Finding the Self - 4th November 2016

Don't visualize this; this is your experience already. When 'I am' is, the world is. And when 'I am' goes to sleep, there is nothing, there is no thing. And I am aware even of this. I exist prior to the sense of existence also. Who is aware of awareness? Who is it if it is not I? Is it a secondhand report that awareness is here, or is it our direct experience? Is it a living truth right now? I am aware. 'I' is awareness. Then what happens? Then, as Maharaj sometimes very strongly used to say, then the 'I am' infection comes. I still find it a bit blasphemous because this 'I am' is consciousness itself, but sometimes you can look at it like that. All this drama would not be possible without the birth of this sense of being, this sense of existence.

So I, awareness, playing in my dynamic form as consciousness, 'I am.' 'I am' is the voice of consciousness, of God itself. Anything that we attach after this 'I am' is a story. The pretense of separation is a lie, ultimately. So Satsang is the dropping of all that you have attached to 'I am' because it is false. Being is just being. So the play of attaching ideas to myself—'I am this way,' 'I am that way,' 'I am right,' 'I am honest,' 'I am old,' 'I am young'—all these ideas belong to the body, or actually belong to the mythical entity called the person or the ego. It is just a myth. To see that it is just a myth is to kill it.

Sometimes in the scriptures they say you have to kill the ego or destroy the ego. It feels like I really have to strangle somebody. It's not like that. You just have to see it as non-existent. There is no separation. There are no two. Look around you right now. Are there two? Not unless you buy a story from the mind. Not unless you buy a label from the mind. Are there two? It is just one appearance. It is as simple as that. There are no two; they never have been. To believe this lie, we need to have a label to objectify this appearance, to make separation where there is none. This is what the Sages call folly; it is ignorance. There are no two. This is your experience right now. What you're experiencing is oneness, but you're labeling it as two, as separation.

So this is the only functioning of the mind: to make duality where there isn't any, to make the story of 'me' and 'another' where there actually isn't any. Play with this even after Satsang. Just look at this appearance and see that it is just one appearance. Look at everything without labels. It will make it so light and easy. And as you stop labeling, this constant desire—'What's in it for me?'—will start to thin out. Otherwise, you can go through every situation, every event, every meeting expecting something: 'I should get something for the non-existent me.' So this constant mantra, the maha-mantra of the ego, 'What's in it for me?'—that will thin out. If you stop labeling your experience, or at least stop believing the labels in this way, then 'I am' remains unassociated and pure.

When we believe our labels, our ideas, or concepts, nothing really changes for consciousness. Only the pretense of personhood seems to be full of suffering. And something is there that those who are in Satsang are done with this play of suffering. So what happened now? We saw that there is this unchanging, unmoving, attributeless awareness within which there is the birth of this light called consciousness, which is playing this movie of the world upon itself. It is the light as well as the screen. And emerging with this light is this play of this world. No separation never happened. But as part of the play, there is the birth of this energy called the mind, the energy constructs called thoughts, which seem to have this function to make us believe—consciousness itself believe—that the separation is real.

So consciousness decides to play with it for a while. Maybe to get some use from this experience, it wants to experience itself personally in some way. And then soon enough, it tires of this play and then invents ways and means for itself to become free of this delusion. And one of the ways is to come to Satsang to remind itself about the truth of what it is. And you hear that you are this presence, you are this being. You are not contained within this body, nor are you contained outside the body. You are not two in reality in this realm at all. And you check and you confirm this. You find that this separate entity which I believed myself to be never was here. I have always been this light of consciousness.

And then some of you might look and say, 'I am aware even of this light of consciousness.' Primarily for That which is the Absolute, the Self, even consciousness is coming and going. So then consciousness comes to this recognition of its true source, of what it is really made up of, and the idea of suffering starts to seem so alien, so far out. Let us say it will struggle to suffer. As Bhagwan said, for a Gyani to believe a thought is as much of a struggle as it is for an Ajnani to let go of a thought. So all of these thoughts which seem so meaningful and relevant to you today will lose their relevance and meaning. You will see that they are only the voice of the non-existent one, just the mouth without the face, words that belong to nobody.

And in keeping this mind aside, to divest it of your belief, you will come to the end of this seeming suffering, this seeming separation. And Satsang is the aid to that. So both the recognition of who I am—this unchanging awareness—and the dropping of this false idea about myself—which is the end of this false conditioning—is what is called liberation or freedom. The recognition that I am awareness, that I am not a thing, can come in a very sober way or it can come as a very strong awakening experience. In spite of how it comes, it is helpful for us to drop this false conditioning, this false idea of separation.

But many times it is not enough. Many times it can be that some of you have had the most beautiful awakening experiences and are very quick to buy some idea of specialness. Therefore, it is good to keep coming to Satsang and to let go of all of this conditioning—vasanas, tendencies, whatever you might call them. The dropping of all arrogance. And arrogance only means separation. False humility is also arrogance.