G: Hello everyone. Welcome.
Language is such an incredible power of mind; something precious,
a great gift of mind. And if we look at it carefully, we will see
it is still in the very primitive stages of development. I mean
you must know that just in trying to communicate with someone you
know. Right? You know what you said and they know you didn’t
say that. Same words. So there are certain words that are trance
words. That we kind of go into a trance about based on our past
conditioning. Very important words like God, Truth, Eternity,
Self. When each of us hears those words, it’s not for the
first time. So the words have a history that influence the
meaning, so perhaps when we first hear the word God, it’s in
a very Sunday schoolish way, where it’s actually a big
father, benevolent father who will take care of us if we’re
good. Then we grow out of that, but that’s still filed in
there somewhere it still influences. It’s still somebody,
and then well maybe it’s not somebody, maybe it’s a
presence, but it’s still a presence somewhere, away. And I
still gotta be good to get there. Based on our different
religious upbringings. Same with truth, of course. Truth is heard
in the context of the family’s truth or the family’s
political party truth or the tribal truth or the particular
culture or sub-cultural truth. This then is what truth means,
subconsciously, in individual minds. Certainly with the word
self. Then even when we get sophisticated, and split that word
into higher self and lower self, it gets even more complicated.
The higher self is the good self and the lower self is the bad
self. The higher self is going to God and the lower self is going
to the Devil. Very primitive and totally conditioned - a kind of
trance.So I believe that it would be very good if I can at least tell you, if I’m able, what I mean when I use certain words. Because it is not what you think I mean. If you can just hear that. It is not what you think I mean. So when I say God. God. I am not talking about anything that can ever be separate from anything. It’s the same as truth. I’m not speaking of a truth that is subject to change, subject to opinion, subject to a vote. I’m speaking of what is changeless as truth. And when I use the word self or you, I’m speaking to the truth that you are, which cannot be thought. Because it cannot be contained. You cannot be contained by any thought good or bad, superior or inferior, just like God, just like truth. The confusion arises in our misidentification with who we are as either the physical body, the emotional body, or the mental body. So when the physical body experiences pain, through the nervous system, we say "I hurt, I feel bad." This is just common usage. Maybe we say "my body hurts." It’s a very different meaning if you say "my body hurts, my body is feeling pain." Usually we say "I hurt, I’m in pain." And when the emotional body is in turmoil, "I’m upset, I’m despairing, I’m angry" rather than "my emotions are in turmoil, there’s anger appearing, there’s despair appearing."
And our strongest identification, perhaps even more than the body identification, is with mind. And when I use the word mind here, I’m speaking of thoughts. This identification that if I think I am this body, this person, then that’s reality. Thought has sway, has authority. If I think you are separate from me, based on physical sensations, then that has authority. So thoughts have in fact, taken the place of God, and also taken the place of the Devil. And there’s a war going on between the good thoughts and the bad thoughts and there’s a desire that arises to accumulate more good thoughts so that they can defeat, so the forces of light can defeat the forces of darkness. And who will win? The good thoughts will win, my higher self will win, God will win and I will be at peace, at rest. Tragically, what gets overlooked in this is that who you are is already at rest, already at peace and winning and losing has nothing to do with the truth of who you are.
The gift of Ramana Maharshi, with the question "Who Am I?" is a gift that is designed to throw your mind back on a very basic assumption such as "I am this person, I am a good person, I am angry." Throwing your mind back on that "who" to see if you can find a thing that is these things. If this is followed, innocently, purely, then there is a huge, astounding realization - there is no entity there at all. When this question "who" is followed to its source, there is indefinable, boundless recognition of one’s self as "no thing."
The mind is very powerful. We love its power. It’s the play of Lila. There will be an arising from that precious, pure moment that says "Whoa I got it. I got it. I’m really no thing at all." This is true, and this is fine, because in that moment, the mind, the thoughts are in alignment with reality. But thoughts, having as their natural law, the law of opposition, there will then also arise, in time, another thought "No I didn’t, That couldn’t be so. I am this body." "Oh how do I get that feeling back again?" "You can’t." "I can." Another war begins with "I got it." "I didn’t get it." "I am no thing." "I am something." So this precious, divine self inquiry from Ramana gets twisted, in the corruption of the power of thought.
Papaji, my teacher, my guru, spoke to me very forcefully, when I first met him. I came to him, hungry for the truth, recognizing that all my avenues of truth, while they had been extraordinary, beautiful experiences - moments of boundless recognition of my own self as the totality the presence of all being, still there was a re-identification, that I was unable to fix. Because that’s what I was looking for - the final fix, the super fix, so I prayed to the universe "Help I need help." and from that prayer, I met my teacher; a guru. I wasn’t looking for a guru at all. I was anti-guru, I was anti Hindu names. I was anti anything other than me doing it by myself, until I became so disillusioned by me doing it myself that I was open to whatever form help could come in. I prayed for help and help presented itself in the form of Papaji, my guru, and he said to me "Stop." He didn’t say do self enquiry, he said stop. I thought I knew what that meant because obviously I had heard the word stop before. So I sat very still, but he could see that I was sitting very still thinking "Now I’ve stopped, what’s going to happen? Is it here? Where is it, what do I do now?" Even more agitated. And he said "No, stop. Really stop. You want truth? You want to realize yourself? Stop."
All my fear arose. My fear "If I stop now when it seems so close, Then I’ll lose ground, I won’t get it. I’ll miss it. I’ll return to my reptilian state. I’ll be just as neurotic as I was when I was thirty." Stop. Everything came in why not to stop. If I stop now, I won’t be like somebody who’s got it If I stop now, I won’t be able to hear what he said. He said again "Stop. Stop." Somehow the trance lifted. At that moment, I didn’t know what stop meant. I had no history of "stop." I could hear it as if I were learning the word for the first time. Really stop. If you really stop; if your mind really stops, as it does actually, all during the day. There are many moments during a day, when there is no activity of mind. But the conditioning is to pay attention to the activity of mind, so these points of stopping are simply overlooked. What my teacher was calling my attention to was that moment, that gap, that millisecond between thoughts. Not to make that moment, he was saying that moment "stop" and in his saying it with his grace, and his power, there was then consciousness - mental consciousness of no thought. Nothing that thought did, just simply what is here, between thoughts, before thoughts, after thoughts. Stop. Because there was consciousness there, there was a recognition that presence is here. I am here. Not that I’m not here when I’m thinking, but I always thought, as we all have thought, "I think, therefore I am." Rather than "I am, therefore I think."
So the conditioning, the trance, was very severe for me as it is severe for most people, but so complex was this trance that it had no defense against something so simple as "stop." Consciously recognize this stopping. Then there is a real choice. Before that recognition, there’s just mechanical action of mind, based on past conditioning, based on desire, based on aversion. In that moment, there is conscious choice, to tell the truth about what is present before thought, after thought, and also during thought. And can that be thought? This, in effect, crumbled the neat patterns of my mind. Someone yesterday used the word "trippy." It was trippy, but it was not psychedelic. There was just a dropping - a release, a relief of this huge illusory world that balancing and rebalancing and reforming and reinventing that I called "me" that was only a thought and then another thought and another thought. In a moment of this recognition of what is still; what is unthought, there was moment of recognizing who I am. The moment of mind’s surrender. Because the breaking of that trance is the empowerment for the mind to surrender. Before the breaking of that trance, surrender is just another trance word. Oh yeah, surrender - "I’ll surrender to God, I’ll surrender to the guru, I’ll surrender to the teachings." But it’s just mechanical. It’s meaningless.
In a moment, in an instant, of recognizing the silence that is always here, you recognize your true face. You recognize the presence of God. You realize yourself. Then we can speak of bodily pain or emotional turmoil, or mental confusion, but we are not speaking of who you are. We are speaking of "my body is in pain, my emotions are off the wall, my thoughts are confused." That’s a very different matter. That identification is cut in the moment of recognizing what is always free.
This, of course, gets heard in spiritual, egoic terms, as then, "I am not my body." As a further separation, then the body is like the little self and the silence is like the higher self and then we have another war going on. People even want to die, want the body to die, so then I can just be myself. (laughter) Yes it is absurd. The body has no existence separate from the truth of who you are. And the truth is free. It is existence. It is not diminished when your body dies, as it will. It is not augmented when your body is born. And you are the truth. You are existence itself. And existence is conscious, is consciousness. Existence is not some materialistic void. It is alive Consciousness. And it is in love with itself. It is overflowing in love with itself. And this theater of you and me and circumstances and emotions and good events and bad events is God’s theater, not to be just distanced from, to be enjoyed, to thrill with, too weep with, but to recognize "Oh my God, what a play, what a theater," and in that recognition, to know who you are. Whatever role you have imagined yourself to be; to know deeper than that role, closer than that role, beyond that role, who you are. Now, not who you will be,.. Now. Right now, who you have always been.
And I suspect that everyone in this room has had at least one moment, either as a child, or on some trip, or in a moment of love, a moment of nature, some moment of recognizing that. Maybe not those words. Those are the cultural conditioning words of this form, this brain, this nervous system. Maybe without words at all. And sadly, there is very little confirmation for that. Certainly as children, we are taught to be somebody. In a particular family, from a particular town, from a particular area. And we either go along with that, or we rebel against that. But the reference point is who we are taught we are rather than who we can experience one is.
So the invitation from my teacher - my teacher sent me to you 0 is to invite you to discover who you are. Without any reference point. In that discovery, you will of course, notice the reference points, Well, I’m me, well ’m my body, well I know who I am. But rather than moving outward from that I’m asking that you question that basic assumption. Not "spiritually" question it, or "worldly" question it, deeper than that because "spiritual" is a huge trance word. We think we know what is spiritual. It’s like "Indian" or "sweet" or "nice", a "saint." And we think we know what is "worldly." These are trance words. Just get them out of the way so there can be some fresh knowing, based on direct investigation, direct inquiry, without reference to what anybody has ever told you, including what I’m saying now, for yourself, so that some reference-less causeless consciousness can confirm itself as already free, always free. The mind may be always somewhat bound by past and future, the body, we know is certainly bound by genetics, environment, basic programming and even if the life of the body is expanded 200, 300, 1000 years, still it’s limited. It was born and it will die. Thoughts also are born and they die. Thoughts of who you are are born and they die, but that stillness, that presence that is consciousness and conscious of its existence - no one has ever reported birth and death there.
We have great holy saints and sages from all religions, throughout all time pointing in their particular ways to this truth. The extraordinary moment in which these lives appear is a moment where it is available for everyone who is so inclined toward this investigation. Not everyone is inclined. But to some degree or other, you are inclined. That means to me that to some degree or other consciousness already knows itself in this particular form as consciousness. And this form - this Gangaji form - has appeared in your consciousness to confirm that. To say yes, trust that, surrender your mind to that. That is where the wisdom is that your mind is seeking. That is where the resolution is, that the activity of seeking is based on. It is already alive in you. My teacher promised me that the people I would see would need no particular teachings. This confirmation and reconfirmation, and pointing and re-pointing perhaps, but no particular teachings. You have been taught and there are beautiful teachings all around also from all cultures. Nothing wrong with those teachings. They are to be celebrated. Closer than any teaching is the truth of who you are. The invitation is to wake up to that truth. That waking up occurs in the mind’s surrender to silence. Not doing silence, not being silence, closer than that.
Sailor Bob Adamson spent
1976 with Nisargadatta Maharaj. He never came back