Saint Kabir Session 14 - The True Guru Resides Within!

Listen to Ektaji talk about Saint Kabir's teachings on non-duality. These teachings are aimed at the experiential understanding of the true nature of the self and are focused on the idea of the oneness of everything.

Transcript

Sām Sām Sām Sām Sām Sām Sām Sām Sām Sām Sām Kabir said about the two birds,

Do you remember that?

In that he had said,

Ek dal do panchi bethe.

One branch and two birds are sitting.

Ek guru,

Ek chela.

Chela mojo palfool kha ve guru nirantar kela.

One branch,

Two birds.

One guru,

One disciple.

The disciple is the one who is constantly consuming,

Consuming from this world.

And guru is the witness,

The one who is witnessing and just taking it like a play.

It is fun.

Yes?

So,

You remember we had the long discussion that the guru is the witness consciousness and the chela is the body-mind-intellect-memory-and-ego complex.

Yes?

The guru is always showing the path to this chela.

You do not have to look for the guru outside the Upanishads.

The Mundaka Upanishad says the guru is inside.

Same thing guru Ramananda taught Kabir.

That is a true guru who tells you that,

Look,

Look inside.

That is the guru.

I am not the guru.

I am just an external form.

I am here to deliver the letter to you.

Yes?

You have to open that letter and read the words of your beloved and dissolve into that love of your beloved.

You cannot hold on to the messenger.

Yes?

That is silly,

Ramananda said.

I am your friend,

If you want to call me a friend.

Yes?

A spiritual friend,

A spiritual mentor.

My job is to deliver your love letter to you.

Your job is to read your love letter and dissolve in the love of your beloved.

Don't waste time holding on to the hand of the external teacher or external guru.

You are wasting your time.

The guru is inside.

The higher bird on that branch,

I told you a story.

We don't have enough time to repeat that story.

The higher bird on the branch is the guru and the lower bird is the mind,

The intellect,

The ego.

It's consuming,

Consuming,

Consuming.

It gets stuck in this beautiful bird and that beautiful bird.

And then it even gets stuck in a guru bird.

It gets stuck in the paraphernalia around the guru bird.

And it forgets about the bird sitting on the higher branch.

And then finally,

It lets go of all its temptations in the world and comes back up to the highest branch and realises,

Oh,

That is who I am.

I am that higher bird.

That is why it is said there is no difference between the guru,

The God and the self.

Which means the witness consciousness is equal to the guru.

The witness consciousness is equal to God.

The witness consciousness is equal to self.

It has got nothing to do with external guru or an external idol of a God or any external self if you sort of want.

So this is Advaita Vedanta's teaching.

This is Kabir's teaching.

The guru is inside and you look within.

Now if you understood the guru and shishya,

The guru is the internal witness consciousness and the shishya is the external ego.

The guru is the real I and this ego is the fake I,

The false I.

Guru kumbhar,

Shishya kumbh hai.

Guru is the potter,

The guy who makes the pot,

The clay pots.

He is called the potter and shishya is the pot.

The disciple is the pot itself.

The witness consciousness which is the guru,

It keeps removing the flaws of this pot.

Gar gar kaare khot.

It keeps removing flaws of the pot.

Antar haath sahar de bahar mare chot.

If you know how pottery is done,

From inside the pot you have to support the clay which is moving around in the wheel and from outside you have to keep beating it to bring it into shape.

Yes?

So the witness consciousness is the inner background.

That is always supporting.

That is always there.

And from the outside the ego keeps getting hit,

Keeps getting hit.

You might say,

Why?

Why do I keep getting into suffering?

Realise that your suffering is the reason that you got tired of the happiness of the world and even made an attempt to look inside.

If there was no suffering,

You would not even look inside.

You would be very happy with this world.

If external people were very good always,

If all situations were hunky-dory,

If there was lots of money,

Lots of wealth,

Lots of fun,

You would never ever look within.

You would be so caught up in samsara.

So really this samsara is there to hit us.

Like the hit that comes from the potter's hand.

It again and again hits us,

Hits us,

Hits us.

So we finally move within so that the pot gets into shape and moves within.

Antar haad sahar de bahar mare chot The inner hand supports,

The witness consciousness supports.

The outer hand beats you into shape.

The ego beats you into shape.

Everything is the consciousness.

Everything is the consciousness.

Imagine a big bubble of nothingness,

Of emptiness.

An empty bubble.

In this bubble,

There is the waking state in which the waker comes up.

Right now you are in the waking state of your consciousness.

You are awake.

You are the waker.

This dissolves,

The dreaming state comes up and the dreamer comes up.

This dreamer is the same as the waker and again it dissolves.

And now the third state,

The deep sleep state comes up.

This guy is the deep sleeper and who is in his deep sleep state.

All this also dissolves.

The waker,

The dreamer,

The sleeper are all the same and they come up,

They play for a while,

They dissolve.

This is our daily story.

We identify with the one who was awake during the waking state.

Yes,

For something to happen in the waking state,

A subject is required.

Subject is I.

Yes,

What happens in my waking state is my reality.

What is happening in Meena's waking state?

Meena's reality in her city,

In her country,

In her town,

In her village,

In her apartment.

Everybody's reality is only limited to the subject.

We are carrying our own little bubble and that is our little reality.

That dissolves.

In the dream,

There is a dreamer and there is a dreaming state.

Whatever in that state is,

Is happening to the dreamer.

Now remember,

Really who is this dreamer?

The waker lying down on the bed.

The waker lying down on the bed does not really know that this is the dreamer.

He thinks it is I.

Again,

The dreamer does not know that I am the waker lying in bed having a dream.

Are you getting this?

The dreamer thinks everything that is happening in the dream is real.

His fear is real.

His love is real.

His passion is real.

His feelings are real.

That dreamer does not know that I am actually the waker in bed.

That is my reality.

Correct?

Now you go into deep sleep.

Dreaming has come to an end.

Waking has come to an end.

Switch off.

But the deep sleep state is there.

The body is in a deep sleep state.

The mind is switched off.

There is an awareness still there.

That is why when you wake up,

You say,

I had a sound sleep.

I slept very deep.

Who knows?

There is an awareness in the deep sleep state.

The Upanishad says,

Again these three states are happening on the substratum in this bubble.

Remember the bubble we started with?

Yes?

That substratum of knowingness,

Of consciousness,

Of awareness is always there.

That is who you are.

In that substratum of awareness,

Consciousness,

The waking state comes up with the waker,

The dreaming state comes up with the dreamer,

The deep sleep state comes up with the sleeper and all of them dissolve back into this substratum of consciousness.

So waking state is not different from the dreaming state.

It is the same.

The same waker thinks this is all real.

Ekta is real and I am real and this is really happening.

The waker is unable to see that I am that consciousness.

Just like you sleep in the night and when you are dreaming,

The dreamer,

The subject in the dream who is running away from the lion chasing him,

He does not know that I am this waker lying on the bed.

Exactly in the same way,

In this waking state,

The waker does not know that I am that witness consciousness.

But he gets a glimpse.

The glimpse that you get is of the witness,

Somebody watching.

Something is witnessing inside me.

That glimpse,

That tells you the truth of who you are.

I think we have diverted from Kabir's topic to Mandukya Upanishad but I will do this in detail in future.

Why did I tell you about this?

This helps you understand,

Like you dream whatever you didn't get in your waking state.

Suppose you dream,

You already thought that I want to have a Coca Cola today,

Haven't had it for 2 years,

I want a Coca Cola,

Coca Cola.

You didn't get a chance to go out,

You are on lockdown,

You cannot go out.

What happens in the night when you are dreaming?

Oh,

You are drinking bucket fulls of Coca Cola in your dream.

So what does not happen in your waking state that you manufacture in the dream?

The same thing is your waking state.

It is not different from a dream.

You manufacture things,

That is where sooner or later whatever you wish for comes to you.

Have you noticed this?

You will say,

No,

No,

I had a lot of bad luck.

I did not wish for it.

Wrong!

You wished for it.

You know how?

By fearing that it should not happen.

God does not understand your language,

Your Hindi,

Marathi,

English,

Urdu.

No!

It just understands the energy that you are cultivating.

If you are saying,

This should not happen,

This should not happen,

This should not happen.

What is this?

Negative energy.

You are sweating,

You are anxious about something and you are saying,

This should not happen,

I hope this does not happen.

You are attracting it.

Are you saying this?

You get exactly what you want.

You may not say,

I want,

You may say,

I don't want,

But your English is not understood by the universe.

The energy you generate,

That is what is manufacturing outside as people,

Situations and things.

If you got this point,

Now you will understand the meaning of the outer hand beating you into shape,

The Bahar Maare Choot.

It is the same consciousness that is now manifesting as the misery in your life and beating you into shape,

Back into shape.

The same consciousness is the one which is supporting you from inside as the witness.

It's always there,

Always there.

The peace is just one second search away.

The problem is you search for it outside and from outside the consciousness keeps beating you.

Look in,

Look in,

Look in,

Look in and you are not ready to look inside.

So it keeps beating you,

Keeps beating you till you get so tired of this external world,

You look within and there you find it.

That's where you find the peace.

Now if you get this whole understanding,

This clarity about what consciousness is,

What this witness consciousness is,

Now you will understand the next Doha automatically.

Haa kamu toh hai nahi,

Naa bhi kahyo nahi jai,

Haa aur naake beach mein,

Moori satguru rahe samayi.

Yes doesn't quite catch it.

No is not quite right.

Between yes and no,

My true guru resides.

If I say yes,

Yes,

That witness consciousness is there,

That is what is there but then you know it doesn't quite catch it.

It's very difficult to explain to somebody else.

Somebody else doesn't understand the witness consciousness.

Somebody else says,

No I am still suffering because of my wife or my husband or my child or my friend or my parent.

Oh my God,

They have created chaos in my life.

We still see the other.

So it's very difficult for everybody to understand this.

That is where haa kamu toh hai nahi.

Yes doesn't quite catch it.

But if I say no,

The witness consciousness is not there,

Naa bhi kahyo nahi jai,

No is also not right.

Yeah,

Haa aur naake beach mein,

Moori satguru rahe samayi.

Between yes and no,

My true guru resides.

Yeah,

The witness consciousness resides.

Is that clear?

This one?

Yeah,

It's more like a riddle.

But that's the fun about Kabir's knowledge,

No?

It's like a riddle that you have to solve a puzzle,

That you have to solve a guthi,

That you have to open,

A knot that you have to open.

Beyond a point,

Really,

The joy cannot be expressed.

It can only be felt.

You can only be the joy.

So if this is very clear about the consciousness,

About who I am,

You start seeing that mind is just an entity that appears to be and plays for a while and dissolves.

It does not really exist.

What does it mean it does not exist?

It does not have its own inherent existence outside of consciousness,

Different from the witness consciousness.

It cannot exist independently outside the witness consciousness.

Same for the body.

It cannot exist independently outside the witness consciousness.

If this clarity is there now,

Now it will be very simple to understand when Kabir talks about this body as a ghat.

See,

He is a very simple person,

A weaver.

He doesn't have sophisticated language.

He will call this body a pot and you will have to go with that.

Because for him,

Who are his friends?

The potter,

The farmer.

So all his things are like that about a typical village life example.

So he speaks about this body as a ghat.

That's where the next Doha starts.

Yogat bhi tar anhad bhaje.

Again,

This is the signal for those who have reached that witness consciousness.

The mind has become so silent.

You become so steady there.

Just steady there.

You can actually hear the sound of this creation.

Anhad bhaje.

Anhad.

That which does not have a limit.

I am literally translating the word.

That limitless consciousness.

That which is beyond everything.

Yogat bhi tar anhad bhaje.

He says,

In this body itself,

You can actually hear it.

Again,

It's got nothing to do with the physical ears on the body.

Even people who are disabled and cannot hear,

Even they will be able to hear the anhad if they are established in the witness consciousness.

I just wanted to clarify this.

It's got nothing to do with the physical sound.

Yogat bhi tar anhad bhaje.

Yahi me uthat bhuvara.

In this only,

There is joy and bliss.

Joy and bliss is not outside.

So if you understood the bubble of consciousness that I explained to you.

From the bubble of consciousness,

Only a waking state comes up.

And in that waking state,

When you get some money,

You experience joy.

That joy is what?

One little drop in this ocean of consciousness.

This big bubble of consciousness has that quality of that joy.

And that joy reflects in that little body of yours,

In that waking state.

The same kind of joy you experience in a dream.

In a dream,

If you get a million bucks in a lottery,

See what happens to you.

You are jumping in the dream.

You are so happy.

Exactly the same joy is experienced by the waker as it is by the dreamer.

But it is only a drop in the ocean of this anhad.

And he says,

In this body,

In here only you can experience it.

You do not have to go outside to experience this.

We already completed that yesterday.

No mandir,

No masjid,

No jab tap,

Upvas,

No external rites,

Rituals,

No other person,

Not eta.

Etta cannot give it to you.

No external teacher,

No external guru,

Nothing.

Outside,

It is not available.

Yo hi me uttad pavara.

Right here it is experienced.

Right here you can find it.

The source is here.

Kahe kabir suno bhai sadhu.

Says Kabir,

Listen oh spiritual seeker.

Ya hi me guru hamara.

My guru is here,

Not here.

My guru is here.

So don't go looking for the guru outside.

Yes,

According to the Upanishads,

According to Kabir's teachings,

According to his own guru Ramananda's teaching,

The guru is not external.

The guru is internal and the Upanishads,

It is called the guru tattva.

The element within me that has the quality of showing me the light,

The truth.

It is within me.

I just get so lost in things that I need some fellow human to tell me,

Inside,

Inside.

That is the right direction,

Not here.

The fellow human comes my way,

Tells me look inside,

I look inside.

Good.

The fellow human's job is done.

Say tata bye bye.

Do you get it?

No craving,

No running behind.

Otherwise what?

You were running behind a handsome hunk or a beautiful woman in your youth and now you are running behind a handsome guru or a beautiful guru outside.

Same thing.

You just substituted one person with another person,

Material world person with a spiritual world person.

You are stuck.

You are stuck.

You are stuck.

That's why Kabir really revered Guru Ramananda so much.

He said,

You showed me the way to my God.

So I bow down to you first.

Guru Gobind,

Dau kha de,

Kage lagufai.

My guru and my God both are standing.

Whose feet should I touch first?

Bali hari guru apni Gobind yo batai.

I bow down to you my dear guru because you showed me the path to the Gobind,

To the witness consciousness,

The God within me.

Then he drops that and he goes in.

Lots of people are stuck again here.

We were stuck in the material world with sex,

With relationships,

With beautiful people.

Now you substituted your material world attraction to a physical person,

The spiritual world attraction.

Same thing.

You're still stuck outside.

Ramananda said,

No,

Inside.

Ya hai guru hamara.

This is where my guru resides.

Dhu nde re dhunde tu kyunandhi yaara.

Why are you looking at darkness?

This is all darkness outside.

It is all darkness outside.

Look within.

You have to look within.

You have to go within.

So this I have taken from the song.

The song is really long.

I've just condensed it into 3-4 sentences and put it there.

But you can find this also in folk songs of Rajasthan.

So now the question arises.

For many people on the path,

Many people went to Kabir and said,

Oh it's so difficult to figure out now this guru who is external.

Is he telling me the truth or not?

Now remember Banaras setting?

Lots of gurus.

It is at the bank of the holy river Ganga.

Everybody,

Every other person is a sadhu,

Spiritual person.

Every other person wants to sell some spiritual beads,

Some spiritual gems to me.

I will do puja for you.

You will get 10 years of good luck.

You will do some shanti in your house.

Your children will become very rich.

So many things.

Who should I believe?

Oh my God!

It's a market place of spirituality out there.

So he was very clear.

Kabir was very clear.

And what did he answer to that person?

Let's look at that.

He says,

Ye sab guru hai had ke.

Bey had ke guru naahi.

Bey had ka guru,

Aap upje anubhav ke ghar maahi.

Yes.

All these gurus,

All these external gurus are gurus in bondage themselves.

Had means bondage.

Bey had ke guru naahi.

They are not gurus of the unbounded.

Bey had is that which is not bound.

So they are not gurus of the unbound.

Bey had aap upje,

The unbounded guru arises spontaneously on its own.

Yeah.

The unbounded guru arises spontaneously on its own.

Anubhav ke ghar maahi.

What is anubhav?

My own experience in my house of self-experience.

You see,

It's poetic way of putting it,

Anubhav ke ghar,

But you have to understand what is he saying.

Till you don't experience it,

You do not buy it.

Simple.

In small words,

In a small sentence,

He has given it to you.

Yeah.

Do you experience shanti by wearing a red colour stone and a green colour stone?

Which shanti?

Which shanti was in my school?

No.

I don't experience any piece by wearing a gem.

Recognise.

Yeah.

I don't experience any shanti by you doing one hour puja and taking me round and round that fire and really heating up my body.

Yeah.

And then taking another 10,

000 bucks from my pocket.

Yeah.

No.

There is no peace.

Yeah.

So recognise all these things,

Rites,

Rituals,

Those sadhus,

Babas selling things to you.

Oh,

Your child will become very good and I will do some mantra,

Some jap on him.

Then there are tantric traditions.

I will do some tantra mantra.

Yeah.

And your sexual life will become phenomenal.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

There are all kinds of shops out there.

All kinds of shops.

Yeah.

He says be careful,

Very careful.

They are all gurus of hud.

They themselves are in bondage.

Yeah.

Otherwise,

Why would somebody set up a shop?

Simple logic.

Yes.

He set up a shop.

He is taking money from you.

He is selling a commodity to you.

It is a shop.

Buy and sell.

It is a shop.

There is trade going on there.

Yeah.

Hud.

Limit.

Limited to what?

Body and mind.

You come to the witness consciousness.

How much money do you need to get there?

Nothing.

It is one second search you can get there.

Yeah.

So now if you have spent thousands and thousands of dollars in all this,

Please do not beat yourself up.

Before this I was ignorant and I probably needed to be hit again and again.

And so I got my hitting from the world and that's fine if I have lost thousands of dollars.

Now I am a new person.

Now I understand that even spirituality can be an industry.

So now I am not going to get hit anymore and now I am going to just follow my path.

So if this understanding is very clear,

Next Doha will be super clear to you.

Sadhu bhuka bhavka dhan ka bhuka nahi.

Dhan ka bhuka jhop hire soto sadhu nahi.

Sadhu is the true spiritualist,

The true spiritualist or the spiritual guru or spiritual teacher,

Spiritual seeker.

He is hungry for the Sakshi bhava.

What is Sakshi?

We started today's session with that.

The witness consciousness.

He only thirsts to be in that silence,

In that quietness,

In that awareness.

He is hungry only for one thing.

Sakshi bhava.

Sadhu bhuka bhavka dhan ka bhuka nahi.

He is not greedy for money.

Dhan ka bhuka jhop hire,

The one who is greedy for money,

Soto sadhu nahi.

He is not a true spiritualist.

He is not a true spiritual seeker.

He is not a true spiritual teacher.

He is not a true spiritual guru.

Again,

Nothing to feel bad about the past.

This moment,

Drop,

Let go,

Start anew.

Yes,

This moment.

A lot of people ask me this question,

You know,

Why don't you charge money for jnana sangha?

And I was offered an opportunity to monetise jnana sangha.

I put all that possible money on one side of the balance and on the other side of balance I put Sakshi bhava.

Hika bale aiyaar.

This balance was of no use.

This was so heavy.

This was too heavy.

What I have,

If you reach there,

I will have company.

I am very lonely there.

Aao hamare desu.

Milore milo koi mara desu raha.

Dodo baata karangaje.

Somebody come there.

Come.

That nectar is all.

Same thing happened with Kabir.

In fact,

Kabir's own son Kamal came to him and said,

Let's start Kabir panth.

And he said,

No.

He said,

We need money.

How will we run this ashram?

He said,

No.

Hari is in front.

I am translating the Doha.

Hari aage hari piche.

Hari is in front.

Hari is behind.

Hari is all around.

Hari keeps running behind me.

The consciousness,

The witness is there ahead,

Behind,

Above,

Below.

He is with me.

He is running behind me.

I have to just ask for something and I will get it.

I do not need to charge other people money.

And in fact,

I do not even need to ask.

I just need to wait.

It comes.

It comes.

So,

To all of you who have this question why I do not charge you for Gyaada Sangha,

This is my answer.

Sadhu bhukha bhavaka.

I am only hungry for that witness consciousness.

Come to my land.

Be with me.

That's good enough.

That's good enough.

So here we finish all the sutras,

All the shlokas,

All the dohas on the guru and how to find a true guru and what would help a spiritual seeker who has begun his path.

How does he distinguish between so many different gurus and the spiritual industry?

How does he save himself and find the right path?

Especially,

I tell you,

Because if you go to Banaras,

You will actually experience this even today.

People clad in orange robes will come to sell different things to you.

So these dohas were very appropriate even 500 years ago,

Even today.

So Kabir is simply helping all of us on the spiritual path with these dohas.

Thank you.