Natural state

Why are people not happy?. There are lot of people in spite of amassing wealth, health and all kinds of wordly things , are not happy. They seek all kinds of methods to reach the happiness they seek and yet become unsuccessful. We say " Why does he feel so?. He has everything in life. He can do whatever he wants and he can have whatever he likes". And yet if we ask him, he would say he is not inherently happy.

The reason is clear. All kinds of emotional situations, feelings, wealth are not what makes us happy. Whenever we deviate from our natural state we would become unhappy. Whatever you do , if you don't understand this principle, you would be unhappy. You may be the richest and most powerful person on the planet and yet you would not be happy. The reason for all this life's efforts its failures, miseries comes from an ignorance of this simple fact.

Now the question comes "What is the natural state?". It comes from an understanding about yourself. We have already seen that the real self is not our body nor it is the mind. The real self is the witness of these and is the presence which watches all and is always the same irrespective of the conditions in life. The nature of the self is pure bliss and happiness itself. It is only the clouding by the mind and other such constructs that obliterates this natural state.

So you can see that it is the seeking of happiness itself that causes unhappiness!!. Why ?. Because when we seek happiness through constant effort we pile our mind with desires emotions feelings thoughts, thus clouding the natural state of the self. So unless all these are cleared , we will never get happiness or bliss, That is why people after amassing immense wealth go to a quiet place or give away all property to charity etc to get happiness.

Even when they do all that they would not get happiness because they need to understand that their mind should be freed from all cloudings and the natural self revealed to reach happiness.
So spiritual life is all about understanding your true identity and abiding in it. Then the seeking vanishes, desires drop, the mind clears and we are in a tranquil state of our natural state.
So you can see all these swamins are actually shrewd people . They abandon everything to reach their natural state.

Our true self is the natural source of happiness. It is not the outside seeking that generates happiness. When we get something the natural state is revealed for a while since the mind is freed of thoughts for a while and the true self is revealed to us temporarily.

In deep sleep, when our mind is totally absent, we get the greatest happiness since we are close to our natural state which is the self revealed. That is why whoever you are and whatever be your pathetic condition, you are free from all unhappiness in deep sleep. In dream state the mind is partially present so we may be happy or unhappy depending on how active the mind is. In waking state when the mind is present , mostly we are a mixture of happiness and unhappiness. So it seems that it is the deviation from the natural state of the self by the mind which is causing unhappiness .


1) Happiness is inherent in us and not in other objects. We are the greatest source of happiness because the natural state of self is happiness itself. It is the partial revealing of the self that is obtained when we get some external things , by quietening of the mind.
2) Any deviation from the natural state is what leads to unhappiness. Mind is the greatest culprit which creates this deviation.

So the greatest idea to find happiness is to understand our natural state and stay there. It implies we stay with our true self and watch everything from there.

Spiritual perspective

We are all seeking happiness in different ways. For some it is the end of sufferings like the miseries that they experience in life in terms of experiences. For some it is based on an ideal future that they envisage. For most it is a combination of both. Seeking happiness in life is not at all bad. It is our inherent nature. We can define happiness or bliss to be stillness whatever be the circumstances.

We are nothing but bliss. So we would seek it, as it is a natural tendency. Only problem is the perspective . 

What can be seen from spiritual life is that if we believe in what is real rather than on unreal imaginary things, with a strong urge to separate the permanent from the temporary, movement from stillness, we would be much better in this quest.

Any effort requires change. Suppose you want to go from point A to point B. For this you will have to put in effort  and this requires change. You are no longer there in A , you would have moved to B. 

What i am speaking is not about travel, it is about some event in life. This change is something that the mind may or may not accept. So you may or may not reach B, but the problem would be lot of changes have happened in between. These changes are resisted by your mind. So there is the inherent problem with our mind. It wants change, but at the same time it resists it. Point A could be that you are well in health , but not having enough money. Point B is where you have money but no health. So even if you have reached point B, you would have lost something and the mind whines. 

So our satisfaction never is complete, because of the changes involved in the effort. Why does our mind not like change?. 

That is the crucial thing to understand. Mind has created an identity of you based on the body and mind. So if they change, you also have changed and this is not good. Consciousness in its purest form is never changing and it is not affected by anything. However when it is limited by the confines of your body and mind it can be affected. But its inherent nature is to be permanent and unchanging. So on the one hand we have change, but on the other hand there is this urge of consciousness to resist change. This tug of war happens in our mind, and hence the problems.

So what is the solution to this quandary?. Identify that the change is not happening to you as the mind has led to believe. The change is happening to only the mind and its thoughts, the body and its organs. Whoever is observing it the real self is unchanged. The real I is pure consciousness and it never changes and since you are that , why do you worry about the changes?. The changes will happen but they are all occurrences that are not part of you. You are witnessing it.

So you can see that we have tried to separate the temporary from the permanent and understood this problem. Also the commitment is towards the truth rather than to the unreal ramblings of the mind. 

Efforts are seen from the right perspective and we are not worried about the changes involved as the changes are in some objects like the body , mind etc which is not part of our identity.

Another thing to understand clearly is that your identity is basically the awareness or just the presence. So you exist only this moment. The last moment has died, the next moment your body or mind need not be there. The reality is only in this moment and you cannot be out of it. Just look around you, whatever you see is the reality. What existed in the last second is not there now. Only mind can take you to yesterday , the reality does not exist last second. Similarly the future is not yet true. Only your mind can take you to tomorrow. So if you start seeing the principle of believing only in reality and not believing in unreal things , you will be in the moment. Whenever the mind comes up with a thought , see whether it is a fact or a projection from the moment. 

So you can see by our commitment to the unchanging identity and to reality we can simplify all our problems at least move in that direction. 

Fear , anxiety , sorrow, dejection are all caused by the simple misinterpretation of reality. Always be in your true nature which is watching the changes that are happening around you. The changes that you watch include the body and mind, since it is something that is subject to change you are not worried. 

So you can see that whatever be the circumstance you are not concerned about it. There is a permanence to your identity which is watching all the changes. This is what peace of mind means . There are changes , but those changes are not in you. 

Even if you dont have the expansive view of infinite consciousness , provided you identify that it is that which is your real identity and not the body-mind system, your path is made. The moment of realization comes when the effort is made but without the concerns about its changes. The happenings of everything is perceived in its right sense.

How can you be so small as the mind has asked you to believe?. Your very nature is permanency, your very nature is bliss. There is no need to seek it anywhere all you need is a dropping of your veil.

Pain

In yesterday's meeting there was a doubt. Suppose you are having a leg pain .

 Is it correct to feel " I am having pain.".  I want to just state a few points here about this. 

Let us analyse it critically. You have a body and the leg is part of it. What is a pain?. A pain is a sensation created by the brain with the help of neural signals that something wrong in some part of the body so that we attend to it. Now we can understand it like this . The leg and the brain together is creating this sensation of pain. Now the crucial statement was " I am having pain". 

So in result you have accepted that my body is I. Whatever happened to my body is me. 

So i want to narrate this from two perspectives

1) Ego:  

Let us assume that I am the body. So the pain experienced in the body is really me. So it is correct to say "I am having pain" instead of saying " My leg is having pain". 

Oh what a pain this is for me. I was so fine before.Ever since i had this pain it is hindering everything.

Or 

I have tried so many treatments for this pain and nobody could cure it. Now i have to bear it out and so on. 

Note: Here there is a commentary by the mind which keeps you engrossed in thoughts and increases the pain sensation. This depends on you believing strongly that your leg is you!!!. We all know my leg is not me. I am just a possessor of an equipment called leg. I am not this leg . And yet we listen to all this . The moment there is a me in the mind about the pain it can start a commentary or narration. This is because you can be projected as a body into the past where you were well and  compared with your present state and so on. Having created your identity as the body, the mind can make you believe in anything. Consider this. Suppose you had a video camera and a part of it broke. Would you say "I broke". Even though you do feel strongly about your video camera , it is not considered you. It is true that the video camera that you own creates a greater impact than another person's video camera, but there only is a sense of possession but no sense of identity. You are a witness to the fact that the video camera that you own broke. 

2) Self (Atman) 

I am this pure consciousness or awareness and i am limitless and without any blemish. I see that this body is experiencing some pain in the leg. But it is not me. It is only an appearance in the infinitude of Me. I was always there in time. Only thing i got manifested in this temporary thing called body for a while so the body being an object would have imperfections and it is natural that there would be pain . I am just witnessing it.

Note : Here the real identity realized what is what. It distinguished that the body is actually an object and not a subject. The only subject is the self which is unchanging  and immortal. Your identity is attached to that, not to the body which is just a fleeting thing in time. Any name and form is limited in time and space. Just like that the body is limited in time and space and subject to imperfections. But I am not that. 

The same process can be seen for the mind also. All the thoughts that crowd in your mind are also associated with you. That is why you value them so much. If you understand that the mind is also an object ( created by neural networks in the brain) , and that the self is a witness to it , you will never feel identified with the thoughts in the mind. 

Note what i am saying. I am not saying that there wont be any thoughts. Thoughts would be there. But you feel that you are not those thoughts themselves but as someone who can witness them from an unchanging platform called the self and that unchanging platform is what I am.

Spiritual life is all about abiding in the real identity by dropping the ignorance.

You can see it is all about identity . Unless you understand who you really are , the experiences wont make sense to you and it would drag you into this world of misery and torture. You take responsibility for so many things for which you dont even have a notion and based on lies.

It is more of a habitual thinking all through your life which has created this identity for you. The more repeated these thoughts are the stronger your belief in it becomes , The stronger your belief the hard it is to strike it out. The first step is to start unbelieving your own thoughts and de-valuing them except for the facts. As Robert Adams used to say " Your mind is not your friend".

Importance of Experience

Spiritual life is always with its ups and downs. One moment we are elated and another we feel we are lost. There is always the sense of ego grasping us and binding us down into this world. As long as we have this body we always would be like that. But the important point to note is that are we aware of the fact that our attention wavered?. If so it means that our awareness is showing us that our attention went back to the person instead of being in the presence. Now ask yourself who is aware of the fact that your attention wavered?. That is the real I. Only the unchanging self can observe the changing self. We need a background of changeless-ness to observe change. That which is unchanging is the real self I. If you say my attention wavered a bit, the entity saying that must itself be unchanging . Look for that sense in you and stay with that sense.

In Kena upanishad , the understanding of the self is described by the disciple
"It is not understood by the wisest of the wise. It is capable of being understood by the utmost fool of the fools. "
Why is this not understood by the wisest of the wise?. Because when you think you know the self, you are actually understanding it using your intellect or mind. Reading a lot of the scriptures and listening to great gurus, wise people would think they have understood paramartha. But it is only an understanding and it is still to be experienced in real life and practiced to be BrahmaNishta . Why can it be understood by the fool of the fools. Because the self is so near to you, and if you don't know the shastras, you can experience it if you are unwavering,
So the Self or Brahman is not knowable and yet is not unknown. It is not knowable because it is not subject to ordinary means of intellectualizing since it is not an object like the body or mind. At the same time it is not unknown because in experience you can feel it and have even identify with it.

The true nature of your self is seen everywhere. Look around you. Each and every object, each and every person is moving in that consciousness only. So even in the person who is angry at you his mind and his hands are moving in the consciousness. The same consciousness that enables you to see and comprehend the anger. There is nothing that is not illumined by it. We don't see the illumining reality and look for it everywhere. In each and every movement , each and every thought you are experiencing its presence. Just as you start seeing things in that deep way, just feel for it. Think about what is that the thing behaves this way. It must be consciousness.
An example of this reality which is hidden and yet shining through all objects is the presence of moon in the night which illumines the night sky and all objects. The sun is the source of this light but it is not experienced directly at night. Just like that the source of all movement, the source of all objects and their interactions are all happening because of this pure consciousness. So you are seeing the Brahman indirectly all the time.

When Ramana Maharshi was asked to show God, he just moved his fingers and the people listening started to see in the direction pointed. But he said , " See it is not the direction, it is the movement of the fingers you should feel. The movement cannot come without the pure consciousness. The cause of these is God or the Self".
Spiritual practice is not elaborate at all. It is about feeling for the stillness within. The poignant silence of the unwavering bliss within us. And identifying itself with it as the one who is observing all. Pure existence ,knowledge and bliss merged into that unchanging reality. How light life would become if you identify your true identity. Instead of the playful energy of the child like ego , your stillness beckons you into the ocean of truth.
Only through direct experience would you sense the reality. All experience good or bad is an opportunity for you to see truth. After all good and bad are labels made by the ego from its stand point. If experience is just experienced without doership who is affected by it?.
One budhist monk had a dream that he was a butterfly in that dream. He woke up from the dream and he was unhappy. So his disciples asked him "Guru why are you unhappy. After all it was only a dream". Then he replied. "How do i know whether i am a monk dreaming that i am a butterfly. It could be well that i am actually a butterfly dreaming that i am a monk".

Whatever you think doesn't make any difference. In your life time how you live is unimportant to the ultimate reality. Truth is always the same whether you realize it or not. But understanding it will considerably lighten your journey because falsehoods are always a  burden.

Detachment

When you see people who are engrossed with life and find it difficult to abandon things that they pursue, you can see a mental process which is interesting.
Every human being seeks something. For each one it may be different. The pursuits are sometime stated explicitly, Sometimes it just carries on with the pressures of the society. For some it is spiritual , for some it may be materialistic, for some a mixture of both. But most people are engrossed in their pursuits so much so that they don't have time to sit back and see what they are doing. This seeking is what keeps the mind engaged. There are moments of stillness in which do realize that something is missing. But it is only a fleeting moment. What keeps them so engrossed?. Why are they relentless in their pursuits?.
It is again the capability of the mind to make you forget about anything else. It comes from personalizing your thoughts involved in your actions. By personalizing your thoughts your mind keeps you attached to the mind. If you have thoughts which are all pertaining to you and it belongs to you , naturally you feel engaged to listen. It is only when you start talking about it and meditating do you realize this.
So the first step in a spiritual practice would be to find your attachment points. What is that you are currently trying to do?. Am i attending to my own actions and thoughts?. If you continuously do that you can see that instead of personalizing your thoughts and experiences you can have the true perception that it is an impersonal thing.
Because if you are seeing it happening , then certainly you are not that emotion or feeling .
Instead of believing that "Something is happening to me ", you can perceive that "Something is happening" and i am observing it.
The moment the personalization drops the attachment is severed with the happening and the mind can no longer attach to it. Detachment is all about true perception. Freer your mind becomes, the more the true self shines. Remember this, the detachment can come only when you stop believing in the personalization process. Accept that something is happening. But dont accept it is you to which it pertains. An happening is only attached when your mind attaches it to it.

 After you detach and become a witness to your emotions and feelings etc , try to think "What is happening to me as a witness?". Am i getting disturbed as a witness. Am i changing all the time?.
Only when you are identified with the witness do you realize the pursuits in your life . It is alright to have them provided you just dont personalize it anymore. Slowly they would drop their hold on you. It is alright to do actions if you have the correct perception.
You can always see another process by the mind when it personalizes something. After a particular event happens , there is a commentary or analysis by the mind. It starts to create a story-line about some event that just happened, or sometime back. Beware of this. This is where it entangles you in the sea of miseries. Shut of the narration and say , " I caught you my dear mind, stop this !!!".

For e.g. Suppose you are having a headache. It may be a tension headache created out of work pressure or some such thing. You may experience it and then the mind starts a commentary. See how your life is . Not only are you made to work day in day out there is pressure and nobody understands me and my problems. Nobody even asked me whether i have headache. They just pretend that nothing is wrong. What a life ?and so on. This may be a rather exaggerated example , but this is how the mind starts.
So in life you can see there are two perceptions. One is the happening and second is the personlization process including a commentary by the mind , interpreting the situation for you. This is also the process by which the mind attaches roles to you and responsibilities. Since you have already believed in the roles and responsibilities you start to feel the pressure.

Mind is such a fleeting being. So if it has to exist all the time and make you feel that you exist , it has to do all these tricks. If you dont believe that you exist , you will no longer function. So a mind can never stop the thoughts. The true self needs no such tricks it is the feeling of "I am" . It can never be disturbed by experiences and it never ceases to be.

Bunch of molecules

When we come to know about the body, mind etc we wonder somehow on what these things work. How does the mind think?. What prompts it to think the thoughts ? We know that thoughts come and go and they are completely random. But why do i think a particular thought?. It seems that it is beyond my control. Suddenly i start thinking about something with no connection to my present situation . Sometimes it is triggered by some question or situation. But the thoughts branch out to wild ways . What impels it to think the way it does?.

I know most of you might have wondered about this as an afterthought. The same doubt is expressed by the student in Kena upanishad. Kena means "By whom directed"

केनेषितं पतति प्रेषितं मनः
केन प्राणः प्रथमः प्रैति युक्तः ।
केनेषितां वाचमिमां वदन्ति
चक्षुः श्रोत्रं क उ देवो युनक्ति ॥ 

"On whose instigation and command does the mind get in to the worldly objects? On whose desire does it work? And on whose push is it dumped in to the worldly cycle of samsaara? By whose order does the life breath do its duty? By whose direction and control are the people uttering these words? Which reality is putting the sense organs (like the eyes and ears) in to their respective work? "


The Guru replies in quiet an uncharacteristic mystic style
"That one which is the ear (or the hearing organ) of the ear, the mind of the mind and the speech of the speech is the life breath of the life breath and is the eye of the eye. Those wise men who were able to know it and have understood it leave behind themselves all sorts of attachment. By that renunciation, they attain immortality. "

Instead of saying directly that it is pure consciousness that breathes life into these, the guru says it is the eye of the eye, ear of the ear and the mind of the mind. What this means can be understood like this.

Look at any electric instrument. It has a certain capability. Say a mobile phone or an electric iron.

But it cannot work unless electricity is put into it. So just like that it is the field of consciousness filling everywhere that is impelling to do all the tasks and do the thinking etc. It is the cause but is not intermingled with any of the things. It stays silently behind all illumining this.

As vidyarana swami said during a drama a lamp is kept in the stage. This lamp can illumine all actors whether they are villian or hero and all objects also. The objects require the lamp but the lamp doesnt require them. So it is the pure consciousness that is the source of all things that we see including living and non living objects breathing life force into all impelling them to perform and yet it itself unmoved and untouched by any of them.

However as we have seen this light is clouded by the objects just like the sun when it sets. Even when it sets the moon is shining from its light. So the mind also is shining from it only and just as moon can never be as bright as the sun, the mind is nothing compared to the sun that is underneath .

Let us try to understand this pure "I AM". Now i move in this world as "I am Renjith". This is a knowledge. A knowledge that comes from somewhere and also it arises somewhere. I know that it is not a fundamental knowledge.  I can change my name anytime. So perhaps i can think something much more fundamental . Maybe how about " I am a man". It looks slightly better.

Because whatever be my name , I am still a man.  

Now i ask myself where from this knowledge comes. From outwardly features and various biological factors. What are biological factors?. Most cells in my body have some characteristic(one chromosome) which distinguishes me from a woman. A woman too has cells but they have some characteristic which is different. So I can say more fundamentally " I am a group of cells"

Now what are these cells?. These cells are made of some organic molecules at the fundamental level. 

Mainly hydro carbons and lot of simple water. So " I am a bunch of molecules". 

Now from this bunch of molecules to reach a level of understanding that it is me, some evolution must have happened. There are lot of molecules in this universe. So what fundamentally different is that they seem not to express any knowledge or at least we cannot perceive it. If the universe was devoid of any consciousness then the bunch of molecules would not have come into understanding anything like i do. So that something which yields this knowledge as I am to a bunch of molecules called me is the basic stuff of the universe. 

That basic stuff consciousness which breathes knowledge into a bunch of molecules have to pervade the universe or reality . Living or non living all should be in it . If not ,how did it get trapped in only certain life forms. If there is one such background of consciousness , all distinctions are only of the name and form. All beings and things are only appearances in it. If so what i understand as a group of cells called me is only that -a "group of cells". It is not ME.

I am actually that undivided background of consciousness which is the mind of the mind and eye of the eye. In fact there is only one reality this basic pure consciousness and I AM THAT. 

What appears as the mind is only a modification of me  , an appearance in me. What appears as the senses are also merely minor modifications in me. 

All appearances are transitory and i know that too. But I am untouched by all these changes. Underneath these sea of objects , appearances, changes and imagery i stand  witnessing all of them for ever. As the molecules dissolve into the universe i watch that too.  I have come back from where i was always, the eternal witness.

If  I am that what should i strive for?. What do i gain by effort?.

na puṇyaṃ na pāpaṃ na saukhyaṃ na duhkhaṃ

na mantro na tīrthaṃ na vedā na yajña

ahaṃ bhojanaṃ naiva bhojyaṃ na bhoktā

cidānandarūpaḥ śivo'ham śivo'ham 

from Nirvana Shatakam by Shankacharya

Presence and Person

We have a feeling that there are two identities in us.
One is the presence or awareness as we said before.There is also a person in us who is nothing but the presence with a psychological identification that it is a body-mind thing.
It is crucial to understand that it is presence itself that has been modified into this limited role of a person. Problem comes when the unmodified presence forgets itself after doing this identification!!!. This is the state from which we have started our lives. So since it has forgotten itself and the person in us cries for help all the while we never have the time nor the intelligence to look for something from which the person itself was created. We are so intimate with our own personhood than with our true nature . That is why we live as persons.
If we, the presence can understand that we have forgotten ourselves and taken our identity to be something else, we can see light. Enquire with your own fraudulent identity whether it is the true one?. It would fail to answer, but even this practice of asking whether i am truly what i think i am is enough to nullify the person. This is because you are shaking the foundation of the person and asking whether he exists or not. If he doesn't exist in the first place , how can the worries, desires actions etc make sense?. Personhood is like a apparition now here now not here as in deep sleep. A fleeting sense of wrong notions.

Take any problem in your life ask yourself whether it is a concern of the person in you, or the presence in you. You would always get the answer that it is only a concern of the person not the presence. The presence needs nothing, cries at nothing and never is disturbed. The truth dawns on you when you have dropped the identification of a person and you exist as just the presence which is conscious of itself.

You have glimpse of the presence when you have moments of just being . But very quickly because of your vasanas, you rock back to your person. The person is trying to find a foot hold to stand amidst these sea of changes.


Suppose i am working somewhere. And i am so engaged in the work. Suddenly someone calls my name. I turn my head instantly. I never have to think "I am Renjith I am Renjith" to do that. We instinctively know that I am so and so. Just like that there is something even more basic that that i know, and it is that I exist.
Now analyze this further . How do i know that i exist?. It is a knowledge ingrained you would say. Not something i learnt by going to school. Nobody in school teaches you that . You just know.  No moment in time comes where this feeling is lost. Have you?. Rain and shine, years have passed, this pure feeling that was there is still the same. It is not something we had to learn. Even learning that "I am Renjith" i had to learn. My parents, my friends, teachers etc started calling me and i had to go through a process of learning that. But the fact that i exist nobody taught me and yet i know.

Now you have a feeling about it , ask yourself this simple question ?. Who knows this fact?. Is it your body or mind?  It cannot be the body you know that since body has no sensations like an identity. It cannot be the mind as well .Why?. Mind is just a collection of thoughts. We start thinking only after a certain age around 1-2 years. So even before that children do know that " I am" as pure conscious beings. Their identity has not been meta-morphed. However they lack a fundamental trait.They are not self aware that they are aware. They are aware and they live only in the moment.
Just probe deep within you get the feeling of "I am". You can see that this pure feeling doesnt have any  qualities. It is niether male not female. It is not anybody. It is always with us.
The height of consciousness comes when your awareness is aware of itself and you have completely dropped your person from you.

Therefore you are nothing but a field of consciousness . your focus on your boundaries of your body blurs into a field. The pure consciousness which is filling everywhere and permeating everywhere is what is giving you the feeling of existence and its knowledge.

The knowledge about you as a presence alone removes your name from the identity. The name is a label only for the body-mind complex.
So then what happens to the pure person in you?. You ask . How does the person live?. It is indeed a valid question. As a human being you have to move around in this world. You can never be always in the exalted state , otherwise people would start believing that you are insane etc.
The answer is no. There is no problem with living. The only change that you observe is that you as a simple person doesnt exist. There is a total absence of mundane thoughts in your mind. They are almost limited to facts and they are only about the current moment. Why is this so?,
Suppose you go to a bank and ask about some loan. The bank clerk would reply that such and such is the condition for granting the loan speaking as though it is her money. So the bank clerk knows it is bank money and yet she speaks like her money protecting it etc. Just like that you move around in this world pretending to be a person while internally you know you are not  a person, without the burden of keeping up to some arbitrary aims ambitions etc.

It is simple to understand . You exist only in this moment . Isnt it ?
Havent you died the last second. So since your identity is now only the presence(I exist) , your concerns are also about the present moment.
Now look at life now. In the current moment there is no problem. The problem is always in the future or past. A fear is about something in the future and when there is a fear about the future, there is anxiety now. If there are memories of the past glory, there is sorrow now and so on. The current moment if you have not died, you exist without any issues. Every moment is a current one for the presence. Because except for the current moment existence is not known. Your identity is the presence so you are in the moment.

If you look at animals or little children you would see this pure bliss of existing in the moment. A cat or a dog doesn't want to become like the neighbor's cat or dog. No hen tries to fly like a dove . They are conscious but don't have this body identification at all. I read somewhere that a dog was having a heart attack and when the doctor was holding it in his hands and looking at its eyes. The eyes never had any fear even though it knew something bad was happening. In this moment there is no problem, in the future i may die. who cares?

Now start looking at a second  person. You discover that just as you as a person doesnt exist any longer, that person is also not a person but just pure consciousness. The differenca es or similarities are all concerning the person in that man. When that part is lost, how can there be any conflicts. There is only pure love. Love is nothing but the recognition that there are no two identities but a single identity.

With a complete absence of dual thoughts arent you feeling peaceful. The current moment has no issues as we have seen . You just are there and you know that . That is all.

When the presence has been identified as you, you are witnessing two things. You are witnessing things which are changing, while you yourself are not changing . So when that happens you can see changes as transitory. When you are in the changing world ,of person you are always resisting change struggling to keep up.

As Mooji said " The presence can be there without the person, but the person can never be without the presence ....Decide which is greater and become that....    Don't define what you are, because to define is to confine".

Being Alone

Can you be alone?
It is the supreme form of bliss where you are in presence of the self or the ultimate reality , where you have dropped the chatter of the mind. This is supreme recognition of the truth of nature.
But most people are afraid of being alone. They fear they would go insane.They want to go somewhere , do something like talk something over , listen to music something which would "keep them engaged".

You are afriad of being alone. why ?Because your mind is full of shattering thoughts and when you are alone it only increases the no of desperation in you. You are afraid of yourself more that the outside world actually. Second is you always want to be engaged. Why ?. This is the familiar way of ego to catch your attention. So it puts the fear in you , dont be idle. Do something. Do something and think!!!.
Being silent and doing nothing is inherently difficult. One of the measures of your spiritual progress can be how comfortable when you are alone. Alone in the presence of the self without any mind's discomforting thoughts. The stillness of being and peace reverberating in you.

The more you are in self awareness, the better is your capability of being alone. So consider meditation to guide you in this process. As you become used to this stillness you are befriending your self and moving away from your false self.
All of us know these moments of stillness from time to time but we never notice it because of the lack of awareness to catch it.

Once you become familiar with the bliss there is of these moment of alone ness, you wont ever go to the outside world for happiness. Desires will never allure you into the world. Also as you start seeing the world as it is in the moment of stillness, your acceptance becomes so natural.
The self is one which sees the seeing, perceives the perceiving hears the hearing. The objects are mere appearances in its infinite field of permanence. The whole content of all the experiences is just in the being ness.

Be alone to become what you are really. It may seem paradoxical that being alone can do anything, as the world appears to be so huge and varied and you are so small in comparison and being alone gives you the truth. But that is how it is. The whole world is embedded in you, so in order to know it you have to come back to yourself. Krishna revealed the whole cosmos in his mouth to yasoda. That was not the indication that some supreme being is mighty powerful or anything as commonly people believe. It shows that in order to know the universe , know yourself(open yourself). When he revealed it again to Arjuna he said remember i and you are one and the same. But if you have to see it, you should never waver from your quest of the self in nascent simplicity.
In moments of alone ness , you can see that problems become not only trivial, but also solutions appear in you naturally. It is a meta solution in that it transcends and solves the problems at the same time.
Sometimes people complain that they feel lonely. Distinguish it from being alone.What does feeling lonely mean?. You think you want company and sharing helps you to alleviate problems and increases the happiness in you. Again this is a clever trick of the ego for self preservation. In doing so it proves to you how limited you are. It says look my dear, you cant take this life alone. You need to find someone to share and then only you can overcome your limitations.
So feeling lonely is a way of the ego, while being alone is understanding the peace of the self. The self never makes you feel little , it on the other hand shows you how peaceful you are. How universal you are and what is more your true nature of being.
In being alone, you can also learn to practice the sense of being in the moment. As the stillness envelopes you, you are just aware of this moment. All the pure sensations coming to your being in perfect harmony.

On Experience

I need to explain the term awareness first.
Let us split it up the term. There are two things here .
1) aware
2) ness.
ness always signifies existence or presence of something.
When we are in the happy mood we say there is happi-ness signifying existence of happy feeling.
So the ness part signifies the state of being.
aware part signifies the knowledge of .

aware(Knowledge)-ness(Being)
So together it signifies knowledge of being . or knowledge(chit) of existence(sat).

Here is the crucial thing to understand about awareness. The knowledge of your own existence is not apart from your own existence.What i mean here is this. When we know something it is usually about an object which is apart from us.Say you say i know anatomy. Here the known(anatomy) is different from the knower(me). When we speak about awareness there are no two distinct things. The existence is the known and the knower is the me

So i am knowing about my own existence. Knowledge and existence has to coexist.

What is even more crucial to understand is that all experience starts from this knowledge. So it is the mother of all experience. The fact that "i exist and i know it " is the mother of all experience and from it springs a world. It is so ingrained that we never question it or feel it. Since it is so very given, it is not a thought in our mind.

Whenever you are having an experience say for e.g. you are watching a movie, your sensory perceptions are arriving and your mind is interpreting it and you experience the movie. But you never think about the fact that you exist and you know about the fact that you exist. This is not considered
as part of experience. It is sort of taken for granted. Your experience of the movie is only the sensory impulses of the movie and the thoughts in your mind.
As a result the mind grants objective reality to the movie, since the mind itself is not sure it exists always.
The world out there seems real only from the perspective of a fleeting identity called the mind. In order to lent credence to the experience, the mind grants objectivity to the outside world. In any change something must be unchanging. Since the mind is changing it lents credence to the world as real.

Let us include in that experience the fact that "i know that i exist" as also part of that . So what happens now.You must say "I know  that I exist and I know that there is an experience of a movie going in my mind."The movie instead of just existing in my mind has become part of a wider perspective that it is in awareness.(Knowledge of existence).

The movie is no longer real object independent of me. It depends on me for its survival. In fact it is part of me. If i dont exist the movie also cease to exist.Here you might say, how can you say this. Even if i die the movie exists. The I , we are referring here is not the false self of body-mind.
We are speaking about the continuous consciousness presence the one and only self.
So we are never having separate experiences in the world , even though we feel so. All experiences are in the self. Experiences are not out there.
They are in the self. You are not moving towards the outward objects so to speak to have experiences.The objects come to your awareness . They appear in your awareness.In fact they are dependent on the awareness for survival. Awareness is the only content of experience.
All other things like the objects the body mind etc are just in awareness.

This is the reason why Shakaracharya said "Brahman satyam Jagan mitya".

From the real perspective of the self which is unchanging ever presence, it is the only thing that is unchanging and the world is the transient reality .

Look around your room. See some object say a picture. What do you see?. Can you see the fact that your awareness( knowledge of existence) is witnessing the seeing experience. If not, think about the process as two.
1)You are seeing the picture
2) Your awareness is witnessing the process of seeing the picture.
Usually we dont experience the second one because of the mind clouding the experience with interpretations.If we can develop the trait of seeing this process also, slowly we would begin to see our true view of experience.
Close your eyes and visualize how the experience was. You started seeing the picture and you were aware of this experience.The real you was the witness of the experience of seeing.

Just like this in real life when you are in a sad situation . Try to stand back and see this as two.
One the mind interpreting the situation in terms of thoughts, and second the real you witnessing your own mind doing this task of thoughts.Once you are aware of this, the gravity of the situation fades and you come to the real perspective of experience.
Otherwise the mind would force you into accepting the situation as real. In the presence of the self, the sad situation is only a fleeting one.

If you rely on your identity to be a fleeting one, your unhappiness can never end as there are so many situations which can be considered as sad.
While you rely on your true identity all such experiences are transient and the real you stands uncluttered and uninfluenced by the so called experiences.
When you watch a child play and if the toy breaks, you never experience sadness while the child does. Why?. You know the fleeting reality of the toy. You can stand back and analyse the toy is only a transient source of happiness in life. For the child, the toy is the reality and hence its misery.


"When you think everything is someones fault you will suffer a lot . When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy"
-----Dalai Lama

The three states

Let us look at deep sleep . What happens ?. Are you aware that you slept or is it that you are just remembering the next day that you must have slept. Usually the response to any questioning about sleep leads to people saying " I slept so well that it was peaceful". Now the question arises. If you are not aware when you are sleeping, how do you say that it is peaceful?. Some people might say there was nothing but blankness when i slept. How do you say confidently that there was blankness without experiencing blankness. So you can see that even in deep sleep there must be some awareness which helps you to say next day that the experience was good. It is definitely not mind as we appear not to think. So there is no mind during sleep and yet we experience peace. So that something which exists which is not the mind and yet gives you an experience must be awareness. There is no outside world during deep sleep as the sense organs are not working. However we experience this state of bliss only afterwards as an hind sight. We are blind folded so to speak to the experience of pure awareness without any sensory inputs and without all the minds chatter.

Whoever you are , you may be a millionaire or a beggar the same peace is experienced in deep sleep.
The blind is no more blind , the rich is no longer so  and all are equally peaceful . The oneness which is not present when we wake up is purely experienced.
So there must be something fundamental about the experience which obliterates all differences. And it also shows that happiness is not in the external world but a state within your awareness which you everyday experience and yet don' t appreciate.  The sensory experience and mind are only hindrances to this state of bliss that is within you. If you can minimize their impact on you by abiding in your true nature, then happiness would never leave you. In fact the very nature of pure being is happiness.
Understand the deceit of your mind . Start unbelieving in what the mind says to you all the time via interpretations , projections etc and become your own master.


Similarly in dream state there is no sense of our body, but we do experience a mind and its mental objects which are all some modified form of our perceptions. When you are experiencing the dream , you so strongly believe that the dream is true. Don't you?. Only when you wake up do you realize that the dream was unreal. If you had a long dream say comprising of years of dream sleep, how pathetic you would be . The misery in our dreams shows that the mind is always creating a world for us which is interpreted for us. Otherwise why do you see a dream at all ? why is the dream different from the real world?. It knows that only during your dream state would you believe in even weird things. In waking state it shows a lesser version of interpretations. Just like you wake up from dream state, you should wake up from waking state also .

So you can see this. In waking state , there is a sense of body and mind . In dream there is a sense of mind but no sense of body. In deep sleep you have neither body nor mind. So what is common to all these?. It is not body as it is absent in dream state and deep sleep. It is not mind as it is absent in deep sleep.
From this you can understand that it is neither the body nor the mind that creates your identity. It is the pure awareness which exists in all states that is your true identity.
In waking state it is hidden by the mind and body sensations. In dream state also it is not felt because of the mind chatter and imaginary sensations. In deep sleep it is present but can be felt only afterwards.
So this is the reason why we are never happy in all these states. If you see this clearly then you also would know the solution.
What have we learned?.
We have learnt that the true happiness is not something outside us as deep sleep shows.
The mind and body sensations are hindrances to the true state of happiness as waking state shows
Happiness is inherent in us all the time and we experience it partially every day.
It is this eternal happiness we should long for , not the temporary subsiding of mind waves.

If you can stop the mind and abide in your true nature in all states , then you are eternal happiness itself. The clouds of mind and body sensations would clear out for you to see the sun shining ..

How to stop the mind?. It can be stopped only by  depriving it of the external world of objects so that there are much to think about. This is the reason why we say we must stop the attachment to the objects so that desires dont rise . Understand that your field of awareness is infinite and all objects are in you rather than outside. If everything is in you, what is there to get attached to ?. Do you desire your own hand or leg?. It is accepted as part of you. Just like that if you identity your true infinite nature, then everything is part of you. You are not a person but the whole universe itself. You are not experiencing anything , as you and the rest of the universe, but the experience is in you.

In olden days kings used to go in disguise to see how their rule was. They would go as beggars or some other costume. But within them they knew they were the king. if you truly believe that you are a king, then you wont identify with your costume or role in life. With reference to your body you are mortal , but body is not you, you are just a possessor of a body. Just like that a state of mind is not you. So how can you say  " I am miserable". Misery is only a state in your mind. How can you be a state of mind which is so fleeting.
All the misery that you experienced before are not there now. So have you changed your identity also?. 

Two abilities have to be cultivated. One is to know what is permanent and what is not.
Distinguish between what is permanent from the temporary. (vivekam)
Second is even when the temporary comes and troubles you, you should not be affected as you know it is only a transient phenomenon and you are not this temporary but the witness of everything.

Some practices

Gary weber one of the modern non dual teacher explains lots of practices for atma vichara or self enquiry. They are simple experiments which anyone can do. Here are some of them which i read about in his book Happiness Beyond Thought.
1) Just try to watch your mind and imagine that you have 3 buckets
a) Past b) Present c) Future.  If you see a thought pertaining to the past like i was walking down the garden when i saw a snake , put in the first bucket. If it is about the present then put in the second one and if the thought is about future like "when i see her i would tell her about it " put it in the last bucket. See after a few minutes which bucket is more filled. You would see that it is more in the past and the future.

2) As the next practice try this. Predict what you are going to think in the next 5 minutes. You can see that you cant do that . But still try and watch the outcome.

3) Watch your mind and try to see how many thoughts are pertaining to you rather than about the world say about "India and pakistan problem " or thoughts like that . Try to count the thoughts pertaining directly or indirectly to you.


If you do these practices you would see many things about the mind
1) You are always in the past and future and not much in the present.
2) You  have little control or predictive power of your thoughts
3) You have more I thoughts than general thoughts

4) Now for the "Who am I" approach . try this and try to feel the identity.
Suppose you have a thought like " I am Renjith and I am afraid of cockroaches ". try to go back to say  " I am Renjith and I am afraid".
Now go back one step further
"I am Renjith "
Now reduce it to "I am".
At each step dont you feel it more intimately describes you . It is the way in which we are tracing our way backward. At each step you are throwing away garbage and going to your root .
Are you that fear or someone who is aware of the fear?. Which more accurately describes your identity
You can see that all the appendages are like the roles and identities that the ego is trying to create for you. Try this approach on your own thought processes.
Slowly you would see that you would develop the ability to discard thoughts whenever you want to .
Try this when you are in a distressing situation and you are filled with thoughts.
I cant resist to quote from Gary weber here as he explains beautifully the process of the mind and the real I watching it ...


"Think about a great desire that you have, perhaps for the ultimate ice cream cone. (Feel free to substitute your own greatest desire, if isn’t Rocky Road or Cherry Garcia.) Be aware of the desire arising, filled with memories of the past pleasure of eating a wonderful ice cream cone, the flavors, how it melted on your tongue, the coolness and sweetness and how it ended the craving. This great memory was followed quickly by your desire to repeat that pleasure. Now you want another, even better ice cream cone, perhaps a different flavor, or a larger cone, or another brand, more expensive or exotic, one that you’ve seen in a magazine or on the web. This is the bliss sheath (Anandamaya Kosha) in operation. Your intellect and ego/I come to the game, and decide how you will get that ice cream cone, how to find the money to buy it, and just how far you will go to get it (intellectual sheath/Vijnanamaya Kosha). You then remember where you’ve found the best ice cream in the past, and become frenzied and emotional as you think about it (mental sheath/Manomaya Kosha). Your hands, feet, voice, breathing, circulation, eating, swallowing, and digesting are then energized to get and eat the ice cream cone (vital sheath/Pranayama Kosha). Your body carries out the physical actions of getting and eating the ice cream cone (physical sheath/Annamaya Kosha). And then the process starts all over again, and again, and again. Was there ever a time in this process where you were not a witness to the cascade of activities and forces at play? Were all of these emotions, actions and processes what you were or were you the subject that saw or felt them occurring? Was there an “I am”, a witness there at every step? Which is most true and basic in this process, a subject who sees it occurring, a doer that carries it out, or an unchanging “I am”? Before, during and afterwards in the great ice cream caper, what was unchanging, real and everlasting?"  Gary Weber

Please be Silent

Pappaji a direct disciple of Ramana , used to start his satsang with the statement
"Be quiet". This looked like a scolding to all gathered around who were all mature people. What did he mean by this?. He used to say many of you cannot be quiet. You are quiet on the outward but never still in your mind. Unless you become absolutely still in body and mind, the self would never be revealed to you. The distance to the self is zero. So you should not even move a bit to reach it!!.
Maunam is really difficult. However please note that being quiet does not necessarily mean absence of thoughts . It is being a state where only the present moment is. There are no divisive thoughts. Thoughts of variance of your existence with the world. Time has to freeze in the moment.

Many people might think that stilling the mind is a difficult task. It really is not that hard as it seems. In order to understand this you need to watch your mind and see how the thought system works. It works by turning attention to the outside world of objects . There are no dearth of objects around you and for each object you can have so many attributes and relations with other objects. So there is not at all difficult to have many thoughts. You would thinking about tomorrow's tasks you might be thinking about things to buy , preparation for a travel and so on.

What happens when you turn the mind inward ?. Obviously the whole world is collapsed into a single entity "Self". So the mind would find it difficult to think many thoughts as it is used to be . So if you are doing it the right way , turning your attention inward and resting there is the first experience where you would see the stillness of the mind. This is most of the times only a fleeting experience as the mind would pull you out of it very soon. However in that fleeting instance you had an encounter of stillness. Look for it . You would also see that with that fleeting instance time also stops in the current moment . Memories of the past or concerns of future dont disturb you.

Some people think that this is all about concentration. It is not about concentration. Concentration is being attentive on a single object (such as a flame)that you focus on. But here the self is not such an external entity to focus on or of an image of external object. So it is not at all concentration that leads you to the stillness. A more appropriate term is listening . Listening to the mind all the time , getting familiar with it , then looking carefully at the onlooker or experiencer of the mind and joining the experiencer and being there.

One of the hindrances to this process are vasanas or tendencies. As each person has so many experiences in life which are so varied that he would have assimilated lot of responses to them. All these surface when you try to turn inward. You would yourself be surprised at the kind of deviations that you would experience. Dont resist them , instead you would see them come and go. This is a cleansing process also.
Ramana used to sit in silence and the disciples just followed. The power of silence was greater than the words of any language.He used to say it is the loudest upadesa. However it is internal and spiritual silence not just absence of words or external movement.

One of the other doubts which arises is this. What would happen after my inward bound attentiveness. Would i be able to function in this world?. The answer is yes. This is because self attentiveness is not a completely continuous process in most people. However you would see that you are extremely light and free, completely peaceful as you carry out your formal things in life. Fear drops out of your being completely . A great expansivity fills you,which kind of fills you with love towards all.

This state is characterized by the purest form of love that is ever known. It is an encompassing feeling of perfect identification with the other entity. Love in the usual sense of the word is always between two identities or more. I love someone but i remain distinct as an individual . Identities are never merged. So i also expect something back . I expect that the other person loves me back and do whatever he/she can. In this exalted state it is not at all like that. It is actually merging identities. In fact as we have said before there is only one identity isnt it ?. So that way it is pure and serene. if you look at Christ , the message of love should be understood in this way. Love in its purest form is expressed only when you are spiritually enlightened. So what Christ said , if you love perfectly then there is no need for anything else. You need not even obey the 10 commandments, because for such a person there is no need for restrictions . All becomes natural. Charity also is not something you should do with the distinct identity. Unless you perfectly identify with the person you are helping , it is just a formality.

Roles

If you take a look at your life you would see so many roles that you took.I am a mother , I am a daughter, I am an IT professional  , I am the son etc
So many "I am so and so" roles.
Even though you never explicitly state this, it is these roles that create the thoughts in your mind. If you didn't have the root thought " I am this body". These roles make no sense. When you work , you use your hands , brain etc to function. But this is taken same as "you" by the mind.It is from these that you say "I am an engineer", instead of saying my hands and brain worked.
All the successes of your brain and hand become yours. Somebody praises you for the work you feel elated, somebody gives you a memo you are worried to the max.
Does the work correspond to you ?. Or is it that the equipment called the body carried it out for the real you?
If it is so what is so great about the work ?. An equipment can always work .
Your eyes are just a sophisticated video camera. Your brain a big computer. You own that for the time being. But YOU ARE NOT THAT.
See, how from disowning and stepping back a bit has eased your relative problems in that role.

Your children come from your body . So you say my children and other's children are not yours. So all these roles are created out of the ego.
Aham means self and  akar means shape. When the Aham takes a shape it is Ahamkar.
When the Aham doesnt have a shape it is the essential existence or the atman.
The ego meta-morphs into different roles in your life. Each of these roles create a set of duties, responsibilities, desires expectations failures  and so on.
As a mother you start to think about your child all the time which starts the attachment in you. This attachment leads to various desires for the child. You want the child to be so and so , you want to do so and so. See how this sea of samsara is created out of just an identity.
Take any incident in your life and trace it back to its root, you would see an identity that you took and which in turn leads to the ego.

The mind only works with the help of this ego. You can say that the foundation of the mind is the ego. All the various structures in the mind come from the basis.
The body too is affected by the mind and its functions. If you are tense, your heart reflects it  , your sweat glands and various hormones in the body too. When the body is thus affected , your mind becomes more pathetic. It now has new worries about the body also. So many people die of heart attack because of the stress creating havoc in their systems.

Since the mind has to rely on something slippery that it has to catch hold of your attention all the time. If it doesn't, the identity would also slip away.
If the identity slips you feel blank and that is what happens when you are mentally challenged. So in order to avoid that the mind starts building a system of lies. These lies create a virtual reality for you which you are attracted to and what is worse you start firmly believing in .

One of the tricks it uses is to superpose a previous incident in your life on a current situation. Suppose you had a nice child hood where everything was peaceful and serene. Suddenly your life takes a turn and you are subject to new realities of life. What the mind does is this. It superposes the old child hood days ( nostalgia) onto the current situation. It creates a new set of thoughts called comparison and respond . You assess the person based on your memories rather than on the facts. By doing this, the mind can hold onto the identity that it has created. The identity is how you existed as a body some years ago and now.
The opposite is also common. You could have had a troubled childhood and you can superpose that on a person and start suspecting him or her.
Another form of superposition is value superposition. If suppose you value money too much. Money has a value but if you value more than what is worth , it creates lot of new thoughts.
Fear is also created out of a projection into the future. Your body would be projected out into the future and analysed. This problem of fear also creates an anxiety now.

This living out of the moment is its way. When you have the correct identity is that ,you don't have a past or future identity that you can compare. Each moment is fresh and new. There is only the current moment in its full glory. Memories exist only of the facts not of the narrations or story lines.

A great yoga master once told us , the whole of yoga can be stated as perceiving reality just as it is without any interpretations.

What is the solution to this identity crisis?.
It is rather simple. Trace the identity and find out whether it is a real identity or an illusory one. The sages or the spiritual scientists have found that the ego is the illusory identity because it never can last. In deep sleep there is no sense of body, in dream there is an imaginary sense of body. So the ego takes a different shape in those states. Obviously we don't die when we sleep or dream. So if the identity has to correspond to those states also it cannot be the ego because the ego is totally different from the waking state.
That explains why we have all these problems. It is clutching onto a straw when you are drowning. The slippery identity is what made all the issues.
So not only is the solution according to what spiritual life says but also is essential even if you don't take that path.

The practice of self realization can be likened to the dark room analogy that we said earlier. The dark room is lightened by a mirror which lies outside the dark room. The mirror just reflects the sun light into the dark room. A person can see the objects in the room using this reflected light. But if he were curios he would follow the light beam onto the mirror and finally onto the understanding that it is the sun.

Similarly we need a system which would help us to trace to the root feeling of " I am". without the roles and identities. This is our real identity . ( Note that there is nothing after I am)
Note carefully what i said here . If we trace all our thoughts in the mind what we would reach " I am this body". We need to trace one more step backward, then only we reach " I am".

When we do that we come out of our mind since we have digged inside the foundation of mind .
This is the reason why the process is difficult and that is the reason why we have been oblivious.
When you reach that "I am " state prior to the role formations, and identify that the real me is that, then you cannot create problems even if you wanted to.

An example to this technique is the following .
Suppose someone asks you " what is in this book?".
What do you do ?. You open and read the book. You don't go on repeating "what is in this book ?" what is in this book?"......
Just like that the principal way is to investigate who " I am" by feeling inside our being penetrating the mind . We dont repeat " I am" "I am"  "I am" and so on.
Meditation is the way to reach your state prior to the role formations.( You are opening yourself)
 What is the real essence of me?From where does all these things come ?. what is the correct me?. What came before these roles?
You have to start the  journey inward .....

Here is a hint to watch your mind. When you are thinking two things happen.
One you are a producer of the thoughts. Second is, you are the experiencer of the thoughts. 
The first can be absent at times, however the second is always there.
In short whatever you are thinking or feeling, it just reminds of the fact that we exist. That is all. This feeling is there in our mental background.
That is the only truth in this whole business. Everything else is created artificially.
This is your "I am". Hold on to that. Turn your attention to that and discard everything else.

I told you the other day any form of prayer is wrong. This is because when we pray to an outward image of some absolute reality , we are again moving away from our self. Moving outward is the familiar way of the ego. It destroys our goal of reaching towards the inner self which really is the true reality. So if you want to turn your attention inward , you have to come out of this habit. Even though i may seem to say something paradoxical, while talking about spiritual practice, you would understand as we move forward.

There is only this current moment that we exist. The last second we have already died. The next second, we could potentially die. So only moment "I am " is this current moment.
So the "I am " is nothing but the current moment!!!!!.
Ego is an act of doing while the self is art of being

Journey that matters

We have been hearing and discussing many things . From ancient scriptures, from teachings , from mahavakyas. All this is useful only for convincing our intellect or budhi. The outcome is that we grasp that something is wrong in our life, something very basic needs to be corrected and yet the solution is at hand in our own being. But the most important question is "How to reach there?".

Let me quote from Nisargadatta Maharaj in " I am That"

"All are being liberated. It is not what you live, but how you live that matters. The idea of enlightenment is of utmost importance. Just to know that there is such possibility, changes one's entire outlook. It acts like a burning match in a heap of saw dust. All the great teachers did nothing else. A spark of truth can burn up a mountain of lies. The opposite is also true; The sun of truth remains hidden behind the cloud of self-identification with the body."

As the Isa upanashid says

hiraNmayEna pAtrEna satyasyApihitaM mukham |
tat tvaM pUShannapAvRuNu satyadharmAya dRuShTayE

With the golden lid the face of the Truth is covered.
It is only to the true seeker the truth is revealed.

All very correct but what are the steps?
Is sadhana required ? .If so what is that sadhana?. Is sadhana meditation alone or is it something more?. Is it hard ?. and so on.

Depending on what the individual feels, many people evolved various ways. Some say no sadhana is required . Only knowledge is required. Some say knowledge is the first step , we need constant sadhana to achieve there. A guide is one who can demystify the process .
Some people however hard they try come back to mundane life and get stuck there.
The reason for this varied approaches and successes is because, it is purely a subjective experience.
What works for one may not be an ideal fit for someone else. The knowledge we have  , the conditioning of our thinking processes are all so varied and different.

So how can we go about this journey?. There are a few things which we can state which applies to all methods.
1) Have the firm conviction that there is a possibility of self realization and it is truly the exalted state in which any being can be. Consider this as a possibility that you can explore. It is this will that would overcome the vasanas.( tendencies).
2) While you are on the journey towards that, listen to yourselves and take steps accordingly. If you feel that something needs to be done in a different way , do it by all means.
3) Carry out life's responsibilities , but make this also the most important goal of your life.
4)Contemplate a lot on the teachings and discussions. Not just while you are reading it, but also during life activities. Apply it to your life.
5)Invest in meditation so much so that it is a continuous activity . Live in meditation.
6) Don't get worried about any results as we all know it is a slow and long journey for most. Even during the journey you would start feeling differences. This is because of the thoughts getting clarified and your subconscious itself  getting clear.
7) Turn your thinking inward all the time as much as possible. If the thoughts come , filter them if they are not of the self. All our disruptive thoughts are of second and third person thoughts ( you , her , he it etc).
Abandon them and feel for the self awareness(first person I) all the time. We will speak about this later.
8) Never worry about whether you reach anywhere or not. The journey itself is a great thing. But persistence is the most important trait.
9) Once you reach the true state of awareness stay there . Hold on to it . Identify yourself with it. If you have reached this much you would know as you would always be ecstatic and would be only in the moment all the time. Intermediate stages exist you where you are off and on . Go on.

Our true nature

If you ask a person to tell us a brief summary of his/her life up to this point you would see that that person has created a reality of her own.

It is like going to a movie theater. You sit there in a seat and a projector behind you projects images on the screen . It is out there in front of you.
Just like this our mind projects the world in front of us out there and it is according to the thoughts emotions and feelings in us .
This reality is entirely your creation and it comes from a firm conviction that you are a limited entity
and you are dependent on others and other things for your completion.
This is the reason why we blame others for our problems. We create our own reality and it is
out there . This picture of our reality is different for each one . So how will it correspond .
Many of us don't even know this to be a fact and we strongly believe that life is one huge suffering.

All through your life you focus on what you don't want !!!
You always pray let that not happen to me let the situation resolve etc etc.
The reason why we do this is because is we don't really know what we want, but we know we don't want certain things.
why is that we are like this .. It is our conditioning. Nobody told us before what we are .We understood it from our own experience of reality , which is flawed anyway.So when somebody tells us that we are truly the ultimate we shake it off as though it is only wishful thinking.
This is where Krishna told Arjuna, I know what i am telling you is above you and you would never believe what i am telling you. So do one thing ..surrender to me completely. That way you can trust what i say and start living.
The important thing is not the surrender, it is the understanding . The guru is only the cause of the understanding
Once you reach the understanding nothing is required .
As sankaracharya says..
Na Bandhur Na Mitram Gurur Naiva Shishyah
Chidananda Rupa Shivoham Shivoham

When you truly realise what happens is you have full attention on everything. whatever you see in front of you, you are that. A painting or piece of music you become that . You see a person you become that . Fullly identified with all entities and fully in them.
There are no past or present in you. No divisions. no false sense of an away feeling .

There is infinite power here. If you say you want love you are that . If you say you want bliss you are that. It is not desire , it is just affirmation of what you have.
Nothing to interfere nothing to blur. Your true nature enables you to become anything you want.
Love is therefore the becoming of the other entity completely.
you realize that all through your life you have been hindered by something . Whatever you wanted it was out of your existence not in it.
Ashtavakra says to janaka..
15.16
Your ignorance alone
creates the universe.
In reality One alone exists.
There is no person or god
other than You.
.......
The sage is free.
His empty mind no longer projects
delusion, dreaming, dullness.
This state is indescribable.

Seer and the Seen

Just like the Panchadasi, there is another gem in vedanta called the Drig-Drishya viveka. Or in simple terms Seer-Seen discrimination. It was probably written by the teacher of vidyarani swami,  Bharati tirtha. It is a short treatise on specific aspects of vedanta using very tight logical thinking.

The first verse essentially says
"Different forms are perceived by the eyes
 Eyes are perceived by the mind
Mind is perceived by the consciousness
It is not perceived by anything".

Forms stands for all objects that we perceive. It may stand for people, flowers, the sky , stars etc etc. Anything which has a name and a form is perceived by us by the sense organs. Here even though the eye is mentioned it means all the sensory organs.
Forms may be different in that the attributes are different. Colors and shapes are different . All these forms are varied . But the eyes are the same which perceives all of them. So in this chain , we see that the objects are many the subject eye is the same.
But the verse says the eyes are also not the subject. Because blindness , blurred , clear vision etc are perceived by the mind. So even the subject eye is not actually the subject. It is only the subject with respect to the forms. For the mind it is an object of perception . The same mind can perceive the changing states of the eye. So the mind is the subject here.
But the verse says even the mind is not unchanging. Thoughts come and go and the state of the mind is also changing.
So these changing aspects of the mind is observed by the pure consciousness or the true witness which is the true subject in this case.
So we have so many objects like the names and forms , the eyes , even the mind . All the subjects in a situation are only relative ( eye is subject relative to form ) . The true subject is the awareness which is not perceived by anything and is unchanging.
So you can see we are trying to discriminate between what is changing and what does not. This is the meaning of the term vivekam.. or discrimination.
We see another interesting aspect here.
Change is possible only if  there is a common substratum of un-changeability. So that which is truly doesn't change is the absolute reality from which the changing relative forms arise.
So it is from the pure consciousness the mind arises, the different names and forms arises. It is intimately connected with the truth of existence.
In vedanta we call the objects as insentient or jada prakriti. While the subject is the sentient reality.
A doubt here may arise. The mind is capable of cognition which is an aspect of consciousness . How is this possible if it is insentient.
The answer is given in this . The faculty called mind is actually made of budhi or the intellect and mind or manas. Both of them reflect the true consciousness. A reflection is always not as true as the original. Hence its imperfection. The ego is the reflection by the mind of the pure consciousness.
It is because of the reflective nature that the faculty mind acquires cognition . However since it is only a reflection, the cognition is flawed.
Each experience is interpreted , twisted and projected by the imperfections in the mind.
Ramana maharshi gives this example.
Imagine a dark room where there is no light source. A mirror is placed outside which reflects the sun shining outside into the room. It is possible to see objects in the room using the reflection from the mirror . For the room it looks like the light source, however it is not as brilliant as the sunlight itself. The person unless inquires about the real light source may be happy living inside using reflected light. The mind is the mirror here while the sunlight is the pure consciousness  which illumines all and is not reflected and is unchanging.
So a truly spiritual person always tries to find the true unchanging reality underneath the cloud of relative changes and illusion . His gaze would be fixed on the sun and nothing else.

On Identity

I want you to imagine this..suppose this earth was destroyed..the solar system, our galaxy everything in this perceived universe. The space and time and all matter no longer exist.in this reality will anything be present?. Yes. That which survives all is the pure consciousness ...this pure consciousness is the real you. yes you are that..it is from this background of pure consciousness the universe got manifested..the basic stuff of reality is pure consciousness..or you. When i say "you", i don't mean any particular you. The sense of individuality is not there..the universe is therefore an appearance in you..

You are prior to that ..
The body that you own, the mind that you have is all as detached as any object..it is the wrong sense of identity that led you to believe that you are only this.
Truly speaking there is only one undivided reality and that is the pure consciousness or you.
You are prior to life ..you are beyond time and space.
Nothing can touch you ..everything is dependent on you..not you on other things..in fact there is nothing other than you...
You are also self illumining..just as you illumine everything
Lets see a simple example of identity crisis. Human beings in pre-historic times existed..in those ages there was no countries no cultures even ..we were just humans ..no wars no cultural invasions ...now after migrations, we created countries, cultures boundaries.a sense of nationalism was created ..from it a new identity evolved..you are an indian an american and so on..humanness is prior to that..
You need to transcend your national feeling to see that..
In this truly expansive view how insignificant our wars would be..our border problems would be..
Just like that it is your true identity that creates all the complexities.realize your true nature as pure undivided consciousness with no sense of person.
You are reality itself and you are prior to that..
Ashtavakra says to Janaka

"You have long been bound thinking: “I am a person.” Let the knowledge: “I am Awareness alone” be the sword that frees you.
......
You are pure Consciousness— the substance of the universe. The universe exists within you. Don’t be small-minded.

The pure undivided consciousness in which everything appears as transient things is the same Brahman that the upanishads speak. And when it says "Thou are that ", it wants us to realize this.

On desire

We have been discussing the influence of ego or the false self on our life. Let us see how this inner  world works.

All through our life we seek happiness. We can say that all our pursuits have this common theme. Underlying our endeavors, this hidden purpose is always there. 

Please understand that this is not at all bad. Seeking happiness is not unworthy thing. Why?

It is our innate nature. We are nothing but Sat-Chit-Ananda. Our natural inclination is ananda. 

But it is wrong to call this happiness in the correct sense of the word , as this ananda is not a state of our mind, but a state of our being itself. Happiness is only a state of our mind while ananda is the state of our being.

So you can see why we seek happiness instead of ananda. We do not know our inner true self or beingness, so we seek happiness of the mind as a substitute. This is managed by our friend the ego who says, happiness is the best thing in the world.

The ego tells us that if we desire objects and get them we would become happy. Let us look at what happens here. There are two outcomes possible. One is that the desire is accomplished. What happens afterwards is curious. We feel temporarily happy. Now instead of being content, we develop allied desires like having some more property , some more money and so on so forth. This is what is called greed. Once greed is developed, we have to run behind that  Later this can lead to delusion , bewilderment and so on. Now what happens when we don't accomplish this desire , then internally a frustration develops , which after a while develops into anger and so on.

So we have seen both the outcomes of pursuing desires in life. Both don't accomplish what we thought would happen namely leading to a state of happiness. Instead it just creates lot of thoughts ,actions and finally leaving us nowhere.

Now you say how does this work? Why do i have desire? This is very easy to see. Desire comes from two things one is the feeling of limitation as we discussed before. Second is from attachment. 

You don't desire each and every thing in this world. You desire things which you are attached to, or pertaining to things which you are attached to. It may be for money, it may be for overcoming insecurity, it may for your kid. For each one it is different. Now you ask how do we get attachment.

This is the most interesting thing. Attachment comes from repeatedly thinking about something. 

If you peer inside your mind you would see how the desire developed in the first place. You started to think about something most of the time. You cannot shake it off. You are always coming back to it. This obviously is what leads to attachment to that entity. Now the mind develops desire for these entities.

Now you ask , is not attachment natural?. Is not attachment part of life. The answer is it is for you to decide where you want to go. If you want to lead a life filled with these endeavors and finally understand that all was not worthy of it, it is fine. If you want to truly see the deceit , it is upto you.

We have already seen how desire works. So you might ask are all desires bad?. 

The answer is no. There is something which we can truly desire and yet be out of all the problems with desire. 

It is desire for the self. This is the only desire we need to have. How can we have that desire. Obviously by attaching ourselves to it, by repeatedly thinking about it, use our mind itself to be 

the pursuer of self. This is what we do when we study philosophy and apply it to our life. Our intellect which is a part of the higher mind becomes enlightened with the knowledge and we decide to substitute all our desires for one desire. The desire for the self.

What is the outcome?. Now the mind has to turn inward from all the external world and focus on the inner world. So this is the only desire which will kill all other desires. 

This has to kill all other desires because as we saw self is unlimited , so having that we would not need anything else. 

Once we realize our true self , we would have truly reached the ananda which was hidden from us. 

This is why i have been telling you, meditation is continuous ..you should always think about your inner being develop  a passion for it , and try to reach upto it. 

The self enquiry is  a wrong term here , self abidance is the correct term. As we discussed before, even though we develop a desire for the self using the mind , the real process would be out of your mind when we reach upto the self.

This can be compared to the following . We may desire a sweet in the mind but our actions are using the hand and mouth. Just like that the desire for the self is in the mind, but the way to achieve it is to feel our true sense of being or existence. To probe and locate it continuously. Where is the real "I am"?. The true sense of being...which illumines all. 

Are we Limited ?

Whenever we see people lamenting about their life , its problems etc, we need to see the influence of the ego. Even spiritual aspirants say i am such a humble creature and i have to attain spiritual salvation and i wonder whether it is possible etc.
There are two problems here. One is that we feel dual with everything. We are one entity while everything else and every one else is separate from us.
Second problem is we feel limited in our abilities in its content and all characteristics.
Our mind constantly reminds us of these limitations.

Let me explain to you how this situation arises. The true nature of reality is that it is infinite consciousness. It is a single undivided unique formless reality. When this absolute which does not depend on anything gets manifested in a form like a life form for e.g. a new kind of consciousness develops. What is the need for such a new kind of consciousness?. It can be explained as follows.
If we just had an infinite consciousness, we cannot understand an object which is limited. The infinitude would subsume its extent.

For e.g. when you see an object such as an apple , you are definitely seeing a limited object . A form with a name and limited in space and time. Infinite consciousness has to limit itself to know such a limited object.  This can also be understood as follows, consciousness always takes the shape and form on what it is contemplating. If it has to contemplate a finite form it need to be become limited.
So the mind which is the trapped consciousness plays a trick . Our mind limits itself by imagining itself to be one of the objects that it knows namely the body.It says let us forget about infinite consciousness and think ourselves as just this  body. Now having limited our consciousness , we can easily fathom limited objects.

This process of imagining that our identity is the body is called ego formation. This happens when we start thinking or verbalizing the perceptions.As soon as this happens we are in for lot of trouble.
why?. It is because we think we are dual with the world . A false sense of separation develops from the objects of perception. So we start desiring the objects. A desire is nothing but acceptance that i am distinct from the object and i want to subsume that so that i can be more bigger. I want that object to be attached to my identity so that i can be bigger in extent. I would feel fuller. I want a house or a car because i feel that it is something separate from me and i would want to be attached to my identity which is limited without it.
If you truly considered yourself as unlimited would you truly desire any limited object?

When after running around and getting frustrated with life we turn towards spirituality seeking all kinds of things. We still work under the assumption that  i am limited and humble being and i want salvation, i want to visit temples for peace etc etc.
So you can see that we are not willing to accept our true identity even then, All our limitations that we feel is because of the ego working. If we go on under the assumption that i am just limited we can never be yourself whatever japa you do , whatever mantra you chant. You need to come out of your present identity first. There is no other way. If you don't do that no method will work. You are only under the clutches of the mind.
As Einstein once told us " You cannot solve a problem with the same system that has created the problem".
Our mind has created this problem. So you need to come out of the mind to see the solution. The first thing to come out of the mind is to see the root thought in the mind.
The root thought is  " I am this body".
If you cut this root thought , all thoughts are destroyed....
What happens when we come out of this and realize our true identity? . We immediately drop the efforts desires dreams aspirations etc as they are foolish to the highest degree. We feel we are truly the unlimited in which the whole universe is appearing . There is nothing separate from us , so nothing to attain. We are neither proud nor humble. If we are absolute itself, how can we feel little?
If we are undivided with the absolute , what is there to desire( no object is separate from me)?

Advaita says there is only one reality which is undivided . So it is fundamentally wrong to say that i am limited. If we accept yourself as limited you are agreeing that there are two things. One an unlimited reality and two me who is limited which is wrong.

While you are reading this you get a feeling that all this is ideal , but isn't it far removed from the real, my practical life, my everyday chores and worries?.Let me quote somewhat extensively from vivekananda

"The Vedanta recognises no sin, it only recognises error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta, is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that. Every time you think in that way, you, as it were, rivet one more link in the chain that binds you down, you add one more layer of hypnotism on to your own soul. Therefore, whosoever thinks he is weak is wrong, whosoever thinks he is impure is wrong, and is throwing a bad thought into the world. This we must always bear in mind that in the Vedanta there is no attempt at reconciling the present life — the hypnotised life, this false life which we have assumed — with the ideal; but this false life must go, and the real life which is always existing must manifest itself, must shine out. No man becomes purer and purer, it is a matter of greater manifestation. The veil drops away, and the native purity of the soul begins to manifest itself. Everything is ours already — infinite purity, freedom, love, and power."   -- 


The Vedanta also says that not only can this be realised in the depths of forests or caves, but by men in all possible conditions of life. We have seen that the people who discovered these truths were neither living in caves nor forests, nor following the ordinary vocations of life, but men who, we have every reason to believe, led the busiest of lives, men who had to command armies, to sit on thrones, and look to the welfare of millions — and all these, in the days of absolute monarchy, and not as in these days when a king is to a great extent a mere figurehead.......
from Practical vedanta by vivekananda