Can You Show Me This Seeker Identity? (Silent Retreat) - 17th Oct. 2015

Someone who has this love for discovery, the nature of reality. The one who has this love for discovery and to find the nature of reality. This one looks like what? Let me... one attribute of this one.

Devotion belongs to this seeker entity.

What is the attribute? What is the color of this seeker entity?

Just awareness.

Just awareness is seeking? There is awareness of the seeker. So are you the content which is seen, which seems like a set of beliefs which make a seeker? So are you that which is seen, or you that which is seen? Suppose for a minute that you are that which is seen, then who's doing the seeing? If you're the content, then who's the witness of the content?

It does not feel like the content, yes, but it does seem that the content is what is being seen all the time. And the content has that quality.

The content has the quality, so the movie is playing a certain way. So if you go to a movie which is playing a certain way, do you become that which is seen in the movie?

There seems to be some kind of accepting understanding that this story of the seeker has to run out, has to play itself out. And this seems to be kind of a compassionate acceptance of this thing.

That story of the seeker can play, can play. Nobody is stopping that play. Don't be worried about seeker and what will happen to it. But can you actually become this seeker and show me how you...?

There is a... there is an essence of kind... she says construct, whatever. There is this awareness of something which has come together in and now it appears as a seeker. There are times when there is just a seeing and compassionate acceptance of it. There are times when there is identification.

Okay, so let's deconstruct this because this is important. Thought is an energy construct. A sensation, emotion, feeling is an energy construct. The body is an energy construct. But the seeker, is it even an energy construct? Does it have even energetic existence?

It is unclear to me whether it is these thoughts coming together that give a notion of a seeker, or there is something little bit more to it than the thought.

There is nothing more to it. There is nothing more to it except the belief that we had in our thoughts. I'll give you an example which I often use in Satsang. The identity is nothing but a photo album, okay? Every thought that you pick up becomes a photo in this photo album. Now we can go thought by thought and remove thoughts and remove the identity, but that seems like a very long-run process. The simplest would be if you could pick up the entire album and throw it away, but a very rare one is able to do that. What is possible is that we look at it section by section. So all freedom-related thoughts create the seeker identity, seeker section. If you're in a relationship, then all the relationship parts become the relationship section—parent, son, all of these identities. Now for those in Satsang, this seeker identity seems to take a lot of space in this album, but it is still nothing but a collection of thoughts, a collection of beliefs. You must look and show me how there is something else to the seeker except a... does it have even an atomic or molecular existence? Where is it located in time and space?

It is those bundle of thoughts and things like that coming together that give that...

But the bundle of thoughts is actually experienced only one thought at a time, isn't it? The mind is not saying two things at the same time. It's like this mouth; the voice of the mind is also like that—one thought at a time. It might come fast and you might say, 'Okay, there's a lot of it,' but our experience is only one message coming at one time, at one instant. So this bundle of thought is just a way to represent when we are speaking as an analog to describe the mind. There is no bundle actually. Right now, is there a seeker here? There never is. But you can pretend to be one by believing your thought. Again, it's coming only one. So what you are saying is that 'I want to let the seeker play out,' but as long as you know that it doesn't exist and you want to play this imaginary game, then fine. Nothing can stop you because nothing can take away your power to pretend.

Who is it that is pretending? Who pretends to be the seeker?

So we can say that seeker is identity, okay? Whose identity is it? I mean, it is there in that thought form, whether you take ownership or I take ownership.

Is the... where thoughts, they come, they go, but they are... it's not that... I'm not... it's not they come and go.

Where is the thought form of the seeker? Say from experience, don't say from any knowledge.

So when a thought comes and when there is a kind of ownership or attachment to the thought, that gives rise to...

The thought comes. Let's break this down. Thought comes, and you rightly said it's an energy construct. Thought comes. What can happen to a thought? What can you do with a thought? There are two things. One is you can give it your attention—attention fully with the thought. Second, you can buy it or give it your belief. That means that 'this is meaningful for me.' Besides this, anything else you can do with a thought? So now a thought is coming, attention is going. Is there a sense that there is a seeker because of attention going to a thought? No seeker yet. There is thought: 'I want freedom.' Attention has gone. You can see it's saying 'I want freedom,' but there's also belief which can be given or not. If belief is given, then it seems like we have created this 'me' who wants freedom, because the 'I' that the thought is talking about is the imagined 'I'. So he has believed that this imagined 'I' exists. That's why we believe the thought. But it continues to be only a belief. No actual seeker came into existence, not even in a subtle form. It was just an idea, just a belief. Whose belief was it? The power of belief belongs to the same Consciousness, Being. That's why we say that if you want to see God pretending to be a person, believe your next thought. Do you want to see God pretending to be a person or not? That is the choice that God is making.