Satsang  –   Volume 4, Number 8: September 28, 2001
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It Is for You to Know: Add I, I Am I

Shiv Naath: … Yesterday when you were speaking about the mirage in the sandy tract, you made it so clear that it is the mind itself that has created the mirage and that you’ll never be free from the mirage if you go through the field of the mind to get there. It’s kind of like saying, “Swamiji, I understand that the mirage is not there, but let me go over and check and make sure there is actually no water in it.” By the time you get there, of course it’s moved somewhere else; then you have to go there and check, just to confirm the knowledge. You make it clear that the very idea that there is a mirage is where the work has to be done; it is where I have to know that thought and desire is not other than the very Self, who is free. Whatever arises is only Me, is only that one Being. You give a very direct experience that that Being cannot take any other form, which means it can’t be divided or separated.

Swamiji: He has just spoken of the mind in relation to the knowledge of the river seen in the sandy tract. Now, we wake up — it’s very easy for you to understand from here. Who woke up? Vidyaatma woke up. When sleep was covering her body, she did not know which kind of quilt was covering her, or whether there were one or two quilts, none, or a blanket. So sleep is a cover of the climate: there's a different type of climate covering Kullu people and Kullu food and clothes, and a different climate covering Delhi and Delhi people.

The consciousness of a person who is asleep is covering him as sleep, therefore he cannot wake up. When the cover is over, it is the waking state; then the sleep state cannot cover his waking state, because he has woken up. In deep sleep, the person who is sleeping is not a person who is awake, but he is a person. The person who is awake in the waking state is not the waking state, but he is a person. When the same person dreams, he is not a dream, he’s a person; and he thinks mentally, with mental imagination, that he’s not those dream figures, he’s that person.

Who is that person? As Marion said, “If you know who you — the Self — are, then you will not keep looking for your identity, such as where your father has gone or where your mother has left you and gone.” Very ordinary things are being said on television; such as if you find your identity you will be happy. Many people among you have found your identity, but you are not happy. [laughter]  We still say this, and you still seek that which you are. You are not that mind, person, jeev, man, purush or male who began to see a river in the sandy tract. This seer is illusory, but you call it non-illusory; or rather, real. You call it your mind. When the mind has become non-illusory and real, then why should whatever this mind thinks and associates with not happen? It happens. That is what you have heard and known — that whatever one thinks, he thinks that is true. We can spend hundreds of days on this point, but you have understood that this is the phenomenon.

If in the waking state Shiv Naath speaks, if Shiv Naath-mind speaks, he cannot be Ian Stanbury, though they studied in the same class with the same group of people. One is doing art there and one is doing art there. Both are artists, but if one thinks, “I am Ian” and one thinks “I am Shiv Nath,” you cannot make them anybody else. You can make a ring…but you just cannot transform a man. Mayunk cannot become Lester [Mayunk’s father, a Presbyterian minister who, with his wife, Marion, is currently at the IMI in Kullu for a few months] and Lester cannot become Mayunk, though I have heard, “Father and I are one.” [laughter] But people have left out the other part, that Father and I are one in heaven. “In the heart, Father and I are one” means that the heart alone is, God alone is, that there is no father and no I. We have these relationships in the waking state on the relative field, and the whole drama is going on. Because without children you don’t have any assistance at home, only an old man and an old woman are sitting together and there’s nobody to serve them French fries [laughter] …

With the mind, you were seeing the river in the sandy desert. A human being himself thinks of having the mind as soon as he wakes up. Now, it is not easy for any great god or guru to speak of Christianity and become Christ, who said that Father and I are one, but in heaven: Impossible! People are busy saying, “Father and I are one over here, so why don’t you do this, why don’t you do that?” All that happens. It’s next to impossible. You can make a group and look like a good parliament, with treasury benches and votes, and the whole thing will be going on, but that is a different realm. That is practical reality. Having come over here, you cannot use the same mind to keep looking at the river and searching for it, going to drink water, and finding it nowhere. You have to drop the idea that this mind will ever be changed, you have to drop the idea that it will not know that there is a river. It will be knowing the river in the sandy desert, whether Guruji has told you or not. It is for you to know …

You came to know the Truth, because without knowing the Truth, without becoming the Truth, you cannot become the Knower of illusion. When you became the Knower, all the illusory state of the waking state is over — for you. But you have not to say this. For becoming aware of the illusion of the dream world, you woke up and the dream is over. In this way, being enlightened you cannot rely on the river which has no water and no happiness in the objects of the senses and in the waking state. The illusory mind makes you think that all that happiness will come here, will come here. But it is always there in You. Your true nature is Freedom, so Freedom will not be found anywhere else — not in breaking free from jail or free from home. It will not be the knowledge of Freedom unless somehow you are able to unfold in the space of your heart, which means in the mind or illusory self-consciousness, that “There is the formation of Me — who is all that glory which is illusory — but I want to call all that glory which is illusory as real, because I have forgotten.”

Guru’s job is to tell you, “Remove this forgetfulness and enjoy the whole world of your Daddy, wherever it is.” All the objects belong to you, because you yourself planned them. That is where the river is not going to be anywhere. You will see it again the next day. If you have known, “Oh, this mind by itself is illusory, but I call it real,” then find out the nature of this I. Is the I the same illusory mind-I, or is this I something else? That’s why we say that you always know that “I am this body,” and I say: Add I — I am I, the Father’s I. After that, all is well. Thank you.





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