Nature Of The Self Session 5 - I Am That I Am

Salaam.

Salaam.

Salaam.

Salaam.

Salaam.

What is this awareness and how can one obtain and cultivate it?

You are awareness.

Awareness is another name for you.

Please highlight this.

This is the most important thing.

Again and again,

I forget that I am awareness and I think I am this body.

I think I am the mind.

Or I feel that the mind is a container and inside that container there is a little small container which is the container of awareness.

No wrong understanding.

This field of nothingness is awareness.

This field of nothingness is conscious.

You understand conscious?

To be alive,

To know,

To understand,

To be aware.

So this field itself is aware.

This field itself is conscious.

In that conscious field,

Objects arise,

It knows these objects.

It understands these objects.

It is aware of these objects.

That is why the field is called the field of awareness.

Mental object is a thought,

Is a sensation.

I,

The field of awareness,

Am aware of the thought.

I,

The field of awareness,

Am aware of the sensation.

The sensation is not aware of me.

The feeling is not aware of me.

The thought is not aware of me.

I am aware of the thought arising,

Playing for a while,

Going away.

I am aware of that feeling or that emotion coming up,

Doing its drama for a while and going away.

It is not aware of me.

Yes?

So the mind does not have anything called awareness because mind is nothing else but feelings,

Sensations,

Thoughts and perceptions.

Mind is not aware of me.

I am aware of the mind.

Yes?

So this is just the mind and beyond that,

The background is who I am.

I am that field in which the mind arises and dissolves.

I am aware of the mind.

Mind is not aware of me.

With that understanding,

We read that again.

You are awareness.

Awareness is another name for you.

Since you are awareness,

There is no need to attain or cultivate it.

A lot of you are saying,

I will practice,

You know,

And when I practice,

I will cultivate awareness.

We were talking about mind's power of focusing on something or attending to something and we always attributed awareness to the mind or attention to the mind.

Now if you look directly,

You recognize mind does not have the power to focus.

Mind cannot attend to anything.

Can a thought focus on something?

Right now,

Notice some thought come up.

Maybe it's just a repetition of what Ekta is saying.

Can a thought focus?

First of all,

Is that thought alive?

Just check.

Alive means is it conscious?

Is it aware?

Can a thought look at I,

The awareness,

And say hello?

Do you recognize that the thought is not a conscious entity?

Yes,

Do you recognize that thought is not aware by itself?

I,

The awareness,

Am aware of the thought.

So earlier when we were ignorant about the field of nothingness being the field of consciousness,

When we were unaware about the field of awareness,

We attributed awareness to the mind.

But awareness or consciousness is not a quality of the mind itself.

I am awareness.

So since you are awareness,

There is no need to attain or cultivate it.

All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things that is of the not self.

So what are the other things?

A thought arises.

Feeling arises.

I give attention to it.

I get consumed by it.

I assume this is who I am.

I get lost in it.

I forget my true nature.

So Ramana Maharshi says,

You just don't give attention to that thought that has arisen.

It arises,

It plays for a while and it recedes.

Watch it like a wave arising and falling away.

Do not become one with the wave.

Then you will notice,

Oh I am awareness.

I am aware of that thought.

I am awareness.

I am aware of that feeling.

So I don't need to cultivate what I already am.

I don't need to attain what I already am.

All I need to do is stop giving attention there and give attention here.

When I give attention to myself,

All these objects that were blinding my vision,

That were covering my vision,

Now they are not giving attention to them.

I am focusing on myself.

Oh,

I am awareness.

I am the self.

Very clear?

That's all we need to do.

I don't need to practice for hundred lifetimes to cultivate awareness.

I don't need to practice for years and years together to increase my consciousness.

Consciousness cannot increase or decrease.

It's an infinite field.

Can infinity increase or decrease?

No.

So consciousness,

Awareness,

The field of infinity,

The field of nothingness cannot increase nor can it decrease.

It cannot be cultivated.

It cannot be attained because that is what I am.

Why I couldn't see it before?

Because I was attracted to that which was not I,

Not self.

The thoughts,

Feelings,

Sensations,

Perceptions,

They arise,

They fall,

They arise,

They fall.

They were taking my attention away from myself.

All that I do is stop being aware of this and focus on myself.

And there I am.

Very clear what he is saying in this paragraph?

If one gives up being aware of them,

Then pure awareness alone remains and that is the self.

He does not mean stop doing all your work,

Go sit on the Himalayas and only be aware of yourself forever.

No,

It doesn't even take so much time.

You have to just recognize,

Oh,

This is who I am.

That's it.

I've recognized.

Now I don't have to keep revising this is who I am.

I'll forget.

This is who I am.

This is who I am.

No,

I know now who I am.

That's good enough.

Now just rest as who I am and drop the wrong identification that I thought that I am this body or this mind.

Now just rest as the nuclear recognition of who I am.

So the questioner says,

If the self is itself aware,

Why am I not aware of it even now?

So now I'll rephrase this question.

What is he asking?

If these eyes itself have the power of seeing,

Why can't they see themselves right now?

Are you seeing what he's saying?

He's saying these eyes should be able to see themselves because they can see everything.

So now read that question again.

There is no duality.

Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative.

What is the meaning of relative?

Relative means there's a subject and an object.

Eyes are the subject and this computer we take down on the screen is the object of the eyes.

So subject,

Object.

This is relative.

But where the self is concerned,

Where the eyes themselves are concerned,

There is no relative.

The subject has to see the subject.

Eyes have to see themselves.

Can the subject see itself?

Can the seer be seen?

Can the perceiver be perceived?

So relative knowledge requires a subject and an object.

Whereas the awareness of the self is absolute and requires no object.

Remembrance also is similarly relative.

Requiring an object to be remembered and a subject to remember.

When there is no duality,

Who is to remember whom?

The eyes have to see themselves.

Is there a duality?

No.

So if there's awareness and there's only the field of awareness and the awareness has to be aware of itself,

There is no duality.

When there is no duality,

There's no subject and object.

When there's no subject and object,

There is no relativity.

So you cannot really see it.

Very clear?

The self is ever present.

Each one wants to know the self.

What kind of help does one require to know oneself?

People want to see the self as something new.

Please underline,

This is what you have been looking for.

Many people wanted to see it as a light.

Some people wanted to see it as something magical,

Mystical.

I'm going to have some different experience out of the world I'm going to feel.

Yes,

I'm going to go to this Advaita session and I'm going to get it.

Nothing like that is going to happen.

Because all your ego is story making.

People want to see the self as something new.

But it is eternal and remains the same all along.

They desire to see it as a blazing light,

Etc.

How can it be so?

It is not light,

Not darkness.

It is only as it is.

It cannot be defined.

That is why I call it no-thingness.

That is why Buddha called it Shunyata.

Because it cannot be defined.

How do you define no-thingness?

There is nothing to define.

That is why he says the best definition is,

I am that I am.

This is from the Bible.

I am that I am.

In our Sanskrit version it is aham brahmasmi or tat tvam asi.

You are that.

That is why it is given the word that.

You are that.

Because it cannot be described.

There is nothing to describe there.

It is a field of no-thingness.

You can only describe a thing.

How do you describe no-thing?

The best you can just sense it.

You can just sense I am.

But your ego says,

No,

How can it be so simple?

No,

No.

It has to be more.

It has to be something interesting.

Something delicious.

Something mystical,

Magical.

It is only a story of your own mind.

The longer you believe in this story,

The longer you are going to keep walking the path.

And you are not going anywhere.

Have you stood on a treadmill?

You just think you are going somewhere.

That's what is the spiritual path.

You are all on a spiritual treadmill.

And you think you are going somewhere.

Yes,

I am going to attain it.

Eta session will take me there.

Definitely.

Advaita sessions I am going to get there.

There is nowhere to go,

Dear.

There is nowhere to go.

There is simply that sense of being.

Right now look within and recognize it.

It is the sense of being.

Huni ka aisaas.

I am that I am.

The shrutis,

Which are called scriptures,

Speak of the self as being the size of one's thumb or the tip of the hair.

An electric spark.

Bast.

Subtler than the subtlest.

Etc.

They have no foundation in fact.

Please highlight that.

You were taught all of this on the Dvaita Path.

Yes.

All the scriptures that you did before this on the path of Dvaita,

You learnt all these things.

But they have no foundation in fact.

It is only being but different from the real and unreal.

It is knowledge but different from knowledge and ignorance.

How can it be defined at all?

It is simply being.

So now don't start judging all your Dvaita teachers that oh they were all wrong.

They don't know.

It is your journey.

You were interested in learning that the self is like this.

It has to be like this.

So then all these examples have been created for people who are looking for a definition.

Oh it is thinner than your single strand of hair.

Oh it is even smaller than a spark.

Oh it is the size of your thumb and smaller than the size of your thumb.

All these things are just given because you were looking for a form for it.

You were looking for a size and shape for it.

You wanted a mystical,

Magical understanding of it.

So these definitions were just created to satiate the seeker's own ego.

Now that you have reached the highest level,

Simply just drop school level mathematics and go to higher mathematics.

We don't criticize school level mathematics.

We accept it as a part of our journey,

As a part of our learning.

But now we get deeper into higher mathematics.

When a man realizes the self,

What will he see?

Most of us have this question.

The answer is there is no seeing.

Please highlight this.

Seeing is only being.

What is the meaning of seeing is only being?

In Hindi,

Kuch dee kega nahi,

Aapko sif ho ne ka aisas ho ga.

There is nothing that you are going to see with these eyes.

Or no magical inner seeing is also going to happen.

All that will happen is a recognition of what already is.

Aha!

This sense of being.

I have been this all my life.

That's all it is.

It's that simple.

The state of self-realization,

As we call it,

Is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away.

But simply being that which you always are and which you always have been.

Yes,

A lot of people come to this point and say,

Oh,

It's so easy.

What have I been doing all these years then?

What have I been looking for?

It is that easy.

The only problem is that I have misidentified that I or the sense of I with this body or the mind.

Just one more step beyond.

One step beyond the body and the mind.

Oh,

That sense of nothingness.

That is who I am.

And not the body and not the mind is so simple and quick to recognize.

It is not something new.

All that is needed that you give up your realization of the not true as true.

So what is the not true?

This body,

I am the body is not true.

I am the mind is not true.

But I have taken these not truths to be the truth.

I feel no,

I am the body.

I am the mind.

So you have to give up your realization of the not true as true.

All of us are regarding as real that which is not real.

We have only to give up this practice on our part.

Please put this down as a homework for yourself.

That this is the only practice that I have to give up.

What?

The wrong understanding?

The wrong understanding of not true as true.

And what is not true?

I am the body.

It's not true.

I am the mind.

It's not true.

So I drop these wrong understandings.

Drop this wrong practice he calls it.

A practice on our part.

Then we shall realize the self as the self.

In other words,

Be the self.

Take this up as your homework for the entire week.

Whenever I start identifying with this body,

There is pain in the body.

That is the time you identify with the body a lot.

Have you noticed a little pain,

A little discomfort in the body?

You start saying,

Oh my leg is hurting.

I always have this pain.

I don't know why I only have to suffer this pain.

Everybody else is walking around,

Jumping around.

I only have to suffer this pain.

I cannot walk around.

And you go on and on and on.

So you recognize,

Oh right now I identified as the body.

This is not true.

Immediately reject that wrong idea and come to the correct understanding.

Ah,

I am this field of nothingness in which that sensation of pain has arisen.

And it will set.

If it is playing for some time,

Let it play.

It will set.

I am that field of nothingness.

So I have to immediately take that step back from the wrong identification.

So this is for I am not the body.

When do I become the mind?

When some particular emotion comes up,

Some particular thought from the past brings an old feeling,

An old emotion.

I hold on to it and say,

Oh see I am always suffering.

That person is always happy.

I am miserable.

Again recognize,

Really is that who I am?

Is this true?

You explore.

You question yourself.

And you recognize,

No I have become one with the mind.

This is not true.

Take the step back and now be that field of nothingness.

And now see,

In this field of nothingness,

Is there misery?

Is that sadness that was there?

I can still feel that sadness coming up and going down like waves.

But I can still at a distance recognize that this part of me is unconcerned with that sadness,

That misery.

That is just another wave that is arising and falling.

So I am moving from not true to true.

Clear?

These are two main homeworks for this week.

Move away from the wrong identification of I am the body.

Move away from the wrong identification as I am the mind and recognize,

Oh I am not the body.

I am not the mind.

I am this field of nothingness.

That's the reason why I chose the word nothingness over consciousness or awareness.

Because at this stage where we are still learning to move away from body and mind,

We have to again and again recognize,

No when I say I am the body because of the pain in the body,

I recognize in this field there is no pain.

So nothingness.

Whenever I identify with that emotion or that feeling that came up in me,

I say,

Oh there is misery in my life.

I am miserable.

When you come to this field,

You recognize,

No there is no misery.

Nothingness.

So use nothingness more than calling it awareness or consciousness.

It will help you create the distance from the body and the mind.

That is the only practice.

Breaking away from your wrong practice of saying untrue things to yourself.

Then we shall realize the self as the self.

In other words,

Be the self.

At one stage,

You will laugh at yourself for trying to discover the self which is so self-evident.

I think most of you have already reached this state.

How many of you all have already laughed at yourself?

Oh my God!

What was I doing?

I was looking for myself in this meditation,

In that technique,

In this,

In that,

In that.

It's so simple.

It's right in front of my eyes.

How was I so blind?

You laugh at yourself.

It's like right in your face and you're not looking at it.

You're trying to find it somewhere else.

Moko kaha dohinde re bande.

Mein toh te re pass mein.

Where are you looking for me?

I am right where you are.

So if you have reached this milestone where you laughed at yourself,

Good pat yourself on the back from Ekta's side.

Big job done.

That first laugh itself weakens that old conditioning of I am the body,

I am the mind.

And you'll keep laughing.

Every time you'll stumble,

You'll keep laughing.

You'll keep laughing at yourself.

And you'll strengthen your practice of being in the self.

So what can we say to this question?

That stage transcends the seer and the seen.

There is no seer there to see anything.

The seer who is seeing all this now ceases to exist and the self alone remains.

This is another very important milestone.

When you start practicing being the witness,

Being the witness,

Being the witness,

Instead of getting consumed as the ego,

As the body,

As the mind.

There is still the seer and the seen.

Yes?

Then a point will come.

Both this seer and the seen collapse.

So there is no seer there.

There is no seen.

Even for one glimpse,

When you start looking and you don't find the eye,

The eye has collapsed.

You've got one glimpse.

That's great.

That's what he is talking about there.

So I'll read that again.

That stage transcends the seer and the seen.

There is no seer there to see anything.

The seer who is seeing all this now ceases to exist and the self alone remains.

Is this very clear?

So witness consciousness is a middle step.

It's not the final step.

It's like a stepping stone.

I use it to separate myself or distance myself from the body and mind and recognise,

Oh I am the field of nothingness.

I am not the body and mind.

Just a stepping stone.

And then I stop being interested even in observing all these thoughts,

Feelings,

Perception,

Sensation and the witness also collapses.

Or simply Ramana Maharshi's method is look for the eye.

Can you find the eye?

Eye the seer.

Eye the witness.

Can you find it?

Look at it.

Look at it.

You keep looking means you are not looking at thoughts,

Feelings,

Perception,

Sensations.

You've turned inwards and now you are looking for this eye the witness.

The moment you start looking for eye the witness,

You notice it is not there.

It has disappeared.

The self alone remains.

Very clear?

So self is not equal to the personal eye.

This has become very clear.

Only when the personal eye drops then you recognise the self.

That's why I don't call it self also.

Call it nothingness.

Because people confuse it with the English language when I say myself,

I am referring to I.

And we are talking about a state where even the eye drops,

The seer also drops,

The witness drops.

The ego has dropped,

The I thought has dropped and that is the field of no-thingness.

Now you have just got a glimpse of the field of no-thingness.

Now keep practicing to be there more and more and more and more.

It's okay if you slip into drama.

That will happen.

Definitely it will happen.

Doesn't matter.

I slipped,

I fell,

I got involved and consumed in the drama at home or at work or whatever.

Doesn't matter.

Again I stand up,

I dust my clothes,

I wear my hat.

Again I come to the sense of I am.

And see,

Can I notice the witness again collapsing and I can go just to the sense of being,

The sense of no-thingness.

Again and again,

Again and again,

Again and again practice this week.

And this can be only done in silence.

Not while talking,

Not while listening.

In silence I keep doing this exploration.

There also you start seeing,

Can I notice this witness dropping?

And then you come to that field of no-thingness.

Don't stop there.

Now start recognizing in this no-thingness the thought arises.

It is made up of the no-thingness.

In this no-thingness the feeling arises.

It's made up of that no-thingness.

Oh!

Everything is that field.

Everything is no-thingness or consciousness.

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