Abide in Awareness with No Illusion of Personhood (Ashtavakra Gita 1.4) - 27th September 2016

Jenny says: 'Abide in awareness with no illusion of person, you will be instantly free and at peace.' How does one abide in awareness?

This sage says: 'Abiding in awareness with no illusion of person, you will be instantly free and at peace.' So for me, I would read the second one as very important. It is 'with no illusion of person.' I feel that the abiding in awareness is our natural state anyway. The only delusion, or the only play, is this play of being a person. So how do we play this play? You play this play only by believing yourself to be an object within this realm, by claiming ourselves to be a separate entity. 'Person' means what? You are saying 'with no illusion of body' there? No, 'with no illusion of person.' Because the body illusion or reality, whatever you like to call it, can still appear. So what is this person? This is a pure imagination. It is a pure construct made up of our beliefs.

So, to abide in awareness with no illusion of person, you will be instantly free and at peace. You can actually just stop here, because either you will be instantly free and at peace if you were just to not fall for the illusion of a person. And we, already being in Satsang, we know that to abide in awareness is just happening on its own. Can you be unaware? You cannot be. So this abiding is a natural part. You don't have to... many of us make this mistake of trying to become the awareness. You are trying hard to become the awareness: 'Can I get myself to be the awareness?' But in that, we've already picked up the illusion of personhood, you see?

So the dropping of the illusion of the person is already the abiding in awareness, because you are aware now. In fact, it would be impossible for you not to be aware. So if I was to say 'abide in the unawareness,' that would be impossible, you see? To abide in awareness is the most natural state. But we have the power, as you know, we have the power to believe ourselves to be a person. This is the illusion of personhood. So he says to abide in awareness with no illusion of person, you will be instantly free and at peace.

So what about conditioning then? We could have spoken about this. What about conditioning then? But even to pick up conditioning requires this illusion of person. Without picking that back up right now, can you pick up any conditioning? Very often we have said in Satsang that it's all about the right now. Even right now, if you don't tug at the leaf of conditioning—a thought about yourself as a person, you see—then the whole tree has no power over you. So in this moment right now, you are free. This is what we see in Satsang every day. Right now you are free. You start free. Freedom is not a destination that you're going to make.