Satsang  –   Volume 20, Number 6: April 3, 2019  
Back to List of SatsangsPrevious Satsang

When Imagination Is Washed Off, Pure Canvas Remains

April 26, 2012

 

I give material for you to think. But you are taught not to ask anything, not to take up anything further. We have heard, “Whatever Guru says, accept it as it is.” But “as it is” is your mind. It is not that Guru says, and you became That—“as it is.” You never hear as it is. You just hear and put it into your box and in your colour, and then you say, “That is imagination.” …

At least you came to know Pure Free Forever and you are satisfied. [Laughter] She convinced us that she came to know Pure Free Forever. But satisfaction is not there. And she knows it. But she understands this because of the brilliance of the mind. Many people are brilliant. They say, “Yes, that knowledge is Pure Free Forever, and that knowledge has no name and no form. So Guruji ,you have said Pure Free Forever, and I have come to know it.” Then the next day, they are insulted. [Laughter]

I just say Pure Free Forever so that you can work on it. The knowledge of Pure Free Forever makes you free from ego. Each human being is ego with form. So you shouldn’t say, “I am a form, I am so-and-so, and ego comes from somewhere.” By birth, the body is ego. But a human being has made the ego as a kind of demon, as if it is the ego that is creating the problem. Thus, everybody says, “Give up your ego, give up your ego!” Ego is the whole world—how can you give it up? So there must be a totally new thought and a new thinking to guide man.

Don’t make your mind miserable. Don’t say it is a monkey, don’t say it is a donkey, don’t say it is a devil. Don’t say it is an idiot, don’t say it is silly, don’t say it is foolish. Yet everybody is being told these things. “You are mistaken,” “You have committed a mistake” mean your mind is erroneous. A human being doesn’t want to listen to this, because he has never become like that. He is pure mind, pure eyes, pure ears, pure nose—everything with a child is pure. Now, there is education. The minds of people who have gone to schools are different and the one who has never gone to school is different, although he has a mind. Many people have never gone to structured schools but they are geniuses. Shiv Nath, you say something, please.

Shiv Nath: Thank you so much, Swamiji. Every time I hear you, I feel I know something more. And yet I am always challenged by the struggle that what I think I know is more is still limited to what I want to know. I understand from what you are saying that that whole thinking that I have created within my mind is essentially an imaginative world, because it is still based on a sense of I as a separate body and mind. Yet you say the knowledge itself is self-effulgent …

Swamiji: I say knowledge is self-effulgent because you will hear it, but you will not know it. That is why I say it.

Shiv Nath: So that is to lead me to…?

Swamiji: To deceive you. [Laughter] To deceive you—from what you know. That is the main thing, as you will see that whatever you have known has deceived you.  And I want to deceive that deception, and bring in that which you are—Pure Free Forever. Pure Free Forever. These are words. When you are quiet, how can anybody say you are not pure? But you will know, “My mind is working, so I’m not really pure.” [He laughs] That is where people began to say that you have no mind. Then people say, “Yes, would it not be possible that I should not have any mind?” So they try to sleep. They try to meditate. They try to do yoga. They try to do praanayam (breathing exercises). They try to do anything, everything. They try to go around the world. And all just to have no mind. But the whole world is mind!

 

Mind does not mean the one who knows. Mind is the whole world, with all its objects and forms, sentient and insentient. The whole material form is all mind. Who knows this? A human being. So now a human being has come to know that the whole world is mind—and I know this. Then, how am I the mind? There, you need the conclusion that you are not the mind when you say “I—am aware of the whole world.” Then I stands alone. And the world, which is changing and time and space, stands in its own way, where I is not involved. Why? I has created the whole thing. So I, without creation, was I. And when it began to create, it should still be I.

But here a human being comes, later on. He says, “No. I am this individual being.” So the very form existence is devoid of this knowledge, which Guru is speaking, that I is Pure Free Forever. I say this to you because you can know it. I Pure Free Forever is only when I will not be associated with the things and forms. How can I become form? You know that. When I cannot become form, then why are you repeating up to this time that “I am a form”?

Shiv Nath: So when I perceive that I became involved in form, that perception will be that I am affected by the change in form, so I became…

Swamiji:  Bound. You became an iceberg, you became a snowflake, you did not remain water.

Shiv Nath: So at that time, bringing in the knowledge…

Swamiji: Knowledge is that I am water. The snowflake is not a snowflake. If you know “I am I” then why will Shiv Nath be there? You want to retain Shiv Nath and I—that is the difficulty. Whereas I am saying, I Pure Free Forever. Having known that, immediately the result will be that the body will be lying in bed and there is nobody to know, because I is not there. But this I, which you make, is found to be in deep sleep also, and says, “I slept soundly.” For the I Pure, there is no such word that any sleep, any dream, any waking state, any thinking state is there. It is Pure Free Forever.

How simple is the conclusion! But now, you have to stick to the conclusion. And use the vehicle. All the instruments, all the cameras, all the tools of the doctors and all those things are to be used. This becomes your tool. The body is an instrument. The body is not the real Being, who is holding this instrument. The one who is holding this instrument, making this instrument alive, is the one who is free and uninvolved. And that a human being can know.

The more it is coming, the greater the satisfaction you must be having. That is where imagination has led you to be That. So we cannot condemn the mind, because the mind is that which is making the whole world. The mind has the power to get back to the Source— and be the Source. Then the mind will not be attached to the changing world.

Shiv Nath: Swamiji, so acting in the world [laughter] —let’s just say acting, when you say knowing that and not being involved …

Swamiji: We give you an ultra sense of ease so that you can act in the world because of that I. When I is there, then I is not acting. I will know, “These are my three powers, the gunassattwa, rajas and tamas. My powers are acting, not me.” Many times the prime minister gives his power to his secretary or deputy ministers; then the prime minister does not act, they are acting. Yet the blame goes to prime minister. In this way, everybody knows the Knower as a whole, wherever he is, is acting, and is making all the things move. The Knower is a kind of sun with the presence of which the whole world begins to move— with the presence of which. The sun has no knowledge of the type that the mind has, but a mental person attributes knowledge to the sun also, that the sun has created the forms. Even if you don’t understand such language, you are convinced, because you don’t argue. We are not taught to argue. We are taught to listen, “Listen to the professor, and don’t say anything. Otherwise, thirty persons will be inquiring at the same time and the professor will have a headache.”

Thus, one by one, we have given a chance to everyone that “You come and express what you know about your imagination.” Immediately, when you will explain imagination, you will say, “Imagination does not exist.” Then others will say, “He knows much, and he must be alright.” But I say nothing does not exist. Only Existence is there.

That is why you find that perhaps by being vegetarian you will know this; by being non-vegetarian you will know this; by eating hotel food you will be this; by eating only home food you will be this. All such things are called ideas—which are called imaginative—of a human being. A human being stands here. But the beauty of a human being is that he gets opened and does not remain a human being. But he has to be a human being, and he is opened—so he is not fully opened.

So then he begins to meditate. He doesn’t say anything to anyone, he quietly meditates and says, “Let me see what the problem is of a human being.” He checks his own head. The problem is not of the things and forms, because they are not there. They are not sticking to you. Immediately, you will come to know, if you are an inquirer of the Knower, “There is something in my head which I have known: the mind. When the mind was not there when I was a child, there was no problem.” In Ron’s movie, a twelve-year-old child says, “When I was a little boy, I never had any problem. Why? I could not think. But now thinking, thinking.” [Laughter]

That thinking is maya (illusion). It is indescribable. So we don’t know it, actually. I will try utmost to describe it, but it is indescribable. Yet I take a chance to describe it. Although it is wrong, but it is the only way. Describe all those things that can be described, and then leave the man from hearing. Whatever remains, that is the Self.

Shiv Nath: … You said [in my letter] … that the canvas upon which the imaginative figures are painted is always there, and in fact it is the canvas that is painting the figures. So when the figures appear or disappear, the canvas alone remains, and the canvas is doing it all.

Swamiji: That canvas is pure: Pure Experience, Pure Anubhav, Pure Self. But by now, you became identified as a human being. So you became the ego, you don’t identify as the canvas. You say, “I am a dot on the canvas.” You say, “It exists. I feel. I know.” That is why the human movie will always remain the human movie. Birth and death will be very precious for a human being, and
they can be made a kind of point of knowledge. “Have you seen birth?” An intelligent man will say no, although he is fifty years old. “Has anybody seen death?” Everybody will say, “Well, I’m not dead, so how can I speak about it? Ask a dead man.” [Laughter]

Then you can easily know, “Oh, I am that one who is aware—aware of these two things.” You are aware of the appearance of a person or a grass blade. Before appearance, you were. And after disappearance, you do not die. The grass blade died, flowers are dried, but you remain. Your hair gets cut, but you remain. Your nails are cut, you remain. Your limbs are cut, you remain. Sometimes your heart fails, you remain. Sometimes your mind fails, you remain. Sometimes your whole body is useless and you are looking like Prime Minister Sharon, who has been in the hospital [in a coma] for the last seven years.

Why does it happen that you never talk about him? It is me who talks about him. [Laughter]Because it makes sense. Who talks about a wolf boy [a child raised by wolves who became like a wolf]? Me. You never talk about him. Why? Because you want to preserve your ignorance. That ignorance is imagination. When imagination is washed off, pure canvas remains. That is called Pure Awareness. So Pure Awareness is there, and it cannot be known in any situation other than meditation, and that too in meditation you remain aware that “This is me.”

When you close the eyes, as the time has come now, talks are gone, all the meanings and words are gone. You don’t say it is nothing, because you are not dead. But you are not aware— this you can say. “Well, I’m not aware what this space is.” Why? You have concluded that awareness must have a subject and object. And this space is Space which has no subject, no object. Unless you take the tool, the mind, in your hands, then the Knower, which is not the mind, gets into the mind, and the mind says, “What is this? Is this a subject? Is this an object?” The mind will give up, because it has limitations. The mind will not give you the answer of what the mind is. It will say, “Well, I don’t know.”

At that time, you remain. That is you. You are that space of purity in the form of Knowledge.  Knowledge. I explain again and again to you that Knowledge has no subject and no object.  It is Pure Knowingness. Because you are a human being, you immediately conclude, “Yes, it is Pure Knowingness. But it is useless in the world.” You conclude. I say, “No. Just know that it is Pure Knowingness. Then all your tools will be in the hands of this Pure Awareness. And you will be I, the Pure Awareness.” Why? If the body is not there and the I could be there, that I is of no use. Therefore, the body is a must for realizing this fact that I am Pure Free Forever. I will be quiet, and you can experiment yourself.

 

 





Previous Satsang
         
 
Copyright © 1999-2015 International Meditation Institute. All Rights Reserved