You Have to Hear about the Space
Every Single Moment

Dikpal: That seems to be the essential question: Why don’t I identify with the Knower, the Chidaakaash? Coming to know that is my true nature — at least intellectually, as you have spoken — then what should be done that I don’t just know it with my intellect, but I know it so fully that I have no sense that I’m anything other than That?

Swamiji: Very right, very correct. It's a great question. You cannot know it fully, because you have not practised the knowledge of the Knower as much as you have practised the knowledge of the mind and body and worked with the body and mind. Therefore, your mental awareness, your intellectual awareness, has become cemented, and because it has become cemented, now it is your trip: make it pliable.

Dikpal: You need a solvent.

Swamiji: Yes, you need some solvent, you need to dissolve it; they speak of dissolution. There is no other way to dissolve it except by your understanding. You began to understand Chidaakaash. But now the point is, repeat it! Repeat it in shravan [hearing about the Knower], which you generally do, because I speak about it; repeat it in manan [assimilating it], which you do, because you analyze it; and repeat it in nididhyaasan [speaking about it], which means studying, or talking to each other, talking to each other. That's why you like to teach sometimes. …

I have found scientifically that these people in India tried to guide the destiny of human beings. For that, their artists, who were geniuses, thought to give people some symbols. So all these — Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh, Shiv, Parvati, Saraswati, Lakshmi, Hanuman, Raam, Sita, Krishna, Arjun — are symbols. Books have been written about them, so it appears that a dialogue is going on. There is nobody as Krishna and nobody as Arjun, but whoever reads the Gita says, "Krishna said this. Arjun heard that." They think they were people. I have come to know, "My goodness, having realized the Space, it is Space. There is no male, no female, no man, no dog, no cat, no mouse, no tree, and no rock — it's all Space." But this, you will not hear. I’ll continue saying it, because I don’t want to continue anything else. [laughter] Eternally, I’ll continue. I have continued forever. I have come to know that I am the Space. Even if I was Brahma, I was the Space. Even if I was Vishnu, I was the Space. Even if I was Shiv, I was the Space — Uma, Parvati, or anything, I was the Space.

Why? It's very simple. You can really understand intellectually (including Bhakti Nath) that there was no time where the world existed. You can conceive that a couple of million years before, there was no time that it existed. So from where did it exist? What's the cause of it? But now you are trapped: cause and effect. Steven Hawking says, "Let me find out the cause of the world, the source of the world." There's no cause of this world. As long as cause and effect is there in your mind, it is the mind, you are a man, and you will never have Chidaakaash.

This is a challenge. But accept the challenge: Eliminate cause and effect, then the mind is gone, and that with which you are always Pure and Free is already working. You are a mathematician not because of the mind, but because genius is there. You are doing things because the Self, the Aatma, is there. It's called Chidghan, Absolute Ghan, Absolute Consciousness Bliss, and that is your Reality. That's still working, even when you see the body. But now, you cannot say you are That. So unless you practise it, this will not be perfect.

Now, you can find out: Practise, total practice, just practise. In every moment practise, "I am that Chidaakaash. That's my Source, that's my Reality." "Chidaakash has been Me" is equal to "When the world was not." How big you are ! Then, even if you tell stories to your children, you can say, "Yes, out of Me, the world came," whether they hear it or not. It is not correct that "out of Me, the world came." Chidaakaash is Chidaakaash forever. It has never been anything. You have to learn this. Intellectually, you have to learn it, and make it perfect — Poornamadaha Poornamidam [That is Perfect, this is Perfect].

They said these things, but they don’t know; yet they continue saying. They say Vedant is the philosophy of Oneness. But where is Ved-end, ant, or Ved-ant [the end of knowledge]? "You" cannot know Absolute Bliss Consciousness: that is Vedant. There, it is adwait, One without a second. Where is One without a second? You are trying to figure out, "How should the second be eliminated?" — right? —"Then, One will come." [laughter] "How should duality be eliminated?" "How should death be eliminated?"

This is what the whole trip actually is. Chidaakaash alone is, and nothing else. You have to practise it. Practise, and you will find that you are Perfect. So this is the answer to "Why do I not get to it?" The reason is that you are trapped as the mind and body, and you have never practised that You are. I say that you are Pure, you are Free, you are Awareness, Forever, Eternal. You hear it and you feel good. But when you eat food: body. When you eat medicine: body. When you have high cholesterol: body. When you eat cheese: body. Everywhere. Weight [wait]: body. Moving: body. Hearing, seeing, eating, drinking, everything is body. This has been the practice not of one lifetime, but of millions of lifetimes that you have gone through: birth, death, birth, death. So practise this, that it's Chidaakaash. It's not birth, it is Chidaakaash. [To Poornima, whose birthday it was] Know it is Amaram [Immortal], that you are celebrating Freedom, that "My goodness, up to this time, for forty-eight years, I have been thinking that I was born. But I’m Chidaakaash. I was never born. Every year, I had to learn this, or someone had to tell me." You would have become Poornima [Perfection] — Poornamadaha Poornamidam.

This is the essence of it. It's one Ras [Essence], Chidaakaash Ras. For Aatma Shakti, it is Ras. For Abhaya, it is Bhakti [Devotion]. For Dan, it is Nishkaam Karm [Desireless Action]. For Dikpal, it is Chidaakaash. For Mohani, Vidyaatmaa, and Deep Priya, it is Hath Yog — ha-tha, chandra-sooraj [moon-sun]. We say all kinds of things, but you do everything as physical fitness. Even Yog is only physical fitness — beyond that, you don’t want anything. You love your pain and suffering, you love your hospitals, doctors, nurses, old age homes, death, and graveyards. You buy everything.

There's no way that you could spend these thirty-two years totally listening to me about Space. You have never heard Space. Even if you heard it you say, "I heard. Yesterday and the day before yesterday, I heard." You have to hear every single moment — if the moment exists. In deep sleep you have to hear, when the dream comes. In the waking state, you have to hear. In every sphere, you have to have it. That is called Perfect. So abhyaas must be there, and you say abhyaas is practice. Abhyaas means knowing Knowingness, Knowledge: again and again, Knowingness. …Whatever is needed, you do. You have to be practical. If you need Chidaakaash, you have to be practical, you have to practise it. That's it. Thank you. [applause] Luckily you have me. [applause] And the greatest luck is that I have you. And You is one. …