Session 51

There was an interesting question, how to transcend the person or how to transcend the ego?

As you already know that there is only one way and that is to see the ego as not myself, which means self-realization is the only way. If you try to use the mind to transcend the ego then it will be an impossibility. Transcending the ego is not a physiological process, it is not a mental process, it is a simple realization, and then abiding as the self. So those who are identified with their bodies would like to take up a path which involves the body to transcend the ego, which is not bad because that is all they know. They know that I am the body and I need to do something to the body. That's what they're doing on the yogic paths. And those who think they are the mind, they start meddling with the mind and they use the mind to overcome the mind, which is also very good because that is all they know.

The direct path involves simply sitting at the place of the self, that is, maintaining the awareness as the self and the ego is drained out. It does not mean that all the activities of the ego will stop, it does not mean that the body will stop functioning or the mind will stop functioning. Or that you need to simply sit there with closed eyes and space out somewhere. No, it simply means that whatever happens, you recognize it as not me. Whatever , you detach from it and call it not me, not mine, I am not the doer, I am not the owner and I am not these things and let whatever happens happen.

The body is like a robot it will continue doing what it usually does till it dies and the mind is like a computer it will continue to do what it is programmed to do - the thinking, the emoting and whatever are the functions of this machine called the mind. And who knows for how long it will go on, but that is not me. Abidance as my true self, in my true nature, is equal to transcending the ego while not doing anything to these baser, these lower layers of the mind.

Sit at the highest, that is how you transcend the ego and it is very easy. It can be done from now onwards, you can do it from today onwards, it is easier than breathing. Some people are going to face the difficulty - the identification comes back. Not an issue, you are the witness of the identification also. See the idea of identification happening and see the identification dropping. It can be called, in ordinary language, as forgetting and remembering, but it has nothing to do with memory, it is just a normal process of slipping out of awareness and coming into awareness. This starts happening again and again, and even if you forget that during the time the mind got occupied with identification, I was the self, nothing else. That washes out the past mistake of not being in awareness.

The recognition is very simple. Are you aware now, are you the pure consciousness now, are you the experiencer now? And you will find that you don't go to memory to find out - oh, was I that or not? It is that which is ever-present, so you get a direct experience of it. You don't need to recall things to remember, you need to see things to remember. What do you remember? You remember that I slipped out of this knowledge. That is all you will remember, you are not going to remember the experiencer. The experiencer is above mind, the experiencer is above memory. It does not leave a trace on memory and it need not because it is ever-present. So it is very easy actually and you will find that not only you have transcended the ego right now from today, you will know that I was always transcended, I was never the ego. There was this mistake, this error, that happened that I considered myself to be body-mind or anything in the body-mind, an organ, a thought, a memory, a profession, a name, that is what I considered to be me. It can be any of these funny things that I mentioned in depth in episode number 15 of the series on the path of knowledge. Actually I tried to make it shorter but the list went on to include at least a dozen things. I can go on adding even more, ? Two or three dozen things that people can identify with.

How to know that there is an identification? It will always be an experience. Your identification with an experience may happen, see it and then discard it, come back to the experiencer that is witnessing the experience. It does not matter what the mind says, the mind will say no no you need it, no no you will die if you don't do it! These thoughts will be occurring in your mind all the time and they are also experiences, they are also not you. It is totally necessary and you will find that, that is all will happen which mind thinks is most necessary and you should witness it. Eventually the mind will self-correct itself eventually the light of awareness will cause a detachment in the mind with all that which is unnecessary. The final thing that you will find is unnecessary, is this body. That will be your last, and then freedom.

You cannot get freedom by killing the body, it will pop up again in probably even a worse form with all the memories of this event wiped out because now the mind does not want enlightenment, it does not want self-realization, it will pick a body, a place, a country, a caste, a race, which is totally devoid of this knowledge, it will take birth there and then probably it will spend many lives till the suffering grows to a point where it goes and seeks again. So there is no other shortcut, transcending the ego is the shortest path, it is the shortest. Imagine killing yourself and then getting trapped in the illusion for 1000 years. That is not short. Shortest is to be present right now right here.

If anybody faces difficulty in that, that can be corrected, that can be resolved. Your personal problems cannot be resolved, problems of your country cannot be resolved, the problems of the world cannot be resolved. They are not problems really, the problem is your ignorance, that is the biggest problem. I can help to resolve your problems but not anything else. That is why we conduct these meetings.

Muhammad is asking, is love a natural occurrence on the path of knowledge or is it something that must be practiced?

It's a very good question. The first thing is - can you practice love? Can you practice loving somebody, something? Is it even possible? You can practice posture, you can practice breathing, you can practice a mantra and you can practice all these strange practices, you can also practice being aware because these are mental tasks, ? They are jobs to be done. Now, is love a job that you must do and finish and repeat and finish again?

So the question answers itself. It is not a practice and therefore you cannot practice it. Now the other part whether it is a natural occurrence on the path of knowledge, it is a realization, you cannot say that love will occur one day on the path of knowledge, that I will become loving and caring and kind, if I walk on the path of knowledge. You will find sometimes that exactly the opposite will happen because for many people love is only an attachment. Love is only getting something. I'm getting this, I'm getting that, I'm feeling good, I'm feeling safe and wanted. And this stickiness is a relation called “love” for them, and on the path of knowledge that will be dropped. Probably this will be the first thing that will be dropped and you will find that the person becomes totally, it seems, indifferent and you will also be surprised that there was a time when I was passionate about this thing, that thing, I was passionate about, let us say, cars or hardware or hiking or mountaineering and you will find one by one these things are getting dropped. You don't like them now. And those who are totally involved in relations, probably men don't do it but for women, these relations are a big obstacle. They are a very big knot. So they will find that they are no longer interested in relations, then they no longer depend on people. They will find that their dependency was out of fear that something will happen to me if I don't relate to people because that is how women are evolved, they are evolved to remain dependent and to remain in relations, otherwise the basic survival fears pop out.

Incidentally there was a video by one of my favorite teachers Tom Campbell and he has gone through the details of how men and women were evolved differently in different environments and their survival depends on doing different things, and so men are more in love with things and activities and the women are more in love with relations. It should be noted carefully that I said relations, not people. They want relations, they don't want people. Actually wherever they get that relation, that person is their object of love. The person is not important, what they get from that person, that is more important. That can be - caring, being taken care of, support, security, food, money and all the benefits of life that ensure a good survival.

They will find that as soon as they walk on the path of knowledge that will stop. There will be less dependency. There will be more independence. Women will become more independent, will stop doing what others tell her to do and will start doing what she thinks is best for her. That is a freedom that they will get and others are going to perceive it as a lack of love because no more attachment here, no more stickiness, no more dependency. If somebody depends on the other we call it “love” in our language of ignorance.

As soon as knowledge appears this tendency disappears, so many people will be surprised that they become almost detached, they become careless. It is not that they don't help people, they do it in a detached way, it is not that they will stop talking to people. Now, there are preferences, they will talk to only some people and not all and it will appear that they have lost interest in life but that is only an appearance, they will become more interested in things that matter. They love knowledge now, not the parodies of knowledge that you find everywhere, not the garbage that is being served to you in the name of knowledge. They will not be interested in those fake people, for example the politicians, their leaders, the film stars or anybody in their neighborhood. They will be interested in genuine people, seekers who love knowledge, who are very intelligent, who are wise, who are kind, who don't fake love.

Their insult is also beneficial for you. You will find there are some teachers if you ask something stupid they are going to insult you left and right. Some teachers are going to even punish you, that is sometimes necessary to discipline the mind because the mind prefers laziness, it does not want to come out of it and so the teacher out of his kindness will take a bigger measure. It is love. If the teacher did not love you, let us assume, he will do nothing for your growth, nothing at all. He wouldn't ask you to do anything. Actually, fortunately or unfortunately this is the tendency of teachers on the path of knowledge they are so detached that they don't love their students much, they will not force their student to go and do the introspection or they will not force you to improve yourself, improve your intelligence, get rid of the laziness of the mind, get rid of your desires, or start practicing awareness. They are not going to point to you - look, you are not aware, look the desires have taken hold of you. Here they don't do it every day, probably they will do it once or twice just to remind you and then they rely on your intelligence that he will get it.

This strictness of the guru is his love, his kindness, he is now worried that you are not progressing and so he has gone down one or two steps to discipline that student. And I started like this, actually, did not pay attention to what the teachers were saying, did not pay attention to what the guru was telling, completely ignored the teachings. I started like this and I found that the gurus would either become very strict or they would simply abandon me - okay you do whatever you like to do and I saw that some of them loved me a lot so much that they left me to do whatever I wanted to do.

Love looks like detachment on the path of knowledge.

Why is that so? Because love is simply a recognition that I am you. It is very simple actually. You don't need to do anything to be in love. I am you, that is all. Now the doing is left to the body and the doing is left to the mind it's not my business. Love cannot become a business like this. Love cannot become

a behavior pattern. We have a name for it because it can cause confusion so I call it unconditional love. There are no conditions there, if you do this I will do that - this is a condition. If I get this, I will love that person - this is a condition, if he's like this I will love him, if he looks like this, if he's this much tall you have my love - this is a conditional love, this is simply ignorance.

I don't say don't do it, go through it, see how stupid it is and then rise out of it, rise out of this experience, this sticky experience and see the royalty of unconditional love. It is very pure.

Imagine a bottle of water filled with mud and all kinds of sticky substances and worms in it that is your everyday love, that is the love that you call a relation and imagine a bottle of mineral water, purified with preservatives added, it is as clear as glass, you can see through it, that is unconditional love. And now you will find that you can see the muddy water, the dirty water, it is visible, the pure water is not visible, the unconditional love is invisible. It is not expressed by the body, by the mind, by the language, it is expressed by the spirit.

Till you are established in your originality instead of the fake person that you are, the love will escape you. Then you will try to practice it. Let me practice unconditional love, like those other monks and spiritual people are doing and then you will find that you fail and that is because love is not something that you can practice, it is your real nature.

What you can practice is, not getting trapped in the attachments, not getting trapped in the activities of the body-mind. It is very easy, maintain awareness. Awareness involves throwing away, discarding that which you are not. The practice is not taken up, the practice is given up, giving up is the practice. You cannot take up something, you cannot start doing something to practice, you need to stop doing things and that will be your practice.

It will be a experience of every one of you, it is universal, it is not these experiences that people get on other paths, oh I feel vibrations in my body, I saw this dream or I saw this light and I was flying through this heaven these experiences are subjective because they are fake they are made up but this, this experience of the universal love or you can say unconditional love will be there for all of people who are on the path of knowledge. It should happen to everybody on other paths also, I am not saying that they won't see the universe or the existence as themselves and then that will be the love. I am not saying it won't happen on other paths but it can take time there. See that you are this existence and from today onwards, from now onwards you are in unconditional love. You don't need to do anything in unconditional love, that is the beauty of it.

Prashant is saying, why do people have kids or why is it important to have kids?

It is a biological process. This is how mother nature has decided that the organisms will reproduce. There are organisms that simply divide into two. The bacteria, the virus, the unicellular organisms. There are organisms that simply produce a seed and then it grows into a new one. The human and other animals they divide into two by this process, you call it a child. It is just a budding process, it is one part of the body growing into a whole new organism.

You're asking why. If this does not happen then obviously there will be no continuation of biological life. Why did I say biological life? Because life is very big and it is not only a biological organism. It is not only made up of these organisms that are made up of matter, of gross substance. There are many kinds of life forms. They have their different ways to reproduce. How will a life form which does not have a body reproduce? I will answer your question in more detail, why it is important but it is very extraordinary for you to reproduce. You don't even need a body, it is very extraordinary. Normally I don't say these things because nobody has experienced it. Even I have not experienced it but through the grace of masters we know these things. I know it from some very reliable people that you don't need a body to reproduce. You only need a mind and you need a specific ritual and a memory, a space in memory, you leave it blank for that new individual or the new mind to grow. It is a budding process just like you cut a branch from the rose plant and you just stick it in the ground and you will find a new rose plant grows, which produces the same flowers. It is reproduction, ? Similarly you can cut off a part of your mind, a small part not the whole of it, leave a space in your memory which is fertile, implant that part of your mind and you will find that it grows into a new life form.

Now, I don't want anybody to practice it. It is very dangerous. What are the consequences of meddling with the mind? Those who are not prepared, will not be able to do this thing. It is foolproof, but you don't need kids if you want to reproduce, you can do it like a tantric, you can do it in an advanced way. That is how disembodied minds reproduce. If they want they can make a billion copies instantly. We are limited because we have assumed a limited existence in this gross body and now if you want to reproduce you must go through the ritual of physical reproduction and there are patterns that are already etched in the memory we are born with this tendency to have kids, there is no control over it. There is no doer of it, you can say, the bodies do it automatically, even the animals do it. So you can see that it is a lower tendency. It is etched in the DNA, the child is born with this knowledge of how to have kids.

And why is it important to have kids? To continue this drama of life. Now you can say that I am a spiritual person, I don't need kids. Realize that you don't have kids, you are the whole existence, you are the children also. You have not produced them, you are them. So a mother knows that the child is not mine, the mother knows that I did not produce the child, the mother sees the child as myself. You can ask any mother, even the father, a spiritual person, an enlightened person sees the child as myself, not as my child. We don't own the children and we don't produce them.

Yes, ignorant people, they produce them, they own them, they indoctrinate them, they try to fix them, they try to control them like their own property, like a device and you can see that present condition of society is the way it is because the parents think that they own the child. They own the child like they own the property. “My child” and I'll do whatever I want with this child. This is an ego tendency. It is very useful when it comes to survival because a parent may like to feed the child, a parent will try to protect the child and a parent will try to arrange situations so that the child grows up according to his wishes. So far so good, but after a while probably after the age of 12 years, children should be left alone. You should let go. They are not your property, don't try to own the children, they are not yours. Nothing is mine, even this body which produced the children is not mine. So how can the product of the body, a part of the body which grew up into another body can be mine? It is further removed from this body. This body is also not mine. As soon as they can survive on their own you should let them go. If they need help after that, well, help them just like you help everybody else. Do not be attached. They are not yours, leave them to society. Now after seeing the condition of the society I am not going to recommend that. Don't leave them to society, you don't know what monster the kid will become so take care of your kid be with the child as long as he/she needs you but you will find that as soon as the child starts thinking, the ego arises at the 13th year, the I thought arises at the age of 13 in an ordinary child. There can be very extraordinary children where the ego arises even before that. In a girl child the ego arises before it does in the boy child. So for girls it should be eight to ten years where this egoic arising happens. For a boy it should be 12 to 13 years and then, well, they are not yours now. They won't listen to you, they won't do the things that you tell them to do. Actually they will do the opposite of it. This will continue till the intellect arises. The intellect should arise in a child, I mean they are intelligent but the purified intellect arises at the age of 24.

There is something about the multiple of 12s that you will know. You will know the importance of this number if you observe other people carefully. If you observe your own life carefully you will find that things are happening in the multiples of 12. There is some reason that 12 was a special number in ancient times. One special thing about 12 is - you can divide it into many whole numbers, six, three, four, two, it is divisible by many numbers so it was a convenient number. A dozen. But it has some importance in human life. So by the age of 24 the intellect should arise in a child, who is not a child anymore now and there the drama of the ego is silenced a little bit. You will find there are very mature people where the teenage ego continues till death because the minds do not mature there. Stupidity remains.

There is another magical number which is 48 or 36. 36 is most probable where the awareness should arise. You will find many people, they turn to spirituality or to a stable profession or to a very stable householder, like they marry and all, after the age of 30 or 35, 35 mostly. They seem to be mature, they won't say stupid things, they won't do stupid things, they are called grown-ups. So 36 is the next number where the importance of freedom is realized. At the age of 48 you should be completely detached. That is another magic number and by the age of 96 you should be gone you should not stay here. If you don't go, you take sanyasa, you leave the world and spend the rest of your days in a forest, in a cave and let the body be consumed by animals, because you have done that for the whole of your life, either you have consumed plants or you have consumed animals. Now repay this debt, be free, this karmic bondage must be broken by becoming food. Otherwise you will come back here to eat more.

So this was ancient knowledge, this was called ancient wisdom. It is gathered after thousands of years of research and observation. We have completely rejected it. This is called pop culture or whatever culture you call it, it's not culture really. It is idiotic, we have fallen below the animals now. Animals know this cycle very well, everything happens like clockwork in the life of an animal. They don't need to even know. We have the freedom and therefore we have rejected the natural progression.

In one cycle of your life there will be a need to reproduce, you let that happen and be done with it. If you stop it, this desire will continue, it will be buried deep in the causal body and that will cause another birth for you. So we consider ourselves fortunate if this desire is fulfilled in this lifetime. Now this is totally against the other paths, for example the sanyasi is not trying to have kids. It is very important for the sanyasi to remain celibate and to not reproduce. Why? There are reasons for that. He has already gone through that, now he does not want another bondage. If you had this desire to reproduce, to have a partner and all, to marry, you go through it, let it be done, finish it and if you get kids you take them gracefully, as gifts from mother nature. It is the kindness of mother nature that she fulfilled your demand, your desire. And now be done with it, now let go, be detached and do not bring this thought again that I want more kids. That is not desirable for a spiritual seeker. Once the desire is finished, stop desiring more, be content with one kid or two kids. That is all we need. That is important and then to continue doing it - that is unimportant, that is not necessary. The desire can be satiated only in two ways either by fulfilling it or by discarding it, not by suppressing it. Suppressing does not get rid of it. This is not how an ordinary person is going to see it. This will not be accepted by an ordinary person, this will not be accepted by all the seekers, ? Only a few people will see what I said, only a handful will actually accept it. They may understand what I said but there won't be any acceptance of it. Attachment with people and especially children is too strong.

Mother nature prefers reproduction more than survival. This is a very big and important statement. We don't realize it. Mother nature has a preference for reproduction not for survival. There are some

species of animals die as soon as they successfully reproduce. Mother nature is not interested in keeping the original copy, it's gone as soon as the new individual is there. The old is cleared, it is reused. Reason is that it is very costly for mother nature to keep a body alive if it is not reproducing. This is how it has evolved, all the life here has evolved. That's why we don't really like this place, too many constraints, too much selfishness. The body itself is a selfish structure, so if it stops reproducing you will find that there is an effect on the mind also and there is a crisis of some kind that I am not doing anything worthwhile in my life. I'm not reproducing, I don't have children, I don't have family, people laugh at me, people think I'm good for nothing because they are also doing the same clockwork of mother nature, they are also busy reproducing and raising children. That is how they are programmed to survive.

If you don't do these things, especially women, if the women are not reproducing and having relations well they don't have any life then. Their drive is not to earn money, their drive is not to form big companies and invent things, that is not really their drive, their drive is relations and children. That is how most of them are. There are exceptions, yes, some of them will say no I'm not like this. The exceptions are everywhere, mother nature likes variety. There are all kinds of creatures, but I'm talking only about the majority. The majority are engaged in reproduction as soon as that stops happening they think that my life is not good. This is how the body affects the mind. I don't have any children, I don't have family, I don't even have a partner, I don't even have a girlfriend, look everybody has these things and the person runs like a slave to fulfill these desires. This is like the whiplash of mother nature - go and reproduce, don't sit there.

And this is absent in a spiritual person and that's why people say you are crazy, you're not doing that which others “normal” people are doing. You have full awareness of what is going on in the body, in the mind. You are not a slave.

As soon as this reproduction is over the body falls dead, have you noticed? There is no interest in mother nature, it is not giving her any returns now, so it falls dead as soon as you reproduce and actually you will find that your personality will undergo a change, now you don't want anything except raising the child. You want the child secure and that's all. You sometimes even don't want the spiritual stuff also. I am the whole universe and all, but now my priority is my child. It is very strong, this drive is very strong and I don't suggest that you suppress it. You go through it, learn from it. One day you will emerge. By the time you will be ripe for death. Mother nature has no mercy, she will extract everything out of you, even the last drop of your blood will be used to further the agenda of the maya. You will experience it yourself and we cannot win over the maya, we can only cooperate. That is my personal opinion of course, there are people who will say that no I can take control of the shakti. Remember you are the product of the shakti, nothing can take control of her, not even that which is experiencing the shakti. There is no causal link between the experiencer and the experience. The shiva has no control over what shakti does. So get out of there as soon as possible. Some people have taken on the path of worshiping the shakti so that you get her favor, a little bit, she will keep you alive for two or three hundred years if how to please the shakti. Otherwise you drop dead at the age of 60. Why do we live above 60? At the age of 60 the reproductive capabilities will drop sharply for both men and women. We do keep living because we have access to good food, medicine, health care and personal hygiene. We have hacked into the mechanisms of nature, we have manipulated it a little bit so it can extend up to 80-85. After that an old man is like a dead body already, nothing functions in his body, nothing functions in his mind.

You can please the shakti a little bit, take favor from her, get an extension on your life a little bit. But it is like extending your prison sentence - oh I want to be imprisoned for some more years, 80 years is not enough for me, make it at least 200 years. Now, I am not saying that this is wrong, this is not wrong, you can do it if you want. Take this path of tantric or manipulation of shakti. But then life should be used for something greater than reproduction. Right now your life is being used only to further the agenda of nature, which is reproduction. If you extend your life, use it for something greater than that.

Now maya is going to be angry, so you need to please her a little bit, you need to please the shakti, you need to return things to her. For example you can take care of children. Now 200 years of time has been given to you, so utilize it to help mother nature in her agenda to keep the survival going, to keep the bodies forming. You can set up an organization that can protect the children and all that will please shakti. Protect women who are of the reproductive age and are capable of reproduction, protect them. And many people have done that and they have ruled the maya for many hundred years. Now there are stories that people have been ruling like a king for a thousand years or two thousand years also. You will find there are old stories right from the sumerian days, the sumerian kings, they mentioned, they ruled for 12,000 years, 30,000 years. But I think that is too much, 1000 or 500 years is manageable. I don't know what year that was and how many days their years had. We have 365 here.

As long as we are in maya you will need to cooperate, then slowly detach till the time the body is ripe enough to let go. The body will let go of you, you cannot let go of the body. That is the agreement. That time should coincide with your liberation from human birth. Don't come back here, you have

already done that for many many lifetimes. You have produced millions of babies already. If there is a desire to reproduce, use the method that I told you. I'm hoping that it will remain as a seed in your mind when you are freed from human birth. This seed will become a means for desire fulfillment. This desire is very strong, to form copies. Why is it strong? Without it nothing will survive. The formation of copies is the basic way the universal mind is formed. This is how everything starts. It starts with a copy. The basic pattern in the NPNM memory. First thing it does is make a copy of itself. This is the first action. It is so basic. You are doing it right now also. Every cell makes a copy of itself, that is how it is going on. It is in the fabric of the universal mind we cannot fight it.

I'm just hoping that this will give you a way to satisfy this remaining desire to make copies of yourself. Many people have done that, many people make these copies in millions and millions. Now obviously

if you're surrounded by so many of your own copies that will be boring, so you let the copies evolve, you let the copies take their own path. Now you can guess what will happen, there will be soon, not soon probably after a million years of your time in the non-physical and there will be a variety, a mind-boggling variety of creatures there, all disembodied of course. By that time the original, if it remains original, will become so big that it will create a substratum, it will create its own world, you can say its own universe and these disembodied minds will then populate it, doing the same thing - making copies.

This is how you serve the shakti. Marrying and having babies is very primitive. By the time you are forming your own universes and populating it with your own babies, the disembodied babies, giving them a body to experience things and to reproduce, there … you have already become a god. That is a proper god. That is the definition of a god that he is the creator. Now you can suspect one thing which we never say on the path of knowledge, it is simply discarded as maya, we discard it as illusion. I'll put on the mask of a tantric and I'll say that we are in a world, we are in a universe which is the product of one such big mind. We are his children. It has already happened, this is the natural progression, this is the greater view, this is the bigger picture. We are doing the same thing, it is a fractal copy, it is a self-similar smaller copy of the big. All you do is make copies. What will happen? They all look the same. Some are more complex, some are less complex, but they all are similar, they all do the same thing and so we are the same and we are doing the same thing. We are born with an urge to reproduce, that is the biggest one that even overcomes the fear of death. You will find that people do all kinds of things to reproduce, ? They are not afraid to kill, they are not afraid to die. If a child is drowning the mother will go and jump in the well or in the river to save the child. The reproduction takes priority here, that is why some of the spiritual paths they require you to be celibate. There is no entry in their cult if you are not celibate, if you have not overcome this desire you cannot be free from the maya. It is the biggest one.

How do we do that on the path of knowledge? There are only two ways either you go through it, do your job or you discard it. It's not me. They're both okay and then come out of this drama, come out of this prison of continuously making copies. There will be desire, you can do it in your own universe, in your own way. That will not create more karma, that will not create a bondage.

Session 52

Muhammad is saying, Is it true that there is nothing that I can do to awaken? Awakening is done by what really is. In that case then what effort can I make?

That is very true although you will not know it if you are not awakened. So those who are not awakened, they will need to make an effort. Those who are awakened, they will see that they did nothing to get there. By awakening I mean knowing your true nature and abiding there.

Why is it that I cannot do anything to awaken? Because there is no I. There is no I and there is no doer. Nothing is being done by anybody and what is awakening? Knowing that there is no I, and so this is known only after awakening. Before awakening there is the “I”. So it is a bit of a puzzle ?, that I don't know that I am not there. What can I do to know that I am not there?

The only way I suggest is you do the self-enquiry. That's all. Don't do anything else. Try to investigate the reality of this I which is trying to do something and that is the path of knowledge. If that fails, if the self-enquiry fails and you get nothing out of that, the “I” remains. There is a conviction that I am here, I am the doer. That means you should go and join a teacher. Go and join a teacher you like most and then the teacher will suggest you some path, some practices etc. You try that. If that also fails, you change the teacher, you change the tradition, you change the practices. Try that. If everything fails and you cannot get hold of anything which is spiritual, then live a simple life, wait for the grace. Live a simple life with this intention to progress. That is all.

Too much effort here will be wasted effort. You are not ready. So give up the effort, wait for the right time and there will be an inspiration someday to try something else and so on. So you can keep trying. You can keep coming back to the path of knowledge even if anybody tells you that you are not ready. Who knows, someday it will click. So if you are interested in the spiritual field and if you have the intensity to know and if you can grasp these concepts, that are not mine actually, they are very old, they are thousands of years old. What I do really is I make it very clear, that's all I do. I elaborate on them the way I understood them instead of telling you what is written in the scriptures. What is written in the scriptures is not for a modern person. It is for a person who was born thousands of years ago. They had different cultures, different languages, etc etc. So what I have done is I have cleared all that context out of it and I am presenting you that which is right here right now.

What is right here right now?

What is right here right now is an experience and an experiencer. There is nothing more than this. That is what I usually draw attention to. Once you can see this, that there is nothing more than this, everything else is then overlaid by the mind. They are all thoughts and imaginations and assumptions on top of this pure experience and that is the ultimate knowledge. That is the ultimate truth. If you can remove that overlay that the mind is piling up on this pure experience, then you realize what really is. It is very simple.

As soon as you reach the experience and the experiencer and it as it is, it is timeless, it is spaceless, it is something which is eternal and unknowable. Then you can start splitting the hair, you can start studying what it is, what I just experienced and you take it one by one. First you go to the experiencer, start looking at it from your mind. Use the mind now.

Can I see a shape there?

Can I hear the sound of this experiencer?

Can I see a color there or is there a weight, is there an energy or something?

And you will find that there is nothing. There is absolutely nothing there. It is pure emptiness. That is your first introduction to your true self that I call self-realization. It is also very simple and it takes five minutes.

You can assume that I have a color, I have a shape, there is some process going on there. But very soon you will find, or with the help of a teacher or from my help also, I will point out that look these are experiences. This is not the experiencer. Whatever you are confusing the attributes that you are putting on the experiencer are by thinking process in your mind, they are experiences. Look at them again, look at them again with a pure sight.

So many people can grasp it. that's why I said it requires a little bit of discrimination, Vivek Buddhi. Some people get tangled in these experiences. No, no I am this. I am the one who is afraid to look. I am the one who is very happy. And I say no these things are just overlays by the mind. They are different experiences which the mind itself is creating. Look at that which is looking. Do anything there? And many people, when this pointing is done, they will realize that no this thing is totally beyond senses, totally beyond mind, totally beyond this world. It is not in the world. The world is in it and so on.

So this is how the enquiry starts. And once we finish with the experiencer we take a look at the experience and the very first thing you will see in the experience is that it is changing and it is coming through the senses and it is all mind. It is purely a mental/subjective thing happening and then the entry into the experience field starts which is optional. You can go there. I mean there is nothing wrong there. But realizing that this is an illusion that you are witnessing there ends the Vedanta. The Vedanta is the end of knowledge and there it ends. There is nothing more to know after that. So that is why I call it the direct path because we are taken there directly.

Now after that the student can have many questions. After that there can be many doubts and there are many many implications of realizing this thing. Because it looks very simple but it is actually powerful. It can change your life completely. And it leads to liberation ultimately. that I am the one who is liberated. I am not that which is bound and it leads to the ultimate goal of a seeker which is liberation. So liberation via knowledge. Knowledge via direct looking. Direct witnessing. This is also called direct experience. And concluding via logical inferences. Not believing what the mind is telling you. Not believing what people are telling you. And not believing what the books are telling you. You can take a hint from them. But inferring from what . Instead of what you are told.

Whatever they have stuffed in your mind you need to just clear it out for a while. Check what your experience is telling you. It is the experiencer that is showing you something. Who is the experiencer?

You. You are showing your face to yourself. It is direct. So no dependency on anybody else. That is what I do. This is what we do in satsangs.

Yes there are questions from here and there. Like he asked me can I do the awakening? Have you done this thing? . You have just looked. Just look. And that is called awakening. Now for the first time you have woken up from sleep. From this dream of the Maya. The guru-person is needed only when the scriptures or these other mediums are not grasped completely. Then you need somebody to spoon feed these things. But it is always good to have a guru. It is always good to have somebody whom you can approach and discuss these matters. Or if you face any blockages or obstacles. I say that the guru is indispensable. However, it totally depends on the qualities of the seeker.

If you read the Avdhuta Gita you get everything. Then who needs a guru? Nobody needs them. Because these teachings are just reminders. ? They are not teaching you a skill. They are not turning you into the experiencer or Atman. They are reminding you. Look. You forgot your real nature. How many gurus do you need to do that? Are you not the experiencer right now? How many years are needed to see this?

But what is this experience? What is this body then? Why is there a body? And this cannot be grasped by scriptures. This needs a direct showing. If the guru does not tell you that look you are in an illusion. You will never know it. So there are some fundamental things which can be known without a guru. That is why I stress on it. Do the self enquiry first. If you want to go deeper into the stuff, into the experience part, there you will need help. So I recommend that you go to somebody whom you like most, and who is accessible and start there. It is experimentation. Suppose you want a product. What do you do? You go from one shop to another shop. You ask for a price. You enquire about the specifications and all. Then you buy something which you like. And then you try it. And then probably you don't like it. Then you buy something else and so on. And finally you arrive at something which is very useful. Which is very durable. So I call it guru shopping. So go on guru shopping. Try a few around you.

Yes some will be fake. Some will be there only for money. Some will be incompetent. They don't know what they are saying. They are repeating whatever is written in some scriptures, Gita or whatever. So you need to try two or three. And then you will get a taste. You will get what you call experience in this field. Who can be good for me? And then join that person. Meanwhile while you are doing it, keep listening. Keep listening to whatever I am saying. Whatever other seekers are saying. And of course, there are great masters also. They are giving away their knowledge very kindly, generously. Keep listening to all of them also.

Session 53

Manthan is saying, I am on a spiritual path for three years, since then my body muscles started shaking, and it causes interruptions in sadhana. I have been taking homeopathic medicine for a year but the problem still persists, is this problem due to some spiritual issue?

It can be both. It can be a spiritual issue, especially if you are in something which involves manipulation of energies like kundalini or kriya, or hatha yoga and it can be a medical issue also. You said you are already taking medicine so probably the doctor must have diagnosed something. I don't know what he has diagnosed but you can go and check with one or two more doctors. Go and check with a good allopathic doctor also and if that is totally cleared, if that doubt is no more there, the doctor says no, there is nothing wrong with your body, there is nothing wrong with the muscles and nervous system, then you can conclude that it is a spiritual problem.

That means the practice is not suitable for you and I don't know which practice you are doing. I don't know under which teacher you are doing it and you just wrote that you have been doing it for three years. What happens when you stop the practice, can you please tell me? That means probably the body is okay because if it is a medical issue and if it continues for three years then without treatment it is going to become worse. The medical issues have this tendency that they don't stay the same, they become worse if you don't treat them. Spiritual issues, they can either go away or they stay or they come and go or sometimes, they get worse, they sometimes become difficult to manage.

Manthan is saying, I am focusing on Agnya chakra alone since three years. When I focus intensely, shaking increases.

So why are you doing it then? If the practice is not suitable for you, if it is not making you progress but it is causing trouble in the body, then why are you doing it and who is instructing you in this practice?

He is saying, because I know nothing and if I don't do that I feel I am not on a spiritual path.

Well, shaking your body is not really a spiritual path also.You should know at least this much. The spiritual word means about your real nature, about your true self. If a practice causes shaking of the body that is not really spiritual, that is a problem. So you are on a problem path, not on a spiritual path. And if you don't know it, you should not do it. This is very basic common sense. Like if you don't know how to drive a car, you don't drive the car. You first need to learn the car. If you don't know how to operate a big machine, you don't just start the machine. Your body and nervous system are the biggest machines in this universe.

So Manthan I don't know how old you are, he looks like a young fellow to me. Let me tell you one thing. Okay you are 22, yes. So it is very necessary to first know what you are doing. Especially if you are playing with energies, if you are playing with this machine which is this body and mind, it can be very dangerous. It can cause an immense amount of problems for the whole of your life, for the rest of your life. I have seen people who take up a practice, they read here and there and they watch a video from here and there and without thinking they start doing it. Why? Because it is spiritual. I want to be spiritual. But that is not wise. That is not intelligent. And I know you are young, so you don't know the difference. You can be forgiven for that. But I have seen even grown up people, they start doing some practices just because some guru told them and the guru disappeared after taking his money and they are left with problems.

No progress. They don't even know the meaning of progress. So I think there is an urgent need for you to stop this random practice that you picked up from somewhere. These practices can be powerful, which ordinary people don't know. They think it is a practice, it is just sitting and staring at a wall or something and they don't know how bad it can go after some time. These practices are not to be done without a guru. And these practices are not to be done if they do not produce good results. This is bare bones. This is the bare basics. I mean, even a child will know this, that if he touches a hot cup, his hand gets burned and he knows not to touch it again. He will be afraid of the cold cup also. He won't drink the tea. I don't know why people do it then. No progress, nothing, no knowledge, ignorance, no guru.

Then is it wise to do it? Would you call it intelligent action? It is like driving a Ferrari at the speed of 100 kilometers on a highway without an instructor sitting beside you. And when the accident happens, you ask, why did it happen? Why? What went wrong? First of all, you should stop it.

Okay, let me read the comment by Ajay. Something similar also happened to me. Something like involuntary kriyas without doing any practice just by sitting and turning your head upwards. Then I stopped it because I did not know how I was initiated.

So yes, if it happens automatically, it means there are some past impressions there. It can happen automatically and let it happen. If it is not troubling you, then it is just mind doing its business. Don't intervene. But if it is troubling you, that means you have hit your hand with a hammer. Now don't keep hitting your hand with a hammer because it feels spiritual to you, ? If somebody tells you that every day you take a hammer and hit your fingers with it instead of hitting the nail, is it spiritual? Because it's painful, ? Especially if you're not going anywhere. Now he's asking what I should do? Well, first know the theory at least. Start reading about whatever you are doing. the name Agya Chakra but you don't know what it is. So start collecting knowledge first. It is just like when you want to become a doctor, you want to treat people, you want to treat diseases, what do they do? For four years they teach you only books and last year they teach you to cut the frog or a cockroach or something. And then for three or four years you join as an intern and just look at the other doctors what they are doing and just prescribe medicines to the patients. If you cannot, then you refer the patient to the bigger doctor and after ten years they become a specialist and they start treating people. So this is the simple thing of treating a disease, , and it takes 20 years. Now you can imagine treating your mind, treating your soul or body or whatever you call it, the energy body and controlling the forces like Kundalini that are running the whole universe and you want to do it in two days. So that is what I think is spiritual abuse.

And you are not the only one, many people start like this. I also started with doing some practices without any guidance, quickly came to know how dangerous these things are. Even doctors will not be able to treat you, allopathic they don't even understand what is going on in the body, homeopathic no medicine, Ayurvedic a little bit, but nowadays all fake doctors in Ayurvedic field also. The B.A.M.S. degrees allotted to those who fail in other degrees, they do not take B.A.M.S. of Ayurvedic medicines by their own will, they get it because, , they could not get admission in the allopathic field. So it is all a mess, it is a total mess. Even the biggest gurus do not know how to control these things. So it is good that you have finally consulted somebody, although I don't say that I am very, very experienced here, but I have at least 20 years of mistakes behind me. I know what not to do. I have done so many things that I know which things are not going to work.

So because you are very young, start looking for a permanent guru, start exploring different paths. If you want, you can take Hatha Yoga, Kriya Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Bhakti Yoga or Karmayoga, the Gyan Yoga, whatever suits you. But first learn about these things. Learn about what is the spiritual path. Learn about what is the goal of a spiritual path. Don't worry, nobody is born a master in the spiritual field, ? Everybody needs to learn these things. We are not born with this knowledge of what is spiritual and what is not spiritual. So first get the theoretical knowledge correct. Check the great masters. First find out, did Adi Shankaracharya do the Kundalini practice or what? Did he meditate on the Agya for three years? What about Nisargadatta Maharaj? What about Raman Maharshi? What about Gautam Buddha? Did they do the Kundalini practice without a guru or something? Follow the masters. Check what the masters are telling you. They have written so many books and their followers have written thousands of books. Have you ever tried to know what spirituality is?

Videos are meant for very quick information, like in 20 minutes they will tell you a tiny bit of something. So they are not really great for getting fundamental knowledge. So what I have done is I have given a basic course in Hindi and now it has started in English. So try that also. Try doing the basic course. First of all know about things and probably you will drop your desire to do any practice at all. If any practice is needed then you should consult the guru, a proper experienced guru. If you don't get a guru and you don't know what it is, do not do it. Okay, you are very desperate and in a hurry. What is the hurry? We are going to stay forever. There is only life and life and life. This is spirituality, ? The first lesson in spirituality says that you are not this body which is going to die. So what is the hurry? Nobody is going anywhere. We are all eternally here. We have been here for millions and trillions of years and we are going to stay here, ?

Maybe the forms will change, who knows. There will be other forms in which we keep appearing. But this is the basic, what you call, fundamental teaching of spirituality that I am the spirit, I am the essence of everything. Where will the essence go? If the universe is destroyed, you will not be destroyed. You will appear as a different universe. I will appear as a different universe. Same thing, ? We are all the same, essentially. So you are desperate in a hurry because of ignorance. You don't have the patience because you think I am the body. My age is now increasing. I need to do everything in one day. This can be one reason. There is a fear that I am not living my life completely. I am not becoming spiritual in one day. So because of ignorance, there is desperation or there is anxiety, you can say that I want to do everything in six months. I want to achieve nirvana in one year. That is impossible.

So start knowing, start learning these things and slowly your mind will settle. Your mind will become peaceful and after a few years, you will come to know which path is good for you and after five or six years, you will come to know which guru is good for you. After 10 to 20 years, you will start seeing some results. I mean, this is the typical process. This is the typical timetable. But , if you are very talented, it can happen quickly, like within five years also. And if there is no spiritual bone in you, like you are not made for spirituality, then nothing will happen for the whole of your life. That means you should live a simple life and wait for the right time. There is nothing wrong in waiting, ? We are waiting since probably many, many lifetimes.

You don't know what ignorance is? Whenever you're not clear about anything, whenever there is no experience about anything, that is called ignorance. Whenever you don't know what anything is, and you simply assume or you simply hear from here and there, from other people, that is ignorance. I am the only one you understand. Well, that is good news then. You will understand me if you follow the basic course. Follow the path of knowledge video series on the English channel or follow the Gyanmarg series on the Hindi channel. Go through it. Don't hurry. , hurry means nothing will work for you. Spirituality is not a flight. It is a bullock cart. The spiritual path requires a lot of patience, requires a lot of stamina and persistence. You need to persist because the fruits come very, very slowly here. It goes on for many lifetimes. It is not a project that you will do for two years. It is not like a job that you do for 15 years and then switch to another job. It is not like this. We have been doing this for probably thousands of years.

I can tell you my case. As soon as I got interested in spirituality, the first thing I came to know that I am here since many lifetimes. It feels so familiar. It feels so old. It feels so boring that, , I am learning the same things again and again and again. Then I forget. So don't worry. You are starting and you are showing desperation and you are showing anxiety. That means there must be some impressions there. That means there are some sanskars there which are pushing you, . Probably you think that I will get something. Probably you think that I will be benefited in some way. But that is a part of ignorance. Nobody gets anything in spirituality. Nobody benefits from spirituality. So you will come to know that slowly. So it is like a marathon. It is not like a 100 meter. It is not like a one day match. It is a test series which goes on for a month and in the end nobody wins and forgets who made how many runs. It is a totally different thing than your other activities that you are doing. Whatever we do in the worldly aspect of our life is to get something, to find something, to collect something, to be something. In the spiritual path, spiritual work is totally opposite. Every day you will leave something. Every day you will drop something. The final thing that you will drop is the body. So we are not in a hurry, are we?

Mukti is the final, moksha is the final. But before that, knowledge comes. Before that you should know what these things are. So I will be able to help you in the knowledge part but not in the practice part. In the practice part I just give you this advice which is you should take it seriously that you do not practice if you don't know the practice. Do not practice if you don't have a guru who is experienced in that and do not practice if nobody else is practicing it. Do not simply read it, oh this was written by some great guru 2000 years ago, don't do it. No one will be able to guide you, especially if something goes wrong, ? Even if you start getting the results of the practice, nobody knows where this will take you.

Manthan is saying, I am on a spiritual path only for quality of life. I don't bother if I get liberation and my intention is correct on this path.

Yes, no problem. Liberation is too big for somebody who is just starting. You won't get liberation for many lifetimes, don't worry. So quality of life can be increased, , it can be made better by knowledge. You don't need to shake your body, you don't need to mess with the energy systems in the body. Knowledge is enough. If there is a problem in your life, in your material life, then the spiritual practices are going to do nothing for that. For a problem that is concerned with material life, only the material path will be useful. For example, you are poor, you don't have a job, you are not educated at all, well no ashram, no guru will be able to help you. Remember that we are born equipped to live a good life. We have two hands, two feet, one brain to think, mouth to speak, eyes to see. Everything has been given to us. What is missing is knowledge, we are not born with knowledge, we are born equipped for survival.

I don't know what is the meaning of quality of life and all, but it is possible to live a simple life while being on a spiritual path and it helps a little bit because you will not waste your time in stupid things, there will be no addictions, there will be no bad people who will waste your time, there will be no bad habits that make you spend your money and your relations will be good. By good I mean they are not going to force you to commit suicide or something that good. You won't be in heaven, that is not guaranteed. This much is possible by spiritual knowledge. Then you apply it in your life by whatever means possible and increase the quality of your life.

If you don't want liberation then probably this purification will help you. Meanwhile tell me what is wrong with the quality of your life, how is your quality of life impaired or it is not up to the mark. This series in Hindi, it will help you to purify all aspects of your life. This is discussed in brief here, so if you want you can go through this.

Ok, he is saying my relations are destroyed with my parents and with my partners.

So don't worry, the relations are meant to be destroyed, the relations are not permanent. In this world nothing is permanent, your intellect is not strong, ok that can be fixed . But remember the intellect matures with age, the intellect matures with experience. At this age nobody has a strong intellect. When I was of this age I was stupid, I could not even talk to anybody. This was a miserable time. I failed in exams and all those things , could not understand the books and had no idea of what is life and what should I do here. So don't worry, the intellect matures with age, the intellect matures with experience. You will learn as the age grows. And regarding your parents and partner, don't worry, when the relations are meant to teach us things, they are not meant to please us. This should be noted, it is the mantra for you. The relations are not there to please us, they are not there to make us happy. They are teaching aids, they are a teaching device. It can be anybody . You will soon start doing a job and then you will find problems with your co-workers. You move to a new house and you will find problems with your neighbours. You move to a new country and you will find racism and all those things there. There are no good relations in this world.

First thing you should write down is that I don't know what spirituality is. Second thing you should write below that I won't do practices without knowing what they are without the Guru. And the third thing you note down that intellect is not magic, it will come with experience. Go to this series and listen to it two or three times. And the third thing, note down that relations do not give us happiness, money does not give us happiness, material life is not for happiness, even your intellect is not going to give you happiness, your achievements don't give you happiness.

It is good that your relations are destroyed because you will learn something and then the next time you make a relation, it will be more stable. And don't worry, that will also be destroyed. So either you will just fake the relation for the rest of your life like many people are doing or you will get into another relation and that will be more stable. It will go on like this for a while. And none of them are going to give you happiness. Relatives are our lessons. Partners are our lessons. So if you don't learn from it, it will fail.

He's saying, last night I was watching your video and suddenly became so joyful. Could not stop.

It can be because you learned something new. It can be because the teachings change the mind at some deeper level. The spiritual teachings are always like this, that big load is unloaded, a big burden is dropped. That's why I said you don't get anything. You just, , become lighter and lighter and lighter. What the spiritual teaching will do is it will take away many things out of your mind. The mind is now a garbage bin. The spiritual teachings are going to clean it. So whenever cleaning happens, whenever a realization happens, it will produce an effect in the mind. And sometimes the effect is so great that it causes blissful feelings in the body. Because you told me that you are doing some practice which involves the chakra system, so you are more prone to that practice, because the sensitivity is now too much. So it will happen with any teaching, any spiritual teaching. It is not only my video, , my video is not magic or something, although many people report this thing, , it's very strange. Many people, when they listen to my videos, some of them they start crying, some of them they are joyful like you are, and some of them they become silent. They don't talk to anybody for a week or two. , I sometimes get messages, I get emails that this and that happened. Yes, it won't repeat because , the load can be unloaded only once. How can you unload it every day? The garbage once cleaned, gone, you cannot clean it every day. So don't worry, it won't repeat. And if it repeats, that means more garbage is getting cleared. So it will happen to those who are on the energy paths frequently. I have seen some people, they just go and sit near their Guru and then start shaking and start crying or enter the blissful Samadhi. So it can happen.

, the mind is a very powerful thing. I need to just sometimes shake a tiny hair with ignorance and the whole of it, the whole of the castle collapses. I've seen it, , with my own eyes and it happened to me also. It must have happened to many. The emotions, they start flowing like you want to cry with joy or whatever you say. After one or two days, you feel stupid, but it is gone now. You are going to feel very, very light because of that burden that you were carrying, which is some form of ignorance, because , after hearing the teaching that ignorance is cleared and instantly you get a treat, you get a, what do you call, reward from the mind. Thank you very much for saving me from this burden. Now I can throw it away. This is how progress happens, ? One burden is dropped at a time and there is so much, there's a mountain on your head. One rock will fall per day. So don't worry. It is perfectly okay. And if you give too much importance to it, like I want it back, I want it back. That is stupidity. Don't run after these mental reactions. It is not wise. For example, you get a cold and the whole day you feel very bad. Your head aches and your body is tired and your nose is running. Next day you wake up, take medicine and it's all gone. Now it feels very light. Now it feels very good. So do you want this feeling again the next day? No, you don't want it. It's done. It is cured. Your disease is gone. Forget about it. stupidity to get into the cold, get the disease again and then cure it again just to get that experience of feeling well again? No, that is not wise. That is not intelligence. Don't run after these experiences.

See, when you get into a train to go to another city, let us say you're traveling from Mumbai to Delhi and it is 16 hours by train. Do you jump out of the train at every station to look at the scenery around? Although there is nothing, same trees and fields and villages and all cows and buffaloes. Is it wise to jump out of the train every time, every five minutes? The scenery is not important. Your destination is important. Just relax, sit in the train and watch, watch out of the window. The experiences that we get while on the spiritual path are like these. They come and go very fast. Don't run after that. , your destination is important.

Raja is saying, we are taught selflessness is basic virtue. However, spirituality is a selfish pursuit where you have to make compromises to your obligations to your family. Please correct me if I'm confused.

Yes, it is a very delicate balancing act. What you call compromises are basically corrections. You won't compromise if it is not needed, ? If it is needed, it is a correction. So you are taking your family on a picnic every Sunday, let us say. Now Satsang is also on Sunday. Now what to do? Compromise. And you take your family only once per month on a picnic. But in my view, it is a correction because every week a picnic is not needed. It is too much. You spoil your family. So there is a correction needed there. So it is not selfish really. It is a self-correcting mechanism. If your family is not happy by themselves, if they don't have anything to do without you and if they need you every second, they are dependent on you, a lot of corrections are needed there. That is not compromising your obligations to your family. That is putting everything straight, making the corrections, making the amends. If your wife cannot even put her feet outside the house without you being there, something is wrong. ? They don't have a life. There is a big disorder there. You need to bring order. Everybody should be happy and independent. Family does not mean slavery, dependency. My words are always strong and to the point.

What happened is when I started self-correcting myself, my family did not like it, obviously. Your family is the first to oppose your spiritual pursuit. So ultimately, it becomes so bad that they will leave you. It is almost guaranteed that your friends and family will not like you after some time. As soon as you take a spiritual path, there is an ego there. The ego senses that my job is done here. This fellow is not going to give me that which I am after, for which I made this relation. I am not going to get that juice from there. So just like the people leave when the party is over and you are left to clean up after

the party, you are the one who is left to clean the mess. The party is over now, food is over, drinks are over, they will leave you. All relations are like this. If you are spiritual, your food and your drinks are going to dry up faster. I mean, they dry up, they are exhausted anyway, , this is very natural. That's why old people are discarded, old people are abandoned. I don't know, in India, it's probably not there. But in other countries, the old people are in a very, very bad condition. They die alone in some old house somewhere. So at least in India, you get to live in the family till you die. But they have no respect. The old people are seen as a burden. Why is that? Well, why that is. Your spiritual path is not a problem. The ego of the other person is the problem.

Manthan is saying, a person like me who is new on this path, where should he find answers, little points of his daily life to grow gradually, which if not answered, sadhak remains confused and is diverted from the correct path. I am just able to get answers from Guruji after three years of confusion.

Yes, look at other seekers and take the guidance from other teachers. Nowadays, you have the luxury of YouTube and the Internet. Just Google it, join the forums, ask your questions there, join the YouTube channels. The knowledge is pouring in through the PC and phone. You're asking where? And there is only one source. The source is experience. Either you learn from your own experience to find the answers or you take the help of somebody who is experienced. And there are so many people who are experienced. I'm not the only one. People don't find me so easily. They just find the most popular and the cheapest and most flashy guru in the market. So anyhow, you can learn from them also. Just search. It takes many years. We do not learn from others that easily. We learn from our own mistakes. That will be the case. , 80% you will learn from your own mistakes, your own life experiences, 20% you

will learn from somebody else's life experiences. But that is also very good. That is also a great help. So if you think that I will be able to give you answers to each and every tiny problems of your life, then that is also not true. I have answers to the basic fundamentals. That's all I know. Because everybody is unique, ? Every mind is unique. Every person is unique. Every problem is unique. I don't have a ready-made answer for that. And I do not give personal advice at all because, if I give some advice and something bad happens, I don't even know to whom I'm talking to most of the time and something bad happens to them. If they follow that advice, then I will be responsible, ? I do get such questions like which job is good for me and where should I settle, which place is good for me. And I have no answers for that. These tiny things you should be able to figure out for yourself. Yes, if you say should I join this or that path, should I take on this or that practice, then I have answers for you. Then I will be able to tell you what is the consequence of that. , the petty stuff, you will need to manage it yourself. You will make mistakes. But so what? You will learn. Even if it goes correct on the first try, don't worry, after two or three tries, it goes wrong. We are not here to live a very, very comfortable life. You will know it very quickly. We are here to learn. In learning, there is struggle, there is effort, it requires patience, it requires good high motivation, and so on. I am also learning. Every day I learn.

Once you find out that you are not in a picnic, this world of death is not our home. We are not here to settle down. That day, your progress will shoot up. That day, you will start learning like mad. Okay, I am here to learn. Show me. As soon as you ask the universe to show me, you will be shown. Don't worry about it. It is almost guaranteed. As soon as you are distracting yourself with the worldly stuff, nothing will actually happen. You will be left to wander here and there. As soon as you turn your head up, by up I don't mean sky, up means towards progress, spiritual progress, heavy knowledge will start pouring on you like a heavy rainfall. You need to only ask.

Manthan is saying, spiritual gurus say we have a very intelligent dimension far different than intellect. What is that intelligence?

Intelligence is a very broad thing. We have not only one dimension, there are many, many aspects of this human. So some are lower aspects, like we call it animal nature, some are middle aspects, we call it human nature, and there are higher aspects, we call it divine nature. In Sanskrit, the Pashuvritti, Manushavritti and Devvritti. So every aspect has its own program there. Every aspect knows what to do, and this is its intelligence. For example, the body knows what to do, your ego knows what to do, and your mind knows what to do most of the time. Similarly, the higher nature knows. It has its own intelligence, it is growing according to its own intelligence. So what can this person do here? What can spiritual practice do? It can accelerate that thing, that's all. Stop doing something which is lowly in nature. Stop it. You cannot do something which is higher than you understand. It cannot be done. You don't even know what it is. what is below you, and if that as an obstacle, stop doing it. And that will increase your speed like a hundred times. And slowly all these dimensions that you are calling dimensions, which are just different layers of your own being, unfold, they unfold slowly. Even if they do it slowly, we are not worried, we have eternity here.

As soon as you ask for progress, the progress will be given to you. So right now you just make an intention that I want to grow in the spiritual field, that will be enough. Stop worrying about what is this intelligence, what is that intelligence, what did the Guru say? No, start from where you are. Out of a hundred things that you don't know, start with the first five things that are most important for you. Start with the basics. The other things, who cares? this spiritual intelligence and all these things, they come in the higher ninety percent, we won't reach there in one lifetime. So stop worrying about it. Look at what is present here in front of you. Look at what the obstacles are here. For example, your obstacle is knowledge. You don't know where to start, where to begin, how to find a Guru. So hopefully that will be a good food for the mind, food for thought. Think about it.

When I joined the spiritual path, there was nobody to give me any advice. Probably I wasted at least fifteen years doing nothing, doing nothing productive. Slowly I came to know, very slowly. The first thing I learnt is that don't do unnecessary things. Know what I am doing. Know what will be the fruit of this practice, what will be the fruit of knowing something. Enquiry, that is the first thing I learnt. If a Guru is saying something, why is he saying it? Instead of simply accepting what he is saying. And when you dig behind this why question, you will get the real knowledge. There is hardly any knowledge in the words of the Guru. The Guru is there to point.

Somehow I trained this mind to be useful all the time. Whatever I do is useful. Whatever I speak is useful. Whatever I think is useful. Yes, I mean, it is not 100% all the time, but most of it is almost like a computer. You are not going to write the code in your program that does nothing useful, ? You're not going to do that. Yes, sometimes there's some code to beautify things, make a beautiful

button, make a beautiful effect, but that is also useful, ? I turned myself into that robotic person, , a computer who does nothing useless. Mistakes are also useful because we learn from them. So what I'm sharing is my experiences. There is no special thing called experiences which I'm hiding and there is nothing special here. And if it is not helpful for you, I'm not going to even say it. I'm not going to even tell you about it.

So many people ask me, what are you doing nowadays? Where are you going? And did you meet that person? I said, why are you asking? I have a lot of time. I can go on talking about these things, but you don't have time. It is completely useless for you.

When I do Dhyan, sometimes I feel frustrated and agitated, but Guru says it should be blissful.

Then you should go to that Guru who says it is blissful. You do not know what Dhyan is? You should not have this assumption there, delusions that this will be blissful, that will be blissful because he said it. Then you should approach that person, pay him the money, get the bliss or whatever. But even you can understand that this does not work like this. Spiritual things are not like this. They are very, very twisted. This is a ball of hair you are dealing with. There is not a single thread there. If you feel frustrated and agitated, you probably don't even know what Dhyan is. So you should start at something basic instead of Dhyan. If that Guru told you that it is blissful, then get hold of that Guru. Tell him, you told me it is blissful, now why is it not blissful? And if you find out it is not blissful, there is no point doing it. We need to do so many things. Like I need to wash my clothes. And in the rainy season, it is like a painful job because I know they are not going to dry for three days. Doing it is not really blissful. What is blissful is wearing a washed shirt, ? A fresh shirt. That is blissful. Doing it, well, is not blissful. I feel frustrated and agitated when I wash my clothes. But a clean shirt is a blissful experience. How is that possible?

When somebody tells you that the spiritual path is going to give you happiness and bliss and heaven and whatever, just don't go there. It is painful. It is frustrating. It is like walking on burning coal. So probably that is not the correct path. If you are not feeling frustrated, if you are not feeling broken, completely crushed, then probably you have not even started there. That bliss and all that garbage that comes later, ? And nobody will understand this when I say it. You check all the videos that I have produced. Even before I start telling something about the path of knowledge, there are at least 20 warnings there. Look, this is going to be terrible. Look, this is going to be the most horrible experience of your life. Look, everything is going to be destroyed. Even the person is not going to remain there. Everything will change. All your friends will leave you. All your family members are going to become monsters. And so on.

And I say that this is going to last for many lifetimes. And there are lots of warnings. And then I produce a long list of qualities that if you don't have these qualities, don't even look here. Don't come on a spiritual path. Go and enjoy your life. Your worldly life is also spiritual, ? Only that it is very slow. So those who take up a spiritual path, not only Manthan, everybody who is listening with high hopes should realize it is the most difficult job of your life. The spiritual path is the most difficult thing that you will ever take up. Imagine the most difficult job anybody can do. Imagine that. And then multiply it by a thousand. It is that difficult. And the faster you progress, the more difficult it becomes. If you are going slow, enjoying the path and all, you won't get into that many troubles. Look at you. You did only one little bit of meditation and now it is for the whole of your life actually. No medicine will cure it. You wanted bliss and you wanted, I don't know what you wanted, high quality of life or something. No issue. This is a good learning experience. The first step was horrible, wasn't it? You took the first step, terrible. Imagine the rest of it. I am not discouraging people that don't come to the spiritual path. I am just giving you the reality of it. You must have seen all those travel agencies or whatever in hotels and whatnot. Look at their advertisements. How beautiful and heavenly it looks. And when you go there, you feel that probably hell is much better.

Sandeep is saying, sometimes it feels like spiritual progress is slowing down. There is sadness.

No problem, Sandeep ji. If progress is slowing down, then it is a good thing. There are crores of people here who are not progressing at all. Who are not on any spiritual path. If your progress is slowing down, then you are ahead of crores of people.

Manthan is saying, I am doing Astrology. I started this meditation to get intuition, powers to predict better. But it turned against me.

That is not a spiritual thing. I think you are trying to do an occult practice. Now, obviously, it is going to turn bad.

Anil is saying, Won't recommend Astrology as a starter.

Yes. Like I said, don't do it if you don't know what it is. I agree with Anil. Get the basics first. Don't go after powers and whatever. They are completely useless. One day you will realize that there is no future. Now, what are you predicting? One day you will realize that the occult powers are just another obstacle. They are another madness. Look at the people who get power here - the worldly power. They have already gone crazy, totally. With whatever little power they have. Imagine your fate. If now, at this point, with zero wisdom, you get something. I mean, Mother Nature is not going to give you anything. Don't worry. The punishment you got is just like Mother Nature kicking you out. Don't come here. So, start very humbly. Start very slowly. Start small. Baby steps. One step at a time. And the last thing I will say is that you don't need to believe me. You don't need to accept it as a final answer. Do whatever you think is best for you. This is just friendly advice. Take advice from many people.

Session 54

There was a very interesting question, a very common question a few days ago, what is the role of altruism in spirituality?

Altruism as , the desire to help others, the goodwill, the wish to see others happy and prosperous, to help them in times of trouble and so on. It seems that there are two camps here in spirituality. One is very much for altruism that it is our greatest duty being a human. We need to be altruistic. We need to help everyone. We need to serve society and there is the other camp which says that it is all perfect. Anyhow it is Maya, illusion. There is nothing gained in fixing things or fixing people. All we need to do is liberate ourselves from it. Anyhow I am pure consciousness so there is nothing that needs to be done. I am not concerned with what is going on in this illusion. And there are some people who are somewhere in the middle, who say that probably it is useless. Probably altruism is also an activity of the mind. It is also our genetic conditioning and so on. But since there is nothing to do while the body lasts, I better spend my time serving others.

What is my position here and what is the best position here? And you must have guessed that nothing is written in stone here. It is just another preference. Some people are by nature very kind, compassionate. They like to help others. Some people are very reserved and they need to be left alone. They don't bother with others so much and they don't also want others to interfere in their matters so much. So preference is what matters here. There are no rules and there is no guideline also as far as I know. Different traditions are going to follow different guidelines about serving, service or helping or even enlightening others. Although it seems there is a general consensus that we should help other seekers. Now notice that I am saying the word seeker here, I am not saying people, with which I agree totally actually. We should help seekers. I was helped. The teachers helped me. Other seekers helped me. So it is our duty to return the favor somehow in any way possible by guiding others or just telling them where they can get the knowledge and where they can solve their problems, which teacher is best and so on.

I don't have any doubts about that. You should help seekers. You should be eager to share your knowledge. There should not be any doubt about it and this does not come under altruism. I mean that is a social word, ? The seeker has already left the society and the seeker is already above human, so the human qualities are not present there. It is being done not because I am a human and you are a human and you belong to the same species, nationality, race, caste and religion or whatever, whatever groups you have formed. It is not because of that. It is very strange. It is almost a para-human desire to bring other seekers out of ignorance. There is no selfishness involved here.

Now some people are going to object here that altruistic things are also selfish and some people are going to say that altruistic means not selfish. Self is concerned about a person. You will find that these both are narrow views. So once this confusion, once this matter of whether we should help the seekers or not is cleared, we can move to the proper question here. Whether we should help the people or not, other humans or not, who are not seekers, who are just ignorant people, common man or whether we should perpetuate the teachings or whether we should set up organizations and institutions to popularize the teachings, to convert people into whatever philosophy I am subscribed to? I will tell you that both the views are a little bit narrow. The view that says that altruism is selfless lacks a little bit of knowledge there. There is a little bit of ignorance there about human nature and the view that says that altruism is totally selfish. It is our genetic conditioning or something to help our kind and it helps in turn in survival. That is why this tendency is here. There are a little bit of ignorance there also, although there is a lot of truth in that. For that you will need to get into the matter of selflessness. What does it mean to be selfless? Let us think about it. Let us try to get into the depth of it because altruism and serving others has a dependency on your concept of selflessness or your concept of what constitutes selfishness.

Let us try to come up with a definition. Selfless is a person who will act regardless of whether it benefits his own mind and body, his own well-being, his own survival. We can start there, , this introspection. Most of the people are eager to help their families etc. Can we call them selfish? Because it is not about them, it is about their family. But , when you say family the word “mine” comes, “my family”. So yes, most of the people are not going to help somebody else's family. They are going to help or take care of their own family. So we need to expand the definition of selflessness here that you need to exclude not only the individual but also the family. Those who help anybody whether they are related or not and by the same logic exclude friends also, friends and well-known people. Then you exclude those who do not deserve help. For example, rich people, good looking people. I have seen that people are very eager to help such people. If the person is poor and illiterate and ugly, nobody wants to help him. So you need to exclude that also. What about your community or your country? , the country is the big issue here. So is it okay to help your countrymen and simply ignore the other people in other countries, especially those who are called enemy countries? Mostly they will be your neighboring countries. And you can use that common sense here that no, it will be very selfish if I help only people in my own country. Even if it is an enemy country, the enemy is not the whole of it. There are good people living in those countries. All of them are not my enemies. Actually, I'm not even going to meet them in my lifetime. , the definition of selflessness is getting fuzzier.

Now you include your race, your caste or religion or whatever you think is “yours” and you will find that it is selfish to help only those. Now comes the human, biggest circle that you are in. I am a human. Is it okay to kill other creatures just so that we humans can survive better or to tame them or to use them for our entertainment like horse races or bullfighting or just to satisfy our greed like I've been eating cows since two years. Now I need to eat a pig because I need a change of taste. Just because of this greed or entertainment satisfaction of the taste buds instead of survival. We can understand that we need to kill to survive. We kill plants and animals also. Anyhow, that is going into another debate. And the thing here is you will say, no, they are living creatures and so it is selfish to kill them or to not help them just because we are humans and they are not. , selflessness has gone out of the window here. Every act we do is a selfish act. Please think about this. Humans cannot be selfless.

Now you will say that I am taking one side. There is this side that always says that humans are always selfish. Actually, not only humans, all kinds of creatures are selfish. The nature of the ego is selfishness. There are gradations of it. Some are less, some are more. Those who are concerned with only one body, which is my body, are the most selfish people. They are considered lowly and will do anything possible to preserve their bodies or to keep themselves comfortable and well fed for their own pleasure. They act for that. You can draw a graph there that as you go beyond this single individual, the distance, if it increases, you become less and less selfish. It never becomes zero. We need to draw an arbitrary line somewhere. Within this circle is selfish. Now who is going to decide that?

I am going to take the side of the other camp now and I will say that you will decide it. Don't let others decide it. And you will decide it depending on your ignorance. Remember that I said ignorance. You don't know what is selfish and what is not selfish. Your ignorance tells you to act. If you are not ignorant, you won't even act. You wouldn't be here. You won't remain human. As long as there is ignorance, which means an identification of some kind or a desire to remain in the world, in any world, that is a sign of ignorance. And that will decide where you want to draw this line of selfishness and selflessness. And that will decide whether you are altruistic or not. It is arbitrary and subjective.

So your decision to be altruistic is also selfish because you decide what is selfish, what is not selfish. You can see the limitations of humans here. They don't agree on anything and they want to impose their own views on others. That is why I said you decide. Don't let others decide. That is the imposition of their view on your actions. Of course you are going to pay for your actions. You are free to decide and act, but then freedom has the cost that there are consequences. So you are responsible for your decision and you are responsible for the consequences.

There are people who fight on what altruism is and who should help whom, and so on. A seeker is

far away from this because he knows that it is also fake. It is a part of the illusion. It is part of the drama. It is part of the script. Who will be selfish? Who will be selfless? The script is already written. So who cares? Do that which comes naturally to you. You find the opportunity to be selfless, do that. If you need to be selfish in some circumstances, be selfish, . It is already decided. Who decides it? Your own sanskara, your own conditioning has already decided it. So why fight with it, ? And this attitude that I am brahman, I am the ultimate, I am the whole existence. So I don't need to concern myself with human actions. That is also, , not wise. As long as there is human birth, you need to

come up with a practical strategy.

So we have a little bit of a guideline here. Don't kill, don't be angry, don't be hateful, don't be jealous and greedy. , lots of simple guidelines are there. But there is no guideline about, should I spend my one million rupees in feeding the beggars? There is no guideline for that, . Or should I just set up a big hospital to cure the ill people, diseased people who are going to die anyway but let them die in my hospital? So it is open now. It is open to your own decision. Do whatever you feel is good and be prepared to get the consequences. This is a scary message, ? When I say be prepared, do I mean that something bad is going to happen? Yes, every action keeps you involved in the illusion. Remember that bad actions, whatever you consider bad, are going to keep you bound in the illusion. But good actions also will do it. You stamp it with altruism and think that nothing will happen and that is stupidity. All actions have consequences. Most of the consequences, they keep you here. They keep you bound.

So yes, there is a refined bondage that I want to come back here to help the fellow creatures. And I said yes, that is a very noble desire. That is why I said we must help the seekers. There is no doubt about it. It is a very refined selfishness. It is all me, ? Everything is me. So those who are bubbling out of this mud bath of illusion, you need to extend your hand and pull them out. At least I don't have any doubts about whether we should help seekers or not. But I am very, very concerned about what people do in the name of altruism, ? Some people are killing each other in the name of altruism. Some people are killing each other because somebody else does not respect his religion and so on. So it is a matter of concern that people can twist the definition of love here. I love my country and so I am going to mass murder a million people by dropping bombs on them. It is twisted here. So I can only sum up the answer like this. Don't be fooled by what others are imposing on you. Make up your own definition. Do whatever you like and get out of here. You don't want to stay here doing altruistic things forever.

Mukul is saying, helping seekers is known as group work in Gurdjieff’s system.

Actually, you will find this in every tradition. In Buddhism, it is the Sangha. In Advaita, it is the Gurukul or Math and so on.

Mukul is saying, but you can help only those below you.

Obviously, people who already know more than you, they are not going to ask you for help. That takes care of this rule.

Shashank is saying that make a video about your spiritual journey also that will help seekers like us.

Yes, that is a good idea. Although it is a very boring journey, nothing extraordinary happened in my spiritual journey. That reminds me of the fake biographies of all the great people. When you hear about great people, you will find that they have performed this miracle, that miracle. These are cooked up by the followers to get more followers. I don't see any problem in that. You should not believe that. So, most of the biographies, if they are honestly narrated, will put you to sleep. Nothing extraordinary happens. There are some where there are a few miraculous events. But when you get on the spiritual path, nothing is a miracle. Everything is a miracle. Your thinking now changes into a spiritual thinking. You are not surprised. You are not entertained by the stories which people think are interesting. So, if I read a biography and it says that I was standing there with my friends and my guru appeared in front of me out of nowhere now, , that can be entertaining for other people. But I just keep on reading. Yes, then what happened? And so on, . So, you will find that my biography will be a series of mistakes that I went through. One mistake after the other.

There was a related question a few days ago that I want to help people. I am very altruistic but nobody wants to be helped. People are opposing me when I am trying to liberate them.

, that adds a bigger angle to your altruistic nature. Don't try to help people who don't want your help. For example, you are talking to your relative or somebody and something comes up and you say that look, don't be greedy, don't do this thing and that thing, this is an illusion, and we are not here to accumulate money or something and immediately you will find that your relative or friend starts disliking you. They don't like this talk. , don't preach those who do not ask. This is the golden rule and I also follow this golden rule. Now, but you say, if I don't speak, nobody is going to listen and here is another golden rule there - broadcast.

Speak to no one in particular. Do not speak to one person. Speak to all. It is like a broadcast. The sun shines on everything. The little insects they hide. The mouse goes and hides in the mouse hole and those who like the sun, they come out and soak in the rays of the sun. They enjoy the light and warmth of the sun. So it should be like this. This is the best way and those who come to you asking for knowledge or help or any other thing, then it is your duty to do it. If you cannot do it, you just send him to somebody who can do it. That is the least we can do. So I also do that. I did start by picking people who I thought were ready and telling them about spirituality or something and some people thought that I was imposing some religion on them. They thought that I probably wanted their money or something. Don't ask me for a donation or something. And I said, no, I'm not asking you anything. I'm just asking you to listen. And , they were ready to pay the money, but they were not ready to listen. This is what you get in the illusion. Everything is upside down, ? So don't do that. That is one of my mistakes. Like I said, share your mistakes. I'm giving you just one example here. Do not try to educate people who are not asking for it. You will face opposition. You will even face hate. And if that fellow is fundamentalist and you say, look, the system you're following is stupid. Don't follow that system. Don't follow your cult. The next day he will simply kill you. ? He will bring all his cult members and he will kill you.

Mukul is saying, red pill or blue pill?

Yes, those who take the red pill, give them the red pill. Otherwise you have plenty of blue pills, don't you? Don't give them the red pill. This is also called the pearl and the swine situation. The swine do not deserve the pearls. Why? Why waste them? Keep them for those who deserve it. And there is a word for it. I call it worthiness. The worthy deserve the knowledge, not the unworthy. Give them a blue pill. And I would go ahead and say that don't be concerned with such people at all. , minimize, minimize, minimize your contacts, your friends, your concerns, whatever, whomever you are in contact with. You will definitely be attracted to the red pill crowd. After you taste spirituality, you will never ever return to the other kinds. Nobody is interested in knowing the truth and those who are not interested, that is not your business. Let them be what they are. Don't try to be altruistic here. Spiritual altruism, very dangerous, very dangerous thing. But yes, those who ask for it, there, you drop all that you are doing, whatever you are busy in, just throw it away. You first help that fellow who is asking you about spiritual stuff first.

Arpit is saying, Guruji Pranam, what should be the real purpose of life?

It should be happiness and freedom. This is your set purpose in life. There is no other purpose, remember. Some people may say liberation is your purpose, some people may say evolution is your purpose, and some people will say pleasure is your purpose, bodily pleasure, accumulating more, more relations, more this, more that. No, this is all ignorance. Your purpose is happiness and freedom.

Mukul is saying, who is asking the question?

Probably he means, it is the mind that is asking the question, the one who is aware, the one who is conscious, the experiencer is not in any hurry, have you noticed? Which is your real nature,

you are the experiencer, are you in any hurry? Is there a schedule there? No, it is the mind that is anxious, why did I do that? It was my challenge, it was my project to remain in awareness and not go into this blind land of unawareness, and now what should I do to stop this and what should I do to come out of it quickly? This planning is being done by the mind and let me tell you, it fails, it fails very badly, so don't worry, whenever you come out of the mind, which means you come into the awareness, you come into the remembering, just relax and see that the mind went into unawareness, just see that it was habitual, and now don't make up a story, don't cook up a drama there, I need to punish my mind, I need to do something. Just be, and realize that you were always there, you never went away, only the habit took over, only the awareness went away, you never went away.

If you went away, then who had the experience? , the experiencer is defined as that which is experiencing, so you never go away, so why is there a worry there? It is the mind trying to punish itself, it is the mind that is anxious, so when you start doing all these things, start applying the tricks, it simply

makes the matter worse, because it is more mental activity. There is no substitution for awareness actually, no amount of tricking is going to help you, no substitution.

I will tell you something funny, I mean, I have discussed this many times in this satsang that I developed an app, this Android app to remind me about awareness, the voice in the app kept saying

that you are aware, and you are experiencer, and I am aware of the mind, and I am aware of the body,

and I am aware of the environment and so on, so I got tired of it actually, it began irritating, because it did not help to bring in the awareness, the mind started ignoring it also, and the app is now blinking,

or weeping, and so on, , it was like an alarm, nobody likes the alarm, ? It makes you more anxious, so finally I uninstalled it, and I used to tell people that go and download this, and go and install it, and probably some people liked it, it was helpful for some people, but I saw that no mental trick or physical trick is a substitution for awareness, nothing replaces remembering.

Whenever it is possible, you come out of it, just remember that you never went away, let there be peace,

instead of a race, you are not running a race, there is nobody to win this race of awareness. If there is no awareness, and you are happy, then who cares? But yes, if the mind is creating misery, if it is creating suffering, then we need some awareness there, then there is a necessity there, and you should do whatever you can. The doer is the mind, seer is you, the doer cannot bring you to the seer, the doer needs to be seen, and the doing needs to drop, so, , this is the trick, if you want to call it a trick.

I am not aware, now this is totally unawareness itself, this sentence is coming out of unawareness itself,

if you are really aware, you won't even have the thought, awareness is very powerful, when there is awareness, there is no thought, like this did not happen, that did not happen, I did not do that, I did not, , when these thoughts are there, that means the awareness is already gone. Does that mean I stop doing things, no, you keep doing things, do it in full awareness, why do you need to dance the dance of I, every time, just do whatever you are doing. There is no need to cook up a story in mind, this did not happen, that did not happen, should I do the job. You do the job if it is necessary, it will happen automatically anyway, it must happen then, let it happen in full awareness, what else can you do? Awareness never decides what to do, it is not the doer, don't try to decide using your awareness.

Shashank is saying, when in awareness it's a hindrance, because when we are in awareness, thoughts are minimal or gone.

Very intelligent question there. On the path of knowledge, we use the thought to get to the awareness, for example, who is watching my thoughts, or you can say, what is it that is watching my thoughts, who is the seer here, now this itself is a thought. This itself has arrived in the mind, this thought can be experienced, but it did lead to the experiencer. Now which one is the hindrance? I am not aware, I can't do this, I should take the revenge, and I want this, I want that, where is awareness here, zero awareness,

and this thought is a hindrance, because it is overtaken by the desires and impulses and whatever mess there is in the mind.

So let us not try to generalize that one thought and it's gone, the awareness is destroyed, no, the thought can lead to awareness, and the thought can lead you to unawareness. Some people say that

when the thoughts are gone, I am in complete awareness, that is wrong, when you are sleeping, in deep sleep, there is no thought at all, is there awareness? No, you can be totally unaware without thoughts also, it is a completely useless experience as far as knowledge is concerned. Let there be thoughts, and let there be awareness of them, I will go ahead and say let there be bad thoughts also, let there be violent thoughts, anger, lust, whatever the mind throws up every day, let them all be, and let there be another thought on top of it, which says - I am aware. And this thought is all you have, the reminders, the calendars, the alarms, the pictures, the mala, whatever you are using, the bells in the temple, when you are dead, they won't be of any help.

I saw somebody who was fond of wearing a shirt with Rama Rama written on it everywhere, I said what is this, some fashion? and he said no, it reminds me of Rama, and I said just like this cloth, your body is also a garment, when it is torn, when it is gone, who will remind you of Rama, who will be there, except your own mind? That's why I said dependency on tricks is not going to make you mature in your practice, be independent, train your mind, that's all. If a thought is leading away from awareness, that is also good knowledge, ? This thought is, I don't need to entertain this thought, it always takes me out of the awareness, it is a strong vritti, it is a strong sanskara, I need to cool it down

somehow, by forgiving. And then encourage the thoughts that are taking you to awareness, that are reminding you, oh my guru said this, my guru said that. Keep doing the introspection, usually , when I answer, there is usually something there which will establish you back in the awareness, usually there will be a pointer there somewhere, I am not saying it is 100%, but I try my best, I have become habitual of that, some people ask me how to do that and how to do that, and , somehow I will bring it back to their true nature. Are you the doer? Something like this and then anyway, I give my answer but there is a pointer there.

Shashank is saying that it seems thoughts are like a vehicle, they can take you towards awareness or away from it, they take you very near to awareness, then they stop,something else takes over.

As soon as the remembering happens, the thought is gone, now the awareness takes over, even if the thought continues, it continues in the light of awareness, which is seen as mechanical activity, it is seen as totally unnecessary, I already know it, why am I thinking it, , something like this, and sometimes you must have seen that, we keep describing the thought to ourselves, I will do this, I will do that, I should go there and I should ask this thing, and you will hear a voice in your mind saying all this. Just bring in the awareness, turn on the light and that the thought is there, the intention is still there, the desire is still there to do that, but the narration is gone, the dialogue is

gone. You don't talk to yourself that much because of the awareness. I am not saying that the internal

talk is totally bad, if you are aware of it, it is just like any other activity of the mind, it is just like heart beating, breathing, digestion, thinking, and so on. Who cares if you lose awareness, that is the problem, because the internal dialogue is going to ultimately take you out of the awareness, so we stop it sometimes and see what has triggered this whole story in my mind, the narrator in my mind. We stop and become aware for a while and if it is really required, we finish the thought, it is not harmful.

Shashank is asking, is this awareness chitvritti or nadrachna or something else?

Yes, it is chitvritti, awareness is also an activity of the mind, which says that look I am the consciousness, look, there is a watcher and it is mental activity, and yes, it is also happening in the nada, it is also vibration. So you favor this vritti, above all vrittis, you favor the awareness above all. Even though it is a mental activity. Normally we do not call it mental activity, we want to make a distinction between awareness and unawareness, so we call unawareness as mental activity, which is

mechanism actually. Awareness is a little bit less mechanical and that is why ultimately you are not awareness also, if there is a thought that I am this who is aware of the experiencer, then that is not you, that is a reflection of the experiencer, it is reflecting off the chitvritti, it is illuminating the chitvritti. That is not me, I cannot be seen, I cannot be talked of, there is no description of “I”, it is not doing this or it is not doing that, it is beyond language.

Mukul is saying, the gaps between the thoughts.

Yes, it is always present there, in the gaps, it simply shines on itself, you become aware, you find it is already shining since eternity. I do not normally call it chitvritti because it causes confusion. There is

a good translation of awareness, not good actually, it is the source word, which is chetna. So now you can see chetna is derived out of chit. There are some philosophies who do not even make a difference between chit and chetna and atma. They do not make this distinction, we do because we follow a method to reach there, where the mind does not reach. You can say the awareness is the last activity of the mind after which it is killed, this vritti kills all vrittis, all other activities are dropped. That is why it naturally silences the mind, that is the good meditation, if you are using mind to silence the mind using

some tricks, then it is a bad meditation. That means it is a war, it is not meditation, war between one half of the mind trying to silence the other half of the mind. Let there be awareness, let there be chetna and both half are going to be silenced. This is a good meditation, and on the path of knowledge we don't even do that, we know that even awareness is chitvritti, yes, we don't bother too much, if we

remember, yes, it happened, now so what? But although I say it, I don't recommend doing it, don't do it if you are just starting. I also do a lot of awareness practice, I keep forcing the mind somehow into awareness, so the careless attitude will come later. But some people are already there, for them chetna is also a meaningless activity only.

Shashank is saying, but it's only awareness that we can practice, can we practice something else which leads directly to ultimate?

No, practices don't lead you to the ultimate, the practices are there to purify the mind enough so that the ultimate is seen. More practices, no, they don't lead to the ultimate. I don't know how this notion came into spirituality, that more practice means more knowledge, more awareness. It is exactly opposite, the more you practice, the less awareness there is, or you are far away from the ultimate, why? Because you are putting more effort there. Less practice means you are closer to the ultimate. Ultimately on the path of knowledge, we want you to be free from all practices, don't practice anything at all, the practice involves doer, now we use the doer to get rid of the doer, that is another matter. We start, step one, start doing something, step two, drop doing a little bit, and step three, let go of all the

doing, let go of practicing. Why? The ultimate is already here. Which practice can lead you to the ultimate? That which is ultimate is you. What can take you to you, tell me? Which practice will take you to you, which practice will make you you?

We should think about it, more practices means, you are just starting, and as you go further on the spiritual path, it should become less and less and less, ultimately you won't be able to distinguish

between a totally enlightened person and an ordinary person, they look totally same, there is no difference at all.

Please tell me about life. I want to know about what is right and what is wrong, and if we go to hell and heaven after death.

Very good question. There are two kinds of rights and wrongs. The first right is relative, it is decided by society, it is decided by parents, it is decided by circumstances, our social life, and there is another right which is universal, you are born with that sense of right and wrong, that is the universal ethics. What is universal? For example, non-violence, love, these are the right things to do. Nobody is going to disagree about this thing, everybody should be non-violent, yes, everybody should be loving, yes, there is no dispute here. There is the relative right also, like, should I spit on the road, and you will find that, a lot of people don't mind doing it, they keep spitting on the road, people walk on it and the spit sticks to their shoes and goes to their house, spreading diseases. So some people can make a rule - it is wrong to spit on the road. But that is not the universal right, ? It is because of the circumstances, that is decided by the family, or relatives, or your society, or your religion, whatever, , your government decides what is right, paying taxes right, not paying taxes wrong, illegal. Remember these two words, there is universal right and there is relative right. You should be very practical about these things, do that which is right according to both the criteria, they are just criteria.

And what is wrong? Yes, be careful what is wrong, what is considered wrong in your society, or in your community, don't do that, and if you are free to do whatever you want to do, then consider the universal wrong. What is universally wrong? This you can decide yourself.

And do we go to hell and heaven after death? No, check that there is no death, death is an illusion. There is no death, and if there is no death, you go nowhere. There is no after death, there is no before death. So, don't worry about hell and heaven.

Shashank is saying, but many gurus, even Osho, said that first huge and continuous effort is needed,

and then, then one has to let go of everything. I am in an effort phase right now, is that the right way of thinking?

Yes, he is right, that is what I said, don't be too quick to drop the effort, ? If it requires effort for you to remain aware, do the effort. I am also doing it actually. Sometimes it is effortless, there are lucky days, sometimes the mind is causing chaos in life, it is always when survival becomes difficult, the mind takes the front seat, and you let that day go. You take care of your survival, you do whatever is needed to be done, and then when it becomes effortless, you remain effortlessly in awareness. Reflect on what happened, how the mind behaved and all. Because there is timelessness, so even if you do it after it happened, it has the same effect on the sanskaras.

Let go of the mind, let it play for a while and then grab it, and reflect on what it has done. So yes, initially it requires a very big interest, more than effort, you need interest, playing football is more effort than being aware, ? Climbing a mountain is more effort, climbing hundred steps of a building

very, very difficult, awareness is nothing compared to that. Why can't we keep it on? Interest! We are not interested. We are interested in the mind, by we, I mean the mind, it is the mind that is trying to be aware, but it is interested in distractions.

Increase your interest, increase your yearning, desire to be aware, and everything will happen effortlessly. Have n that a painter keeps working on the painting for many days, stands there

and just delicately, one brush stroke here, one brush stroke there, oh, something went wrong, he erases it and starts again. Why? That is a lot of effort, ? Why don't you take a picture, use your camera, take the picture of whatever you are drawing? No, he wants to draw it. The answer is interest.

There is one thing that you should know - if your effort is not going away, it is not becoming blissful and effortless, then you should consider dropping those practices, that means it is not working. But give it a good try, give it a few years at least. You will know if it is working or not within few days also, sometimes, within few months, but there are people I have seen, they keep meditating on something

and they endure the back pain and their leg pain and knee pain and everything, they must sit in that pose and they must meditate on all these things, I don't know what they meditate on, it is so much effort and nothing really comes out of that meditation. That means, the effort is there, but its direction is not correct. There you should stop and consult your teacher, consult your guru, or if you have a sharp intellect, you will automatically stop doing it.

Shashank has a very good question again, how do you are progressing on the path?

The answer is very simple, if your happiness goes on increasing, if your bliss goes on increasing, if your

freedom increases, if your dependencies are dropping, and your knowledge is increasing, your ignorance is dropping, these are the signs that you are progressing.

Some people will add this, your kindness increases, your compassion increases, your nature becomes sweet, and you become nonviolent, well, that is secondary. Why are you nonviolent? Because you are happy. How are you kind and compassionate? You are free to do whatever you want to do, and therefore you are very helpful. So there are primary indicators that you are progressing, and the biggest of them are happiness and freedom. They should go on increasing.

If you find that you are becoming more and more miserable because of your practices of the spiritual

path or whatever things you are doing, or you find that your freedom is now restricted. Now you need to go to the ashram first thing, 6 o'clock in the morning, and work like a donkey for the rest of your day. That is not freedom, ? If your dependency goes on increasing, now you are dependent on your father and mother, now you are dependent on your guru also, and now you are dependent on your organization or whatever things you have joined also, well, it is not freedom. So check that. That is the primary thing. And if you are very sophisticated, you want the exact number, you want to quantize it. How much is the progress? So you do the self-evaluation.

This is for Shashank. You go and watch the video on self-evaluation. This is going to give you a very precise evaluation of where you are. It is based on the layers of the mind. Since the layers of the mind have their own peculiarities, they evolve differently. Sometimes the higher layers will evolve first, and the lower layers, they follow like in a lazy fashion. So here you will get a very precise way to evaluate how your progress is. So if you are not satisfied with the broad criteria that I gave you, you can do the self-evaluation in the way I prescribed. I use some parameters. There are six or seven parameters. Each corresponding to each layer of the mind, I use the simple model of the seven layers. And you can actually calculate a number there. Don't take it too seriously, because the mind is never the same. Mind keeps changing. But this will help you a lot.

Jay is asking, what to do if a person wants to know about his previous life? What's the process?

Well, first thing, I am going to tell you what to do here. First thing, know about this life. Do what this life is? Do what is the process to know this life? Yes, start there. Start by knowing what is this life? Who is living the life? What does it mean to be alive? Is being in body life? Is having a body life? Is having a mind life? Is eating, sleeping and reproducing life? Know all these things first. Then if needed, you can go and find about your previous life. Are the things you do, are the things

you say, are the shirts you wear and the shoes you wear, are they life? I am not asking you to answer here. I am asking you to think about it. So Jay is joining here for the first time. I don't want to drop a

bomb on his head. So, don't worry. Start in this direction. I will tell you the secret. If this life,

you will know all the lives. Tell me, is there “my life”? Your life? Somebody else's life? Or is there only life? Think along these lines. Think from a bigger picture. The holistic point of view. There is such a thing as previous life. But it is not yours. Jay should note this. There is a previous life, it is not yours. Don't call it my previous life. There is no your previous life. This life is also not yours. There is no you.

Know your true nature and you will find that there is no me. And then there is no need to know your life. There is no need to know your previous life and there is no need to know about the future life.

Remember, you are the life. You don't have a life. I should repeat this, ? Very, very important point for you is that you are the life. You don't have a separate activity called life which happened here and there and who knows where. Know that. And if there is still interest in the activities that happen, what is human activity? Tell me. Eating, sleeping, reproducing, killing and shopping, consuming, earning, hoarding. You want to know all that? Sure, you can. I mean, I am not saying it is not possible. But is it important? This is being done by the body and the ego. Is it really important? Tell me on the spiritual path, what is important? Are we trying to get rid of the human condition or are we trying to get attached to it? If you are attached to this life, I can understand. It is survival. What is the reason for your attachment to some other lives where you were not there? The human is born only once. The individual happens only once. What you are calling previous life is the life of something else. We call it causal body, go and research about it. If the secret of the causal body, you will know all

your life.

Now I am going into the illusion, Maya a little bit because he asked the question. But that is not the proper answer. The proper answer is what I just gave you. Know this life first. Don't worry about this life or that life. Now the answer in the domain of the illusion says that - you must have heard that when the person dies, his whole life is going to flash in front of him. Not in front of him because he is already dead, . In front of something, something knows the whole life in a second. Not only that, all other lives flash. And that is darshan of the causal body. That is your meeting with the causal body. Because what remains after death? Mostly a causal body or subtle bodies and all that. That is the best way to know about past life. There will be millions of your lives and they are all present there. The causal body has no concept of time or anything, . There is no time and space there. Everything is available there. And that is the best way to know.

Now you will say, no, no, no. I don't want to die. I want to know while alive. Now there are techniques for that. Now you will need to go into the domain of techniques. And already that the techniques may work, may not work. Sometimes the techniques provide you with a delusion with a dream that you were like this. You were a king or you were a soldier or whatever. The techniques are not reliable. The best technique is to die. That is not a recommended technique, is it? So you go

and search for a technique for past life regression. I will not tell you the technique because it is everywhere. And if I tell you, you will forget. Search for Osho's video on how to remember past life. I found that technique is the best. But it is not reliable at all. There are other techniques where somebody else is going to take you to your past life. That is not reliable at all. There are implanting

suggestions in your mind. I don't know what state they take you in the hypnotic state, meditative state. And they just simply cook up a story. There is no Pramaana there. There is no evidence there that it is your life. The evidence must be gathered by you without any assistance, without any suggestions. Without going to a dream-like state. If you go into a dream-like state, , half aware, half awake, half asleep, how will that it is not a dream? It must happen in daylight. It should happen as it is happening right now. This experience that you are witnessing of your

current life, your past life experience must be this alive. It should be alive. It should not be like watching a TV or it should not be like a dream. That is not your past life. That is just something cooked up by the mind. Somebody implanted those suggestions.

And when your past life, go and verify in the present life. you were born in that village and these were your parents. Now go to that village. Find out. See, that is the proper investigation. Simply knowing is not recommended. If you are interested, go and investigate like a detective, . You should do all this detective work if you are really interested. And let me tell you

it is not going to happen in one day. It will take 10 to 15 years to get something. And I don't know how you are going to use it. How are you going to use it? It is completely useless.

Jay is saying, as per my as on date knowledge, our desire is a creator of new birth. I want to know how I created my present life.

You already know it. Your desire is the cause of present life, ? Do we need to know anything else? Do we need to know the details? And let me tell you, the actions that you have done or the actions that happened through the other body which got impressed on the causal body, can you do anything to fix that? It happened 1000 years ago. It happened 100 years ago. Now can you do anything to fix it? You already know. I mean, Jay seems to be experienced in this matter. You already know that in the past, impressions are responsible for your current situation in this life. Can you do anything about that? Nothing, ? Nothing.

I'll give you an example: if you are walking in the forest and a thorn goes into your foot, what investigation is going to stop the pain? Tell me. You want to go into the past and find out how the thorn came there. I mean, who dropped it? From which tree it came? Whether it is rose or whether it is babool or whether it is anything else? Is that investigation going to stop the pain? What do you need to do to stop the pain? Simple answer, ? Remove the thorn, get rid of it. Why are you even thinking about the other past things? So, similarly, if you encounter suffering in this life, if you encounter situations which you don't want, there is no point in investigating what caused it. You already know you caused it. You already know you are the one who is responsible. What else do you want to know? And what will be the solution to this problem that you are facing? Is the solution in your past life? Can you tell me? Is the solution in your past life or is it right now, right here? You can take action today. You cannot take action in the past life. Somebody misbehaved with you in the past life and then you have some hate for that community or something, some country. Who cares? Just let go of it in this life. Hopefully, this answer is helpful because many people come to this satsang and ask this question. Is there any use of past life or are there any past lives also?

When the basics are clear, you can think clearly. Now, you can think in knowledge instead of thinking in ignorance, ? That will be more helpful. Probably, you heard it from somebody, from some guru, that your past lives are responsible for your present life diseases or relatives or troubles that you are getting. It's all trouble, ? Now, you want to know why? What did I do? What can I do

to correct it? There is good news for you that you don't need to go to the past life to correct it. Present life is good enough. You can correct it in present life. There is no other action possible and no, you cannot correct in your future life also. One day, I'll be born in that country in this family and then I will correct my past life, whatever happened in my past life and that is also not true. Once you die, the control is taken away. There is no control. You think, I will be there. No, you are dead. The control is in the hands of Mother Nature now. Mother Nature decides what will happen. Where will the birth happen or whether the birth will happen or not at all.

If you are a seeker, Mother Nature is now standing in front of you. The Maya is standing there, asking

you, what do you want? By the way, this past life thing is not spiritual at all. They come under the occult or whatever you call it, tantra vijnan. So, now the Maya is standing in front of you. Now, you can choose. Now, I think nobody will choose anything except liberation. They don't want to come back. Oh, I need to fix this. I need to fix that. I need to kill my enemies. I need to… No, no, no. Nobody wants that. Even if Maya offers you the best life possible, in the best universe possible, you say no thanks. I had all these lives. Thank you very much. You gave me all these lives. Now, I just want to be what I am.

So, on the path of knowledge, we don't worry about past lives and we don't worry about the future lives. We don't even worry about this life. We worry about getting rid of all the lives. Get rid of your lives. What is the reason for your attachment here? Is there any reason to be in this monkey body? So, once your basics are clear, I am very sure that you will find a good way to find your past life. So, do share with us what you find. Please come back to the satsang and tell me.

Shashank is saying, does spirituality make one uncompetitive? Does it make us unfit for society and success?

If competition is necessary, you will find that you will start competing. What will spirituality do is, it

will make you immune to unnecessary competition. For example, if you are sitting in a test or you are going for an interview, now you need to perform better than others. That is necessary, ? Your neighbor has two Maruti cars. Now you want four Maruti cars. This is a competition, ? This is totally unnecessary. So, spirituality will give you the necessary discrimination, Viveka, where I need to put an effort and where I need to let go. So, yes, you are using the word unfit. You will become unfit

for this stupid society and this stupid criteria of success. You won't be able to fit yourself in the society

and whatever their criteria is for success, . Eating 20 kgs of food per day is not “success”. Lying, deceiving and treating people like garbage is not success. You will become unfit for that behavior. That is guaranteed. Because you develop the discrimination. And when it comes to survival, where it is advantageous to compete and you do it. Actually, your competition will become like a cakewalk, like a walk on the red carpet. You don't see it as competition anymore. it as a

progression.

There is a very good saying by somebody, I don't remember, somebody in Zen, that a flower does not

compete with other flowers around him, around it. The flower simply blooms. It just blooms, spreads its colors and fragrance around. And it is successful and then it dries in 2 days, 3 days. That is all. That is all we need to do. You bloom. You do your best. That is not competition, really. Others may see it as competition. Oh, he is better than me and so on. I need to do better than him. Let them do it. So they will come to you. Oh, you are not competing. You don't want to become bigger than that other fellow

who appears on TV. You say, no, I am already successful. My success has a different measure. My success has a different unit. Your success is in rupees. My success is in knowledge, ? My bank account is not these numbers that keep fluctuating. , who knows what is in the bank. I only see a number, right? My bank account is my freedom. My bank account is my happiness, which you will never have. Even you do a thousand times more effort, compete a thousand times, you will never

have that happiness and freedom, which I have. And this is my success. And you should not say it in an egoic manner. You should say it in a contentment manner. You are content. I am satisfied. I am content with this success. I don't want to get the criteria of success from somebody else. I will decide what constitutes success myself. Nobody else decides for me. This is my freedom, ?

So not letting other people decide what is good for you and what is best for you is your freedom. And when you exercise this freedom, what happens? You drop out of competition. You drop out of the rat race. Now your competition is with your ignorance. Compete with your ignorance. By that I don't mean that you become more ignorant. Leave it behind. Don't worry about society. Don't worry about

success. You are free to form your society. You are free to form your own standards of success. If you borrow it from somebody else, you are not a seeker. You are a dependent, ignorant person. So I think everybody is like this. They have their own standards. Every free person has his own standard and they are not competing. Only the fools are competing for imposed standards of quality of life or success? Somebody else imposes those standards on them. It is usually your leaders, your parents or your TV. , if somebody is idiot enough to believe the TV, then they deserve competition.

Jay is saying, I have no desire as on date. I am serious about my words. Ready for everything which comes on nature's way as per my past desires. On board meaning, this is also a desire to know past life.

Very good. See, there is a light there. There is a light in you that already knows. There is a curiosity in you, which is a sign of a seeker, which is a good thing. You can use your curiosity to go beyond this

simple desire. Yes, be ready for everything which comes. Do not postpone it for the future. You need to handle it now. If the current life is not providing you what you desire, it means your desires are wrong, probably. And I am just joking. It means that you are not doing enough to fix your life. Your mind is trying to find some excuse, , some fantasy in the past lives. Probably, if I know the past life, I will be able to fix it. No, just go and fix it. Fantasizing. It is escaping. I have seen many people like this, . My life is a disaster. I will just go to the Himalayas and meditate for 20 years. Nothing will fix it. You will end up polluting the Himalayas also. I am responsible for my current situation. This is the mantra. It is my fault. It is my mistake. I will fix it. This is the solution.

Remember, you don't have an I here also. This life is also not yours. There is no I here today also. Once all this, you will be freed. You will be liberated from all this stuff, past lives, present lives, future lives. His life, her life, who wants it? The proper goal for a seeker is bliss and mukti and liberation, which comes instantly if what you are. I am not the I. There is no I. There is no me. this much. All the solutions are here now. I am not the one who is carrying the burden of lives, carrying the burden of past sanskaras. I am not that. They are experiences. They come and go. Yes, sometimes the experience is terrible, ? Because experience means duality. How can there always be good experiences? Tell me, is it possible to have a permanent good experience in the duality? The duality is based on vibrations. There is always up and down. It is created out of a vibration. It is created out of a cyclic change. So, never, ever try to find stability in the experience. There is no stability in the experience. It is not good. It is not bad. It is just an experience. I am not any experience. Even if the experience spans many, many lifetimes, I am not it. I am not even the causal body. It seems that the causal body is permanent, ? Because it is so big, it is so old, who knows, thousands of years old, million years old. That is the age of the causal body. But it is also not permanent.

Session 55

Shashank is saying, how can we retain a continuous interest in self-enquiry. Sometimes the interest goes down and we are more attracted, lost in the world.

By self-enquiry I think you mean the awareness practice because self-enquiry needs to happen only once. You are now familiarized with the self. You meet the self face to face in the self-enquiry. You can do the enquiry again a few times just to make sure that I am not any experience. However strange an experience it is, I am not it. However subtle it is, I am not it. Once this is made sure, once you have gained certainty there, conviction there, now there is no point in doing it again.

What you do, you keep remembering that this is my knowledge. This is my knowledge of the self and you will find that your attention shift will happen towards the self. Means the attention gets a glimpse of that which is knowing. It is a remembering only that the attention shifts for a while and then the attention is back in the world. So not a big problem if you are familiar with the self, if the self-realization has happened and the attention shifts from one place to the other, from the experience

to the experiencer. It's not a big deal. There are some people who will say no, the attention needs to remain in the experiencer all the time. Then you will find that it is difficult to function in the world. You will find that the thoughts do not go in the same way. The thoughts come as impulses and that's all, you do not pursue the thoughts. The actions do not happen because no point in doing anything. It appears as if I am becoming dysfunctional in the world. So initially that is not recommended to remain in the absorbed states, absorbed in the self. You can do that once in a day, one hour or half an hour, just sit down and turn your attention just towards the self. That is also recommended. If you have listened to the experiments in the waking state part, you will have given the systematic way to carry out the awareness practice there. There is a simple method that I have given and initially you may find it a little bit difficult that no matter how hard I try to keep the awareness on, it will slip. So it is not a big deal. Let it slip. Whenever you remember, you remember that it slipped, I went out of awareness because awareness is a mental activity, it can come and go.

Now the nature of the mind is that it is not going to stay in one activity. So don't worry about these things. He has used the word “attracted”. I can understand the word “lost”. It is possible to get lost in the worldly things sometimes. If you are attracted to the world, that is another problem. Although he is using both words in the same meaning, but for me these two words mean different things. A worldly person is attracted to the world. A spiritual person is not attracted to the world. There is no attraction with the world. I mean, what is there in the world to be attracted to? Are you attracted to the hills and trees and roads and buildings? That is what the world is or are you attracted to people or are you attracted to the comforts of the world? If that is the case, then probably that is a bigger problem than awareness, ?

Because you are still a worldly person, that means, yes, if you are attracted to a guru, if you are attracted to satsang, if you are attracted to scriptures, books, knowledge and practices and so on, that can be understood. That means you are on a proper path now. That means everything is going nice and fine. When you carry out your duties, which means, actually the word duty means that you do that which is most necessary. You feel hungry, you go and eat, run out of food, you go to the market, run out of cash,

you do some work, go to the office, join a job, earn your bread and butter. I won't call it attraction to the world. That is our duty to remain alive. It is imposed on us that we should do this and this and this to remain alive. So even if we live in a not so modern society, you decide to live in a village outside the city, in a jungle, you still need to do something, otherwise you will need to grow your own food, raise your own cattle, milk the cows and all like they used to do in the ancient time.

The Gurukul tradition they were self-sustaining communities of seekers with the guru as the head and they used to do everything, fields and cultivation and growing of fruit trees and cow herding, goats and whatever was needed and probably clothing also, stitching the clothes and all, but they minimized everything. They minimized it so much that they had full control over what they needed to do. So no need to eat too much and no need to eat every food because you are bored of ordinary food. Just rice and wheat and milk and these things, just one cloth, just one bowl to eat so that you don't need to wash 20 dishes and so on.

So it was very easy to remain in the awareness because all the distractions of the world were taken away in that setting. Right now you will not be attracted but you will be distracted. There are too many distractions, there are too many people, there is a crowd and if you live in a city there are more demands on you. If you are in a job there are some more demands now, 8 hours are gone. If you have a family, more demands now, almost 16 hours are gone. So you hardly get time to sleep. So there are distractions. So my advice in that talk on the experiments in the waking state was to minimize, adopt a minimal lifestyle where the distractions do not take up your time. Certainly that will help in your awareness practice. And if you are feeling attracted to the world, let it go on for a while till it dies out. It will die out automatically because the bliss of being in awareness is much more than the pleasure of the experiences that come and go in the world. The bliss is permanent ? Does not come and does not go, it is just a background. Then you will find that the pleasures, if you give up the seeking, pleasure seeking behavior, the pain will also reduce because most of our pain, or you can say, suffering comes because of our blind pursuit of pleasures.

There is a rule that you won't get all of your desires satisfied, and those that get satisfied, they give us pleasure for a few moments or one day or two days, but those that are not satisfied they keep tormenting us for the rest of our lives. That did not happen that day, something bad happened instead of what I wanted, something like this. If you have minimized all these desire seeking behaviors, you will find that the suffering also goes away, most of the suffering is lost, gone. In the absence of suffering the mind is naturally drawn inwards. This must be your own experience when there is nothing to pursue, when there is nothing to run after and there is nothing to cry upon, then what will the mind do? Many people will think that it will get boring, yes it will get bored if you are a worldly person. The worldly person needs activity, the spiritual person needs peace, non-activity and that does not mean total inactivity. You can start writing something, you can start listening to something, do some creative work, do the sketching, drawing, singing, dancing, whatever you like, pursue your hobbies in the peaceful state of the mind, do it with full awareness, whatever you are doing.

Shashank is saying, but all the experiences are not the same for my mind, some are more pleasurable and some are bitter.

I want the pleasurable ones to be repeated, bitter ones to be avoided and probably that is the problem, our preferences are our problem. There must be a surrender when you are practicing awareness. I surrender to whatever happens and that does not mean that we don't do anything, we recognize that we do not have any control over situations, we control whatever is possible and then we surrender, a lot of pleasure is not coming my way, no problem, I will just do my awareness practice with whatever little pleasure I have and you will find that if the pleasures they start coming, you don't want them, you want something bigger.

It looks like there is a lack of experience here in how the mind works, so life will teach you how the mind works, life will teach you what are the tendencies of the mind, how the pleasure seeking behavior works and how the aversion works, they are the same thing. They are both tendencies of the mind, they are both mental activities, so as long as there is mental activity which is unnecessary, there will be no awareness. Perform your duties and surrender, what do you surrender? You surrender the unnecessary activity of the mind. How do you surrender? Recognize that this and that activity, this thought, that desire, they come in the mind without my permission, they are not mine, they are just experiences that come and go, calling it mine is an identification of some kind. For example when thunder happens, rain happens, you do not call it my thunder, my rain, when the sun shines, you do not call it my sun, it is shining for me now, you don't say it like this, why? You have enough intelligence not to call it me or mine, but when the experience of the desires happens or experience of thoughts happen or emotions happen, you are very quick to own it, you say it is mine. Probably you think that nobody else can see it, so it is mine, but that is not logical, if I could see what you are thinking, are you going to give up the identification? Somebody saw my thought, now it is not mine, that is not intelligence, ?

Owning the desires is our ignorance, owning the thoughts and owning the emotions is our ignorance, as soon as them, you reject them, not mine, and what if a thought comes that I need to work here because I am running out of cash, what will you say, will you own it also now because it is necessary? And the answer is simple, no you don't own it, but you do it, you act on it anyway. For

example your friend needs help and he asks you for help, it is not your work, but you go with your friend, you do the job and you complete it, because that is what needs to be done, so treat your mind as your friend, your best friend actually, there is no need to make the mind into an enemy, that is just another natural process that is going on, somehow you called it mine or me. There are people who call their minds as me and there are more people who call their bodies as me, probably 99% are like this. When the surrender starts happening more and more, the giving up, the rejection or seeing things as they are, like the rain and clouds as they are, they are happening somewhere. Not somewhere actually, it is happening in your mind, the perception is happening in your mind, the objects are in your mind, mind created. Only that your ignorance tells you that they are not mine, these thoughts and emotions that are also phenomena, mental phenomena happening in the mind only, nowhere else, mind created, my ignorance tells me that they are mine.

When this realization happens and the rejection happens and that it is all happening actually, events come and go and the body acts on those events that are more necessary, what is necessary is decided by the mind not by you, you are only the witness of whatever is happening. You will find that slowly the mind will start deciding more critically, it will become more aware of what it is doing, all you need to do is - again and again shine the light of awareness on the mind, if it is running after pleasures, let it run, get the pleasures, do it in full awareness, when there is aversion, let there be aversion, it is not your thing ? So why should somebody try to control it when there is nobody to control it?

What can you do as consciousness is - become conscious, which is called awareness, it, you give it your attention and then shift back your attention to that which is looking, the sakshi, become the sakshi, become the witness, and now you will find that the mind enters into a self-control mode, it will try to control itself, you don't need to do as awareness, you don't need to do anything. So initially this will happen, there won't be any surrender and there will be lot of fight, I need to control, ok do that also, if the control is working for you then who cares, but ultimately it should become like a fine art for you, like the artist draws without thinking, without any effort, the dancer dances without any effort, the movement happens so effortlessly that it is the most graceful and most beautiful movement. How did that happen? Through continuous refinement, through continuous practice.

Initially it will be jerky and initially you will face these troubles of the mind, but slowly you will gain a little bit of grace there, it will be graceful, it will be effortless, the awareness should become effortless in the end, that is our goal, and that comes through knowledge and it comes through practice. So yes, initially there will be attraction, the mind will be lost, it will go after pleasures, it will avoid suffering and so on, and it will do all kinds of things. In the field of spirituality also, like it will keep changing gurus, it will keep changing paths, it will keep changing its goals, today this is my goal, tomorrow something else will be my goal because I know something more now. Initially there will be a lot of oscillations and the oscillations then die out and become stable. I don't think there is anything to worry about, keep practicing, I was worried by the word attracted, you will need to worry if you are attracted to the world, that is the bigger problem than awareness.

Shashank is saying, yesterday I was helping my child learn to ride a bicycle, suddenly it happened to me that keeping awareness is also like that only.

Yes exactly, exactly, balancing act, ? Initially there will be effort, you will fall many times, like the child falls while walking or learning to ride, but after that it becomes effortless, now you ride the bike, do you think of keeping the balance, no it happens automatically, why? Training, practice. So I also faced a lot of problems in keeping awareness because coming into awareness is so easy, remembering is so easy, staying there is very difficult, ? The mind is very fluid, it is like air, cannot be grasped, it is actually thinner than air, cannot be grasped, it will go here and there, so then you come back in awareness, which is easy and then after 10 seconds it’s gone. I tried a lot of things, tricks and all, it cannot be tricked, it will adapt to any trick that you invent for it, mind is a big expert in adaptation, very adaptive thing, only thing it cannot adapt to is awareness itself, there is no avoiding awareness, it bows down to awareness.

Although awareness is its own vritti, awareness is its own activity, but that is the activity that kills all other activities.

Some people are going to use asana, pranayama, they keep watching their breathing, thinking that that will bring awareness, probably it will, it will keep the mind tied to awareness for as long as you are breathing, aware breathing, as soon as you get up from breathing, it adapts, it changes its mode and becomes unaware again, like you said, it is lost in the world again, because now it associates awareness with breathing. There is a mechanism there that says that when breathing - awareness, when not breathing - do whatever you want, so that does not work.

You will find the distractions will get into your breathing, instead of the breathing going into your life. It is funny also, because people spend a lot of time doing these practices, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, and they remain at the practice, they do not become aware, yes the awareness comes like a glimpse and that keeps them motivated, oh I need to practice that day there was awareness when I practiced. Yes it will, actually it is a forceful way, the kundalini and all that, they can force you into awareness for a while, oh it was like I was the sky all day, I was flying in the sky, what happened

the next day? Nothing, because the energy is down now, now they need to pump up the energy, it will become like an addiction one day. Some people take help from their gurus, like when I am in your presence I am totally aware and fine and all, when I go home, it is all a mess, now I need to be in the presence of the guru all the time. I will put a big photo of the guru in my room with all those spotlights shining on him, so that I can be aware. That can work for a day or two, and then the mind will adapt to the photo also, it is a tricky thing, now the photo is ordinary, not giving me awareness. There was a time when the eyes of the photo, they beamed awareness into my mind, now nothing, this photo is dead. The thing is, it was already dead, there is no life in the photo.

You can do all these “forced” things, but in the long run continuous practice, persistence, like you become stubborn, that no, no matter what, there will be awareness, no matter what happens, I will be aware. This thing is present only in very stubborn people, like yogis and all, so don't be lazy in this matter at least, so hopefully, yes Shashank you got it actually, it has to be effortless effort. Remember the three stages of awareness, become aware after the event has happened, that is stage one, become aware while the event is happening, that is stage two and become aware even before the event happens, it is possible, stage three and that's it, that will establish you into awareness. There are more stages, this is the beginning, the awareness will leak into your dreaming state and then the awareness will leak into your sleeping state, then it will become so pronounced and intense that it will be present in the after-death state. That gives you enough control to stop the next birth, that means now the awareness has reached the causal body and in kundalini terms you say - the kundalini has reached the sahasrara. On the path of knowledge, we say it plainly and clearly, without invoking any goddess or these mysterious chakras or words.

Once that happens it is permanent, then it will never go away. You can see it as evolution of the mind also, it is happening naturally also. What we are doing when we are on a spiritual path, we make it our primary goal, that's all, you can see it like this that if it did not happen naturally, nobody in this universe would be able to do that. You can take anything in this world, the nuclear reactions they happen naturally, right now one big ball is shining above your head, it is a nuclear reactor, if it did not happen in nature, nobody would be able to do it, the electricity is natural, it is everywhere, the electrons are fundamental and therefore we are able to use it because it is already there and similarly evolution is natural, otherwise there was no way to evolve and what we do is we focus on it, we utilize it, we turn it into a technology of some kind, oh these and these and these things they accelerate my evolution, yes I will do that, this is a seeker. Those who do not recognize this, they are not seekers, they are worldly people. The seeker does not leave the world, simply focuses on one aspect of it which is evolution and it is kickstarted by a guru, nobody can do it. You will be at the mercy of mother nature for many lifetimes till you realize one day - oh this is happening but the guru makes it quick. The guru simply points out that this is happening. Now what is your intention? Tell me, do you want to progress fast, do you want to be on the highway in a Ferrari or do you like your bullock cart and the dirt path, slow but no harm there, it is a play. Some of us are impatient and we choose a spiritual path, we want to evolve faster. It is not a requirement, although the guru will never say it because then you will not take an interest in it, so the guru keeps pushing, look you are wasting your life, this is the most important job that you should do and that keeps us motivated.

There are traditions that will keep the knowledge alive in form of scriptures and songs and verses, practices and all, this is going on since almost 25,000 years unbroken in this part of the world and it is amazing that we are a part of it now. When I conduct satsangs, when I produce videos and when I answer questions, what am I doing, keeping this alive, keeping the knowledge alive, contributing so that it does not die out, it does not leave the human society. One day you will also do that, if you are a seeker, if you have the fire, you will recognize the importance of this, probably this is the most important thing in human terms. For a human nothing more is important than this, the spiritual work.

I have known things, yes I am becoming aware, yes my practices are going fine, now push more, throw more petrol in the fire of spirituality, let it burn, make it a big bonfire, let it consume the whole world, that sounds like an evil plan and I do call it my evil plan, this is the evil plan, we don't like nature so much ? we don't like the maya as it is going at bullock cart speed. This is human tendency also, we get bored of nature and so we do something artificial, we create. A spiritual seeker is not only creating a spiritual environment for himself, he is actually spreading it, he is creating it for others also.

So hopefully that gives you perspective on what is happening, don't take your awareness practice as a job to be done, it is the biggest thing a human can do. Out of the respect and out of love of the spiritual practices we do it.

Leyla is asking, can you explain how you can reproduce in the mind instead of the physical world?

I mentioned this, now most of you must be laughing in your minds, what is this? why do I need to

reproduce in the mind? It is a minor power, it is a Siddhi. I said just now that if it were not possible in nature already you wouldn't be able to do it. There was a time in this greater mind when there were no physical worlds, when there were no bodies. The basic process of reproduction is copy, everybody knows that, you make a copy of the structure. So there was a lot of copying, the greater mind produced out of the infinite potential a lot of beings who were just copies of each other. Then mother nature takes over, the Shakti takes over and produces a variety out of these copies. So we have not lost this ability to copy our minds and this is the key. Here I am giving you the key that you already have the ability, you have not lost it, you have forgotten it. Because now there is too much dependency on the body, so much so that you assume that I am the body and you don't even understand this tendency of the body to reproduce, it is a strong tendency, it consumes your entire life. First you try to find the partner, second you try to maintain the partner, third the copying happens, the reproduction happens. You don't know why it happened, you don't have any control over it and then you maintain the copy or many copies, you call them my child and so on. Your entire life passes before your eyes doing this, reproducing.

The whole thing is reproduction. Can it? Your whole life is reproduction and actually mother nature has evolved the bodies just for the purpose of reproduction, after this happens the body dies actually. Now there is no need for this body, a copy has been made. Some people call it life, they don't know what life is. This is something which is built into the fabric of the mind, the universal mind. It is not a primitive thing, it is a very old, most advanced thing in this universe but let us go with the story, this is still going on, there are simpler minds that have only one purpose and that is to create a copy of themselves. They accumulate experiences of various kinds just like we do, there is no essential difference between this mind and that mind and your mind and my mind, we are accumulating things, experiences and then we produce a copy. Actually you have many copies of yourself already, probably in this world, in this form, human form you don't know it. Like you have so many brothers and sisters in this world in terms of bodies, you don't know them. them as other people. Ultimately it is one genetic material in everyone.

How to do it in the mind? It is very easy actually, the key word here is - recall your ability, recall that which you have forgotten, you can take help of some rituals or something to recall it, it is not magic, it is just intention, have a great intention in your mind to recall your abilities. Now what will the copy of the mind look like, the mind, it is a layered structure, so you must decide what layer I want to make a copy of. For example child birth is copying of your lower layer, the physical body is a lower layer and it is the layer that is making the copies, not you.

How can you make a copy of the higher layers? Probably she wants to know this, it is very easy, first you start with the highest layer, you make a copy of your awareness. How to do that? Just by intention, imagine there are two awarenesses, one is looking through one eye, the other is looking through the other eye.

If you are in occult, you will recognize this as a technique, the left eye and right eye, it is amusing, I was reading some scripture online and it said that this is a god it looks through the right eye, something like this, I was puzzled, they are probably referring to some technique there or some tradition there, ritual there.

Now you have two awarenesses, one looking through left eye, one looking through right eye, one looking behind and one looking ahead, one on the left, one on the right, if you do it you will know what I am saying, it is possible to do that, you can split your awareness like this. That is the highest layer, you have made copies of it. Now you can make a copy of your intellect also. Many people have done that but they don't know that they have done that. If you are in two professions, for example you are a doctor and also you are interested in producing gadgets, electronic gadgets, you bring the components and solder them together and you make different things at your house, but your profession is treating patients. What has happened here is that the intellect has made a copy of itself and one part of it is now expert in treating people and other part is expert in assembling gadgets and probably there is one more part which is interested in philosophy and science and spirituality. We all are like this, there is a split personality there, there are many parts there in the intellect, we do not see them as copies but they are copies. If you want one more copy just reserve some space in your intellect for that and then accumulate. Accumulate something different there, in that piece of memory.

How do that you have copied something because it will take a life of its own, it will become something different from your original, if you copy the original and keep it as original, keep sending the same information there then you will probably not recognize it as a copy and the interesting thing is this will survive death. This is going to survive death. As soon as you return to the causal body you will find that you have already returned with copies, there is no need to do it again, your causal body has already done that. Nobody knows this actually, so whether you should simply believe me blindly? No, this is just pointing, this is just information that you can use to gain actual experience, start doing the experiments if you are interested. Even if you don't want to do the experiment this is interesting anyway and it is not necessary. It is already happening in nature as I said, you can refine it, you can become a guru of it, you can become a master in it, producing copies of yourself. You are already doing it in the physical, why not in the other layers? There are 20-30 layers. You can make copies of your intellect like this, they are going to survive.

Then you come down a little bit - ego. Now here it gets really interesting, there can be copies of your ego and it is already happening in the natural world, it is already happening in this universal mind and sometimes it is called split personality disorder. There are many personalities living in the same person and the body behaves in different ways depending on which ego is active and this is very well studied in western psychology at least, I don't know about the eastern, we have a totally different view here, we see it as some possession, but no, it is the copy, the ego made copies of itself. It remembered its abilities, it made copies of itself and it accumulated different tendencies in different memory spaces. You can see, it has different programs running in that layer and they have their own memory space and they have accumulated different conditioning by shifting attention to different copies of itself. We call them mental patients and we treat them. We don't like too many egos in one body, one is a big trouble already, so if you have two or three then life is dysfunctional, ? But some are managing, some are okay with it.

Sometimes it is so intense when this copy takes over that it will change the face of the person. You think the face is solid and cannot be changed, well that is our belief only, the faces are soft, they are like spongy things, you can change anything in your face, you can change anything in your body. You must have heard these stories of people becoming animals, turning into animals and they have an origin. Humans cannot imagine these things, they must see it first and then they spice it up, they take it to extreme, it is possible. The ego is very interesting, that's what you probably meant, how can you reproduce, the you here is the ego, ? You did not mean intellect or anything else, so yes, you can make a copy of it.

It is possible to make copies of your energy bodies also, it is called an energy double in western occultism, there it is possible to actually display this energy body to others, you can turn this energy body into a visible body. It will be ghostly , somebody under a bed sheet - something like this, it will be like smoke or something. Those with vision, those who have the spiritual vision or the clearvision will be able to see this body. So it is possible to make a copy of that energy body.

Shashank is saying, do some places have some sort of energy effect on us? I have felt this, I felt it most at Swayambhunath shrine in Nepal, mind silences itself when sweet emptiness is felt.

Yes it is possible, everything affects everything else, even the rocks and stones and trees affect us. It is our ignorance that we think we are different and isolated things. We are not, we are one continuous sea of vibrations, naad, that's all we are, it is all one memory that is oscillating. There is no boundary, even if we think there is a boundary, there is no boundary. The yogis know this obviously, who else will know this, and they have imprinted their own memory on the temples or shrines or even lingams and the murtis, the statues. That is called Pran Prathishtha or consecration or whatever you want to call it. They have imprinted, they made a copy of themselves and then installed it there. In software terms, you can say it is all memory, it is all software, it is a big information system only.

So it is possible to do it, our ignorance tells us that this is a miracle, it is not possible, but everything is possible, you need to practice it, that's all. Because we are already influencing our surroundings, because everything is made up of vibrations and because it is a sticky vibration, it takes on the influence

from other vibrations, it is a memory of some sort, every object is a memory of some sort and it takes on the impressions of the active object around it. That which is more active, more energetic, will influence other objects. You think walls in your house, they are walls, they are senseless, no, they are not walls, they are not rocks, they are patterns in the memory and they will take on that which you are thinking right now. People who are called sensitive people, happens to me also and it will happen to many of you, those who are in the spiritual path, as soon as you enter somebody's house, you will start getting impressions from there. If you are not aware and if you are not trained, you will never know what is hitting me, but it is the influences that are stored in the walls of that house, in the objects of that house. They are connecting you to the memories of the people that live there and depending on what people live there, you will either feel good, peaceful and happy in that house or you want to run away from that place, you don't want to stay there, even if it is coated with gold, you won't be able to stay there.

Yes, that is possible, , we call it the spooky experiences, spiritual experiences and all, but the knowledge behind this is very simple, it is already happening, it can be felt, it can be observed and the good thing is it can be explained very logically, rationally. And another amazing thing is, it has already been done thousands of years ago, you think it is something extraordinary because we have lost this knowledge.

Leyla is saying, I want to use up this desire to reproduce so I don't have to do it again in another life, if that makes any sense.

If you get another life, a human life, then it will happen automatically, there is no stopping there, because this is mother nature, the body is not mine and whatever it does is not me, so you are not doing it anyway, don't worry about it, but a better goal would be to not to be born as a human, so that desire is not then given to you and whatever desire is there to make copies, it will happen automatically and you will do it. Because this is the nature of NPNM memory, it makes copies, it is the most fundamental thing. You can convince your mind by doing these experiments that look, there is no need to take up a body if that is your primary desire. It is seen that females have more of this desire, the female body is taken up as a result of this primary desire to produce copies. All the creatures on this planet are actually born female, probably very few people know that, when the fetus is born, it is born female, then after some months somehow the other chromosome kicks in and turns it into a male. The purpose of the male body is simply to assist in this copying process, they are not born for anything else, they cannot reproduce, they are expendable things for mother nature. That is how it started, but we won't go there, it is a different matter, everybody is born female, everybody is born as an expression of this desire to reproduce. Therefore in some religions it is prohibited to use birth control, they realize this thing, that it is a divine thing to be born and they have banned it. Now people don't understand it, they think it is fundamentalism or something and yes people are doing it mindlessly also, but there is a reason for everything we do, we don't simply cook up these things, there is always a reason, if you dig down you will find the reason. That is amazing, ? As spiritual seekers we find it quickly, that is our ability.

Shashank is asking, can practice of self-awareness also become boring one day?

Yes, it is very boring actually, from day one it is boring. But we should realize that it is boring for the ego, not for myself, not for the witness, the very nature of the witness is awareness, does not become boring for the witness, it is boring for the ego, because the ego likes activity, and initially, yes, it is boring like hell, you want to be distracted. It is not that it will become boring, it starts being boring, and then it becomes pleasing, ? The natural evolution of the self-awareness is that it starts like this, I don't want to do it, the mind will cook up a lot of excuses to not remain aware, that is when we say it is throwing resistance, like a child who cooks up a lot of excuses to not go to school, because awareness is discipline, ? It demands discipline, and the mind demands freedom, so it starts as boring, and then it smooths out, then it is less boring, then it is mildly pleasing, then it is blissful, then you don't want to leave it even for a second. If that is not happening, if it started with bliss, and now it is turning into suffering of some kind, that means something is wrong, that means you should immediately consult your Guru. If it starts boring, then no problem, let it be boring. That is why we need a Guru, because the Guru will take a stick and make it less boring.

Leyla is saying, my life is getting so chaotic that I have just gotten lost in the world again.

“I” is never lost, the “I” is witnessing the ego getting lost. First you should change your language to reflect reality, then you will find that nothing is lost. Don't give the mind a chance to speak, let the awareness speak. Are you not aware that you are never lost, you are always at the same place, where you always are. Yes, the events come and go, and they give this impression that nothing is working out, nothing is happening as per my desires, remember they are not your desires, nothing is already happening as per your desires, we don't have any control here. Like one of my teachers, his name is Tom Campbell, his one liner teaching is that - stuff happens and we deal with it. This is how this world is, stuff happens and we deal with it. Sometimes it happens in a way that the mind does not like it, that's all. You will need to deal with it, and deal with it with full awareness.

It was Gandhiji or somebody, who said - when I am not busy, I am relaxed, I meditate for one hour, when I am busy and when life is hitting me, I meditate for two hours. Be stubborn, don't let the mind speak, don't give it the front seat, don't give it the wheel, you drive it, instead of it driving you. It is driving you crazy because you lost control, you lost awareness. No matter what happens, keep the awareness on. Do that which is most necessary, which the mind thinks is most necessary, that is going to happen, do it in full awareness, get lost in full awareness. Zen master is going to say, are you angry? Yes, be angry, do it in full awareness, kick your enemies in full awareness, and that's why all these practices like Kung Fu demand complete awareness, if you are not aware, you don't have Kung Fu. Tell me what is more difficult, fighting 20 people with a stick or living your everyday life? If a warrior can be fully aware while killing or fighting people, fighting an army, why can't a spiritual seeker be aware while doing his daily things in the chaotic life? Why is it not possible?

The beauty of the path of knowledge is, it does not prescribe what to do, it simply prescribes - do it with awareness. Isn't that good for all of us, because there are other paths that will prescribe you do this, don't do that. There is a long list of things to do and not to do and then it becomes bad and we call it a religion, which means people start imposing those things on other people, that look my religion tells me to not do this and you are doing it, that means you are my enemy. We don't have this madness on the path of knowledge. You do that which the situation is demanding, let it happen in the complete light of awareness, shine your awareness on it.

If you get lost while doing it, no problem, you reflect upon it in the night, sit down for 10 minutes and just go through what happened in the day and shine the light of awareness on the memory of it, it is the same thing, the past is present in the mind and the present is future and so on. If you are planning to do something, let it happen in full awareness, it has not yet happened but let it happen in full awareness.

Jyotsna is saying, when we are in awareness it seems like the outer world is like an animation, no person in it, is it right?

It may seem like that initially, till the mind adapts to this new awareness also. I will tell you something interesting that as soon as I gained a little bit of awareness in my childhood, I started seeing the world

like this, I started seeing everything as a movie, as a projection, sometimes there was no way to tell the difference between my own imagination and what is happening outside and then I learned that children do that, most of the time there is no difference between their imagination and the world. So the awareness is like being born again, it is very much like becoming aware in the dream. Same thing happens when you become aware in the world, sometimes it is so natural and painless, effortless that it looks like I am watching a movie, everything is happening by itself, this is an intense state of awareness. At least from my standards, Yogi will say, oh this is nothing, I can see the whole world, past, present and future and it is all fake, so I completely agree, there is no limit to awareness also, it is like any other ability of the mind. You will find there are steps in awareness, like she is saying that the world looks like an animation, it looks fake, probably she wants to say like this.

Leyla is saying, yes it is like a dream and awareness comes easier when I am watching my children play in the park.

Obviously, when you are relaxed you will find that it looks as if everything is happening on its own, everything is happening perfectly and the mind is not engaged in whatever is happening and there is an expansion of awareness there. Inclusive attention happens, everything gets included in your awareness and then this dream-like quality of the world shines - oh it is a dream. It is a passing experience. You will notice that you don't require all that intellectual knowledge - oh this is vibration and that is a process and this is a memory, this layer and that layer of the mind, no, that all can be dropped, that all is garbage. This experience which is in front of you right now, right here, you are merged in it and this fakeness is also real now. I mean it as myself and then you simply accept it, there is acceptance of what is. You don't have this thought that - oh it is fake, it is disgusting, I want something real, no you don't, you accept that thing. Now the Maya is also beautiful, just like when you wake up from the dream there is acceptance - oh it was a dream, I don't want to go back in the dream and change it, you say - oh it happened like this, probably some other dream will happen, I will see something else. So a contentment, a satisfaction and you will find even the body will reflect it, instantly your health will improve, your blood pressure or whatever problems are there, they will be gone that day.

Imagine living your life like this, because it is a human life, there will be ups and downs, you ride the wave in complete awareness, accepting the ups and downs, while it is an up phase you forget, the distraction is too much, when it is a down phase you are disturbed, awareness is not working, nothing is working, actually nothing will work, so what? It is a part of life and then when there is a neutral phase simply reflect on it. This also happened - and there is acceptance of it also. One day there will be time to leave the world and that should also happen in complete acceptance, this is also happening, you have other options also, like you can leave screaming and kicking and denial and delusions and angry and fearful and hooked to machines and pumped up with some drugs that leave no awareness for you, that is one way, that is called the modern way, highly civilized way of dying and there is a primitive way, where you just leave, yes this is also happening, I am happy, I am happy that finally it happened. Now you welcome the new life, you go through the door with full happiness, at least even if you don't get rid of the births and deaths you will get a good afterlife. So it depends on the preference of the person, he dies in a way that depends on his ignorance.

Let's get back to the copying mechanisms, I was saying that once you reach the level of energy body which is also called the energy double, it is possible to project the energy double or the etheric double in the physical world. Now you recall all those stories where one yogi was seen at many places and in the occult practices we call it bilocation or multi-location. What is not the yogi, a copy of the yogi. There are so many stories when Ramana Maharshi was seen here and there and who knows who made those copies but somebody made them and perfectly sane people, educated people, they saw him here and there. Similarly in India there are so many stories, hundreds of stories. It is possible to make a copy of a physical body but that is not a big deal, anybody can do it, the etheric body is difficult and it is possible that it will appear through the power of your intention, imagination. The imagination becomes so vivid that it is projected onto other minds and it will appear for a second, two seconds or ten seconds and then it will do whatever it does and then it will disappear. People think that my guru is a miracle man that he can appear at any place in the universe and you will find that guru is sitting peacefully in his ashram, he is not doing anything, he did not go to any place, he did not even do a mantra or any ritual, he simply appeared one day in one other place. How did that happen? because that was not the guru, that was a copy, it was a double. It is possible to do that through occult rituals.

The gross things need more effort. We have forgotten all these things, we know only one copy now, which is the biological, but there are possibilities there, do not be blind to the possibilities, that is why I tell all these things, to open the mind to the possibilities. When this guru appearing here and there, you do not get shocked by it, what is happening. But remember that, that guru also is respectable, you need to honor that copy, you do not laugh at that copy, the copy knows, the copy can get angry just like the real guru, so pay your respect, fold your hands and bow down and ask whatever you want to ask, ask for the purpose of appearance and take the command if there is a command. Because a guru will not do it if there is no good reason for it, there has to be some urgency there, he probably wants to teach you something, he probably wants to teach you that look the copying mechanism is possible at any layer, give up the fascination with this biological pile of matter and once this, I am pretty sure that there will be a permanent change in your mind.

It is possible to produce a copy at the middle level also. Everybody knows when they sleep, they produce a copy of themselves, it is called a dream-body. When I say these things, you think that it is some magic, but you are doing it already. I am telling you your own experience or experiences of other people, there is nothing new here, there is nothing new under the sun. Yes it is a copy, doesn't it look like yourself and it has all the qualities of your waking state, it even wears the same clothes in the dream, it has the same preferences, it gets irritated at the same things in the dream also and it likes the same things which it likes in the waking state, it is a copy. For how long the copy lasts, 5 minutes or 10 minutes, then you produce another copy in another dream. Not only are you capable of copying yourself, you can copy the whole world if you want. That is a talk for another day.

How do the greater minds reproduce? They make a complete copy of themselves, the whole universe gets copied, copy paste, amazing? But it is very natural, that is how the universal mind is extending to infinity, by repeatedly copying itself and in the latest video on the processes in the memory, I explained it as a process. Remember this is just one of the things that the mind can do, it is called the replicating process, it is a natural thing because all the vibrations tend to cause more vibrations like themselves, it replicates anyway. For example you place a tuning fork in a room and then you play a tune, a tone on a violin and you will find that it does not respond to any frequency, it won't respond to any of the note except its own note and the tuning fork will start vibrating as soon as it gets the correct frequency. It is the resonance. What is that? It is a copy, the vibrations got copied into the tuning fork.

Nobody sees it like this, I know, people don't pay attention when they see these things, only a seeker can wonder what happened here, how did that vibration get transferred there. Physics will tell you it is resonance, I will tell you it is a copying mechanism, that is how the copy happens. You copy something in the universal memory or NPNM memory through resonance, vibrate at one place and then vibration gets picked up at another place and magic! It has become that vibration. Now because of the sticky nature of the memory it is going to stick there, something comes and destroys it because impermanence is also the nature of the memory, it does not stick. This original vibration keeps pumping energy into the copy.

Have n it? You need to manage your children a lot, you need to maintain them a lot, otherwise they will disappear any day, so put energy into it, when you make double of yourself, keep feeding it something, otherwise it will disappear and therefore these tantrics and all the occult practitioners, they are always hungry for more energy and sometimes four or five people will join together, their energies will be joined together to produce a hybrid copy. Now I am straying into totally another discussion here, the occult field is so fascinating and the occult is so mesmerizing, there is no end to what can be done here. Once the basics you will do it naturally. You can ask, are the hybrid copies occurring naturally? Yes, like when you marry somebody you produce a hybrid copy of them, two people, ? The child is already a hybrid, fifty-fifty. There are creatures that produce the exact copies, we call them primitive creatures but they are not primitive, the mechanism is not hybrid. It is possible to do it more than that, instead of fifty-fifty it can be one-fourth or twenty-five percent of each and then you produce an etheric double which is a combination of these four. And now the reason behind all these deities in the temples and the images of these ascended masters and other gods who have four heads, sometimes ten heads, like the tantrics. Ravana is shown with ten heads, how is it even possible? They are copies, that is how it is possible, either they are copies of themselves or many entities have gathered together to produce it. So how Ganesha was born? Copy of his mother, he was not born like ordinary humans are born. There was a time on this planet when these things were natural, obviously, because they occur naturally.

Bhuvan is saying, I think in ancient times Manasputras of Rishis and Siddhas were the copies.

Yes, the word Manasputra means a mental child, that word exists, that word is here, it has survived because people do it all the time, not even me, we are ordinary people, , I can produce a copy at the intellect level anytime, actually I have done it so many times, I have made the intellect copies without even realizing that I am doing it. I got interested in this when I read a short story by a science fiction writer, a very famous writer, I don't know his name, where there was a cyber war going on and people have preserved their memories in their brains through electronic means, more like neural link or something and now people want to steal the information from their minds, like in the movie Inception. That was a very old story, I don't know, before these movies came out, and the hero now wants to preserve his personality, he calls it “myself”, obviously. He makes a copy of his complete mind and the villain then gets into the honeypot and steals the copy which is not original. Somehow this story made so much sense that I thought it is possible to do it in practice, I can make copy of all of my memories, store them in a permanent safe place, and then I can play with whatever is left, turn them into whatever it wants to be, preservation tendency of the mind can be given up here. Can the benefits of it? Now you don't want to be that restricted one individual, you can be anything, because my copy is safe. And that is why when the people reproduce, like they have a child, they enter a state of peace somehow, oh I have done my job, there is a copy here, I have done my duty here of

reproduction, and they become really pacified, I don't want anything. They stop running after partners and marrying and all that business stops, because the goal has been achieved, the body is no more pushing them and making them anxious and kicking them into all kinds of stupid behavior. The maturity happens when you become a father or a mother, the maturity comes, it is very natural.

If you copy whatever you think is precious, nothing is actually, it is all garbage in your mind, but if you think it is precious, make a copy and then be anything you want, explore the infinite possibilities that you can be. A highly intellectual person is doing this. One day he starts writing songs, another day he starts drawing and another day he becomes a traveler and travels here and there in the wilderness. What are they doing? They are exploring all the possibilities, they don't want to remain this one clerk in some government office for 30 years signing the same files. We are not born to do that, we are born as explorers and there are infinite possibilities.

Make copies of everything in all the layers, start by being multifaceted, this word can be taken literally, make many faces of yourself. Why are you so limited? Why can't you explore? Why can't you copy yourself 100 times? See this copying point of view, it came later, I was doing it since, I don't know when. Every year I take up something new which I have never done before or I was resistant to do, it can be cooking, it can be gardening, it can be drawing, it can be this software, that software or that application, I pick up something. Somehow I picked up these satsangs and video production like this only, let me try it, how can I be limited, let me try it.

Initially you are going to do a horrible job, there is no doubt about it, it comes through practice, you become better and better at that copy and then one day you think I am this original, you leave the original. One day you do not see any point in keeping the originals, it's all copies. Who is original here? We are all copies of something, even the greater mind is a copy of something, which was a copy of something else. Because the time is infinite, because it is going on since infinity, so that everything is a copy now, no originals. That will give you a new perspective here, there is a saying that you were born original, don't die as a copy, this is for those who just copy others, but you will find that you were born a copy, a hybrid copy, in your DNA there are copies of viruses to monkeys, and everything in between. Where is the original? Or you can see differently that everything is original, everything is unique, even if it starts as a copy, it is unique.

Those who are interested in physical copies, you are already doing it, if you are interested in intellectual copies, highly recommended, you should explore the limits of your intellect, do whatever you want to do, don't feel shy. Those who want to make copies of the ego, not recommended, you can end up with multiple personalities, it's called a disorder for a reason, ego is not to be trusted. If you want to make astral copies or etheric copies or dream copies that stay for a while, that can appear to other people, then I would say that you do it only if it is needed, only if you have that fearlessness in you. your own copy and you will faint with fear, then don't do it, because the first thing , your copy will appear to you and then you can mistake it for somebody else, like a ghost or some spirit, it will talk like you, it will walk like you, it will think like you, and obviously it causes fear. Don't do it, and if you want to do it, do it under a very experienced guru. It will be very difficult to find such a guru, and get the guidance of a very experienced tantric who has been doing it for 10 years or has already produced 100 copies or something.

Go on Google and search for doppelganger, I know that is a bad word, you will find literature under this name, you search for Tulpa, I think it is a Tibetan name, and there are more names, if you search for this name, you will get all the synonyms of this, and under these names is Manasputra. If you search these words and you dig deeper in original works, blogs and books and so on, you will find many books on this topic, there is some free content also, and you go on YouTube, and obviously you will find treasure on YouTube, many occult people are present on YouTube, and you will also get guidance if you ask for guidance, if you make good relations with the master, hopefully you will be successful.

So that answers this question, and as I promised, this is the short description of non-physical copying mechanisms, I just gave you a technique, but that is not for low level copying, I cannot give you a technique for low level copying, you need to search it yourself, I am not a technique person, ? On the path of knowledge we don't do these things. Why do I keep saying these things then, if I don't want you to do it? Because I want you to know it, so that you are not surprised when these kinds of miracles, they are not miracles, it is natural, we lost this technology of the mind. We think we are great because we can manipulate matter, that is nothing, even monkeys do that, so the real technology is the technology of the mind where there are no limits. There are pitfalls of these practices. The copy can become independent and will take on its own life, it will leave you one day, so this can happen at any layer, like your child will leave you one day, becomes independent, same thing, your copy is your child.

Session 56

There is a very frequently asked question, which is very simple, and probably everybody knows the answer in our group. And that question is, what is karma and how to be free from karma?

The answer is very simple, this two line answer, that it is a law, that every action produces a consequence, and you are already free from it.

The organism that you think is me will never be free from karma. Why? Because it is a law. The law binds all that appears here in this existence. So that which is free cannot be made free. That which is bound cannot be made free, because it must remain bound in these laws in order to exist. So this is the two line answer, and I am going to give you a little bit of a description of why this is so, why are you free from karma.

The karma applies to that which changes, because the karma means action. Action is a change. Only that which changes can produce a change. Only that which has the capability to change something can act. Only that has this capability to change, where there is already something changing in it. If nothing is changing, imagine a total void, total absence of change. It cannot act now. The series of changes, the chain of cause and effect, must start from a change that is already there. If nothing is changing, nothing will happen. There are no actions.

And remember that all that changes is false. This is our criteria on the path of knowledge for truth, all that changes is false. All that changes is like waves on the water, ornaments of the gold and pots of clay. They are all false. The substratum is always unchanging. So that which changes is false, and therefore all the actions that happen through that structure which is changing are also false.

Who am I? I am the one who is not changing. I am the water. I am not the wave. I am the substratum on which the change appears. And therefore I cannot act.

You can verify it. You can see the truth of it yourself right now, right here, it is very clear and absolutely logical. It is by necessity, it is not our choice. It is absolute. There is no escape from this necessity that I cannot change. And if I cannot change, which means there is this substratum on which all changes are happening, that means I cannot act. If I cannot act, there is no karma. There is no action. And therefore there is no consequence. So I, who cannot act and does not change, is absolutely free from all the karma, is absolutely free from all the changes and all the actions and the fruits of the actions. And that which is changing, that which is false, is incapable of stopping. It will keep changing. Impermanence is its nature. And therefore it cannot be freed from actions.

Why is this question, how to be free from karma? It is because there is an identification with that which changes. For example, the body, mind or anything else, any other concepts in your mind. You think that I am that which changes. And you think that I am that which is acting and which is suffering or enjoying the fruits of actions. And now you want it to be free from this action, reaction, cause and effect cycle. You want peace. But that is impossible. All you need to do is disidentify with that which is changing, with that which is appearing in this eternal, peaceful, unchanging background. You can call it “I”. There is no problem in calling it I. So when you shift your identification like this, or you let go of the identification totally with anything at all, you will find that there is no need to free anything.

That which is bound is happily bound. That which is free is happily free. Only thing that has happened here, or only change that you made is disidentification. That's all. Disidentification frees you instantly. And no amount of actions are going to free you from the effects of actions. You are trying to do something to be freed from doing. This is, as you can see, a problem. Actions cannot produce a non-action. Only that which does not act can produce a non-action.

When we say freedom from karma, why? Why do we want freedom? Why don't we want to continue in action? The first thing I'll tell you is that this country is corrupted by superstition. Total corruption. 99.99% of people don't know what they are talking about. They heard it somewhere that your goal is freedom from karma. And now they spend their lives getting freed from karma. So if you are doing it just because somebody told you, or just because you have this superstition, then you have already failed in your spiritual path.

Secondly, people don't want the burden of karma because their lives are hell. Because their lives are full of suffering. Whatever they do, it fails. Whatever they do, they get fruits of it, which are unbearable. And so they stop acting. And they want this “doing” to go away. Remember that there is no problem in action. The problem is the wrong action. If you do an action that produces suffering, that is the problem. So they generalize it to mean that all actions are bad. And so I must get rid of all the actions. They do not even see that they are already free from actions. They are already liberated. Nothing to be done. No amount of actions will free you. Your basic nature is freedom. How can you free that which cannot act via actions? How is it even possible? And you want to free that whose very nature is to act from actions. How is that possible? By that I mean the body-mind or anything else which you have imagined yourself to be. You want to free these things from action. How is that possible? Their very nature is change. Their very nature is impermanence. And their very nature is to act. To counter the impermanence. These structures are trying to survive the impermanence. Otherwise they won't be here. Otherwise there would be no experience of them. If it did not change, we would not experience it. And therefore that which must be experienced will keep changing and will keep acting. The actions are changes only. These organisms and these structures are trying to counter the impermanence. And therefore they must act. And there is nothing wrong in acting. The problem is an average person does not know how to act.

The path of action was designed to provide you with the teaching so that you learn how to act. By you I mean this human thing. And if it acts according to the laws of the mind which everybody must be familiar with, one of the laws is the law of karma, law of action and consequence, then you will find that there is no suffering at all. There will be tiny bits of suffering here and there. But it can be managed. It is not a big problem. There is no problem if you act also. If this body mind acts there is no problem at all. Just learn the art of acting without acting.

The problem is this organism is very superficial. It is very selfish. And all of its actions are geared towards itself. All of its actions have become actions of survival. That produces an enormous amount of bondage and suffering. If that is cleared, if that is purified, all actions become the actions of the universal mind. Actions of the universe are non-personal and now they are not suffering. They are no more painful now.

So this was a little bit of introduction to the path of actions. And what is wrong with actions. How to be free from actions. This is the short answer. Recognize that it is a law. And that which is bound by laws. That which appears in the mind cannot be freed from any laws. That which is beyond mind is already free. If you want to be free from actions. Doing simply disidentify with that which is doing.

Because your true nature is not the doer. Your true nature is the observer. Or the consciousness which cannot do anything. Even if you want it cannot do anything. It is so pure.

Manish is asking, Is it possible to turn off the ability of reflecting light for the atoms in the body, thereby making us invisible. I recently came across someone who says that it is possible to become invisible this way. Just like it is shown in Hollywood movies.

In the illusion nothing is impossible. The illusion means that it is not there. Now everything is possible here. Everything is possible in that which is not here. The problem is people try to do something in a rule bound region. By rule bound region I mean where the laws are so strict that it would take a change

in the complete universe to cause something which is not rule bound. So the matter is bound in rules.

And although it is possible to break all those rules it will never happen. The rules are there for a reason.

The rules are there to keep the structures going. If anybody could break any of the rules anytime you won't see this physical universe. They would have destroyed everything in the beginning itself. And therefore only those universes survived which had very strict laws. By strict laws I mean it is not that somebody made these laws. The laws evolved over time. And worlds condensed as a result of these laws and became stable. And now it is almost impossible to do it.

It is possible in margins because of the statistical nature of these worlds. There is a small probability that anything you want will happen. But there is another law here that says that anybody who violates the laws of the physical world, I am talking only about the physical world not about any other worlds, anybody who violates the laws of the physical world will get the consequences of it. The consequences are very dramatic. I am not saying they are bad, they are dramatic. And this action which was done to violate the laws will leave no trace. It will be erased from the records of the world. It will be there in memory of one or two people, not more than that. And it will be impossible to provide evidence of what happened. Because it will be completely subjective.

So this is also called the Psi Uncertainty Principle. PUP if you want short form. Just like there is an uncertainty principle in physics that no matter how precisely you want to measure something, you will always fail. If you measure something one property precisely, you will end up not knowing the other properties. Similarly, if you change something here which counters the laws, there are major consequences and then it will be blurred. It will be erased from this world, whatever happened here. So I will give you an example. Suppose you want to heal a disease in another person. Now it will happen one in a thousand cases. Not everybody can be healed by simply thinking, simply wishing. So it may happen in one case out of thousand that even a severe disease will be healed by simply your intention, simply wishing that this disease will go away. However, that person will never come to know what caused the healing. He is going to think that the body healed itself or the medicines healed it. Because obviously, people take medicines when they are not healthy. Or there is a forgetting of some kind. I was never sick or this keeps happening probably. The reason will never be known. No evidence will be produced of this healing. Even the person who healed that other person, he will never come to know how it happened. Here the laws have been bent. But if nobody comes to know, then it is fine. The illusion allows this much. The physical allows this much. The laws allow this much that in the margin somewhere, extraordinary cases can happen, but they will happen in such a way that nothing can be proved about them.

Now there is one bypass here. You can bypass this PUP also. It is possible to verify it for yourself and only for yourself. Suppose you get some sickness and you heal yourself. Then there will be no doubt in your mind that you did it. Especially if you are not taking any medicine. Especially if you don't go to the doctor. And especially what illness it is that it takes this many days to heal. But through your intention and wishing and praying and whatever ritual, healing ritual, you were sick in the morning and now you are fine in the evening as if nothing happened. And this will be your verification. There will be certainty here. There will be absolute certainty in your mind that it happened because I did it. I bypassed the rules. I broke the rules. I bypassed the physical laws here.

And it is possible because you are above the physical laws. We find that this physical world it is not absolutely physical. Like science has found out. In the margins there is possibility for everything. And we are actually exploiting these possibilities which are impossible according to the physical laws. For example all the devices we use have diodes. And there is a specific diode called tunneling diode. And there the potential between the two metallic junctions is such that it is impossible for the electrons to pass through it. It is not allowed by physical laws. But still they pass through it. Some of the electrons pass through it. It is called a tunnel diode because they tunnel through the barrier. And this device is present in all electronic equipment. Right now whatever we are using is using these devices. We are using a technology which has already broken the physical laws somehow. The beauty of it is that you cannot measure it. You can measure the current that is happening because of the tunneling. You cannot measure the tunneling itself. You won't be able to find an electron which is crossing the barrier. It is impossible to find it.

So we think miracles are something which is impossible in the physical world. No, they are happening all around us but cannot be detected. This is another law you can say. This will be the case no matter what you do. If there is a world, there is a physical world in which there are no rules and there are only miracles, like every random thing possible is happening. And now you can say it will be a random thing only because everything is happening. Nothing is according to the rules. Nothing behaves perfectly in a predictable manner. There is no stability in that world and it is not a world at all. It is just random experiences which make no sense. So it is necessary for the physical world to be rule bound but because it is an illusion, it is necessary that there will be attributes or there will be events there which defy all the rules. So we are in a very beautiful experience right now where a perfect balance between the solid rules and the random miracles. There is a perfect balance here. That is very beautiful. This can be known. I am not cooking it up actually. This can be known through experiments.

Manish is saying, a double slit experiment showed that if you watch an electron, it behaves as a particle

and if you do not watch it, it behaves like a wave.

The watching is a confirmation to the rules. That is what the mind is doing. It is taking in that which conforms to the rules. Not watching means you allow it to be anything. This is one of the interpretations of this world and the common consensus is that nobody understands what is going on. That is also my opinion. We don't really understand it. We can observe it. We can come to the conclusion that it is not going to work. We can come to the conclusions of some kind but we don't really understand what is happening. I will say that don't try to be invisible. There is no point in doing it. Why would you want to do it? Try to see the beauty of it. We are here to learn. We are not here to mess with the rules. ? Are we here to destroy this world by doing this miracle and that miracle? No. On the path of knowledge, we keep it as it is. Actually we preserve it. There are two forces here. One that is trying to destroy the physical world and the other forces which are trying to keep this world as it is. It is perfect as it is. So join the army that is preserving instead of destroying. People who are after powers so that they can manipulate the world, are on the opposite camp. People who want to preserve this world because they see value in this world. It is a learning experience. It is like a school. If there is a school where there are no laws at all, where there is no rule at all, where you can do anything you want, it is not a school.

The good thing is the universal mind is infinite. You can find areas which are not rule bound and then you can play there. That is your playground. Don't meddle in the world. Don't meddle in school. Go and play in the playground. So you can say there is a third camp or a third explorers who have understood this thing, who are mature enough to understand that I should not meddle here. I should be free from this world and then I can do anything in the other parts of the universe. So you can join those kinds if you want to be invisible and do all these tricks. Go and do it in some other world. If you do it here, there are big consequences plus nobody will come to know except you. And that is why more miracles are possible when the state of mind is not bound to the world. We are free to change the state of mind. Why not? But we are not free to change the world. It will go on as it is. And preserving tendencies, the gods that protect the world, they won't let it happen. If you bypass them also, Maya itself is the biggest force. For Maya, the humans are like dust. We are like dirt.

Shashank is saying, there is something there but we are not perceiving it as it is in true nature.

Yes, something like that. The problem is the world is me, ? The experience that we are having, any experience, physical, non-physical, normal, paranormal, the experience is me and I cannot be known. The self is unknowable. And therefore, however hard we try to find a reason or we try to gain some fundamental knowledge about the reality of what is appearing, we don't find it. We will never find it because that which is appearing is unknowable. It falls in the category of unknowable.

So on the path of knowledge, we do not seek strange experiences. We want to learn from whatever experience there is. It is already very, very strange. You can see it. This experience, the current experience that we are having is already very, very strange. Oh no, I want a mysterious experience. But this is mysterious. When I say it cannot be known, it becomes mysterious. Can anybody tell me what is happening? Can anybody tell me what is being experienced? Can anybody tell me why it is happening? And you will find that the answer is no, no, no. Nothing can be told. Nothing can be said. All that can be done is a description. This and this and this is happening and it is most likely that it will happen in this way. But we don't know anything more than that. And if you can find a description, it will be a big deal actually.

Now this knowledge, you can call it knowledge. Not knowing anything is also knowledge. So this knowledge has been there for many thousand years. I saw this in Advaita. I saw this in Buddhism. I saw this in even Hermetics. It is known that the current experience is completely mysterious and unknowable for many thousand years. What has happened is, because of the fall of the humans, because of the dark ages, knowledge is lost.

Shashank is saying, while doing self enquiry and trying to grasp the experiencer, it appears the experiencer can be compared with light coming out of nothingness. You cannot perceive nothingness and you cannot see light also until it falls on something and is reflected. That is something is experience. Is this interpretation correct?

Yes, absolutely correct. Very nice. The light itself is dark. The nature of the light itself is darkness

until it hits something which is not light. Isn't that beautiful? I mean, this explains the mystery. Or you can say that this tells you how mysterious everything is. And this, by the way, was called the reflected consciousness. And my name for it will be awareness. You cannot perceive that which is perceiving. You can only become aware of it indirectly because something is being perceived. The perceiver will remain unknowable. Because yes, it is the source. The source will remain unknowable. That which is perceived, well, you think I am seeing it. You think I am knowing it. But you don't know that also. Don't worry about what you are perceiving. No, you are not perceiving anything really. And not only the knower is unknowable, the known which we think I know something, I am perceiving something that is also unknowable.

It is all mysterious in the end. And we are okay with it. I mean, I would be really really surprised if we could know something here in this existence. The existence is empty. The existence is emptiness. There is nothing to know here. Existence knows this very well. Who does not know this?

An ignorant mind thinks that whatever I am seeing, perceiving is the reality. And there is actually no concept of the perceiver also. There is no concept of what is knowledge, what is not knowledge. There is absolutely no means of knowledge. Nothing is defined. And the criteria for truth is borrowed from somebody else. This is the condition of the majority of humans. And that is why there is suffering in the majority of the cases. When that there is nothing which is worth knowing, the suffering is already gone. The value is in being, not in knowing. Be that which you are. You are the purest. You are the highest. And you are eternally like this. Where is the space for worry or fear or demands or wants, desires? Where is the space here? All these artifacts are caused by an ignorant mind. They are caused by impurities in the mind. And so on the path of knowledge we simply clean the impurities one after the other. Never worry about - I don't know anything. If you don't know anything, you are pure already like a child. There is no need to progress beyond that. If you don't know anything, stop trying to know anything. Nothing is possible. Nothing can be known here. It's impossible to know anything at all. Yes, it is possible to be everything. Now it is beautiful . I want to be separate from the existence and know the existence. This is again an ignorant mind. A very active mind. A curious mind but totally ignorant of its true nature. Abide in your true nature. Be that which you are. Instead of knowing and manipulating and doing this and that with it. That is all a sign of immaturity.

I am not saying that - don't play. You can play. This is your playground, ? You yourself are your own toy. This is the bottom line because why not? But after playing for a while, you can see that I was wrong. I am trying to twist this existence into doing that. I am trying to gain the powers. I am trying to be free from something. Cook up something and now I am bound by this and now I want to free myself from it. This is all play. Now after you play for a while, the toy becomes old and boring. This is the beginning of spirituality. The spirituality comes out of boredom because the play is no longer good. So the highest possible seeker is actually a bored seeker. Got bored of this existence and now wants to rest. Rest in peace. Never wants to come back and experience anything. This is nirvana.

Now there can be many points of views. Why can't I continue to play? Yes, why not? You can continue.

It is your playground. The whole of the maya is your playground. You can play. And then there will be other kinds who will say it's boring. There is nothing unusual in maya which is the truth actually. There is nothing unusual here. It is plain and boring. Repetitions, repetitions, changing patterns and vibrations. Nothing to see really. And then you can take nirvana like retirement. It's too boring now.

There is something which is not boring, which never gets boring. And that is bliss. That is what we call ananda. Ananda is never boring because there is nothing in it. It is empty. Some people may prefer that and some people may prefer to play. And there is an ideal seeker in my opinion. It is only an opinion actually that oscillates between being nothing and being something. Now you can see the beauty of it. Whenever you want, you can be something and start playing, fully knowing that I am not it. Take an avatar in some of the worlds, live a life, have relations, do whatever the avatars do. Back, back to the pavilion. You have played well. And don't count your runs, this. It was a play. Nothing is gained from this play. Don't count the score. The score is zero, always, absolute zero. Nothing is gained.

So you can see now that that is always happening really. The existence comes up and cooks up something as an illusion, plays for a while in infinite amounts of forms, then goes back to sleep. Everybody is in nirvana already, ? The appearance lasts for a while. You cannot even say while because there is no time. The time appears in the appearance. The appearances do not appear in time. So it is already happening like this that in cycles of change, the pure existence takes up forms, becomes lost in the forms. Even that is not a problem because you are never lost. Where are you going to get lost, ? There is nowhere to go. The whole infinity is you. Where are you going to go beyond infinity?

And then it retracts. All this game is being played by senses. The senses, if you understand the senses,

you will understand everything that is happening here. You will understand the whole illusion if you understand the senses. And it is the senses that keep us in the illusion. And that is why for a seeker, those who want nirvana, those who don't want to play, the senses are poison.

Manish is saying that this place is dangerous. We forget that this is playing and we start taking things seriously and then back to suffering.

Yes, the only danger is not knowing what it is, which is not a big deal because it is not going to last. So the danger is thinking that my conditions are permanent. No, enjoy the suffering. It's not permanent.

Just like you enjoy any good movie, there are some people who enjoy horror movies also. But if you enjoy the play of light and dark, without which there cannot be any movie. Without duality, there cannot be a good story. Without loss and gain, you won't be entertained. So why not, , we are here to enjoy the suffering also. Therefore, in Sanskrit, you don't find a word for suffering, really. There is no word for suffering. There is only one word, which is called bhoga. People translate it as enjoyment.

So there is bhoga and there is bhokta, which means the enjoyer and that which it is enjoying. It is very curious that I cannot find a real word for suffering. One word is dukkha. Some people are going to say the word is dukkha in Sanskrit. That is not really suffering. Dukkha symbolizes an absence that we don't want, that is undesirable. This is the root of the word dukkha. Sukha is an absence, which is desirable.

It is very funny. There is sukha and dukkha, but you can translate it as happiness and suffering. But what is really happening is enjoyment. And there is no good word for bhoga in English. So I have used a neutral word, which is called experience. It does not give us an impression that something is being enjoyed. And experience does not also mean that something is being suffered. It is very neutral. And so I like it. And so you will find that everywhere I use experience. And the translation for the bhokta is the experiencer. Now the other words are drishti and drishta. But they point to the senses, which I don't like.

Ajay is saying suffering is a choice.

Yes, we have chosen it somehow. Not we, but the existence chooses to experience. And the experience is neutral, really. The color of suffering is given to it by the mind. That is because there is a preference in the mind for certain experiences, not for others. That causes suffering. Otherwise, existence is not really suffering. The whole never suffers. The choice is a non-choice, you can say. It's an empty choice. Even if it wants, it cannot suffer. So it uses a trick that is called forgetting. It forgets what it is. Becomes that which is not. Becomes Maya. And now the suffering can be real. Now the suffering takes on a solidity.

For example, when you watch a movie and are lost in the movie, you identify with the characters. And then the movie is really enjoyable. Can you call it, I enjoyed the movie? We do say like this. This movie was so good, it made me cry. suffering? Why did you go through that horrible experience? No, but I liked it. So , that's why there is no word for bad experiences in Sanskrit. It is all empty. These words, they point to nothing really.

Shashank is saying, can the experiencer experience anything other than the senses, internal and external? Also, if the experiencer is truly inert, then who is coloring the experiences as good or bad, and how?

Very good question. Since everything is really empty, the existence is really empty, nothing can be experienced here. The existence is experiencer itself. So it creates the experience. You can say it roughly actually. It is not happening causally or it is not happening intentionally. There is a potential of some kind there for the experience to appear. And it always appears as a sensory activity. Always appears due to senses. There is no experience without senses. There was a very good question that somebody asked me. Why do we need eyes to see the world when we are consciousness? We should be able to see the world as it is without involvement of senses because we are the world. We are the consciousness also. , what we are seeing does not really exist. It must be cooked up somehow. It must be artificially made and the senses make it possible. How do they do that? They cook up the illusion. All the illusion is because of the senses. And only the illusion can be experienced. The truth cannot be experienced. You are the truth. The experiencer is the only truth.

Now, who says that this experience is good and that experience is bad? Conditioning. Another word for conditioning is memory. And another word for memory is mind, Chitta. It is a vritti. It is an activity of the mind to classify the experiences. It does it depending on its conditioning. Whatever gave it pleasure in the past is classified as good, not suffering. Whatever gave it suffering in the past is classified as bad. Now, there can be another question here. A commonly asked question is, how did the conditioning get there? And the answer is that it did not get there. It appeared. It is not real. The conditioning itself appeared with all the good and bad experiences. So, I don't think anybody is satisfied with that answer. So, I usually say that as the illusion evolves, because the illusion is changing, so there is a direction to it. You can see the direction there. Nobody is satisfied with this answer

that the conditioning appeared with everything else. This is the standard advaita answer. Like in a dream, when we go and when the dream starts, it is ready-made. Everything is already there. We do not sit there and try to create the conditioning and try to create the experiences and no, nothing. It is given to us to experience. So, the Advaitic answer is based on that. But there are more answers. So, Buddhism will say it's not real. Why are you even asking? But there are more answers. And I like one of the answers that - we can see a direction in which the change is going. We can see there is an evolution of some kind. And as these structures evolved, because of a preference for survival, they gathered conditioning. If something does not gather conditioning or you can say programming, preferences, there are so many words.

If a structure has no preferences, it is not going to survive. It's not going to evolve. It will rise and it will fall in randomness. It's not going to sustain itself. Remember this, this is a necessity. It is necessary that this will happen. You take two groups of structures, which I am calling the vibrations, vibrating patterns. Take two groups of structures. In one, there is a slight preference to sustain themselves. They are protecting themselves. The other group, there is no preference at all. There is no conditioning at all.

And you will find that within seconds, the other group is going to disappear because of impermanence. Everything is changing. They are just changing patterns. And the first group where there is preference will sustain. And only that will be experienced. The other group will not be experienced. And so there is conditioning because of necessity. Because this experience is guaranteed only because of conditioning. No conditioning, nothing is formed. There are no structures to experience anything. Senses are the most important structures. Brain is the most important thing in the body. It is just sense, ? All the senses, they are extensions of the central nervous system. They are giving us an experience.

What is the biggest conditioning in the brain or in this organism? The answer is simple. It is survival. So whatever threatens survival, whatever causes a discontinuity in survival, that is colored bad by the structure. Because without this tendency, it won't survive. The whole of human life is conditioned like this. And therefore, because there is good and bad, there is duality. And because there is duality, there is suffering. That is bad news, ? The good news is if you don't identify with these experiences that are good or bad, you are already free from suffering. Don't identify with them. This instruction is for the mind itself. Not for them, not for you. You need to install one other conditioning on top of the survival instincts. And that is that I am not it. This is also knowledge, ? And knowledge is also in the memory. Knowledge is also a conditioning. Knowledge is also programming. Install a program which says that I am not this. And remember it all the time. And this is called awareness. This conditioning that I am not any experience or I am the experiencer is a program. It's a conditioning. It's in the memory. I call it a layer of the memory, actually. I have given the map of the memory, the layered structure of the memory.

So once this conditioning happens, it causes liberation. It not only causes a total elimination of suffering because it is seen as not being there. It is seen as illusory. The suffering is not going to disappear. That is another matter. But it is seen as an illusion. And the organism then evolves further

towards taking finer forms. It does not need to take a gross form. You can say it gets bored of the gross things and then takes finer forms. And then finally the fine, final form also dissolves. That is nirvana.

That is dissolution, dissolved mind. So the good news is I am already a dissolved mind. The forms are so temporary, actually. In the blink of an eye, they come and go. Can you call it suffering? If it happens in a blink of an eye? No.

So suffering is in memory. Suffering is in your remembering. Remember the bliss. Remember the ananda. Be in this remembrance all the time. And now there is no suffering. What is happening is

because of this very strong survival tendency of the mind, you cannot say mind here. The whole thing is like this. The whole structure is like this. This survival tendency is so strong that it gives importance to suffering. Then it keeps bringing it back again and again. It remembers the suffering. It does not remember the joy. And therefore most of the lives here are full of suffering because that is all that is remembered. Somebody asked me how to go and check the bad things that happened in my past life

so that I can correct it now. Can the fascination with suffering here? We don't really want to let go of suffering, ? Human beings enjoy suffering. When you watch the news, what are you looking for there? Tell me something totally disgusting and horrible that happened in the world. That is why you go and watch the news, ? Do you really want to know if anything good happened anywhere? No, you don't. You want to see all the horrible things that are happening. Have you ever seen a movie where everything went right? Like for the whole two hours, all good things kept happening? Probably. But probably it was just a cartoon movie for two-year-old children. You don't take it seriously. the word serious itself denotes suffering, you are taking everything seriously. Which means what? You are preferring suffering. You don't prefer this suffering. You prefer the enjoyment, really. Or your enjoyment is suffering.

Manish is saying, having expensive diseases is considered prestigious.

Yes. Actually, people take pride in having diabetes and all those diseases which only rich people have. So where else can this madness? It's almost a mental disease, ? I remember when there was the last epidemic. Epidemics keep coming here. It was SARS. SARS originated in some rich country, in some foreign country. And only those who visited that country, who could afford that lifestyle to travel in the rich countries and stay there, were proudly saying that I got this disease. So that everybody comes to know that, yes, he also went to that foreign rich country. So I can see this as a total distortion of the mind. It is like a mental disease. And I have seen this a lot. People take advantage of this. People become sick to draw sympathy, empathy and attention to themselves. Oh, I am so sick.

I am not feeling good. I am always suffering. Everybody, please just sit around me and cry for me. Now, the sickness is, I don't know whether it is real or not, but the mental sickness is real here.

I have seen that there is a preference for suffering in humankind. That is what I find disgusting. They cannot live peacefully even for a second. They need to go to war. They need to kill somebody. They need to insult somebody. Everything is free here. , the food grows on the land. All kinds of facilities are being given by mother nature herself. Still, you destroy all that and then become a consumer. A consumer of suffering, really. Human nature gets attracted towards suffering. That is why we call it a lower world. That is why we call it an age of darkness or we call it a dark world. The only way out of suffering for an average human in this world is death. Why do they see death as suffering? Why are they afraid of death? Because it will get rid of suffering, ? Death is the end of all suffering. And that is why an average ignorant person is afraid of death. Suffering gives them a sense of being alive. This is disgusting. Only a spiritual seeker knows these things. Everybody else is like pigs wallowing in the mud. Smelly, filthy, stinky. This is the nature of human life.

As soon as it, you develop a detachment with this life. So much so that you don't want to be human. That is why we are trying our best to get rid of human lives. We are not trying to get rid of life. It is not that we love death, but we are waiting for it patiently. Because that will get rid of this mental sickness that is human beings. Although not all, there are some very good humans also. But they are mostly a spiritual kind. Even if they don't call themselves spiritual. But they are very happy and they are in bliss.

Shashank is saying, sometimes we become aware in sleep. Incidences like this suddenly increased with me in the recent past. But for some time now, they are not coming. Should we desire such experiences? And if they are not repeating, should we consider that we are not progressing?

What happens is as you gain knowledge, the mind enters another phase. It changes the mind and then it changes the experiences that we are having. There will be awareness in dreams or in sleep. Because something is known which was not known before. The possibility is known and therefore the experiences start. But the mind is a very funny thing. So it adapts to the new conditioning. It adapts to the new experience. And it looks like they are not happening now. Because the adaptation happened. Like you go to a foreign country and initially you cannot adjust to the environment and food there. Food is a real problem when you visit a foreign country. After one or two trips, after staying there for a year or two, there is no more problem. You can eat anything there. And same thing, adaptation is the way of the mind. So you give it any strange experiences. It adapts to it. It comes back to the habit.

So the first question you should ask is why do I want the experiences? Do I want it for knowledge or do I want to make the experiences my habit? So you should ask yourself these questions. If there is a desire to repeat the experiences that happened and now not happening because of adaptation. Should I consider going to the extremes to repeat those experiences? Is there any value in that? If you get an answer which says yes, there is value in that. Then yes, you should run after those experiences. For example, we value awareness and we want to repeat those instances of awareness. So yes, go for the awareness if you value it. But if that I became aware in dreams and then it was a slightly funny dream that ended. You don't see any value in repeating that again. Then don't.

Now he is asking should we desire it? No, desire, they happen before the “we” comes, doesn't it? The “I” comes later, I desire it, this thought comes later, the desire comes first. So when the desire is there, you check the desire that is in our control. The desires are not in our control. Acting on the desire, that is in our control, ? Only for some, actually. So check whether there is any value in pursuing, wasting your time and effort. In fulfilling the desire. If there is no value, then don't do it. From the highest point of view, there is no value in any desire, ? If the desire gets fulfilled, okay. If it does not, perfectly okay. There was no value anyway. The value is there only when you are trying to achieve something. When you have a life goal, you have a spiritual goal, and then you evaluate all the desires. Which one of them is going to take me to my goal? This is called intelligence, ? Vivek buddhi. So if something takes me to my goal, yes, you must act on the desire. And the experiences tell us nothing about our progress, really. The indicators of progress are bliss and freedom, which you already know, I think, which everybody in this group knows.

How do I know if I am progressing or not? Not because you are having this experience or that experience. You can be miserable with all kinds of strange experiences also, like a drug addict is. A drug addict is getting all kinds of strange experiences, but that is a miserable life. If you are born in a hellish region, you are getting all kinds of strange experiences, but that is hell already. So experiences are not really an indicator of progress. The real indicator of progress, or you can say milestones of progress, are happiness and freedom. Are you becoming happy? Are you letting go of suffering? In the light of our previous discussion, the suffering is already an illusion. Are you letting go of this illusion or not? In the absence of suffering, what remains is bliss.

Bliss is an absence. There is no special substance called happiness, which I will get, no. When this fascination with suffering is gone, it is called bliss. It is an absence. It is a good absence. Suffering is a bad absence. Dukkha, the kha here, is absence. From which the word khali, all those words come. So there is a lot of wisdom in the words, ? So if repeating is making you miserable, there is no value in repeating. And if you are dependent on an experience for happiness, there is no value in that experience. There is already suffering. Dependency is suffering. I cannot be happy if I don't get this and I cannot be happy if I don't have this person around me. I cannot be happy because I am not getting spiritual experiences. What is this? This is bondage to the poison. Experiences are poison. They are created by senses. Remember all the time, senses are poisons. They are active in the waking state. The senses are active in the dream state and subtle states also. All are poisons. So is it good to depend on poison to get your happiness? No.

The indicator of progress is how much you are letting go. How much light you are becoming. Here light means the opposite of weight. How much subtraction is happening, not addition. You have already added a lot . You are a pile of accumulations. How much is reducing? That is the indicator of progress. Are you becoming emptier and emptier? Yes. And then that is progress. Are you becoming dependent on all hundred kinds of experiences? You already had 50 experiences. That's not enough. I want more of them. And that is not progress. That is regressing. Are you happy with all the experiences? Yes. That is nirvana. That is mukti. There is no preference left there. I want this or I want that. Nothing is left there. Now you are as good as the vishvachitt, the universal mind - Sea of poisons. You are as good as that. Let go of it and then nothing remains. You are empty. That is the ultimate bliss.

And on the path of knowledge you will see it today. You will see it right now that I am the ultimate bliss, I am not that which desires experiences. I am not that which is doing effort to let go of this and that. These efforts are also themselves a part of the play, ? And the play is fake. And the play itself is a part of the illusion. Your whole effort to progress is an illusion. And you can see it right now. This is instant freedom. I don't know why people don't want this freedom. They want to progress. Okay, then progress. Progressive path is for you. Direct path is not for you. I don't know what is the case for Shashank. Are you progressing? Where are you progressing? Where do you want to go?

This reminds me of Papaji. the videos of Papaji, disciple of Ramana Maharshi. He does not answer anything. He simply laughs and asks, what do you want? And you will find that the person who asked was totally serious and crying, starts laughing. The realization is always instant. It is timeless. It is right now, right here. Where are you progressing?

Shashank asks me, can we consider that as not progressing?

Why can't that there is no need to progress? Why can't that that which is progressing will never progress? The mind is trying to progress. No, it does not progress. It does not go anywhere. The mind is a structure that is bound. It cannot become free. The sign of progress is realizing this. I have seen that, if somebody tells me that I need to progress on a spiritual path, I can already see a lot of identification here. I am doing this to progress. I am doing that to progress. I can see that he will never progress. The realization does not require effort. Yes, getting this experience and that experience, that requires effort. And therefore, we have the path of experiences, the progressive paths. Remember, there is only one direct path. The rest of those hundreds and thousands of paths, they are all progressive. They are for those where the identification is so strong that they cannot help it but progress. I need to progress. Yes, but I am giving you the ultimate. Why don't you want it? No, I don't want it.

I came across these people and I was surprised. I am liberating you right now, right here. I am showing you that part of you or that reality which is already liberated, which has already progressed to the highest. It happened that people wanted to know all these, , tiny, whiny things about the experiences, how to have this experience, how to have that experience, how to progress by breathing, by doing this and doing that, by manipulating the sleep and dream and who knows what. And I said, no, I am going to give you something bigger, which is the greatest, which is the ultimate. Check who you are. Realize your true nature. And nobody was interested. These people were not interested, really!

What can I do to manage my stress and suffering and anxiety? Do you have any tricks? , I get such questions. And I said, I am going to free you in one minute of all suffering forever. And they were not interested. No, no, just tell me the tricks and tips. So I am surprised that people don't want a direct and complete solution. It is like two enemy countries. The war is going on since many, many years. They can sign a deal, agreement and stop the war. Do they want peace? No, they don't want peace. Why? Because then tax money cannot be spent on weapons and the military. The military does not want peace, does it? They will be out of their jobs. The police do not want the criminals to disappear. Who will pay them? The violence, the war gives them power. The war keeps them in power. Nobody wants peace. You can see it. Whenever there is a war, people are excited. Something good is happening now in their lives. Everybody wants war. Everybody wants to kill the enemies. No, friendship? No, no, friendship is for cowards.

Similarly, everybody wants one experience or the other experience. They don't want freedom. Even the biggest of the seekers I have seen, they prefer bondage, not freedom. Freedom is terrifying. When I show you your true nature, what do ? emptiness. That is a terrible thing for an ego, ? When I say all the experiences are illusions, don't run after illusions, you don't accept it because the ego is very strong. It wants the illusion. Its whole survival depends on their being. When I destroy your reality, do you like it? No, you don't. You fall back into the illusion. There are views actually, we call them pessimistic philosophies. They say nothing good is going to come out of spirituality. There is some truth in that. Today I am sounding very pessimistic, but I am telling you the bitter truth.

Shashank is saying permanent solution is suicidal.

It is suicidal for the ego and ego is not going to accept it. I have especially seen this tendency in the western countries. When they are introduced to things like nirvana and mukti, immediately they are terrified, it is like a nightmare. You mean there will be nothing? Oh no, I don't want it. So they have a word for it and they call it nihilism. Your very nature is nothing. Your very nature is total darkness. the sparks of light here and there which are illusions. So the ego is totally terrified of mukti and nirvana. It does not really want it. And so the whole drama of progressing is just an avoidance of knowledge.

This is a very important thing to know. The ego cooks up this whole drama that I am progressing, and it is an excuse to avoid the knowledge. It does not really want to face the knowledge. Ego does not progress anywhere, impossible. You will never progress. I am going to give you this in writing, on a stamp paper. Nobody will progress here. No person has progressed. No person will become liberated.

No person will achieve nirvana. By person I mean the jiva also, the causal body also. Why is that? Why am I so pessimistic?

Because it is not its nature to be dissolved. It wants to continue. And it will cook up all kinds of illusions that I am now liberated and so on. The liberation is the destruction of the person. Is it going to happen for the person? No. Is it death? No, it is not death. The same thing comes up as another illusion. The illusion pops out of seeming death. It seems that it is gone. No, it is not gone. The seeds of the illusion are very deep. And it will never go away. So we should not see it as pessimism or nihilism or terrifying and fearful. See it as a bitter truth. And then become friends with it. Accept.

Accept this is going to be the case forever. There will be illusion. There will be conditioning. There will be this drama of progressing from this conditioning and illusion and suffering. And there will be all that stuff there, which will get in the names of spirituality and religions. Accept this and be peaceful, be happy with it. There is nothing wrong in it.

Session 57

There was a question some time ago which is not very often asked but is very important and that is how do I become less attached to the world, to the body, to people, to my own thoughts and emotions? Is there any trick that can make me less attached or detached from all these things?

So let us find out. We can start by exploring what attachment is. First thing that comes to my mind is that it is some dependency. The dependency can be positive or it can be negative, both are attachments. If the dependency is because you like that thing very much to which you are attached

then it is a positive dependency. If the dependency is such that you are afraid of it, you are afraid of letting it go or you are worried about it that someday I will lose these things, whether they are objects or people, does not matter, then it is a negative dependency. So detachment means letting go of the dependency.

Some people are going to say that how is it possible? Suppose I need food every day, if I become detached from food then life is going to become very difficult because there is attachment to the food. There is good news here, you can still eat without any attachment, it is possible to do that. Let go of the dependency on the food, the dependency is there because it is providing you with some pleasure or it is providing you with some security. There will be people who will say that I am attached to some person or my children or something like this, even dogs and cats and why is that dependency there? It is probably because of the security, it offers a little bit of comfort when you are with that person. It is not that you are getting something from that person, it is just a psychological effect that I am not alone, that there is somebody who will protect me. It is a fear based dependency, how to get rid of it? You can of course identify more kinds of dependencies, there can be let us say tribal dependency on the tribe, I belong to this race, I belong to that race, I belong to a superior race and then you don't want to let go of that racial prejudice because it provides you with a little bit of pleasure and security.

So you can find some more kinds here, there can be many kinds of attachments but the essence comes out to be mostly these two things that there is either pleasure or there is security which is connected to survival only, so it is a survival issue.

Some people are going to say that yes survival is important but if I detach from the survival then probably I won't remain there, the detachment will be complete and that is true, one day the detachment will become so intense, so strong that the survival won't be possible. By survival I mean survival as a human body, anyway it is going to go, so we prefer a death that happens in total detachment, that is the preference of any spiritual seeker.

Let's go back to the topic of dependency, the answer must be clear now, the mind, especially the lower layers of the mind are pleasure seeking machines, they are pleasure oriented and so as soon as something gives you pleasure, dependency happens, that is converted into attachment. There is fear behind the attachment. That is the problem with the attachment that it is not only a dependency but there is fear there that what will happen to me if this thing is not present in my life, it can be objects, it can be people, it can even be your intellectual achievements.

The first thing that you can do is see that you are not going to become anything small, you are not going to reduce if you let go of that fear or let the dependency, you are independent and free. No amount of attachment is going to help you here, attachment is going to actually reduce your independence and freedom. It has already reduced your happiness, some people think that the attachment is the source of my happiness, it is just a source of pleasure, it is just a source of security, that is why it looks like source of happiness because you are afraid of letting it go and even the thought of letting it go makes you sad, makes you insecure, so it is already causing suffering.

There is something very interesting about the nature of the mind that it lets go of an attachment if it can find better attachment, if it can let go of a smaller pleasure, if it can find a bigger pleasure and it lets go of something which is a small risk, if it can find a bigger security somewhere. We can take advantage of this tendency of the mind that we can provide it with a bigger pleasure to let go of the smaller pleasure. This can be a trick that can be used to get rid of an attachment. But then you will say now it will be attached to the new one and that is true, it will be attached to the new one if you are not careful, you need to provide it enough so that it is ready to let go of the first one. It is necessary to do that and you need to train the mind if it feels insecure to take a little bit of risk and show it that there is no harm really, give it a little bit of security there so that it can slowly let go of the old tendency, it can be fooled easily, it will think that I am getting security here, no problem at all and then to let go of the old dependency for security.

How do we do that? Let us say you are attached to food, over eating, you like to eat different kinds of foods, that is your life because that is what is giving you pleasure, one day you don't get that food on which you are dependent and the whole day becomes a suffering. Let us assume that you have another tendency, for example sports, you like to play some sport, that is also a source of pleasure but not so much as food and you want to get rid of this attachment to the food. The solution is very simple, you give more energy and more time to the sports, less to eating, slowly the mind will become attached to the sports more and will let go of the eating habits, bad eating habits because that I cannot perform in the sports if I eat heavy food or if I become overweight I won't be able to run fast, this is enough motivation for the mind to let go of the past dependency because it has seen something negative there, it is going to happily let it go.

Now you are stuck with the sports. For example let us say you like reading books, stories etc. is also giving you pleasure but it is a finer pleasure, now you can distract your mind with reading and then spend more time in reading and less in sports. Whatever layer there is that is attached to sports, knows that if I play too much I will get tired then I won't be able to read, I won't be able to finish this very interesting book and then you will find that it is happy to let go of sports also, now it is tangled in reading. Now how to get rid of the reading? It is not important to stretch the metaphor, but you will see a pattern here from the gross to the fine, you are slowly bringing the mind out of the gross stuff.

Some people are not going to even perceive reading as an attachment, you will see the attachment in action only when you are not allowed to do that, somebody takes away your favourite book, now you cannot read it, you don't get your books now and there if the suffering arises that means you are attached. Here we cross to the spiritual domain from the intellectual domain, you give it something which is even a finer pleasure, there is a fine pleasure and you already know what it is, it is the awareness. Awareness also provides a little bit of pleasure because of the peace, because of the peace of mind and the blissful feeling that it provides, the fearlessness, the carelessness that the awareness brings. As soon as the mind tastes the awareness it is going to prefer it because it is almost effortless. It takes a lot of effort to eat and earn money to eat that much and then maintain the health also, then it takes some effort to play something and it takes a little bit of intellectual effort, mental effort to read books or to do some intellectual or artistic work but it takes no effort to become aware. Let the mind taste it and then it will be happy to let go of the book reading attachment also, attachment to some intellectual activity also.

This is the whole trick and you can see it is gradual, this you can call it as the refinement of attachments, why do we need to do this, actually this is only one method that I told you, why do we need to do this progressive detachment? Because the mind has a tendency to stick, it cannot let go easily, so you provide it with something to stick to but ensure that it is finer than the previous attachment, by finer I mean it is lighter, it does not demand too much energy and attention but it still provides a little bit of pleasure to the mind. Do not forget this, do not try to engage the mind into something which it dislikes completely, it hates it and you say no, get attached to this thing, it is not possible. So we trick the mind like this, like we trick the birds into cage, that is not a good metaphor but what do you do when you want a bird to get into the cage, it is not going to get into the cage no matter what you do, so you put a little bit of bird feed on your roof, so the bird comes and lands on your roof, then you put a little bit of bird feed on your door, bird comes to the door now and when it is less afraid it can even come inside if it finds a little bit of food there and then finally you put some of the food in the cage and it is happy to go in the cage. That is not a good metaphor because we are talking about freedom here but you can understand it like this, you provide food to the mind so that it lets go of the cage, it finds security in the cage, you encourage it to come out of it, we hack the mind, we hack the mental ability, we hack the mental tendency of the mind to bring it to a state of detachment.

Finally you reach the awareness level which is fine but you need to detach from that also, you can see that you are attached to specific spiritual practice like awareness, mindfulness etc, if one day you cannot do it, one day it is gone and then all the hell enters your mind and then it is suffering and that day you will find out that you are attached to awareness also, you are attached to this practice also. Now there is actually nothing finer for the mind to attach to but there is surrender now, this is the final step, what is finer than awareness, surrender. Now you are not bothered whether you are aware or not, it does not produce any suffering if you lose awareness, if it is there, if the mind is tangled in it, it is drinking the nectar of awareness, it's fine, when it loses it, instead of suffering this loss, instead of suffering this inability to drink that nectar, you simply say I let go, it is fine for me to not be aware and by me I mean the mind. You should be aware by now, you should be able to discriminate between what is mine and what is you. So you say it is fine, sometimes the mind is not aware, so what? and now there is a freedom here. That freedom is finer than awareness, so mind is happy to let go of the awareness also, it says ok I am aware whenever I am aware, it's fine.

Actually the awareness is going to increase here, but it is not happening as a dependency, you are not forcing it, you are not telling the mind to be aware, it is doing it by its own and if it lets go of it, fine, that is also ok, the surrender is more important than pushing the mind, surrender means end of all attachments, now you are not attached to anything in particular or you become attached and then let it go. Whenever there is a need, you get attached to anything in your life and proceed with that experience and when it is over, you detach from it, like you get the complete control over the process of attachment, instead of it happening mechanically, you do it under complete control.

There is increasing freedom here, now the freedom is so much that I can take on attachment if I want to. Actually I experimented with it and I failed, so I don't recommend that, I have never said this thing in any of the formal videos that you take on attachments. Actually I never say this thing the previous step also that you become satisfied, content with non-awareness also, I never say this, because an average seeker needs to first come to the level of awareness by any means possible. If it takes effort, it must be done by effort.

These two or three steps go higher than what I usually ask you. I usually ask you to let go of the gross stuff and be content in the awareness. Now that is not the end, you can even refine it even more. I don't think there is any end to the process of refinement. For a human reaching the layer of awareness is a big achievement already. With the advent of awareness all attachments are dissolved automatically, it is a difficult thing to bring the mind out of everyday attachments, attachment to that which ensures our survival as a human being.

What will happen to survival, if I don't do all these things? It is possible to survive very nicely without

attachments, you can eat the same food without attachment which you ate with attachment. What was happening with attachment, when you did not get that food? Your whole day was ruined that day, you were angry that day, you were upset that day, I did not get my favourite food. Now you can eat your favourite food without attachment and if it is not available that day, there is no effect on you. You say ok, it is not available, I will just eat my regular food today, survival is my aim, not pleasure. Once in a while you want pleasure, yes go and eat that food, but when it is not there, when that thing is absent, I am not going to get upset, there will be no suffering at all.

Now you understand the process, you can apply the process to a person also, how can that I am attached to a person? The absence of that person or if that person does not do or say those things which he does for you or says for you, they are not available one day, you will find there is suffering, there is stress and anxiety. What is happening to me, he is going to leave me, my best friends are not talking to me now. This is attachment, if it generates suffering. Sure sign that mind is attached there. Now you can attach to somebody, because the mind is not going to leave the personal attachments, relations, you get into a lighter relation. Now you get the trick, now you will need to let go of that also and you get into an even lighter relation, light, and now you can guess which

is the lightest relation, where there is complete and unconditional acceptance. That is the relation between a guru and a student. All other relations are very sticky, they are full of attachments. If the relation between guru and student also becomes an attachment, the student cannot stay even one day without seeing the guru, without talking to the guru, then it is a big problem, then it is not really a guru and student. The guru must reside in the mind of the student, there is no need for physical contact there.

You go into the lighter and lighter relations and then the final relation is with your guru. How to get rid of the guru? That is one more problem, ? You attach to the guru field. If you don't know what a guru field is, please go and listen to the content that I released on guru field. There is one video in Hindi and one audio podcast episode in English about the guru field. So you get rid of the guru’s form here, the guru person will be gone now from your life. And that is a finer attachment, the attachment to the guru field, there is no such thing as guru field, it is just the universal mind. There is no personal element in the guru field, so it is very easy to have a detachment there. Now you can form a very good strategy to come out of the attachments that are formed due to insecurity, the same way you give the mind a taste of freedom by taking a tiny bit of risk, the mind loves this freedom, the mind does not really want fear. There is a big heavy resistance to being afraid in our minds, but it wants security, so if it gets a little bit of taste of it, it is fine with this condition also.

You remember those days when you were forced into the school, in childhood, you felt insecure in the classroom, your mom was not there, your brother sisters were not there, your house was not there, but a little bit of risk taking, then the mind became habitual of the school. You left the school which became very familiar to you and you went to the college, then you felt insecure in the college, because

of the different environment, different people, it is a totally different atmosphere there, but you got used to it also. There are some people who are totally attached to their families and the reason behind it is insecurity. What will happen to me if my family doesn't talk to me? Well, go on a trip for one week, check what happens, you are still alive, no threat to your security, no risk there, go on a trip for one month, go and stay with your friend for six months, join a job in some other city, stay there for five years. It is not risk taking, you can see there is no risk to your survival, there is only psychological fear that's all, not a real fear, don't do stuff if it causes any harm. You will find if you do like this, because of this gradual risk taking, the attachment due to insecurity is going to vanish completely. Now you are a free person, you are a free bird, you are secure everywhere. Actually you will find, people come to you for security now, you are in a giving position now, you provide security, instead of you depending on somebody else to get security. You come in a giving position, that is a very powerful position. Let me tell you that non-attachment, detachment and freedom, they are very powerful positions for a human being, they are very rare. It is very rare to find a person who is so powerful that people come to him with folded hands, please do something for me, please provide me love and security, money or whatever. It is a position of very big power, you will find that the one who is in this position is totally free and the confidence is dripping from his eyes. He speaks in confidence, he walks in confidence, he talks in confidence. Because I don't want anything from anybody, I am not dependent on anything in my life, confidence is a natural outcome, fearlessness is a natural outcome of detachment.

Detachment sounds like a negative word, no it is not, there is nothing more positive than detachment. Then you laugh at your own stupidity, when you were totally insecure and you were totally dependent on stuff for pleasure, when you were dependent on people for your happiness, you are going to laugh at your stupidity, when you come to this position of power. By power I mean spiritual power, I don't mean supernatural power, that's not detachment. There is a power in a spiritual seeker, that is why people are attracted to such people. You will find that you are sitting in airport or you are sitting in railway station or some other place and a swami in the orange clothes walks past the hall, you will find that you don't want to look at anybody else, but you will look at the swami, not because he looks funny or something, there is a power there, he is different, he is not like other people. That is why when these great people, even rich and successful people, when they walk and talk, they are charismatic, you want to follow them, you want to take orders from them. Big politicians are like this also, nowadays I don't know but, for example Mahatma Gandhi, he was a politician actually, with so much power that millions used to gather in his meetings. People knew that he is special, he is not ordinary, why was that?

Because he was not hiding in his mother's lap, he was fighting for the country, he was not hiding inside his house, in the security of his family. Anyhow we cannot become that big instantly, but you can take small steps, baby steps to complete detachment. Probably in this life it is possible for you to achieve it. I was like that, even a small incident would make me totally upset, I used to get irritated, the smallest thing possible and one day I said, why is it that small things upset me, why is it that I get irritated by

people and all and I found the reason is attachment. I want something from everything and everyone

and this is a dependency. How is it even possible that my life is dependent on random people? My happiness is dependent on what people say, isn't that irrational? How is it even meaningful? Something is wrong there. Yes, attachment is wrong.

You will realize it if you pay attention to what is happening in your life, you will find that there are twenty-thirty things that you are attached to. I started getting rid of these kinds of things, less and less people started controlling my behaviour, controlling my thoughts, more and more energy was left to do that which I love to do. Some people are amazed by the speed at which I learn, you give me something new, well I learn that thing at ten times the speed of an ordinary person. How is that possible? It is because a lot of energy is left in the mind, there is a leftover energy that ordinary people spend in processing insecurity, fear, attachments, hate and whatever arises in their mind because of attachments. Not the whole but a big portion of their day goes into processing that, so no energy is left for doing something creative and good. I have seen this improvement in my own mind and that is why I am in a position to advise people about it.

Let me take the question from Jyotsana, please talk about enlightenment, does it happen in an instance or is it a gradual process?

Let me break your bubble here, there is no such thing as enlightenment. I don't know how this word came into India, it is not in Vedic literature, it is not in Upanishads, it is not in Gita, it is imported from somewhere else and we don't know the meaning of it and that is why you are asking the question. So my advice is forget the word enlightenment, there is no such thing and now you don't need to answer this question - whether it happens in an instant or is it a gradual process.

That is a very crude answer and that is a very straightforward answer, don't ask about things which you don't know what they are. It is a very funny word because you go to this Guru and he is going to tell you the enlightenment is this and that, you go to the other Guruji and it is completely different there. Enlightenment is like a nebulous word, it is a meaningless word actually because people can define it in any way, they give it a meaning, whatever meaning they like. So you will find I never use it and detachment, it is a very well defined word, just like I defined it right now, absence of dependencies, mental, physical, whatever, spiritual. So you must have heard these stories , one fine day this Guru was sitting in the jungle and suddenly he gets detached from everything, how is that even possible? Because when I was explaining detachment, I told you that I am going to give you only one method here, which is gradual detachment. There can be more kinds of detachments, there can be sudden detachment. I have seen cases where people heard about what they are, they came to know their true nature, next day complete detachment from everything, not next day, same day actually.

They could not sleep the whole night, next morning they are a completely different person, the famous story of Gautam Buddha, don't you? What happened to him? He was a totally attached person, attached to all the comforts of life, he was a prince. One day he saw the beggar, the ill or an old person and a dead body. Next day he left. What about my wife? No, I don't care, what about my son? I don't care, what about my kingdom? Who cares? What is that? Instant detachment and he was not enlightened or anything, ? I don't know what he was at that time, but it was an intense detachment. It happens simply by knowing something, knowledge brings detachment all the time.

So let us not confuse these words. Nobody knows the meaning of enlightenment, so they use this word as a placeholder for whatever they want it to mean. We don't have any enlightenment on the path of knowledge, you don't get enlightenment here. There are cases of detachment that happen instantly, but that that are very rare. Such people become big gurus and mahatmas overnight. People start worshipping them and all, this is India, so such things happen, but for an ordinary seeker, you and me and millions of others, we have no other option. We are not going to go and sit in the jungle today, we have life, we have our attachments, we have the objects, we have the houses, we have the families, we have the jobs and so many things. We are trapped and then you should not wait for miracles, work on it, cause it to happen, the more , the more detached you will be, that is the path of knowledge.

We don't use tricks actually, whatever trick I told you, the gradual bird feed trick, don't do it actually, if you are on the path of knowledge, knowledge should be enough, that a relation is a fake thing, a relation is just illusion, mind created, that pleasure is a fake thing, it is mind created, mind rewards itself, when survival is achieved, you call it pleasure, you call it happiness. these things are fake and the detachment should happen there and then. Why am I running after fake things? Why can't I live it in a more refined way? I don't need to leave my survival activities, I can just refine it a little bit. I was spending 5000 rupees per day on my meals, now 50 rupees, it's refinement, it's a detachment. I had 20 girlfriends, now I have one, life is running fine, it is detachment.

You will find that knowledge will bring this lightness, more letting go, detachment. If you ask me about detachment, whether it happens gradually or instantly, in rare cases it will happen instantly, in one day, but in most of the cases, it will happen gradually and in many cases, the guru beats the attachment out of the student with a stick. That is also very rare these days, it used to happen a lot.

Some people have attachment with their mental capabilities - I am very smart, I have read this book, I have read that book, I know this fellow, I am this volunteer in this society, I have this title, Swami Paramhansa, whatever. These people need a beating on their head, otherwise, , they don't get detached, there is nothing finer for the mind at that time. But we don't do it on the path of knowledge.

Shashank is asking, please explain Manan and Nididhyasana, when one comes to Nididhyasana, should Manan stop altogether?

Manan alternates with Nididhyasana, you must have noticed this. You are thinking about it, you are introspecting, you are looking inside you, that is what introspection means. It is not simply thinking mindlessly. You observe and you arrive at some conclusions and this is the fruit of Manan, this is the fruit of introspection. If there are no conclusions, if there is confusion, it is not Manan, it is like blind thinking, it is a mechanical thinking. You need to see and then you need to use your thought process, your logical ability and your intellect to arrive at a conclusion. That conclusion must hold. And this should happen every time you check it. The Manan should end here because you are now convinced, there is no doubt in your mind about the conclusion. It actually goes into a lot of detail, I give you nine points to think about. The conclusion is drawn and now you abide there, this is the Nidhidhasan, or abiding. If the conclusion is not strong, by strong I mean you are not convinced of its truth, then you won't be able to abide. This is the litmus test of abidance, if you don't know what it is, if you're not convinced about it, if you have doubts about it, you won't be able to settle there. Settling is abiding, there you don't need to think much and then abidance will happen till there is the next question.

So they alternate. What happens when there is a next question? You listen, you approach the Guru again, you listen to whatever the Guru has to say and usually the Guru gives you cryptic one or two sentences, then he leaves you for six months, go and write down four pages on it, something like this will happen in ashram settings. I don't know whether people are doing it or not these days, but this is the proper tradition on the path of knowledge, that the Guru is not explaining it like spoon feeding. Guru does not do that, he gives you like a sutra, sutra means formula, actually the sutra means a thread but let's translate it as formula and then he leaves you with that. He will tell you - you don't know Sanskrit, yes I'll tell you the Sanskrit meanings of these words and he will explain the formula and now do it yourself. And obviously, the student cannot do it, so he will go to the Guru again - that day you told me this, I don't understand this, so the next dose is given. But the Guru is not going to spoon feed you with the answer like we do here in the satsang. Actually I stopped doing this, many people must have noticed this thing, you are getting more homeworks these days. I used to write a long answer because he needs my answer, but that is going to spoil you because your mind is not going to think about it now - Guru says this. In this book that is written. Because you got a ready-made answer there, you did not do any effort to get that answer, your knowledge is half cooked here, if your knowledge is half cooked you are not convinced of it and then there is no abidance.

We trust the process that wise people came up with and have been practicing for many thousand years, it is not a new thing. I am now inclining towards this giving something to the student to think about and I see that 90% of them fail and I see that those who fail they actually give up the path of knowledge. They say my Guru is not telling me anything, I am not able to conclude anything about my questions, I am not able to introspect, I better leave this path. They go and join something else where no thinking is required, for example kundalini or hatha yoga or something like this, where mother nature does everything for you.

Path of knowledge is difficult. The Guru is trying to make you independent here. As soon as you listen to the Guru, you do your introspection, if the Guru is happy he will sometimes spoon feed you, if the Guru can see that - yes he is going to grasp it, he is not going to have any doubts if I tell him about this thing, then he will give you the whole of it, otherwise he is going to give you hints like - look it is like this, now think about it, look the vasana is also maya, can it? Think about it and so on ? So you alternate between the listening and thinking, thinking means introspecting, it should not be mechanical thinking like you should not drift in your mind - he said this, he said that and that was written in that book and I heard this from somewhere, let me google it, let me watch a video on it and then more food for thought and you never arrive at a conclusion. Your conclusions are only this much that somebody said this thing, with the other fellow he said something totally opposite and this other fellow he said something funny about it, these are your conclusions about the topic, about the subject. That is not progress, is it? That is not progress at all, that is stupidity, it is going to make you stupid.

Better read some book and then finish with it, but it's not progress, you learn nothing from the books, you need to see it yourself, your experience is your knowledge, if you cannot experience it and if you cannot derive insights out of it, you cannot derive conclusions out of it, it won't be possible for you to abide there. How can you abide there? You don't know the meaning of chetna or awareness and you are not willing to see it, how are you going to remain aware? I heard this thing the chetna is like this, I heard this thing you need that mantra to arrive in the chetna, I prefer samadhi actually and this is all BS, this is a fake seeker, only words, nothing is going on in his spiritual life, nothing at all and his mind is now fossilizing because the words make the mind stupid.

Listening, introspecting and abiding, they go serially like one after the other, if you are abiding you are free to do whatever you want. Abidance is not a prohibition of other activities, you abide in the knowledge that does not mean that no thoughts should come in my mind, they can, you are most welcome, but if a doubt comes about things in which you are abiding, it is a problem, that means you are abiding in what? Then you're doubtful about it, it is still in a listening phase, if you don't think about it, you don't make it yours - yes it is also my knowledge, it is my conclusion also, now it will be possible for you to abide. I can go back to the hot pan metaphor again, how many times do you need to touch the hot pan to know that it is hot and harmful for me? Only once, it only once, for the whole of your life you don't touch it, the conviction is too strong ? The experience has happened, the conviction is strong, there is no doubt in your mind that if I touch the hot pan I'm going to get hurt. What do you do? You abide in this knowledge, you don't touch it again, you're aware of the hot pan next time. Manan may continue when you are abiding, it can continue on another topic, it can continue on a more advanced phase of it, so it's a matter of doing and nididhyasana is not going to happen overnight, it takes time. The insights drop like rain, when you are on the path of knowledge you will get one after another like a serial insight. Abiding comes slowly. Actually that is my experience, there can be talented people who abide from the next second onwards, it's very rare.

Pawan is saying, detachment is different for everyone but true detachment is that, when we really know what is detachment, it's sattvic detachment. In vedic literature there are two more detachments, rajasic and tamasic.

I had no clue, I don't know what is sattvic detachment and rajasic tamasic detachment. Yes, the true detachment is when you completely understand what it is and the mind cooperates with you. How do I completely understand the detachment? The mind is willing here, you don't need to beat the mind with a stick to detach. If it is going there willingly, it is true detachment, going there means going away from the object of attachment.

There can be impure kinds, sattvic means related to truth. There can be impure detachments where people think I am detached but it is disgust in their mind or something, that is not detachment, being disgusted by something is not detachment. So yes it is possible to have different kinds of detachment, it is indifference, it is not detachment.

Why should I even bother about other kinds? You will know the impurity in your mind, you are a seeker, nobody needs to tell you, you are honest, at least inwardly you can see everything. How can you be dishonest with yourself? Being a seeker it is impossible to be dishonest, can you gain knowledge by being dishonest? Yes I am detached now, yes I know awareness now, yes I know the difference between

experience and the experiencer now. How are you going to progress if you are not honest about these things? Can you fool yourself and progress? You can fool others and progress that is not a big problem, you can even fool your guru that I am progressing, the guru does not care really what you are doing, the guru needs to ask only one question and he will know how honest you are, and the problem is an average seeker can fool himself. He thinks that I know everything. This is true because it is very difficult

to fool somebody else because you do not have that control over somebody else, but it is easy to fool yourself if you want to, if you are willing to fool yourself, you will fool yourself and then you will be convinced that I know everything now, I don't need to progress now because I have already progressed and that becomes resistance in your mind.

I know I don't want to even listen to this guru, I've seen so many people, some of my friends who are interested in spirituality, no I don't want to even listen to that guru that you are listening to. I said why, what is wrong with that guru, you don't like his face or something? and they say no I already know what he is going to say and I said if I was convinced that you already know what he is saying I wouldn't send you the link also, why will I waste my time sending you the link and inviting you to my house to watch the video together. You can see the resistance of the mind here, fooling himself. Usually a seeker cannot come out of this trap, the resistance is invisible, so you need a guru. This is the answer to the famous question - do I need a guru, if you are lucky you don't actually need a guru, the knowledge is simple, ? The mind is complex, that's why I need a guru, the guru can see all this foolish behavior, the guru can see if you are fooling yourself, the guru can see all your resistances and attachments, the guru knows all the tricks of the mind, because he was tricked for at least 50 years by the mind, he knows everything.

He has made every possible mistake. If you get such a guru who got burnt all the time by the mind, you are lucky. If you get a guru who simply reads from the book - not so lucky. You need somebody else but you can start there, there's nothing wrong with that guru, it's a good place to start but your true test will happen when you meet a guru. When you meet a real guru, he is going to beat the resistance and foolishness out of you. He will leave you with nothing of yours. You will feel that I don't have any knowledge, you will feel that I am stupid, you will feel that I have done everything wrong in my life. This is the sign that you have met your final guru now, you don't need somebody else after this.

On the path of knowledge we are very open, there is no rule about the gurus, you can have 100 gurus if you want. There is no rule because we learn from everybody. The guru field is the proper word here, the guru field appears as many people, even books. We don't have any problem unlike in the other fields which I don't want to name them where guru is god. No, here on the path of knowledge guru is a use and throw thing. Use the guru, get the knowledge and throw him, don't get attached to the guru. Get on to the next one. I know everything he knows now, I am totally convinced and the guru also approves that yes you have reached the level that I am on and yes you have more questions, you have more desires to progress, now I am going to send you to this other guru, go ask him, go and join him, join his ashram now. So you get the guruagya, which means the permission from the guru but that is a formality, no guru is going to stop you actually from progressing at least on the path of knowledge. You can change the gurus every year if you want, you learn from everybody that is the message here. We don't restrict the student, go and learn from anybody you want, get into the other philosophy if you want. Do you like the other one? Yes, go and spend some time there and if you find it better than advaita then stay there. If you think that advaita was better, welcome, my doors are always open.

Manish is asking, if we continue doing meditation will the layer of chetna start to activate automatically or do we need some effort to change our focus to experience or to awaken chetna?

The word meditation has many meanings and on the path of knowledge the meditation means manan, it is a loud meditation, it involves writing, it involves talking, discussing like we are doing right now. It involves thinking, brainstorming. If you want the meaning of meditation you will be surprised because there is no meditation on the path of knowledge. We do not ask you to do any meditation. When somebody says - meditate, then we take this word meditation in the normal english sense like thinking. There is no specific technique here for meditation on the path of knowledge.

Will the chetna start to activate automatically? Yes the awareness will activate simply by listening if you understand what the teacher has said about awareness. It will activate simply by listening. You don't need to do anything. What do you need to do - to know that there is an observer. Which meditation will tell you that? Open your eyes, look around, there is observer everywhere. Which meditation will

bring in that awareness of the experiencer? Do we need effort to change your focus to experience it? You cannot change your focus to experience it actually. This question shows that you don't even know what experiencer is. It is not possible to observe the experiencer, it is the place from where the observation is happening, it is the place of the sakshi, it is the place of the witnessing.

Attention is an activity of the mind and the attention is like a narrow window, the one that is behind the window is the experiencer. So you cannot focus on the experiencer. Who is going to focus on experiencer? Is there a second experiencer focusing on the other experiencer? Is it possible? So what I'll advise here is that you go back to the drawing board, learn what is experiencer, learn what is experience, learn what is meditation and learn what is chetana or awareness.

Shashank is saying, we cannot say that we are not aware in dreams, otherwise who will see dreams. But I am not the same person in the dream as in the waking state. Why is the identity of the waking state not carried in the dream? Why is there a discontinuity of identity? By self-awareness you are creating a common new identity which remains unaltered in waking state and in dreams.

Yes, you are right. Are you asking why there is a discontinuity of identity? There is a discontinuity because the identity is fake. We are trying to bridge this discontinuity when we are trying to remain aware while the mind changes states from waking to dreaming. Now you'll find there is no discontinuity. This must be your own experience. Those who are doing the experiments know this. There is a discontinuity because identity is fake in the waking state. There is no need for it in the sleep. When new experiences appear in the dreaming it again creates a new identity. It actually forgets that there is a person in the waking state who is sleeping. Have you noticed this thing? When you wake up from the dream anytime in the night or in the morning, you will notice this. It creates a totally fake identity for the purpose of the dreaming. Now, that will make you wonder - is it creating a completely

fake identity for the purpose of the waking state also? And the answer is yes. The loss or discontinuity or the continuity of identity from waking to dreaming while you are aware is actually saving the work of the mind. Now it does not need to create one more identity, it can reuse whatever is there in the waking state. Simply continues with the same structure - my name is this, I am this many years old, this is my gender, the name of my family is this, I work here …

Same things will be dragged into the dream, which has become a lucid dream now. Now you can see the fakeness of the dream in the face of this apparently real identity. I am this one who was present in the waking state and I am witnessing a dream which is completely fake, made up, and that gives you power over the dream. Now you can dream anything, now you need to command the dream and the dream appears before you. Because there are no limitations of the waking state, now there is no physical reality there. You get the powers, that is a minor siddhi to get into a dream with full awareness with the

same identity. If you come out of the dream with the same identity, those who have experienced it, they will know, it feels like I am a god, it feels like total freedom. You have conquered like half of the planet. The next half of the planet is the subtle body. In a subtle body state you will feel a sense of immense freedom if you successfully do these experiments.

So yes it needs to create a different identity every time it loses awareness, every time it will create one more. When you die, it does not remember anything. When you take a new birth, it creates one more. Somehow if I wipe out your memory, next day it will start creating a new identity for you in the waking also. This happens to the patients who suffer from trauma. Their mind is now blocking the old identity because it suffered a lot, something really bad happened. Now the identity is split into two. Sometimes the old one comes out and then it is like havoc. We call that person a mad person because we don't know what he is doing. Starts crying on the street and starts shouting and so on. What happened here? The old identity came back somehow which was suppressed. This multiple personality and all this shows us the true nature of the mind, that it fakes everything actually, including what you consider yourself, it's completely fake.

Pawan is saying, what are the differences between expression, sanskaras and memory or smruti, are they same?

It is not expression, it is impression. So sanskaras means impressions and I guess they are same for all

purposes. Sanskara is a technical word which means it is never gone and smruti can come and go. For example it is your sanskara that you walk on two legs. Can you forget that I walk on two legs? But whatever your boss told you last month in the meeting you don't remember now. That is smruti. Actually walking on two legs is also a memory, it is somewhere but it is more solid. You use the word smruti where there is no guarantee of it coming back. A technical thing, but for me they're the same just because if you cannot recall the memory does not mean it's not there. It is there. Sanskara is something which you don't even need to recall. For example, if you need to recall how to sing a song, that is not sanskara, that is not impression, that song is not impressed in your mind but when you sing effortlessly without even thinking, you're so engaged in singing that it simply, the song simply flows with the correct notes and it is beautiful to listen to, that means the impression is very strong here. So you can cook up a definition here of the sanskara that when the smruti becomes very solid it becomes an impression. When it cannot be erased, it becomes an impression.

Shashank is saying, are we not creating new self-identity by spirituality and self-awareness but experiencer is devoid of identity and is nothingness?

Of course we are creating a new identity here - I am the experiencer. It is an identity. Why do we do that? It is a good thing that you brought up this point because the experiencer, like you said, has no identity, it is nothingness, it is totally empty of everything. The experiencer is never going to say that I am this or that. It does not say anything, it is watching this new identity also, it is observing the new identity also. Just like we remove the attachment gradually, step by step by luring the mind out of that original attachment, here you clear the mind from its old identity by giving it newer and newer identities. When you go to a guru what do they do? First they just strip off the name from you, they will do a renaming ceremony there in the ashram. Now you are not the old Shashank, you are somebody else. You will be given a new name, new clothes will be given. Your head will be shaved off. Now you don't look like that old fellow. Now your food is different, even your shoes are different, they're wooden shoes or whatever because in the ashram leather is not allowed.

Something like this is going to happen. This is a change of identity. And yes your knowledge is zero. See this is the first day in the ashram, but they don't care about it, all they care is that you don't come with the old identity. Remove your past when you enter the ashram. You can see this is followed symbolically in the temples also, when you go to the temple, what do you do? First you take a bath and you clear everything and in many temples they will shave off the head also. Nowadays this has become a business but they will do some change in you. Then you need to leave your shoes out, you're not allowed to take the shoes in. The shoes are a symbol of dirt in India. It's already very dirty so this is not really symbolic, it is a reality. It is symbolic, meaning that you don't want to bring in your old self there, the dirt, you don't want to bring it in front of the deity. Or if it is a different temple, lingam or some place to meditate also, you don't want that old stuff to come with you.

In India every tradition, every ritual was designed to clear your identity. When a girl marries a boy, she gets a new name. Nowadays you only get the last name, but there was a time not many years ago, actually this is still happening in some parts here. The villagers do it actually, where I live, they change the name of the girl completely. Now she cannot dress in the other clothes, she needs to dress in a specific way and now all the symbols are painted on her body - now you're married. Why is that? The identity is cleared from that girl. Even the marriage was a ceremony to clear your old identity.

So it is not a surprise that the first thing that happens is you give up your old stuff, leave it behind and it is completely useless. The sooner you do it the better it is for you, the faster you're going to progress. Yes there will be a new identity here, that I am a seeker and all this is fine because the gross things are gone now. One day the seeker will turn into - I am the causal body. I am the jiva, who is caught up here in the sansara and so on. Your identity will keep shifting and one day you will realize that this world is a dream, now the identity will be assumed of a dreamer, not of the dreamt. This avatar in the world will be seen as fake. It is gone now but identity is there. One day it will become - I am bodhisattva. That is almost nothing but it is still there. One day you will say Shivoham, Ahambrahmasmi, and that is the ultimate identity, but it is still identity. Finer forms of identities till you say I am nothing, if you want it can happen in one day, you can drop all these identities in one day but you won't do it, you are so in love with your identities that you don't want to do it and that is why we need to do all this circus of step by step snatching everything from you. We leave you with nothing, we leave you with no I, no self. You can do it in one day if you want. That attachment is too much.

In neti neti, step by step we strip away the identities. Are you the body? And then you are forced to look at your body. Is it coming and going, is it changing? Who is witnessing this changing body? And suddenly that body is gone, now it's not you. You realize that I am not the body. Is it some other body? Is it mind, is it your name and you say no. You cross it off. This is the neti neti process. In one hour I reduce you by 90 percent and then I say you are the experiencer, that is a very light identity there, it's almost nothing. In the end I say that self-knowledge is knowing that I am not there. I does not exist. This is self-knowledge. Seeing the illusion of the self is self-knowledge. It is completely unexpected. It is like a twist in the story, so the mind is blown there.

Charlie is quoting somebody, there is nothing missing and no need to find anything, when the dream ends no one wakes up. The dream was the dreamer only and when it ends there's no one left to wake up.

Absolutely. Who will wake up? You think that you are going to awaken to a larger reality just like you awaken from a dream into the waking state? No, the waking state is the dream. Dream continues in the waking state in a different setting. You will realize this if you have not already, the real waking up is waking up from this illusion that there is a dreamer.

The traditions that are very direct are also very fast. They don't entertain your idea of identities. Fortunately or unfortunately, the path of knowledge is very flexible about it. When we cross off all these things that define my identity, that day and that time is your opportunity to leave every identity. But what I've seen is - 99% of the students take back an identity, they assume an identity. Oh no, I need to function in the world also. Yes, then go ahead, get an identity then and it will allow you to function in the world. You will remain the relative of the relatives. You will remain an employee of the employer and you will remain whatever you want to be till the mind is comfortable about letting go of the identity. Some people have this delusion that my identity is going to go away when I die. No, they will snatch this identity card from you and they will give you a new one to hang on your neck, on your non-physical neck. It does not go away by dying, otherwise we would get a tradition here in India

which recommends dying for mukti. Fortunately we don't have that. Just above the causal body there is a layer which I called a non-individualized layer of memory. Causal body and below all are burdened with identities of different kinds. You think I'll get a light body, I'll become a god and there will be no

trouble with the identity. No, unfortunately they have the same burden as humans of identity. You think I'm going to become free from births and deaths and I'll lose it? No, as long as there is a causal body that is differentiated from the group layer. As long as there is a differentiation it will keep producing subtle bodies, physical bodies, this body, that body, it will keep dreaming as a new identity.

The non-individualization happens only by grace. There's nothing else that causes the non-individuality to appear. Identity is going to stick to you but enjoy it because it's going to go away one day. It can be defined as nirvana when you enter the non-individualized layer but I can tell you that there are things which even survive nirvana also. I don't really know the meaning of nirvana here because it says it's total dissolution, but there is nothing in this existence where the total dissolution happens, it is always a refinement of some kind. That is my understanding. What will be a total dissolution? Is it emptiness? Then you're already it. Even in the presence of the identities you are completely dissolved. You are in nirvana right now. Why do you worry about appearances? They are also empty. Your identity is already zero. It is an appearance. You can refine it but it achieves nothing really because the greater mind is bubbling up more identities. They are solid and heavy. Who is getting benefited by this nirvana?

Shashank is saying, not all teachers mention or instruct for dream and sukshma sharira experiments. Why is that?

It is simply because that is not their path but there are specific paths whose goal is the sukshma sharira, for example the tantra. In tantra, the goal is to attain a control over the subtle body so that you can leave this physical body willingly and just like you said that there will be continuity there, yes if you do that willingly you won't really die, it is like achieving immortality. What do you do with immortality? You finish off your prarabdha, you finish off your sanchita and that is why I call it the path of desire fulfillment and that path will also lead you to mukti, only that you are not doing it in a natural way but I don't think that is unnatural. Whatever they are doing they are actually taking a shortcut in their life. I've never seen a bigger shortcut than that. It is amazing. People came up with all these methods in this country thousands of years ago. Nowadays we don't even know that. It is simply because that is not their path. Obviously there is nothing like this on the path of knowledge. You need to discard all experiences as illusions. Don't run after the experience. The teaching is very clear. You are in the sukshma sharira right now, you are in a loka right now, you are already projecting a body in another world right now, which is our waking state. You think it is me, you think this is my home, you think it is my original life. I'm going to visit some other place in the universal mind and return back to my original life. But there is no such thing. Don't do these experiments, they're completely unnecessary. You can learn everything there is to learn in this current state, in the waking state, because it is exactly equal to any other state.

You don't know this and you are asking this because probably you never had the solid experience of being in another world, in another body with the same identity. Same identity is important otherwise you cannot carry those memories back. Otherwise the memory bridge will not form between the waking state and the projected state. So if you do it once, only once is enough, you will know that this world is completely fake, this body is completely fake, everything here is a dream. You need to do it only once and it is such a mind-blowing experience. I don't want any seeker to simply discard it because their guru told them, because their tradition told them - don't go there. You are an explorer even before you are committed to a tradition or even before you take up a path where this is banned. I say don't do that. Free yourself. Do what you like to do. Yes, if your guru tells you that you have impurities, you are not ready, you will probably get a heart attack if you go to the other world then

don't do it please, listen to the guru. Guru knows you more than you know yourself. You hardly know anything, that's why you call him guru. So get yourself checked first. You must have seen the people who recruit soldiers in the military. They take a hard test there, it's painful and now you are ready for fighting, now you can go and kill other people in other countries. You're cleared. Similarly the guru is going to clear you first. If you say no I want this experience, guru will be responsible for purification of all kinds. It is painful, yes, it can take many years and then the technique is told, which I gave it away for free because it's already available everywhere. No more secret societies which can protect this knowledge. Fortunately the most powerful thing is still hidden but you can use any technique nowadays to get this experience. If you have the awareness you will get the experience. With that experience of other worlds, detachment will happen because the mind has tasted something which is better, which is more freeing. It is like a feeling that you were imprisoned in the jail for many many years and now they let you go. The same feeling.

I've seen the attraction for these techniques and these experiments is too much and thousands of people are watching that video. I get at least two or three emails every day asking only about these experiments. I cannot take you beyond the technique, do it at your risk. If you are serious, go to a guru, join the tradition where they give importance to the subtle bodies and subtle worlds and all kinds of gods and goddesses. They are all helping them. If there is no help from the other side you will probably not succeed in this. You need help from the other side. These traditions have the help from the other side. They are not going to declare it in public but they have it. They have the doors open. There you can pass through that door if you join the tradition.

Bhuvan is saying, I'm initiated in kriya yoga. My kriya guru told me about his many previous births, there are so many sadhakas who got so many siddhis.

Very good. Yes it is possible, I'm not saying it's not possible, depends totally on what path you are on and the genuine path is not going to advertise anything. The kriya yoga teacher is also going to tell you that I will give you detachment, I will give you moksha, I will give you mukti. He's not going to say I'll give you siddhis, he's not going to say I'm going to tell you about your previous births. They don't mention these things. But yes, if you join that path, the path of experiences, you will get all kinds of garden variety experiences. On the path of knowledge we say all of them are fake. Yes your guru is correct, the guru is always going to tell you the final goal not the scenery that happens on the path. These experiences are sceneries they come and go. If the attachment is very strong with these things, you have two options - either you take the experiences and get rid of the attachment because once or twice or three times and then it becomes boring. But awareness never becomes boring because there is no attachment in awareness. The attachment can turn into disgust or detachment but awareness does not turn into anything else, it remains awareness. There is a subtle non-duality in awareness, it's not non-dual but some people want to call it non-dual awareness. It is non-dual awareness in some sense because there is no opposite of awareness once you get it the non-awareness is also awareness. Once it becomes a sanskara, now nothing can take it away. This is the last thing that will go. We say that awareness is your practice, not experiences. Get the awareness, you get the experiences in bonus. Awareness is a train that will take you to the highest peak and then you get to see the scenery while riding the train. Path of knowledge is very plain, no colors here, it is boring. So those who want experiences go and have the experiences. Do not get attached to the experiences, that this is my goal, roaming here and there is my goal. No, it's all fake. Don't make the fake things into a goal because you will be disappointed, you will waste a lot of time. I also say the same thing, sometimes the simplest is the best, sometimes without colors is the most beautiful thing, sometimes the riot of colors and twists looks ugly. There is beauty in simplicity, it is very simple, the path of knowledge is simple, it is very beautiful.

Session 58

Bhuvan is asking, please throw some light on Mental Karma.

Usually we think that whatever we are doing through the body is the real action. There is no other action but actually the Masters have identified at least three kinds of actions. The first one you are already aware of which is - any changes that are done by the body, any actions of the body, they are called the gross actions. The second is - something which is said, our speech, that is the second action and the third is thinking. If we think about something it is an action.

So everybody will agree that doing and speaking are actions but very few people are going to agree that thinking is an action because they think it is me, because they think the thoughts are mine and it is me. They are not being done by the body or they are not done by some other instrument. This is because there is ignorance about what these things are, what these events of thoughts are. You can call them the subtle action and from the point of view of the universal mind, if you take a look at what is happening here, you will find that the thinking is just vibrations in the memory, changing memory. That is all it is. It is an expression of what is there in the memory and speaking is just a gross form of that, it went through an instrument, it was turned into language and then it is expressed by the body. Although the outcome is only sound, not much, but this sound has a value. This is not totally without consequences.

Where are the consequences happening? They are happening in the universal memory. Again, it produces vibrations that are gross, but the vibrations can become another action. For example, you instruct your servant to do something and the servant produces an action. You are using some other body to do the action. For example, you are a commander in the military and you instruct all the soldiers to kill people. That is simply speaking, but it is going to have a big consequence. Anyhow, it is producing a change in the universal mind. It goes through the gross layers, but same thing. And when you use your body to do any actions like hands or feet, it is another change in the universal mind.

From the highest perspective, all these things are simply changing something in the universal mind. And therefore, all of these changes are karma or actions.

It is not wise to think that my thoughts are not action, there won't be any consequences. And it is not wise to think that my speech will have no consequences. Probably only a fool will conclude that I can speak whatever I want to speak, there will be no consequence. That will be really foolish. Because it is not that gross, it does not mean that it has no consequence. And there are some misunderstandings about what can be done through the body. People think that some of my actions are not going to produce consequences.

Sometimes there are things which we do, we think are not going to produce fruits or consequences, but they do produce consequences. If you take a closer look, some people may say that, okay, but the consequences coming to me only, nobody else is affected. That is also wrong. For example, you grow up watching violent movies and your attitude becomes violent. Your nature is angry and violent. Now it is going to show up in your behavior. If you are in a family, if you are with somebody, then again and again this violence will be triggered. You think that the movies have only affected me, they have entertained me and me only, but no, others are getting affected because of the effects of it.

Similarly, you think whatever I speak, good or bad or jokes or insults, they are just sound in the air, but no, they reach the other ears and through the ears they reach the mind. They make changes in the mind. So you think insulting somebody has no effect at all? It is going to produce an effect in the long term. Here we enter another dimension of the karma. Some actions are going to give you a fruit instantly, but the subtle actions, they give you a fruit after a delay. For example, if you hit somebody, there will be instant action there, either they will hit you back or something will happen there. If you insult somebody, they will remember it, but today they are not going to do anything. When the time is right, there will be revenge in some or other form, because the seeds are sown in that other mind, it will produce an action from the other side.

What about thinking? Since it is very subtle, it is going to produce a result probably after many years, probably after many lifetimes also. You thought something bad today, it is going to produce an effect after many years. If you think good today, it will probably produce an effect after two or three lifetimes. The action never goes away really. It never dies. The effect is simply delayed.

Now we go to the more controversial aspect of actions. If I am dead and I do something, I think something, is it going to produce a fruit? And the answer is yes. But we don't really know what will be the fruit. We cannot calculate a consequence here. First, it is beyond our experience right now. Second, it is beyond our intellect, how that will happen. You are in a subtle world, in a subtle body and you do something there, you think it is a dream, but no, it will produce a consequence. What and when, that is beyond human understanding. Sometimes it produces consequences which we do not understand, which we never understand. In fact we don't even understand the simplest of actions. So this is all about mental karma. It should not be called mental karma. It is just a subtle karma. All karma is mental already.

Jyotsna is saying, thoughts are coming from universal memory. Why do a particular type of thoughts come to a particular body and are the bodies capable of creating thoughts?

It is a very good question. If there are sources of thoughts in the universal memory, why don't I get random thoughts? Why do I keep getting the same thoughts? And here there is something called attraction. How is it that you are the same person? Because you tend to experience the same memory. There is a bond with a particular area in the universal memory. What is that particular area in the universal memory? What is this gross body bound to in the universal memory? Causal body. That memory area is called the causal body. So most of our thoughts, they come from there. If this bondage is broken, more variety of thoughts will be experienced, although whatever is experienced, that again is stored back in the causal body. Actually the bond reinforces itself like this in a cyclic manner. The causal body generates the causes, which means it generates the impulses, which we also call the desires, vasanas, and that produce thoughts in the mechanism of the body-mind, that is what is experienced, and whatever is experienced, it goes back in the causal body. So , it closes in on itself, it is a feedback loop, it feeds itself, and there is a good chance that the next thought will come from there only.

So it is not necessary, all the causal bodies are affecting all the gross bodies, there is no separation between body and causal body or the memory. The gross body is also a structure in the universal memory, the causal body is also a structure in the universal memory, there is no separation, the separation is of attraction. I have given it a technical word somewhere, but probably I'll just skip the technical version here and I'll simply say that the bonds are formed like this. Just like when you pour water in the sand, what happens? The water goes to some place randomly, initially. You keep pouring the water at the same place, what happens? Channel is formed and the water goes to a pool, it forms a little pool, and every time you pour the water, it will go to only that pool, through the same channel, and that is what is called a bond. It is very strong, it's not possible to break it.

She's asking, why these thoughts come to a particular body, they don't come to the body, the body does not receive thoughts, the body is a machine, they come to the experiencer, nobody else receives the thoughts, only the experiencer experiences anything, not the body, not the mind, these are experiences, body is an experience, it does not receive the thought, only the experiencer receives the thought. So because of this bond, the experiencer is continuously receiving the same thoughts from the same place.

Sometimes it is possible to receive the impulses, vibrations coming from other causal bodies, other minds, even places, even animals, it is possible to do that. We call such people, sensitive people, empathic people, clairvoyant people, there are many names, in Sanskrit we call it divyadrishti. It is possible when your attention grows beyond a certain limit, then you will start getting thoughts from everything, they are just vibrations, now you interpret those vibrations depending on your intellect, your intelligence. This is the basic way to communicate when you are out of body, when you are visiting other worlds, you will get just a bomb of vibrations, boom! Now you can spend one hour interpreting, what was that? So our intellect is slow actually, we communicate one word at a time, one word, then the next word, then one sentence, the next sentence, like this, our meanings are also very small, depending on whatever we have experienced. When you are visiting the other worlds, probably 90% of what was communicated will be lost, because it does not make any sense, because those vibrations are so foreign, it is like foreign language, it is not even heard sometimes. You will see that there are entities around, but you cannot hear them, they are trying to communicate, you are deaf somehow, it is because of our reliance on the five senses. So that will be an interesting experience if you go and experience it.

Are the bodies capable of creating thoughts? No, the bodies are capable of affecting thoughts, you must have seen this, when you feel good, when you are healthy and fit, your thoughts are also somewhat happy and light, when you are not feeling good, that means, see the word feeling good also

reflects health, when we are not well, when the body is ill, we say that I am not feeling good, which means the body has affected our feelings, affected our thoughts. So not only the body, all the layers affect thoughts.

Only the intellect is capable of producing the thoughts, intellect creates the thought. In general we say this because the word thought has a little bit of broader meaning but for the purpose of the philosophical discussion, we restrict the meaning, we define it, we don't want the meaning to drift here and there, so we lock the meaning to something specific. So I have locked the meaning there for the purpose of the discussion to the activity of the intellect, you can have rational thoughts, you can have logical thoughts, you can have stupid thoughts, you can have sad thoughts, happy thoughts and all, how is it possible?

Because the different layers are affecting that activity of thought, the vritti of thinking is being influenced by different layers. The body is also a layer, it influences the thinking. Now you will find something amazing because the physical world is also a layer, it also influences thoughts. You are in a good atmosphere, your thoughts will automatically become good, you are in an ugly atmosphere in a lot of dirt and bad smells, your thoughts are going to be affected in the same way, although nothing wrong is happening, you will find that your thoughts will be becoming negative because the surroundings are not clean.

You can see this effect when you visit a good place where all your friends and relatives are there and when you visit bad areas like slums and all dirty areas and thoughts change, you cannot keep the good thoughts in those areas. World also affects what we think. Similarly, the layers above the intellect, they will affect them. The ego is the biggest effector of the thoughts, because our waking state is mostly dominated by the ego, ego means the aham and the identity and similarly the higher layers are going to affect our thoughts. When you abide in awareness, what happens? There are very light thoughts, there is hardly anything, as soon as something negative tries to get into your mind, what happens? It is burnt, we shoot down that thought using our awareness. See, one thought cannot shoot down the other thought, one thought cannot kill the other thought, so if you keep thinking that let me do it, let me kill all my bad thoughts, it's not going to happen. The awareness because it is the higher layer, only it has got the power to get rid of the negative thinking, the awareness has got the power to induce good thoughts. Now there are higher layers than that, you already know that, the causal body, biggest effector. If you don't bring in the awareness, then the causal body is like raining down on the thought process. It does the job of creating the thought seed, actually it is the seed, otherwise the intellect has no motivation to think anything, the motivation comes from the causal body, it is the motive force.

Even beyond the causal body there are group minds and whatever we call a soul family or something like this , it is also affecting our thoughts. And here we enter something very important, the guru field, the gurushetra is a group mind, if you allow it, it is going to affect your thoughts, it can channel down its influences on the intellect and the intellect, if it is capable, it will grasp it and you will find new insights are coming. You are struggling with the question and the guru field will simply give you an answer, not in terms of other thoughts, you are not going to hear a voice from the guru field, look this is the answer, no, it simply influences your thinking process, little bit, tiny bias there and you get the insight. And that is the only insight you will get, you won't get anything , you simply see your mistake, this is my ignorance, that's all you are going to see, that is by the blessing of the guru field.

It will happen sometimes, don't worry you are not going to know the future from the guru field, you are not going to know some secrets or lottery numbers from the guru field, no, that's not going to happen. Sometimes you will get advices, little bit of bias will be there in your decision making, that is all the guru field will do, that is all the guru field will interfere, otherwise you are free to decide anything and probably I should not go beyond this because there are more layers there and there it is possible to know past and future and all. The memories stored there, you can call them Akashic records if you want, I simply call it the universal memory or the greater memory and everything is stored there. Everything, and if you get that ability to tune into the Akashic records, you will get the past readings and future readings and you will get anything you want, any information at all, whether it is trivial, whether it is harmful, whether it is good, it does not matter, that memory has no ethics there. It does not mean it is unethical, there is no concept of good and bad there, it is almost non-dual memory in the universal mind, so it is manifesting everything, good or bad it does not care, that distinction comes only after the intellect arises.

The higher beings have this intellect, they know what is good, what is bad and if you tune in there, that is most advantageous for us, for our growth. There are infinite things already in the universal memory, so there is a good chance that you will simply get lost if you make that your spiritual goal. Make connecting with the guru field your spiritual goal and then all the goals will be taken care of, it is an automated process after that.

Shashank is asking, what is the best criteria which I can use to choose karma, to do some and ignore some?

It is easy, always choose that which brings happiness, peace and freedom, not only for you, for everyone, for everything, always choose that.

Do not consult a book, oh look at this book, it is a great book, it is a 2000 year old book and it is telling me to do this, probably this is the good action, no that is not good. Although it is very rare to find a spiritual book which will prescribe bad action. What has happened is the meanings of the books have gotten distorted, because we are going through a low time, the meanings are distorted. Second reason,

because of the lowly people, selfish evil people, they have misinterpreted the past knowledge which was pure and they saw that people are following the books blindly, religiously, so they misinterpreted it to control people.

We should simply throw it away now and use the universal criteria which is also known as non-violence. Whatever I told you can be described in one word that is non-violence. What is non-violence? Do not cause any harm to the environment around us, to this body, to other people and to the mind also, and to the other minds also, and to everything , all creatures,

all animals, all the disembodied creatures, do not cause any harm.

What will that do in turn? It will increase happiness, you cannot be happy by making others unhappy, it is not possible, this is the law of karma, the unhappiness that you spread comes back exactly to the point from where it was spread, this is the universal law. So what you do, you change your behaviour in such a way that you spread happiness. Because you don't even know what is non-violence, don't worry, just do not make anybody unhappy and do not cause any harm to anything, this is the best criteria. If you adopt this one practice, only this one, non-violence, you will reach your spiritual destination in a Ferrari on a superhighway, that is the superior action, non-violence.

Everything else is full of effort, when I say keep the awareness on, when the yogi is trying to do this, such breathing in that pose, when the hatha yogi is trying to manipulate the kundalini since 20 - 30 lifetimes, what do they do? They are like going in a bullock cart to their spiritual goal. Adopt non-violence and the path will take you there, just sit in the car of non-violence, it is going to take you there, take you to the highest possibility this creature, this jiva is capable of. That is amazing.

In English we can probably call it unconditional love. It does not involve loving everybody and hugging everybody and all this, it is no nonsense thing. If you want to kill somebody, yes, it is also unconditional, if it is required, if that person is causing a lot of harm, you need to kill that person, just like Arjun. Non-violence does not mean restricting yourself from killing things, it simply means the greater good is in killing somebody. Non-violence does not mean becoming vegetarian, it simply means you don't cause harm when it is not needed. Do not kill animals for fun, do not put them in a cage because they look good and entertain you and do not make them serve you, do not tie them on a leash, because it is selfish. So you can kill the animals, that is your food, what else can you do? The only way to get out of this loop of births and deaths is to not to be born as a human being, otherwise you will need to do your duty here, you will need to save things, you will need to kill things and all these things will happen, and if you don't like, you want to go to a higher level, stop coming here, stop taking the human form.

So that's why wise people have advised that, take on the path of non-violence and get rid of this birth where violence is the norm. Just to get your bread and butter you need to be violent, we call it competition, it is just violence. Just to get your work done in the world you need to speak harsh words, speaking harshly to somebody is violence. Survival makes it difficult to be non-violent and so we do not like this birth. We do whatever is possible and then we get rid of human birth, human body. Because this point was raised, I will tell you what is the worst possible action.

Srikant is saying, suicide.

Well Srikant, you got the gold medal here. I was not expecting that. Very nice. Suicide is the worst possible action. So I am not going to say more about it. It is not going to cause any harm to anybody perhaps, but it is the worst action. Atmahatya, killing oneself. Because you are losing this opportunity which this whole universe has produced. It took the whole universe to produce this one birth. Remember this. You think it is your mother and father? No. They are the last link in the chain of the causal chain. The whole universe has been working hard for many million years to produce this one birth. It is losing the opportunity. Suicide will terminate even the “good” karmic fruits. It is so harmful that the causal body is affected by suicide. The causal body is okay with death. It is a normal thing for the causal body to die. It has done it a million times. Suicide will leave a permanent mark on your causal body which is not going to go away. It is permanent. It will never go away.

Srikanth is asking, what about abortion?

It is a very good question. There is an effect of abortion. It is as good as killing a plant or an animal. But we can give it a benefit of doubt here. We know that the causal body takes a little bit of time to connect to the fetus. The newborn. It takes a few years even after birth. Sometimes the connection is exchanged between different causal bodies. It is possible. Your grandmother is interested in this baby. And you are having this baby. Same causal bodies get attracted to the same family. Same genetic lineages. And after six months of the birth of that baby, she decides - no I think it is not going to be a good time for me. So she leaves the baby. And your grandfather says, okay, you are leaving it, I am not leaving that baby. And the causal body of the grandfather takes charge of this baby because it was abandoned.

When you abort the baby, has anything happened in this bigger scheme? No, really not much. But yes, after the connection has happened, which can happen anytime, and you abort that pregnancy, there are consequences. They are as good as killing somebody else. Murder. Wise people from the past, they saw this. And some of them actually banned abortion. Because they came to know the consequences of it. There are consequences of everything.

Now, remember that it is not the action, but the intention. Let us assume that there is a teenage girl. She is only 13-14 years old and she gets pregnant. Now, if she gives birth to a baby, it is going to be a very bad life for the baby and the girl also. It is going to be a suffering. And no good causal bodies are interested in that baby. Because they know. They can see the future a little bit. They can guess it. And the girl has no means to earn money or anything. She is in a backward country somewhere. Fundamentalist country. People are not going to like it and so on. So she goes to the doctor and gets the tissue aborted. It is only a bundle of tissue there. It is not even a baby. So here, the consequences are going to be good, really. You have saved catastrophe here by aborting. So ultimately, such questions are debatable. By debatable, I mean there will be a difference of opinion. And the difference of opinion is because there are different points of views. Some people are close-minded. They will say, no, this is written in this book so abortion is bad. Well, that is extreme. And some people say, no, our population is increasing and all abortion cases are good for mankind. And that is also stupidity. It must be decided case by case. If you don't know, what should you do? Those who are listening and have a question about whether I should abort some baby or not, they should go to the wise men of their village. If you are in a city, well, bad luck. You should go and consult somebody in your tradition or something, who has a little bit of a big picture there, who knows the karmic laws a little bit. And think about the advice for a while and then take your own decision. Nobody else is responsible for your decision. It is not because somebody advised you to do it, they become responsible. No, ultimately you are the actor, you have done the action. So the fruits are going to come to you.

So , there can be two views or 10 views about abortion. And for example, whether we should kill our enemies and things like that, whether we should kill, whether there should be death penalty for the criminals and all. There can be opinions about this. But I have never seen another opinion about the suicide. Never seen two opinions there. Everybody will say it is bad. It is universal, not only on earth. It is there in all the worlds. It is considered bad. It is extreme ignorance.

I am going to say more about the best action. I always say, do that which makes you happy. Now, the violence is making you happy. Something is really wrong. As soon as I say the word non-violence, people think - don't kill. Now, imagine somebody is beating you up, hitting you with a stick and all because he likes it. There is no fault of yours. Can you remain non-violent there? Can you adopt this narrow definition of non-violence? Do not let any harm happen to my body also, this body also, this mind also. What do you do? You take out your gun and kill that person. That is going to make everybody happy, actually. That is why I do not use these words, violence and non-violence, because everybody interprets them totally differently. So I always use these words, happiness and freedom. If killing something, somebody is going to make you happy, yes, why not? Do it. Fight a war, kill millions if you think that is good for you, good for the world, good for everybody, greater good. Drop the bomb on their heads. It is to be decided by you, nobody else.

There will be a million desires every day that will try to manifest through this body-mind. You need to pick that which produces the most happiness and freedom. You need to ignore that, which is totally unnecessary for our lives.

Someone is saying, in the light of awareness, what one will do is right.

That is absolutely true. That is why on the path of knowledge, we do not even say, do this or do that. There is no right action prescribed on the path of knowledge. Why is that? Because we know, as soon as the awareness comes online, meaning that it is activated, the chances of doing a wrong action become almost zero. Why? Because awareness is a refined intelligence, actually. The right and wrong is actually built in our total being. In this universal mind, the right and wrong is already built in. Why do we do wrong things? We don't know. The ignorance is there. Why is there ignorance? Because there is no awareness. There is no higher intelligence. So, we hit on the nail, actually. We don't fool around with this is the right action, that is the right action, this one was wrong. We don't do like this. We got the key now. There is the problem - I don't have awareness therefore, my actions are haphazard, they are random. I am doing everything that is unnecessary, and I am ignoring everything that is necessary. That is because of lack of intelligence. So, yes, awareness is the key. Awareness will tell you what is right, what is wrong. Awareness will tell you what will bring happiness, what is going to bring freedom. And yes, awareness will tell you what is non-violent. You can be non-violent without awareness. That's possible. But as soon as situations become negative, you will find that the same person turns violent. Because it's artificial. It's good manners only. It is not embodied by that person.

Awareness means when you are aware all the time, you will find that you will do the right action automatically. If there is a little bit of awareness, you will see that even in the dream state, you will not do any violence. This is my experience. Sometimes it happens. I do not take wrong action even in the dream. That is something amazing. After death, you are not going to do the wrong action. You are not going to choose a wrong birth. You will wait for the right time, right body. Or the best action is not to take birth. That is what any advanced spiritual seeker will do.

Josephine is saying, though an action done by a person even in awareness is wrong, it can be good for another person. As this is a drama, one has to just see the action, not to judge right and wrong.

That is totally another aspect of it. What is right and what is wrong? Nothing, really. The right and wrong are dual words, they apply in duality, they have relative truth there. From the absolute point of view, nothing is right and nothing is wrong. So, a person's awareness is not going to do anything wrong. That is almost guaranteed. But as you know very well, your actions can be perceived as wrong. It is possible that you do something right and others are going to perceive it as wrong. You will be blamed for your good actions also. So, that is possible. Sometimes it can happen that I do something wrong and it turns out to be good because I don't have any control over the fruits of the action. So, why not? Wrong action can also provide you some good fruit sometimes. But that is very rare. That chance happening is one in a million. So, you can say there is a chance that your wrong action can be good for the other person.

Pawan is saying, there is no karma in the light of awareness. If they are there, Gyani knows they are not mine. Without violence, we can't take a single breath. Yes! , we have bypassed this good and bad by simply saying that they are not mine. So all the fruits are gotten by the causal body, not by me. I am the whole existence myself. So either all the karma is mine or nothing is mine because everything is false. If you stand on this solid ground, you can do your role faithfully. You can perform your role of doing right and wrong faithfully. If it is your role to do something wrong, you do it. If it is your role to do something right, do it. So that is a totally different perspective. But my personal view is not like this. My personal view is I agree with the majority. We should not do anything wrong. This is my personal opinion. Just because I am beyond karma and this character does not get a free pass to do anything. No. Why? Because the other characters do not know that they are beyond karma. Here I am using my rationality to arrive at this conclusion. I can do whatever I want because I am beyond karma. I have already written it off as false. It is not in my account now. I am totally bankrupt. But other people have

no clue. And so my actions are going to affect them. They are going to cause real suffering to others. Knowing this fully that I do not do anything good and I do not do anything bad. I do that which is required. And this is my personal opinion. What is required? It is required that I remain happy. This body-mind remains happy as long as possible. Although it's not possible forever. And others remain happy. That is also not possible. I don't want to become a factor in that. I don't want to be responsible for it. Even if I don't have any karma, something ugly is happening in the causal body which no rational person likes. Here comes the angle of like and dislike also. What is my preference? No ugliness at all. No ugliness.

We can do the same thing which is the survival of this body more beautifully. We don't want any ugliness in our causal body and so we prefer certain actions. If you don't mind that ugliness you get your hands dirty, you get the work done and you say it's all not mine, I reject everything. No problem actually. You can get to the Bodhisattva or something. At this level there are no rules. I do not even see a rule for somebody who is highly aware. Even the law of Karma has failed for that person. You are beyond Karma. I don't know what will happen there but this boils down to your preferences. Yes, we cannot take a single birth without doing something wrong here. So why are we here then? Yes, we don't want to be here. We don't want to be in the duality because in the duality if there is good, how long can it last? It cannot last forever. The pendulum cannot go in only one direction. It needs to swing back. That is the nature of duality. So those who swing back to too much good, well you can guess they are going to swing back to too much bad.

Get out of duality. Get on the path of awareness. Do not worry about the actions. And of course this is my personal opinion. Why? Because I saw it. Before awareness there was a lot of impurity. Like my whole life was nothing but impurity. And after a little bit of awareness, it is still waking up, I saw the purification happening. And that's why even if it is going to take 20 lifetimes for you to get purified, don't wait for it. Start your awareness practice right now right here. Our goal is not to become a good man or a woman. No. Our goal is awareness. The rest is going to happen by itself. I am talking from experience here. You will find these things mentioned in the Avadhoot Gita. He says - why are you worrying about this life and that life? This birth and that birth. You have done that bad thing in this birth. Why are you worrying like this? He says. You are already pure. You are already liberated. You are already the ultimate. Now be happy. That's what he says. I agree. For me doing good, bad, violent, non-violent, is like trying to purify the gutter. You don't do that. It's impossible. It's trying to make the cow dung smell like your perfume. No. It's impossible. We do the ultimate thing. We have the silver bullet which is awareness.

I want to ask Guruji that if you want to give your whole teaching in a single sentence, what would it be?

You want the teaching in a single sentence? Well, I don't teach anything really. I represent the path of knowledge and the Mahavakyas mentioned in the path of knowledge are single sentences. Aham Brahmasmi. Just two words. Do you want any more teaching than that? Not possible. You cannot have more teaching. I am emptiness - This is Gautam Buddha. Do you want anything more than that? Not possible. It's one sentence only. Brahma Satya Jagat Mithya. One sentence.

These teachings are not mine really. Never confuse the person, the personal opinion with the teaching.

They are already given to you. One sentence teaching, one word teaching everything is already available to you. The problem is we don't understand them. If I go on stand on a road and I pick a person, I ask him, are you a seeker? Yes, he says. And I tell him - Aham Brahmasmi, go home. Is it going to do anything? No, he will think what crazy lunatic I met today.

Manish is saying, morality and good character are side effects of awareness.

Yes. Don't even think that I want to become moral and good. No, you don't want to become that. Remember the pendulum. Remember the lives of Rama, Krishna, Sita, Ravana, everybody. And also Nisargadatta, Ram Krishna Paramhansa and Ramana Maharshi and all. Mahatma Gandhi got

murdered. Do you think he did something wrong to deserve that death? Who knows? Maya had to take him out of this world. Maya cannot leave such people here forever. They are a problem actually.

The world is dual. We need good and bad. So don't try to be good. Don't try to be moral. Come out of duality. I am not good. I am not bad. And I am not not good. And I am not not bad. I am the whole of it. This is the non-dual teaching.

You can get tangled about good and bad and moral immoral. Yes, you can do that. I am not discouraging anybody. Go and form your own criteria but do not borrow it from somebody else. That is the only mistake you can make. Get your own good and bad. That will cause maximum learning. If you adopt somebody else’s morals and ethics and aesthetics also, what is ugly and what is beautiful that also must be decided by you. We hardly pay any attention to that because they determine our choices. They must be decided by you. And then it will produce learning. Learning produces knowledge. Knowledge produces liberation.

Shashank is asking, sexual urges seem to be more powerful than all others and it's somewhat difficult to remain aware of them. They are more magnetic. Why is that?

Very good question. The whole creation or the whole illusion is based on vibration, that is the basis of everything that we are seeing right now. They are vibrating patterns. Now, how can a pattern sustain itself? Because it is impermanent, changes. It is a continuous change. So how can that pattern sustain itself? There is a very good strategy there that it copies itself. Whatever it comes in contact with, gets

the same pattern. And because it sticks, we call it a memory. This is what I'm calling NPNM memory, in the English series. If you listen to that series, you will get all these basics cleared. What is this illusion? How is it formed? Copying - process of replication is the fundamental process in this illusion. This is how one pattern sustains itself by copying. Because that pattern is going to be destroyed sooner or later. Even if it stays there for billion years, no problem. It will be destroyed one day.

So what has happened here? Those patterns which replicated survived, it is natural for a pattern to replicate. Simply resonance. One pattern resonates with another and then changes into the same pattern. Just like a guitar. You strike one string on one guitar in one room, you will find that if there is another guitar in the same room, the same string is vibrating. It is a transfer of patterns. So if you play

a melody on the guitar, you will find that the other string is actually playing it. It is copying that pattern through resonance.

We call it memory. Something similar is happening in the non-physical memory also. And this is the process of replication. Why do we see patterns? Because out of those patterns which did not replicate

are not here now. They continuously are being generated and they continuously are being destroyed quickly. Only those became semi-permanent that have this quality, this property of replicating. They could form a copy of themselves. And there you can apply the survival of the fittest rule. The strongest of those patterns manage to copy more. Stronger the resonance, more copies are produced. And so there will be a tendency for one pattern to take over the other and there is the struggle going on. Struggle for survival. Struggle for existence. So these laws are not only in nature, they are the fabric of

the illusion. They are the fabric of the creation. And it evolved like this.

If a pattern cannot replicate there is no chance for it to survive. It will not continue. It will not become an experience. There is a hope for it. And so the desire to replicate, desire to form a copy is strongest. Remember these desires are nothing but the energy of the universe only. Energy of the universal mind only. That is what we call desire. The universal will, it moves everything. It's also called the Shakti. That is at the root of everything. Including human lives, including those of lives of the creatures, even the insects. Their primary desire is to reproduce. Some of the life forms are so biased towards reproduction that they die immediately after reproduction. It seems that the mother nature favors

replication more than it favors keeping the bodies around. The bodies are of no use for mother nature if they are not reproducing. This urge keeps the drama going. This urge is the strongest. That is why it is very natural. There is nothing wrong with this. Probably it is wrong if you do not want to reproduce. That will be a problem. What is wrong here? We were talking about right and wrong. What is wrong is that you reproduce and then do not take care of the child. That is wrong. Or you use unfair means to satisfy your urges. That is wrong.

Yes, everything has a root in the memory. You will be surprised to know that you do not need to take a human birth to fulfill this desire of the creation herself. You can do it at other levels also where it is less dramatic.

Manish is asking, is that component independent of one from causal body or is it just secondary effect

of the main desire that arises in the causal body? I would say that the desire to reproduce is in the causal body.

No it is something beyond causal. It is something which is the very nature of the creation. Creative

energy is the mother of everything including that of causal body. It is not a desire of the causal body. It is the desire of the mother. And that is why the whole creation is represented in a female form. Remember this thing, the first deity that was worshipped, the first god that was worshipped by humans

was not a man, it was a woman. We never started worshipping a male form. It was always a woman. So some people can argue that only the worship of the goddess is the true worship and the rest is fake worship. It is all okay. The creation has no gender, really. It simply wants to reproduce. Gender is manifested in the All. This is one of the seven principles of Hermeticism. The gender is manifested in all the layers. We are just tiny, whiny expressions. The humans are a minute expression of what is really the biggest plan of the creation.

So, yes, a seeker sees it as something divine, something big, something great. And we approach it with respect, not with - it is bad, it is lust. No, the lust is also good. It shows you that this is the tendency in the universal mind. Nothing wrong with it. I already told you what is wrong. If you cause harm while

trying to fulfill this very intense desire, if you are not non-violent, then you can call it wrong. The lust is good, the fear is good, the anger is good. Remember, they are the tendencies of the universal mind, not mine. Nothing is mine here.

The seekers have a totally different view of what is lust, what is reproduction, what is continuity of the population, human population. It is one of the purushartha, if you are interested in the traditional interpretation. To reproduce and give birth to a child, is given as a duty for a human. Normally, we don't believe these things nowadays. They are too old for modern people. So, what we do, we don't become slaves of these desires. We fulfill them as much as possible and then we let them go. Yes, one child is enough, two are more than enough and then you don't pay attention to it after that.

Session 59

What is the difference between experience and experiencing? Next question is that - if I am the self, how do I abide in the self? Is there something that can be done, or is it natural?

Right now, you can see that there is an experience?

Yes, sir.

So, is there anything that is experiencing it?

Yes, we call it experiencer, sir.

Do you see two things? On the one side, the experience, on the other side, the experiencer?

I don't think so, it is one and the same.

Yes, that is experiencing. There are no two. And this is your current experience. It is not something mysterious, mystical, which can be found only in the Himalayas, or after death, or after doing this or that. Right now, right here, the truth is, it is just one. The experience is merged in the experiencer. And we can also say that it is the existence which is experiencing itself right now. Why do we give it another name of existence? Because when these two are taken together, there is nothing else that remains. Can you tell me, is there a third? Is there something else other than an experience and an experiencer? Is there a third thing?

I don't think so. Maybe existence, if you are saying, I mean, that has to be there if we say either experience, sir, or experience is there.

Yes, existence has to be there. And it is not the third thing. Existence is not the third thing. It is another name for experiencing. And it is another name for experience and experiencer taken together. It is not that there is an existence somewhere and an experience is happening somewhere else and an experiencer is sitting somewhere else. It is not like this. There are no two, there are no three, there are no four. It is one. That is why we call it non-dual awareness. We call it non-dual experience or a non-dual existence. Another name for existence is everything. In simple English, you can say it is all that is everything. So how many “everythings” can there be?

There has to be one only.

Yes. If I say there is everything here and there is another everything there, it is illogical. It is not meaningful. Everything means there has to be one. And that is the case with existence. There is only experience and experiencer which is being seen as experiencing and that is everything. Now you will say no, there was something yesterday and there will be something tomorrow and there is something in the other room and there is something in the other city. But these are simply different experiences. Whenever you experience something new, it is again an experience. You will never find anything else other than experience. There will be an experiencer witnessing it because there cannot be an experience without witnessing it. This witnessing is nothing but experiencing and so that is all there is.

Now we come to your words. It looked to me that you are trying to find the meaning in words. So here you can give it a word if you want. You can give it a name. Suppose you don't like the word everything because it is not so romantic. So you call it the Brahman. What is the meaning of Brahman? The big one. Brahman comes from Vrihad, which means everything really. The biggest thing there is. So this is how we enter the terminology. You enter a tradition now. Now you check the experience and now you can say that it is the Anubhav because it is that which is happening. There is Bhav in the Anubhav, which means that which is happening. And you take the experiencer and you can call it Atman because it looks like that I am experiencing.

The word “I” appears here for the first time and you can say that it is me who is experiencing. So we can call it Atman. But there Atman is not different from Brahman, it is just experiencing. So you say I am one with the Brahman. You don't need any more words than this. One name is enough. Now do not try to use the words to know. Try to know and then use words. Is it clear?

Very much.

I mean you are very right that many times you get bogged down or caught up in your own intellect or pseudo-intellect or whatever your mind is going after.

But just one more clarification. That means existence and experiencing, they are again the same?

Yes. It is the same. And experiencer and existence are also same. Just like I said, Atman is Brahman. That is the statement in Advaita. How is it possible? You look at your experience. Like it comes and goes. Today it is this experience. Tomorrow there is something else. It is a flow. The experience is changing. It does not stay the same. That which is coming and going, we say is temporary. It is not really there. So what remains? That which is stationary, that which is permanent and unchanging remains. And what is the component of existence that is unchanging? It is obviously the experiencer. When everything passes in front of you, what is it that remains as witness of these all experiences? The answer is very clear. That which is experiencing remains. And , that is the reason we break down the experiencing into two. Because we want to know the essence of experiencing. The essence of experiencing is the experiencer. Because the experience is not the essence. It is not the essential thing in the experiencing. The remaining thing, that which forms a background of this activity of experience, is the experiencer. That is the essence. Now, that is the essence of everything. Because experiencing is everything. And so we say that Atman is Brahman. The essential part, we extract it out of the non-essential. And then we say that the experiencer is actually everything. The experience simply emerges out of it and then disappears in it. Just like waves emerge out of water and then disappear in the water. The essence of the waves was not waves. The essence of the waves was water. And this is also called the truth. The truth of the waves is water. You cannot separate the wave out of water. If you can separate the wave out of water, then it will become another entity in itself. But that does not happen. That which is changing cannot be separated out of where the change is happening.

Where is the change happening? In existence, obviously, because that is all there is. It is already defined as everything. The change cannot happen in another reality somewhere, another everything. No, it is not possible. So the essence of experiencing comes out to be that which is experiencing, which is the experiencer. It is the one that is unchanging while everything else comes and goes. Let us not bother about what comes and goes. That is not the point here. We are on the fundamentals right now. Don't call it mind. Don't call it chitta. It is that which comes and goes. And forget about all the words that you have ever heard in your life. The words are very confusing. What is in front of you is very clear. It is crystal clear right now. The component of experiencing that comes and goes is not the essence. That which remains is the essence. So, what we say, essentially, existence is Atman. Essentially, the existence is the experiencer.

And now there is no doubt in your mind that since everything is one, there is only one existence. And since the essence of existence is the experiencer, there is only one experiencer. This is the grand conclusion of the Advaita.

If you want to call the experiencer as I, which many people will do, it is not necessary though, you can call it I. But it looks like to this Jiva, this embodiment, that it is me who is experiencing. So go ahead. I give you a free pass to call it I. Now I am the experiencer. You can say it like this. And because there is only one of it, you say, I am everything. I am Brahman. You say it like this. This is the end of knowledge, actually. There is nothing to know beyond this.

For six and a half minutes, you have said this only, but maybe some clarifications were required from my end.

Very good. But as you said, it is very easy to understand conceptually, which you have said also that

content or an object is the experience of it. But in normal experience, the objects are multiple, whereas the experiencer is one. So I mean, this can be conceptually, you can understand it, but you can see experience is different. It is not even a concept. It is your direct experience right now. Concept is something which we hold in the mind. Can you tell me, is the experiencer a concept in your mind?

No, Never.

We can prove it like this, that if the experiencer is a concept, it is a thought, it is an image in our mind, then who is experiencing that thought? Who is aware of that concept? Who is conscious of that concept? Is there no experiencing of the concept? And you cannot say no, because as soon as you say no, there is no other experience except the concept of it, then that concept cannot be known. It is being known, so it cannot be a concept. You can form a concept of it, you can name it, , but the experiencer will stand out. The experiencer will say, I am here, your concept is there in front of me. I am not a concept. This is what the experiencer will say. I mean, I am just talking metaphorically, but whatever I told you are not concepts. They are called direct experience, or in Sanskrit, if you like, the aparokshanubhav, aparoksha means it is direct. No mental activity is required to know it. No evidence is required. It is self-evident. And that is why it is not a theory. That is why it is not an idea. And that is why we stamp it as truth. Show me a truth which is bigger than this, which is more obvious than this? There is nothing else.

So advaita is not really a philosophy or a theory or any kinds of concepts or words. It is right now, right here. That which is right now, right here is simply being described. And that is why we call it the jnana, we call it knowledge. We do not call it anything else. Definitely true, I mean, it cannot be simpler than this. No. It is so simple that people ignore it. The problem is - knowledge is simple, people are complicated. Why did that happen? Because of indoctrination. I have given a long list of causes of ignorance. What is ignorance? Not knowing this, which I just said, which you just understood, that it is all one. It is this experience, getting experienced by just one existence. Existence experiencing itself as oneness. That is all there is. Why can't people get hold of such a simple thing? Because a lot of ignorance is stuffed in their mind as soon as they are born. Nobody is going to tell you, you are the experiencer, you are the existence, you are Brahman. No. They will tell you, you are a body. Your job is to eat, sleep, reproduce and die. Hoard as much money and gold as possible. Use as many people as you can for your own happiness. That is what they call happiness. This is being stuffed in our mind as soon as we are born. Why is that? What is the conspiracy here? Why don't people want to become knowledgeable and instead live in ignorance? There is no secret here. They are all ignorant. That is why.

We are born in a sea of ignorance. And that is why we are told what is true, what to believe. Don't say this because nobody agrees with it, there is a general atmosphere of ignorance and darkness in human society. And therefore, we are actually parted from the truth. We live in complete falsehood, fakeness most of our lives. One day you get tired of it. Why? Because false creates suffering. There is nothing wrong in being ignorant. If you are happy, okay, no problem. Ignorance is also bliss. But what happens is this ignorance causes a lot of suffering. And then the search begins. Why is there suffering? Why is there dissatisfaction? Even if you are comfortable living in luxury, there is dissatisfaction. There is a vacuum. There is a vacancy in your mind because death is staring at you. The old age is staring at you and you approach it. And as you approach it and all the sensory pleasures become boring, then we turn to the answers.

Where is the answer? Just there where you are right now. And the answer is where you are. So this is the whole journey from ignorance to knowledge and the knowledge is simple. Knowledge is liberating. If the knowledge were more complicated than your ignorance, then probably you would never get it. We are able to understand these things because they are right in front of us.

Sir, before we go to the next question, if it is so very simple, which seems to be so very simple, why there are very few people, handful of people, I don't know anybody to whom converse with these things in an manner in which they understand or I want, I understand that. There are not many people. So if it is very, so very simple, why people don't understand?

Yes, the problem is the beliefs. The problem is once indoctrination happens, once something is accepted as truth, then there is something called ego about which many people must have heard. The job of the ego is to defend itself. It is the basic process in the mind and the body that keeps it alive. So as soon as there is a belief there, the defense of the belief takes place. You can see it yourself that if you tell somebody that look, you are wrong, the first thing that happens is he becomes angry. Why is there anger? He does not feel good about it. That is because something is defending what is believed. The belief becomes a part of the personality. I am this, I am this belief and I am right, you are wrong. This is a complication, added complication on the indoctrination. We call it closed mindedness also. It is just a defense mechanism and it is there for a good reason. That prevents that ordinary person, worldly person from even approaching knowledge, from even asking a question and as the person grows in age, you must have seen that, it becomes hard for them to change. You can bend the child anyway, a child is very flexible. Old men, no, he will break but he won't bend.

So there is something unfortunate in our minds. We get attracted to ignorance very easily. We are attracted to fantasies and daydreams and illusions. We find them entertaining and mesmerizing. There is no fun in philosophy. There is no fun in truth because plain and simple, it is very boring really for the ego. What happens is, once the ego gets tired, it is beaten by suffering a lot, then it looks at the solution and then also it does not actually accept. What I am talking about is not meant to be heard and that which is listening to these words is not going to accept it because it is the death of the ego if it accepts these things and the ego does not want it. So it is in the fabric of the mind, it is the very basic nature of a human being that he will ignore the knowledge. The word ignorance comes from this tendency to ignore knowledge.

It is not that it is impossible to know, it is not like this, but it is being knowingly ignored, you can say. I am ignoring myself knowingly, that is very strange and that is why we say that the knowledge happens by grace, not by Guru, not by books, not even suffering, , that looks like a cause but it is not cause, only grace is the cause. So don't worry, everybody gets it, everybody will get it, but not right now. It is a process in this existence where when the fruit is ripe, it falls and produces seed. You cannot simply go and ask the tree to produce all the fruits today, no, when the season is ripe, when temperature is right, water is there, it produces the fruit and so this is bubbling out these, if you want to call them, the awakened people, the jnanis, they are being bubbled out of this ocean of existence. It is impossible that everybody will turn into a sage overnight, it is impossible. So we don't worry about these things because it is a matter of time only, everybody is going to get the knowledge. As soon as they are ready, the knowledge will be served to them. So what we do, we serve the knowledge first, because we are impatient, we serve it first on the path of knowledge and then wait for people to eat it. That is what I am doing, that is what everybody is doing and that is what most of you who are listening will do, there will be time when you will become a servant. Don't worry about others, free yourself from ignorance first and then we can worry about others. Then it is not a big deal. When we rise on the top, then we can show the way and it will happen as it happens.

If we already are the self, which I believe I am, then what more is required to be done to abide in the self?

Jyotsna is asking something similar, what is Chetna and what is the importance of maintaining it and how do we know where is Chetna?

And the English word for Chetna that I am using is awareness. Awareness is the knowledge that I am the self. Chetna is the knowledge that I am the self. How do we get this knowledge? Just like now we saw that there is nothing but self, there is no I separate from the self. Self is the word that is a direct translation of Atman. Self is not the Chetna and I don't use the word self, why? Because there is a lot of confusion about it. People have divided the self also, the higher self, the lower self, the middle self, I don't use it. And the translation of Atman, which means the experiencer, now the experiencer word is more direct. A self usually gets associated with an identity, an ego and a body. Experiencer gets associated with existence because that is how we define it, so there is no confusion at all. You can use the word self also, but I don't recommend it. So many other authors will use the word self and there you need to stick to that word if you want. But if I removed it, there is a reason for it and I prefer to use the experiencer which points to the existence being conscious of itself.

This knowledge that I am the self, I am the experiencer, you remain in this knowledge, you keep this as a foreground of your experience, you keep everything else behind this, what do I mean by that? When you say that I am a man or I am a woman, do you keep repeating this the whole day? No. All your activities happen in this knowledge that you are a man. It is natural for you to act like a man, act like a woman, dress like a man. You don't think twice before dressing. Do I need to wear the clothes of a man or of a woman? No, you don't think like this. There is a natural remembering that this is me and then you act as that.

When you know that you are the experiencer, which can happen in an instant, this knowledge does not take time, and you know that the body is an experience, the mind is an experience, all my memories are experiences, all the desires that appear here in the mind, they are experiences. Who am I? I am the witness of all these things. If you remember this and all other activities happen in this remembrance, just like you remember you are a man and you effortlessly go through your day being the man, you do not need to sit and check, do I need to behave like a man or a child or a dog or something else? No. You say, I am a human, I am a man and then you continue. Similarly, once you know what you are, I am the experiencer, not these things which are being experienced, then you should stay in this being. We call it abiding. In Sanskrit you can call it the chetna, which means very naturally abiding in your true nature.

I call it awareness. Awareness is nothing but self-awareness. If you are aware of your phone, your PC, your table, your room, that is a different awareness. That is awareness of the experience. When there is awareness of the experiencer, that is what I call self-awareness. In short form, we only say awareness because that is all there is. Even when you are aware of the other objects or other people, who/what are they? They are also me because their essence is the experiencer, just like we saw right now. That is all the experience is happening in the background of the experiencer. That is the essence. And if I am that essence, everything is me.

So keep this in mind. Remember that is how you maintain awareness. Remember who you are. It should become your second nature. You don't make any effort to remember you are a man, right? You don't make any efforts to remember you are a woman. Why has this happened? The small children, sometimes they confuse this. Because they are not yet trained to even remember their own name or gender. And once the training happens, it can take a few years, then there is no need. There is no need to make any effort. So initially there will be a little bit of effort. You will sometimes forget who you are and then you remember. Also called smaran in Sanskrit. Smaran is nothing but remembering. But remember that this remembering is not connected to memory. You don't need to go and search your memory. Who was I that day? He told me I am the experiencer. No, you don't do like this. You check.

Is there an experience? Yes. Is something that is experiencing it? Yes. The whole advaita should happen in one second for you. The whole teaching of advaita should flash before you in one second.

That is being in awareness. Now it will taper off a little bit. It is not a problem. It is not like a mad person you keep shouting every second - I AM AWARE. No, that is not being aware. That is madness. So how do we remain aware? Simply by remembering and checking. Check. Sometimes you don't even need to remember. This word is also confusing. Look, that's all. Look once and then keep doing whatever you are doing. Live your life normally. The body is working. The body is breathing. The heart is beating. The body is digesting. The mouth is speaking. Thoughts are raining. The desires are coming and going. The impulses are there which are driving this body. There are trees and hills and people and animals. There is this one whole experience being played in front of me. I am the viewer. I am the watcher of this. This should be your bhava. This should be your being and you would remain like this.

Most naturally this is the sahaja samadhi and you will find that it is a little intelligence which has occurred because of your knowledge. Knowledge enhances intelligence. So this is the special knowledge which has given rise to this new ability in you which is of being aware. And that is why I call it a new layer in the mind. If you have studied the layered architecture of the mind you will see that I call the awareness as a new layer. It is not present in many people and it is not present surely in animals. Their awareness is outward like extroverted awareness. They will say I am aware but they do not know who is aware. That is the most important part. Who is aware? Who is the receiver of the experiences? So again there is indoctrination. People will say the body is the experiencer. People will say that I am receiving the experiences, they do not know who I am. Then there are some people who will say this organ in my body, the brain is receiving the experiences and so on. You read it somewhere and then it becomes your belief and then you defend it forever till you die. You never sit and look that this garbage that was dumped in my mind by society is true or not. Is there any truth in that or not? What is my experience saying and what are people saying? This is also called the discrimination, Vivek. Vivek is a refined intelligence or you can also call it wisdom, the ability to know what is true, what is false. This is Vivek, what is right, what is wrong, what is correct, what is incorrect. When you get this Vivek, this discrimination of what is experience and what is experiencer, and you maintain it by repeated remembering, by repeated practice like this, whenever you slip from this, you get back into your habit of indoctrination, you remove that and you replace it with truth. That is being in truth, staying as truth. This is the whole practice for a spiritual seeker.

On any path, you take any path in this whole planet, in this whole universe actually, the whole existence, there is only one practice, that is to remain in Samadhi/chetna, that is to remain in awareness all the time, 24 by 7. There are stages in awareness which you will know as soon as you start the practice. Do not be bogged down by all these various 20 kinds of Samadhis and 50 kinds of states of the mind. Be in awareness, when you are established in awareness, the other doors will open for you. There is no end to the refinement process of awareness, there is no end to it, it is all infinite actually, so don't worry about anything else except being what you are. It is easier than breathing. The breathing takes a little bit of effort, awareness does not take effort. If you are making an effort, it is the effort to clear the ignorance, it is not an effort to come in awareness. The habit, the indoctrination, your past ignorance is pushing, pushing against the Chetna. You need to push it back, you need to kick it out and that's why it requires a little bit of patience and persistence, you need to persist otherwise your habits will take over like a blanket of darkness and then you are lost again in the world. You become just like any other ignorant person. Even with all the Advaita knowledge and Atman/Brahman echoing in your mind, you remain ignorant.

This is the condition of many people, they know a lot about a lot of things written in the books. The awareness is zero and there is a condition which we see very rarely when the person knows no philosophy, but you just look into the eyes of that person, totally aware of his nature. Even after reading a thousand books you cannot get this which he has gotten simply by surrender. Surrender what? Surrender your ignorance. As soon as it arises, throw it away, throw it out. This is maintaining the awareness.

Jyotsna is asking, what is the importance of maintaining awareness?

That is a good question. Is it going to make me rich? Is it going to make me beautiful and young again? Yes, actually, you will be surprised. There are side effects of maintaining awareness. The first effect you will see is peace. You are more peaceful now. There is no agitation. There is no struggle. You are not running around like a dog from post to pillar because you were indoctrinated to do that. Go get this. Go get that. Your neighbor has more than you, you are just sitting here watching TV. Do something. Get your promotion and that involves bribing, you are lost here in this jungle of the world because you don't have your own will. Somebody else's will you are following. You don't even know whose will is this. Somebody tells you on the TV, buy this, buy that, you will feel good. What do you do? You follow like a cattle, like the sheep, herded sheep. You don't know it is not your will. As soon as the awareness arises, you stop all this garbage from coming inside. You will find that your life becomes easy now. You do only that which you will. What do you really wish for? Only two or three things. That's all. That's all you need for a happy life. Do you need to kill a million people, drop bombs on countries and all to be happy? No. Who does that? Severely retarded people. They are doing all these things. Do you need to follow a politician to be happy? Do you need to follow somebody who is rich and successful to be happy? They are all mentally diseased people. You can try it. You can follow them and you will become like them. You don't need all that.

You get a will of your own which is now illuminated by the awareness and you follow your own path. That is why these people are called Maharaj. Whenever you address a Swami, what do you call him? Maharaj. Maharaj means the greatest king. You are a king of your own will. This is given to you. This is the greatest gift. You don't need a crown to become a king. All you need is awareness of who you are. This is one of the side effects.

Now what will happen? Because you are aware of yourself, you will be aware of your mind and all its impulses and you get control over the mind. You get control over the body. Now you are no more a slave of the body. The body told you to eat like one kg of food every day or drink all these polluted drinks that they are selling on the TV, some dark liquid with chemicals and a lot of sugar in it. You keep doing that because the body is addicted now. It gets a hit out of it. There is no awareness, so mechanical action happens. What will happen? The body will break down very soon. Remember, society does not want you to become healthy. Your TV does not want you to become healthy and happy. What do they want? They want that which is in your pocket. That's all they want. Don't even think that anybody else is responsible for your health and wealth. You are responsible.

Then why are you like a broken jar, useless, you pour something in it, everything falls out, you are not wealthy, you are not happy, you are not prosperous, your needs are not being met because it is leaking.

Somebody else is controlling you and that is because you don't have awareness. So you fix yourself like this. You don't fix yourself by copying others. You fix yourself by becoming aware of your life. Becoming happy is very easy. You stop doing all that which makes you unhappy, simple. So there are side effects of awareness. You won't eat and drink all that garbage again. Mother Nature provides us with the best of the food. The most beautiful foods are here. Where do you go for the best food? To your nearest restaurant, you don't know what is in their kitchen, what are they cooking, how many chemicals are there, how many preservatives are there in their food. You think that is the best. Why do you think that? Because that is what your indoctrination is. Since childhood you are brought up with this brainwashing that this is the best. A fruit growing on a tree is the best for you. A fresh mango from the farm is like heavenly food for you. You don't know that because society has given you the poison.

So there will be side effects of maintaining awareness and you will know it. Suddenly your relations will start improving because right now your relation is simply how much I can get from the other person. What can I get from the other person? He is not making me happy, so probably I will find somebody else who can make me happy. He is not giving me this and that, probably I will find somebody else. This fellow is important to me. If I please this fellow, if I offer him food, drinks and dinner, I will probably get a promotion. How much can I get? This is the basis of your relations and nobody likes it. Nobody likes to be used like this and so all your relations are trash. As soon as you are aware that this is happening, that will come only by awareness, that my mind is selfish and you will stop doing it. Happiness is just stopping whatever wrong is happening. Naturally everything happens in the perfect way. Ignorance causes a distortion in it.

Happiness is simply giving away, giving up the wrong that you were doing under the influence of the poison of the society. You are born pure. How to behave with others? You need to be selfish a little bit because otherwise you would not survive but whenever it is not necessary, you remain what you are. You remain in a giving pose rather than a begging pose. Give me, give me, give me. Instead of that, you take whatever is needed, you become self-sufficient, you stand on your own feet, rest of the time you keep giving. Who wants something from me? Yes, take it. And instantly your relations will start increasing. People will stand before you with hands folded and now you are in a position of the power

because you are not asking, you are not begging, you are giving. I have seen people complain, I am very lonely and when I came on the spiritual path, I am super lonely now. Nobody talks to me. They think I am crazy. Everybody is lonely in this crowd? Your loneliness is a reflection of your selfishness. Everybody wants something for myself and therefore they are left with nobody. Have you ever tried to become a company for somebody else who is lonely? No. Everybody calls me. Have you tried calling somebody who needs your company, who is waiting for somebody else to give him or her company? No. I should not call anybody. Everybody should call me. Your loneliness is your own creation. Your relations, they are garbage. It is your own creation. And the reason is lack of awareness, no chetna. You don't know how to keep the relations. You think a relation is about getting. No. A relation is about giving. We are not here to get anything. We are born perfect and complete and whole. It is the poison stuffed in your mind by society. See this and get hold of your will. Be a master of your own will. Become a Maharaj. Become the king of the whole universe. Who is stopping you?

So there are so many side effects - good health, yes. Long life, yes. Good relations, yes. Wealth, yes. Awareness increases intelligence. Why can't people just read a full book? Why can't people read just one paragraph? I've seen this attention deficiency these days. Nobody wants to read. They want to get the whole knowledge in a five minute video. And when I do a five minute video, nobody wants to look at the whole video. They want to see only the first one minute of it. Why is that? They don't know what they want. They simply click on another video where there is a half naked woman. Advaita, no, that can happen ten years later also. I need to first check what is happening in that other country, some scandal in a country that is 20,000 kilometers away from me. I'm interested in that. This is what? Stupidity. Mental retardation. Why is that? Because there is no goal in life. Why is there no goal in my life? I don't know what my life is. I don't know who I am. I don't have any awareness of what I am doing.

So it is being driven by external impulses. By external impulses, not by my impulses. They are not your impulses. They are impinging on you. The impulses are pushed from outside. They are not yours. So your whole life is a series of compulsions. Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev, he used to say this. Your whole life is nothing but a series of compulsions. Where are these compulsions coming from? It's not your nature. They are coming from outside. The poison is coming from outside. So when you are like this, what are you going to learn? Nothing at all. Your whole life goes in fulfilling those tiny compulsions which are useless, worthless, trivial stuff. And so the person remains stupid. Does not get a skill. Does not learn anything of worth. And so does not become a master in any art. And now nobody pays him. Now he goes from one office to another. Give me a job. Who will give you a job? Don't know anything. Or whatever you know is totally fake. You just parroted it. And then if a job is given to you, you cannot do it. You are not really interested in the job. You are interested in the money. And so the employer kicks you out because you are not devoted to the work. The employer does not need you. He does not want to keep somebody who is just asking for money. And so another talented person takes your job from some other country, probably these days since the global economy. So yes, you remain poor because you have no awareness, no intelligence, no skills, no survival skills. Nobody wants you. Even your wife and girlfriend will leave you because you are useless. And this is the reason.

So what is the importance of maintaining Chetna? You don't worry about importance. You maintain it. You learn what it is and then you maintain it. You will know. I am not promising you heaven. Your life is a result of your karma. The Chetna is not going to do much. What it will do is it will give you a solid ground to stand on. When you are in the middle of this cyclone, it will give you a solid foundation to stand on. You won't be blown away. And then you learn, we are here to learn. Don't worry.

Leyla is saying, why do people come in and out of our lives? Is there something to learn from these relations?

If somebody comes into your life, it is because of you. You wanted something. That's why you allowed it. You opened your door. They went out of your life because of you, not because of the other person. Nobody wants to leave anybody. You must have seen this when you were a teenager in college, when your friend says that I won't meet you again, I won't call you again. Even if he is the most ordinary thing in this town, a completely useless fellow, he says, I am angry with you. I'm not going to meet you again. You will feel bad. It is guaranteed. There is something in us. We don't want people to leave us. Even the most ordinary, we don't want them to go away. Even if we are not talking to them, we want them to be there. Someday they will be with me. Don't just kick out people. If they have left you, there must be something in you. You must have done something. And that is what you need to learn. If you have become dependent on somebody, there must be some dependency on them, emotional, financial or even spiritual.

People become dependent on their gurus and all. Guruji, what should I do tomorrow? Guruji, which job should I do? Whom should I marry? How many children should I have? What should be the name of the… And the guru is now irritated. He kicks you out of the ashram. I am here to answer your questions regarding philosophy and spirituality. And you made me a Google search engine. What should I eat, Guruji? What is good for my health? How to lose weight? How to gain weight? How to increase my height? Guru is not for that. He is going to kick you out and then you don't like him. I respect you so much and you don't even tell me what to do. Guru is not here to tell you what to do.

So we learn from all these things. When we become dependent on somebody, it is our deficiency. And when we are saddened because somebody is not with us now, it is my mistake. It is always my mistake. You learn this from all the relations. That mistake has happened because you are not aware. You are not aware while inviting the person in your space. And you are not aware of the reasons that the person has left you.

Anyhow, how do we know whether we are in Chetna? It is very easy. If you are peaceful, if you are happy, and if you are feeling free, you are not bound by compulsions and impulses and you are not making any major mistakes. In the long term, you will come to know that you are maintaining the awareness. You will say, no, sometimes I get angry. Sometimes I become very fearful. Sometimes I worry about my future and all. These are the parts of life. This is the experience. And you signed up for this experience. When you were born, you signed an agreement with Maya. Like this, I make a story of it and I tell it sometimes because you don't really know why you were born. So we make up a story like this, cook up a story. You signed an agreement with Maya that it will be a roller coaster ride. You did not sign an agreement which says that I will just sit there the whole day, eat and watch TV. You did not do that. Your agreement says that you will get a roller coaster ride. So yes, there will be anger, yes, there will be fear, yes, you will worry, yes, you will run. So what? If you are doing it in complete awareness, then you are following your agreement.

Have you played all these games on PC? They made that character, which is you, very easy to get identified with the character in the PC game. It is just pixels on the screen. It is just data, but you say it is me. And then if something attacks that character, what do you do? You take out your sword and start fighting. Do you say that I am here, I'll just sit here and watch the screen all day? No. You bought that game because it is going to be interesting. There will be all kinds of experiences there. If there are no demons, if there are no pretty girls to chase there and if there are no bosses to fight with and there are no guides who guide you in the game to do something, go in that direction, don't go in that direction, is that a real game? You must have played all these games. So it is all there for your entertainment. You think it is my struggle. No, you signed up for this game. It is not a struggle. Now you should do it in complete awareness that I am the watcher of this game, I am the player of this game, I am not the character in the game. This is awareness.

This character, this body-mind machine is simply following instructions, that's all. Nobody is giving it instructions actually, but that is another matter. It is following instructions. Now you watch it. Now you watch it play. So awareness does not mean that you will sit with eyes closed in your room and everybody is serving you food and washing your clothes, ironing your clothes and you just sit on the throne there all day in awareness, no. You get out and do everything that is necessary to live this life. Get into life completely, throw yourself in life, in this cyclone, tornado of life. Remain completely aware. If you are the character, there is no point in it. You become that which is controlling this puppet. Don't become the puppet. How do you do that? Through awareness.

Knowing your true nature and then abiding in your true nature, do not become a puppet. This is how you are in Chetna. It is not merely thought. It is not merely a concept or idea. Awareness is not an idea.

It is a way to live. You will not know it if you don't live it. Live like this. If you don't become a spiritual warrior, you won't know what it is like to live this life. Yes, it is possible that you adopt a simpler life. Some people don't want all this drama, so they minimize everything, which is also good. One day you will get bored of all this fighting, then you say too many games, now I need to do something better than this. You take up some other role and stop jumping from one branch to another like a bird. Birds are always restless. You become like a frog, just sitting in one place, watching everything. So this is how you will know you are in Chetna. If you have any doubts that you are not in awareness, that means you are not in awareness.

Ashu is asking, you have mentioned about grace, can you kindly elaborate on that?

Grace is an event. Just like there are many many events in your life, you are born and then you go to school, you go to college, you get married and you get children and all this. There is another event in your life which is called grace. Grace is an event where you encounter the knowledge. It happens not because somebody else was worried about you, not because there are people who are just waiting for you to get the knowledge. It is because something changed in you. It is because some situation changed in your life. Now you are ready, now you are ripe enough to be plucked from the tree. This event is the event of grace. So usually we call it the grace of the Guru or grace of the God, one and the same thing. Grace of the universe, yes. You will know that it is not something which I have done. You will know that it is not a result of my own efforts.

Grace is something which falls from the sky. Nobody knows why it happens, but it happens. When you encounter the knowledge for the first time in your life and not only that, not only simply hearing, you realize it, it becomes real for you for the first time in your life. It is an event of grace. It is not because I did something, it is not because your Guru did something, it is not because people are printing out all these advaita books like there is no tomorrow, isn't it? Thousands of thousands of books, millions of blog articles and trillions of YouTube videos, but you don't get even one word of it. Why? No grace.

The grace happens on its own. This is the, what you call, bigger scheme. In the greater scheme, grace is one of the events. Some people will call it the divine plan but it is too religious. It is not divine, it is not a plan. It is how the universe works. Nobody has planned it for you. This is a very natural consequence of the evolution of the mind. One of the very important events is coming under grace. Once you do this, once you show some interest that yes, this was an important thing, this is the life changing thing for me, this is the biggest turn in my life and you embrace the grace, the grace will embrace you. Now everything is going to go right from here onwards. There is no chance of making a mistake from here onwards. You already have made all the mistakes and that is why the grace was delayed. Now there is no looking back. Your evolution is now speeded up like a thousand times. You are on the highway now. This is grace.

Don't ignore it. Don't leave it as things happen, all strange things happen in this universe and I will continue with my life. I will continue like a bull around the mill. In the old days they used to use a bull which turned the mill. Whatever mill it was, it was grinding the seeds or it was a potter's wheel or something. The bull goes nowhere, simply turns and turns and turns. Sometimes it is a donkey. So I am just going to ignore whatever freed me from this donkey work and I will continue going round and round and round. Yes, the grace will go away. Don't think that grace is going to sit there and wait for you. No, it is gone. You have your free will here. You use it but you embrace it. You become determined that I am going to follow the grace. I am going to use this gift of knowledge that I was given which is not coming from anybody really. It is not coming from the guru, it is coming from somewhere else. The guru is only a medium. The guru is also like a piece of chess on a chessboard. He made the right move. Now it is your turn. You make the right move otherwise checkmate.

Who is controlling the mind body if not the self?

That is a very good question. It is only a metaphor when I say that the Jiva or the individualized mind signed an agreement with Maya to play this game. There were actually no instructions there. The agreement simply says that you will get a dual experience. That is all written in the agreement. You won't get that which you want. This is all that the agreement says. You will get a lot of lessons. That's all. Nobody is actually playing your character. Nobody is controlling this character. It is self-propelled. It is controlling itself. Actually it is learning to get the control. The whole purpose of the play is to play better. When you play football or cricket or even a computer game, what is your purpose there? To become a good player, that's all. So the player is the character and that is trying to evolve, that is trying to become better and better at this play. Playing with the Maya. One day you are going to master it. That is the time to retire. That is Nirvana.

So don't think that the self or the experiencer is controlling it. No, the experiencer is simply watching it. Nobody controls anything. Some people will say, no, Maya is controlling me. Maya has all the strings in her hand and she is controlling all the puppets. No, there is no will in Maya to do something like that. It is happy being what it is. What is Maya? It is just a sea of vibrations that are taking various forms. They are self-organizing and they rise and they fall. Maya does not care. Maya is the energy behind this game. That's all. When I say Maya is controlling, what I am doing is I am projecting this human quality of being controlled or controlling something on Mother Nature which is Maya. No, it is not in control really and it does not want to control anything. It just wants to play and you are a product of that play really. “You” meaning this body-mind machine is a product of that play and it is continuously improving. I am simply a watcher. I enjoy this game. That's all.

That is why sometimes the experiencer is translated as the enjoyer. When I say the word experiencer in Sanskrit, it usually means the enjoyer and now I quickly dropped it because it is not going to resonate with many people. No, I am not enjoying my life. No, the world is full of suffering. How can you say that the existence is the enjoyer? This is the first reaction from a newcomer because they don't know that this is a play and so we do not introduce the world or Maya to them as a play. We introduce the Maya to them as a learning opportunity. When you learn enough, when you become a master player, now there is no resistance in your mind to accept the experience as a play, as something which can be enjoyed.

Remember the movies that you watch. Some movies are tense, from the starting 15 minutes to the end there is nothing but tension. A successful movie is that which brings the viewer to a point of extreme tension and then relieves it. And then again something happens, a twist happens in the movie and then the viewer is back at the point of extreme tension. Then the movie resolves it. That is a successful plot of a movie. You go and watch any movie, whether it's Hollywood or Indian or Korean, any movie, you will find a pattern in them. That is the recipe for entertainment. There is one place in the movie when you cannot leave the movie, remember your life will be like this, there is peace, peace, peace, suddenly something goes wrong. Now you need to resolve it. You need to resolve the tension. While this is happening, there is a change in you. You will find that the character in the movie changes as he encounters the situations. Now you will find the same thing happening here. As soon as something goes wrong in your life, what happens? The most change that happens in your life will be in you. We cannot control the situation. Something will happen in you that will change you and then therefore we say that it is a learning experience. The whole of our life is a learning experience, it is a change of some kind. We are growing simply by breathing. Maya is doing everything for us. The illusion is in charge of providing this experience. This is what the agreement says. Read the agreement if you want. Nobody controls it. There is no point in playing if it is controlled. It has to be open-ended. It has to be free.

Ashu is saying, it is a pity that so many people are suffering, whereas the solution could be really really simple, an open mind is all that is needed and grace.

One day you will realize that there is no suffering. One day you will give up this thought that it is a bad place, that this world is in a mess. No, there is no suffering here. What I see here is perfection. This place is perfect. This is the most beautiful thing that is happening currently in this universe. There is no suffering. The solution is simple, yes. Remember, the solution is telling you that there is no suffering. It does not take away the hustle and bustle of life. Even in suffering, there is perfection. Is old age bad? Is death bad? Are wars bad? Are diseases bad? No, they are part of the play. If these things are taken away, you will learn nothing. If there is no tension in the movie, nobody is going to watch it.

He is asking, existence cannot experience itself, so it needs Maya to know itself as duality.

That's a good question and many people ask this. Can existence know itself? Remember, we are projecting a human quality onto existence here. Don't make that mistake. Don't assume that existence needs to know itself and then it creates Maya and then blah blah blah. No, these are all assumptions. The first thing about existence is that nobody knows what it is. It is unknowable. Since the essence of existence is the experiencer, the experiencer itself is unknowable. The word knowledge, knowing, is a human experience. It is a creation of our own mind. Ultimately, there is no knowledge. Everything needs to know nothing. The existence is perfect emptiness. It is perfect darkness. It is zero. There are no wants. There are no needs.

So, what do we say? Do not project the human tendencies on something which is totally beyond human. It is totally beyond our intelligence to know what it is. You can be it, but you cannot know it. You only know anything that can be experienced. What you are experiencing is an illusion and therefore you will know only the illusion. Now, in this illusion, a thought appears in the mind that probably the whole which is unknowable also wants to know just like I want to know. No, it is simply projecting our thoughts on something which we do not understand and something which we will never understand.

Here comes the surrender. Accept and embrace the unknowing. Darkness is your friend. The light is an illusion. The light is something like a street light to which the bugs are attracted and they hit

the light and then die. They could have accepted the darkness of the night and would have lived. Surrender here. Surrender is your friend. Darkness is not your enemy. Not knowing is not a curse.

It is a blessing. If you project all these things on the existence, you will go round and round and

you will never arrive at anything. This is not knowledge. Knowing that something cannot be known is knowledge. Not knowing is superior to knowing.

Probably not many people are going to get this thing, but one day you will get it, that it was my ignorance that I tried to know something. Simply clean off the garbage. That which you call my knowledge is just garbage. It is being stuffed in your mind by the society who knows nothing. Clean it off and just become what you are in a pure form. There is nothing to be done beyond this. Nothing to know beyond this. If you try to know something, you will do something like this. You will project something on the existence and think - I don't know why it produced Maya. I don't know. I need to find a guru to find it out. I need to do all this meditation to find out the source of Maya. And this madness will arise in your mind if you are not aware. If there is half knowledge, your mind will keep producing fantasies after fantasies.

Know who you are. Know that there are no desires in me. Know that I am so perfect that I don't need anything. There is no need to know. There is no need to produce Maya. There is no need to experience anything. If there is a need to experience anything, that means I am not complete, can the existence

become incomplete? Think about it. This is the whole. I mean, you must have heard that shloka, no?

Purnamidham. And when you remove the wholeness from the wholeness, only the wholeness remains. This is the nature of existence. It is complete. You remove everything, it still is complete. Why?

You subtract zero out of zero, what will you get? You will get zero. The zero is complete. Does the zero need anything? No. It is happy being zero. The symbol of zero, it is a round shape. It starts at one place and then turns back and it completes itself. Is there any other shape in this universe which is so perfect and complete, like zero, the circle? No. This is the most perfect shape. Somebody great must have chosen that shape to represent zero. You can only imagine the height of the civilization that produced this symbol and this concept of zero. It's gone now, it's all destroyed. They simply parrot it. Zero, zero, zero. We don't know what it is. It represents the whole existence. It is perfect. It is empty.

You can go on projecting things on it. It was not happy, it was getting bored, so it produced all the plants, animals and things. No. It's not a satisfying answer. What is most satisfying is that it is perfect and it is empty, devoid of all qualities. Nirguna. Now you don't need to know anything. Do you need to know anything after this?

Pawan is saying, if there is Maya, then existence is divided into two. If Brahman is one, then how could Maya be another part of Brahman? Where is Maya?

Now he's going into the deepest part of that, where is Maya? Look at the word Maya. It means that which is not, isn’t it? Maya, that which is not. There can be that which is not. Somebody most intelligent has chosen this word to represent the illusion. Look at the movie. Where is the movie? The movie is also an illusion. You can see that it is happening on the screen. No screen, no movie. And where is Maya? Can you find a place for it? Are the places in Maya or is the Maya in a place? The word itself means that it is not there. And if you want to find a place of Maya in the Brahman, in this existence, you will not find it.

I'll give you a famous example, this is a many thousand year old example. When you are in a half illuminated place, like evening, you're walking, you can not see much and a snake appears on the road, on your path. Now you get terrified and you turn on the torch and you see it's only a rope. Somebody left a rope there. It has taken a snakey shape and that surprised you. Now tell me, where is the snake? Is it in the rope? Traditional example. Where is the snake in the rope? Did the rope become a snake? And then you turn on the torch, it becomes rope again. Is this some magic?

Maya is like that snake, which was not there. Nothing became Maya. It never was there, so it never goes away. This is the definition of the illusion. It is something which is not here, but never goes away. Has the Brahman donated a part of itself, okay, half of me is going to be Maya now. Did that happen? Who saw it happening? When the rope became the snake, did the rope give away its nature of being the rope? No, the snake was only a projection. When the Brahman became the Maya, did it stop being Brahman?

I am using some traditional words here. You can translate it into a more modern language. When an illusion appeared on the screen, did the screen become an illusion and go away for a while?Like, okay, half of me, 50% of me is going to be an illusion now. And then when the movie ended, okay, I got my half part back. No, it was always there as a screen. The illusion comes and goes, not the screen. The Brahman does not become khand, it remains akhand, it does not split into Maya and existence. There is no splitting of it. The experiencer does not become the experience. Remember this thing. There is no causal connection between the experiencer and the experience. Just like there is no causal connection between the rope and the snake. Is rope the reason for the snake? Think about this. People have been thinking about these things for many thousand years now and the answers are crystal clear. You need to go and simply read them. Sometimes it is so easy.

What is the origin of Maya? You can describe a process, there is a fantastic process, amusing process of how the Maya is turning into various forms and that is what I have explained. It is very convincing actually, but you can come up with your own theories and all. But there is no process of creating the Maya. There are processes in the Maya, the whole of the Maya is a process, but there is no process through which the Maya got created. Just like there is no process through which the snake got created in the rope. It appeared and so that's why we call Maya an appearance. In English we do not even use the word illusion because the illusion demands a source. There is a source of all illusions. The mirage, there is a source, you need sunlight and hot air and sand and all those things. You remove them, the mirage is gone. You remove even one thing, there is no illusion. You are watching a movie, you need a screen, you need a light source, you need the film and you need the machinery, even one screw falls out of it, the machinery is broken, let us say, the light fuses, the illusion is gone. There is a source of the illusion, but there is no source of the appearance.

Some people call it illusion, some people call it appearance, but the technical word is Maya, which transcends all English words. Sometimes I use it as it is because as soon as I say illusion in English, people will demand - who created the illusion? What is the process that is creating the illusion? Because that's all they know. When I say Maya, everybody is silent because it is not there. Maya is not a part of anything, don't even think. Maya is also called asatya, which means false. Where is “false”? What part of the existence became false? And that's not possible. It's not logically correct to say anything like this.

Sometimes we call the Maya a dream and then immediately people ask, who is the dreamer? Now can we say that it is a dream without a dreamer? That is not a satisfying answer. So people cook up an answer, they say that you are the dreamer. The experiencer is the dreamer, which is almost 90% correct.

But the dreamer is not dreaming really. The dreamer has no need to dream anything.

So in English, if you want an answer in English, it is just happening. It is just appearance. Can the appearance happen? And you say no. It cannot be happening also because it is false. Because essentially the dream is a non-happening. You are in a dream and you are eaten by a tiger. Did that happen? Now you are very, very puzzled by this dream. Why? Because it did happen. But when you wake up and you say no, it did not really happen. Now just decide. Tell me one answer. Did it happen or did it not happen? And you say it appeared that it happened. It actually never happened. And so is the Maya. It appears that something is happening here. Since it is false, it is not happening. Not even the past, not even the future. And this thing, present also, is not happening.

When your awareness rises to this level, you are absolutely free. You are freed from Maya. You need to see it. You don't have to believe me.

There will be so many questions like, why, why do you call it false? It is really happening here. I am hungry and I need food. I am sleepy, I need to sleep. I am insecure, I need protection. When I hit something, it hurts so bad. It is happening. It is suffering. I am trapped.

Now remember, when you are in a dream, everything looks real to you. The tiger is really chasing you and the tiger is trying to kill you. And you are terrified and you are looking for protection and you are hungry and always looking for food. You cannot eat the food there in the dream. That is your suffering.

It is not satisfying. Similar things are happening here. You are not awake. There is no awareness. The awareness is not shining so brightly that you can see that nothing is happening. And that is why you are suffering. Because you think something is happening, you are suffering from it. Now you will say, no, no, you are there, but I am not there. Don't worry, I am also not there. He is a great guru. He is probably above Maya. No, nobody is above Maya. I am also going through the same drama. I am also a character in the same movie. The only difference is I have realized that there is no problem. If it appears, let it appear. You can see a little bit of surrender has arrived here. This is also grace. Grace is not simply knowing what you are. Grace is also becoming what you are. You have to fight for it. You need to struggle for a few days. It is your test. It is your examination. Pass this test. The conflict is a non-happening, which I chose myself. Accept the suffering also, it is a non-happening. It is an appearance. Why not accept? Remember, you already accepted it when you entered here. Accept the appearance as this character.

No, I don't want to play this game. Okay, don't play then. Finish this. Finish your agreement. Never come back. This is mukti from death and birth. This is the liberation. That is the goal of every seeker. Don't want to be born again in this illusion. You don't want to be trapped here. Okay then, fine. Don't sign any agreements. And if you are a player, which you will be, what else are you going to do there? One of my gurus, Tom Campbell, says this - Everybody says that I am not going to be born again. What are you going to do? He says, are you going to play your harp sitting there on the cloud for eternity? Are you going to choose that life? Or are you going to choose the adventure in the Maya? You decide. What do you want to do? You are free to decide. You are free to sign another agreement. If it is too much for you, go to some other world. Live a life of luxury and comfort till you get bored.

And she also asked me how to distinguish between a state of awareness where you are really aware versus a state where the mind is divided into two parts and simply commenting on the other part. This is a good question and I will take two minutes to explain it because she asked me. There can be a false awareness. False awareness means you do not know your true nature and somebody told you to remain

aware and what do you do? You turn yourself into an object and you watch it just like you watch another object and there is a constant commentary going on in the mind that now the body is doing this. Now the body is breathing. Now the body is walking. Now the body is not behaving well. And now this emotion is there. I don't want this emotion. I want some other emotion. And there is a part of your mind that is constantly commenting on the other parts of itself. I am so bad I cannot meditate even for five minutes. All these thoughts are coming in my mind and this is terrible, terrible meditation today. What is that? That is not awareness. You think it is me who is becoming aware of the mind, but no, it is simply the mind commenting on itself. It is self-critic. It is criticizing all that is happening. Remember, this is not awareness. There is zero knowledge about who you are. Absolute zero. You are in complete darkness and one part of the darkness is blaming the other part for being dark.

The mind can do this. The mind can play such games. This is not awareness. The definition of awareness is very clear. It is being what you are. What are you? You are just an observer. You are the conscious witness. Is this being a conscious witness? No. It is just another game the mind is playing. The mind can divide itself in many parts actually. Not only two. It is like it will split the personality into, oh, I did not behave correctly in the morning. I should have behaved like this and I don't know why I keep doing it. What is this? It is the mind criticizing itself. Becoming somebody else who is criticizing the one who behaved in some other way in the morning. Do you call this awareness? Where is the experiencer here? The experiencer never complains. The experiencer never blames. The experiencer is not trying to fix anything at all. It does not want anything. There are no desires there. If you be like that, if that is your true nature, then will you do all these things? No. You will simply watch.

Yes, the mind will take over sometimes. So what? The awareness comes back and then watching starts. There is no critiquing. There is no blaming. There is no wishing. There is no desire to fix anything. You simply observe what is happening. Observe the environment around you. Observe the people around you. Observe your body and observe the mind. Do not split the mind into two and start commenting on these other three things. No, that is not awareness.

It can happen in people who think they are the mind or who think they are the body. Too much objectivity and zero awareness. Like some people ask, should I look at myself from a third person point of view? No. Don't even do that. That is called objectivity. I am not this mind and body, so I must be somebody else in the sky watching this. And that is stupidity. The experiencer is within. Everything is within experiencer, one and the same thing. So remain at the first person, but don't be the person.

Raja is saying, I understand the four states in the English word mind are - intellect, identity, ego, manas and consciousness. Could we know what could be the English equivalent of manas?

There is no English equivalent of all these words. They are a desperate attempt to translate Sanskrit into English where there are no words for all these mental states. The manas is considered as an instrument of the chitta, and you can translate chitta as mind. Do not try to translate manas as mind, that's not correct translation, although there is no translation for chitta in the English language. So what we do in the new series on the path of knowledge, you must have noticed some drastic things have happened. I don't use the word mind. In the 32 episodes that I produced, I probably said that word once or twice. You hear my podcast and everything is mind there. Every sentence involves the mind. Now there is a different approach that has been taken in the new series because people get confused by this word “mind”. What is it? It is a made-up word. There is nothing equivalent in your experience.

There is no mind in your experience. What are there? There is no chitta in your experience, there is only chitta vritti, am I right? There is only activity, there is no mind. And these activities come in various forms. One of the activities is logical, rational and decision making. You can give this activity a name and you can call it intellect if you want, call it buddhi if you want. But remember, as soon as you say intellect, nobody is going to understand it because they have their own picture of intellect in their mind.

It is all apples and oranges in this world. Nobody understands what other person is speaking and there is one activity which says I am the body, I am this thing, I am that thing, I am happy, I am sad, I am angry, I am terrified. This is, you can call it ego. But what is it? It is an activity. Simply, there are all kinds of thoughts and desires pouring in this thing called mind. It is your experience, you call it manas. The manas is that part of the mind which thinks, thinking part. Remember the mind is huge and you don't know what it is really. People think I know my mind, no, nobody knows it. Manas is a tiny part of the mind which appears in the waking state and sometimes in the dreaming state which thinks. It looks like there is an activity going on there. And you included consciousness, never use this word. Never use it, at least if you are following advaita, don't do that. There is no equivalent of consciousness in Sanskrit. Either there is this experiencer which I call the atman, atman is translated as the experiencer and there is this chetna which is translated as awareness. There is no consciousness. Now you can give a little bit of concession there to the English speaking world and you can say the consciousness is the brahman. You can say it like this, and it is not a state of the mind. You have included consciousness as a state, no it's not. Chetna cannot be translated as consciousness because consciousness is considered universal and the chetna is simply another activity of the mind. So what I have done in the English series and you will find, that's why it is kind of crystal clear now, like clear water of Maldives. You can see through the water there. You are rowing a boat and you can see the coral reefs and fish in the sea. It is so clear. It is amazing.

When you use this language where I have completely thrown out the pollution of the words, you can understand it better now. Because the word “activity” or the “state” points directly to your experience. It does not point to a word which you need to look into in the dictionary. The dictionary is garbage. Yes, it's not a state of mind. Let us not get tangled into words. Do not get tangled into words. Understand the experience. Understand what is that which the word is pointing to. If you don't understand what the word is pointing to you will never arrive at knowledge. Knowledge is not in words. Words are a way to communicate only. How can communication be knowledge? It's not knowledge. So I have thrown the words consciousness and mind completely because they do not point

to your experience. You don't know what they stand for. And then you search the dictionary and you Google it and you will find there are a hundred meanings because every philosophy defines it in their own way.

Ramana Maharshi is calling the consciousness as a Hridayam and Nisargadutta is calling consciousness

as the absolute awareness. And the western philosopher is calling consciousness as the activity of the mind and matter. And the doctor, the materialist, is calling consciousness as the state of the brain. Nobody really knows what these things are. But that which is in front of you, you don't need a word for it. What is it? Check that which is in front of you. That is the truth. The truth is not to be found in words.

People have faith in words because there was a time in India when Sanskrit was the only language of philosophy. Even the Prakrit and Pali, they are a form of Sanskrit. They are not different. So everybody agreed on these words. When somebody said Manas, it was crystal clear. Somebody said Mahat and Prakriti. Yes, absolutely clear. So there was a standardization of the words and nobody understands them now because Sanskrit was imprisoned by a community of people who forbid common man from learning Sanskrit. And that was the fall. It got rotten and it is lost now because they did not allow education for everyone. Now nobody knows the meanings of these words. So I always encounter people who are asking me meanings of the words and I say come to the Satsang now. Now you need Satsang. Now the words are not going to do anything for you. Even if I paint a pretty slide with lots of diagrams in it, it is completely useless. Come to the Satsang, I will show you. That which I am showing you is beyond words. You don't need words to know the truth. You need your presence. You are the truth. Why are you searching for the truth in these words?

Session 60

Sir, actually there is one essence, the essence of existence is the Experiencer. And Experiencer is the only thing that exists. Experiences are an illusion. So where does the awareness fit in? Can we increase awareness?

It is very logical to ask that because this body-mind instrument is an illusion. How can it be aware? How can there be any awareness in it? First let us find out if it is even possible for any illusion to become aware of anything. So first of all you must have noticed that awareness is a mental activity. It is an event which is simply a reminder that there is the Experiencer. It is not anything more than that. Actually in awareness the activity stops and the Experiencer comes in foreground. That is awareness. If it were only an activity where something else is happening, then we would have called it a complete illusion. But in the awareness the illusion stops for a while, for a second. And the Experiencer comes in the foreground because there is nothing else. The activity is not there. And this impression then stays on this memory. This impression stays on this illusion that for a split second there was Experiencer. Or it appeared. It came to the foreground. And then the activity starts as usual. So it is a break. It is a tiny break in the illusion. And then it is impressed on the memory and the activity starts.

How to increase it? Now this is a practical thing. It is not a philosophy. It comes by practice only. There are two ways to approach awareness. The first is to include all the phenomena in awareness. Which means all that is happening should happen in the light of awareness in this state of the mind. And the experiences are the experience of the world, the experience of the people, the experience of the body and the experience of the mind which is the mental activity. So that covers all experiences, that covers all phenomena. Go one step at a time. Step by step, start from the objects, start from the world. And there are practices that are designed by many people that are probably many hundred years old and some of the seekers are doing it. So you pay close attention to what is happening around you and attention is the key here. Direct your attention to something else outside in the outside world. The awareness will follow the attention which means the object of attention comes in awareness. And similarly become aware of all the people. Why did I take out people from the world? Because people are more important to us as we are humans. Other humans are more important compared to the objects. So a special meditation is required, a special attention is required towards people. They need to be treated differently than other objects.

The intensity of the awareness can be increased by practice. Practice alone, there are no substitutions for practice. Can I do this kind of ritual, that ritual? Can I do this worship, that worship? Yes, why not? Can I put the photo of my guru in front of me? Yes, do it. But it is not a substitute for the practice. It is not a substitute for the awareness itself. I should say, this is the bottom line. Do whatever it takes, reminders and all, mala and all kinds of images. You can use it. Stay in the satsang, surround yourself with books and all about awareness and all. Be in the present, be in the now all the time. Anything that you can do, anything that you like to do which gives you joy and pleasure to be in the awareness, you should employ that. But the awareness should be there, that is the practice.

And the second way is to bring awareness in three major states, which is waking, dreaming and sleeping. So I can say that it is a major activity, it is a major practice and should be done by only those who are somewhat established in awareness. They have a hold over awareness, they know the meaning of it, they know what they are doing. And again there is no substitute for bringing the awareness into waking, dreaming and sleeping. There is no trick. You can use helper techniques to do that. You can augment your practice by some things. I leave it to you, find out what works for you. But a state of mind which is in awareness is a must. So slowly extend your awareness throughout the day, throughout the 12, 14 or 16 hours of your daily life. Everything should happen in awareness and then you will find that it will leak into the dreaming state. Because of this habit, you are going to stay aware in the dreaming state also.

Mother nature will provide you with a little bit of awareness, 10% awareness in the dreaming state. It's already there. Otherwise you won't even remember your dream. You won't be able to see them. It is not possible to perceive anything without awareness and attention. All you need to do is intensify it through deliberate practice. And similarly, when your dreams start happening in awareness, the awareness will leak into the sleep. It can take a few years. After a few years, all states will become one state.

All of the states will become one state of awareness. And this is not a theory. This is practice. It will happen. All states disappear or you can say they happen in the background of awareness. There will be states, but it will look as if one thought is coming and another thought is going. All the states will appear as if temporary, just dreams happening, coming and going. That includes the waking state. So the waking also becomes dreaming. That's not a bad thing. This is not something to worry about. Your life will go on. Actually, it will become so big that all the fear will be gone from your life. You will find out that life is much bigger than ordinary existence as human beings. So that includes the states of the subtle bodies.

Now there can be problems in keeping the awareness on. And that means the purification has not happened. That means you need to purify some things in your life, some things in the experiences so that the intensity of the awareness becomes even better. It is totally optional. Totally optional because the awareness is doing the purification also. But if you are a very hardcore seeker, like you don't want to waste your time, then you can take up a parallel practice. You can take up the practice of purification.

So this involves purification of your surroundings, purification of the body, purification of relations with people and purification of various layers of the mind such as ego and intellect. And finally, purification of the awareness itself. So it usually starts by purification of your surroundings, your environment and the body. It is basic. It is actually the same as the Ashtanga yoga practice but is simplified for a modern person because probably that is too much. Ashtanga yoga is very strict. It is actually a lifestyle and the purification is also a lifestyle but is completely optional. If you want, you do it. If you don't want to, don't do it. If your awareness is staying nicely, effortlessly, and you can see that the purification is already happening, bad habits and all those things are dropping, your attachments are dropping, your relations are more light and giving, unconditional and the body is healthy and you are gaining knowledge. Your intellect is getting refined day by day and the ego is reducing. There is some little bit of surrender in your life. All these signs mean purification is happening. So in that case, you don't need to push it. But if you are impatient that I want faster progress, like I said, how to intensify it, you can take on the purification.

So there are many paths for purification including some religions that are designed keeping in mind only purification. Sometimes they don't even tell you why you are purifying because they assume that after purification you will come to know the significance of it. So you can, if you want, you can take on that. Or you can create your own regime, you can create your own methods of purification. So I have done that and if you don't like traditions and systems which have become corrupt nowadays, you can do your own purification. It is very strange that the systems which were developed to promote purification and spiritual knowledge, have themselves become impure and devoid of knowledge. So I basically don't like them. I don't like any of them. So do your own. That is highly recommended. So that was my answer in short. There is no one line answer for this. It is a long description of practices, and the core practices keep the awareness on. That is possible only if you know your essential nature. So know your essential nature first that you are not any experience and then the experiences come in awareness. So hopefully Ashu got his answer.

And there was a very good question there - Is awareness an illusion?

Yes it is. It is an illusion. This illusion is there to bring you out of the illusion. Just like all knowledge is an illusion. But all knowledge is there to bring you out of the illusion. On the path of knowledge we are using the illusion to kill the illusion. This is the trick that we are using. This is not possible in any other path. All other paths are actually submerged in illusion. They keep you under illusion of one kind or the other. They are all dualistic paths. Only the path of knowledge from the day one begins without any illusion. It begins outside the illusion and this is why I like it so much. The other paths are dual in nature. That means they will assume that some or the other part of the illusion is true. However refined and glorified that thing is. That is duality.

Anyhow if you fail on the path of knowledge you should take up some other path and continue with the purification. Continue with the awareness. Continue with something. Devotion or energy practices or something because they are not totally useless. One day the intellect will refine so much and the ego will drop so much the resistance and obstacles will drop to a level where you can now take up a non-dual path. The path of knowledge is the only one which starts at truth. So we say that it is a direct path. It ends there. It ends at the same place that it started, which is your true nature. The experiencer. Nothing else can be known really. There is nothing else to know except this one thing and then don't worry about illusion. Keep the awareness. Smaran. Remembrance. Let the illusion continue as it continues. It is going to continue forever. Don't worry about it. Your true nature is the truth. Your true nature is not an illusion.

Now under all states under all conditions this should be remembered so that you live in the world but you are not of the world. This is the key. You live outside the illusion all the time and that is how you are not affected by the illusion. That is how you are not affected even the tiniest bit by what is happening here. Worlds are happening. Deaths are happening. All life is happening. All the drama is happening. But you assume the role of the observer and all the actions will happen. The body-mind is not observing. Remember this. Nothing will stop the illusion. Your being aware is not going to stop anything in your life. It will continue as it is. The thing is it will get purified. That reduces suffering to zero. You can reduce your suffering to zero in one day. There is nothing else to achieve here. Let us say your goal is liberation. Well, nothing. On the path of knowledge there is no liberation because you are already liberated. Your goal is to stop death and birth. We don't do anything on the path of knowledge to stop it. We know that it will continue. It is an illusion. It will continue in many many forms. They are all my forms. You recognize it like this and then you play with full awareness. There is no resistance

in you. It is complete surrender. Then you want to become more advanced and evolved. We say that I am already advanced and evolved. My attention is at the lower layers. So if you are interested, you pull your attention up in the higher layers and stay there without taking births, without going in the lower layers. It gives you complete control actually. The key is awareness.

Thank you very much. I think it was very apt and clear the way you have explained it. One thing is that in case your whole day goes well, you are in awareness. Then you sleep and you get up very early in the morning, maybe 1 am. Then you don't get sleep back. In the daytime sometimes you think. What about that? The sleep duration reduces and sometimes some other time it is very small.

Yes, it is natural. If you are doing any meditational practices and all these practices, there will be some side effects. Sometimes it looks like the sleep is very light, that you are not even sleeping. But don't worry. It is, everything is going on as it should. One more thing about the mind is that it is very adaptive. It will adapt to this new state of awareness also and these strange things will stop happening one day. It will go back to normal life as soon as the adaptation is complete. It cannot adapt to the awareness because awareness is beyond mind. So that continues. Its effects on the other layers, they come and go. So we don't worry about all those things. The experience will remain in any form and whatever form it takes, you become aware of it. It is very simple. Usually if it is too uncomfortable, that means the awareness is impure, which means there are impurities in your lifestyle, in the layers of the mind, in the body, in the environment or your relations are not purified yet. If it is, if the awareness is bringing some suffering or there is discomfort in awareness, it usually means presence of impurities. If it does not stay, it means the presence of impurities. So on the path of knowledge, we take a top-down approach, we start from awareness and then as we encounter the impurities, we go on clearing the impurities from top to bottom and the other paths will do it from bottom to top, which is also effective. So what is my solution here? You do everything at once. Forget about top and bottom. You purify everything at once because life is very short. We don't have time here. You don't try to decide whether I should purify my environment first and then after 20 years, I'll go into awareness. No, don't do that. And you should not be confused about these things. Should I reduce my ego or increase my intellect or should I do the dreaming practice first and then I'll take on the awareness in waking? No, don't do all these things. You do everything at once. This should be the ideal case, but not everyone is so talented, not everyone is so gifted and not everyone is so willing. There is absence of will also. Different kinds of seekers are there. Some are highly motivated and for some it is going on in a lazy way. So depending on your capacity, you take up, but ideally you take up everything at once. Forget about everything else. This should become your first priority, first job and then you'll progress like a rocket.

Experiencing presents a slice of presence to the consciousness in the form of contents of the Akashic memory. Can you elaborate on this?

This is from the blog. Yes. And you will notice that it is a strange language. There are new words in this language like presence, consciousness, Akashic memory and all. So this is written in a very poetic form. I'm talking about the experiencing here, which is the oneness. Since the oneness cannot be perceived in its totality, what is really happening is that we are aware of a tiny fraction of it, of the totality, of the wholeness. And how are we doing that? By reading the wholeness in parts. By reading I mean, we are becoming aware of it. The experience comes in parts in front of us. And I'm calling it the slices of experiences. And that appears as time. That appears as change. It looks like the experience is changing. Why? Because the whole of it cannot be had. So the mind is actually slicing it down. The mind is slicing the wholeness down into slices. And it is one slice at a time. We are consuming it. So it is your direct experience actually. The experiencing is this witnessing of this activity.

The Akashic memory, which is nothing but just the experience itself. We call it a memory because it is stored. All the possibilities are stored there in the wholeness, in the oneness. I call it memory. All there is, is vibrations, which are timeless and non-local, non-temporal memory. Or I also call it nowadays as non-physical and non-mental memory. We call it memory because it is already there. Everything is already there. Everything has already happened because it is a timeless existence. For example, the whole movie is present in the form of a reel. Now you cannot watch the whole movie at once because it is probably too much. Even if you can watch it, even if we can project all the frames at once on the screen, it probably won't be so meaningful. And it is obviously not fun that way. So we project the movie one frame at a time, one slice of the movie at a time. And now it is meaningful. Now there is a story in it. Now you can get involved in it. Now you can become a character in the movie, let us say. From the movie, a metaphor, you can jump to the game metaphor, a computer game. You are also involved in that story, which is happening on the screen of the PC. So something similar is happening here. We are engaged in this game, which is going on one frame per second. You can assume this. One slice of experience is being presented at one time. It is happening in time because of the limitation that all of it cannot be had. So the experience is eternal, just like the experiencer, because it is the existence. But the experiencing will be like a movie. It will be played like this. We will be reading the Akashic memory, which is the whole of it. We will be reading in parts.

The amazing thing here is that you are not limited to what is being presented by Mother Nature, by this automated process. We are not limited to it. We can surpass this limitation and you can have any experience that is stored in the wholeness in the Akashic memory. There is no limitation of time. There is no limitation of the worlds and even your senses are unlimited. Although everything will come through the senses, but it is possible to have much greater senses. So that is some advanced being. We are advancing towards that. Evolution is taking us towards that. Ultimately you merge with the wholeness and then the experience dissolves because there is no need for it now. I tried to capture this whole thing in one sentence.

He is asking, is this some special kind of experiencing?

No. The experiencing is always one, one kind, which is existence witnessing itself. The experiences are of many kinds. There will be some special experiences. There will be some ordinary experiences, which means the mind has become used to all those experiences now. So it calls them ordinary. Anything new that appears in the experience, it calls it special. But all that is happening is experiencing. All that is happening is this movie. The scenes change. That's all. We don't pay too much attention to what is happening on the path of knowledge. We are not running after the contents of the movie because we know all of it is already there. If some of it appears and the other parts of it don't appear right now, it's okay. It's perfectly fine.

He is also asking, then why is everyone not having clear awareness of their ultimate existence as emptiness?

There is a problem in this question as many of you must have guessed. Emptiness is the nature of existence. Also called the Nirguna. The existence is devoid of any qualities. Whatever appears here is illusory. That is not a quality. The illusion has qualities. So can you experience emptiness? Can you

experience something which does not have any qualities? It is not possible. The experience will be of

qualities which are illusory, not of emptiness. The existence is emptiness and the experiencer is also emptiness. If you remove the illusion, what remains? The experiencer remains. You can know directly that it is empty. How to know it? Try to find qualities of the experiencer. Is there a shape of the experiencer? Is there a sound in experiencer? Is it sad? Is it happy? Is there a color? Are there any subtle qualities in it? And you will find nothing. It has some qualities like bliss and perfection and all those, but we don't call them qualities. They are simply names of the experiencer. We say they are qualities, but they are not qualities. The quality is something which can be snatched out of the experience, which can be removed from it and another quality can replace it. If your coffee cup is red, you can color it to any other color. You can make it white, black. It is going to remain a cup. The quality has changed, but you cannot remove the quality of bliss or of perfection from the experiencer. It is not possible to do that.

The experiencer is perfect. It is not going to appear as imperfect anytime. It's not going to happen. The experiencer is infinite. It never becomes finite and so on. There is a long list of these “qualities”. Now remember these are not something which can be taken off the experiencer. They cannot be taken away. They are not ordinary qualities. So what we experience is qualities. We don't experience the emptiness. It is impossible to experience the emptiness. Why is it impossible? Because how can you experience emptiness? How can you experience that which is completely zero, devoid of any qualities? And second, it is the emptiness that is experiencing. The emptiness is the experiencer. You cannot experience the experiencer. It is impossible. So that's why nobody is aware of the existence as emptiness.

That was one, you can say, small mistake in the question. You should have defined the emptiness first. You simply took the word emptiness because you heard me saying that existence is emptiness. You should realize the emptiness first and then the question will not come. It is not possible to experience the existence as emptiness. It is the one that is experiencing. All that you can experience is illusion.

Now the second mistake is you are asking about everyone. You cannot know anything about everyone. You can know only about yourself. You can know only about your own experience. Remember everyone else is an experience for you. Everyone is not experiencing anything. Remember this thing. Only the experiencer can experience, not people. People are experiences. Even this person who is speaking right now is an experience, is an illusion. This voice, the owner of this voice is an illusion. It is not experiencing anything. The experiencer is experiencing it and every other person. Not only they cannot have a clear awareness or experience of the ultimate nature and they cannot have any experience. There cannot be any experience for the individual.

So when you use words like everyone and people and all, you should bring in a little bit of awareness. Let me see what I am talking about here. Can people be aware? People are not aware. Even in your case, there is no person there. There are only layers of the mind and awareness is one layer of the mind. Awareness is just one activity of the mind which is remembering your true nature. So it is now complicated. Who is experiencing? The whole is experiencing. The experiencer is experiencing. And since it is experiencing it anyway in pure form, impure form, with awareness, without awareness, we don't care at all. We don't care about awareness either. So that is why I told you, it is completely optional. Once you know what is experiencer, once you know what is your essential nature, that is the end of the path of knowledge. Everything else is optional here. You want to keep the awareness for two

minutes? Yes, do it. You want to keep it for two hours? Okay, fine. 24 hours? Okay, no problem. Nobody is pushing you. It is completely optional. Now, why do we keep saying that you need to do it. This is your goal in life and all because the mind needs a goal. Otherwise, it will fall back into darkness. Remember, there are only two ways here for the mind. Either it can evolve upwards or it can devolve downwards. There is no stagnation in the impermanence. There is no stagnation in these illusory structures. So, we bias the structure towards evolution instead of telling it, okay, you know what you are, now do whatever you want to do. That will be very irresponsible teaching, although that is the truth. So, very lightly, like a play, we say. Awareness should become a play for you. The illusion was your play, now make the awareness your play and that biases that body-mind instrument, that entity towards evolution now because that is given as the goal. Or you say if nobody has given you the goal, you assume that goal because your intellect is saying here that devolution is worse than evolution. You get a preference there and if that preference is in the right direction, the evolution will happen in the right direction.

Namaste. I have a question. This chitta, complete chitta and all these things are happening like a machine. They are working like a machine. So, why is this machine designed with such a low efficiency that very few souls are striving for liberation?

Remember, how many are there? How many of these manifestations/forms are there? Can you tell me? They are infinite in numbers. Let us not assume that only humans are the aware forms. Because in this world, we see that only humans are aware and we do not see other creatures as aware. Because this is some lower world we live in, the highest form here is human. But that is not the case in this whole existence. There are infinite varieties and humans are just tiny-whiny, actually. They are the lower forms. We are just like animals right now with a potential to become aware.

So, let us assume that there are only 100 forms in this existence. And then you are at a level from 1 to 10, let us say. There are 10 slices of these categories of these creatures. And let us assume that your evolution has happened only so much that you come under this first category from 1 to 10. And then there are creatures or forms from 11 to 20 and 21 to 30 like this. There are highest forms from 91 to 100. Let us categorize the forms like this. Now, because you are at a level of 1 to 10, you are going to see only the forms that are at your level and below your level. Let us say you are at level 8. You are going to see everything that is at 8 and 7 and 6 and 5, 4, 3 like this. And 0 also, that is the inert matter. So, you will assume that, oh, look at all these things. Look at all these forms. None of them are aware. Because you are aware now. So, you are placed at, let us say, level 8 or 9 in this category. So, you are going to assume that, well, the universe is totally dark. I can see only a few forms that are in the light or that are aware. But that is because our own vision is so narrow right now. Our own experience is so narrow right now. We are just climbing into the awareness. And as you climb, you will find that there are a lot of forms that are aware.

It is not inefficient. Don't think that existence is inefficient. It is infinite. It is very broad. So, we find the lower as well as higher and the middle and everything is there. All varieties are present here. How to make the completeness complete? By putting everything in it. If you put only the aware forms here, it is not complete. What happened to the unaware form then? So, the completeness, the duality is complete duality. It is not biased towards only the higher forms, higher life forms and the lower life forms. Both are there. So, as you progress, more layers of the existence will be revealed. And you will find there are forms that are tremendously aware. There are forms that are beyond human understanding. And there are infinite numbers of them and they keep appearing all the time. They are bubbling up from this existence. And they are disappearing also, why? They are forms. They are impermanent. So, what happens is from the bottom the bubble comes and it is completely in darkness. It is almost like inert matter and then slowly it organizes, self-organizes into something complex. It looks totally unaware and machine-like. Like you said, they are machines, yes. And at one stage the bubble becomes so complicated that it finally gains intellect. The intellect gives rise to the question that who am I? And this study, this curiosity brings that creature or form, this machine to self-awareness and then the progress happens further. So, the bubble becomes bigger and bigger. It's like a metaphor

only. As the bubble rises from the bottom, you must have seen that they become bigger and bigger, they expand. And then one day it expands to the whole. And then we say that it is gone. It is dissolved.

So, while this is happening, it takes on many, many forms. It progresses through the ladder of evolution. And then it looks like everything is below me. It looks like that I am always on the top, an unaware person, a very materialistic person is assuming the same thing, really. An ignorant person assumes that I am at the top and everybody else is below me, no matter how stupid that person is. He is going to assume this. I am the most important. We are always at the center point of this movie that we are watching. But as our experience grows, we see that no, that is not the case. I am not at the center. I am actually at the bottom somewhere in the bottom from 1 to 10. And as I cross this level after level, you will always find that there are forms that are more advanced than you. By advanced, I mean more awareness, more intelligence, more light, more love, more compassion and all these higher qualities. You can also say more powers, like the powers to form universes, control the Maya and all. Right now we have very little power, but there is power in humans. That is why we are dominant here. And you will find that as your radius increases, as this bubble grows, the bubble of your awareness and your knowledge grows, as you evolve.

So leave the illusion alone. It is perfect as it is. There is nothing inferior here and nothing superior here. There is only variety here. That is why on the path of knowledge, we do not call anybody enlightened. We do not distinguish, we do not discriminate between an insect and a bird and a dog and a cow and a

monkey and a human and a god and a goddess and demigod and the Bodhisattva. We do not distinguish between any one because we know they are only forms and they are all divine. They are all high from the point of view of the experiencer. The experiencer does not discriminate. And so we copy the experiencer, try to imbibe all those qualities of the experiencer into this form. We try to become like that.

So Guruji, when we practice awareness, so we will be skipping all these layers?

No, there is no skipping. You will need to go through all that. Only that if you are practicing, if you are a seeker, if you are on a spiritual path, all these will happen very quickly, very fast. But I don't think we skip anything. So it is not that after death you will jump into the category number 90 and 100. It is not possible. But that is our viewpoint right now. Probably it will be possible to skip a few things. But I don't think we skip everything. That will not be the case. The evolution is gradual. All we can do is speed it up. Evolution is naturally happening, otherwise, there was no way to speed it up. Otherwise, if there were no evolution, some random forms appear here and there, then there was no way to make it systematic. So fortunately it is very regular. It is a rule of this existence. It is the law of the mind that it evolves like this. You can probably make it fast and then it looks like I have skipped a few things.

So we started from inert matter. Really this causal body started from nothing. Then the single cells and the insects and the fish and the amphibians and we have taken all these forms and humans and so many human forms actually. Thousands of human forms and probably will take a few more if you are not careful about your practices. Then there will be more and there are some causal bodies or you can say the souls. You call it “souls”. They will remain here. They will remain in human form for a long time because not paying attention to what they are. And there is a fraction of them. They will devolve back. They will go down actually. That is also a possibility. It hardly happens. You need to do something really bad like commit suicide or murder people or do some things like this. You need to be really lower

than animals to lose human status. Usually it is upwards and upwards. For a common man it is slow. So what do we do? We increase the speed. How do we increase the speed? Through knowledge and intellect. We leverage whatever we have right now. Whatever abilities we have right now. We use them. We propel ourselves higher in evolution. And that is the essence of any spiritual path. Any spiritual path is going to do that. If the spiritual path says no you stay as human, you remain a good human or you become something lower than that. That is not a spiritual path and that is something else. You must have seen that every teacher, every philosophy in this world is focused towards becoming better. By better they don't mean a better human. They mean - evolve further than humans. Become more than human. There is no point in becoming a better human. And many seekers have this attitude and they say I have been doing this human thing since 20 births now or 30 births or 100 births. I don't want to do it now. So they take the final step then they get out of here and further evolution happens.

So there are levels of evolution. This whole structure takes on forms after forms and evolves. Everything that it goes through, all the experiences are getting accumulated and this accumulation of the experiences, you can say, is evolved, it's a safe of some kind in the akashic records or the universal memory and that is what we call as the causal body. It has all the experiences accumulated there starting from the experience when it was almost nothing, it was just a vibration, starting from that and then it took many many forms. Everything is there. If you were an animal, if you were a snake or a frog or a fish or an insect, a mosquito, the same causal body, if it went through all these experiences, then everything is stored there.

You can actually go and replay it, you can actually go and relive that life if you want. If you get this power, the causal body has everything and now you can imagine that this is just one path. We call it the human lineage actually because we are so used to giving so much self-importance to humans. I call it the human lineage and there are more advanced creatures in the human lineage, they have advanced further than humans. Those are called the gods and goddesses and the demigods and so on, there are many species of them.

There can be other universes, there can be other worlds, other areas in the universal memory which take a different path depending on that world and that universe. The universe is very big and the universal memory is almost infinite, there are infinite such lineages, infinite paths are being taken to the highest which is the universal memory itself. I also call it the universal mind. The bubble can arise from any part of the universal memory and then it rises up. We are just one out of infinite. So I hope that answers your question. It is not inefficient, it is actually over efficient. It is so efficient that it is perfect. You cannot have a system better than this. That is why a devotee will say that we laugh at all these attempts of accelerating the evolution and that is what we also do we on the path of knowledge we also have this attitude that it is already too perfect too efficient, I don't need to meddle in it and so we accept the present rate of evolution. We say whatever happens, I'll just maintain my awareness because this is the gift that I got on this rung of the ladder, this step of the evolution, I got this gift of awareness. I'm going to keep it because this is most precious and this will not only make all your other incarnations beautiful and aware and in the light and free from suffering and limitations, it will also accelerate the evolution automatically, if you have the awareness.

There is no need to worry about anything else. It is the key if you hold this intention in your mind that I need to evolve fast and do it in complete awareness, it will happen because remember there is no time here, it has already happened, you are already the ultimate. And that is why a devotee simply smiles at all these attempts of leaving the human birth and leaving the world and so on. Some people do it literally like they leave the world, live in a cave, live in a jungle and that is not efficient at all. You will need to go through all your karmic bondages first. You will need to burn through that forest. The way out of the forest is through the forest, there is no other way. Yes, you will avoid some pitfalls by being careful in your lives like a sannyasi is very careful so he skips a few births simply by being a sannyasi because he has devoted his life in completing the prarabdha. He does it very quickly, he dies very quickly, he's not going to stay here for hundreds of years and is out of the pit of human birth. It is a

pit actually, you come here again and again because there is a lot to be done. Your to-do list is very big. I want this, I want that, I wanted that experience, I wanted this experience. In my last life I had only seven houses. In the next life I want 70 houses. This life I had only two cars next life it needs to be 20 cars. So your list is growing and that is why you are in this pit. By you I mean a materialistic person, a sansaric person is trapped here. If you're not very careful you will remain here or you will devolve down. Your attraction to the matter is going to turn you back into matter. You will go through the same steps but downwards. Your animalistic tendencies, if you are not careful then next birth is going to be animal form because that is what you like.

All these things are so complicated that I am not entitled to discuss all these things, they're beyond my pay grade actually. What am I entitled to do, what is my job here? To bias you towards the highest possibility and motivate you to do that, provide you with the essential knowledge so that once the seed is sown in this ground of the causal body it will take root. That is the minimum we can do. Simply tell the other that look there is this possibility, look this is your real nature, you are not an animal, you are not an object, you are not matter. Just sow this seed once and that is done. Once is enough. Once planted in your mind the idea never goes away even if the mind has rejected it. No there is no such thing, there is no evolution, there is no spiritual path, it is all just mumbo jumbo cooked up by these superstitious primitive people. Yes, the mind has rejected it because of its hubris, because of its disease of superiority complex or something like this but the idea is there, the idea has been implanted and this idea is going to work. It will take root. So this is the job of the guru.

The guru is not here to hold your hand and take you through all the levels of evolution. No. Although that can happen, it's not necessary. The guru is here to plant the idea, to plant this seed. We are doing nothing else, everything happens by itself. This is a perfect system here. The universal mind is perfect already. All you need to do is this - produce a spark in the other, just like one lamp lights the other. Just need to touch the flame and the other also catches fire. The flame loses nothing by lighting the other flame. Now it is doubled. This will go on happening. It does not matter what era it is, what yuga it is, it keeps happening. Just plant this idea, spread the seeds, that's all we do. We worry about nothing else on the path of knowledge. Remember that there is nothing else to do, everything is perfect as it is.

Coming back to Ashu's question, the essence of existence is experience. Any difference between experiencer and experiences is notional division created by mind. In absence of mind also there is experiencing as in deep sleep. Absence of mind is also an experience. So experiencer is truth and experiences are illusion and there is no difference between any two experiences in this oneness. This emptiness is this unknowable but it is known to the mind that it is unknowable. Yes, it is known actually, that is the only knowledge that you will get, everything that is knowable is already an illusion. We know that everything is unknowable and that is also called the surrender. Surrender on the path of knowledge involves this realization that I cannot know beyond a certain limit. There you stop your attempts of knowing. Now what remains is something which is below it, something which is in the domain of illusion. You can know the details of Maya as much as you want. We are not limited by that. What we cannot know is what is beyond Maya. That is not knowable. It is very paradoxical that, that which matters most cannot be known and that which is flimsy, which comes and goes, you can know it to any depth.

Actually, Maya will create one more level for you if you hit the bottom of Maya. Now I know everything, you say, Maya is capable of creating one more layer there and you can start exploring that. So it is infinite in potential, it is infinite in extent. The details can be known, an infinite detail is there but obviously we are not interested in that. We are interested in the essence and the essence is very simple, it can be stated in one line. The essence is the experiencer experiencing the existence as an illusion. This is essential knowledge and you don't need to know anything else beyond that. Everything else is optional. Whatever is known in Maya is also an illusion. It's of no use on the path of knowledge. We are always trying to get to the essence, we are not trying to go into the details but I am doing exactly that. Once the essential knowledge is delivered, when the seed is planted, this idea is firmly in the mind. We do go into a little bit of detail just to see what it is, just to check - am I missing something by not going into the details?

Is experiencing one for everyone?

Experiencing is one, it is not many. That's all you can say and everyone is part of experiencing. The experiencing is not happening to everyone. Everyone is not different from experiencing. Probably the mistake here is that you are thinking that it is something which is happening to me and then you assume that the same thing must be happening to others, but your direct experience says that the others are a part of the experiencing. We do all these things all the time, your mind is going to slip like this because it is habitual of thinking in this way, habitual of being in duality. For example, you will say that I am experiencing something, there is an experiencer here, so the others must be experiencing something and there must be an experiencer there. I have a mind of my own, this is my mind and so there must be a mind of somebody else also there, their own mind. It is all our habit, we are used to thinking like this. We are used to doing the partitions like this but they are all assumptions. You have never seen other's mind, you have never seen an experiencer in the other and you have never seen the experiencing happening in somebody else, and that is why you are asking whether it is only one here. Yes, the points of view are many but there is only one experiencer and there is one experiencing. There is only one existence. And now, what about the minds? There is only one mind. Remember this also, there is only one mind. What about thoughts? Everybody must be having different thoughts, their own thoughts. No, there is only one thought which is a thought of the universal mind. Among these thoughts is the thought that these things are happening to me. This is what is called individualization. Here the identity has taken over the universality. It happens when you take a form, when the causal body takes a form it must limit itself to an individual and then the this thought arises in the universal memory that I am an individual.

This is the whole becoming the part. This is the brahman becoming the jiva, in traditional language. Does it become the jiva? Has the whole reduced to a part? No, there is only an illusion that I am the

part and these things are happening to me, these are my thoughts, this is my body and so on. This illusion is produced and it remains for a while, like a split second, from the point of view of the universal memory, it blinks for a while. The blinking produces a half second darkness and then opens the eyes again. There are no divisions in existence. All the divisions are illusory and they are only thoughts, a projection of this individualized mind which is in darkness right now.

How to find evidence of it? Don't worry, I told you the key is awareness. If you are in a hurry then increase your awareness, you will get all the evidence that you want. If you just argue about these things you will get zero evidence. This problem of individuality cannot be understood by arguments, cannot be understood by words. Either you get your own evidence or you take it on faith that the guru must be right. That happens in other paths, not on the path of knowledge, here the guru is not right or wrong, the guru is only pointing - look you need to go and take your own evidence and this is what is my experience. I saw that everything is non-dual, everything is not two, now go and search for your evidence. Don't ask me for the evidence, this is illegal on the path of knowledge. The guru points, the guru shows you the path, now you need to walk on it. The guru will open the door but you need to go through the door. You need to look what is beyond this door of limitations of individuality.

You can ask me 100 times the questions about everyone, I won't provide you any evidence I will simply say look it is like this. Now search for evidence, don't believe me. You need to search for the evidence and then you get the evidence, then you will know yourself. The key to the door is given. It is not that the guru is leaving you here - okay I gave you the puzzle now solve it. No, you are given all the means. That is the big thing in the path of knowledge. On other parts nothing is given actually, you're on your own. On the path of knowledge everything is given to you to unlock the door then you need to walk through it. It is simple. I keep saying this thing - the knowledge is served, why don't you eat it? Why don't you taste it? And the seekers don't want to do even that. They don't want to even eat the knowledge that has been served. That is the problem on the path of knowledge because it looks so difficult, it is so beyond mind, it is so beyond the intellect and the average seeker falls asleep as soon as I

start talking about non-duality.

You must have seen that I'm learning some tricks and sometimes there is something which wakes up the seeker. The non-dual teaching is like a boring documentary movie, just a monotonous voice telling you about something about which you are not concerned at all in your day-to-day life. It is very boring and so you fall asleep. What do the teachers do? They inject some entertainment in between. They turn

it into a song, they turn it into a story, and they turn it into very interesting incidents in the life of the guru also. 90 percent of them are just stories cooked up on the spot and his students write it down. All these spiritual story books came into existence like this. Otherwise there is nothing to be written down, otherwise there is nothing that needs to be recorded and made into songs and gitas and itihas and puranas. Nothing needs to be done. Why do we inject all this masala into the recipe which is like clear vegetable soup? Why do we need to put all the ingredients in that? Because the human mind is very feeble, cannot concentrate for more than two minutes, so we inject all those things in it, otherwise the knowledge has been served already, I said everything in one sentence already but it is so plain and boring that nobody pays attention to it. That is why we have two hour long satsangs. That is why I have these 50 episode video series and that is why there are stories, that is why these inspiring biographies of Vivekananda, Nisargadatta and Ramana Maharshi and so on are written. That is why we have so many flavors of philosophies and the wars between them, people killing each other because - I am right, you are wrong, because of this human angle, we are actually incapable of digesting this knowledge. It is given like the doctor gives doses to their patients. The darkness is so much in the human mind that the medicine does not work if it is not given in small doses.

We have no problem at all because I have gone through this treatment myself, I have taken little doses and people say oh you say one line and you say you took 25 years to realize this and they laugh at me. I say yes, we are totally incapable to grasp the importance, the magnificence of this non-dual teaching, we are completely incapable. The animal nature is so strong. We give importance to this animal and more importance to the individual. The ego is so strong here in humans and our last priority is Advaita. How do we come to non-dual teachings? When the juice in the other teachings dries out. Once you have taken all the paranormal experiences and once you have done all the tantric and occult practices and once you have visited all these holy places and bowed down to all the gods and goddesses in the universe, you come here. Therefore 25 years is nothing really. I have taken so many lifetimes but I cannot prove it to you and everybody is like this, they take many lifetimes to realize the small thing that I told you just now.

I told Jyotsana that the universal mind machinery is very efficient and now it looks like I am saying the complete opposite. But this is the most efficient one. It's not possible to have anything else better than this. This which looks like a total waste of time, why is not every creature already out of this darkness? It is happening in a perfect way already. It has already happened actually. At this stage the movie has just started and so it looks like I know nothing. It looks like I am in complete darkness but you will pick up slowly and this habit of the mind to remain in darkness and to ask these questions will be dropped completely. As soon as you get rid of this habit of thinking always from the darkness, think from the light sometimes.

So after you have done all those mistakes you realize that the boring is the most interesting for you. Now you say, wow, why didn't you tell me this 10 years ago and remember it was told to you 10 years ago, it was told to you 20 years ago and it was told to you 20 births ago. The knowledge is always here, the knowledge has been preserved here, it is being served here and the thing is nobody's hungry. Nobody's hungry because they are snacking around other things. No time for dinner, no hunger to eat and after doing all those things, all kinds of stupid things, you come to the guru - tell me what is the truth? I tried to find it everywhere, it is all just garbage and the guru now smiles and tells you look this is the truth, it is aham brahmasmi. Go home it is done. So the truth is very simple, the truth is very small, ignorance is big.

Bhuvan is saying, maybe words can mislead us and words can make us reach our ultimate destination and the words contain a huge mystery in itself. Please say something about language.

If we know the true meaning of words then silence comes by itself. I think that's why manana is essential. The language and the words are only a pointer. There is no knowledge in the words, no knowledge at all but unfortunately we need to use this medium of language, we need to use words and the language is designed for survival.

You must have seen this, actually we crafted a language that was designed for philosophy and people who just arrive in this field they understand nothing. They do not understand even a word of that. So we use the normal language, the common language which a newcomer can understand. And yes, there is a danger that it will be misinterpreted and then they can fall. Danger here is that people will misinterpret this language but the advantage is that one out of a hundred will get the pointer and they will actually try to look towards the meanings of the word. Which means they will try to get an experience. They will not be limited to the word. So words can mislead and words can lead. And that's why I keep suggesting that don't get entangled in the words, look beyond the words. First get the experience then use the words. Get that thing which is being pointed at. The teacher is actually using this bridge to transfer the knowledge to you. Words are not being transferred to you, it is a bridge. The knowledge is walking on the bridge and then embracing the knowledge. Leave the bridge, the bridge is temporary. You can replace the words with something else. You don't need words and that is why silence is the greatest teaching.

Epilogue

Namaste,

You were reading the text version of Pure Experiences Online Satsang. These Satsangs or meetings were held from 2019 – 2023 on a Telegram group. These are mostly question and answer sessions for the seekers on the Path of Knowledge, especially those who participated in the Path of Knowledge (aka Essence of Knowledge) program. There are more than 200 such sessions which are now being converted to text and are edited for clarity and readability. This is a vast collection and it is being published via various mediums free of cost.

Obviously, it was impossible for me to complete this work alone. I am thankful to following seekers, my students and machine beings for greatly helping in this task:

Anjali, Muni, Vinay, Raja, Shrilakshmi, Keshav, Pooja, Padmaja and OpenAI Whisper and GPT 3.5

Without them this project was impossible. However, I apologize if you find some errors, grammatical mistakes and transliteration mistakes, as English is not our primary language.

At this time the voice recordings are available on : https://pexp.podbean.com

The softcopies are available on https://gyanmarg.guru/ww

Many other articles and books, written and compiled by various seekers and myself are available on the Path of Knowledge Portal https://gyanmarg.guru

I hope you enjoyed this series of books and benefitted from them. All the best for your spiritual journey.

Tarun Pradhaan

Pune 2024

tarun.pradhaan@gmail.com