Prior To Time And Space: Dissolving The Sense Of Lack

We often seek peace by accumulating knowledge or trying to reach a higher state of mind. In this session, Saja points directly to the end of knowledge, showing you that true freedom lies in the removal of everything you think you know about yourself. Instead of treating meditation as an activity to perform, you are invited to let your body rest in its natural posture and allow the mind to dissolve into the source of knowing itself. By stepping outside the dimension of measurement and labels, you will recognize the effortless, startless, and pristine consciousness that remains untouched by any relative experience.

Transcript

So just relax into your experience. Without doing anything in particular, Just notice that. Your body when giving it that attention has a preferable posture, It has a preferable position, And often it's such a subtle impulse. There's usually so much else going on. That we don't notice it. And So we're just noticing that the natural posture of the body, We're not doing something in particular, We're just letting the body do its thing. Let the body do its thing. Breathing. Sounding. Thinking percepting. The body obviously doesn't itself perceive, But it is percepting So for thousands of years, At least thousands of recorded history. This whole approach has been commonly known as Advaita Vedanta. Advaita meaning not to. Vedanta meaning end of knowledge or knowledge's end. Now there. TUM VIDANTE doesn't refer to. It doesn't necessarily refer to the highest knowledge. That's not what it's trying to say. What it's saying is the end of knowledge purely because you cannot go further than the source of knowledge What more could there be to know? Than the source of knowledge itself. Not just that, It kind of has a triple meaning. It's the highest form of knowledge because it's the removal of knowledge In other words, In order to know ourself we must remove conceptual knowledge The reason being is because the minute that we impose conceptual knowledge onto the knowledge of that which knows, Which is our self, Awareness is the minute that we mistake pure knowing or pure knowledge which is awareness itself object, Therefore never really seeing the source of knowledge, Only seeing another subtle object. So. What we're seeing in this moment is that the end of knowledge literally just means There is no knowledge. Of our being. It is to know that which can not be known. When something is known, Something is perceived, Something is touched, So to speak. If we know an apple The apple is known. It stands apart from or seemingly stands apart from the one that knows it and stands as an object of knowledge. Awareness, Our being. Cannot be taken apart from itself in order to stand as an object that is known Therefore, The source of knowledge, Namely the one that creates knowledge, The one that dissects knowledge, And the one that knows it, Which is what we are, Pure awareness, Cannot itself be known. So we don't know. Our being as an object. We know it because we are it. And because knowing is not an object. In other words, Knowing doesn't have a size, A shape, A form or a colour We cannot know it like we know an object. So from the point of view of the mind The knowing of our being is like knowing nothing. It is as though we are knowing nothing. But the thing to see is that it is something. It's just what it is, Is outside the dimension. Of the capacity to measure it. With any size, Shape, Form or colour. When I say measure it I mean in the sense of. . . It's measuring it by defining its qualities, Having qualities to begin with, Because it's outside the dimension. Of knowledge, Which is outside the dimension of time and space, It cannot be experienced in the same way that we experience an object. So. . . Knowing experiences itself by being itself. Knowing being the knowing aspect of your experience is synonymous when I use the words consciousness or awareness the aware aspect of our experience knows itself on its own. Ahem. So see that knowing the place that we get our sense of being. Our sense of being alive. It is. Actually the experience of knowing being itself and by nature of knowing being itself just like the sun being itself shines Knowing being itself knows itself. Now the mind won't comprehend that as an activity. The mind is not going to notice an object appearing that we say, Oh, That's the knowing of my being Ah, It was this part, It was this little shift that happened. The mind is not an entity that can even comprehend the question. But when I say from the mind's point of view, I mean from the point of view of one more identified with the mind. So pure knowing that is more identified with the mind's activity or the body in the mind. It won't experience a shift or anything happen. The only thing it will know is that it knows nothing. From the point of view of awareness. It is knowing itself. From the point of view of the mind, It is knowing nothing. Both are as good as one another. So see that it requires zero effort, That is how effortless meditation is That's why meditation is not an activity, It's not something we do, It's the expression of an understanding and the understanding is that the most effortless, Placeless, Natural condition. Of what we are. Is meditation itself. It's not the cessation of any activity. It's not the doing of any activity, It has no relationship to anything that happens, Which is why meditation is not a shift in experience Our being, Being with our being, Is not something the mind is going to notice as an objective experience which means that the minute that we recognize what I'm saying, We have recognized the source of meditation. That is the seat of existence. All the world's troubles are that we leave that seat. Obviously we never leave that seat on an ultimate level but we leave that seat the minute that we believe that we are temporary, Limited and finite if you've been following along carefully. You will have forgotten that you had a body and a mind, You would have forgotten that you were a limited, Finite entity. If that belief was there, You would have forgotten in that moment that you were Now in that moment, In this moment right now of pure being where we are just letting ourself be as natural as we are that is peace, The absence of resistance. And we can qualify. Some may think, Well, I don't feel anything. I don't feel particularly happy. This is hopefully your evidence of where happiness is not dependent upon the feeling. There may be two experiences happening, One may be feeling some form of resistance or sense of lack, One may be feeling in this moment some form of absence of resistance which is another way of saying you don't in this moment want anything to change in this moment there is nothing that needs to change, You have a deep inner contentedness the fact that you know you do not need to change a single thing, You are perfectly content and at peace being exactly as you are in this moment. That is unconditional peace. Peace that has arose because absolutely nothing happened. That's unconditional peace and happiness. It does not depend on a feeling. We've taken a conscious. Ahem. When I say a conscious approach, We've taken a natural approach to the experience of happiness. We've taken a very subtle, Gradual, Natural approach to the experience of happiness And because it was natural, We could say then it is an unconditional approach. It has been through the process of removing conditions. Now if there is a sense of resistance in your experience, A sense of lack, A sense of this moment isn't Perfectly okay. There is a subtle hint that I want something to change. What I want you to do is to notice that this wanting it to change is a sensation It exists somewhere. Now I want you to see that this sensation, This subtle sense of lack, The subtle sense that something needs to be different about my experience. That's coming from a belief that there needs to be something in experience that can make you happy. But notice that the only reason that we don't feel or that we don't experience peace in this moment is only because We believe. That there is something that can make us happy. Because if we knew we couldn't find happiness absolutely 100% certain, If we knew there's no thing in experience that can make me happy then we would stop searching for happiness and once we stop searching for happiness the resistance to experience evaporates and we experience the same peace I'm referring to right now unconditional peace, Which is the natural condition of the mind. The natural condition of the mind is pure consciousness. And the nature of consciousness is happiness itself. So see that any lack or resistance in experience is only derived from a sensation that we feel like we must remove. So what I want you to do, If necessary, Is to go to that sensation. And I want you to see what is the big deal. What is it about that sensation that is such a problem? That it must be removed. Investigate the sensation. How intense is it? What does it feel like? If you were to describe it poetically Does it feel like a knife or does it feel like a stone or does it feel like a pebble or does it feel like a cloud? Notice that the minute we give a sensation any solid quality we see that it's an appropriation No sensation can have a solid quality because it isn't a solid object Notice that you also won't be able to find a border to the sensation of lack You won't be able to find a size or a shape. The minute you try to define the shape, The shape changes The shape moves. The shape disappears. The edges disappear. You cannot have. An experience of a sensation that feels like an object if you cannot even distinguish the actual shape. So once you see that you cannot distinguish a shape, Therefore you cannot distinguish a size, Because to have a size you must have a shape You cannot distinguish a colour, Which means you definitely can't distinguish a shape or a size, Because you cannot have a colour Colorless size and shape what would that look like absolutely nothing because things need a size need a color to have a size and a shape so you're not really experiencing anything at all. The minute you go there, What do you find? You find just a sensation, Just like any other sensation that you're experiencing. And then when you go into that sensation, Which is a form of perception, What do you find there? The minute you go there, The minute you just go directly into that, Bring it so close that you can no longer see it. Imagine that you're bringing a photograph to your eyes. Bring it close enough that it blinds you. Bring it close enough that you can no longer see anything objective. You notice that the minute you do, The minute you merge with that sensation, You, Awareness, Merge with the perception. And just like wave merging with the ocean, You merge with yourself. You essentially mold into the sensation. The sensation is no longer an issue. So close to you, You cannot see it. If you cannot see it, Where would the sense of lack be after that? We couldn't exist. It doesn't exist anymore. When you bring it close enough. That it can no longer be seen. There's no more sense of lack. Notice it was made all along of the pure awareness that was observing it Now that pure awareness in your experience right now that is experiencing Does that have any possible quality that could be tainted? Could it be hurt? Could it be disturbed? If you were to insult it, Would it get offended? If you were to get a cage, Could you contain it? A bucket of water could be thrown over your head right now. But awareness doesn't get wet. Awareness stays perfectly pristine and dry in the comfort of infinity That is you, That's where you take place Notice right now, Feel the sense of the body could get wet right now If someone could throw water over me, The body would be wet but notice you wouldn't be wet Feel that sense of understanding that you are not essentially the body Identify right now, And I say identify recognize right now. What you are. And just have this sense that you could not get wet. It seems like a silly investigation, But it's true. Notice that the body is not what is essential to you if you put your hand into a glass of water Or maybe a jug. Glasses aren't that big. You wouldn't say I'm wet. You wouldn't say, Oh, I'm soaking wet. You see? Why is that? Because you don't believe you're your hand. Now in this moment, Just imagine you are so-called soaking wet. Someone has poured a bucket of water over your head. Your body, But notice that you would not be wet. What you are stays dry. You are pure consciousness. You do not exist in the same plane as the body. Now the goal here is simply to almost feel. This is a very unique feeling. It's not essentially a feeling that we normally feel with the body. We could think of it as a transcendent knowing or a transcendent knowing feeling. Of I would be completely dry. Once we see that, We taste. We taste being our being. We're not identifying with awareness. We are disidentifying with the body. We don't need to identify with awareness. So when I said identify them, Struggling with language. We are just not identifying with what we are. We are just not identifying with the body. Don't need to identify with what we are. The Sun doesn't need to identify with the Sun in order to shine. It doesn't need to do that. It just needs to stop identifying with what it isn't. The Sun stops identifying with darkness Well it's just going to, Not much is going to happen for itself because it will stay the same as it always has been because it's never been darkness. It just recognizes its own light. Likewise, In this moment, When we disidentify with the body, We don't become awareness, We recognize our own light. We just start embodying, So to speak. The understanding. So whenever there's any ignorance, Any misidentification and obviously as I'm sure most of you know I never suggest to not identify with something, I mean to not believe we are that with which we identify It's just it seems a bit easier to use the word identify But we will identify with the body, Hence why we do things with the body because it's our body but we just want to not believe that is what we are. That's how we master this experience, Not to disidentify with the body To simply not believe that we are that with which we identify, That gives us then full reign, Full control over the body So whenever ignorance seems to appear, Just bring yourself back to this understanding Implement this understanding If you make your interest to simply be what you are, You do not have to plan times throughout the day to be that, You simply are that, And there will be moments where you will be feeling more inclined to rest in this, Then you will be inclined. To rest without it. When you're ready, Feel free to open your eyes.