Ashtavakra Gita Ch.1, Vs. 10-14 Commentary and Contemplation - 2nd August 2017

This 'I'—you may not be concerned with finding bliss. Bliss is concerned with finding you, serving you. I mean, as I am, without the illusion of person, as the sages say. And this is not a plan; this is talking about now, just now. What is it that you are? And if you feel that you are something phenomenal, find out who witnesses this phenomena. And what is more intimate? What is the truth? The most pristine insight which remains unchanged. If you tell me that 'I came to satsang and had a blissful experience, I had an experience where all my chakras were vibrating, a heightened experience where I could travel to any part of this universe, I could go back and forward in time'—if you tell me all of this, I might be nice and say, 'Very good' or something like that, but actually I know that even this is not important relative to what I am speaking on. In the realm of appearances, most pristine appearances can come, but that which is an appearance always comes and goes.

So, the information or the invitation to stay with the truth is basically a request: don't give so much value to this appearance. It was here for a while, and now what is here that is beyond these? How to find out? You cannot find out with your mind. You cannot see it phenomenally as an object. You cannot deduce this like two plus two equals four. I cannot give you an equation where you calculate it and you come to it easily. So, it's not intellect, it's not reasoning, it's not phenomenal, it's not sensational, it's not emotional, it's not experiential in that way—the phenomenal taste of an experience. It is simpler than that. The mind will say it is more difficult; it is actually simpler than that. What witnesses this? What witnesses all of this? Does that have a shape? Also, is that dependent on bliss or joy or peace, or is it bliss and joy and peace which are dependent on that? You see, before you can experience anything, what is this?

So, the Rishi says: 'You are unbounded awareness, bliss, supreme bliss, in which the universe appears like the mirage of a snake in a rope.' This is the most popular metaphor, the image in Vedanta, isn't it? When there is not enough light, you can feel like the shadow of a rope, the appearance of the rope in the absence of sufficient light, it can seem like this is a snake. In the same way, the light of your existence, the light of your being, can seem like there is a world which is separate, outside of me. Just like a dream can seem separate, but it is even this insight of a mirage. To find out that everything is really this, find out what you are. It is enough to dig this well: 'Who am I?' It is enough. As we dig this, we really come to the water, the recognition of the Self. All these other insights—the snake in the rope, the world in the being—all these will become so plainly obvious.

It is true what they say: you are what you think. If you think you are bound, you are bound. If you think you are free, you are free. It is true what they say: you are what you think. If you think you are bound, you are bound. If you think you are free, you are free. What does this mean? What happens when we think? What does thinking mean? It means that there must be this appearance of this world, just the mind's voice in both, the voice in our heads. This is the appearance of this energy construct called thought. But what do we mean when we say thinking? When we say thinking, we are not just talking about the appearance of this energy construct or form; we are also talking about the belief in this construct, the identification with this construct.

Now, who would experientially see? If you don't attach at all to your being, you just are. This is a nice exercise for all of us: to exist right now, do you need the thought? Are you using thoughts to exist? So, existence is here effortlessly. I am. Now, for any other identity—'I am 42 years old'—now, this '42 years old' is an identity. If there was no thought, if there was no identification with the concept, would I be able to attach this '42 years old' to 'I am'? So, that which is effortless existence, then to identify with conditions needs these thoughts. What does the appearance of thoughts or the belief in these forms do? As we remain in our openness, as we allow all this thought activity to come and go, what do you find yourself to be? This existence, just 'I am.' That which is even prior to this, that which is aware of this, more aware of your presence. This is the value of openness. That's why they say, 'Let thoughts come and go, just don't serve them tea.' That is the most simple, straightforward spiritual instruction. All surrender, all openness is contained in it.

As Mooji says, if you still feel like you have a choice, make the choice not to go along with what your thoughts are saying. And one day, then you will see soon that even this was not a choice; even this was a function of Grace. But he says very clearly: as long as you feel there is a choice about anything at all, then you make this choice of not going along with the thought. Don't identify, don't believe, don't give it meaning. So, the Rishi says: 'It is true what they say, you are what you think.' What does he mean? The pretense of you. If you say, 'I am honest, I am not a liar,' then you are obviously not talking about your unlimited being. You are talking about a limited entity which you are proclaiming yourself to be. So, the teaching is just: be. I mean, as I am, all of this. It means this: leave 'I am' unattached. The mind might come and say, 'I can't do this.' Even that, don't be attached to that. Just let that come and go. This is consciousness reminding consciousness of its own design, of its own power, for it to believe itself to be something.

Just to deviate a little bit from what I saw a sign saying, he's saying that if you think you are bound, what does that make you? It makes a seeker out of you. He says, 'If you think you are bound, you're bound.' And if you're in satsang and you think you are bound, then what are you? You're posing as if you are a seeker. Then he said, 'If you think you are free, you are free.' So, I want to say something different from this. I'm saying even this thought 'I am free' is not needed. You are actually free because you didn't have the thought 'I am free.' There is the possibility that you will pick up the presumption of the 'I' which is a limited entity. So, drop this idea that 'I am bound' and see if you can also drop this idea that 'I am free.' This neutrality is what Mooji speaks about. It is completely alien to the mind. To the mind, the door is either open or it is closed. We say there is a door that is neither open nor closed. Let the mind try to make a visual of that or something, but it doesn't succeed.

The neutrality means being empty of the concept of anything, empty of the concept of bondage. And without the concept of bondage, is there a concept of freedom? Freedom is only the opposite of bondage. Without the concept of desire, is there a concept of aversion? The mind operates in opposites. As you step back from this play of opposites, you will find this natural neutrality. This is a very, very, very important point because many times in satsang especially, it can happen that this resistance takes the opposite position of that. Okay, so even our openness becomes a position which tries to counteract this position of resistance. 'So, what are you doing now?' 'I'm being open.' 'What are you doing?' 'Resisting.' 'I don't want to resist, I'm being open,' you see? But both of them are also in the pair of duality. What is it that you are that witnesses this play of duality? Is it resisting or open? It is neither. It doesn't apply.

So, although openness is very important and it's maybe the most near and direct way to point to what is being pointed at, even the term 'open' can be misunderstood. It is more about staying with the discovery of you in this neutral place, which is unconcerned, unbound by this play of opposites. What happens many times also is that in satsang, one day you will feel like a great insight happened, and very quickly the proclamation comes: 'I've got it!' And then the story changes a little bit. Then you go on the road and you take a rickshaw, and you say, 'I want to go to Ganeshpuri.' 'I will take 200 rupees extra.' In that one moment, your freedom can go, so-called proclaimed freedom. What you achieve is separation; all that can come. The oneness dissolves into vanity. So, it is not about this proclamation. This play of opposites—does this thing have allowing? Not in that way. To find out within you which is not involved in this play of opposites. It is not a position that you are taking on. It is not a new position of consciousness: 'I am now spiritual, I am now Ananda.' It is being empty of all.

Rupees extra in that one moment your freedom can do so-called proclaim freedom. What you achieve—separation—all that can come, the oneness dissolves into vanish. So it is not about this problem, this way of opposites. Does this thing have allowing? Not in that way. To find out within you which is not involved in this way of opposites, it is not a position that you are taking on. It is not a new position of consciousness: 'I am now spiritual, I am now Ananta.' Such an ability, certainly, it is being empty of all positions.

The mind will come as a used-car salesman: 'This one, best, best deal! I know, I know, matter of fact, you know, last ten million years I've been lying to you, Madam. I know, tell me, I will lie to you, but this time I have—I'm gonna have changed before. I am not going to sell you your individuality; I will point you to your truth.' It will come to them just like that. You keep buying this ticket to this merry-go-round and then someone says, 'But you are not that which you are believing about this.' 'Talk to me, I am never going to buy from the salesman again and again.' That's it. You'll be careful of him. What is that? That is also an offering from the same salesman. 'It's fine, I have to get—have to get rid of the money, have to be rid of it. It's mine, has got me in all this means. I have decided that I am going to be open.' This one, this one is a trickster.

Seeing that, seeing that, so what—what is the solution? It's simple. Just let it come and let it go. If you pick it up, it's okay. Now we will let it come and you let it go. If you picked it up again, it's okay. Don't believe guilt about yourself. Don't believe unworthiness. Pick it up, fine. Mind is the one that is working hard to redeem individuality. It needs to keep offering you these ideas of your limitations. You become naturally empty or filled every moment. I mean, you guys really see this what I'm saying? All this trouble in your spirituality will drop away if you just see this what I'm saying. Every moment naturally it is done. Does the mind which needs to take this extra effort every moment to convince you again—it's empty of concept for himself. Let me come with the next offering. Otherwise, it's for wherever it is in maintaining or trying to create this sense of individuality effortlessly. Just be. This is the meaning of letting go.

Letting go doesn't mean that there's really something to let go of. It really means this offer comes: 'I am going to sell you the most important ticket of our life. You will become the best, most spiritual, most right person in the world.' This offer comes from the mind. Let that come and go. Which you pick it up ought to be nothing, and the next offer comes, let that one come. When you know about this story to me, which is that many, many years ago before I met Guruji, probably eleven, twelve years ago, I was reading Bhagavan and I was very frustrated at being a seeker. So one day I said, 'Today, today I will not leave the same self-inquiry till I find myself.' I sat down and I see like this—I don't know if it actually happened like this, this is the way I like to remember it—which is the embodiment happened textbook, textbook. You're coming, it's always the witness of these sensations. Who perceives in sensations? Staying the time, everything became quiet for a long time. Still nothing. Maybe forty-five minutes or an hour.

Mind came and said, 'Stop this right now. I'll give you a good life. Right now I'll give you a good life.' And mind itself came and said, 'Deal! Thank you.' Stop this right now, give you a good luck. Mind itself came and said, 'Deal.' Then what happened? So much guilt. 'You were finding it and you made a deal with this mind, that this ego, this devil. You sold your soul to the devil.' All this nonsense. But believe it, you see, this is the way the mind can play. That's why what to do? When something is picked up, nothing worry about it. Forget it, it's gone. What is it? Properties were owed. Somebody posted: 'The past is a corpse.' It's finished. Which comes and goes, this mind, that is the one that has to make the effort to convince—convinced that it is something which is small, limited, constrictive. It has conditioned the root itself. This one will not stop making the effort. Don't expect it to stop. Does this have anything to do with its trouble tracing its—yeah, certainly it is true what they think, what they say: 'You are what you think.' So you understood this is not that you actually are, but you can pick up the pretense of whatever thoughts that you are believing.

If you think you are bound, so I said what you think you are bound, then what is the role you're playing? You're playing the role of the spiritual seeker. If you think that you are free, what is the role that you're playing? You're playing the role of this, but it should equal. If it is just a role, it is not realization. So neither concept—I'm sure after the truth about this, you do not need the concept 'I am free,' just as you do not need the concept 'I am in clarity.' He says: You are Self, the solitary witness. You are perfect, all-pervading one. You are free, desireless, forever still. The universe is but a seeming in you. You are Self, the solitary witness. You are perfect, all-pervading one. You are free, desireless, forever still, and the universe is but a seeming in you.

You see, this is that many beautiful thing. How do you use this beautiful thing? Is that the satisfying indeed? Not by looking for these particular attributes in themselves, but come to the recognition about yourself. What is it that I am? And then the mind will come and say—it will create a need for some approval, some confirmation—and say, 'Is it really this? I really want it, or am I just speaking?' So then when this kind of doubt is done, then you use this point. You check what is the sage talking about. He's talking about one that is a solitary witness, that has—that is perfect. We think that the idea of imperfection does not apply to it. That which is all-pervading, can you find somewhere where you are not? Do you find something which is your absence, or do you find everything which is just your presence? He says 'One' with a capital O. So if you find any separation, what is a real person? You are free, desireless, forever still. So all of this, and use these in a place of self-recognition. Yes, this is exactly what the sages say. I have no desire. I am free, actually beyond the concept of free, but that cannot happen to me here.

So all of these attributes, if you start looking for them in this as they are, then it can seem a bit confusing. How do I find this form that is one? How do you find this one that is desireless? Well, find the witness of all things and then see who that is. Is that you? Oh, no. And this you that is the witness of all things, then you check against all of these attributes: the solitary witness, the one that has no imperfections, that is free, desireless, forever still. From that place of checking on yourself, this will be very clear. You didn't start choosing the attributes for themselves, then it can seem like another. Maybe we want to get into: Meditate on this: 'I am awareness alone, unity itself.' Give up the idea that you are separate, a person, that there is a within and without. Meditate on this.

So I would say that buy into this on the basis that you are not that. Tat Tvam Asi. Meditate on this, inquire into this on two pages: the oneness that is Advaita, not to use these words. By inner contemplation, find out the nature of the Self. Give up the idea that you are separate, a person, that there is within and without. And we hope this discusses how to give up this idea. It's already given up right now. It's given up. How to give it up? When the offer comes in this, let the offer come in, in the conveyor belt of the mind that I talked about earlier. This will keep coming. We've used issues of various shapes and sizes.

One time we were—most of you noticed, oh, I'm sorry, my stories are getting old—so one time we were with Mooji in Delhi and we were shopping on some street. And it was the first—we were through the street and there on the street we saw some hundred-rupee note, or fifteen, ten—memory gets easy as time goes on. So some note is there. Then one of us, I don't know, they bent down to pick up the note, and the note had a string tied to it at the other end. So as they went down, the one sitting on the wall on the side pulled it like that. So the mind makes this. It is April 1st. If the talk was that the mind comes with these offerings, this is what I mean. You know that you have been fooled, or you've been playing as if you're an individual for so long behind these concepts about yourself. Yet the next well-dressed note, this time not rupees, maybe silver coins, with its various forms of this offer that comes from the mind. Like the poor one who keeps bending down to pick it up, you keep playing this game expecting that this time I will really get it. In that way, I will get something meaningful.

Give up the idea that you were separate, a person, that there is within and without. Most of our thoughts are like this. I've looked at this very closely over the last few weeks and spoken about it. And someone comes to me these days and said, 'But does this have to be a greed? Does it have to be a desire?' And I know that they were very good desires, things to say. Okay, but some thoughts are so—for them I say, though, it's completely meaningless. Let's put this to give some reassurance. I say okay, if the thought is just trying to replicate the phenomenal appearance very accurately without any sense of personal identity. So if your thought, for example, is, 'Ah, that's a green apple,' not that 'I want a green apple' and 'I like green apples' or 'I don't like.' Without this 'I' identity, if there is a thought which is saying 'That's a green apple,' you'll find that it's meaningless because the experience of it, mean whatever it is, is apparent already. But if you want to pick up those thoughts for some time and make this concession for later, but it must report something which is a phenomenal appearance as accurately as possible and must be empty of any self-definition. Because in this self-definition comes so-called self-definition, which is actually ego definition.

And that is the door. You have long been bound thinking 'I am a person.' Notice the sage did not say you are long being bound as a person. He says you have long been bound thinking 'I am a person.' Let the knowledge 'I am awareness alone' be the sword that frees you now. This is a bit subtle, although it might seem straightforward. It's a bit—the first part is that we have only been thinking 'I am a person.' No person ever actually existed. No person actually ever appeared. Unlike this body, unlike this energy, the concept of 'mine'—that which is a payment of this body—'mine' is not an entity which even appeared in the phenomenon. At best, there is the physical appearance, energetic appearance of this body, with the energetic appearance of this mind. And at best of the best—not to dwell on that—is there is an energetic sense of some separation, some individual. I don't talk about that because the more you think about that aspect, the more it seems to amplify. So forget about it.

There is appearance of the body, the appearance of the mind. We have been thinking that because there is the appearance of this body-mind, there is actually a person. It never has been. It was like saying that the person is—if you feel, you don't have to feel this, but if you feel that the world is an illusion, person is second level. You do not even in this world will defend you. The body is unconcerned with the amount of money in the bank. Body is actually unconcerned even with enlightenment. And what will enlightenment even bring to a thought? This moment is for me, mean good. What can we give to a nothing? So that which one is neither this body nor is it the mind. It's just different mixes. It's just a belief system that we whipped up about ourselves. So you have been bound, and this bondage, of course, you understood now is its pretense. And the voice of the pretense is: 'You have been bound thinking I am a person. Let the knowledge I am awareness alone be the sword that frees you.' Knowledge is not the concept.

It will unlike you even bring to a talk. This moment is for me, mean good. What can we give to a nothing? So that which one is neither this bar being hot, is it the line? Just different mixes. It's just a belief system that we whipped up about ourselves. So you have been bound, and this bondage, of course, you understood now is its pretense. And the voice of the pretense is: you have been bound thinking 'I am a person.' Let the knowledge 'I am awareness alone' be the sword that frees you. Knowledge is not the concept. The model is not the concept. 'I am awareness alone'—if you chant, I know looking or inside is happening, it is chanting. Maybe it will have some energetic benefit, okay, I'm not denying that, but it is not the knowledge which the sage is talking about. Knowledge is this, which means the direct recognition of the Self. Knowledge with a capital K, what we spoke about in the first day, which is beyond perceptual, conceptual, and emotional images.

Do you want any concept? Are you aware now? Do you need a thought to see that you are aware? Do you need a perception to see that you are aware? You need neither. This is the only one that you can unselect this. It's that simple. That's why I keep doing this so much. You might think I'm obsessed with some of these examples. I like them because they are so simple. If I say to you, 'Is there a small green ball in my hand?' so you refer to the perceptual knowledge of seeing this small green ball. If I say to you, 'Is the world round?' can you refer to a concept to your knowledge right now? Your experience of the world is not that it is round. You refer to a conceptual knowledge that the world is round and you answer from there, 'Yes.' But if I ask you, 'Are you aware now?' do you do either of these? Sometimes we might be referring to the concept of awareness and saying, 'Of course, yes.' But that's why I say that don't answer from the mind. Look, and then I check with you. Check what do you find. You find no appearance of something called awareness like this green ball, yet we answer yes.

So now, let the simplicity of this reveal itself to you. This self-recognition, which takes millions of years of sadhna supposedly, can it be that just openly asking myself this question, 'Am I aware now?' can bring this insight of what I actually am? So maybe the point of all that sadhna was to bring us to this simple ultimate step. Even asking ourselves is first, and then over the years, I've seen many, many metrics of the mind. And some wonder can come because over the years, so many times for years now, I ask this question, 'Are you aware now?' and it becomes a pattern. 'The awareness is here,' all these reports. And then next day, beings come to satsang: 'Father, I'm having this trouble in my relationship. I'm having this trouble with my body. I'm having this trouble.' But just yesterday we found this awareness. 'Yes, and I knew you'd say that. I don't want to talk about awareness today; I want to talk about me.' Do you see? This is the ultimate resistance. 'I don't want to talk about awareness today; I want to talk about me.' That means that even when the insight of this Self, the mind has been able to come in and see a sense that is the range which has nothing to do with you really. Maybe you come from that, but you are this.

When we get caught up in this kind of thing, I have offered you another question, which is: who is aware of even this awareness? And this question will hit home for those having this insight, deep insight about the truth of who they are. So what the mind has been able to do in some way is to still create a separate 'I' to separate from this awareness. If you ask yourself now, you will say, 'Only I know this awareness.' Is this 'I' anyway separate from awareness? All things appear within it at the same side as you. The universe is an appearance within 'I'. With this awareness as you stay with this question, 'Who is aware of even this?' you will see that this possibility of making a distinction between 'I' and awareness is silliness. Then you're not able to see so easily. 'Yes, Father. No, no, no, I don't want to talk about awareness today. Please talk about me.'