What Is Here That Is Beyond Perception? - 20th November 2017

One was relentless in his pointing of the question 'Who am I?' That itself is a huge clue. The great sage himself kept reminding us to ask ourselves: who is it that I am? Obviously, it was clear to him that most of humanity has taken a concept about itself which is not true. And in clarifying, in coming to the truth about who one is, and coming to the insight about who you are, then all this confusion that we call suffering becomes alien.

Most people are convinced about who they are, especially if there are some who are new to Satsang. And we've been looking at this 'fill in the blank'. What are we filling the blank with? 'I am ______.' So some will fill the name there. 'I am' whatever the name is. So what does that name represent? The name represents a body in this world. What does the world represent? What is the world right now? Just a set of perceptions. If one by one these perceptions were to vanish—these outer seeming perceptions and these inner seeming perceptions that which we call the body sensations, the visuals of the body—if all this was to vanish, would the perceiver also vanish? At what point does the perceiver go?

So if the world became completely quiet and all visual perception also stopped, I am still there, no? If these sensations that you call the body, they were also not felt for some time, are you still there? Just like the space between two thoughts; it just continued and there are no thoughts, then are you still there or no? If you were feeling no emotion at the present time, are you still there? If all these perceptions were not there, do you still exist? Or are you also another perception? Are you an appearance? The masters, they said find out that which witnesses all appearances. Are you also an appearance? What witnesses you then?

So beyond an object or perception, what can you put in that box? 'I am something.' How many will make the mistake? Everyone tells me so far it cannot be an object or perception. Then what can you replace it with? That 'I am something' can become a 'something' concept. You don't have a perception of it, so I must be something which is non-perceptual. But what do I know about that? That I know is the Atma, the Self. We can have a concept of the Self and put it in that box. Actually, even otherwise, when we say 'I have the body' or 'I am the mind', these are also just concepts. We've taken a set of sensations and we created an idea about these sensations and called it the body. We created a set of energy concepts which we call the mind. So these are already just conceptual.

But you could take on a concept which seems higher than that, higher than the perceptual constructs, and say 'I am the Self'. But you find that just using the intellect and saying that 'I am the Self' or 'I am awareness' doesn't also help. This is what the intellect does, isn't it? Intellect now has understood that 'I cannot be an object which is witnessed, so I must be something which is the perceiver.' So what is that? That must be the Self. But this is also still just an idea.