Since Nothing Can Touch This 'I', Nothing Can Threaten It - 12th Sept. 2016

Even now, the mind for many might be coming and saying that, 'Oh, this has become too abstract right in the beginning of the week. This is too tough. I'm not getting any of this.' It's not true. Yes, the mind might not be getting any of this, which is completely fine. But you, 'I am'... you might even say 'I am here', you see. To be able to say 'I am here', first you have to say 'I am'. So we are just talking kindergarten stuff actually, very, very simple, isn't it? And it's completely confused if you just stay with the simplicity of it and don't try to understand it too much. All of you are able to say 'I am here'. Nobody says 'I am not here'. It will seem, even if the words escape your mouth, in your heart you know something is not right about those words. Something will work very hard to say these words again just to take a position. But you are able to see here in Satsang or in our day-to-day life: I am here. I am here.

So okay, here, let's leave what is this 'I am'. We say it is beingness. This is it. But why does this beingness translate to 'I am'? Why not like any other object? Music, computer, chair... it is a chair. We don't say 'I chair'. Computer... ultimately maybe we get there, but right now, what is it? What is this 'I' which has this attribute 'am'? Can I answer that?

Yes, I'd like to. Yes, I do. It's truth. Well, it feels like it's awareness announcing itself. Yeah, because when I contemplate on awareness, there's no 'am'. There's just silence.

So what are you saying? Are you saying that big 'I' is awareness?

Yes. Yes.

How is this known?

Because there isn't... there's no other answer that I can find when I follow the pointings. When I contemplate, when I meditate, it all leads back to the same thing. But the only answer... there is no other answer. I think what gets confusing... oh, go ahead, I don't want to...

Thank you. So this 'I', does it ever change now? Is it that at one moment it is something else which is 'am', and at the next moment it is something else? So one minute there was a void which is now 'I am', the next moment there is a white light which is now 'I am', and the next moment there is whatever you might want to put over there which becomes 'am'. Is this a changing 'I'? Is there a change happening at that level?

I didn't quite understand that pointing, but it doesn't change. I don't change. I can fool myself and, you know, get back into the person role, which seems heavy, and forget. But it doesn't change. That's just like... not good.

So this 'I am', I am saying, doesn't change. But the attributes after 'I am'—'I am this' or 'I am that'—that is constantly changing. So when we say the change is happening at a personal level, it must mean it is happening after the 'I am', isn't it? Yeah. Again, it's a subtle point, so that's why I want to repeat it again for all of you. We say 'I am'. Is this 'I' changing? It's a question. So this 'I' that we are referring to, is that changing in any way? Do we signify different things when we say 'I'? Are we sometimes signifying the sense of a void, sometimes the sense of sunlight, of a body, which is 'I am'? Irrespective of any other data, this what we're referring to as 'I am'... mostly this 'I' that we are referring to, as I say, this remains constant.

He says, the next step is what? So if this 'I' is unchanging, is this 'am' also? The sense of 'am', is this constant? This is what others questioned earlier. The 'I am' and what if you... yes, that's what. So this question is this: so is this 'am'ness, you think, as changeless as 'I' itself? If it was, then why don't we just call it 'I'? Why do we say 'I am'? If it was just the same as 'I', changeless, then what would be the distinction? There would be none. So we see that this sense 'I am' is present in sleep, or is it present in waking? It is present in dreaming. So we cannot say being was there, and yet we cannot say 'I' was not there. But I was glad to see this: this whole being was not present, the state of being was not present, but this 'I' which is aware of the presence or absence of the sense of existence, that remained constant, unchanging.

Then we see that this 'I' is the ultimate truth. With the light of me, this waking state, light of this universe or this realm... there was an object within this realm, 'am' or consciousness, is coming and going. It is timeless from this perspective. As an object within the realm, stripped of the reality of what we are, even though they go... therefore, if there are times where only 'I' remain, this 'am' being made of... if you have experienced that only 'I' remain, only this awareness remains, therefore this beingness must be made of what? Even if it were just a thought which you look at, even that must be made of what? Because if only 'I' remain, then anything that comes after that must be made up of what? This 'I' only.

So if there's only water in everything, whether it is ice or evaporated water, water itself will be made up of water. So if it is clear that this 'I' remains, and only this is the name, then this being must also be this form of this. This is the different qualitative feel of this. So this is the integration of the 'I am', yet it is clear that there is a qualitative difference. So this 'I', awareness, which is now appearing in the form of beingness, 'I am', this is the substratum for nominal experience. You cannot have experience without the sense of being. Now when this being gets together with power, which we call attention, then all these various objects in the phenomenal realm, whether seeming inward or outward, appear and disappear.

Is anything now... again for Devi and for this 'I'... with the appearance or disappearance of this phenomenal realm, can you say that again? Are you talking to me?

Yes.

I said, does anything change for this 'I' with the appearance or disappearance of the phenomenal level?

No, it doesn't change. This is 'I', that's how I knew.

Yes, yes. 'I', that's helpful because it doesn't change. Whenever everything... let go of everything completely, let go of everything, the only thing left is 'I'. Very good. Therefore, spoken conversely, when so many things come, when so many things come in our life, so many events happen in this phenomenal experiencing, what happens to this 'I'? Is it true to our experience? Say it again, I'm sorry. So you say when I let go of everything, then this 'I' remains, isn't it? So now conversely, things seem to come. Even if they are believed, even if they are believed to be true, does anything happen to this 'I'?

No, nothing happens. But I can think in my head that something's happened to it. That's not true.

Yes. So this distinction is very important for us to see: that even when we think something happened to me, or even when we believe something happened to me, we are not referring to the true 'I' then, right? Who here doesn't see this? I'm not saying because of peer pressure. Because if you mean it, it means that you in reality cannot suffer, have never suffered. So therefore those words, 'Nothing real can be threatened', is now becoming your direct experience. Because if nothing happened to this 'I', you see, then a threat is something far beyond something happening. If nothing can touch this 'I', then nothing can threaten it.