Only One Question You Need: 'Who am I?' - 11th November 2016

'Even today you see such people in the world, and you yourself have seen such a life of ignorance and delusion. Because you are young and ignorant, you do not understand it. This great forest is not far away, nor is that strange man in a strange land. This world itself is the forest. It is a great void, but this void is seen only in the light of enquiry. The light of inquiry is the "I" in the parable. This wisdom is accepted by some and rejected by others who continue to suffer. Those who accepted are enlightened. The person with thousands of arms is the mind with countless manifestations. This mind punishes itself by its own latent tendencies and restlessly wanders in this world. The blind well in the story is hell. The banana grove is heaven. The dense forest of thorny bushes is the life of the worldly man, the numerous terms of wife, children, wealth, etc., hurting him all the time.'

'The mind now wanders into hell, now into heaven, now into the world of human beings. Even when the light of wisdom shines on the life of the deluded mind, it foolishly rejects it, considering that the wisdom is its enemy. Then it weeps and wails in distress. Sometimes it experiences an imperfect awakening and it renounces the pleasures of the world without proper understanding. Such renunciation itself proves to be a great source of sorrow. But when such renunciation rises out of the fullness of understanding of wisdom, born of inquiry into the nature of the mind, the renunciation leads to supreme bliss. Such a mind will even look at its own past notions of pleasure with puzzlement. Just as the limbs of the person, as they were cut away, fell down and disappeared, the latent tendencies of the person who wisely renounces the world also vanish from the world. Behold the play of ignorance which makes one hurt oneself out of one's own volition and which makes one run hither and thither in meaningless panic. The light of self-knowledge shines in every heart, yet one wanders in this world driven by one's own latent desires. Stop them.'

So how long will we be this thousand-limbed, hundred-thousand-limbed creature, or pretend to be this one? The sage asks the question: 'Who are you?' What are you running from? Our own ideas, our own delusions are all that can seemingly hurt us. If you don't go with your thoughts and your feelings and you check right now, just in pure inquiry: 'Who am I?' Without settling for an answer, whatever you are witnessing, find out who is the witness and whether that witness can be witnessed. Who is aware of the perceiver? Who is aware of your presence? Is it not you? What does this 'I' look like? Don't visualize—look. Don't think—look. Don't feel—just whatever might be happening, whatever is being experienced, you are aware of it. This awareness is unhurt, unconcerned actually. And every time you believe a thought in this mind, you're picking up the mace to hurt yourself, to play the game of suffering.

If you were dead, what suffering could you have? And you are beyond the identity; you never actually lived. What concerns do you have now that you're dead? The one that is the presumed owner of this life, saying 'This is my life, this is the way I want to live my life, and this is how I am'—it's just a big presumption. Here I am telling you that you are the witness of this game, and you say that 'I am' anytime we use this term, the unborn. This is your experience, no? Then whose life is this? If you cannot even find whose life this is, then what to say about our problems and our concerns and our relationships? Hmm.

So in this game, the wonder will be why you check this for yourself and whether you see this for yourself, or whether you run. Whether you run from this quietly or you run from this kicking and screaming. The sage says some heard him; they looked at this question 'Who are you?' and all the limbs, all the conditioning, the latent tendencies, they were allowed to drop off. There was another who felt like the sage was attacking him. So all these possibilities exist in the play. And the sages have said as long as we have this presumption of choice, let's make the choice to inquire. One day automatically it can be seen that even this seeming choice was part of the play of the one Consciousness itself.

Until then, while there is a semblance of choice, check on who you are. No other action, no other ritual, no other practice is needed. You ask yourself: 'Who am I?' Don't proclaim any answer. Let your Master make the proclamation for you. To be empty of all ideas is that which we claim ourselves to be. Can it remain without thoughts? Can it survive whatever separation you might believe has happened? It needs the nourishment of your next thought to sustain this wrong being. So use the inquiry 'Who am I?' Come to the truth of the recognition of who you are and simply allow all these concepts, thoughts, and ideas to come and go so that you don't pick up any fresh conditioning. Allow these arms to fall off. Anytime what we're doing is that the old arms are falling off and we are building new ones—the 'spiritual' arms. Allow all of them to be empty.

These words are coming—I don't know if they're statistically accurate or not, but they're coming—so I see them. No Master has ever become a Master by trying to become a Master. Yeah. All sages are only an expression of this emptiness, of this openness. Now, all your intentions, ambitions, aversions, desires—allow this moment to dissolve all of them. Right now they are gone. Until you pick up a fruit from this world's tree of knowledge called the mind, right now the separation will start to seem real again. This is the only game that is being played. You experience freedom every moment right now, but you buy the story of bondage. You buy the story of 'me.' Stop writing the story. Leave the chapter—the next page—empty. There is no 'but' after 'I am awareness.' You are the one solitary witness of all that is. No ifs, no buts, nothing. It was you. So any 'I' that can be picked up is not the real 'I.' You.