Gangaji - Still In Awareness

Still in Awareness
Compilation of Talks 2004

The most sublime truth of all has never been
stated or sung or written.

Not because it is far away and can't be reached but because it is so intimately close, because it is closer

than anything that can be spoken.

It is truly alive as the stillness in the
core of your being, not my being or her being

or his being, your being, alive in the stillness
that is the core of your being.

It is too close to be described, too close
to be objectified, too close to be known in

the way that we think of knowing as knowledge,
as objects.

But it is yours already. It's already present.

The only reason that I have appeared in your
consciousness is to simply confirm that.

I truly have nothing to teach you. You probably know more than I do anyway.

There have been plenty of teachers who have
taught exquisite and true and useful codes

of conduct, methods of meditation, ways of
living in the world, ways of manifesting in

the world but what this appearance that is
called “Gangaji” is, in your consciousness

is simply a pointing to the stillness that
is alive in the core of your being,

and an invitation to turn your attention to that,
to let that live your life, to give your questions

to that, to give your answers to that, your
failures, your successes, your form, your

formlessness, your action, your inaction,
your choice, your choicelessness, all,

to give it back where it came from, back before
creation.

This is possible only because you are that
stillness.

It would be impossible regardless of the intention
or the effort, if you were who you think you are.

Who you think you are is by the very nature
of thought limited.

So however grandiose that thought may be, it's
still limited.

But who you are has never been spoken, is
closer than you can know.

Who you are is where it all is.

***

I’m far from being still.

You’re far from being still.

How do you know that?

Who told you that?

I feel that.

Okay, there is a feeling and the interpretation
of that feeling, since a feeling is agitated,

is that what you mean?

The feeling is agitated so then there is a
conclusion that therefore I am agitated.

And maybe there is a mental agitation that
goes along with that so that’s further proof,

“I am agitated."

But I am here to tell you that you are still.

And this agitation is in your body perhaps,
in your emotions perhaps, in your mind perhaps,

in the elements perhaps, but you are the awareness
that recognizes the agitation.

You follow this?

There’s agitation.

Can there be recognition of that agitation
without some awareness of that agitation?

No.

Right, It’s simple isn’t it?

Is the awareness of the agitation agitated?

(laughter)

Yes, it bears checking.

Just take a moment to check.

Is agitation…

I understand...a lot of agitation.

And there's awareness of that agitation.

Is awareness agitated?

No

That’s right. (laughter)

Awareness is still, Isn’t it?

Yes.

I say to you, you are that awareness.

Agitation comes and goes, calmness comes and
goes, awareness is eternal.

It is eternally still.

You are that.

You can’t catch it with your mind.

Yes, because the mind just gets agitated further
in trying to catch it.

Let the mind do its thing, it doesn’t matter.

You are the awareness of the mind’s agitation.

You are what is already still.

I just don't believe it.

It’s not a question of believing it.

Don’t believe it. Don't believe it.

I don’t want you to believe it.

I want you to investigate and see for yourself,
is this true or is this just another belief.

In your life moments of agitation have appeared
and disappeared.

Right?

You have not been agitated every second of
your life.

Maybe a majority, I don’t know.

But that is the way it is with certain nervous
systems.

They vary like plants vary, you know.

Patterns of weather vary in human beings.

Certain nervous systems experience or generate
more agitations than others.

The awareness of that agitation that has never
come and gone.

That's always been present.

And it has always been still.

The dilemma and the suffering comes out of
misidentification of your Self as your body

which can be agitated or sick or in pain,
or your mind which can be spinning or calm

or confused rather than the awareness of all
of that.

Okay. What happens when I get almost overwhelmed
with feelings?

Aha.

What gets almost overwhelmed with feelings?

My body

Your body, now, does the awareness of that
get overwhelmed?

Check it out be sure

Okay

I’m willing to go on but I want us to stop
along the way because if we can nip the misidentification

in the bud.

I get a feeling that it happens in my body
and then I go Okay, I’m angry or upset and

it’s so overwhelming that I think my mind
will just go…

Yes it’s overwhelming to the nervous system,
right?

The awareness, just for now, just for checking
it out- Has the awareness of that gone anywhere

or gotten agitated or been diminished
or overwhelmed in the slightest? (pause)

It is very good you’re taking time
to look.

Yes.Take time to see this.

Î don’t want you to accept it because I
say so, don’t do that.

I feel like there is a little fight that goes
on in my head...

A little fight, there is a big fight.

Yes there is a fight.

The mind is fragmented isn’t it?

Into the good guys and the bad guys and the
mediators (laughs)

But the awareness of all that, is there any
split there?

No

You are doing very very well, your are telling
the truth.

So the very fact that you are willing to tell
the truth even though you are experiencing

the suffering of this situation means that
your interest is more in truth than in this

identification of yourself as this body.

This is excellent, excellent sign, you can believe
that.

Now throughout time, conditioned existence
has been taught, so you have to learn that

you are your body.

And that learning gets translated into thoughts
and then you have to learn you are being a

bad body because you are in pain or you're agitated,
“and stop that you bad girl, slap, slap”.

And then another part fragments off and says “I’ll
stop it when I feel like stopping it.

Leave me alone bam, bam” And this is what
goes on in your mind, right.

I am not a mind reader This is what goes on.

This is what goes on in individual minds and
goes on in the collective mind.

In the collective mind we witness it as wars,
religious wars, or political wars or genocidal

wars but it is the same mind at war with itself.

One side of the fragmentation of mind deciding
the other side has to go.

No room for it here.

And the identification and the suffering in
that or the self-righteousness in that.

But the point here is there is an awareness of
this war that is not at war.

That is peace itself.

And that is your soul.

There is an opportunity at this moment in
your lifetime to align yourself with your

soul rather than these warring factions of your
mind.

I'm not saying the war will immediately end.

I'm saying if you align yourself with your
soul, the war won’t be empowered.

They'll run out of provisions.

There may be clashes but the war’s steam
will have finished because your central attention

has shifted to its source, which is awareness
itself, vast limitless awareness.

Peace, stillness has shifted to who you are,
not who you thought you were.

Who you thought or think you are is only a
thought in your mind.

It comes and it goes.

It changes, it mutates, it likes, it says
that you are a good one day and bad the next day.

The awareness doesn’t change, doesn’t
move, radiates the presence of love, regardless

of the thought ” I am bad or I am good' irrelevant in the
face of this awareness.

And somehow you know it.

Now, I understand the suffering.

And I don’t want to trivialize the suffering
or dismiss the suffering as nonexistent.

I mean, it is but I don’t want to dismiss
it as that. (laughter)

Yes, I want to wait until you do that.

Then we will laugh together.

Because there's a weight there and an identification
there and am not asking that you now layer

on top of that identification another identification
called “ I am awareness”.

'Cause then they are just stacked, you know, and
you can walk around saying “I am awareness”,

and smiling and laughing and then four o’clock
in the morning “oh yeah” comes up (laughter)

because it's just another belief.

But if it’s not a belief but in fact a direct
experience then what ever arises in whatever

time of day or night, you can investigate
the truth, “Has awareness been diminished by this?

What is the separation between me and awareness?

Do you find one, a separation between you
and awareness.?

I do now

At the moment because you identify yourself
as a body separate form awareness but awareness

is here always and this body comes and goes.

Even in a day, I’m not even speaking about
deep sleep now, but in a day aren’t there moments

when you are not aware if your body?

Yeah, you're aware of other things, yes, or you're aware of spacing out, yes, aware of daydreaming,

aware of working intently focused, aware of dancing, aware of liking something, aware of not liking

Oh, then aware of the body, aware of the heartbeat,
aware of the breath- back and forth- the constant

in that is awareness.

Yes, yes, this is it. You've caught it.

When you recognize this, then you can explore
awareness with awareness, and then you see,

“does it have a boundary? Is it a thing?

Is it limited?”

Then you recognize “we’ what we call ourselves
are all in awareness.

There is awareness here, aware of awareness
here and differences in the form “here and here”

but the same radiant, simply, absolute
awareness.

Yes, I see you catch it.

Its beautiful, your willingness to tell the
truth, your willingness to be exposed, to

investigate, to be free.

Yes, and amazingly awareness, even though it doesn’t
have attributes of beauty, is beauty.

Even though it's untouched by good or bad,
it is radiantly good.

Is God itself.

Because in truth, God has never left the soul.

I'm very happy to see you see your Self.

There may be moments…

Expect moments to come where self-doubt or
agitation will once more say, “No you're mine.

This life is mine.

That's all right, you just stop and tell the
truth.

“Has awareness left?

Has awareness changed?

Is awareness at peace?

It's not forcing your mind to be at peace
or forcing your body to stop suffering.

It is just telling the truth.

And then the mind naturally unwinds.

The body naturally comes to a place of equilibrium
or not.

It doesn’t matter because the truth is being
told.

and the truth is primary.

(instrumental music playing)

So there is a certain point where you tell
the truth.

And this point is now, obviously.

And that’s why we meet.

We meet in the spirit of truth.

We meet to surrender to truth.

The mysterious force that has already appeared
in your life and said,

“Come here, come home, rest, be still”.

That is what meditation is.

That's what practices are, what prayer is.

That is what rituals are.

But Papaji’s invitation is, not really a
prayer, it is certainly not a ritual.

It is not a meditation.

It is not a practice.

It's the immediacy of right here, right now,
stopping, looking for anything.

Being still, not working on being still, or
working to keep stillness (soft laugh).

Being still is being who you are, not cultivating
stillness or being bigger in your stillness.

Being who you are is being still.

Being who you think you are is your lack of
surrender to being who you are.

“Well, this is just who I am.

You just have to love me as I am”.

That’s who you think you are and it is not
lovable (laughter).

You have to face it.

And it never will be.

It may be cute or not cute but it is not lovable.

Who you are is lovable.

'Cause who you are is love.

Plain and simple, That's the truth.

All the rest is some resistance to that or
denial of that or searching for that. It's all the same.

(instrumental music)

And where I’m at now is, there's been kind
of awareness of the story.

And then going back into the story and the
awareness of the story and then going back

into the story.

Does the awareness go back into the story?

No

What goes in and out of the story?

'Cause it's so great you can say “no”
immediately.You know it is not the awareness.

You are aware of something. Yes.

Going in the story and going out of the
story.

This is excellent, excellent.

What is it that goes in and out?

The awareness becomes aware of itself and
I’m aware of the awareness

As awareness

And then I’m me again.

And where is awareness in that moment of “meness”?

Forgetting itself?

What’s aware of forgetting?

Oh yes.

Yes. You see what happens, is because the mind,
as we have been speaking here in the last

few days, is so brilliant, so awesome, awareness
itself becomes an object.

So I was speaking no form but you can then kind of have
this amorphous “oh awareness”

and so of course that's subject to appearance and disappearance.

But the awareness of that awareness that comes
and goes does not disappear.

“Me” appears in it, the sense of “meness”,
the physical, emotional, mental sense of individual

nervous system taking in individual processing
of information.

That appears and disappears as does that notion
of awareness appear and disappear.

But there is pure awareness that cannot be
notioned.

When you say forgetting, you are forgetting
some 'thing'.

You know there's a problem with this phrase
about self-remembering, as there's a problem

with any phrase that is spoken and then gets
taken out of context and gets worshipped and then

people have to "self-remember”.

But you cannot remember your Self.

It is impossible, because you're not a thing
that is an object that can be stored in a memory bank.

You can remember a notion of your self or
an experience of your self or an idea of your self.

Just like you remember your name.

Every morning when you wake up, you have to
remember your name again.

It’s quick because you’ve practiced it.

But there is an instant where you have no name
and you remember it.

And so we assume we can do that with the
truth of who we are.

You cannot.

If you recognize and are willing to recognize that you cannot remember your self, the truth of your self,

Then immediately you will see that you also can’t
forget it.

It’s not subject to being remembered or
forgotten, because it is not an object.

Did everybody here that?

Who you are is not subject to being remembered
or forgotten.

So give up remembering your self.

This is worse than a useless activity.

It's the carrot again. It's an image of yourself.

It's like awareness, or bliss or emptiness.

But now this bliss, and awareness and emptiness
has a boundary had a birth, subject to change

and a death.

Forget it.

Save yourself some trouble.

Forget it, then you can see what is out of
the bounds of memory, what cannot be forgotten,

cannot be remembered, cannot be denied.

Cannot be found and cannot be escaped.

This idea “I will find it or I will remember
it or I will keep it”

This is an idea of you as a thing, walking
around like a little stick figure, going after "It".

This is all in your mind.

Forget it.

Forget it.

This is what Papaji means when he says, “Give
up the search."

And we think, "Oh, he couldn't really mean 'give up the search'.

He means that metaphorically or poetically,
not really give up the search “.

Yes, give it up.

Give up the search.

You give up the search, you give up the seeker.

You give up this little stick figure in your
mind or this fleshy wonderful, godlike creature.

And see what is here.

It’s the same as dying.

Only it's dying consciously before the body
dies.

(instrumental music)

A word that I hear often, when I suggest or
demand that someone stop or be still or tell

the truth is “trying”, “I’m trying
to. I’m trying to”.

Do you know this word?

Do you use this word sometimes?

“I’m trying to." And this is a big trap.

In using this word “trying”, what it usually
means is “I’m trying to do that”.

And so the trying is the effort around doing.

But really telling the truth or being still
or stopping is much simpler than doing anything.

And so once there's a trying involved there's tension, different from focus is tension.

Because you can’t quite find how to do it
and many people ask me, “But how, but how?"

That’s really looking for some model, or some
picture, or some image and it is much simpler,

It's much closer to home.

You may ask “how to be”

but you already are.

So if you'll stop trying to be, there's an expanse
that opens up of beingness, or rather there

is an expanse of recognition of beingness.

But the trying is covering because of the
tension and contraction of energy.

“I want it." I have to get it. "How do I do it?””

I’m trying to do it." Just stop. “Okay, how do I stop?'

So you can see the dilemma in speaking about
this because language itself is already one

step out from what is closest in.

The simple fact of being, it takes no trying.

So I really want you to understand that I
am not talking about changing your behavior.

There is a natural appropriateness of behavior
that there is nothing wrong with.

The way you speak to your parents, the way
you speak to your children, the way you speak

to your friends, the way you speak to the
desk clerk, the way you drive your car.

This is just appropriate behavior that gets learned.

But deeper inside, there is often a tension in trying to be something that that behavior says you are.

Trying to be a good person, trying to be brilliant and the fear is if I don’t’ try to be I will be the reverse of that.

I will be a bad person. I will be a stupid person, trying to
be of worth or I'll be a worthless person,

trying to be enlightened or I will live in hell and ignorance.

And so, of course, what has to be faced sooner
or later and the suggestion of this message

from Ramana and from Papaji is that sooner is right
now, is that which is being avoided.

Ramana gives us the example with facing death.

It’s all about facing death, all of it.

But our mind fragments death into lots of
little mini deaths like being worthless or being

no good or being condemned to ignorance or
hell.

So in this moment, if you aren't trying to be any thing or any body or any where or any way

Who are you? What are you? What is here?

If you aren't trying to be some place, where
are you?

If you aren't trying to be, are you?

It's possible you can at least glimpse the
extraneous energy and unnecessary suffering

which is the attention of your lifespan which
may be over today or tomorrow or in a year

or ten years, who knows? But the attention of your lifespan is spent unnecessarily, extraneously.

So the question, “Where is your attention?”
is the same as “What are you trying to be?”

"Who are you trying to be?”

"What are you trying to escape?”

Which is the same as, "Who are you, really?"

(instrumental music)

How do I stop the obsession?

Oh, this is beautiful, this is the question "How do I stop the obsession? Yes, this is a true question.

The real question behind that, the question,
“How do I obsess?’ can be seen.

The how to stop the obsessing cannot be seen
because stopping…Do you get this?

But what can be seen is how the refusal to
stop and its justifications and it’s tangents

and it’s sophistication, and it’s cynicism,
how it plays itself based on desires and hopes

and fears but what is already stopped within you?

Everything, it's...I don’t know. I don't know.

So when you make that statement, “I don’t
know," there's awareness of that statement.

Is that awareness moving in any direction?

No.That’s right.

So the secret really is that
when you stop, you stop identifying with the

movement and you identify with awareness.

I'm not speaking of observer and observed.

I’m speaking of the awareness of the observer
and the observed, in which both the observer

and the observed appear.

So already you are stopped.

And so when I say “stop” you are already
stopped.

You are already awareness.

Attention is gathered, stop to what already
is at peace,

where fulfillment is already.

Yes, you see that. This is the beauty, how
simply and really easily it can be seen.

With that beauty there is a tragedy, how easily
it is turned from, how easily it is trivialized,

given up, dismissed, denied, ignored but the
ease is not diminished by the turning.

So still within you, however many times your
mind has turned from this, simple and radiant truth,

there is the welcome, there is the
invitation, home, right now.

Thank you

You are very welcome.

You are very welcome.

This is an essential experience that is available
to anyone who is even curious enough to investigate.

From this essential experience, there is choice.

There may appear to be lack of choice but
you have an experience now of what is already at peace,

already stopped, already free, already who you are.

That's the gift my teacher sends to you,
from me, via me. This is Papaji’s gift.

Did you have anything else you wanted to say?

No, I’m just enjoying this. (laughter)

That's the opening, that's the beginning.

There may come, expect, many, many challenges,
but always there is this very simple truth:

what is free, what is conscience, what is at peace is the awareness that is present every moment.

That's who you are.

Who you think you are gets its power from
that awareness.

Awareness has no problem with any thought.

Only thoughts battle each other.

That's why you can have a horrible history as a thought form acting it’s way out in the collective mind

and you can still return home, as a prodigal son.

(instrumental music)

The question is, is there ever a time when
awareness is no longer overshadowed by emotion?

Actually all the time, all the time.

What happens is the mind, the individual awareness, the ray of universal awareness gets fixated in a loop of

emotional drama. But if at any moment in that loop,
at any point that loop, the individual mind stops and

examines that moment, investigates that moment,
all the way, whatever the emotion, instantly

there is full clarity in awareness.

So then every emotion is a vehicle, every
moment of every emotion is a vehicle.

Awareness is not overshadowed by anything
ever, ever.

You see, we use this word “awareness”
but often what we're talking about is an

individual state of awareness that gets called mindfulness, or equanimity, or oceanic or Samadhi,

or clarity. Those are states of awareness.

And then we also have what we call the negative states,
which you know, “lack of equanimity, confusion,

anger, negativity, fear.

Those are also states of awareness.

But you cannot have any of those states without
awareness.

This is not illogical.

This is very logical.

You can have awareness without any state.

You don’t need any state for awareness as
some people in here have discovered.

There can be a moment, an instant of nothing happening.

Just awareness as you just spoke of, no trees,
no me, just awareness.

Then trees reappear. Does awareness disappear?

Well how would you know there are trees, if awareness disappeared?

How did you know there were no trees if awareness
disappeared when there were no trees?

So what happens in certain spiritual conditioning
is we start to elevate certain states that are elevated.

We don’t start to elevate them.They are elevated states

but we start to assign
the elevated state as the truth of awareness,

rather than recognizing awareness is
present in any state.

Awareness is omnipresent.

Awareness is God.

It is always here, omnipresent, omniscient,
knows everything, is aware of everything.

That doesn’t mean some like powerful thing
knowing what you're thinking, you're thinking

knowing that you blinked, you didn’t blink.

It means, in your mind, everything that occurs or doesn’t occur, occurs in the presence of awareness.

The shift, the break happens when you recognize,
as was spoken of

here so beautifully this morning about the cars passing on the road but here you are.

Emotion as weather, so the winds came up this
morning.

There were whitecaps on the lake, and rain
came but here you are.

You didn’t change.

Life didn’t change.

So it’s dropping the individual awareness,
deeper and deeper back into it’s source.

Not so you have to stay in the source, because
you can’t be separate from the source.

If you stay in the source there's still some
latent thought, 'If I don’t stay here

than I won’t be awareness." This is fluid, effortless being. Awareness is effortless.

Identification with particular states of awareness
is perhaps part of the organism, perhaps part

of the evolution and is a source of suffering,
because then there is identification with a sufferer.

And a sufferer is an image or a sensation that
appears in suffering that is identified as me,

associated with the body and the sensory
nerve endings of that body.

But deeper than that, there's awareness, aware of the suffering, aware of me, aware of identification and free.

It is already present.

The mystery is how it got overlooked.

But let’s leave that as a mystery.

We don’t have to solve that mystery.

Just stop overlooking it.

(instrumental music)

I have moments that I would say of stopping
and waking up and then I have moments where

I would say I’m aware that I’m not awake.

So there’s kind of that being awake and
being aware that I’m not awake.

And I don’t really know what the question
is, just looking at that.

So let me ask you a question.

So when you say (this is so rich because everyone can relate to this, surely).

So I want to know what you mean by “I am
awake or I am not awake.

What “I” is awake?

There is a moment of seeing like how I usually
see myself then seeing it likes it’s

a horse, you know like a horse that I have.

That that personality is just this horse that
I have but it’s not me, you know

Excellent, beautiful and then in the other
moment?

Then I am the horse and it’s very real and
sometimes it's like “oh, I'm being the

horse” and I remember that I’m not the
horse but is seems really real right now.

So what is exactly the same in both of those
experiences?

We understand what’s different

Yeah

One's light and one's dark or one is identified
and one is free of identification.

But what’s the same?

What aspect of both of those experiences is
unchangeable?

I don’t know.

I know it is so close, it is so close that it goes overlooked.

When you said, initially you said “and
then I am aware.

I am aware that I’m awake and then I am
aware that I’m identified as a horse.”

Are you aware that you are awareness?

I get the idea, you know

Impossible, you can't get the idea because
it doesn’t make sense but you can,

you can catch the reverberation of it.

It’s like tuning, you know, (mmmm) and then
we are on the same wavelength.

And then what happens is you try to get it
as an idea and its flat.

You lose the tune.

Right?

Yeah

So in the experience of “I am aware, I am
awake and I am aware I am not awake”.

What is unchanging is that “I am aware”.

The truth is I am awareness.

What happens is we identify with the experience
of awakeness and we hate the experience of ignorance.

And that’s then this spiritual dharmic wheel
'I’m awake, I’m asleep, I’m awake,

I’m asleep, I’m awake, I’m asleep,'
which is the same wheel as the worldly wheel,

“I’m good, I’m bad, I’m rich, I’m
poor, I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m beautiful,

I’m ugly, I’m stupid, I’m brilliant”
Familiar?

I mean I must of gotten your version in.

We all have all parts of it, many spokes on
this wheel.

But the spiritual one and that's what I’m
speaking to many people is, 'I’m awake,

I’m asleep, I’m awake, I’m asleep, I’m
awake, I'm asleep.

I want be awake all the time; I don’t want
to be asleep anymore.'

All the time overlooking what is closer than
awake or asleep.

What is free of both awake and asleep.

Now I believe it to be so, I am not sure about
this, but I believe it to be so,

that in order to discover what's closer than awake
or asleep, you have to first to have an experience of

“I am awake”.

Because there's this tilt to our experience
of ignorance, sleep, sleep.

and then 'poof,' there's an essential experience,
of awakeness, where you recognize,

I am not this personality.

I am not this set of this story.

I am not this story.

There is a recognition there and it is a beautiful
recognition.

And it is filled with light and freedom and
joy and laughter.

It's an essential experience because it's
the counter point to the normal experience.

But it is not the final experience.

It’s the opening of the final experience.

It’s what Papaji would call “half-baked”.

Half-baked but half-baked is half-baked. Right?

Half baked, good, so back in the oven is
to discover, 'Okay if I’m aware when I’m

awake and I’m aware when I’m asleep, who
or what is it that is aware?

So when you say, “I am aware,” Who is
aware?

Is it not awareness itself that is aware?

Let’s see, like right now.

Isn’t there an awareness of this exchange,
an awareness of whatever maybe happening or

awareness of no awareness of what's happening.

But awareness is here so close- closer than
any thought- closer than any heartbeat.

Closer than any awakening and closer than
any sleep, closer than any identification.

And present in every identification as well
as every awakening.

Now when I feel into it, it doesn’t fit,
you know words.

It doesn’t fit a word, that’s right.

But a word fits into it.

Every word is in it.

You see, do you catch it, what I'm talking
about here.

This is not just giving you another spiritual
search.

It’s not giving you a religion or a set
of beliefs.

It is first of all acknowledging that you
have had an essential experience.

If you haven’t, you don’t know what I
am talking about.

And you will have one.

You will get one because they are contagious.

And it’s what you want.

So you’ll have it.

You are mind is turned in that direction.

I would say that 90 to 99% of the people in here
have had an essential experience.

Even if you don’t remember the exact experience,
you have an echo of that experience resonating

in your being.

Even if that experience happened with some
substance, even if that experience happened

in your sleep, it’s there. That's great.

Now, what was unchanged even by that experience,
by that blessed, hoped for, prayed for

searched for, worshipped for, worked
for experienced, experience.

What is unchanged by that?

When you find your Self, you find what is
unchanged by any experience.

Blessedly delivered from hell but unchanged
by that delivery.

You understand this?

Because otherwise, you will fear hell and
you will resist hell and you will hate hell

and you will spend the rest of your attention
in this life story avoiding hell.

And then that becomes the religion, the avoidance
of hell, the avoidance of pain, the avoidance of

suffering and then the life once again, very superficial
only now it is a spiritual superficial life.

Don’t settle for that.

The essential experience is the counter balance
to the normal experience of plodding through

life miserably, neurotically, there is an
essential experience that penetrates and cuts through.

How it came to you, I don’t know and I suggest,
you don’t know.

It is very skillful to not know how it came
to you.

By Grace, by luck, some mystery, there
is an opening and there is a direct knowing

of oneself as free- free of the personality
or free of the identification or freedom itself.

(Instrumental music)

This is the profound teaching of Ramana when
he says to Be Still, to be the stillness that you are.

And this stillness is eternal.

And it is the sublime nectar of being.

It’s not a magic potion.

It won’t keep bad experiences away but it
will keep the truth shining regardless of experience.

It won’t keep your body from aging or keep
your body in perfect health always but it

will keep the radiance and the innocence and
the purity of your own nature obvious regardless

of the state of the body or age.

It won’t bring you great riches.

It won’t help you win wars.

It won’t make you the queen of the world
or the king of the universe but it will reveal

the source of power, which is the resting
place, which no war can disrupt,

which no individual power can touch.

(instrumental music)

So in this moment, as we are gathered here
with our attention on this if just in this

moment for just five seconds, thirty seconds
you just put aside the whole story of who you

think you are, the story of your unenlightenment,
the story of your enlightenment, the story

of you don’t have it, the story that somebody else
has it, the story that you had a horrible

childhood, the story that you had a good childhood,
the story that you’re beautiful, the story

that you’re ugly, the story that your superior,
the story that you’re inferior, the story

that you’re brilliant, the story that you’re
stupid, just this moment just put it aside.

Then where does you’re attention go?

If it doesn’t go anywhere, where does it go?

Where does it rest?

This is present always in everybody, in every
moment.

That’s the glorious good news.

Let your attention rest in itself, in awareness
and experience your Self.

Not to get something, because that is another story.

Not to keep it because that is a story, not
to wake up because that's a story.

Awareness is awake, it's awake.

How else would you know you’re asleep if
you weren’t awake?

(instrumental music)