Maintaining Awareness Wherever You Are

Lalita: I would really appreciate any advice you can give me about maintaining the awareness of who I am while away from your darshan.

Swami-ji: You must be already having a technique of how to maintain the awareness which has worked for you. Maintain that. You are not a cloth. You are not a bed sheet. You are not a car. You are not a house or table. You are not hair, stomach, nails. So know what you are. Maintain that. That which is eternal, ever-present that you are. That which changes, you should not identify with—then you will maintain it forever.

Lalita: It sounds easy, but difficult to live.

Swami-ji: No, it is simple in every situation. Everybody here has heard this and nobody felt that it is difficult, because they have understood. If you have understood that you are not this umbrella, this chair, then it appears to have been understood.

Lalita. When the sense that I am this individual body comes...

Swami-ji: This is not a drawback. You are talking from the vehicle, the body. You are not talking from somewhere else away from the body. This body that has a language and says ‘I’ is all right. If it is individual, it is all right. But this individual is always changing. It is antvant [having an end]. You must know this.

But that which is unchanging is known to you. So both can be there. Both or one, whichever way you understand it; it depends on your mode of understanding.

I say that the things and forms which will end one day are already changing. Things end, forms end, age ends. You know this process. But the one who has not ended, that is what you are. If you know this, it will be maintained.

You need some formula for which you are asking advice. These flowers will end. At this time they have not ended yet, so we are using them. The one who uses has the tools to use. He has eyes, hands and brain. At some time, flowers will not be; eyes, brain and hands will not be, but ‘this’ will always be and that is what you are.

In the intellect, there is forgetfulness. It is said that one forgets in the waking state, so you bring about the divine state. Whenever you feel you have forgotten, you now have a formula and now you can remember. Apply this again and again. There is no alternative because you cannot buy this awareness from somewhere. You cannot maintain this awareness by reading about it or by hearing about it. It is the plan of this body to unfold it. That is the sole purpose. We maintain whatever is necessary to take care of the body, but the main purpose is to keep knowing, "I am God. I am eternal. I am Self."

Whenever you talk, say that you are Lalita, living Canada. All that goes on. But the one who knows all this is you. What difficulty do you find?

Lalita: Listening to you now, I don’t find any difficulty.

Swami-ji: Always keep listening to me. That is what the advice, the formula, is. How many clothes we have put on and forgotten about? How many ideas and thoughts have come that we have forgotten? How many successes and failures have come that we have forgotten? But the one who is ever, eternally present is not a thing of the past or to be forgotten. Remember that.

Chaytana Mahaan: If I have the attention on the space, the nature of the Self is revealed to me that Self is undying, indestructible. I have the idea that I have to discriminate between the nature of the Self and the Self as itself.

Swami-ji: There are two points held in the awareness. One is that you see flowers, things, and body. Objects are being seen. At that time, you are subject. Subject is this mind which is present with the senses, and the senses are seeing, so the mind also begins to say, "I am seeing." That became individual self.

The nature of the individual self is the same as the nature of the senses, the nature of the body, and things. This individual self changes, but your Self which is True Self never changes. It remains forever the same. The nature of True Self is called undying. The nature of this mind-self, ego-self, understanding-self or body-self is given the name ‘changing’. It is possible with your awareness to grasp the nature of either of the two.

When you watch the space, then you know that one can watch the space in the same way as the one who watches a flower, call it flower and call the space nothing, but this is not really  watching the space because in this case, space is equated with things and forms. Space has been made a 'thing.'  It has been made a thing and it made itself as somebody, a subject.

When subject, object, and the relationship between subject and object get immersed in the True Self, that is realization of the Self. In this way we realize.

You will never have the discrimination that this is changing self and that is stationary, unchanging Self; it will not happen that only by knowing changing Self you will realize unchanging.

The nature of the True Self is undying, unchanging, indestructible.

Tripti: I wonder if the sense of responsibility is entangled with the sense of doership where I think, "I am doing something," instead of thinking that God is doing through me. Can you say something about that?

Swami-ji: We take the body, ego, intellect, and senses into consideration and hold action important because of the body. Therefore the body itself is the doer, the actor. If the body is taken into consideration and is separate from God, then you were right when you said, "I am doing. I am responsible." But if you are already God, then why would you say that you are doing? God is doing and God is responsible. God is experiencing and all the results of actions should belong to God. But a human being is brought up thinking he is separate from God, separate from things, even separate from his body. The sense of separation became powerful and doesn’t allow your knowing power or individual power of I to be one with God. If the sense of separation is removed then everything becomes easy.

You are God. Without God you just cannot breathe; you cannot exist. Check when you forget and when you begin to say that you do. You never do anything, but because you have forgotten, doing will be taken into consideration, and then you will do that which is for good health and happiness, and for good communication.

The ultimate ras is Oneness with God, but that is not the same as friendship with God. A drop having Oneness with the ocean will not remain a drop in the ocean. You having Oneness will not remain in the lap of God. That is not Oneness.

Our work is to achieve Oneness. Because it has not been achieved we are doing saadhana; we are saadhaks. We will achieve one day. The symptoms get mixed with the siddh, the one who has attained, so you feel you are realized or not realized. The symptoms of realization are found in you, but you are saadhak so you don’t think you are realized. You got mixed.

As long as you have not realized that that I which you call ‘I, the body’ is one with God, you are a doer, and you should have the relative knowledge of doing and the result of doing. At that time don’t get mixed up thinking that God does. You will be an utter failure.

Spiritual people artificially know that God does and then they don’t do anything. God does it when you become one with God. Till then, duality is in your intellect. The intellect says, "I want to become one with God." It doesn’t say, "I have become one with God." We get mixed everyday. One day you will know, "I cannot walk without God. I cannot take a seat without God. That means I must be God." Therefore what do you care about doing or not doing? Whatever comes is God’s doing. But as this has not become a certainty, the idea of what to do and what not to do comes, and that is the field of mind of a human being.

A human being is born only for the attainment of Oneness with God. That is the purpose of life. When you do something, you are responsible for your doing and no one else.

Nothing is serious for a God being because he never dies, so what seriousness would there be? All that is for the mind and intellect, so we take emotions and feelings, which happen in the waking state, into account. When the waking state has become God Consciousness, then, as your name is Tripti, it is Tripti doing. If your name is God, then God is doing.

You may not say your name is God because that is not good language. So you don’t say that you are God. But you should know that without God not a single breath can move. It is not that God is close or that God is a parallel wheel. No. The whole car is God!

Responsibility is no problem. Any action you do, the result will come to you. Any seed you sow will grow. But the result is not in your hands.

Now I have changed from the first part of my instructions—thinking that you are afraid of some result. If you sow a seed, the result will be there. You are married; child will be there. You cannot stop it. It is not in your hands. If you sow an apple seed, apple fruit will come, but fruit is not in your hands. So what is your responsibility? Keep doing. At that time, let the result belong to God. When you know the result is not in your hands, then just act and act for God’s sake. That is the simplest way of acting.

A human being is body. Body means action, karm. The opportunity of the human body has to be used for the sake of realization. There is only one duty—to realize the Self. For that purpose, a human being has come on earth. There is no other duty. This karm was given by birth. It is not that a human has to find some other duty. You are a body and you are meant only for realization. So don’t postpone.

You have reached here. In this lifetime you are sure to get it.

Eating and drinking are just ordinary things.We put in gas and the car moves. We don’t make a big deal out this car. The best thing about this car is that it is useful to realize the Self. All the actions should be directed to that goal; then those actions will be saadhana, means, purusharth. There is no other duty. If you make any other duty, you have forgotten your first duty. All other duties will be side duties. You may have a necklace, but you have to have a skirt.

Realization is your job. Having many clothes you can realize. Having a meagre quantity of clothes you can realize. Having richness you can realize. Having meagre means you can realize. Only for the purpose of realizing the Self have you come on earth. My duty, your duty, any human being's duty—there is only one duty— is that one shouldn’t die. One cannot avoid death unless he realizes the Self.

Duty and responsibility are for a human being. For a realized being, his realization works, and the question of duty are responsibility is settled.

When a human being feels that he is not complete, not perfect, desire comes. Desire means insufficiency.

When a person wishes to fulfil desire, it is called kaamana. The sense of insufficiency is already there. When one desires to attain something in the field of material existence, that is kaamana. When kaamana is fulfilled, it becomes raag. When kaamana is not fulfilled it becomes dwaysh. When kaamana is fulfilled and raag comes, and again and again one desires, it is called trishna. The person desires more and more. That trishna is gluttony. It is the same desire but it has a variety of stages.

A human being wants to be fulfilled. The intellect is the centre of non-fulfillment. Whenever your intellect goes up or down you have trouble. You desire a bit; when it goes up, you desire more. On the level of the intellect, stability is in sam, samaadhi, sambuddhi which is Aatma. Unless the intellect is immersed in Aatma, it is asamaadi, not samaadhi.

There is a possibility that the intellect can grasp what God could be, what the fulfilled state is, but it cannot attain it. That is the deficiency of the intellect. It can understand that there is a vast ocean and it is a river, but it cannot be the ocean. It has to get immersed. When the intellect is immersed in God there is no more desire, because there is no intellect. It is all God.

Aatma Shakti: Most of what I thought of as love and beauty and which I cherished, I see was just greed.

Swami-ji: The moment you have understood kaamana, it is said to have disappeared. That is the beauty of knowledge, because darkness and light cannot go together.

Osnat: I want to make a situation nice, although someone may be heavy or not nice. I try to create a nice space.

Swami-ji: You will fail in it because everybody is independently becoming happy or unhappy. Know the secret of wanting to make people happy. You are selfish in that under all circumstances you want to be happy. That is not the function of the mind, that is the function of the Self. Self wants to be free under all circumstances. But in front of people, Self uses the tool, the body and people take advantage of the body and mind to explore their own happiness through you. If they show their unhappiness, you become unhappy.

Drop the idea that you can make anybody happy. Change your style. Make yourself happy and that should be your work. You should know the technique. You will be happy when you know that you are blissful forever. Then you will not need happiness from outside. Make yourself happy. That is the purpose for which you came on earth. The method of making yourself free and happy is not by making everybody free and happy or making them behave well. Why don’t you reduce your work? Get married and then there will be no idea of pleasing twenty or thirty or two hundred people!

How would you be unhappy when you know that bliss is within you and is always held within you? Juice tastes good. Why? Because you are bliss. Once you know that you are the bliss, everybody will taste good, everything will taste good. You have not to make the juice happy. Just know that you are bliss. Don’t say that you are all the desires or all the ideas. That is for poets and writers who lie. Mature the idea that you are bliss. Anything that you eat you like because you are the bliss. When bliss is asleep, nothing is sweet. If someone is unhappy with you, he has no knowledge of bliss.

Kaalaateet: You talked about how one can still be attached if he is detached. I want to reach that state where I can be attached to my work, attached to my wife. Do I first need to be detached from everything?

Swami-ji: Yes. You were totally detached from Truus [his wife] years ago. You are the same person who was detached and now you are attached. Choosing attachment is not losing detachment. You went to Bosnia as a doctor. You were attached to your duty and work, but you never got bound. You came back.

First, detachment is to be cultivated or imbibed. Detachment is the nature of God. An earthquake destroyed four thousand people and God is still sipping tea. He neither gets excited nor worried. Detachment is God. God realization is all the qualities of the detached side.

The attached side has all the base qualities which are negative to God. All human tendencies are negative to God: vipariya [opposite]. The very intellect is opposite to God. Form is opposite to space; it binds the space. When a jug is formed, it is opposite to the space; it binds the space. When it was not jug, space was free. Space is still free, but intellect, which is a form, is a jug, jarh. If you, Shuddh Chaytan, become associated with jarh intellect, jarh mind, jarh body, jarh tree, roots, all the qualities of jarh are superimposed on you. That means that you fell into negativity.

You will be detached when you are your own true Self. Then you can be any person or relation—father can be father; mother can be mother; child can be a child, friends can be friends—but you know who you are. You are the Self. You are the Being forever free. Then, not only your relationship will go well with one body [that of your own], but any relationship with others will also go well because you know that you are the space.

Space is detachment. Detachment is not hatred.

You just have to unfold gyaan on the level of sankalp—agyaan—where you forget your true Self. If you know that, then the natural knowledge will be 'All is That’. Wherever you move, you will have no ignorance, no hatred for anything. You will be detached, yet you will be able to do anything that you like. If you are attached to someone, then you want to keep that person close and look after them.

Attachment and detachment are two emotions, bhaavana. They are not concrete substances.

Detachment is like a doctor who goes to the hospital. Patients are not known to him, but ten patients have been assigned to his ward. He wants to see them well. He is not attached because he has no raag.

But suppose a doctor sees a good looking girl and wants to see her again and again. Then desire grows and then ignorance starts. Ignorance creates attachment. Attachment is not love. Love is the knowledge that the Being is God.

Ignorance is colossal. The wheel of ignorance rolls down until it reaches hell. But love is heaven already. For love you don’t have to find heaven. Anytime you know that you are the Self, the whole world becomes the Self. One can be detached and forever doing things in the world, being attached to the right persons, the right things, and experience the delight and life.

Ego doesn’t get eliminated easily. Just as when a goat’s head is cut, its body still exhibits life for a few minutes, the human ego is not easily dissolved. Even when you say, "I am surrendered to Guru. I am nobody," the ego lingers a couple of years. You have to be alert.

The one who wants to see his highest Self is a saadhak. To a saadhak, saadhana is given. His ego is not killed right away. He is given the opportunity to study where the ego lies. For Guru there is no ego, but for the disciple there is "I." " I" wants to improve.

Improvement is when "I" is eliminated, but "I" wants to become thicker, one wants name and fame. That is what the human ego is. God realization is ‘You are the Whole.’ How will you be the Whole if you have the ego sense?

Disciple is one who offers his ego. When intellect has not attained samaadhi on the level of antah kaaran, the attainment of God realization will not happen.

Those who have intellect are advised to be even (sam) under all circumstances. You want to have shaanti, sam yet your ego goes up and down and gets shocked over little things. At every step you get upset over nothing.

Nobody told you that all the things and forms are innocent when you are asleep and that your Self who is sleeping is free. Then why is it that you get upset? Because in the morning your praan becomes apaan and then praan is disturbed. So keep your praan even as we meditate and keep it even.

Close your eyes . . .

Lead-in to meditation

In meditation you have to observe how much peace, samaadhi, yog, evenness you can maintain. That becomes your training. Meditation is not some curriculum that we undertake. In meditation, you come to know that there is neither ought nor nought. Whatever remains is Self. What remains is God. That is your purusharth. That is 'what I am', as against calling yourself mind, intellect, food, skin, or body.

For those who can dissolve their condition of calling themselves this form, the automatic result is God Consciousness. It is not that you have to plan it or that it creeps in gradually. The moment you have Aatma gyaan, the intellect with the sense of otherness exists no more.

Meditation is very effective.

A human being is aware of action, aware of knowledge, of things, of devotion to someone, but he has no awareness of what is that nishkaam yog, what is gyaan yog, what is bhakti yog. Yog is sam, samaadhi, God, Self, Aatma Brahm. If one uses his channels in the body, he can attain yog through hatha yog. He can attain yog through dhyaan.

Attainment is very simple. You have to know that you are the Self under all circumstances, in every situation.

It appears that the moment one begins to talk, one appears to lose his Oneness with God. Therefore practice is an enormous necessity. Only you can do it.

We are endowed by God with this nervous system and body. Just a little effort of your own can make you aware of your truth.