Om, shanti, shanti, shanti, om. Peace.
Good evening. Welcome. I welcome you with all my heart. Most people are home watching the presidential debates. We ought to have Jnani debates. We have all the Jnanis in the world show up. Whoever shows up loses of course.
If only people understood the first principle of self-realization, which is simply this: Whatever is destined to happen, is going to happen, no matter how you try to stop it. And whatever is destined not to happen, will never happen, no matter how much you try to make it happen. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the politicians understood this truth. There would be absolutely nothing to worry about, nothing to fear, nothing to conquer, nothing to win, nothing to lose. Everything is unfolding the way it should. Everything is in its right place. There are no~ mistakes. Everything is lovely and beautiful, just the way it is.
If you can only understand this in your own personal life. What you're supposed to go through, in this experience, in this incarnation, has been already planned for you before you came into this body. Yet you have absolutely nothing to do with it, because you are not the body. But as long as you think you are a body, you think you're somebody, somebody important, or you think you are a failure, whatever you think about yourself, if you would only turn within, and see the one self, then you would never worry about what is going to happen to you at all, for you would realize, there’s no you for anything to happen to.
You are total freedom right now, total liberation, complete awareness. Yet, you do not believe me. You still feel inclined to be a body, a doer. Think of the experiences you went through today, and see if you do not believe that you’re a doer. How many times did you become angry today? How many times did you feel slighted today? How many times did you feel fear, or something is wrong somewhere, or you're not in your right place? This shows you that you believe that you are a body. And as long as you believe that you are a body, why not just let go and stop fretting and worrying about your body.
The power that knows the way will take care of you. The one who makes the sun shine, the grass grow, the apples grow perfectly on apple trees, the food that sustains us, nourishes us. Everything has been lovingly provided for us. Have faith. Trust the power that knows the way.
This is the first step. To have total faith and total trust in the infinite, the one. You may call this God, if you want to. Makes no difference what you call it. It is within you. It is without you. It is everywhere. All you have to do is to surrender to it. Surrender all of your doubts, your frustrations, your fears, everything that has besieged you for so long. Give it all up. It doesn't belong to you. Be free of it.
When you're able to do this, you can go further, and understand that there never was a body to begin with. The world, as it appears, does not exist. The universe, as it appears does not exist. Yet you are, and you will always be. What are you and what will you always be? Silence. There is no answer for that, for the mind can never comprehend the unknown, the transcendental, the self. The mind can never know these things. The mind only knows itself as a body, as a doer. Therefore you have to transcend the mind, transcend the thoughts, transcend the world, transcend the universe, and enter the silence, where there is total bliss, and peace and harmony.
Actually the only freedom you have is not to react to conditions and to turn within, to see the truth. Everything else is preordained. Whatever appears in your life is destined to be. It is your reaction to what appears that matters to you, what’s going to happen to you next. It’s your reaction to life's experiences that comes to you, which determines what is going to happen to you next, by the way you respond to it, by the way you react to it.
Do not be in conflict with your thoughts and the self. When there is no conflict there are no thoughts. Thoughts only appear because there’s conflict. By conflict I mean, you're worrying about getting rid of your thoughts, you're doing sadhana, meditation, pranayamas, japa. All of these things cause conflict. For aren't you saying, "I'm doing these things to become liberated. I'm doing these things to become free." The reason there’s a the conflict is because you're already free and liberated. Therefore when you give yourself the information that you have to do something to become liberated, there is immediately conflict.
This is the only problem you have. It is your conflict. And this conflict comes from programming when you were a child, from samskaras, from previous existence, things that you took with you, the habits that are inside of you, that you believe you are. This is where the conflict comes from. For it tells you, "I'm just a human being, I'm just a frail body. I have to suffer sometimes, sometimes I have to be happy." This is all a lie. There never was a you that has to suffer. There never was a you that has to be happy.
There is no one in you who needs to be happy. There is no one in you who needs to be miserable. They are both impostors. So every time you try to exchange negative conditioning to positive conditioning, you’re causing conflict. This is the reason psychology and psychiatry does not work. For they’re trying to make you normal. Who wants to be normal? How boring.
The truth is do not wish to be anything. There is nothing you wish to be. There is nothing you have to become. There is no future, for you to become anything. Right this moment you are the one, and there never was another. Right this moment you are totally free, without thinking a thought, without trying to make anything happen.
Why not awaken to this truth? Why not awaken to the fact that there is nothing that you have to become, there are no goals to accomplish. You want to believe everything is preordained, and it's been mapped out for you. Or you believe that you’re just a victim of circumstance, going through many experiences, to learn a lesson. It's really funny to me when people tell me, "Something happened in my life, but I guess that's the lesson that I have to learn," or, "that's my karma." Forget about karma. Forget about lessons you have to learn. No one has to learn any lessons. No one has to go through their karmic experiences. Put an end to it all. Drop it all. After all, for whom is there karma? For whom are there experiences? Only for the I-thought, for the mind, not for you. You are bright and shining. You are the absolute reality, Brahman.
Yet even those words are superfluous, redundant. For what do these words actually mean to you, absolute reality, Brahman? They’re just names that are given to the absolute reality, to the self. Yet everything has to go. The absolute reality has to go. The self has to go. The reason it has to go is because you're thinking about this with your finite mind, and every answer you come up with is erroneous. Always remember the finite mind can never know the infinite. It's impossible. And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Consequently the wise person becomes silent, quiescent. You're not even trying to change your thoughts or stop your thoughts. For how can you try to stop something or change something that never existed to begin with.
Can you see now why you’re in conflict? You're trying to correct something, you’re trying to become something, you're trying to do something, and something does not exist. Also what you're trying to correct does not exist. What you're trying to change does not exist. You get nowhere. This is why I tell you so often: leave everything alone. Have no opinions for or against. Do not be judgmental. Be nothing and you'll be everything.
Why do most of you come to satsang? As long as you have a reason it's the wrong reason. There should be no reason. There shouldn't be any valid reason why you come to satsang. For if you think back on what I've been referring to, you will see every reason is erroneous. For the reason that you're trying to come to satsang doesn't exist at all. You say you come to satsang to become enlightened, to know the truth. Who has to know the truth? Who has to become enlightened?
You come to sit with me. You can always sit with me, wherever you are. What I'm trying to tell you, do not look for reasons why you do something. When you start giving up all reasoning, all ambition, when you start surrendering all of your so called power, your human power that you think you have, this is when the mind begins to slow down. The mind will never slow down by trying to make it slow down. I don't care what method you use. When you are using Vipassana meditation, when you're using breathing, whatever method you're using... Whatever method you're using, you're using your mind. It is your mind that you're still using. That's why you can never get anywhere.
You must use your mind, no matter what you do. Therefore stop doing anything. I know many of you have been practicing sadhana for 25 years, 40 years, practicing many forms of meditation, going to teachers, reading many books. And what becomes of you? You may get a good feeling, then it goes away, and you're back where you started from.
The only thing that you should do, or must do, is not to be in conflict with anything. Do not be in conflict with anyone or anything. When you're not in conflict with anything, the mind begins to surrender itself, and goes back into the heart, and you become your self. This is the easiest thing that you ever had to do. It's simplicity itself. It's simplicity itself because there’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to become. There’s no one you have to change. You are that.
Do not analyze what I am saying. Do not even agree with what I'm saying. Just be open. Open your heart by remaining still, silent. Allow the thoughts to come, do try not to stop them. Do not judge your thoughts, analyze your thoughts, or try to change your thoughts, or try to remove your thoughts. This will put you back in conflict with your thoughts. Do not even observe your thoughts. Do not even be the witness to your thoughts. Why? Because in reality there are no thoughts. The thoughts that you think you’re thinking, are an optical illusion. It is false imagination. Don't you see? Everything that you're thinking about is false. There is no thinker and there are no thoughts.
So why have you been practicing all these exercises all of your life? It's like a person in the ocean going in search for water.
Awaken. Be free. Be yourself.
You are the joy of the world, the light that shines in darkness. You are a blessing to the universe. Love yourself always. When you love yourself, you love God. Forget about the past. Never dwell on the past. Remember, time and space does not exist. If time and space does not exist, then there cannot be a past or a future, for the past and the future is about space and time. If there is no time and space, there cannot possibly be a past or a future. So who thinks about the past? Who thinks about the future?
Even to say the I does, the I-thought does, this again is mostly for beginners. Self-inquiry is very important. Don't get me wrong. But the day has to come when you go beyond self-inquiry, when you just realize and understand that there is no I-thought at all. It never existed. Therefore you do not have to get rid of it. There is nothing to get rid of, because nothing exists. You are total freedom, right this instant, right this minute.
Whenever your thoughts dwell on the past, do not become angry with yourself. Leave them alone. Do not observe them. Do not watch them. Do not be the witness to them. Just leave them alone. They will disappear of their own volition, due to the fact that they never existed. This is an important point. This is the reason why you leave everything alone. Now if things existed, if there was such a thing as negative thinking, karma to get rid of, then you'd have a job on your hands. You’d have to do all sorts of things to get rid of your karma, your past sins. You'd be working continuously, practicing all kinds of japa, mantras, everything, to remove all of these thoughts of the past. But I say to you since these things never existed to begin with, why do any work at all? Oh, it's OK, if you like to work, but I'm very lazy myself, and the less work I have to do, the better.
I know it's difficult for some of you to think that you have to do absolutely nothing to become free, because you're already free. For you've been brought up that you have to work, work, work to get ahead. Why do you want to get ahead? Ahead to what? To whom? Everything must change sooner or later. Everything must dissolve and return to the elements from whence they came. And new forms are always being born, so to speak. So what kind of goals are you trying to achieve? Your goals will vanish, when everything else vanishes, sooner or later.
Think how many civilizations we've had on this planet. Many civilizations and they've also passed us where we are today. But where are they now? They're gone. Dissolved into the nothingness from whence they came.
So it is folly to try to improve yourself, or to try to achieve anything. It is folly to try to change something or to become something. Just be. You may ask, "How do I just be?" By asking, you're not being. To just be is to just be. Not to be this or to be that, or to try to discover how to just be. Just be, without trying to understand what that means. Without analyzing. Without pondering. Just be. Just be. Just be. Just be.
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