The Starting Point Is the Destination - 23rd January 2018

I am not something. 'Something' has always been a notion, an idea, and it is gone. You're finding that all appearances—the appearance of this body which seems so much more intimate to you, the appearance of all of these other bodies, the appearances of all these places and spaces—all these are just movements of light and sound designed in such a way to make it feel like something can continue. But actually, all is just contained on your own screen, on your own Being, in your own light. And this is your very experience. You have never experienced the world without you being there. You might have experienced the world, you know, in a body experience or out-of-body experience. The body could be there or not there. You could have a death-in-life experience or a near-death experience, but whatever experience there is, you have to be there. Your existence is undoubtable.

So, it is this 'I Am,' this Being, which in this Maya, in this play, has been confused to be 'I am something limited.' I am something with a boundary. I am something which had a start and will have an end. There is nobody who has continued to play with these notions and not suffered. That is also part of the design of the play itself. If you play with light, then assuming suffering also comes as a result of that. That is just... after a point, you see it is just too much hard work. Too much energy goes into picking up notions about yourself. No energy goes into resting as you are. Maybe I already said that God, Guru, and Self are the same. So, let me say God is here, or some Guru is here, Self is here, or the enlightened Being is here, the Atma is here, Christ is here. It doesn't matter. The words don't matter. You are here. And this 'you' has misunderstood. This game of misunderstanding has been played so that these words are not just some words about speaking and you pick up some concepts about them. I mean this in your case-to-case experience: you are the limitless Self, not the time-bound illusion.

So, does this mean that life must become this boring, robotic sort of existence if I see that everything is just happening within me? No. You see, mostly you find the practitioners are having the most fun. Why? Because this world then is playable carelessly, and it is only a playground, you see? The burden is taken away because you see that nothing can happen to me here. Nothing in this world can make a scratch on my Being. Nothing can make a dent in my existence. Okay, I'm happy to take some questions if there are some. If there are none, in time you don't have to exchange your Being for a question. Unless something is on fire, something seems to be blocking you.

Ellen asks: 'I am starting to understand that life gives me so much suffering not because it is me, but to transcend and to see that it does not exist. So far, it is just a small window of clarity and still I am burning. Could you clarify further?'

Yes, very beautiful what you say. This is here. It is not vindictive. It doesn't mean at the point of suffering there seems to be a need to transcend it. And once you transcend it, you actually come to this which you said later: just to see that it actually does not exist. That which seemed so clear, as if it is a lake of water, you saw it was just a mirage. Why? Because it is not that the sensations of pain did not exist, or the turbulence of some events appeared, but because the sufferer was already presumed. This presumed individual sufferer never really exists. So, to transcend suffering only means to transcend our individual identity.

Once you see that—the Ramana question was 'Who am I?'—once you see that this entity which was the presumed sufferer has not even a little bit of tangible existence, it's just been an idea, then you see that an idea itself does not even exist. So, how can it suffer except in ideas itself? So, to transcend suffering only means to transcend the confusion of mistaken identity. As I said, all confusion actually is confusion about who we are. Now, at least one of you must know the better of some very good news: it is that all that needs to be done already is. So, this moment is bringing you this gift. Yes, naturally everything that you are hoping to transcend is already gone. If you see, 'But, but, but it is not gone,' then all that is left to transcend is the 'but' part. It's gone. Whatever notion or idea we might pick up about it is that which remains to be transcended.

How to transcend it? Now, you have to scramble to suffer. You have to scramble, you have to work hard to suffer. So, the more difficult path is to stay as an identity. The easiest thing is to let it go, because what could be easier than not having to do anything at all? And in not having to do anything at all, God is here. But you have to do a lot, maybe the attention will leave all of these things for you to be here, about pretending to be here individually. So, what is easier? Just let God be.

Then Sarah says: 'I'm afraid that I cannot remain as I am after all the actions that happened through this body. It is like a leap of consciousness that is too high for the state of consciousness in which I lived my life mostly. But I don't feel these words reach you, Father. I cannot fathom how blessed I am to be in your company.'

That is why I say I have the best news. Whatever might have happened, whatever you might have done, as we might be in our mind, we might be the biggest sinner ever, but we have never been forsaken. God is here. And the good thing is that it is not even a leap of consciousness. It is just very natural consciousness. The leap is the imagined one, because the imagined one, which is the leap to limitation—the ocean pretending to be just a wave—is too much of a leap to ever be. For you to be the ocean is not a leap. So, what can happen is that we might have this idea that we have to be looking at all of this through this limited lens. You might feel like, 'Oh, that is too high.' So, as we talk, you are finding that actually you exist right now. Existence is not possible for anyone but God. Can we put it that way? So, you exist, therefore you are God. Some blasphemous souls say nothing exists but God. Okay, let's put it this way: nothing exists but God. Do you exist? Yes. It's not a leap; it's a simple recognition of what is naturally present.

Then what can happen is we discover that we are the ocean. Now what happens is, because one coconut has always been there, then we start to look at the movements of the coconut and see, 'But why did the ocean behave like that?' I don't know whether you heard this; I use it very often, the three tones. I said you might think that you're the ocean, but on the surface of the ocean there is one coconut floating, which is this body. Then you say, 'But I thought the coconut was told to go right, it's still going left.' You are finding that you are the ocean. This coconut body is just another appearance on your surface. If you keep trying to fit the ocean in this coconut, then it makes you feel like so much confusion can come. You see, 'What do I do? It's too confusing now. And I find myself, then I don't know whether to go left, right, or left.' But you're finding that you are not this body and you never have been. You are not the individual doer at all. And yet, all doing, all actions, all activities naturally happen with this body.

But if you have an expectation of how they have to turn out or what the meaning of the right way to live is, then it could seem like all this is starting to get very confusing, because the ocean doesn't conform to any idea. This is naturally existing. And in this life, all bodies are naturally existing. So, it doesn't have to make sense in that way. And this is the very difficult aspect to deal with, because you always try to make sense. You will be trying to figure out the 'why' of it. 'Why am I doing this? Why am I coming here? Why am I flying to India?' You see all these things. But nobody has ever figured out the 'why' of anything. That's why these days so often I've been saying: by consciousness, everything happens only with the will of consciousness. And where the burden is, in a way to share this is that consciousness we don't know, so that you drop these ideas so tight that you will make some little sense out of it. 'Every action that I make will have some reason behind it.' Letting go of apparent control means having no reason. So, not everything has to be 'it should be this.' This can feel like instability. If you let go, start enjoying this movie. No idea why this scene is here, why the next thing always turns out to be this way or that way. That's what makes this movie. You wouldn't go for a movie where every single thing is really trying logically. Unpredictability is in that. And the way I'm saying all of this is...

Every action that I make will have some reason behind it. Letting go of apparent control means having no reason. So, my everything is 'why it should be this.' This can feel like I'm unsteady. If you let go, start enjoying this movie. No idea why this has happened, why the next thing always turns out to be this way or that way. That's what makes this movie. You wouldn't really go for a movie where every single thing is logically predictable. And the way I'm saying all of this, it has nothing to do with the question that I cannot remain as I am. All the action that happens through this body, it is like a leap of consciousness that is too deep for the state of consciousness in which I have lived. All right, mystery. But I cannot feel these words to be true, Father. I cannot fathom how blessed I have to be.

Yes, that is where the last thing I want to say about this is that it is our starting point which has been resurfaced with vision. If we presume a starting point of being a person, then we have to enjoy the journey. Now I am telling you that your starting point is unlimited consciousness itself. See your starting point, and it is true over here now. From that perspective, nothing is too big. No matter how big it might be, you are bigger than that. Everything happens only because you exist. Before you are the light of that, it is not the light. So, the starting point here is the destination. All the leaps have been taken. Over the two examples I give, suppose you had like very strong conditioning that you have to get there and what is needed to get there. Suppose you have this very strong idea that one thousand years of meditation I have to do to get there. So, I give all of you the guarantee that you have already meditated for 999 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds, and the fruit of all your meditation is available.

Thank you. Because the connection was not so good, can you hear me, Father? I just said, Father, that I wanted to thank you so much. You know, so much has been burning, and at times it's been quite intense, you know. But just your presence... we have just to stay present here right now. Something just needed to be here, needed to hear that one more time, you know, Father. And it was really, really... it was much needed. And also through all this burning, there is just this feeling of such rawness, you know, just so dry. We think we feel so worn down in us, and you know that it's actually quite beautiful, Father. And also watching Mooji's video this morning, the interview where he talked about losing his son when he was with Papaji, just kind of, you know, with the situation. And often it just kind of... I don't know, I just felt so much gratitude hearing that for him, and especially for you, Father. And I just wanted to say thank you. And also, I think the question a short while ago about the Being and it's always here, and you know, we need to make it special in itself and just miss the fact that it's always here. And I don't know, so I'm just happy to be here. And yesterday, you saw yesterday Guruji said something like, 'If this life is only for me, I don't want it.' Can I speak about it, please? That if it is just restricted to like... I would say that it is like for just being laid out, you know, where it is only for the ego, what it wants to do next, what are the experiences it wants to experience, this desire for what I would like, what I want us to do to get those desires. If this life was just for that, I would not feel like having that.

Because that's exactly what has been crossing. Looking back, this one with so-called ego is just another appearance, but the field of your own delicate consciousness would not want this universality now to become constricted only back to the person: 'What's in it for me and what should I do to get it?' It's a bit like discovering the ocean and then trying to fit it in a Coke bottle. So it seems now that there is one Self, and the play of this life is just like the play of all other lives which are getting this. Being this consciousness is no longer feeling itself to be just restricted to one being, one person identity. This is the meaning here about what he would have meant. Of course, since I am paraphrasing Guruji, I hope it captures the sense of what he was trying to say, daughter.

What is the connection between the feeling and the truth? Can the feeling lead us astray? The doubt that comes to me is one that says to me, 'All that you really care about is the feeling that motivates everything. You like the good one and dislike the bad one.' By feeling, I mean, for example, this: when one feels positive about life, this is when it is just an enjoyable feeling of being alive. Thank you so much for sharing.

Beautiful satsang. It's my joy to be in something so beautiful. And this what you're finding is that your presence will be... it's a substratum for even all feeling. And as you're discovering that this substratum is unshaken no matter what quality of sensations might come, including feelings, you'll find them in the perfume of your presence. Always there is no shortage, although there is no finish or expectation about them. There is never a lack of this beautiful perfume or feelings like these that we enjoy. So allow yourself just to taste your own existence, even if it feels empty of sensation or feeling for a bit. And as you are getting used to this taste of your flavorless being, you will find that all flavors are accessible to you. And pretty soon, the distinction between good and bad will not seem so strong. It will still be tasty. You will still be able to differentiate between grief and joy, between salt and sugar, but you will not have so much feverishness or preferences about one thing. This taste was intact. In fact, you might come one day to this seeing that all these beautiful feelings are just in service to your presence. Something inside is jumping with joy that I don't have to suffer, but the personal conditioning is coming apart at the seams. So I am the bearer of good news: you don't have to do anything at all, especially not suffer. Thank you all so much for being in satsang today. Satguru Sri Mooji Baba Ki Jai.