I Am That - Session 36 - Chapter 15 - The Gnyani - Part 2

Listen to Ektaji talk about Nisargadatta Maharaj's book I Am That. Nisargadatta Maharaj was a teacher who did not propound any ideology or religion, but gently unwrapped the mystery of the self. I Am That preserves his dialogs with the followers who came from around the world seeking guidance in destroying false identities.

Transcript

Questioner says there is not enough devotion in the world.

Maharaj says you are always after the improvement of the world.

Do you really believe that the world is waiting for you to be saved?

Maharaj is very happy to poke somebody's ego.

He wants to really puncture your big fat balloon so that you come down to reality.

Questioner says I just do not know how much I can do for the world.

All I can do is to try.

Is there anything else you would like me to do?

Maharaj says without you is there a world?

You take this down as question number four for homework.

Without me is there a world?

You know all about the world but about yourself you know nothing.

You yourself are the tools of your work.

You have no other tools.

Why don't you take care of the tools before you think of the work?

What is the tool?

Sense of I am.

First is the sense of I am.

From that this world has projected.

You are so interested in saving this projected world.

He is saying come back to the tool that is projecting.

Come back to the projector.

Come back to the source.

Find yourself first.

Find the truth.

So you look towards the tools instead of focusing on the work that has been done by the tool.

Then you will know that you are only God and you have the creative function.

And what is this creative function?

It is the source of all desires to be,

To become.

Till the time I get caught up in this jijiviksha,

I will keep projecting.

The moment I work on this tool,

The projector and recognize,

Aha!

I am stuck in jijiviksha.

I am getting confused.

I the consciousness lose my stand,

Get lost in jijiviksha and project the world.

Once you see the truth of yourself,

Then there is no more slipping.

Then the world will continue as long as the past seeds have to exhaust.

It has got nothing to do with me now because I am not interested in it.

Similarly,

I am not interested in God,

The creative function in me.

I have got nothing to do with him.

I come first.

Very clear?

This is the meaning of working on the tools,

Focusing on the tools rather than on the work.

So far clear?

Can I move ahead?

Maharaj says in the last sentence,

You yourself are the tools of your work.

You have no other tools.

Why don't you take care of the tools before you think of the work?

Questioner says,

I can wait while the world cannot.

He is still not clear that this is my own projection.

He still thinks this world is individually existing.

Apart from me,

The consciousness.

It has its own individual inherent existence and that cannot wait.

Whatever work is there in the world,

I have to go and do it now.

I have to help the world now.

Do you see his understanding?

He is not clear about his Advait understanding.

So he says,

I can wait while the world cannot.

So Maharaj said,

By not inquiring,

You keep the world waiting.

By not inquiring into what?

Who am I?

By not inquiring,

You are keeping the world waiting.

So he is confused.

He says,

Waiting for what?

Maharaj said,

For somebody who can save it.

You know that was like a little trick he played on him,

Right?

Because he wanted to go save the world.

It wants to be saved,

Right?

You are keeping it waiting.

Questioner says,

God runs the world.

God will save it.

So he is back to his religious conditioning,

The Dwaitam conditioning that there is a separate God existing apart from me.

And that separate God will save the world.

Maharaj says,

That's what you say.

Did God come and tell you that the world is his creation and concern and not yours?

Did God come and tell you that he exists?

He has created the world.

He has created the world.

Every time you get lost in this kind of religious conditioning,

Ask yourself this question.

This can be the next homework question.

Did God come and tell you that the world is his creation?

That he is running it?

And that it is his concern?

The questioner is confused.

Why should it be my sole concern?

So Maharaj says,

Think.

It's not consider.

That's not the right translation from Marathi.

Think.

The world in which you live,

Who else knows about it?

He is asking him to think a little bit.

He is pushing him towards the Swapna Nidra Jnan,

The knowledge of sleep and dreams.

He is saying,

Think.

Your world,

Isn't it personal?

Does anybody else know about it?

So questioner says,

You know.

Everybody knows.

Maharaj says,

Did anybody come from outside of your world to tell you?

Myself and everybody else appear and disappear in your world.

We are all at your mercy.

Those who understand Swapna Nidra Jnan completely,

In its entirety,

Get this immediately.

Yeah.

Everything is at my mercy.

First,

Sense of I am arises.

Then from that,

The projection happens of this world.

So this projection of the world is at the mercy of the sense of I am.

Clear?

Yeah.

If there is no I,

There is no world.

I have no proof of it existing apart from me.

I have no proof of it existing when I am asleep in bed.

Who says that I am asleep in bed?

Does awareness or consciousness ever sleep?

No.

What is asleep in bed?

Isn't it the body?

Do you even have any direct experience that there is a body lying in bed that is sleeping?

No.

How do you know there is the body?

How do you know there is the mind?

When you are in the deep sleep state,

When you are in the deep sleep state,

You are the closest to your pure self.

And you know about it.

That is why when you come out,

You say there was nothing.

Your there was nothing is a comparative statement to there is something in this waking state.

There is something in the dream state.

Because there is something in the waking and dream,

I compare this to that deep sleep and say there was nothing.

But I was there.

Correct.

That's why I know I was there,

But there was nothing else there.

There is who knows that there was nothing.

Obviously,

I was there.

Yes,

Super clear.

So I recognize,

Oh,

From this no thingness,

The sense of I comes up.

There is that little restlessness to be to become.

And then the dream world is projected and then the waking world is projected.

So the dream world and the waking world are at my mercy.

Therefore,

My world that I have projected is unshareable.

Because it is projecting out from me.

It is unshareable.

There is nobody outside my world who can come and tell me that there is a world existing outside your personal world.

That person also comes into my personal world.

So do I have any proof that he has his own personal world outside my personal world?

Not that I know of.

I have no direct experience of he having a separate world.

So the only truth in direct experience is that Ekta and other people on the screen are simply images that are being projected.

That are being projected by you.

We all are at your mercy.

Super clear.

This point is super clear.

I'll read that again.

Did anybody come from outside of your world to tell you?

Myself and everybody else appear and disappear in your world.

We are all at your mercy.

The questioner says,

It cannot be so bad.

I exist in your world as you exist in mine.

So Maharaj says,

You have no evidence of my world.

You are completely wrapped up in the world of your own making.

I like the Marathi word for wrapped out.

It's gur fatle.

Means you're totally entangled.

You are completely entangled in the world of your own making.

You have no evidence of my world.

That is an assumption.

That the husband has his world,

The wife has her world,

The children have their world.

All the Advaitins in this group have their world.

This is an assumption that you're making.

You do not have any evidence.

You do not have any evidence.

You have no evidence of the existence of Ekta.

So you do not have evidence of Ekta's world also,

Whether it exists or not.

So he starts seeing it little bit.

He says,

I see.

Completely but hopelessly.

I see in Marathi,

It's a very long sentence.

Marathi says,

I see that I am completely entangled.

But is there no hope?

So Maharaj says,

Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions which you have created is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension.

He pleads with you to get out of it by the same way by which you got in.

You got into it by forgetting what you are and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are.

Maharaj says,

There is hope,

Don't worry.

The hope is that in your world an image appears and he is referring to himself.

That he appears in your world and he tells you,

He pleads that the window that got you in is the same window that will take you out.

If you notice a pigeon that comes into your home,

It comes into your home from one window and never tries to get out from the same.

It keeps pecking at all the other windows thinking it's going to get out.

It never goes back to the same window from where it came.

We have the same problem.

We never try to get out of the same place.

We think that which got me into this mess,

How can that get me out?

The I,

The ego,

The I that got me into this mess,

How can that get me out?

But it is exactly that which helps you get out.

Because behind the ego is hidden the sense of I am,

The witness consciousness.

So the door that gets you in also takes you out.

In what way does it affect the world?

Maharaj says when you are free of the world,

You can do something about it.

As long as you are a prisoner of it,

You are helpless to change it.

On the contrary,

Whatever you do will aggravate the situation.

What has happened?

Sense of I am arises,

There is the jijiviksha to be,

To become that projects the world.

Immediately I forget my stance of being consciousness,

I become the person.

I assume a wrong idea that I am the person and I am trapped in this world.

So anything I do in this world lands up to be a mess,

Creates more suffering.

How much ever good I do,

The good lasts a little while.

The merit from the good lasts a little while.

But I am back to my suffering and this is our direct experience,

Everybody's.

Has everybody done some seva in life?

With that intention I am going to help.

The merit of that seva exhausted.

Did everybody notice that?

And you are back to your suffering mind,

The same suffering.

So he says whatever you do in this personal world as the body-mind,

You are a prisoner of this world.

So you are trapped in it,

You are in prison.

So anything you do is only going to aggravate the situation.

So drop this positioning of being in the world.

Maharaj is again and again indicating to him to come back to his original,

Real,

True stance.

And that is the sense of I am.

So the questioner says righteousness will set me free.

The Marathi word is Sadacharan.

Righteousness,

Righteousness will set me free.

I will do good,

Be good,

Do the right thing,

Always help others.

Righteousness will set me free.

Maharaj says righteousness will undoubtedly make you and your world a comfortable,

Even happy place.

But what is the use?

There is no reality in it,

It cannot last.

However beautiful your dream is,

You are Alice in Wonderland and you are getting all the goodies to eat,

But it is unreal,

It is an illusion,

It is not true.

And that which is an illusion is temporary,

It appears and it disappears,

It cannot last.

So what is the point of creating a temporary illusion and trying to be happy in that temporary illusion?

When it goes away,

You are definitely going to suffer.

Because it cannot last.

Do you see that?

So he is not saying don't be righteous,

Go out and be unrighteous.

No.

That is again perverted use of knowledge.

Maharaj is saying don't focus on the body-mind to do something good.

You have to separate yourself out.

Get out of this wrong understanding of being the body-mind.

Then at this level you will not do wrong only,

You don't want to do anything.

Because doing is becoming.

It is jijivic cha.

It is new projection,

New initiation.

Then you are going to be caught up in that projection.

So you don't want to do,

Just want to be.

There is no more doing.

Clear?

You know the difference between just to be and to become.

To be means I am not interested in doing anything.

I have no condition put on God or the universe to change anything.

What is,

Is.

That is to be.

To become,

No I want this,

I want that.

I don't like the current situation.

I want it to be different.

This is jijivic cha.

Very different.

Two different things.

Only from this projection happens.

From this level there is no more projection.

The past seeds that have projected will continue their shelf life.

You can't do anything about the past seeds that have already projected.

If the movie is a three hour movie,

You started it in the past.

So now it will go on for three hours.

So now it will go on for three hours.

You can't do anything about it.

But now I got nothing to do with that.

And I got nothing to do with this God that projected it.

Yes,

I hold my ground.

Very clear?

So when Maharaj says that What is the use?

There is no reality in it and it cannot last.

Questioner says God will help.

He's gone back to his dvaitam understanding.

Maharaj says to help you God must know of your existence.

Do you see God has come,

Is born of you.

You are the witness consciousness.

From you that jijivic cha is born,

God is born.

That God cannot look back and know you.

Just like the body cannot look back and say hi to the witness.

The mind cannot or the thought cannot look back and say hi to the witness.

Similarly,

God is also your projection.

The projection cannot know the projector.

Is it very clear?

So God cannot know you.

Again I'll read.

To help you God must know of your existence.

But you and your world are dream states.

In dream you may suffer agonies.

No one knows them and no one can help you.

He's giving you another clue of Swapna Nidra Jnan,

Knowledge of sleep and dreams.

In your dream you land up in a very difficult situation.

You are on the streets,

There is no food to eat.

You are in agony,

You are in pain.

Does your assumption,

Your so-called spouse sleeping just two feet away from you,

Know of your suffering?

You are alone in your sleeping dream world,

Correct?

This is your direct experience.

Similarly,

The waking dream world,

You are alone in it.

Nobody knows about the agonies,

The pains that you go through.

Forget about a God,

There is no God,

It's just your own creation.

Your own little restlessness to become something,

To do.

The becoming is the problem.

So when Maharaj says no one can help you,

He feels a little disturbed.

Oh,

So all my questions,

My search and study are of no use.

All this advaita search,

Advaita study,

You are doing self-evaluation,

Self-exploration,

Oh my God,

All this is of no use.

So Maharaj says these are but stirrings of a man who is tired of sleeping.

Shairi,

He is doing shairi,

Poetry,

Maharaj is doing poetry.

Basically you have become restless of sleeping in this hypnotic waking dream world and so you realise there is something wrong.

It is that restlessness,

That stirring.

They are not the causes of awakening,

But it's early signs.

Please highlight this.

So it is an early sign in you that you have this thirst for knowledge.

You do study,

You do research,

You attempt to understand your true self.

So it is an early sign of awakening,

Even if it is not the complete awakening yet.

It is an early sign.

But you must not ask idle questions.

Please take this down as the rule for going ahead with I am that.

I should not ask idle questions just for the sake of asking questions.

Two lines are missing in this translation after this.

And the lines start exactly after questions.

After questions is a full stop,

Not a comma.

It's only in the Marathi,

I'll translate it into English.

Sadhak,

Questioner.

I don't always know the answers.

He is trying to defend himself,

Defend his idle questions.

So Maharaj says,

Of course you know the answers.

Verbal questions have verbal answers.

This is very important,

So please write it down.

Because the next line of Maharaj is referring to this that he said.

I'll read it out again.

The questioner says,

I don't always know the answers.

Maharaj says,

Of course you know the answers.

Verbal questions have verbal answers.

So these two lines,

The translator or the editor of this book has shortened into that half sentence to which you already know the answers.

But he has eaten up the most important thing.

Verbal questions have verbal answers.

If you are stuck in the intellect,

You keep getting lost in the sea of words.

Why are you trapped in the jungle of words?

Why are you trapped in the jungle of words?

So Maharaj is saying verbal questions have verbal answers.

You will be trapped in this jungle of words.

Constantly intellectualizing knowledge.

When you are intellectualizing knowledge,

You will ask idle questions.

Because you are not really looking within.

So now Maharaj will go on to explaining what is non-verbal.

So the questioner asks,

How am I to get a true answer?

Maharaj says,

By asking a true question.

That's number one.

Write it down for yourself.

By asking a true question.

Non-verbally.

How are you going to ask me a question non-verbally?

You know your intellectual question is perfectly phrased.

Because you already know the answer.

And your answer is in the question.

Have you recognized this?

You are not really trying to ask a question.

You are trying to show off that I already know the answer.

But I am just talking to you.

Empty cannon.

Hot air.

So recognize,

When am I indulging in idle questions?

I already know this answer.

Non-verbally,

There is a lot to talk.

You will not be able to phrase your question only.

When you really do a direct self-exploration.

You are unable to phrase the question.

You are all over the place saying something.

But you are not able to communicate it.

But I still get it.

And I still give you the correct answer.

Have you noticed?

You wonder what you said rubbish in your question.

And how she understood what I was saying.

That is a true question.

Not phrased with Harvard English perfect grammar.

With the answer inserted in the question.

It's totally you are lost.

You don't know.

You stop.

You come to a pause.

You cannot complete your question.

That is the real question.

It's coming from somewhere.

It's coming from your research.

But you are lost.

You truly want to know.

When your words dissolve in mid-sentence.

It's non-verbal.

Then I connect.

Then I get it.

What you are trying to say.

So,

Number one.

True question and non-verbally.

Now don't pretend to make it stop in the middle of a sentence.

I will catch that also.

You just be true.

It will automatically happen.

And then a point will come when there will be no questions left.

Because all answers are within.

They are within.

Now this is the third.

It's not translated well.

So,

First is true question.

Second is non-verbally.

Third is but by daring to live according to your lights.

Very crazy translation.

It means having the courage.

To follow only that which comes to your own direct experience.

Having the courage.

To follow.

Only that which is my own direct experience.

So,

To explain that.

I'll ask you a few questions.

Is God your direct experience?

Is any supreme power your direct experience?

Is any supreme power your direct experience?

Has God come and told you he created the world?

No.

See,

All these are assumptions I have made up.

So,

Having the courage to drop these assumptions.

Oh,

I was young and naive.

And maybe I could not see the truth earlier.

I was ignorant,

But now I am wiser.

Having the courage to say I was ignorant.

Now I am wiser.

And what I had assumed in ignorance.

I let it shed away.

Now I can stand up only on one foundation.

The foundation of my own direct experience.

Clear?

So,

That's where your question should come from.

From your direct experience.

It should not come from some hodgepodge story heard.

The only answer you will get from me or from Maharaj is that is your conditioning.

Do you see it?

So,

My question should be true.

Should be non-verbal.

Means basically you don't really have the answer.

And third,

It comes from my courageous stand in direct experience.

Discarding all conditioning.

Whether material world conditioning or religious conditioning.

Is that paragraph very clear?

A man willing to die for truth will get it.

This is like a confirmation,

A guarantee he is giving you.

If you are ready to die for it,

You will get it.

What does it mean?

Does this body-mind have to die?

He is not talking in the literal sense of the body-mind having to die.

He is talking in the sense of I am ready to let go of all my conditioning.

I am ready to let go of all my past beliefs.

I have the courage to let go of what the ego thought is that which builds me.

Defines who I am.

So,

What is dying?

The false I.

The image created in my mind about me is going to die.

And I am ready to let it die.

Willingly.

So,

The one who is willing to die for truth will get it.

Super clear?

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