In many temples in India, you will see people burning camphor. When you burn camphor, it burns brightly, but after the flame is exhausted there is no residue. Nothing remains. This camphor represents your identified state; the fire is satsang itself. It will remove all your identifications; nothing will be left. Be like this camphor.
In fact, if you leave camphor exposed to the air, after a few weeks, it evaporates. One time I bought a box of camphor, and I didn’t know very much about it at that time. I had this box stored away in my room, I had forgotten about it. After some months, I went and opened the box and there was nothing there; it had vanished. How wonderful ! Similarly like camphor, you vanish. You vanish meaning what ? All the ideas you have held about yourself are vanishing. Even at this moment, what remains ?
You know what, I look at some of you and I can tell. I look in your eyes. Some of you, there is nothing behind those eyes. Nothing. There is just a shell sitting here. Just a shell, nothing inside. Empty. You have the look of these chickens when they are hatching, a kind of in-drawn look in the eyes when the chicken is sitting on the egg. You have that same look of emptiness: Nobody there. Still, these words are simply arising in consciousness. They are heard. Perception is there; perceiving is being perceived. But what of you, the perceiver ? What picture can you present as yourself right now ? Where are you in all of this ? And yet I see there is no anxiety. No turbulence. Stay here. Stay here. I don’t mean ‘Sit quietly, shut your door, hide away from the world’. This is only another thought. Satsang is not contrary to activity. Activities are arising. It’s also witnessed that some power creates this activity. It’s unfolding, and this activity is also manifested through this form, this body. The identification, all of that, is the activity of some power. How does it come about ? Activities are arising in consciousness. What is aware of this ? You are the awareness in which all of this is simply arising. Let it be so. No need to interfere. Now some sensation, inclination, some urge to move is carried through in the presence of this. It’s very natural.
Get used to yourself as emptiness.
I’m not here advocating a new role for you to play. In fact I am removing all your roles. Who is the role player ? The sense of doership has been that. Doership is a myth. The vital force inherent in consciousness is spontaneously going on and there is the witnessing of this. But you are not the witnesser. Witnessing is spontaneously there. What are you ? Get used to yourself as emptiness - empty beyond the concept of empty. How can I touch you ? What is there for me to see of you ? Where are you ? Are not you also just an idea in this ?
Now, fear comes. Fear arises. ‘Oh, if I am not, how can I continue ?’. This is also a thought. In beingness there is no discontinuing or continuing. These are simply thoughts. You are quite at ease here. Total relaxation in beingness. Total presence. Here you are where you are not. This type of craziness we speak only here, and yet all of this resonates with total truth and clarity in you. You can never articulate this effectively. There is no word, no concept that can convey this. Simply you are. Honour this. How ? By keeping out the tendency to flow out with your thoughts. The thoughts are arising. Let them arise, don’t panic. Stay only as emptiness. Keep the mind in neutral. And then what is now called mind will only be Self. Stay here. You are already one with this. You only dreamed that you were other than this.
I remind you again that one of the most virile tendencies of the consciousness, when it identifies, is to arise as ‘I am the doer’. Don’t touch this doer sensation, and then you are free. Touch the doer, be the doer, and karma is there for you, and you will reap the fruits of karma. Be the doer and you take on the responsibility of your identification. Don’t touch this doer sense, and you stay as freedom. Activities don’t imply doership. Activities are arising by themselves, spontaneously. Touch the doer sense, and you start to navigate in the world of manifestation. You start to avoid, choose, judge; you come into the field of hardship, arrogance, pride - the ills of mankind, I would say. Stay put only as emptiness and see.
The thought will arise ‘But how can I stay like this when I have duties to perform ?’ Some people have said ‘It’s alright to come to satsang and have these lovely feelings, but now I must go back to the real world’. What is the real world ? You mean then you must go back to the unreal world. Stay as the real. What is the real ? The real is not a void. All this, all that you can perceive, remember, think, is a play in consciousness. When we say ‘real world’, we often mean running back to the insanity of identification. You have this impression that without taking hold of what you perceive and conceive of as your role, your duty as a doer, then you might as well be dead.
But I tell you that whatever role this body-mind expression has come to play, it will be played. If you feel that by listening and honouring what you have heard here that you simply have to sit in your room and go nowhere and avoid people, then you are sadly mistaken. Life goes on, and in fact, it will play out much more richly, much more beautifully, but you will not exchange your peace for it. When you stay put as emptiness, you will see that everything is there. If you see the personality only as a role that consciousness plays in this form, it’s fine. You don’t have to go to anybody and say ‘I am not John now, I am the I’. That’s not true. You can say ‘I, me, mine’, ‘I am doing this’, ‘I am going there’, but it will not leave any strong impression in the consciousness. All this is simply the functioning of the consciousness. It’s very wonderful when seen from the place of non-identification; with identification it becomes very chaotic.
Take a lesson from me. I also am here. Some may be inclined to think ‘Well, it’s alright for you, you travel around, you talk to people. This is what you do.’ But there are very varied expressions also for me. I am also running a little chai shop and sometimes the energy is there to do gardening, or to travel or whatever. It happens. I don’t interfere with that. I let it play itself out, it’s fine. I am there present in all of it. My joy is not diminished, my peace is not diminished. There are times of course, the body is here, the mind is here, and consciousness is here, and all of that play in consciousness, and the consciousness is not a good guy. Good, bad, indifferent, ugly, all this is there. I don’t identify with the consciousness. I only observe that this is a role, somehow all this is bubbling, dancing, according to its nature. But in essence, the consciousness is pure. That pure consciousness is the consciousness I am, in all of this it’s the root, it pervades everything, but it’s the last thing to be seen. Because once the consciousness takes on an identification, this essence somehow gets eclipsed by its interests, its preferences, its likes, dislikes and tendencies. They cover it up. It falls into confusion. It gets hypnotised by what it perceives. It takes mere perceptions in it to be itself, and it’s intrinsic peace, joy, emptiness, stillness, silence and love becomes objectives in it, which are searched for in relationships or in otherness, rather than recognized to be is its constitutional state. That is missed. Who misses it ? The consciousness in identification we call ‘you, me, Harry, John, Susan’. Just seeing this is enough. See it. See this deeply, not in some intellectual way, but with the urge and the desire to be free. Seeing with the earnestness to get to the root delivers this confused consciousness speedily into pure being, essence, joy.
You will not learn this in your universities, you will not learn it in the cafes, and you will not remember it in the marketplace. This is your moment. Seize this moment. Be totally open, present, available, earnest. Let this be the real discovery, this recognition which leaves you as you have always been. It is your good fortune that you are now here. Here now is not 7.30 in the evening at 12 Fairview House, sitting with Mooji. Here is beyond location. Now is out of time. As this here now you can never leave. What will you do to leave ? You are in total unicity as your own self.
Fully imbibe what I am saying. Allow it to be fully assimilated in your consciousness. Thereafter, by itself, your view, your approach to life will be radically different. Let your mind, your tendencies be fully baptised in this understanding. Satsang is the sulphuric acid bath that your mind, your identification gets soaked in. Bring your consciousness to rest in itself. Let this consciousness, the sense ‘I am only this I am’ incubate in itself. Stay only as ‘I am’; stay only as awareness; stay only as emptiness. Keep your mind in neutral. It’s enough. It is enough. This is it.
This is it beyond the saying it is it. What I have told you is all you need to know. It’s all you need to hear. Yet I will say it again and again. It is the soap that washes off all the impressions. Because all the impressions from the place of the true you, they are untrue. It will leave you as the ‘you without you’. Be this you-less you. Stay as this. This is the glorious, stateless state. The Absolute. Here you have met and dissolved in your Buddha nature, in Christ consciousness, in Krishna consciousness. Here you are one with yourself. You’ve heard people say ‘one love’; this oneness is love. Stay as love. Rest in love.
There are no efforts, no spiritual or religious gymnastics to perform - only the pilgrimage from the mind to the heart. Don’t wait for this to happen. Truth is not a journey. It’s where all journeys end. Truth is not some cluster of concepts. All concepts dissolve in this, leaving you as you are. Get used to you without the information of you. In this, as this, there is no CV, there is no photo album of past experiences. There are no stories. Stay as this. From here you will see very clearly, very freshly, the activity of mind and identification will arise. It will be seen. Your power to see with detachment is your joy, your freedom. By Mooji
