures to a point where the effort is no longer necessary. It is not because of the effort that he achieved the highest state. It is because the mind finally gave up, stopped the efforts and became mature enough to now contemplate on its real nature.

Muhammad is saying, The mind does everything in order to avoid facing the silence.

Yes, that is why we have the path of effort. It is just because the mind cannot take the truth, which is silence. There is nothing there. Just like I said in the beginning, there is nothing to know there. It is pure being, not doing or knowing. Our nature is completely non-doer, non-knower. Don't try to do and don't try to know. Now this can backfire to people who are just joining the spiritual path. "Oh, my Guru told me, don't do and don't know. I am just sitting here. I just eat and sleep and that's all." This can be a problem. So, initial teaching is never like this. I don't start like this. I don't do, don't think, no, don't know - That is not recommended. And the person will not go even one step further in their path if you start like this. This is the end of teaching. Not knowing is the end of knowing and not doing is the end of doing. Probably for some people, whatever I am saying will sound totally alien. That is how it sounded when I was making an effort. "Oh, he told me don't do effort. He told me my place, the highest place, which I am, is effortless. Where is it? Tell me where it is?" And I even asked some teachers, "How did you get there?" He just finished saying that it was effortless and my question was, "How did you get there?" Why? Because the mind cannot come out of this mindset of doing an effort, working towards it. Why do we do that? Because we see that worldly things are obtained only by effort. If you don't do anything, you don't get anything in the Maya. And we try to achieve the ultimate, which is effortless and which does not come by doing, by efforts and by doing. A very tricky thing. The spiritual path is backwards. You need to step back. There is no forward movement there. Step back and you will arrive at your real nature.

People try to use their body. People try to use their intellect. People try to use all possible means. Somebody is trying to please this deity, that deity. Somebody is trying to please their guru. People think the gurus have done it, they must be knowing some kind of miracles. Like, "Please send me your Shaktipat through the air. I want to experience that which you are experiencing." And it is amazing. The universe works in a very, very mysterious way. So, we don't know what can happen through effort sometimes. I never discourage the person who is doing the effort. Even if it is a very stupid effort, do not discourage the person. The effort always produces learning of some kind. Because that is my experience. When you learn that there is a way, which is effortless, go for that. Because ultimately you are going to go there anyway. Ultimately, it is going to happen effortlessly anyway.

A few years ago, I was making much effort to be aware all the time. Finally, that effort is gone. One time, my passion was how to remain aware while dying so that I don't have to take birth again. That is also gone now. I mean, I'm not saying it is stupid. It's a good spiritual goal. But who cares? I am not the one who takes birth. Why should I be concerned with these things? It is just an attachment to not taking births. It is a mental activity of some kind. It is not the highest spiritual goal. That which is highest, you already are. All you need to do is remove the obstacles that are in the form of the beliefs that tell you I am something else. The beliefs are like, "I have a body, I have mind." Okay, they are not mine, but I am experiencing them. I need to do something about them. Just tell me, you are experiencing so many things, like the rain, the sun. Why don't you call them mine? Why are these phenomena not yours? And only this body-mind is yours. What kind of conditioning is that? When I heard this thing from somebody, it was an eye-opening statement. Actually, it started with the discussion on pain. “How should I deal with my pain? My pain”. And the Guru got irritated by this. He said, “why are you calling it my pain? Can you tell me? How did it become your pain?” Obviously, there was no answer. This kind of mind is a shifty mind. This kind of mind, which can call pain as my pain, can call anything as “mine”.

“There is much pain in the universe. There is much pain in the world. What can we do to eradicate this pain and suffering from people?” And the Guru was terrified now, “what? Is it not enough to call the pain of the body as my pain, that you are taking on the pain of the whole world? What is this? Is it spiritual? Is it progress?” Yes, we can understand that for the purpose of survival, the mind calls this house as my house, but can it call the mountain there as my mountain? Can it call the planet my planet? Some people do that actually. It is a terrible idea. You are trying to get rid of the identification, and in this case it is growing. And you can see that identification is at the root of such questions. If you don't know your real nature, you will go on calling anything as mine. An intelligent person is not going to call these clouds as mine, but he will surely call the body as mine. But a spiritual person will discard the body also. The body is also universal. It's not mine. Nothing is mine, really. But he will call the mind as mine. What about my vasanas? That's what I did. When you have this desire not to take birth, what is happening here is the identification with that which is taking birth. Identification is the root of the problem. All the effort arises out of identification. And the effort actually strengthens the identification. It makes it even stronger. Unfortunately, you cannot say this to a seeker who is just starting. You tell them, when he says my pain, my mind, my birth and my death, you say yes. They are yours, yes. Try to fix everything. And you go even lower. Try to fix the world also. Try to plant more trees. Try to consume less.

Nowadays, this behavior pattern has become a part of spirituality somehow. How one should behave. A spiritual person does not behave like that. He should behave like this. Enlightenment is not dependent on behavior. Even a criminal can get enlightened instantly. It does not really depend on how the body-mind is. That is all conditioning. A criminal is a criminal because of the conditioning. You can say karma or whatever. But for enlightenment, that is not a condition. Plus, a very good person, well-behaved person, ethical person, born and brought up in a very cultured family, in a rich family, in a good country, he can remain an idiot for his whole life. Actually, if you do the survey of things like this, I have not done this, but my observation is that very ordinary people got enlightened all over the world. Shepherds or the bidi makers or people like Ramana Maharishi, who were nobodies. There are two or three who were princes and kings, but we know them because they are famous. But most of them, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa or Vivekananda, are nobodies. And very surprisingly, some criminals. Ravan was an enlightened person. Can you imagine? He wrote many great texts on Shaivism. What was his behavior? Kidnapped somebody very important. And then that was his fault. Otherwise, he was a great fellow. Sometimes I think a criminal is more equipped for enlightenment because he does not have this kind of stupid attachments, what is good, what is bad and all. A criminal mind is a very simple mind, although a distorted mind. But remove the distortion and there is nothing there to stop him from becoming enlightened. And he will drop the birth and death also instantly. Carelessness, rebelliousness, that is a requirement for this kind of goal. A criminal has that. Sometimes it is very difficult to differentiate between a yogi and a criminal. They have almost the same appearance from outside. By appearance I mean the behavior. I should not say these things in public. That's kind of a dangerous thing to do. But what I am saying is my observation only, just observe these people. This is very interesting.

The yogis are rebellious. No laws apply to them. They don't care about laws. They don't care about tradition. They don't even have the decency to wear clothes. I am just telling you my observation. A obedient person, a person who is a slave of the society, forget about that person. There is no hope for enlightenment there. He will remain trapped in this loop of being a good person for many lifetimes. There are so many enlightened people, they need to behave according to the ethics cooked up by this society, just to avoid trouble. They behave in a “good” way, in an ethical way. Otherwise, a yogi or gyani has no ethics, is governed by the universal laws, not by the petty stuff that is cooked up by humans. Are you not afraid of the aghoris? You are terrified. What do they do? They cook the human body, eat it and live with snakes and tigers and who knows what. And we read those textbooks of aghoris, we wonder how they got so much knowledge. They do not look like a good person. Everybody is afraid of them. Everybody is afraid of tantrics. Can you become a tantric while being a good person? Impossible.

Forget about these things, petty stuff, improving the world, improving the people and improving myself, improving my mind. I need to become better, ethical. I need to talk sweetly. I saw that the most effective guru is who is very bitter, who insults you every second. That is the most effective guru. Forget about these things. Go straight to your spiritual goal, whatever it is. Bypass the mind totally, which is an accumulation from society. How can you even hope that this accumulation will take you there, which is very universal and beyond mind? How can it do that? How can the cart take you to your destination when the horses are behind the cart? Put the horse in front of the cart. I am saying it many times so that it becomes obvious. Think about these things. I never thought about these things in my life. It is very late now, because I have wasted 20 years on this. Ignore the mind, ignore the body, ignore society, ignore the world. I will say ignore the books and the gurus also, useless things. Reach there where it matters most. It is direct, it is effortless, it is non-doing. Stay there. If it requires effort, do the effort. Ultimately, it does not require effort actually. Nothing else needs to be done after this is done.

Session 48

Today is our Sunday Q&A as usual. My attempt is always to reach a lot of people. And although on the path of knowledge, there is nothing to watch really. There is no eye candy. I cannot give you pictures and videos to watch. It is mostly text or a listening experience. That is why it is called Shruti. You must have noticed. All the ancient knowledge is called Shruti. Shruti means that which we have listened to. It is not called writing. For example, in English, it will be called text. But in Sanskrit, it is called Shruti. Because that is the best way to transmit knowledge. By listening, the sense of hearing. Because there is nothing to show here.

At least in the yogic path, for example, there is something to show. There are yoga postures and there are breathing exercises and all. We need to show it to the viewers. But on the path of knowledge, there is endless talking only. Nothing else. And we repeat the same thing all the time. It is very dry. Still, I try to spice it up a little bit with pictures and slides and all. But I don't put too much on it because it takes away the seriousness, usually. Because as soon as we see the pictures and all, the mind goes and constructs an imaginary story.

Our language is not really suitable for imparting the teachings. When I say the universal mind is huge, the universal mind is very big, what kind of picture do you get? You extend it in space and you extend it in time, isn't it? You think that the universal mind is a huge thing somewhere. And it is called Akashic record etc. Whenever there is this word “universe”, you always picture it as something huge. You cannot reach it. But that's not true. The universal mind is here and now. It is tiny as an experience. Whatever is happening here and now is a universal mind. Whatever is being experienced is a universal mind. Everything there is in the universal mind is in a potential form. You can experience it here and now. This is the pitfall of language. When I say Brahman, you think there is something very big which only the great people know and I probably will not be able to know in this lifetime what is Brahman. And that is not true because you have picturized it in that way. The Brahman is you. You are sitting here. The Brahman is right in front of your nose. Nowhere else. What do people do? They embellish it like Parbrahm, Paratman. There is no such thing. There is just you. It does not matter if it is appearing in the human form or in the form of the world and on. It is you. You are the Brahman.

I try to clean up the pictures that people have formed in their mind instead of giving them pictures. If you give them pictures to look at, then there is a good chance that they will get it incorrectly. When I say oneness, people usually think that I will be able to know everything there is in the universe. No, that is not the oneness. The oneness is your current experience. It is very tiny. It is very subtle. Yet it is the whole. It is the whole thing. Nothing is missing in your current experience. You don't need to go anywhere to find the oneness. The experience and the experiencer are oneness. They are one.

Sometimes I give this kind of metaphors like the faces of the coin. And they also cause trouble because then you want to picturize the experience and the experiencer like a coin. People try to picture it like a coin. There is experience on one side and there is the experiencer on the other side. It is not like that. That metaphor also causes problems. It is like water mixed in milk. This is the experience of oneness. The water is the experience. The milk is the experiencer. Mix it together. It is not like a coin.

That's why if you don't get it, nothing in this universe will be able to impart knowledge. If you get it, you don't need anything. You don't need any metaphors. You don't need any words or books. Usually I have seen that it happens while talking to the student, to the seeker. Go on pointing. Go on giving metaphors after metaphors. And there is a moment while talking there will be a shine in their eyes. Oh, you mean this? And yes, usually it goes away after two seconds. And usually they are left with this memory that there is oneness. That is enough, actually.

On the path of knowledge, we don't want too much involvement. We know our natural state is of oneness. You get a glimpse. Once you get it, it is done. You are not going to forget it. People do say that day when I was talking to you, there was oneness and now the oneness is not there. Then I need to take them there again. Then what is there? Where are the two? It is very tricky. The language has caused a lot of trouble in the spiritual field. When the teachings are given in language, people misinterpret it. It has happened in many traditions. It is called seeing and people try to use their eyes to see. You can see some things, but it is not knowledge. You cannot see the knowledge. The knowledge is the most subtle. The knowledge is the seeing.

Sushant is saying, Can you explain how Chitta came into the body at birth?

That is a very big confusion out there. Chitta is defined as the mind and the body is defined as a layer of the mind. So, by this definition, you can see that the body is in mind. The mind is not in the body. There is no mind in the body. For example, if you observe the body, you will not find the mind there. You will find only the body. The body that is within the reach of five senses is an experience of the mind. So, the question should be, How does the body come into mind? It should be reversed. The Chitta is also called the mind substance, by the way. The Chitta is not that which we are thinking or feeling or emotions or memories. No, it is something which produces these experiences. What produces the experiences? And you will find that there is a potential of some kind and I call that potential a non-physical, non-mental memory. This memory gives rise to various experiences. Among these experiences are the experiences of the world, the body, the human mind, thinking and all that. Plus, many more.

There are out-of-body experiences. There are dreams and there are after-death experiences. ADE, this is one of the terminologies that many modern occult people use these days to classify our experiences. And you will see immediately from this kind of experience. By the way, IBE is an in-body experience. Right now, you are in IBE state. Right now, you feel as if you are trapped in a body. Right now, you are having an experience of being in the body. And it gives rise to the illusion that the mind is in the body. It is not like this. It is never like this. If you see clearly, the experience of the body is appearing to you, if you let go of your notions about location etc., there are no locations in the mind. It is completely non-local. The definition of the mind is that the body is one of its layers. And the mind is nothing but a potential form of memory, non-physical and non-mental. All the experiences are being produced by it.

I was giving you another classification, which is body-based by some modern kind of practitioners. And they will classify the experience in terms of whether the body is involved or not. And your current experience will be called the IBE, which is in-body experience. If you leave the body, for example, in the dreams or some other exotic state, it will be called OBE, which is an out-of-body experience. And after death, there is no body at all. This physical body is gone completely. And that is ADE. And you must have heard of this one, obviously - The NDE, which is a near-death experience, where it looks like the body is gone. And the body is then taken back. There is no communication with the body or the mind blocks the experience of the body because it is painful. There can be a number of reasons. It is a very complex thing.

So, all these three-letter words, they are body-based. They are trying to describe our experience from the point of view of the body. The body is central here. So, there is no mind in the body. And so, this question of how the mind comes into the body is irrelevant. It's not meaningful. The body is in the mind and keeps coming and going. The mind is more stable, you can say, the ground on which the body happens. The bodies come and go. This is very well known in Indian philosophies, for example. We know that the Jeev, the bundle of the memories, which is huge, actually. We call it latent and we call it the remaining memories and so on. It is huge in terms of memories. Because it has been storing memories since millions of years. We don't even know what is there. I use the word causal body or Karan Sharira. The causal body causes a birth in the physical world.

Now, you'll notice the physical world is also a layer of the mind. Not the layer of the causal body, but it is the layer of the mind. And the causal body is a part of this universal mind, of which the world is also a manifestation, of which the world is also a layer. So, there is a hierarchy of layers, inside which there is a hierarchy of causal layers or individual layers. There is a big hierarchy, inside it is the small hierarchy of the individual minds. We know the individual mind only, mostly, in the waking state. That is why we think that that is all there is. But there are exercises, there are practices that will take you to the hierarchy of the universal mind. You can see it. Why? Because you are it. You are that whole thing. You are the universal mind. So, once you get the whole picture, the bigger picture, then you will understand that the bodies come and go. And the phenomena of taking on a physical body is a higher level phenomena than our individual mind. So, it looks as if the causal body has descended into the physical body. Just like I was saying in the beginning, the words cause big trouble. Like, when I say that you are born as humans in this world, you descend in the world, you descend into a body. Now, this is a very poetic language. I don't think anybody understands the meaning of this. Because it is never seen. Nobody sees this thing. What do we see? What is our direct experience? Is that the world appears to us. And slowly, the nervous system becomes mature enough to take the impressions from the world. Slowly, we learn what this is.

It is not that the causal body has descended. It is only that it is connected. The word connection is a better word. Nothing descends into something. Nothing goes inside anything. So, all these locations and all these things, they are illusory. They do not really exist. It is very tricky. How is this connection made? This question is also not very accurate. The connection is already there. Other connections are dropped. Now, I will give you an image, but do not take it literally. Imagine that you are in the middle and you picture yourself as a circle. And there are other circles around you. And there are many other bodies. There are other worlds. There are other minds. And there is continuous connection with these other circles. What happens in a birth is you connect to only one and drop the others. You cut the connections from others. So, again, in the field of spirituality, it is always counter-intuitive. Whatever you think is always wrong. This language has done so much damage to our knowledge that we assume things. What is our direct experience? We are always connected to everything. And then, at the time of birth, we break the connections. And the individual mind, the causal body becomes involved in this form. The temporary organic matter, which has taken a form, is involved in those experiences. They last for an eye blink, actually, compared to the life of the causal body. And then it's gone. Then it's back again in business as usual. Then one fine day, it says, my desires are troubling me. I need to fulfill some more desires. And then it connects to some other form. Can be an animal, can be a bird, can be an ant, who knows what. There are many possibilities. This world is not the only world. And this universe is not the only universe. There are gradations of universes. It is a big topic now.

Anil is asking, How does potential appear as experience?

There is a potential to create senses and form a mental structure. Structure of the ego, structure of the thoughts and so on. That is what we call as an individual. And it then appears in the form of an experience. A limited experience that is being produced by combined activity of the senses and the other mental instruments. How does the mind itself appear? As soon as the mind appears, the experience appears out of this potential. How did that happen? Because there is infinite potential, there is a possibility of self-organization in these patterns. Fortunately, nobody asked me how the vibrations appeared. Because there is no answer for that. The vibrations do not appear. The vibrations are there. They are in existence. Nothing is really vibrating. And that is why we say nothing is really happening. It is not real. That which is happening, even the Naad is not real.

We start with vibrations and we say that the vibrations produce the mind. But there are some texts in Advaita which say that the Maya is projected by the mind. They reverse it. Very difficult to comprehend that. But you will need to change your perspective a little bit and then you can understand how that is possible. These things are uncaused. The nature of existence is acausal. Nothing causes anything. The nature of existence is non-temporal. Time appears as an illusion in Maya. There is no time present before the experience. If there is no time, then which event comes first and which comes later is undefined. And therefore, the mind can produce the Maya and the Maya can produce the mind and they can produce each other if you want to assign a creator or a producer. It is all happening at once timelessly.

And now you can see that it is beyond intellect. Because intelligence works in the domain of time and also space. You will need to provide the intelligence with this coordinate system to comprehend anything. Because intelligence is born out of experience. And the experience always happens in terms of time and space. No matter which experience, sometimes the time is distorted, sometimes the space is distorted. The experience always happens in time and space. There is always a field in which the experiences appear and they appear one after the other. This is how the mind works. This is the, you can say, basic nuts and bolts of the mind. Intelligence cannot comprehend that which is not presented in the background of space and time. And therefore, you need to pick a place to explain the creation of anything while fully knowing that I cannot understand what happened before, what happened after because it is not in time. It is not happening. It is all an illusion. Even to say that something is happening, something is being created, there is potential, there is experience, these words are also projections of the mind.

It is unknowable. What we can do is, on the path of knowledge, we can drop our assumptions, come into the field of not knowing, and arrive in this very peaceful state of not knowing. Why is that desirable? Because that is my real nature. The nature of existence is not knowing. It is fine with not knowing. Who is not happy with not knowing? The mind, obviously. It wants to know what this is. And it fails miserably. It can know a few things, that's all. Some people say, no, it is growing, it is evolving, it will know more sooner or later. Yes, it will know more. Still will be limited. Still will be a distortion.

Everything is an appearance. The fabric of mind is such that even time and space are manufactured before things appear in it. Otherwise, nothing appears. It needs to arrange what is appearing. And it arranges it in time and space. It is just a method of arrangement. We never perceive time and space. We do perceive objects, the forms and colors and shapes and all. But we do not perceive time and space. It is an assumption. Actually, it is more subtle than the appearances that appear in time and space. That's why in the Maya series, I called it the double Maya. Time and space are twice as removed from reality as compared to any other appearance.

We take them as primary. And then we place the objects in time and space or events in time and space. And that is why I say the Maya reverses everything. Our knowledge is completely the reverse of what is actually happening. There is an interesting article on my blog which deals with this, the mechanism of the Maya. Just take the truth, reverse it, that is Maya. It's very simple. She looks complicated but she is really simple inside. She simply reverses whatever is happening. And when the knowledge arrives, it is a reversal of the reversal. And it is like the foreground becomes the background and the background becomes the foreground. Now all of your insights will look like this.

Sushant is saying, there is nothing, so there is no time, nowhere to go.

To realize that there is nothing, and there is nothing to do, and there is no time, and nothing to achieve, is stopping of the mind, is stopping of the seeking. And from that time onwards, you have a lot of time. From that time onwards, you can waste a lot of time. There is only time after that. There is nothing more. To realize this is the goal of the path of knowledge. That you are whole and complete, nothing to seek, nothing to do, nothing to achieve. Everything else is distraction, illusion, projections of the mind, mental activity, play. When that happens, the impulses of the mind settle down, and you will find that even though you have infinite time, you are doing nothing. Once you recognize there is no doer also, then what are you going to do? The karmic balance is burnt out, just like fuel in a car that is going nowhere, and the car stops, and there is no more birth. This is the liberation from birth and death. What do you do when there is no birth? Nothing. Our nature is being, our nature is not doing.

It is very difficult for the ego to accept this thing. "Oh no, there is no doing. What will I do then? I will get bored." Who is thinking this? Who is saying this? Not you, the ego, which is addicted to doing something, which is addicted to wasting time. We don't have time for these things. We don't have time for ego. We need to get to the non-doing. We need to get to nothing as soon as possible. When you get there, the doing is non-doing. Non-doing is doing. There is no difference at all.

Session 49

Today I received a question, what is the best way to do introspection?

What is the meaning of introspection? The word means “seeing within”. What are we seeing within here? Well, there has to be a subject of introspection. The subject can be anything which is in your experience or it can be yourself, it can be worldly issues or it can be philosophical matters or spiritual topics and you start by putting a question in front of it. The introspection is also called inquiry and if it is about the self, it is called self-inquiry. When you look within for the answers, it is introspection.

The answer should not come from memory. It should not be a memorized answer that you heard somewhere and then you repeat it. Yes, the topic can be such that which relates to memory but usually in the context of spiritual studies we pick something which is in front of us, pick any object and start questioning what is this object, why is it appearing like this, where is it appearing, what is seeing it and so on. For that you don't need to go to memory except using the language. You need to use only two things, which is your experience and your intellect. Trying to get knowledge about our direct experience using the intellect will be called introspection.

How to do it? The first condition for any introspection is that you need to clear out your beliefs first. Just keep your beliefs aside. You don't need to simply declare them as false, that will be too extreme. You can say that I am keeping whatever I know about this topic or this experience aside for now. I am not going to refer to my memory and you should keep all this external information also aside. You don't worry about what somebody else has said about something. Do not worry about what is written in some book about your topic. These things need to be removed for a while then you go and focus solely on your experience. This is the first condition that the memory is kept aside. Then you use your intellect, use your logical ability and rational abilities, critical thinking, be skeptical, surround the topic with questions. And it helps if you write down while you are introspecting.

Incidentally, there is an article on my blog which is on this topic itself and it is called the art of introspection.

A related question is what should I do introspection on? There is no such rule that you should do introspection on only spiritual topics or the self, but these are most important. Pick a topic which is most important for you and then you can start questioning and use your direct experience as a means to arrive at the answer and then you use the inferences and deductions to know further about it, or if some thoughts arise in your mind that this is like this or it is like that or somebody said it was like this, then you can use the cross questioning to clear it up, to destroy the beliefs that crop up in your mind while you are introspecting.

Initially, there will be a problem of mental noise, because the mind is not used to such kind of activity, it drifts into something else. It will change the topic, it will bring out something which is of the worldly nature, which is related to your survival and so on. This is the egoic activity, the ego does not let go easily, it is very strong, at least in the newcomers. As soon as you detect that my mind has drifted, come back to the topic, you should not start a fight within you - my mind is not cooperating, my mind is like this and my mind is like that. This is also mind, this is the mind complaining about itself, simply discard whatever was going on in your mind and come back to the question.

And then there will be more difficulties like you will start assuming the answers because initially the critical thinking is a little bit rusted, you don't use it, it is going to sleep for a while and then in the absence of answers, assumptions start coming up and you need to cross check, you need to cross question. If you encounter assumptions you will need to cross check, cross question, did I just assume it or is it my experience? Or is it even logical and this is how you bring back the introspection back on track. If it drifts again, if it starts assuming again, you do it again. If you keep a notepad and you start writing on it, that will help the mind to focus on the topic and you will find sometimes that the mind goes in circles, it will come back to the same answer which you discarded previously. Writing helps here also, you write down that answer and then you cut it, this is one way to avoid the repetition of the answers in the introspection. There can be problems like the mind cannot find any answer, which is okay, simply write down that I do not know the answer right now, this is my experience and my logical ability says something like this but I really am not convinced about this answer. You write it down and then you get back to that topic later on because you will find that the mind, if it is given a task, will continue doing it in background, it does not leave the task if you leave it, and if you come back to that topic after one or two days, you will find the answer will appear now.

It is not recommended to give up easily after five minutes of introspection. I have also given some examples of introspection in my blog, you will find that they are very straightforward and accurate. If you think I cannot even think like this what to do, I am failing in that, there is no need to give up initially because those articles were written after many months or probably years of introspection, they are the final product. It may not happen on the first try. You can take help from your guru or help from somebody else who has already thought about those things, who has already tackled all those questions. And never say that I cannot do it, you keep it on the back burner, like they say, you say I will return to it, I am not going to leave it and meanwhile you can collect more experience. There is no such rule that you should not read or you should not search about it, you do all that is possible to get the answers. Usually introspection is not there to get the answers, answers are very easy to get, they are everywhere, especially in philosophy and spirituality.

You want to find out for yourself. You want to verify the answer that you have received and you want to see it for yourself. You want to check your experience. You want to establish it through logic and deductions. That is why you do it. Otherwise, you will get many answers out there about your topics. We are not really interested in just finding one line or one word answer. We also want to establish it and that is why we are doing the introspection. That is my short answer about introspection.

There is one more thing that I would like to add which is that as you become good in introspection you will find that the answers will start coming very quickly. Sometimes you won't be able to find a source of the answers. It looks as if you already know the answer, even before you asked the question, even before you started the process of introspection the answer will pop out. It won't come from memory. It won't be something that you read somewhere or a confirmation of what you already know. This is also explained in my podcast episode on the gurufield. It means that your connection to the gurufield is showing up. Anyway I am not going to make it miraculous and extraordinary, introspection is very ordinary. It is just thinking very logically using your experience and intellect. Any answer can be gotten, anything which is knowable can be known like this.

Sometimes you may need to go and do some experiments and all, which is okay, you introspect on the experiment. This can be a repetitive process, this can be improvisation. Sometimes you will find that some answers that I got last month are not complete, they are not really accurate, you repeat it as many times as it is required. There can be another pitfall that you keep asking the questions without waiting for the answer, then there is a long list of questions and then you get confused what was the answer to that. That is purely an intellectual exercise, that cannot be called introspection, that can be internal fiddling, confusion, that is intro-confusion not introspection.

The introspection always involves seeing, just like the word says, the “spect” in introspection. If you merely think without seeing, it will give rise to confusion. The sign of a good introspection is that the questions will start reducing, they will start disappearing. If you find that more and more questions are coming up that means you are not seeing it, you are simply thinking about it, your intellectual mill is running but it is not going anywhere. When this happens, just relax, stop thinking, see the experience, go back to introspection. Actually sometimes it is so fast that you don't even need to think about it. The experiences are here and now, why do you need to think about it? Think about it.

I will take another question which I received today, which is - how can I find and integrate my shadow side?

I actually answered this question, this is coming from somebody most probably from the western side of the world, because in India we do not have this concept of shadow side and light side, we do not find all these things, so they are coming from some other tradition where it is told that you are not whole already, you need to integrate your broken parts, some parts are in shadow, you need to find them out and then combine it with yourself.

I heard about these things and I always wonder, why do I need to do this? Because I know the essence. Everybody who is listening also knows the essence and knows that I am whole and complete. Do I need to integrate anything here? Is there anything in me which is in shadow which cannot be seen? No. So the answer to this question will be very difficult because it is already covered up in beliefs, there is already an assumption that I am not complete, I need to integrate things and there is also an assumption that I have a shadow side and I don't know how to do it now. This is what will happen if you simply assume whatever you hear. I thought about it, and the shadow side that it is mentioned is of the mind, not of you, you do not have any sides, you are sideless, you are dimensionless non-entity. Only the mind has aspects and because of hidden trauma, because of unpleasant experiences, because of unfulfilled desires, the mind actually buries some of its parts. Some of its memories are buried somewhere, and in my understanding that is what is called the shadow side. How to find it? Frankly, I don't know, because the shadow side will find you, you cannot find anything. It is an automated process, it is what is happening in the mind and it is beyond any activity, it is beyond willing, if you cannot even see it then you cannot do anything.

What happens is, you keep your awareness on, you keep strengthening, intensifying your awareness and then one day the shadow side decides that I need to show up now, and when it shows up it can be traumatic, it can be very negative, I have seen it actually with my eyes, it happened to me also, now in Indian traditions we call it the arising of the Sanchita, it is same thing I think, I have never done this kind of research, I am just using my own experience to tell you. The shadow side, light side, this side, that side is more scientifically dealt with in Indian psychology and it is the basis of all these activities of the mind, the suppression and the revelation and all that. That is taken care of by the causal body. The causal body stores all the impressions, obviously. There is no other part of the mind that can do this kind of storage and in Indian psychology we have a very holistic approach. Sometimes the drama from many lifetimes ago can also show up here. My experience is that the first thing, the first shadow that appears will be your immediate issues which were suppressed, which were disconnected from what you are. Probably in the western hemisphere they think that mind is me, which is half truth, mind is also you but that is not the essential thing, the essential thing is whole and complete. The first shadow or broken parts that appear, belong to this lifetime, they appear in order of priority, the one which is most negative will come first.

Why do they appear? That is a good question, isn't it? They were hidden for some reason. And there are internal processes about which probably I don't have any experience, but I know there are some, and they will bring up this thing. Actually, in your daily life, your day-to-day activity of the mind, it is always doing that. It is always bringing up something from the past. “You are like this, and he said like this, and she did like this, and I did not get this”. Whenever you are sitting quietly, these thoughts will start arising. There is a process going on there. There are some things which are deeply buried. It can be guilt, it can be shame, it can be something the mind does not want to handle, does not want to see. The pain is too much, the suffering there is too much. It is hidden. It is not going to come into your day-to-day activity. That will remain hidden. Actually, from the Indian point of view, nothing is hidden. Whenever I see all these words like subconscious and unconscious, I laugh. There is no such thing. Nothing is unconscious, nothing is subconscious. It shows up. These so-called hidden shadow things, they show up in your behavior, in your speech, in your addictions, in your body also, in the organs, in your blood pressure, in your glucose content, in your hormones, in the color of your hair, texture of your skin. Nothing is hidden.

First of all, we should get rid of all these concepts. Nothing is in the shadows. Case is that you are ignorant about these things. Nobody told you about these things, you cannot see it. You go to your teacher, you go to your guru and the guru says, well there are many shadow things, work on them. You do not know where these shadows are hiding because you never paid attention to what is happening in your body, in your mind. You are totally extroverted. Your whole attention is outside. “What do I need to do? What do I need to eat today? Where do I need to go? Whom do I need to meet and talk to? Who is doing what? What is on the TV? Why is the world like this?” Well, first of all, that's why we say bring on the awareness. You don't need to do anything. Awareness will give rise to introversion. Just now I was talking about introspection. Awareness is like continuous introspection. It is continuously introspecting, seeing internally. That's what introspection means. Nothing remains hidden if your awareness is 100% on. It should shine like the sun onto your body, onto your mind, onto whatever is there, whatever you want to call “myself”. You don't need to shine it on the self, the experiencer, it is the one that is shining the light. Don't try to turn it into the action of the experiencer. It is not possible. Other things are seen in the light of experiencer, in the light of consciousness. That is what is called awareness. And now you will start noticing, if you are smart. You must have a very well developed intellect to notice what is going on. Now you will find your shadow side will show up.

When it showed up for me, I could not believe it, because it will introduce you to a new person within you. People need not panic when I say this, because if you never encountered any traumas, never encountered any bad situations, negative people, toxic people in your life, then probably you don't have anything, nothing is in shadow, you are already free, you are already clean. Such people are very rare, where nothing bad happened. Once it shows up, you will be surprised, but don't worry, it has shown up, because it is the time for it to be integrated. You accept, this is me, this is what happened. Now what is the proper rational action? You forgive, you do whatever is needed to get rid of it, you integrate it. It is also me - you say, take responsibility for it and you will find then the purging happens. I have seen many people start crying anytime, start shouting anytime, they go into fits of anger without provocation, without any reason. Why is this anger coming up, they don't know. Don't worry, it is the shadow side, it is coming out of the shadow now, you need to accept now, that these are the memories that were hidden long ago. Now there is no point in doing that analysis - in which of my lifetimes, what did I do to get this kind of result, there is no point in doing that. Simply observe what is going on, keep your lights on, keep the awareness on. Otherwise the shadow will become shadow again, if you suppress it, it will go even deeper, who knows where. My method of integrating the shadow side is to remain aware and accept. Yes, this mind is not me, it did not happen to me. These ideas may seem totally useless when it is happening, for example, you are driving on a highway and a big truck comes straight on, high speed, 100 kmph. Now this world is not real, this is just illusion, when this is happening in the illusion, you forget the spiritual teaching, you do whatever is needed to stay alive. Here the spiritual teaching is completely useless, cannot be used, similarly when the shadow side shows up, forget the spiritual stuff, you deal with it, in that moment nothing else can be done. If the mind is saying I need to cry for two hours, well do it, do not suppress it. If the mind says I need to go and kill somebody immediately, well don't do it, because that is not going to purge it, that is going to augment it. That's why you need to keep the awareness on.

Let other things happen, do not analyze what is going on, nobody can analyze this thing. I met a few people who were in a very extraordinary situation, like whenever they started talking, they talked in some foreign language which is non-existent, a language which is 2000 years old, or whenever they tried to talk, only grunts came out of their mouth, as if it was a monkey, an animal, even bird sounds. There are ways to clean this up quickly also, that is done in the kundalini path. It can be dangerous, that's why I never talk about these things, there are shortcuts to clean up 50 lifetimes of shadow, it is going to make the situation very very strange, very strange things happen. I do not recommend it, it will happen to you as your purification is going on, which must have started. As soon as you gain the awareness, it is like a second birth. The spiritual awakening is like a second birth, you wake up again, you are born again, and as soon as you get hold of that state of awareness, even if it is not intense, the purification has already started. You will see it instantly, a few layers of ignorance are dropped and the mind starts purifying itself.

As I said nobody can do it. There is no doer here. It is all going to happen as mother nature desires. We do not have any will here, so let it happen. You will find that on the path of knowledge there is no escape from this kind of thing, which I usually call purification. Probably in the west they will call it purging. I don't really know what it is called. There are shamanic traditions where the shadow work is taken up knowingly. You mess with it knowingly, using drugs and journeys and beating the drums and who knows what. In South America and Africa and even in India in some places. But in India it got refined, it has become a science. If you want to activate it, then it must be done under the guidance of a good teacher. Do not try to mess with this thing. Sometimes it will become really unstable. For me it has been going on for at least 15 years. It started as soon as I projected out of the body. It started at that time, when all the beliefs suddenly dropped.

Our conditioning is so bad in this society that it makes me angry sometimes, that I was reduced to some stupid idiot kind of animal because of the society. Probably it is my surroundings, people, my family and so on, but I have seen that it has happened to every seeker. As soon as these beliefs drop through your direct experience and knowledge and the mind wakes up, it starts picking its pieces. So the first thing that happened was intense sensitivity to everything, sounds, light, people, foods, everything. As I said, do not try to rationalize it, do not try to find the cause of it. I tried to find it, but nothing can be found really. How will it manifest, nobody knows. It became so bad that it looked like the whole nervous system was always on fire. I went to people and then I collected knowledge and they told me only one thing: do not stop it, there is no doer here, you cannot do anything. Things have happened and they will heal by themselves. Just like the body has a corrective mechanism, if some cuts happen or some infection happens in the body, the body has an army of agents that fixes the body. Since the body is just a part of the mind, similarly all the layers of the mind have their own methods to fix anything there. It can manifest in any form, if you are not aware, if you are not attentive then it can cause a lot of problems.

In short, nobody can escape the shadow work. It will be helped a lot if you realize your true nature first, stay there. It's not happening to me, it's happening to my mind and that takes away a lot of suffering out of it and that also accelerates it a lot. Don't keep doing the shadow work for your whole life, our lives are not meant to do that, be aware, that is how you fix everything in your mind. You will find that sometimes even the simple introspection will start the purification and then you don't know why these thoughts are coming. In addition to the purification there will be resistance of the mind, the mind is resisting something and as soon as the shadow comes out, the mind is hiding already, the mind is resisting already and then it comes out. You will find here there are two processes that are happening, you already know that the mind is not a monolithic thing, it has many things going on. There are internal conflicts, one thing is trying to go right and the other process is taking you to the left and the third comes and takes you to the top. This tussle is always going on in the mind because there are different parts and they function independently as well as dependently, there are connections with each of the layers but sometimes it looks like one layer has taken hold of the whole system. It may happen that one of the process is trying to hide it and the other wants to bring it out. It's the right time - it will say, look there is awareness, this organism is now ready to handle it, let me bring it out. The other says no, I don't want to deal with it right now. And this all goes on without your knowledge. It will be very obvious to a person who is aware, those who are not aware and those who do not have teachers, they will probably not know it, probably that is why it is called shadow or subconscious.

Resistance of the mind doubles when this happens and I have seen examples of such people also that they were very nice, they were very good, as soon as they became spiritual, they took up a path, hell breaks loose and now the person is very irritable, the person is suddenly very angry, the person is now finding fault in everything and he is very picky about stuff. Not only is s/he affected, others are also affected, his family members or people in the workplace. Suddenly s/he will develop intolerance for stupid people or suddenly s/he will develop intolerance for egoistic people, toxic people or those who think they are the boss and so on. Suddenly relations there will start shaking. I know this happened to me, it will happen to many people actually because all our relations, all our surroundings, they are 100% fake. Even our behaviors are fake, why? It is all buried somewhere, the real nature was buried long ago.

I find Indian or Tibetan or Buddhist psychology very in-depth because my own experience corresponds to that, otherwise if your experience demands western psychology then go ahead, why not, it's always good to have many points of views. Here's the subconscious and conscious and all kinds of phobias and manias, when they show up, they lock up the spiritual kind of people, they do not understand that this is a spiritual process or this is a cleanup, this is purging. Here in the east it is very easy, very straightforward, it is just your hidden sanskaras, it is just your hidden impressions, they are now no more hidden because of your progress. Now believe me or not, they don't need to integrate, they are already integrated, the whole of your mind is one. It looks like it is in pieces because of the communication gap that happened, because of suppression that happened in the past.

Because most of our lives are fake, it will start breaking up. Your family will not remain family. Your work will not remain work. You will suddenly find that I was doing something unethical even though society accepts it as ethical. You will find that this is not good. You will find that you were a liar, you were manipulative. This is a big shock. Sometimes people find out that I am stupid, I am no good, I do not have any skills, I am good for nothing. All these things come up and then the other side of the mind suddenly realizes, "Oh, something is wrong here. This should not come up right now," and the resistance begins.

Resistance is like driving with your eyes closed or you can say just walking in a dark room. Nothing is seen. This is resistance. By the way, on my blog there are a few articles on the obstacles and resistances, where I have separated obstacles from resistance. I have never seen this done anywhere. I have never seen this thing mentioned anywhere in the world, that obstacles are visible to you and obviously to your guru, resistances are invisible. It is like complete darkness, sometimes even to the guru, even the guru does not know everything. So those articles were written from my own experience. I have seen it for many years now.

And because I use this formula that when you know your mind, you know all minds, they are all the same kind of machinery there, impressions are a little bit different. These articles will be useful for those who are struggling with resistances and purification at the same time. It is like two elephants fighting inside you. It is very bad. That's why I say spirituality is not for weak people. It needs a very brave person. Spirituality is not for stupid people. It needs a very intelligent person to see what is going on. Don't worry, everybody arrives here in full stupidity, then slowly they get hit by bricks upon bricks that increases their intelligence. This is what happened to me also. I don't write these personal things in my articles or the video series. I get this chance only in satsang to talk about what happened to me.

There is some experience and then there is some common sense and there is some logic. There are some very reliable people that I met in my life, even though I never experienced this thing but I heard this thing from them and it makes complete sense. And obviously there is our tradition and psychology. Two or three kinds are there that are very in-depth and it does not involve taking pills and it does not involve locking up the person or surgery of the brain, and does not involve electric chairs. It does not even involve counseling and all. It is very elegant here, the ways are very beautiful. You can instantly see that at least 10,000 years of knowledge is here. Just pick it up.

How do we deal with the resistance of the mind and the war that is going on in the mind and the shadow stuff that is coming out? It is very easy. Do not sway from your path. Get out of society as soon as possible, otherwise they will lock you up. They do not know anything better or they will start treating you with medicines and some people become addicts of alcohol or drugs or they become addicts of relations or entertainment, become violent, join the army or wherever the violence can find a way and because they do not know anything better, start playing violent games, their language becomes violent. Yes it is a mental disease of some kind but it is very natural. Actually sometimes I think that we are forced into a world like this, we are born here again and again just to get a chance to clear it all. Now this will be supported by the karmic theory. We come here because of our past karma and if we accumulate more then we are not helping it, you need to burn more of it, let go.

Get out of the situations that are triggering these things, and I have seen that it helps a lot if you consult somebody who has gone through it, which will be your guru. Maintain the awareness, see what the body is doing, see what the mind is doing, see whether the mind is trying to resist. You won't be able to see the resistance obviously, you can know it indirectly, if your intelligence has grown to a certain limit you will be able to discriminate what is normal behavior, what is not. If you find yourself angry all the time, e.g. you have a lot of tribal tendencies, somebody is insulting my country, somebody is insulting my race, my race is superior, how can anybody insult us, if you find the abnormal behavior in you, if you find abnormal thoughts, like bad things are happening to women, women are being suppressed, women are being tortured, I am a woman, then this is abnormal. You are not all these things. If that starts happening and your intellect has risen a little bit, you can notice that some kind of trouble is going on in my mind, it should not be here, this abnormal thinking, this abnormal behavior or these days I am doing something which I never did, I am taking more risks, you can detect a little bit and probably you won't be able to do much, just like I said there is no doer, there is only detector, there is only watcher, it is going to proceed anyway, the best thing to do here is to go and consult a teacher.

Actually I cannot claim this but I have heard about teachers who can look through all of your hundred lifetimes and they can prescribe a remedy. Sometimes you hear the strange stories, sometimes there are superstitions, nowadays I think there are a lot of superstitions, but your guru will say go to this temple which is 2000 kilometers away in Himalayas somewhere and just give the deity a coconut and just put a flower there, come back, now it is amazing that people in India, they simply accept this thing, they do not utter a single word, if the guru has said it, I will go there, yes, it is supposed to remove something in your mind and the guru knows better. I used to be very skeptical of these things, this is madness. If you have a mental disease why don't you treat it simply, just do the surgery, cut it off. But nowadays after many years of experience, I have become a little bit softer. I don't say that they are miracles, they are not, there is a reason for everything, these are not miracles, these are upaya, or “treatments”. You are a poor fellow, do not know why the mind is resisting and what actually is resistance, you do not know, nothing is known, all you have is blind faith and because you are grasping for straws, you are drowning now, you need to grab the nearest thing. You now do all these irrational things. You will find many people are doing it in India, nobody understands what is going on, the rational people, they rationalize it away, the blind faith people, they just accept it and the seekers, they wonder what is going on, till it happens to them. Sometimes the Guru will say go to this house and just ask for water, drink the water from this house, come back. If you dig deeper, if you ask the Guru, if you have good relations with the Guru, Guru is kind, they are not really trying to tell you the whole process because immediately people will think the Guru knows miracles, he is like a Siddha, he has got the special powers and then you will find a big crowd outside his house. Gurus do not advertise really, they will tell you the means or a treatment or whatever and they disappear.

These are stories, actually, this is not my experience, I've heard these stories from Sadhguru and people like that. You can trust them a little bit. Not everything they say is true but, it happens that in one of your past lives, that fellow where the Guru told you to go and drink water was your relative. Something bad happened, some kind of negativity happened and you refused to talk to him, you became angry with him, you said I am not going to drink water in your house from now on, you just walked away and that is pending, that trauma, that event is pending now. I am giving you just a small example. Let us say, since 20 lifetimes it is stopping your progress. Progress means purification, obviously. Our progress is simply removing all that which is not necessary. Gurus have direct access to all these memories, your current body, your causal body, they can read it like a book, so that mending of that event collapses everything that the mind has built up as a defense against this event that happened. It can be a small thing, it can be something really tiny, but the resistances are huge.

I am not going to do it, I am always right, that stops the purification from happening, it can be negative, it can be positive also, like attachment to things, that will stop the purification, or you like helping people, you keep doing services of all kinds and that stops your progress. Or you love your family a lot and that is why since past hundred incarnations you are there only, you don't want to leave that family, you come back here again and again and that is stopping your progress. Guru is going to tell you something strange, sometimes he will say - leave your family now, go to forest, stay there for ten years, stay in the cave, go on a pilgrimage and don't come back for five years and what that does is, there is a hair break there in your attachment. You stay away from the family and then the mind gets a chance to let go a little bit, it is like a tiny break and the Guru knows that now the mind will handle it, there is a seed now, a seed has been planted that I am fine without my family, I don't need family, I am whole and complete without my family, the family is just a bondage, the family is just a chain, I need to take the next step, the family is okay, they were always okay, they are always fine, they are happy, nobody needs me. When this kind of detachment arises in the mind, you will find that progress happens immediately.

That fellow will return back to his family. But he returns as a new person, sometimes it is a complete change, sometimes it is manifesting gradually. Now the Guru is pretty sure that his next birth will not be in this family because by the time the seed will grow, that attachment and the resistance of the mind is all gone now, very strange. Sometimes you will think this treatment of sitting in the cave is going to do nothing or this pilgrimage is absolutely a waste of time, money and effort. That's why I said the Guru is central if it comes to such things. These are the finer things in spirituality about which we don't talk, we remain in the essence most of the time, we remain in the bigger truths. Maya is very fine, it is very dense, there are tiny hair-like things growing in the Maya, picture it like this, it is an infinite landscape and full of stuff, how much are you going to purify? That is a good question, because it looks like it is going on since infinity, since eternity, the same thing comes up. You purify till you are freed from suffering, that is the important point. I'm going to repeat - purify till you are freed from all kinds of suffering and then let go, let go of the purification or resistance, it's not you, it's not yours. Let the mind do whatever it wants to do. Get rid of that desire to climb the obstacles or to destroy the resistances of the mind, or your obsession to check all the time what is going on there, how can I fix my mind, from which incarnation is it coming, which is the next pilgrimage, which is the next Guru. Let go of everything, now just relax. Remember, the karma is infinite, that is what Gautama Buddha told you, you can check with any knowledgeable person, they will tell you the same thing, it's a waste of time to do this kind of purification. Don't be a perfectionist here. Does not work like this. The shadow will never be gone completely. One day you leave all that, that is the biggest purification.

You can do it today also, but you won't, the ignorance is too much. There is an end to it, it stops all kind of attachments, it stops all kind of births and desires, they don't manifest, but you get the freedom to manifest anything, you get freedom to bring up any kind of vritti, because now you are universe, your will is now prime, it is the highest will now. Whatever comes up in this mind, which is freed, the bodhisattva mind, that manifests immediately. Now, you will say, what is the use of that? You can use it to help others. That is the manifestation of interconnectivity, we care about others, once we are on the other side, that is why, they never let go of this tiny bit of individuality, they keep coming back, manifesting this thing or that thing to help others. To help other minds, to remove the shadows from other minds, these people manifest as gurus, sometimes even your friends and members in your family, sometimes strangers. Very strange things can happen if you are intensely walking on the path, if you are going there like a lazy dazy, probably nothing extraordinary will happen, but if your intensity is too much, you will find that things happen that defy your common sense. You always thought that my common sense cannot be deflected, nothing unusual happens in my life, that kind of belief will be destroyed. All you need to do is intensify your practices, intensify your desire to be free. Help is always here, you are always connected, the gurus are just sitting there to help you. And it is the destiny of everyone who becomes free, they will want to help others, help all the seekers. You can start now also. There are shadows, does not mean that you cannot become useful for others, you have the knowledge now, whatever little knowledge you have, the essential knowledge, that is most important, you are destined to become that, you can start it now.

You can start returning the favor of the gurufield, expanding the gurufield by becoming a part of the gurufield, and it is not like the borg in star trek, it is not that gurufield is going to take over your mind, possess you, no, it is more like a voluntary work, volunteer. You do it because you like to do it. If you don't know a lot about the shadow work and these processes, because we do not call it shadow, but it is all in front of you. If you want to see everything, it is available to you. On the path of knowledge, we don't worry much. We simply discard it as a mental phenomena. But there is no escape, really. Only thing is that the mind of a gyani is so stabilized that the resistances last for a day and the obstacle lasts for a second. For example, you are going somewhere, you meet somebody and suddenly that person is angry at you, starts abusing or insulting you. Now what will an ordinary person do? Is going to react very badly. There will be a big fight and all. But if you are on the path of knowledge and this is happening, you will immediately see a connection there. “Oh, it is happening because I must have done something, somewhere in the past, 20,000 years ago. This is the manifestation of it”. What is your reaction there? No reaction at all. You let it happen. You try to burn it away. Like, "Okay, sir, I am very sorry that this happened, it is my mistake. Tell me what you want, tell me what I can do for you." Instead of fighting, you just let it go. And I have seen that even pretending helps. Just pretend that you don't want anything from there, you have no complaints with anybody. Let go, let go, pretend it. Why am I saying pretend? Because the ego is not going to cooperate with you. It will bring up all these survival tendencies. It may want to fight, it will get fearful. “Why is this happening to me?” And it does the defensive thing. But if you are completely aware and present, you will be surprised. “Why is this happening?!! What did I do now?” And after 10 seconds you will realize that I am in the Maya, everything is possible here, and everything happens according to the laws of the mind here, this is just another manifestation.

Now, you need to have some kind of common sense here, like, if the person comes at you with a big knife, you need to run away, you need to postpone loving kindness, but be detached, it just happened. This is a small thing, many horrible things happen to people actually, they wonder why, why was I a victim, why was I tortured, why was I murdered, why this terrible disease I got, I was born without hands and feet, why? Most of us are very lucky that these things don't happen to us. It is also Maya, it is also laws of the mind, it is also something in the mind that has manifested this situation. When we talk to ordinary people, we do not say things like this - “everybody in your family died, it is Maya, it is good, you get detached”. No, we do not talk like this, we talk in an ignorant fashion - “I'm very sorry this happened, let me know what can I do for you, do you have anybody who can take care of you?” And take this money, take this food, come to my house and so on. We say only this, but when we talk to another seeker, there is no need to waste time - “you are in a mess, that is your fault”. I like such gurus a lot. First they will point a finger at you - “look, you are the one who is responsible”. “No sir, I don't have a job, everybody left me, my wife left me and nobody respects me and I'm in this pit of all the addictions and bad habits, I don't know what to do, I cannot even think”. And the guru will point the finger at you, you are the one who is responsible for this, that saves a lot of time. You can also get an answer like this - “do some self-improvement”. Many gurus will do that, there is a better way, look within, you are the one who is responsible for your good condition, your bad condition. The good is not going to last and the bad is not going to last, this is a cyclic existence, the trap is the cycle, not good and bad. The trap is that you are repeating it, that's not good, isn't it?

Although there is progress, mother nature is already pushing you a little bit, but not that fast. I think there is a saying in China or somewhere that may all your past karmas manifest today, it looks like something good is going to happen, no, it is a curse, if everything that you have done, good or bad, manifests today, it will look like hell. This mind is very kind actually. What it is doing by resisting is actually saving you, it is saving your life. There is no other reason. The mind is not an evil thing that likes to do such things. Whatever the mind does is extremely logical, it is like a machine, it is like a computer. The problem is ignorance, if the ignorance is removed, you allow the purification to proceed as usual, there is nothing to be resisted there. If there is resistance, the mind will do the clean up. Don't worry about it, just be present, be stable, be very aware. It does not mean that you lose common sense, use common sense wherever it is needed. Just don't sit there, you do whatever is needed, the mind will take care of it.

Sometimes you help the mind, take the responsibility. You can even go one step further, like I mentioned in the episodes on the Kundalini and the path of knowledge, knowingly you pick up something in your mind which you know is abnormal, there is guilt, there is shame, there is anger, there is addiction, there is attachment, there is lust, jealousy, whatever, pick it up, identification with the gender, caste, creed, religion or race, pick it up, knowingly destroy it, burn it out. “I will not be troubled by this thing from today”. Done. Freedom. Now you have saved your two or three lives here and saved a lot of trouble for your guru, saved a few pilgrimages, coconuts and so on. A seeker will do this knowingly. Why don't I recommend this? Because the mind is a very funny thing, nobody knows how it will behave. I always say that don't meddle with it, if you want to meddle, take expert help. Remember your doctor is not an expert, your doctor will treat the diseases and whatever, but as soon as it is something karmic the doctor will fail. Your psychiatrist is not the expert, they don't know all these things, they are just ordinary. The expert here is your guru who has gone through all these things, who has gone through a journey of many lifetimes and he appeared on your request. The guru has no time, the guru does not bother with people who don't want to improve, don't want to progress, don't want to evolve, the gurus don't have time for them, because they know, the mind is doing it anyway, the universal mind is doing it anyway. Those who ask for it, the guru appears for them. “Today I am ready to look at my resistances, today I am ready to give up my odd behavior, my beliefs, my ignorance, my stupidity”. And you will find, by evening your guru will appear there. The problem is, resistances are so much that you are not ready. You need to ask for it, just ask it sincerely. That is all I have to say about this topic, it's a very big topic actually.

Session 50

The question is, what is the best way to spend my life and you can guess that this is coming from people who have already solved their survival. For a human being life is not merely survival, that is for animals, they do not have anything more than survival going on. There is a tiny bit of playing and fighting with each other and so on, that is okay. Humans have a lot of potential. Human life actually starts when survival is taken care of. And such a person is going to ask this question : what is the best way to spend my life? That boils down to the purpose and probably such a person has already realized that there is no built in purpose, there is no assigned purpose because the universe is freedom, it does not restrict, at least it has not restricted humans because we have the intellect, we don't have this kind of restrictions, there is no assigned goal here. You will find that the less sophisticated structures in the universe have an assigned purpose. The river always goes to the sea. It cannot choose to flow upwards, that is the structure. Humans have a lot of freedom or there is this illusion that I am free to do whatever I want to do, that is also freedom. We can choose and we choose that which our ignorance allows.

I will repeat that because it is kind of a strange answer. We choose to spend a life which our ignorance allows. I am not saying - which my knowledge allows, no. You will see clearly that we choose a life which is governed by our ignorance. Now you can guess it, we are going to go a little bit into the depth of it, why did I say that? By knowledge I mean the essential knowledge, I don't mean the knowledge of languages or knowledge of your skill or whatever you can do to impress people, no, not that knowledge, nothing that you heard or read in some books. By knowledge I mean the essential knowledge, the knowledge of who you are, what this world is, what this universe is, this is the essential knowledge and those who do not have any inkling, no clue at all what is essential knowledge, they will choose to spend their lives in survival.

You can see it, you can verify it, through your own direct experience it is happening all around you. Now I said that people are going to ask this question when survival is taken care of, but because there is ignorance, survival is all that will happen. Now you can see that I use the word choice, but here there is no choice. These words are just stepping stones to what I am going to say now, see, I destroy my own answer sometimes, if you use these words as a stepping stone to arrive at something which is a revelation, which is a gradual unveiling of some kind, we are trying to do that, let us see where it takes.

Absolute ignorance gives you absolute bondage, there is no choice, even though such people think that I am doing it because I choose it, there is no choice there, they are helpless before their desires, if the desire has popped up in their mind, I must go and satisfy it, why? My desire, it's me, and here is the lack of essential knowledge, there is no self-realization here. And then they do some mischievous things, they do a circus of some kind, I think that I am smart, I have chosen, I have exercised my will, but what is this will? An ignorant person cannot choose, the choices are already made for him, the choices come in the form of desires, the stick of desires drives that person. You already know the nature of desires, they are not satisfied, it is not possible to satisfy them. I had this desire to earn this much, now as soon as that is done, bigger stick arrives, you are hit with a bigger stick, no that's not enough, look at your neighbor, he is richer than you, he is enjoying more, he is more happy. I want to eat this, well that is a desire, and then you are animated by the desire because there is ignorance, you think it is my choice to eat, and the eating does not satisfy the desire.

Now I need to go and eat in that restaurant because I see people are more happy there, whatever I cook here is garbage, you run. That's why I said, the choices you make are limited by your ignorance, that is what you will choose, that is how you will choose to spend your lives. Now this is a deeper question, here you cannot assume things, knowledge does not bring freedom, it simply makes you realize that there is no bondage. What is the difference? The difference is that which is bound remains bound, that means that which is living this life, called human life, is going to choose only from ignorance, there will be desires, there will be choices that will be made, and that will be made only through ignorance, it is not possible to make it free, it is not possible to choose from knowledge. You can try that as an experiment actually, I have tried that many times. Why did I say that?

Even knowledge does not bring you freedom to live a life according to your choice. That is a big claim isn't it? Have you verified it? How are you going to verify it? Try to make a choice using your knowledge, you can try to do that now, you can try to choose something through knowledge. What is knowledge? The knowledge is essential knowledge, that I am not any experience, I am not this body or any object or the mind or anything that goes on in the mind, it does not matter how intimate it is, it does not matter how private or subjective it is, it is not me, it is just a universal event, just because others don't see it does not make it me, that is illogical. Try to choose from this knowledge. What choices are you left with? Isn't it pure emptiness? This place is total lack of desires, this place is total lack of biases, biases are in the mind, desires are in the mind, they are the experiences, they can be seen and you say that no I am not going to use those things, they lead to bondage, it is already done, it is already decided for me, the mental biases have already decided the action, there is no freedom there. You can see it now.

This is the essential knowledge, this is the self-knowledge, I am that which is witnessing, now I will try to live my life from this knowledge and you can try doing that now, but it is very strange, it is very entertaining, whenever you make a decision, you will find the decision is already made by the mental processes, by the biases in the mind and you say no I reject that, I don't want to live like this, I want to live from the knowledge, I want to live from the witness consciousness that I am, let me see what it is saying, let me see what it is telling me to do next, let me see what it advises me regarding my life, this is knowledge isn't it? You are present here as a presence, check what it is telling you. How should I live my life and you will find that it is totally empty, it is totally silent, it is content in watching. No, I just want to look, I am not going to tell you how you should live or how this organism should live. That which you essentially are is not dictating how this organism should live, this is your direct experience. If you think that the true self or that which I am essentially is going to tell me how I should live my life, you will be disappointed. By you I mean the mind, the intellect which is trying to be free, will be disappointed because the self does not answer. The phone keeps ringing, it is not picking it up and why is that? You want to live a free life, you don't want to be that ignorant person who is just surviving because they know nothing more than that, the ignorance limits them to doing the same things again and again in as gross, as nasty as is possible because the desires push you to perversion. This much is not enough and so they repeat it in a more brutal way, in a more gross way, this is how the ignorance pushes you into actions, this is the stick, this is the donkey and stick model. But now you don't want that, you have refined your intellect so much that you have the essential knowledge, you don't want to live that life. Now the question arises what is the best way to live my life, let me ask the true Self and you will find that it does not tell you. There is no good way. According to the Self there is no good way to live a life and there is no bad way also, it is content with what is, that is all it will say and this is how we live with knowledge.

As soon as you become troubled by this thought that I am not living perfectly, I need to go and fix things in my life so that I can live according to the will of the Self which is the existence itself, you will find a big disappointment there because it is not interested in governing how this organism conducts its affairs, totally disinterested, totally detached. That is my real nature, I am completely detached, I am actually a stranger to this thing that is trying to live, that is trying to survive, that is thinking what is the best way to live. Now it boils down to the question of freedom. Freedom comes when you stop controlling how to live. And then somebody who is very smart will say, you mean I should just let the circumstances decide how my life goes? When you try to live from knowledge you will find that there are no choices, there are no biases and there are no desires and that is very depressing, that is when this feeling comes in our mind that life is of no use, it is not worth living, there is no purpose here, there is no meaning here, whatever is the purpose and whatever I have chosen is already my conditioning, is already my ignorance, this can be depressing.

What is the way out of this depression, what is the way out of this new state of mind which arises out of knowing? It is paradoxical, isn't it? Knowledge should make you happy but it leaves you with many questions, what should I do now? I don't want to live from ignorance but there is no way to live in knowledge also and that is why it is said that this organism, this mind body thing cannot be free, it must decide using its ignorance, it must choose that which is already chosen. Now you understand why I said that your ignorance decides how you live your life, not the knowledge, the knowledge has no interest in deciding how this thing conducts its life. If I shift my sense of I am to that which is simply looking, you will find that I am totally detached, I am uninterested in the life, this will trickle down in your mind also and you will find that you are uninterested in anything, there is a detachment in everything, it is peaceful but what has it done is it has cleared the seeds of attachment with the form. At this point I think, in my opinion, everybody is free to choose as per their ignorance. What can this mind do? Accept, accept the ignorance also, remember it is all you, the mind cannot have knowledge, the mind can only have ignorance. The mind is a structure, it is built by accumulation and that is what decides how this life will be conducted. Your survival is over, the body decides the survival, you don't decide to eat, the body decides, the body tells you, you don't decide to sleep, the body tells you, you don't decide to reproduce, the body tells you. Similarly the lower layers decide what to do, you don't go for social status, you don't go for pleasure, the lower layers do that. There is no freedom there, and we accept, yes this is how it is, this is what it is, it is not me but I need to accept this, the mind needs to accept this, the freedom is in accepting, the freedom is not in rejecting.

When you reject life as it is, it is just the mind resisting life, there is no freedom there. It looks like I have kicked out ignorance, I have kicked out my conditioning, now I will decide something from knowledge, that is impossible, that is also ignorance. That is what I have realized, the body-mind will conduct its affairs according to their conditioning which is ignorance. Now bring in some acceptance here, there is no harm, what is the harm of ignorance, what is ignorance doing, if it is keeping you alive, if it is running the life of this organism, nothing bad. You accept it as my part, which is here and now, which is manifested. Unmanifested has no interest in that. It has no attachment with that which is manifested, it will observe anything that comes before it. That does not mean it is lifeless, that is the only life , this body-mind is lifeless, it is just a machine, the consciousness gives it life, it is bathing in the light of consciousness, there is no life in this structure, this impermanent structure is not really alive, it borrows the light from the sun of your true Self. Being, not doing, not conducting, it is already happening, you don't need to do anything, you don't need to fix it, can you fix it? That which is alive is being, being is the life, and the activity part, the manifested part is non-living. It does not have a will, it is a machinery, machinery of the universal mind, that is appearing here for some time. Now this machinery says that I want to be free, which is not possible. The other way is to accept, I accept the ignorance here, the body needs food, it is its ignorance, there is no problem, I accept it. Ego says I need to show off in the society, no problem, do it, the intellect says I need to learn more things, I need to know more answers, I should conduct my life like this, in the service of knowledge, no problem.

There is no freedom there, you accept it. Awareness says I need to be aware all the time, I need to be bathed in this light of knowledge all the time, this is how I choose to live my life, and that is not a problem at all, for the true self everything is okay, just like for a mother, all children are beloved, these body-minds are just children of this existence which is my true Self. A mother cannot discriminate among her children. All these layers of the mind, they are mine ultimately, accept. First comes the rejection, then comes the acceptance.

Leyla has something connected, let me take that, I am coping with the highs and lows of life, I know this is my karma, but how does one live with this?

Just now you got your answer, with full acceptance, your other option is rejection. You have already seen what happens when the mind resists. Yes, the mind will make knowledge as its shield, I need to hide behind the shield, but the organic life will continue. This organism knows nothing about the knowledge and that must be accepted. Live with acceptance. Some people call it surrender, but modern language has corrupted the meaning of surrender, nowadays the surrender means losing, oh I lost this, I surrender, I am the loser. Just throw away the word surrender if you don't like it, it is an old word, live with acceptance. You will immediately find a little bit of improvement in the life of this organism also, suddenly there are more choices, suddenly whatever you choose, fully knowing that I am bound to choose this, it will give an impression of freedom, that this thing cannot choose anything else, but it is being done fully knowing that this is so. I have a desire to eat a cake, now this will manifest some day, you can resist for a few days, it will manifest in some other form. You will start sharing pictures of cakes and pastries on your twitter, it will come out somewhere. Now is the time to accept, there is a desire. Other layers are also involved in my life, I cannot reject them, you choose it, you let it happen in full acceptance, if something bad happens, bad choices are made, same formula, you accept it, you accept the bad choices that were made, fully knowing that I didn't do it, my true self does not choose anything, they were chosen through ignorance, there is no other way to choose otherwise , otherwise nothing will be chosen. There are no choices in the Self, the mind is full of choices, that is how you will choose, there is no other way, accept this. This thing is also called karma, it is just the impressions on the mind. Live with acceptance. Knowledge will purify the mind in time and the experience will improve. And that should be accepted also.

The other option is resistance. “No, I don't want to live my life in ignorance. There must be a better way”. There are many ways. Mind will choose that which is dictated by its ignorance. Let choice happen and all that it chooses becomes an experience, becomes the karma, and all that is chosen gives rise to consequence. That is your learning. That is the mind learning it through actions and consequences. This is how life proceeds.

“No, I need to use my intellect. Should I let my life go like a dry leaf in the wind? Everything is pushing it in random directions. Shouldn't I use my intellect to intervene?” Remember that the intellect is nothing special. It is just another layer in the mind and it will also choose according to its ignorance. It gives us an impression that I have chosen something through my knowledge. Intellect is also limited. There is no choice there. Whatever choice the intellect brings to you are also ignorant choices. Learning is going to happen there also. From this perspective there is no difference between an ignorant person and an intelligent person. No difference. There is an illusion in the mind of an intelligent person that I am more free. There is no such thing. The body-mind is not free. It will never be free. There can be thoughts like “I want to get rid of it then. I don't need it”, and this is also ignorance. You are already free from body-mind. There is nobody there to get rid of it. It is already not yours. Thoughts - “This is mine. This is me” - is ignorance, isn't it? Now what are you trying to get rid of? “I need to get rid of all my karmic load”. It is also not yours. Stop thinking like this - it is mine, and it is gone. These are all thoughts in the mind. The mind appears in many forms. It is a monster with a hundred heads. Don't make this mistake of identifying with one of its heads, rejecting the other 99 heads. No, that is not wise.

She is asking, but to what extent do we accept this ignorance?

As long as it is not producing any suffering you accept it. Your choice is if they are not producing suffering you accept it, otherwise you intervene, reduce the ignorance. If the organism is happy, if your actions are not generating suffering, ignorance is also okay. Does that mean that I stop refining ignorance? No, continue. There is no point. You will never reach beyond that which you are. You are already at the highest point. The mind will keep refining the ignorance, that can go on till infinity and it is not a big problem, you accept that also. Just like I said, there will be a desire to refine ignorance, so what? That is what the mind will choose then, and that is how it will say I have decided to live my life, to spend my life, refining my ignorance, fine, it is okay. You stop accepting the circus of the mind if it starts generating suffering for yourself, or for others.

She is asking, aren't there actions that are unholy?

That which produces suffering is unholy. You can define it like this and then everything falls in place. Those actions which produce happiness for everyone are holy. It is very simple.

She is asking, is it good to be happy when good things happen and be sad when things are upsetting?

If you have awareness on, then the good and bad will not bother you, the states of the mind will not bother you if your awareness is on. The answer boils down to - if there is no awareness and you are happy it is bad, very bad, if there is no awareness and you are sad it is worse, it is total suffering. Happiness in unawareness is nothing but suffering, when you are aware that it is a mental state, you allow it, you accept it. You are aware that sadness is a mental state, it is not going to stay, you allow it, you accept it, you get upset for a while, no problem you see, it's not a problem, this is the nature of the mind. Nature of the mind is like a river that keeps flowing, can you stop it? If you stop it, it will build up and then the dam will break one day. Is that good? No it is not good, this is how mother nature has constructed the mind, it needs to flow, it cannot be stopped. You can try to stop it, I see no advantage in that, I do not see any benefit in that. Yes, you stay away from the river on the banks, you just watch the river flowing, that is wiser. Fully knowing that this river is going to the sea, it does not have any choice.

The ignorance leaves no choice and the knowledge does not want to choose, it is very strange, now you have only one option, you accept it with full awareness. Yes, there will be resistance initially, there will be a lot of confusion initially, that is why you keep your awareness on, keep introspecting like this, introspect on this question, how should I spend my life, it is very revealing, it is very enlightening and it is very entertaining also. I found that no, I am not interested in living the life, I am detached, I do not choose anything and I laughed because for the whole of my life, I held this notion that I can live my life in knowledge. This was also a thought, that was also mind, the mind goes deeper than you think.

Leyla is asking, how does one find a guru?

The guru is here and now. But let us make it concise here, let me give you a simpler answer. You cannot find a guru, the guru finds you. I do not give this answer because nobody is going to accept it, nobody likes this kind of answer. Yes, she means practically in life. Theoretically you cannot find a guru, the guru will find you. When you are drowning in the river, let us say, how will you find a savior? People who are on the banks, they find you, they see you, you are drowning and somebody jumps and throws a rope, when you are drowning do you go on a search for someone who can save me? Where is the rope? You do not. I know it is cryptic and I should not have said that, because it is discouraging and I do not want to discourage people from finding a guru. No, you do not find a guru, you start searching for the answers. You need a guru, because you are lost, you are drowning, start seeking. What do you do when you are drowning? You scream for help, you make some efforts. Start swimming, start calling for help, you do not say that, “no, I do not like your face, you cannot save me”, or “no, you belong to some other community, I do not want you to save me”. Can you choose like this? The question of how to find a guru has an ignorance there, that I can choose my guru, can the one who is drowning choose his savior? “No, do not throw this nylon rope, I want environmentally friendly coconut rope only, let me drown, I do not want that plastic rope”. Some people justify their gurus by very funny criteria, I have never seen a person choose a guru, I have never seen a person find a guru. The word “find” involves choosing. You will find them everywhere, but probably she means which one I should adopt, who is the one I should pick, and no, there is no way, the guru will pick you.

She is saying, maybe I am not ready?

Yes, the mind will throw all kinds of garbage, I am not ready, I do not need this, I do not want this guru, this path is best for me, look how luxurious this other path is, the people, they look very smart and rich and famous who are on this path. Let me take this path, this is in fashion these days, this is how the mind decides. Does not really know, it is using some odd criteria to pick the guru, it is very funny.

I get a lot of calls. I get a lot of emails. And I get some odd requests - “Please send me your photo”. One day I got this. “I want to see you”. And I said why. And I did not get a reply. But I can understand. Because that fellow has no way to evaluate what a guru is. He is trying to judge by looks. I said in my mind : what if I send you any random photo from the internet. Probably you have this notion that one with a long beard, one who looks old and sold and hardly clothed. That will be my guru. Probably you have this kind of criteria. Many people in India have this notion. The guru needs to look something like one on the TV. The one in the old calendar. Otherwise not my guru. I said if I send you that photo of somebody, will it become useful for you? And obviously I dropped that fellow. I did not pick him. I am not going to make any effort to answer his questions.

Similarly some people say that he knows Sanskrit. He knows Greek and Latin. Even the ancient Egyptian language. He must be my guru. No. You can speak bullshit in Sanskrit also. It is possible. Many people are doing that. So a student cannot pick a guru. It is sad and that is why I do not say it. I always say go to the nearest guru. Find a guru. Do not let your mind tell you that I am not ready. Do not let your mind tell you that I am ignorant. People are going to laugh at me if I join a spiritual path. The Buddhist monk attracts you most. Look at his graceful way of talking and walking. Look at his shaven head and smile, how pure he looks. That you find attractive. You cannot decide what kind of knowledge he has. What is he going to teach me? No. You cannot decide that. That fellow attracts you. Go there then. Check what he is offering you. That is why I say go to the one whom you love, whom you like most, whom you agree with. Because you cannot choose a guru. If you are ready for that kind of teaching, the guru is going to accept you. If somebody comes to me - “Please teach me magic. Please teach me how to call this deity. Please teach me how to call this demon” - And it is not that I cannot teach them. But I simply find that they are not ready for the path of knowledge yet. He is still experimenting. He is still executing that which he is fed. That is what they fed you in the name of spirituality.

Okay you go and do your adventures and then come back after 10 years. After meeting all the deities, daemons and everything, come back here. Then you will be ready for the path of knowledge. It is not that I do not answer the questions. But I know that there is no hope there. Sometimes I may say that you give up these things and I find that usually the person leaves the next day. There is no communication from him. Because he has realized that this “guru” knows nothing about daemons and deities. “I need to find a better guru”. Even if I want to keep that fellow around, I cannot. It is very natural, it cannot be forced. You can force a marriage, which happens in this country often. Your parents choose whom you are going to marry and have babies with. That can be forced. The guru cannot be forced on you and the student cannot force himself on the guru. It is more subtle than a love affair. You can adjust a little bit with your partner in your love affair, “okay she is not beautiful, okay she is not young but she loves me, I will accept her”. Or the girl can say, “okay he is not that handsome and okay he has this kind of habit he drinks alcohol but he loves me, I can adjust, I can live my life like this”. That is possible even if it is a very intimate relationship. But no adjustment is possible between a guru and a student.

Some gurus are very kind; they will try to fix things in your life so that you become ready for the path that the guru is on. Some of them are very kind, they will say - okay you are not ready for this kind of practice, I will teach you something else. The student must be willing, there must be surrender there, must be an acceptance that I am not ready, the guru is showing his kindness. I should at least listen to my guru, what he is saying. But if there is no internal drive, if he is totally sold to some other idea, he is not going to stay, no adjustment can be done here most of the time. I say you start, don't say that I do not want a guru, start with anybody you are most attracted to, and if nothing happens there, there is no resonance there, you stay for a while, probably the guru will teach you how to throw away your ignorance a little bit, so that you at least become receptive to the path.

I also do that because my guru did that. They were very patient with my stupidity. I remember an episode when I went to a guru. I was doing the kundalini practices and I was totally sold on the idea that there is no other way except this, everybody else is a fool, they simply recite the old scriptures, they have no practical knowledge. I know how to get liberation. And my guru said - you are stupid don't do that. Immediately a thought came in my mind that this fellow is not my guru, I need to find a guru who knows what I am doing. The amount of ignorance will make you crazy, insane. The good thing is, I had a little bit of patience by that time and luckily the guru had a little bit of kindness. But the word “stupid” got stuck with me, because I thought I was the most intelligent person in this universe. That kept me there, because somebody is telling me you are stupid that means he knows more than I do. I used my “intelligence”, I tried to use my rational thinking here. He called me stupid, there are only two possibilities - either he knows much more than I know or he is stupid he does not know anything. So I tried to give it a chance. There was a little bit of benefit in that because some adjustment was made from both sides. And I will tell you the bottom line, the end part of the story, I did not accept him as a guru. No I did not. I went away after seven days. Those seven days had an influence on the mind. The seeds of the path of knowledge were sown. He gave me the seeds, one simple sentence - you don't need to do this, you need to ask the correct questions. And that stayed with me until finally I saw it.

Finally our ignorance decides our choices. The guru understood that this is not the right time. I will give you some seeds, take them, let them grow, plant them in your fertile mind. It is mostly fertilizer for a student anyway, and let the seeds grow, and then hope for the best. That happened. Now why did I tell you this story? Because I have gone through all these experiences. I have done this search for a guru and all. It took many years. Finally, I found the gurufield. I find that the person you call a guru and judge him from his looks and whatever is a manifestation of the gurufield. What you are actually looking for is the gurufield, not the manifestations. I don't say this initially because it's too advanced, isn't it? How should I find the gurufield? Where is the gurufield? It is everywhere. As soon as you took a spiritual path, as soon as you became interested in spiritual matters, and you saw the value of it, you saw that it is more valuable than worldly things, it became your priority, you came in contact with the gurufield. You don't realize this. I also did not realize this. The gurufield is everywhere. You are in the gurufield. The only thing is that you are just like any other ordinary person, they don't pay attention to you. Why am I saying “they”? Because I've done personification of it. I've done that because your mind will grasp it, if I do it like this. But don't believe it, don't think that it's a person. It has finer intelligence than a person, than a human. You can personify it, there is no harm, fully knowing that I have done that for a purpose. Practically, you surrender yourself to the gurufield, not to the guru. Realize that this person who is talking, standing in front of you, and delivering the lecture is a manifestation of the gurufield. Now you will be able to accept him a little bit. “Let me see what the guru field is telling me through this mouth today. Let me see what the guru field is telling me through this video or this book today”. You open yourself to the gurufield. “Oh no, this lecture is too long, I'll watch something which gives me all the knowledge of the universe in five minutes”. Well, the gurufield will be withdrawn immediately. The gurufield is not interested in helping such a seeker. There is no surrender here, there is no effort. Although knowledge cannot be obtained by effort, you need to reach there through effort, surrender, let the guru field guide you.

Don't try to guide yourself in the gurufield. It's not possible. I surrendered a few years ago, actually in 2015-2016 and that made my life very easy. There is total acceptance now. I am not fighting with philosophies, I am not fighting with ideas. I can immediately see why somebody said something. This is not because I know that philosophy or I know that language or the text or whatever. This is because of the grace of the gurufield. I know that which has written that thing, I know that which is saying those words. You need to know that. Don't try to know the guru, don't try to understand the words in the book, they're pointers. If you don't get the thing that it is pointing to, it's meaningless.

There is a primitive way to find a guru and there is an advanced way to find a guru. The primitive way you already know, you need to do guru shopping. The advanced way is to surrender, open yourself to the gurufield. Gurufield is guiding you. Set your priorities. I'll give you metaphor, let us say a person is stranded on an island, very classic situation, now can he call the ships, can he call home? No, it's an island, it's a very remote place, no signal, your phone is discharged, you don't have any food, nothing, now you say - let me choose the ships that will rescue me, I will choose the correct ship that will rescue me. Isn't that foolish? You cannot choose it. What can you do? You just mount a flag there, you just start a little bit of fire and set up a smoke signal, the smoke signal is going to rise in the sky and any ships and boats that are passing around will see it. Similarly, you set up signals in your life - “I want my answers, I want to progress”, this is the flag, you raise your flag very high, you send the smoke signal, the rest is gurufield, the gurufield will do whatever is necessary and if the help comes, do not pick and choose, “oh I wanted a red ship, your ship is yellow, I don't want to take it”. Well, understand that somebody has seen your signal, somebody wants to rescue you, don't do anything stupid.

Shanthi is saying, if the mind already decides, does an individual have a way to choose or set signals?

No, if the mind has already decided, it will do that which it wants. I told you my own story, the mind had already decided, it will not do it. What happens is that it gives up after a while. The mind tries and tries using its limited intellect, picks and chooses the gurus and picks and chooses the paths, traditions and practices and whatever, then it fails or it gets deluded that I am going somewhere and this failure, this desperation, this defeat forces the mind to ask for help, not before that.

There is no choice here, in your helplessness, in your desperation, you will send the signals, then the guru appears, that is the point when the student is ready to receive. You must have heard this old saying, but you never meditated on this. Why do they say that the guru appears only when the student is ready? This is the reason. If it is merely curiosity, if it is merely your pastime, if you want to acquire knowledge just to show off or to fulfill your desires, nobody will appear, no guru will accept you. As soon as a desperation is seen, as soon as this defeated student is seen, he will be picked up, now the mind is surrendered.

There are many such stories. I have seen people cry, they beg the guru to accept them, they just occupy the ashram, “no I am not going to go away from this ashram, you need to accept me”. Sometimes the gurus are not kind, they will just kick you out of the ashram. If there is desperation, there is surrender there, the guru will show you the way, he will tell you, okay you are interested in this thing, I will tell you a better place, a better ashram, then he will send you to somebody else. I also do that, I do not discourage people, “I want to learn this”, “okay go there. I am sorry, I know only this much, you need a better expert in this field that you are interested in, go there”. This is how I do it and I did not fall at any feet, I did not force the gurus to do something for me, “please take away all my karma, please make me free, please just shine the light of your consciousness on me, give me the Shaktipat” and all, initially I must have done that, I do not even remember, I actually paid a lot of money also to the gurus to get the stuff that I thought I needed badly, nothing happened, no progress was made. Actually I cannot say that no progress was made, I learned my lessons, that is progress, you fail and that is also progress, yes we do not see it as progress, but it is progress. Seeking became my first priority instead of my pastime, seeking became a way of knowing instead of escaping this life. Most of these students are escaping life. You must have seen this, “oh there are too many troubles, let me join a spiritual ashram, a spiritual path, I will be saved from the troubles of the life, my family is abusive, my wife doesn't love me, my children insult me, my boss is like a demon, he is sucking my blood, I do not want this life, where should I go, oh they are spiritual, they seem to be very happy people”. Now, in such cases, the gurufield will kick you out, accept your life first, make your survival your priority first, bring the food to your plate and feed your family and then intensify your desire to know, your desire to be free.

I gave you examples of smoke signals and all, how should you send the smoke signals, how are you going to raise the white flag? There are few ways, if you want to take the advanced way to find a guru. Firstly, announce, start talking about spiritual stuff, announce I am a seeker. Probably you are good for nothing but do announce it to the world. I did that, I am a seeker now and I am doing all this research and all, that is one way. Start announcing it, don't worry if people call you crazy, you are crazy, accept it, tell them yes I am crazy. This will clear your first hurdle, you are now publicly and officially a seeker, don't worry about the path etc. Just announce that I am a seeker, I am interested in spiritual knowledge and I am interested in liberating myself, your thoughts will be transmitted to the gurufield. Now start making an effort to find whatever you have announced. Buy the books, go and join the meetings, go to this ashram, do this course, pay the money also. You are stranded on an island, now what is the use of this money? You are not going to take it with you, pay it, this will send very strong signals to the gurufield that you are trying, you are desperate. Start writing the answers even if you don't know it, start speaking it. If you make mistakes, it is the job of the gurufield to correct you, it's not your job.

This is a subtle way. People say pray, and you can do that, learn a very good gurumantra, they were set up as a password to contact the gurufield, learn this password, enter this password in the website of the gurufield. I'm just saying it poetically because there are no practical ways to say it, this is prayer. But what is the use of entering the password if you don't go and check the website? You keep saying the gurumantra every day 108 times, or whatever your favorite number is, that many times, but it does nothing, gurufield is not listening, how many times are you going to enter the password? They realise that this fellow just knows the gurumantra, he knows nothing more than that, he is not doing anything more than that. I'm just personifying it because there is probably no way to understand it right now. You will need to go out and make some efforts, you prayed, now try to find the fruit of that prayer also. Where are you going to find that fruit? The gurufield is not going to drop the knowledge in your lap, if you just sit there and do your regular things that you do every day. You need to change some things in your life, start mixing with spiritual community, “oh you eat this kind of diet, why do you eat it, please tell me”, you experiment on that, you go there, “you have done this practice, let me try it”, this is when you don't have any guru, people do all these kind of things, there is no harm, just don't do anything extreme. “You went into solitude, let me try it”, but that does not mean that you go and sit in a cave, you will die in two days. Go to a separate room in your house and sit there, turn on the ac, turn on the pc, live in solitude, that is fine, that is okay in this age. Start sending these signals that I am desperate, that I am defeated, I am helpless, pray if you want to pray, use the gurumantra or any other mantra that you like, just don't sit there and wait, do some efforts, the guru will find you.

Sushant is saying, if everything is an illusion, what is the importance of making spiritual progress or walking on a spiritual path?

This is a very good question. Actually, there is no necessity of walking on a spiritual path. There is no absolute necessity. If it were necessary for everybody to become spiritual, they would have made it mandatory already. They would have converted everybody to a spiritual person already. Never underestimate the power of these great people. They can just raise their hand and turn everybody into a spiritual person. But we know, it is not necessary. It is an illusion. Your searching for knowledge is also illusory. Remember this. Are you trapped here? Are you bound here? No, you are not. And that is why it is not necessary. The spiritual path does not give you anything which you are already not. And therefore, it is not absolutely required.

What are you progressing to? Your real nature is complete nothingness, complete emptiness. It's just peaceful bliss, all-knowing bliss. You are already that. You're progressing towards emptiness. Can you call it progress? No. Everything is already perfect. And therefore, it is not important that you take on a spiritual path. It's a complete waste of time. Let me tell you, live your life happily, simply accepting whatever there is. I am trying to discourage you from doing too much in the name of spirituality. Any guru will do that. The gurus that I know that had a huge influence on my life told me not to do anything. This is the real story. I listened to many, everybody told me that you don't need to do anything, that is your path, enjoy the non-doing, that is your path.

Remember, there is no island, there is no smoke signal, there is no ship, this was all dreamt up by your ignorant mind, now do you need to do anything? From that day onwards I am not doing anything, you must have seen, I don't do anything, some people come here and check what kind of spiritual life he is living. It does look like a spiritual life because I have dropped all that which was unnecessary, completely dropped it. You can call it a spiritual life, but to me it is a simple life. Dropping all that which happened due to ignorance, that will be your spiritual life. Nothing special is going on in this life. There is no need to do anything special and that will be your spiritual life. One day this organism, this mind-body thing will be gone, because it appeared, so it will disappear. Did it make any difference? No, better live your life peacefully, why are you struggling? Did you get any knowledge? No, you cleared your ignorance, isn't that enough?

I am pretty sure the newcomers are not going to understand what I am saying, they need the practice and so that is also okay, they will be given the practice till they become tired of the practice. And they decide - do I need to change the practice or do I need to change the guru? And there is a turning point most of the time. The dropping of practices, the dropping of this madness called spirituality is the liberation. We keep calling ourselves seekers, there is nothing bad in that, as soon as I call myself a guru or assume that I know everything now, there is a problem. We keep calling ourselves a seeker, we had announced in the past that I am seeking, I am a seeker, you keep that announcement on all the time, seek without seeking, that is okay, that is fine. Every time we seek, every time we try to find something, you will see the uselessness of it. What are we seeking? Trying to stop this mind from falling into ignorance again. I thought that I can fix the world, I can fix people, I can help people and I did much, it was a complete waste of time, it was completely useless. You realize this, you empty that, back to emptiness, back to simple life. Actually this is not only my realization. People have realized this already. It is an established fact that all effort is a complete waste of time. If you are happy, if you have a simple life, if you are not suffering, nobody else is suffering, don't do anything. There is no knowledge, there is nothing to realize.

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 youtube. 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