Saint Kabir Session 3 - Kabir Says Drop Duality

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

Pokémon Bros.

So the Doha goes,

There is a mirror within.

Hriday is just used.

Hriday in Hindi means the heart.

On the inner core of my being there is a mirror.

But I cannot see anything clearly in that mirror.

Why?

Because it is fogged,

It is dirty,

It is dusty.

And what is it dusty by?

What has made it so fogged?

Because of Dhuviddha.

Dhuviddha means Dhuhi ki bhavana.

Two.

I and you.

I and the other.

This is Dhuhi.

This is Dvaita.

So I have continuously,

Moment to moment,

I am living in this sense of separation.

This Dhuhi ki bhavana.

And because of this I and you,

Because of the Dvaita,

There is no love.

And because of the lack of love,

Because of the lack of clarity of oneness,

I am not able to experience myself in my true being.

So only sadhus who had really reached that height of understanding Advaita,

Of that understanding of who am I truly,

Understood this particular Doha.

Because very few people could even understand what kind of a mirror is there inside,

What is he talking about.

So as Advaita explains it,

My mind,

Intellect,

Memory and ego,

The antakaran,

Is like a mirror.

And this mirror shines or reflects the light of the witness.

Just like the sun reflects its light on the moon and then moon reflects it in turn to the entire earth planet.

It's borrowed light like that only.

This antakarana is a mirror and it borrows its light from the witness consciousness and it reflects this light onto the body and to this world of people,

Situations and things.

That I experience.

This reflective consciousness,

This mirror of mine is foggy because of me,

Because of my Dvaita,

Because of my Dvaita.

I am not clear.

I cannot see the truth of who I am.

And that is why I see myself as separate from another person.

But the moment I recognize who I am,

This separation,

This gap is bridged and I see,

Oh we are all one.

We are all Brahman.

In fact,

I cannot say we are Brahman.

There is only Brahman.

Everything else is like an appearance.

For example,

In the ocean there is only water.

Imagine an ocean which is still,

Absolutely still serene,

No movement.

That is who we are.

At the core,

We are nothing but pure H2O.

But what happens is that a wave comes up in that only ocean and calls itself Ekka.

Another wave comes up and calls itself Mina.

Another wave comes up and calls itself Vandana.

And now these waves think they are individuals.

They take on their own individuality and they believe I am somebody.

Yes.

This is Dhuviki Bahavana.

This is Dvaita.

This is the Dhuvidha that Kabir is talking about.

This is the duality.

The wave does not see the truth that,

Oh I am the water.

When one realizes that I am not this body,

I am not the mind,

I am that witness,

What happens in the night?

This body is gone,

Switched off.

The mind is on only till the dreaming phase of sleep.

Once the dreaming stage is over,

It's switched off.

Something still exists.

That witness is still there.

That is who I am.

When this becomes my understanding,

My reality,

Then I don't see another wave as a wave or I don't see another bubble in the water as a bubble.

Everything is now just water.

The same H2O.

We are the same Brahman.

In fact,

Only Brahman exists.

Individuals do not really exist independently.

What is the meaning of independently?

A wave,

Can it exist independent of the ocean?

No.

It is born in the ocean.

It is made up of the ocean.

It cannot exist independently.

Like that only we are Brahman.

There is no real reality to an external person,

Situation or thing as individual person,

Situations and things.

Everything is the Brahman.

When this becomes very clear,

Experientially,

Not intellectually,

You listen to me,

You think,

Ha ha,

Yes,

Yes,

Correct.

I am not the body.

I am not the mind.

I am Brahman.

The moment the session is over,

You step out of the room and you start fighting with your kids.

Why are the shoes in the middle of the room?

What happened to your Brahman-ness?

All gone.

How did you become suddenly a mother or a father?

Recognising that we are all the same one field of consciousness.

When you recognise that in experience,

Then everything,

Even kids playing,

People getting angry,

Everything you see as waves,

Everything is a wave.

It will arise and it will go away.

It will dissolve.

It doesn't bother you.

It does not harm me in any way.

It is me.

The second level of this understanding is,

If you get to the first,

Then only you get to the second.

I hope this is clear that you get to the second level and you see,

Oh,

Only that which is created in my mind becomes apparent or manifest in my life.

If I water or nurture the plant of fear,

Fear will manifest in my life.

If I nurture and water the plant of love,

Love will manifest in my life.

Whatever I am nurturing,

That is manifesting in my life.

So really,

How can I say,

I am not in control.

I am the one making things manifest.

So the reverse must be true.

If I recognise that I have this strength,

I can prevent certain things from manifesting in that particular way.

The second level of maturity develops.

Yes,

And that's how you stop creating future karma.

In the past that I have sown the seeds of karma,

They are going to sprout of course.

If their time is to sprout in the future,

They will sprout.

Every cause has its effect.

So only those will sprout because I had sown that seed.

But I am not throwing new seeds now.

I am not reacting anymore to this current sprout.

Because I recognise it is just manifestation of my own mind.

Everything is an appearance.

Everything is apparent and it appears on account of my own vasanas.

This becomes crystal clear as an experience.

You can experience this.

You recognise it in your reality at home,

At work,

With friends,

With colleagues.

And then you stop creating.

You stop initiating.

Even if because of a past habit pattern,

You tend to want to start initiating,

You withdraw.

Because you recognise the futility.

A different paradigm opens up to you.

It's a different way of looking at the same life.

The life will not change.

The people in your environment will not change.

The situations that are bound to come in your life will come.

Coronavirus had to come,

Came everybody's way.

You cannot say,

Oh I will become so magically powerful that it will not come my way.

No,

It's going to affect everybody.

But you don't suffer from it.

What is the meaning of me not suffering?

Because my mind does not become one with it anymore.

I have managed to create a gap.

And where is the gap really?

In the witness consciousness,

That is the real I and the fake I,

Which is the body,

Mind,

Intellect,

Ego.

I have managed to create this gap within.

And the more you become steady in the real I,

The more this gap will widen and widen and widen.

And you will see certain things come up in the mind,

Play for a while and they go away.

But they are not as strong and they cannot take you over like a tsunami like they used to in the past.

So widening this gap will take some time and that totally depends on your practice of being established in the witness.

Again and again get established there.

Again and again recognize that the body and the mind do not have consciousness of their own.

It is just borrowed.

So if it is borrowed from me,

I can cut it off.

I can take that light away too.

And then the mind and the ego and intellect cannot dance alone.

Every fire needs its fuel.

If I don't provide the fuel,

There is no fire.

Clear?

So this particular Doha clearly suggests that he was teaching Advaita Vedanta but many people did not get the highest knowledge.

So the simple simple Dohas became very popular and especially for people who like to have Hari and Ram in their Dohas.

And Dohas about being moral and being a good person became very popular.

But the real core teachings of Kabir,

That is what we are learning.

The Advaita Vedanta Dohas.

It is what it seems.