What is the Unchanging? - 4th January 2018

In this plane, this Leela of the Lord himself, we forget what we are and we attach ourselves to that which is just passing. I was saying the other day that we are tied to something which is changing, something which is not constant. And to be attached to it, to call it mine, to claim some ownership over it, it's like tying yourselves to a crazy, dumb donkey or something like that because you know it is going to pull. Nothing in the phenomenal spheres is constant. Now you have attached yourself to that donkey. You attach yourself to this notion that 'I am this body.' And if you consider yourself just to be a limited body, then obviously you will not feel like you have enough, because unlimitedness is your natural state and something keeps longing for that. And if you consider yourself to be a body, then you'll want what? Unlimited good relationships, unlimited amount of money. We want that unlimitedness in a mental sort of way. But what you are truly searching for is the truth about yourself: the unchanging, the unlimited nature of the Atma.

Now, as long as you continue to consider the notion 'I am something' to be real, what are you filling this 'something' with? 'I am the body,' 'I am a person.' What could this 'something' be which is the unchanging? What can you put into that box? 'I am something'—and that something should be unchanging. Could that something be the Self, the Absolute, God? Actually, it doesn't need to be said because the 'I am' itself contains it. Not really the truth is contained in 'I am,' but the false is added as a superimposition on top of that, as a belief on top of that.

Now, this 'I' is the unchanging. That is why it is called the real. Nothing real can be threatened. So, if you cannot be threatened, then what can? That which is going to go anyway, isn't it? So what is there to fear? You threaten the power if nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal never came into existence anyway. What does this mean? It doesn't mean that the appearance did not arise, but it arose as an appearance. What is the meaning of the term appearance? That which appears and disappears. So it is just an appearance.

So the sages have made this distinction between reality and appearance on the basis of that which does not come and go, versus that which comes and goes. Now, we have tried attaching ourselves to that which comes and goes and we all know how that has worked out. The good news is that you don't have to attach to the real; you just have to drop the false. Find your reality which is beyond this body, beyond this mind, beyond this world, beyond this waking state, beyond all the realms that you experience. What is that unchanging?