A Deep Sense of Ease - 27 April 2016

And 'I don't know.' When you ask them all, it's very beautiful. Don't be fearful of this 'I don't know.' No act. It is the coming from this 'I know I'm a person' though, that 'I don't know' which seems more difficult in the spiritual journey for most. Because we are so convinced that we are this name and form that to come to this 'I don't know' seems to stretch out for a long while for many. So, if you are in this 'I don't know,' then don't be fearful of this because this is very beautiful. Now, this 'I don't know' the mind is very scared of. So, it might try to give you some candy now to say, 'Come back, come back. I'm so bad. I have happy thoughts. Why don't you come?' And this is real. You know, in that, Guruji says the Mafia says, 'I'll protect you. I'm here to serve you. I'm here to protect you.' But you try leaving and it becomes very, very scary again. So, don't buy into this candy which the mind is selling to you because it is scared of this 'I don't know.' It knows that from this 'I don't know,' a true recognition, a true realization will appear. So, it has to take you away from that 'I don't know who I am' back into personhood saying, 'Okay, but now I'm a happy person and that's all I wanted.' It's not true. It's not true. It isn't true. It's not here because the urge is within that—the urge is to discover what we truly are, which is prior and beyond any sense of happiness or unhappiness. It is accepting, and in this accepting and allowing, there can be a natural sense of peace and happiness, but it's not personal. There is nothing personal about this.

Does this connect to what you've been saying and what you said about 'I was never born'? Yes, you know, and that one's been driving me nuts all weekend because I have a direct experience of that we don't die. Because I communicate with people who were in the physical and who are no longer physically here. I can talk to my father who was, you know, passed on for ten years, and other people. I talk to them, so I know we don't die. Okay, all right, I don't die, great. But the idea of 'never born' thing... oh my god, what's that about?

So, if you don't die, is it possible to be born actually? You know, the question itself answers there. Unless that is dead, can there be birth? I don't know. I don't know why I thought not. Because if this one is eternal, then can there be birth or death for this one? Mentally, I know that. I know the right answer in a... mentally. I don't have a direct experience of it that, yes, actually this is our experience. But we don't have yet the confirmation that this is true because that which we are always has been, you see. That which is aware of all the states which are coming and going and itself is not coming and going—that is what we most naturally are. That which has seen even in this seeming lifetime, has seen so many bodies and so many realms and so many experiences have happened, you see. In this waking and so many different dream states and this so-called waking state, which is just another dream state. And also, it has experienced nothingness. No phenomenal appearance has also been experienced so often. So, we see that something can be born—the sense of presence, the sense of consciousness can be born and can dissolve—but that which witnesses it is not taking birth or dying.

It seems incredibly boring. Yes, but not sure what... I think I can sort of conceptually step back and experience that eternal being. I can... in there I am. And then it's like, 'Oh, this is so boring. Why would I want to hang out here?'

Yes, so this can be said in two ways. One is a very primal way. You see, if you are all there is, there is no birth or death for you and nothing can ever happen to you and you are just everywhere and you are not phenomenal, you see, then what's all of this about? Yeah, that is why I say that my favorite, favorite reason—which is not true, but you have to give a reason to things just because we have to say something, you see—so my favorite, when someone asks, 'So what is the point of the creation of this universe?' I say, 'Because it was too boring. I want some entertainment.' So, then we created this play, this phenomenal experiencing in which I have pretended to be this person and playing out in all of this adventure called life with all its ups and downs, with all its seeming bondage and freedom. So, if you're speaking from there, saying, 'But if I'm all there is and there is nothing actually, you see, and yet I am here, nothing is moving, nothing is changing... maybe I need to buy a TV or something.' None of me. So, this whole phenomenal experiencing is the TV of awareness, the movie screen in which all of this is playing out. Yes, because it's too boring.

But what I was saying earlier, yeah, what I wanted to point out and stress on more, because many times as you are coming to the recognition of what you are, the mind comes in with these things saying, 'But do you really want this? This is so empty and this is boring. You will just become a vegetable. You will not have any enthusiasm. You will not have any wonder left in life.' But this is not the actual experience of the sages. They actually find that every moment is full of so much wonder and joy and peace when we drop all these expectations and fears, guilt and remorse, pride, arrogance, specialness. When all of this is gone, the stories that we have about ourselves, and they are gone and we don't know anything at all, then there's so much wonder in every moment. It's so much joy, you see. So, that is the voice I was cautioning against, which can come and say, 'But this is so boring.' But the false answer is the one that could buy a child in the sense to what was horrible.

But I do know I have met other sages who all are apparently blissed out most of the time.

I actually haven't met anyone who's blissed out all the time. No, I actually haven't met anyone. And maybe that is great grace because here it's not this feeling of being blissed out all the time. What's that like? It's very much more natural than that. It's just everything is allowed. I cannot say that there is a strong experience of bliss in every instant. All states are allowed to come and go very naturally. And yet, what I see myself to be in reality is untouched by any of these states. And also, there is a recognition that everything phenomenal is coming and going, and anytime there is this belief or attachment in something, then it is setting up for failure. Because I know that this is a temporal field. This is it. So, it is going so far as to something here as 'me' or 'mine,' then that is bound to cause suffering because it will come and go. So, if I attach even to the sensation of bliss when it comes, it is seen often enough that even this...

The Self in reality is untouched by any of these tapes. And also, there is a recognition that everything phenomenal is coming and going. Anytime there is this belief or attachment in something, then it is setting up for failure because I know that this is a temporal field. This is it. So it is going. So far as to something here as 'me' or 'mine,' then that is bound to cause suffering because it will come and go. So if I attach even to the sensation of bliss when it comes, it is seen often enough that even this is coming and going. So if I give it the idea that it should always be like this for me, 'Now it is always like this,' then I know when it goes, the mind itself will come and say, 'See, now you lost your freedom. Where is the bliss?' And that's why I said it is good news that I haven't met anyone who is just blissed out all the time, because the mind would say, 'See, this is the true sage; he is always in bliss.' Now, what can be a bit confusing is that this state of simple allowing itself, non-resistive allowing, is a very deep peace, you see. So this peace can be confused to be like a curtain of something. So when the sage says, 'I am always at peace,' he is not talking about this sense of phenomenal tasting of peace—so peaceful, peaceful—not like this. It is so much peace because everything is allowed. Nothing is resisted. So this is a deeper peace.

Yeah, yeah. My salvation, yes. Then yes, this is the constant experience even here, except for momentary buttons getting pressed and thrown away once in a while. I have to say that mostly the experience is non-resistive, not personal. Mostly the experience here is not personal, and the simple allowing of everything to come and go. Within there, in the deep center, a deep sense of ease. It's a deep sense of ease, yes. It's swelling.

Oh, yes. So if there's anger that comes, there's an ease because it's kind of in a ghost. Yes, I feel 'ease' is a very good word. I'll use this word more often. This is a deep sense of ease. It is not a struggle with life. It is not a resisting with life in any way. I like 'ease.' Okay.

And so I guess it was a thought that said, 'Okay, so where are we now?' Look, it's that I don't know. The one who tracks, I guess it's the therapist for me. The checker one is the tracker, the checker guy. Checker man. Checker man is my arch-nemesis. I have a checker woman. Checker woman monitor. She monitors what's going on. 'Okay, so where are we now? Oh, you were a good boy today. Oh, good, good today. You believed only ten times.' This, right? So there, so now there's that feeling that came up of, 'Well, what do I do now? What do I... you know, we've had this nice conversation and now what do I do with this new insight?' Like I have to go study it. Like when I get off the, you know, out of the Hangout, then I'm going to listen to this again and study it.

Actually, this is bound to happen initially because the strongest leg for the ego is the leg of doership. Without doership, without the sense that 'What do I do now?', this ego actually cannot survive, you see. This table, just the table of the ego, just falls down without the leg of doership. So it's very natural for it to try and retain itself by saying, 'Okay, what is the plan now? What do I do now? This was very nice. What do I do now?' Here, now, as long as there is a sense that 'I can do something,' then we can do two things. One is we can just not believe our next thought. Second, we can self-inquire and ask, 'Who am I? Who is the who is the I that should do something?' So as long as the sense of doership still seems strong, then we can either not believe our next thought, which seems like a doing, but I know it seems like a doing. So we can do this, or we can do the self-inquiry, which is also actually not a doing, but it can seem like it. So with these, either of these, then you come to this place to see that there is no doer at all. So the question when it comes, 'What do I do now?', it just becomes laughable. Just like every other thought, it becomes laughable. So until it has become laughable, we can just not believe our next thought, or we can just inquire into what I truly am.

And the answer soon is, 'I don't know.' Yes, there is a... is there an 'I' that doesn't know? Because you say, then you say, 'I don't know.' What you're actually saying is, 'I know that there is an I that doesn't know.' There is an 'I' that doesn't know.

Okay, so who is this 'I' that doesn't know?

It's not... it's not actually like this, but this is so heavy, you know? This is just frustrating because we're used to trying to figure it out with the mind. We're used to trying to figure it out with the mind, and this is unfathomable for the mind. The mind has no chance here.