Find That Which is Not Moving - 4th November 2016

So, what are we doing here? Some of us are together Monday to Friday and some of us together once a week, but we get together for what? What is it that we really want? What are we looking for? And someone might say that we are looking for the Self. So first, when you lose something, you know, and my children, they'll lose something, then what is the first question I ask them? 'When did you see it last? Where did you see it last?' So if you feel like you lost the Self, where did you see it last? Where were you when you saw the Self that you lost and now you are looking for it? It is the most obvious question to ask, isn't it?

And then someone might say, 'But I have never seen that, actually never seen it.' Then what is it that you are? The one that has not seen it or is looking for it? Which one is that one? Who is it that is already here? Could this be that this is actually a case of even more absurdity than looking everywhere in the house while those spectacles are on our head? Yeah? Could it be even more absurd than something which is right under our nose and we don't see it?

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi said the most direct way to the recognition of the Self and the realization of the Self is to ask yourself, 'Who am I?' And he was not the first one to say it. Maybe he was the first one to give it so much focus and attention, but for a long time a lot of sages, right from the Upanishads, have said inquire into who you are. Even Western philosophers have said, 'Know thyself.' So if we're all looking for the Self, where must I go to find it? What is it that you are right now?

The problem is that most of us are following the wrong teacher. The wrong teacher means this one which we call the mind, who is constantly directing us to look outside. Outside means in this phenomenal realm. The mind is saying, 'Look, look.' Like how we find other things phenomenally, in the same way, by going place to place, teacher to teacher, Satsang to Satsang, we might come across this Self. But nobody has found it that way. The only recognition, the only valid true recognition that has happened, is by looking in the other way—looking within.

As long as there seems to be a boundary between outside and within, till then we must look within. In the phenomenal realm, find that one who witnesses this moving world. This moving realm—is that moving? Every movement, be it objects in the world, emotions, thoughts—isn't there something which is unmoving, unchanging, which is aware of these movements? And I know the mind might come and say, 'But I don't see anything.' Wait, wait. Don't rush. Slowly. What are we doing? We are looking for that which is unchanging, the witness of that which is changing.