When It Doesn't Feel Like 'Everything is a Happening' - 8th September 2017

Father, can I ask something about you? Yes, my dear. I actually think it is really a question. I felt to come up and say something to it because to a service to something which reached towards me sometimes. But normally I say during the day, I would also not say that the experience here is that everything is just happening. This is just not—I don't feel it's an experience here. Sometimes yes, but it's not like that really. But to say that it is, I would say I don't think about it. You know, in a practical way, yes, but I don't think about the things I'm doing. And I'm not sure, you know, there is a doubt in it somehow, a subtle doubt where the mind creeps in. Someone says she gestured we're here or something like that. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's just really because most of the day just, you know, going without thinking on doership, what we're doing. Yet I would say it's not the experience, you know, that everything is just happening. I would not say it like this, but something in the middle of it, you know? Boom. I just heard to say that, save it for the important question.

Actually, when we hear that, then you see that everything is just happening. Why it doesn't seem to change? You stay very able to see that I'm not thinking about it, and yet it seems very natural. It's not like, 'Oh, now everything is just happening.' Why? Because everything has always been just happening. So we don't expect this shift in our perception in some way. And yet when we notice, for example, if you were to notice just how the next words you say come out, you will notice that it was just happening. You see, these words are just appearing. You see, and the perception of these words is also just happening. Just like your eyes are blinking, the heart is beating—all of this is just happening. Your head could be nodding; all of this is just happening. Why it doesn't feel like, 'Oh, nothing really shifted,' is because actually everything has been always just happening in this way.

The key is what you said: 'I usually don't think about it.' Now, what happens when we do think about it is when we invent the doer. Because when the thinking comes, what is it saying? 'You should not have done that' or 'What should you do now?' 'I don't know what to do.' And yet, what is to happen or not happen will continue to happen or not happen. Let me use a metaphor so it's easier understood. Now, suppose the tree had thoughts. There's a tree in the garden and the tree at home, and the thought was saying that you have to move your branches up and down. The thought was saying, 'You work to move your branches up and down,' and every day it was giving the tree a report on how well it did in moving its branches.

Now, when we first hear that, the sage comes next to the tree and is able to tell the tree in tree language, 'You are not doing it, because the wind comes and moves your branches.' So then some sense of relief can come: 'I am not moving these branches, it is the wind. This mind has been lying to me.' The movement of the branches, the movement of everything, has been moved by the movement of consciousness. But this is still incomplete, because what the sage will say next is that, 'See that you are not the tree itself.' You see the difference in position? So first, 'I am the tree and I am moving my branches.' Then, 'I am the tree, but God or the wind or some higher force is moving my branches.' And then to see, 'I am not the tree itself.' Because if you get stuck in 'I am the tree and the higher force is moving my branches,' then we can always have the sense of victimization. So, 'Why God has to move it this way or that way for me?' And we can have a desire for something about the future: 'I hope tomorrow God moves the branches only through this way in a particular direction.'

So that's why it is important for the sage to remind us that you are not the tree. Not only are you just not moving the branches, but you are also not the tree. So then you see that, 'Yes, I am that which is entirely free.' Wind, ground, sage, everything—I am the third bird witnessing both the doer and the perceiver. And that primal witnessing, then we come to this. Now, the thought is the completely opposite thing. The thought is saying, 'Yes, of course you're moving your branches. See, now you decide to blink, only then you blink like that,' or something like that. So in that idea that you are moving your branches, it is telling you the story basically that you are the tree.