What You Can Perceive Is Not You!

This meditation uses the movie screen metaphor to help you recognize yourself as the transparent, self-aware screen—untouched by anything that appears or disappears.

Just like a movie screen remains unblemished whether comedy or tragedy plays on it, you remain untouched by thoughts, feelings, sensations, and experiences. But because of your transparency, you've identified with the reflections instead of the screen itself.

You'll discover: Whatever you can perceive is not you. You are the perceiver. When you believe yourself to be what appears on the screen, you suffer its fate. When you recognize yourself as the screen—nothing can be added, nothing subtracted. You are complete.

This is the snake and the rope: until morning appears, you believe the illusion. But once you see through it, you can't unsee it.

The stakes are high. Your peace is at stake here.

Transcript

Imagine you are sitting in a theater,

A movie theater and in the theater I ask you,

What is this movie appearing on?

You would immediately say it's appearing on this blank screen.

When the movie is appearing,

It is invisible but you know that it is appearing on the screen.

If you were watching TV and I asked you,

What is this movie or TV series appearing on?

You would immediately say it's appearing on the screen of the TV.

And in both the cases,

Whether it's the movie or the movie screen or the TV screen,

You know that the screen is unaffected by what movie is playing on it.

Now,

If I asked you,

Right now,

Where is my sound appearing?

On what is my sound appearing?

Recognize if you can see that the sound of my voice is appearing on a screen of your mind.

Just like the movie and the TV series is appearing on the screen of the theater or the TV screen,

The sound of my voice is also appearing on something or in something.

It's not an exercise to be dismissed so easily.

I want you to really check and answer this question or verify my claim to see if the sound of my voice is appearing on a screen.

If it helps,

Say the word tomato in your mind and recognize or check where is the internal sound of the word that you said tomato,

Where is it appearing?

On what is it appearing?

And to take it a step further,

When you say the word tomato,

There is an image of tomato that appears.

Where is that image appearing?

Maybe you can experience the metaphor of the TV screen and the movie screen as your experience with the sound of my voice,

The sound of your internal voice or the images that appear to you in your mind.

So this mind becomes like a screen.

Of course,

We can't see the screen but you know that the image and the sound is appearing on something.

And just like the movie screen and the TV screen which remain unaffected by any genre of the film or the TV series that plays on it,

Unaffected,

Untouched,

Unblemished,

Just like that,

Every image that appears on the screen of your mind,

Every thought which is the verbal words,

Internal verbal words and the external words or sounds,

They leave the screen of your mind untouched.

Again,

It's not literally a screen of your mind,

It is you.

It's not happening somewhere outside,

Right?

It is happening inside of you.

But it has a screen-like quality.

It has a screen-like,

Unblemishable quality that is extremely analogous.

I want you to see it if it is true and feel it if it is true.

The same analogy is also true with open eyes.

Although it is a little harder to decode,

But if you zoomed in on your experience after you verify it with eyes closed which is a lot easier to convince you or to put in enough doubt to your existing beliefs about how things are so that you become open to it revealing to you.

But once you are convinced that yes,

There is a screen-like quality in the experience that happens to me,

All my thoughts whether it's images or sounds,

They appear in me.

Even the external so-called sounds appear in me.

And there's no separate screens for what I see versus what I hear.

It's the same screen.

I'm sure you've had this experience with your eyes open that you have caught yourself daydreaming.

With your eyes open,

You were lost in thought.

And this thought appears on a screen.

Whether it's eyes open or eyes closed doesn't matter.

It is superimposed on you.

But because you,

The awareness,

Are so transparent,

Just like the TV screen or the movie theater screen,

That the loud,

Diverse sound and light show gets emphasized whereas the transparent screen is pushed to the background.

The important thing to notice here is the superimposition of experience of different modalities whether it is thoughts or sights or sounds.

The same applies for tastes and textures and smells.

They appear in you and they leave you unblemished.

The screen is fresh for every new sound,

Every new sight,

Every new smell,

Taste,

Thought,

Sensation.

And you are the screen,

A self-aware screen.

If we believe ourselves to be that which appears on the screen because the transparency is missed,

Ignored,

The transparent nature of yourself as awareness is ignored,

That's why the Indian tradition calls this as ignorance.

If you believe yourself to be that which appears on the screen,

Then you suffer the fate of what it appears,

What appears.

Whatever appears,

Disappears and then there is heartbreak.

Even the heartbreak appears,

But because we are so one with that feeling,

Because we have forgotten ourselves as the transparent screen,

We identify with anything and everything that seems like us.

Some days it's feelings,

Some days it's thoughts,

Some days it's our accumulation.

Let today be the transparent screen.

There is no room for beliefs today.

Don't believe yourself to be anything.

Just be.

Just be whoever,

Whatever you are.

You know,

It's like if you are in your bathroom,

Not quite in front of your mirror,

But you can see the mirror.

You can see the reflection of the objects in your bathroom in the mirror.

The transparency of the mirror is often lost and forgotten or ignored.

But the objects are seen in it.

And if this was a self-aware mirror,

It can believe itself to be the reflection of your vanity,

Of your hand towel,

Of your hairbrush or whatever else is in your bathroom.

Although at the core,

It is always the mirror that it is,

It can believe itself to be anything it wants because of its transparency.

That's the freedom the mirror has in this thought experiment.

Which is all fine.

There is no problem until there is suffering.

When you pretend to be that which you are not,

There is suffering.

The superimposition of the experience is not you.

It is appearing in you,

But is not you.

And this is the core message of today's exploration.

To see that that which appears to you is not you.

The superimposition is not you.

No one can make us believe something.

Our freedom to believe who we are runs so deep that it is impossible for someone to make us believe something.

So you as the self-aware mirror,

The transparent mirror can stay as the untouched mirror by any of the reflections that appear in it or you can believe to be one of the reflections which could look like a body,

Which could look like possessions,

Which could look like skills and identify with it.

Anything that appears,

Disappears,

And when something disappears there is suffering.

Although whatever that appears in you does not touch you,

Does not blemish you in any way whether on appearing or on disappearing,

Yet there is a belief that I'm incomplete,

I'm hurt,

I'm bleeding,

I'm broken and there is nothing I can tell you to change your belief either.

The only remedy that works for any belief is to see the truth.

So here we are face to face with truth about who you are,

About who you really are,

Because once you see who you really are you don't need to remove one by one who you are not.

Firstly,

It's important to see that you are not what appears to you,

You are not the superimposition,

You are not the reflection,

But you are the transparent screen,

Self-aware screen.

And once you see yourself as the self-aware screen,

Every other reflection,

Every other appearance is not you,

Becomes obvious.

A belief is simply something that we take as true,

Even though there is no evidence for it.

And I'm not talking about beliefs about materialistic things or possessions,

I'm talking about the deepest,

Most invasive species of the belief of being a reflection,

Of being limited,

Of being a superimposition rather than the transparent screen.

So when you are in your bathroom,

Run this experiment,

But don't run it in a third-person sense.

Imagine yourself as the mirror,

With the same self-awareness that you have,

Imagine yourself and that's the power,

Which is a blessing and a curse that we can become what we want in our imagination,

But then we can become what we want in our imagination and suffer as well.

So this is a good reminder that we can use our freedom,

We can use our transparency to run an experiment to find the truth about who we are without suffering.

So run this experiment of seeing the objects in your mirror with the imagination that you are the self-aware mirror and see how ridiculous it feels to be one of the objects that keeps changing.

It's not a static bathroom,

Right?

It's your thought experiment,

You can run it whichever way you want,

More realistically,

Just like everything is appearing,

Everything is moving,

And then immediately apply this experiment to yourself as this self-aware presence and see that everything is appearing to you in exactly the same way.

Although I mentioned to you that,

You know,

There is a deepest level of freedom that nobody can make us believe something and nobody can make us believe the opposite of it either.

This freedom exists in every moment,

But we have made these decisions,

These beliefs have crystallized decades ago and they have crystallized in our mind as beliefs and in our body as feeling beliefs and we have assumed them to be true and unquestionable.

With this experiment,

The idea is that your hidden beliefs about yourself will be revealed so that now you can question them,

You can expose them.

It doesn't matter when these beliefs were made,

When these decisions were made,

Whether we were influenced by our parents,

Society,

It doesn't matter.

What matters is this reminder about who you are,

The pointing to who you really are and your interest in discovering who you really are and the stakes are high.

This is the biggest stake of our life.

The peace and happiness is at stake here.

If you think you are the reflection,

If you think you are that which appears and disappears,

There is no long-lasting peace in your life.

There is constant waves of suffering because something that you don't like will appear and something that you do like will disappear all the time.

But if you recognize yourself as the transparent screen that remains untouched,

Unaffected by what appears and what disappears,

Then you don't mind what appears and what disappears.

Why would you?

If you are not affected,

Why would you care?

And the beautiful part about this recognition is that if nothing can be added to you and nothing can be subtracted from you,

I.

E.

You are untouched,

Which means you are perfect the way you are.

You are complete the way you are.

You are full.

You are full to the brim.

No matter what your thoughts tell you about being incomplete,

Not enough,

Being this body,

Being that mind doesn't make it true.

What is true is always true and you are that truth.

The conclusions of our mind are always incomplete.

So when I say truth,

I am not talking about facts.

Facts belong to the realm of mind.

In the Indian tradition,

There is an analogy which is used where if you are,

And again this was given thousands of years ago,

So it was relevant at that point,

But a version of this might be applicable to all of us.

If you are walking in the jungle and accidentally you see snake and you are terrified and you go call someone for help and they come there and they show you that it's not a snake,

It's a rope and you don't believe them because you believe your eyes.

Yes,

That's a snake.

It looks like a snake.

It is a snake.

I'm terrified until morning appears and you see the rope looking like a snake.

At that point,

You recognize that the friend who came to help you was right.

But no matter what they told you,

You had to see through the illusion.

You had to see that what looked like a snake wasn't a snake.

There was a deeper seeing that revealed that it's not a snake and that it is a rope.

Just like that,

We need to see that I am not that which appears on the screen.

I am not the superimposition and I am the screen.

As a first person experience,

Not as a concept that is being visualized in your mind,

That visual is also appearing to you.

Whatever you can perceive is not you and you are the perceiver.

These are the two things that are extremely important to reveal who we really are.

And within this lies the key to our peace,

Happiness,

Harmony.

Peace and happiness inside and harmony outside.

Right now,

We are living our life broken,

Vulnerable,

Easily hurt like a ticking time bomb,

Stuck,

Bound,

Easily influenced by people,

Situations,

And things.

But once we start seeing deeply,

What gets revealed is harmony because no people,

Situation,

Or thing can cut you.

Nothing can take anything away from you.

Your accumulations are only good in the realm of the body and mind.

These accumulations didn't matter when you were born.

They won't matter when this body will die.

So you understand that that which is most important belongs to the realm where accumulations,

Physical and mental,

Can't reach.

That's the realm you are in.

You are that realm.

As you sit here still,

Notice that everything is moving.

The sensations,

The thoughts,

The sounds,

The images,

Everything is moving effortlessly.

There is room,

The same amount of room,

For every thought.

Just like when you are watching TV,

The entire screen is filled up with the TV series,

Unless the TV has gone bad,

Right?

Every pixel is lit,

Just like that.

Your entire experience is full.

That's where the illusion creeps in,

Where we feel lost,

Where it's easy for us to lose our identity.

As the object that appears instead of the screen on which it appears,

In which it appears.

So notice that everything is moving,

You are not.

And no matter what appears,

It's disappearing without any trace.

So be this awareness,

Be this transparency,

Knowingly.

See through this matrix,

See through this illusion of maya.

Thank you.