This Moment is Your Best Friend - 9th October 2016

And some fear might come, and I don't want to belabor this point because if I keep saying 'some fear might come, some fear might come,' then you will project that. Okay, but if some of you are experiencing it, they know that nothing will be harmed. It's all auspicious. Don't fear the fear. Even if it seems like the ground is shaking under you, allow it. In this simple naturalness, you will find that all this effort to become a person, to pretend to become a person, will start to seem more and more alien to you. It will start to seem more and more effortful to you. It will seem like a waste of time, actually. Why would you want to? And then in this simple natural state of allowing, all insights will also emerge. Freshness will be there and this movie will become much more enjoyable because you're not trying to predict every scene. 'What is the next scene going to be like? Tell me, tell me.' And it's just fresh. We don't know right now who is going to speak in the next few minutes and what they are going to say. Isn't that so wonderful? This not-knowing. If we already knew what the whole day would be like and we were just going through the motions of the day... So when we don't have fear about something happening to us, you see, then we can truly enjoy the movie.

If you're trying to protect this 'me,' this non-existent one, and everything in our life caters to this one, you see, then we are fearful. 'What is the next moment going to bring?' you see. 'What is the agenda for the retreat? Are you going to become really harsh on me tomorrow?' These kind of fears will come when we are no longer catering to this 'me.' And what is there? All I'm asking is that we stop catering to that which we cannot find in the first place. Someone was saying the other day also—again, I've heard this many, many times over the last three years—that 'If he who is also Consciousness, why are you always so harsh with the ego?' But it is just make-believe, that's why. I am trying to show you that it is just make-believe. There is no tangible ego. It is not even the situation where you say that, you know, you forgive the sinner. It is not even that situation. And of course, the most beautiful way to deal with that is with compassion in the world, it is like this. But it is not even that case. We cannot find this one. That's what I'm trying to show you.

There is no cat. If you keep believing that you're a Martian, you see, if you keep believing that you're a Martian and then you come and say, 'But even this belief is Consciousness,' then what can I tell you? I'm just showing you that you are not a Martian. You are not this person. Even the presumption that you are a person is a play of Consciousness or Brahman, you see. But if you were to wake up tomorrow and you woke up under a spell and all of you said that 'I am from Mars, I want to go back to my house on Mars, I'm missing it too much,' what would be the most compassionate way to deal with you? Would it be to cater to your Martian identity and say, 'Okay, let's try to bring the spaceship'? It would not be. It would be to tell you, 'Look, look, you are not a Martian anyway.' 'Why are you so harsh with the Martian?' 'I'm not, just look, it's a lie that you're a Martian.' That's all that is happening here. Nobody's being harsh with anyone. You're just looking at that which is false and saying it is false. That which is a lie and saying it is a lie.

See, if your children have an imaginary friend who started off all fine but now it is scary to the child, would you not tell the child, 'Hey, it's imaginary, don't believe it. It's just your own projection'? And you've given it too much belief, so now you believe whatever it is saying. And then whatever it is saying seems like it is too much, so the child gets overwhelmed. That's what used to happen, you see. I started off by saying 'Don't believe your thoughts,' then everybody came back saying, 'But it's too much, there are too many thoughts, I can't.' So then what to do with the imaginary friend? Okay, don't believe the next thing it is saying. That much you can do with it, you see. So don't believe your next thought. Then this false imaginary friend which is claiming to be you yourself cannot be nourished. The identity cannot grow like that.

So all that is happening here is this, to see. I say, 'Look, look, you are not that one.' That is the recognition. I have given you the tools to look, how to look also we have shown you, isn't it? So the first part is: look, who are you really? So as you look, then as it is, belief in the false starts to fall. Once you see you are not a Martian, you see, then the Martian belief starts to disintegrate, you see. But because so much has been believed in the past, that is why it is important also to not draw any future nourishment to this Martian conditioning. Otherwise, the spiritual journey will keep going on and on. I can give you a practice: every day you do 10 minutes, you come to the recognition of who you are; the rest of the day you again fill yourself up with egoic conditioning. So how does it end? Never. Because you get rid of whatever has been filled up the previous day with your 10 minutes of practice, then the rest of the day you go about as if you're the ego.

Yeah, so if I wanted hundreds of thousands of followers, I would just do that. Make you taste the honey every day, you see. Give you some sense of peace from that previous day's conditioning, and then I know the rest of the day you will go about your thing, you will build up more drama in your life, and you will come next day again with a bucket full of conditioning, then do the practice. It's a fail-safe module. And I'm not saying this has anything fundamentally wrong with it, but I am saying the urge here is not for that. The urge here is to show you who you are and also show you don't need to pick up any of the false stuff. And if whatever little bit you do pick up, just a simple inquiry—'Who is it who is here really?'—can drop that. So both the recognition 'I am not the Martian' and the dropping of the false Martian conditioning is possible right now. And then if it gets picked up, it can also be let go.

And you know what the best news is? The best news is that this moment is your best friend. In this moment, all that was past is gone. All our ideas of the world, ourselves, right now—gone. If I say tell me your ideas about yourself, you first have to think about it. They are not here. You have to go to that and pull it. So you have to wait for some thought to come, pull at that, and then the whole stream of conditioning seems to be available. Can it be this simple, that the recognition of who you are is possible right now and also the conditioning is wiped off? Actually, self-realization is the simplest thing. That is why it is impossible for the mind; it's too simple. All that is needed is right now, check: what is here? Who am I? And don't buy any story that the mind is telling you. If you don't want to buy, nobody can force you to buy. This is a lie we tell ourselves: 'I am just forced to believe, I am just forced to believe.' Because that who has the power of belief is not some mere mortal, it is Consciousness. The person does not have the power to believe, but it has the power to believe that it does not have the power of dropping these beliefs because 'they are too strong for me.' It has the power to believe all of these things. It wants to play like that.

But I cannot believe you when you say these things, because that which believes or does not believe is Consciousness itself. So for those who have been with me for some time, they come to me still with some story. Sometimes I just say, 'I don't believe you.' You see, one thing—I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this—but we were in Rishikesh and she would write to me on Facebook, 'There's lots I have to share with you, so much has been happening here, I am picking up so much.' So when we were walking on the ghats and she shared something, I said, 'Actually, you know what? I don't believe any of this.' 'But Father, it's true!' I said, 'I know that you believe it to be true, but really none of this is really true.' Because even with our beliefs, can what we really are be harmed? Can we actually become the ego? We cannot. You can only be this Being, and ultimately that which is aware even of this Being.