IAT - Session 92 - Do Not Undervalue Attention - 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. It was his mission to guide the individual to an understanding of his true nature and the timelessness of Being.

Transcript

So,

Maharaj ended the previous paragraph,

And all these ideas belong to the waking state.

Questioner,

What brings in the waking state?

Maharaj,

At the root of all creation lies desire.

Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other.

The fourth state,

Turiya,

Is a state of pure witnessing,

Detached awareness,

Passionless and wordless.

Please highlight that.

It is like space,

Unaffected by whatever it contains.

Bodily and mental troubles do not reach it.

They are outside,

There,

While the witness is always here.

So,

What brings out the waking state projection,

You tell me?

What brought out your dream state projection?

Desire.

And the same witness continued,

The dream collapsed,

And just before you open the eyes,

The waking projection came out.

What was it born of?

The same lingering desire.

The same lingering desire to exist,

To experience.

So,

The waking state is born out of desire.

That is the root of all creation.

Do you see it in your Swapna Nidra Nayan Sadhana?

It's the same desire that projected the dream.

The dream collapsed and that same desire projected the waking.

So,

Desire is like a little seed buried deep in,

And you don't know when it is going to sprout.

And if you're very astute in your observation of Swapna Nidra Nayan Sadhana,

You will see that desire manifests at a verbal level in your dream,

Very feeble,

Not clear,

Not cohesive,

Not logical,

And it will manifest in your waking.

That's why a lot of people say,

You know,

I had a problem,

It got somehow resolved in the dream,

And I woke up with the solution.

What is it?

It was a desire that manifested something in the dream and manifested the solution in the waking.

Same desire,

Same desire.

There's a very important line there,

Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other.

Means what?

You will start recognizing this desire manifested the dream projection or the dream thought,

And the same desire manifested the waking projection.

Means what?

Desire fosters imagination.

Imagination reinforces desire.

You see the imagination,

What happens?

You like it,

You dislike it.

You want it or you don't want it.

Want it and don't want are what?

Desire.

So,

Imagination reinforces desire.

Cycle continues,

Continues,

Continues.

Desire,

Imagination,

Desire,

Imagination,

Desire,

Imagination.

That's how your personal world is nothing but your imagination born of your desire.

Now he talks about the fourth state where I recognize that I am not the waking thought,

I am not the dream thought,

I'm not even the deep sleep thought.

I'm not the waker,

I'm not the dreamer,

I'm not the deep sleeper.

I'm not the waking world,

I'm not the dream world,

I'm not the deep sleep world.

Then what is left?

The fourth.

I am the fourth.

This is the final recognition of servikalpa samadhi.

Then only servikalpa will move to nirvikalpa.

It will never culminate otherwise.

Servikalpa means with duality.

So,

There is duality.

I keep thinking,

Oh,

I am either the waker or the dreamer or the deep sleeper.

Or I'm the waking thought or the dream thought or the deep sleep thought.

Or I'm the waking world or the dream world or the deep sleep world.

I'm shuttling between these.

Perception,

Sensation,

Thoughts,

Feelings or absence of perception,

Sensation,

Thoughts,

Feelings.

Happened in your samadhi?

Yes.

Perception,

Sensation,

Thoughts,

Feelings were there or absence of perception,

Sensation,

Thoughts,

Feelings.

Did you recognize both?

Did you come to a point,

Little glimpse,

Tiny glimpse of absence of all of them?

Yeah.

The fourth,

Turiya is a state of pure witnessing.

Now,

You check in your samadhi.

Did you get to these four descriptions that he's talking about?

Number one is pure witnessing.

Number two is detached awareness.

Number three is passionless.

And number four,

Wordless.

Did this happen to you?

When you turn towards the seer,

The witness,

Then you become passionless.

They are the surface level waves.

Some are going to be the size of tsunami and some are going to be little.

And they keep coming,

Keep coming,

Keep coming.

Your job is not to focus on them.

Hopefully,

You're not focusing on them.

Are you?

If you focus on them,

That is called passion.

For now,

Let me become passionless,

Not jumping in wordless.

Wordless,

Why?

You tend to analyze,

No?

When you investigate,

No analysis,

No words,

No inner chit-chat,

No labeling the samadhi,

Saying this is I,

This is I collapse.

You're spoiling the whole thing.

Simply being,

Simply being at a distance.

Can we do that?

That is called pure witnessing.

Wordless,

Passionless is clear.

Detached awareness.

Detached means I don't jump in and interact with the thought and I don't resist it,

Want to go away from the thought.

That is detached awareness.

And what is the fourth?

Pure witnessing.

Then you automatically come to pure witnessing.

When there are judgments,

When there is analysis,

That is not pure witnessing.

Just stay as the sense of I am.

Don't do anything else.

Don't expect anything.

No passion,

No words.

Completely detached,

Completely detached.

At a distance,

Perception,

Sensation,

Thoughts,

Feeling,

Absence.

Detached.

At a distance,

Far.

Is that clear?

Then you'll understand what he's saying in the next line.

Bodily and mental troubles do not reach it.

Why?

It is like space unaffected by whatever it contains.

Space in this hall doesn't say,

Oh,

I've become holy because we are doing Advaita for five days and the previous retreat was only a party retreat,

So I was unholy then.

Does the space become holy or unholy?

No.

Nothing happens to the space,

Right?

It does not take the color of what it contains.

Exactly like that.

The bodily and mental troubles do not reach the witnessing,

The pure witnessing.

They are outside there,

Like the space is here,

Everything is in space,

But it is not affecting space while the witness is always here.

Questioner,

What is real,

The subjective or the objective?

I am inclined to believe that the objective universe is the real one and my subjective psyche is changeful and transient.

You seem to claim reality for your inner subjective states and deny all reality to the concrete external world.

Maharaj says both the subjective and the objective are changeful and transient.

There is nothing real about them.

Find the permanent in the fleeting,

The one constant factor in every experience.

What is subjective and objective?

The I is the subject and the world is the object,

That is subjective objective.

He's saying these are all transient,

Not just the objective part of it is transient,

Even the subjective part of it is transient.

Did you recognize that,

That the I is not constant?

Comes,

Goes,

Comes,

Goes,

Wave,

Arises,

Falls,

Arises,

Falls.

Is this clear?

That means the so-called subject is also transient.

So,

What should you look for?

Find the permanent in the fleeting.

Questioner,

What is this constant factor?

Because he said try to find the permanent in the fleeting,

The constant factor in every experience.

So,

Questioner is asking what is this constant factor?

Maharaj says my giving it various names and pointing it out in many ways will not help you much unless you have the capacity to see.

Please highlight.

Do you recognize everybody's capacity to see is different?

Yes?

Then how much ever I describe,

If you don't have the capacity to see,

Do you see it?

No.

So,

Recognize this.

You have to be ripe.

If you are raw,

How much ever I explain,

It will not get in.

So,

You need to have the capacity to see and please have the courage to accept if you cannot see.

It will make it easier for you.

Otherwise,

You live a life of lies and in that lies,

You will not be able to progress spiritually.

So,

Be honest.

If you don't have the capacity to see,

Be honest.

Oh,

This part I cannot see.

Cannot see.

This part put in the parking lot.

Okay,

I'll attempt to see and watch more videos.

I'll ask more questions.

I'll read it again.

I'll really practice 10 times more than the others.

Having that determination to go on till you see is very important.

Clear?

Yeah.

And again,

Imagination is not seeing.

Is that clear?

Seeing is not equal to imagination.

And read that again.

That's a very important line there.

My giving it various names and pointing it out in many ways will not help you much unless you have the capacity to see.

A dim-sighted man will not see the parrot on the branch of a tree.

However much you may prompt him to look,

At best he will see your pointed finger.

Therefore,

What should you do?

First,

Purify your vision.

Learn to see instead of staring and you will perceive the parrot.

It's not concentration.

I hope you're not concentrating in Samadhi.

Staring means concentration.

Concentration is like a focus light.

You know,

Those dancers dance on stage and a spotlight runs on them.

If you're doing that in meditation,

In Samadhi,

It is wrong.

Yes,

It is wrong.

Samadhi is not concentration.

That is not the meaning of seeing.

So,

If you're trying to concentrate when you go out and do the five perception walk with touch,

Taste,

Smell,

Sight,

You will not see because you're trying to focus and concentrate on an object existing out there.

Do you see that?

Yeah,

You're spotlighting.

So,

Staring is not what is important here.

The diffused light,

Have you gone to a stadium and seen the diffused light?

You can see the entire stadium in that light.

So,

Not a spotlight,

A diffused light is seeing.

Not zooming in,

Zooming out is seeing.

Without the interference of memory,

Without the interference of thought,

That is seeing.

If there is memory,

Then what are you seeing?

What you already know.

You're seeing your idea.

If you already have a particular belief,

Then you will see only that idea.

So,

If you heard Ekta say the witness collapses and you imagine something collapsing,

Now you have an image in the mind which you've grasped and now you're trying to find that image in your meditation.

This is imagination.

Conditioning.

Conditioning.

You conditioned yourself and you're seeing through the conditioning.

You're seeing through the idea.

You are not seeing.

My mind was looking for airy fairy tales.

Yeah,

That dropping of those tails,

Then you see.

Is it clear?

Yeah.

Attempt to see without the interference of thought.

And when you see something,

Read the sentence.

Seeing means seeing without the interference of memory.

Did I have a memory of this that I saw?

Did I create a mental picture before I saw it in meditation?

Oh yes,

I created a mental picture.

Okay,

It's imagination.

You start evaluating yourself and you become clear.

Oh no,

I projected this idea in my mind and I saw it in my Samadhi.

I'm imagining.

I have to withdraw even from that.

That's how your Samadhi improves day by day,

Day by day,

Day by day.

It becomes clearer,

Clearer.

Conditioning gets ripped off and then you finally see.

And then you see,

Oh yes,

There's just the now and then there is the arising and suddenly it got wiped and then just the now and the arising and it gets wiped.

That is the truth.

That is the only truth.

There is nothing else to know.

It's so simple.

So,

Dim-sighted man will not see the parrot on the branch of a tree.

However much you may prompt him to look,

At best he will see your pointed finger.

First,

Purify your vision.

Learn to see instead of staring and you will perceive the parrot.

Also,

You must be eager to see.

You need both clarity and earnestness for self-knowledge.

Please highlight.

If you don't have the earnestness to see,

If you are not eager to see,

If you don't have clarity only,

How much ever Ekta explains,

She's trying to show you something but you don't want to open your eyes.

Will you see?

No.

So,

You have to be eager to see as much as she's eager to show it to you.

So,

Number one,

Ask yourself,

Am I eager to see?

Are you eager?

Two,

Did you really see the previous step?

In your case,

Degrees one,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Did you really see?

And third,

Earnestness for self-knowledge.

Do you really have earnestness?

A dim-sighted man will not see the parrot on the branch of a tree.

However much you may prompt him to look,

At best he will see your pointed finger.

First,

Purify your vision.

Learn to see instead of staring and you will perceive the parrot.

Also,

You must be eager to see.

You need both clarity and earnestness for self-knowledge.

You need maturity of heart and mind which comes through earnest application in daily life of whatever little you have understood.

There is no such thing as compromise in yoga.

What is the meaning of compromise?

What does he mean?

Means,

Okay,

This person is not mature but still let's see if you get it.

Will he get it?

No.

If you are not mature,

You are not getting it.

Period.

You will not see.

Period.

There is no compromise.

No concessions made.

You don't see,

You don't see.

Simple,

Accept it.

Don't fight it.

Don't fight it.

Be honest,

Humble.

Yes,

I don't see.

I am not there yet.

I am not right.

I need to write it.

You will move faster.

Don't expect that the wisdom will manipulate itself to come to my level.

No,

I have to go up to that level.

It cannot be watered down.

I cannot dumb it down.

You have to push yourself up which means maturity is of the essence.

Maturity of heart and mind.

And if it's not there,

Accept it.

This is the reason I do not see.

Maturity is lacking.

Very clear?

Do you have the courage to do that?

Everybody?

There is no such thing as compromise in yoga.

If you want to sin,

Sin wholeheartedly and openly.

Sins too have their lessons to teach the earnest sinner.

As virtues,

The earnest saint.

You want to do wrong,

Just go out,

Do your wrong,

Learn your lesson,

Fall on your face,

Get injured,

Bleed,

Hurt,

Suffer,

Then realize,

Oh,

Okay,

It's pointless.

There is no Sukha in this world.

Then you will automatically turn within.

So,

If you want to be a sinner,

Please be an earnest sinner.

Did you notice those words?

Please be earnest.

Go sin wholeheartedly,

He says.

Finish it off.

Be done with it.

Bleed,

Suffer,

Hurt,

Recognize it is futile.

When you recognize the world is futile,

Then you will really be eager to see the truth.

Do you understand?

That eagerness is your first quality that I look for to even give you the next step.

If I don't see eagerness,

It's pointless.

If you don't see,

I get the cue.

I know it.

I cannot give you the next step.

So,

You need to see and you need to be eager to see before you see.

And to be eager to see,

You need to see the futility of this.

Then only you'll turn inwards.

Otherwise,

What are you interested in seeing?

This futile world.

This is the wrong direction.

This is the right direction.

Yes.

Yes.

Mere curiosity will not take you to Samadhi.

How many of you realized it?

Mere curiosity,

One glimpse here,

One glimpse there,

Nothing is happening.

You're not stable.

In fact,

You open your eyes and you look at everybody.

Oh,

Everybody is so much in Ananda.

I'm only in Dukkha.

Again,

It was just mere curiosity.

So,

You need to have that earnestness.

I cannot stress enough on earnestness,

Just like I could not stress enough on taking the stand of the witness consciousness to begin.

That is the beginning point.

And just like that,

On the path,

Earnestness is the beginning point.

Very clear.

It is the mixing up of the two that is so disastrous.

Nothing can block you so effectively as compromise,

For it shows lack of earnestness,

Without which nothing can be done.

What is he saying here?

You want to keep one foot in the boat of sin and one foot in the boat of sainthood.

Are you seeing this?

You want to sin a little and you want to do some saintly Samadhi also.

Is it going to work?

He's calling this a compromise.

He's saying this compromise will not work.

You either become wholeheartedly a sinner,

You learn what needs to be learned,

Or you wholeheartedly come this way,

Drop all of that,

Become a saint.

If you keep one foot in the boat of sin and one foot in the boat of sainthood,

Then what is it?

Compromise.

It is a compromise.

And compromise will not get you there.

Feet in two boats,

You're going to sink.

You have to be very strong about your sankalpa.

Which way is your sankalpa?

Go in one direction.

You can't go one step this way,

One step this way,

One step this way,

One step this way.

Then nothing is going to happen.

You're going to be forever stuck.

You can't expect a 10-day retreat is going to make you a saint and then on the 11th day,

You go and party.

And that's okay.

No,

It's not going to work.

It's not going to work.

Forget about it.

It has to be a complete turning within.

Complete.

No compromises.

Yeah,

So a little bit of contemplation is required here.

Is that my intention?

To be completely this way or completely that way?

I cannot be half here,

Half there.

Nothing can block you so effectively as compromise.

It's going to be a big block on the spiritual path.

Nothing can block you like that.

You cannot say,

Monday to Friday,

I will do knowledge sessions.

I'll be a good person.

I'll do everything good.

And Saturday and Sunday,

I'm going to sin.

No,

It doesn't work like that.

No.

The moment you make a compromise,

That is the block.

Now look back on your spiritual journey.

If you feel you have not progressed,

If there has been a block,

Do you recognize it is because you have been one foot forward,

One backward,

One foot forward,

One backward?

Your own truth,

Why you are stuck where you are stuck,

It will reveal what Maharaj is saying.

Nothing blocks you so effectively as compromise.

Compromise means one foot in the boat of sainthood.

Will not work.

Aren't you done with sins yet?

Aren't you fed up yet?

Recognize your personal conditioning.

Oh,

This is my snake.

I have to be worry of this one.

This will take me back to that belief,

I am the body-mind.

Again,

I'll have to begin from scratch.

Next time again.

Again,

It will bite me.

Again,

I slip down.

Again and again.

How long are you going to continue this?

It's become your block because of your compromise.

You're compromising,

I am the body.

That is a compromise.

That is the sin.

Recognizing I am the witness-consciousness,

That is the path of the saint.