IAT - Session 94 - Do Not Undervalue Attention - Part 4

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

Vidyaranya Swami was the one who came up with it and he was the revolutionary Advaitan sage to first time say that even deep sleep is a vritti,

Even deep sleep is a thought.

There was nobody else before him who came up with this.

That's why Panchadashi became so popular and that's why it is taught to monks even today that see it as a deep sleep blankness thought.

Right in the beginning he talks about waking,

Dreaming deep sleep directly.

Consciousness is equal to experience.

If you're stuck there,

It's not a beginner level scripture,

You realized it,

Right?

So if you're stuck there,

You can't move ahead.

So at least become very clear what is a What am I seeing?

He's saying this is one waking thought.

That's all it is.

There is no world out there.

This is one waking thought projected inside out.

There is no world out there.

Degrees one,

Two,

Three,

Four convinced me there is nothing out there.

It's from here.

That's how I come to the fifth degree of seeing that it is an inside out projection.

That is the waking vritti.

The inside out projection in the dream is the dream vritti and the inside out projection in the deep sleep is the deep sleep vritti.

There are only vrittis.

Only vrittis and it keeps getting keeps getting wiped.

How many of you really practiced after I explained it to you last night?

Did you see that the dream is inside out and then as the eyes open and the body was in the was recognized as if in the waking state?

Did you recognize the waking state?

The waking thought is inside out?

How many of you saw it when you woke up?

Fantastic.

Fantastic.

Those who didn't see it,

You have to work again on it.

In your swapna nidra jnana sadhana.

Again tonight a soft intention.

May I see it?

It is the reality.

You are just covering your eyes and wanting to believe I am this body mind person because this body mind person is so important and its world is so important that you are going to be lost.

Look at your belief.

Your belief projects your world.

He image you have of yourself that is what you project and that is your world.

There is no experience only.

Witness consciousness itself is the experience.

It itself becomes flavored.

It itself becomes taste.

It itself becomes the ocean.

It itself dives deep into the ocean and disappears forever.

All this dance is done by the witness.

But what is the source?

The depth of the ocean.

The core of the ocean.

Where is the witness consciousness born of?

Where do you see it arise from?

Where does the wave arise from?

From the ocean.

So,

What is the source?

Can this wave be the source?

The ocean from where it arises is the source.

The depth of the ocean never knows the waves on the surface.

Do you realize waves are only at the surface level?

Waves are not known by the depth of the ocean.

Is this clear?

That is why the depth of the ocean is beingness and the surface is the knowingness.

It knows the waves.

The waves can never be known by the depth.

There is only beingness there.

Attempt to now see it first in your SNGS and then in your closed eyed samadhi,

Then open eyed samadhi.

Do you remember being born?

Do you remember coming out of your mother's womb?

There is no beginning.

There was never a beginning.

It is beginningless.

This is seen even in your dream.

If you really become very adept at your swapna nidra jnana sadhana,

You will notice you never see the beginning of a dream.

It always is in the middle.

You never see the beginning of your dream.

I told you this.

No,

Why didn't you do this?

You're saying this to your spouse in the dream.

I told you this means there was yesterday when I told you.

But you don't see the yesterday in the dream.

It starts in the middle.

Attempt to see this.

You're so interested in content now.

I'm giving you some interesting masala to see in your content now.

When you start seeing that there is no beginning in the dream,

Then you start recognizing,

Oh,

There is no beginning in the waking.

Every now is the beginning and every now is the wipeout,

The end.

Again,

There is the beginning.

Again,

There is the wipeout.

This is what you need to start seeing.

Even if you say on this date,

The body was born,

But you don't feel that you were born then.

You don't feel you're going to die.

Have you seen that?

Have you ever been to a funeral?

You always feel death is going to happen to somebody else,

Not to me.

Have you realized this?

That is the truth.

It is the truth.

You are not going to die.

That is the truth.

And then you think,

Oh,

It's a crazy idea.

I better shut up.

I better not open my mouth here.

No,

But that is the truth.

Buddha has very beautifully detailed these things.

He gives you an exercise where you have to go sit at the funeral ground.

And in India,

We get this opportunity to see the body being cremated and the funeral pyre and the fire burning and all.

You don't get this opportunity to see in the US.

But here,

You can see that.

So go sit there for two,

Three hours and you will go through all these glimpses of the truth automatically,

He says.

Out of them,

One is this,

You never feel you're going to die.

All these people will die,

But I will not die.

That is your feeling.

And that is a true feeling.

And somewhere deep down,

You have this feeling,

I was never born.

I was never born.

Somebody says,

Oh,

It's your birthday.

OK,

We celebrated that day.

But you feel fake.

Have you realized it?

You have to remind yourself,

This is your birthday.

You count,

Oh,

I'm so many years old.

Why do you have to revise and count and remember?

Do you know what you have to revise again and again?

Falsehood.

Falsehood,

Lies.

The truth does not need to be revised.

Truth does not need to be remembered.

What do you need to revise and remember?

Lies.

So,

Start recognizing these glimpses of truth.

They come to you.

Ekta is not telling you something you do not already know.

So experiment with your dream.

You never begin at the beginning.

It's always in the middle.

Similarly,

When you come to the waking,

It's never the beginning.

It's the middle of a story.

There's always the middle of a story.

There's always the middle of the story and it gets wiped out.

Middle of the story and it gets wiped out.

That is the meaning of beginningless and endless.

Is this very clear?

This is very important because you will come across it in every scripture.

So,

Attempt to see these truths.

They are not just poetry or just put in there for the sake of putting.

It has some meaning and that meaning can be seen through direct seeing,

Not intellectually.

You cannot get there through the mind.

Drop is in the ocean or is it the ocean?

In is a wrong word,

No?

Drop is the ocean.

The witness consciousness is the primordial awareness.

There's a difference between the the big tsunami wave on the top and the quiet depth of the ocean.

It's very quiet down there and right on the top it's so chaotic,

But it is one.

They are all one.

When you see the whole ocean as one,

The waves,

The tsunami waves,

The rogue waves,

The foam,

The little ripple and the deep ocean all as one,

Then there is no confusion like this.

Can I attempt to see this?

The vyakta and the avyakta,

The personal,

The impersonal.

When I'm giving the command,

It's the flow talking to the flow.

It's a part of the flow that is happening.

You pretend that you are taking care of the body.

You don't need to.

You've never taken care of the body.

You're lying.

Just rip off all your conditioning that you're the body-mind.

Divorce this body-mind person.

I don't eat.

The body eats.

You don't eat.

Your body eats.

Just like in the dream,

You were pretending that you were running away from the tiger.

The moment you became the witness of the dream,

You were like,

Oh how foolish,

How stupid.

I'm not in danger.

Nothing is happening.

This is an illusion.

There is oneness.

The moment oneness is seen,

Fakeness is accepted,

Acknowledged,

And then it's dropped.

Exactly the same thing needs to happen here.

What you are actually experiencing in the dream is like a little hint to you what you're supposed to do here.

You are experimenting right now because your belief is that you're the body-mind.

I don't need to experiment.

For me,

It's continuously one and you will reach there.

Just like Maharaj says,

I was there.

You will get here.

You continue.

When you see there is no toucher,

No sense of touching and nothing that is being touched,

There is a oneness.

After you see the oneness,

Can you say in the oneness this arose before that?

It's oneness.

How can you say in oneness there was this before that?

Then you're saying duality.

So,

Become very clear.

It is all the same.

It is oneness.

The moment you say oneness,

How can you now divide it?

How can you say one part of the oneness came first and then the second part came?

You just said it's oneness.

The moment it's oneness,

It's indivisible.

The moment it is indivisible,

You cannot say one preceded the other.

Super clear?

Pure consciousness itself has a desire to experience.

That is jijivisha.

In order to experience it projects.

That's why I say do your swapna nidra jnana sadhana.

Your answer is there.

You yourself become ignorant and you project a dream and you start enjoying the dream.

Isn't it?

You project a false dream.

It is out of your desire to experience.

So,

You have to see that the desire to exist belongs to the pure consciousness.

It is born there.

That is what gives birth to witness consciousness and its desires.

Meditation is only one.

Self-inquiry.

Being turiya.

That is the only meditation.

All other meditations are just hocus pocus.

Mental relaxation for a mental patient taught by a guru.

It's only for mental relaxation.

Are you mentally ill?

Are you looking for that mental wellness?

Become clear.

Once you become clear,

I'm not looking for mental wellness.

I'm looking for self-knowledge.

Then you have to move away from the body and mind.

Otherwise,

That becomes a very strong impression.

It's beneficial for the body.

Yes.

People go to the gym.

It's beneficial for the body.

Like that,

You do the stretches.

It's beneficial for the body.

That's it.

Not for meditation.

You went to school,

No?

School build the foundation for university.

Yes,

You come to university.

You can't take your school along with you.

You have to let it go.

It's like the ladder.

Once you start climbing up the ladder,

You have to let go of the previous steps.

Like that,

You use the ladder of I am the body.

Because as a baby,

You didn't understand how to operate in the world.

You had no sense of I,

You.

You had no sense of body.

So,

I am the body was a stepping stone.

You came up.

Luckily,

Very few people sprout to the level of Advaita Vedanta,

Where they move from duality to non-duality.

They recognize there has to be something higher because this is not getting me there.

An inner calling happened to you.

You came up.

Now you cannot go back down because that is the snake for you now.

Because that will take me back to I am the body.

Then again,

I will go down the ladder.

I have to keep climbing up.

So,

I have to let go of the previous step.

And you have to recognize your own personal conditioning that can make you slip.

Is this very clear?

It's not meditation.

It's imagination.

Yeah.

Look at any of those meditations.

Sit and write them down.

You will see it's only an imagination.

And today,

Psychotherapy is using that imagination for mental wellness of mental patients.

It's only imagination.

Imagination is not the truth.

This is what Advaita Vedanta is saying.

You look at whatever meditations people are doing on the Dwaitampad.

Whatever you did.

Look at the description.

Write them down.

Go listen to them again.

Write them down as an evaluation.

As if you are a judge in a court and it's a case that has come to you.

You write it down and see,

Oh,

It's all imagination.

All imagination of the mind.

All imagination.

Yes.

So,

Where will I be stuck if I keep imagining,

Keep imagining,

Keep imagining?

I will always be stuck at the mind.

I will always think I am the mind.

Realize,

Oh,

It is not a doing.

It is a seeing of what is happening.

Then you stop pretending that you are the doer.

That is a very big step.

Beginners don't get it.

They go,

They do,

Those 10 days they come back or 10 days they were doing,

Imagining.

Yeah.

It's a very hard path.

Seeing is not an easy path.

Has this become clear?

Yeah.

Mentally,

Have you adjusted to this fact that it is a hard path?

Second,

Have you adjusted that I want to walk the hard path?

Is that want there?

The true path can never be easy.

The easy path is for the masses.

The moment you see the masses,

Antenna should come up.

Masses means something is wrong here.

How can janta be there?

How can such a big public be there?

That means no,

It's not the right path.

It's always going to be very few,

Like Saint Kabir says,

No?

A very rare one gets it.

How can it be the path of the masses?

It cannot.

So,

The seeing is important.

Have you understood seeing now?

And it's different from intellectualizing,

Different from imagining,

Different from,

I don't know,

Seeing through memory or interference of thought.

Completely different.

It is not experiencing.

It is not experiencing.

It is seeing.

One word,

Seeing.

Clear?

They will take you to partial enlightenment.

This is what the Buddha described that there is only a partial level till where the others go and they get stuck.

And then he describes it further and he explains the techniques.

He gave five different techniques for that.

And he says,

See,

This is where people stop.

But there is more beyond.

This is not the end.

And that's how you see,

Oh,

There is more beyond.

There is more beyond.

There is more beyond.

They stop at the witness.

They don't go to the primordial awareness and they consider the witness as the individual soul.

You've heard about the individual soul.

That's where they stop.

Khatam.

Journey end.

Your journey ended at the first step,

Buddha said.

It's wrong.

Same thing,

Advaita Vedanta.

Oh,

Your journey ended at the first step.

It's wrong.

There is more.

There is more.

Go beyond.

No,

No.

Too much work.

That's where the Dvaitam path stops.

Remind yourself you are the witness of the body-mind.

You are not the body-mind.

Does the witness lie down and sleep?

Can the witness sit?

Can the witness walk?

Can the witness eat?

Can the witness do any action?

No.

Did it ever sleep?

Never slept.

Oh,

I have never slept all my life.

I never sleep.

Just this recognition and allow the body to lie down.

Only the body and mind sleep.

Repeat your intention and then observe the heartbeat slow down,

The breath slow down,

The muscles relax.

For a little while you're moving right,

Left,

You're pulling the blanket.

The body wants its perfect cozy temperature.

Observe all this happening.

It's sensation,

It's perception,

It's a feeling,

There is a thought.

Observe,

Observe,

Observe,

Observe.

And see,

Observing,

Observing,

Observing,

You'll notice sensation of the body is gone,

Disappeared completely.

Waking state has faded away.

Dream state has just started and then there will be these verbal or visual dreams and they will be illogical,

In-sequential.

The same witness is continuing,

Same witness is continuing,

Same,

Same.

Some of you are not 100% in witnessing yet.

It'll go away and then suddenly in the middle of a dream you'll recognize,

Oh,

I'm witnessing.

Recognize the dream collapsed the moment I recognized it.

Oh,

I am,

I am and I'm not the dream subject.

This becomes very clear and the witnessing continues.

You will see there is the tamo vritti,

The darkness thought.

Nothing to see,

Nothing to see,

Nothing to see,

The same eye collapses the way it collapses in samadhi.

Exactly identical collapse.

Then you know nothing.

Then you just know coming out of the darkness of deep sleep.

Then there is the dream,

Verbal or visual,

Case by case basis.

There is the recognition,

The witness knows,

Oh see,

Dream,

It starts vanishing.

The moment the witness becomes one with it,

Again dream comes up.

Again you become a witness,

Again it vanishes and then the witnessing continues into the waking.

Then you start learning,

Oh,

There is no difference between waking and dreaming.

Oh,

Waking,

Dreaming,

Deep sleep,

If I know all three means I have to be the fourth.

I have to be beyond this.

How do I know all three?

This becomes more and more clear,

More and more clear.

This is svapna nidra jnana sadhana,

Basic instruction to begin.