You Never Change

In the waking state, all human beings are up and down. They have doubts, thinking that this is right and that is not right, this is good for me today and this will not be good for me tomorrow. This person is my relation and today he is very wonderful and that person is not my relation. Thus, a person passes the time, day and night, morning and evening, year after year with this doubtful sense regarding the existence of the one who he calls I. And I feel that I should always be at peace. I feel that I should always love and be loved. I should always be free from anger, miserliness, pride, ego, and ignorance. I should be free from the attachment that binds us all together, to which we cling so much, knowing that things will remain forever; yet being very sure that one day neither you nor your things will be there. If you have things, they will grow old, time will eat them. And even when you are there, time will not spare you; it will devour you. And even time itself will not be there—it will also be gone. Having known this, why should a person have such a small consciousness that keeps him stuck to his things and to his form. Why? Because he is always afraid of losing himself, losing his life. And this is not life as opposed to death. Death is not opposite to life—death could be opposite to birth, but death is never opposite to life. In life there is no such thing as death.

Eternal life is forever pure and free and that life a person does not know. He knows movement, he knows action, he knows the result of eating and drinking, and he knows joys—but he does not know life. Without life your body will not be there, and if your I is not there, your body will not be there. So the I is the representative of your life, but it is so hidden that only this I is not known. You know your body and begin to call and identify I with the body, so it becomes the body. If the body has pain, then I have pain. If the body is hot, then I am hot. If the body is sick, then I am sick and if the body is happy, then I am happy. If the body becomes weak then I become weak. What is this? Total attachment. It is identification, asakti, where I and the body become one.

And you wonder, who told me this? You ask because you are reaching that point where you become sick, miserable, disappointed, and frustrated. And then you come to know that actually, there is something that I have to know. And what is that? Why is it that I feel that I am always free and undying, yet why am I mixed or having the knowledge that I am going to die, or he is going to die? Check—you must have met many, many people, and in this laboratory we have found that a persons’ difficulty is that he is unable to sieve his I from his body. He is unable to take the body in freedom, the way it remains forever free in the deep sleep state. But in the waking state, he feels hot and cold. The same body in deep sleep is so free that even if you have a hang nail in the waking state, but you have no pain in deep sleep. If somebody died in the waking state and you had gone to the cremation ground, when you go to sleep there is no memory. Your body is so free, and in deep sleep, if your body is free, you must also be free. But what is it, that in the waking state you feel that you are bound? You feel that you have this duty, this responsibility, you have to finish these works and you have to do this or that, and much before you breathe your last breath, you have to put things together. Why is it? Man is seeking this information—somebody should tell him. Why is it that I am like this?

And then you meet someone who has the knowledge that you are like this because you are awake. And you are awake because you were born. You were born, so you have senses, and these senses work because of you, but they don’t care for you. The senses do not care about what is happening to the I if you eat or drink poison, or if you see bad things, or use your tongue badly. Therefore, the whole body that is born is totally opposite to the Self, to the Aatma, regarding which our sages and saints have said, Aatma is pure, Aatma is free, Aatma is forever, Aatma is undying, Aatma is amar, Aatma is madhur, Aatma is bliss. Why do they give this knowledge? Because if they don’t give it to you and you don’t get it by yourself, then from where you will get it?

In the scriptures, you read about it but there is no life in books. There is only ink and words, and whatever you read, you are reading your own mind and your own understanding, so you don’t get there. Therefore, somebody who knows the real knowledge says, "Well, you are forever pure." Pure means shuddh, which means nothing can touch you. You are like the sky—the sky is permeating all, everywhere there is sky. Here sky, here sky, here sky (Swamiji indicates all directions) but all your bodies do not touch it. If bodies come or go, the sky is just the same. So you are that who is similar to the sky, but the sky is only that which is above you and is blue—that’s what you say—it is where the stars are, the moon is, so you don’t believe that you are like the sky.

We were talking in the morning, and perhaps every day, saying that you are that which does not change. Check—in your body or in any other body—what is that which does not change? It means, what is that which is truth? What is that which is forever, whether the time is this or that, the climate is this or that—but that is forever—whether the body is small or big, but that is there. And for that you have to make efforts and be devoted, dedicated, and with discipline attend satsang and daily come to know what Guruji says, "That sat (pure existence) is that which is unchanging, forever, and unborn. Therefore it is undying." But what is that? Then it is your turn to check and for that, Guruji has given you meditation, contemplation, and concentration. And then you have to check, what is that which remains forever?

In this laboratory all of you are scientists…and you are intelligent people, aware people, and you want to make an experiment and have your own realization. Then you can know, "Yes, I have known it." So I have not made you believe in me because whatever I’ll say, those will be my conditions. If I don’t eat certain things that I am not accustomed to, and I tell you not to eat those things, you will not like it. I speak Hindi, and you speak English or French. I cannot be that and you cannot be this. And through English or French, in your country whatever you have learned, whatever your parents have taught you, that is your truth. And whatever I have learned, that is my truth. So you began to say there is this culture and that culture, this religion and that religion, this profession and that profession—so many things. But the main thing is to know where we are one in our awareness. Where are we one?

You don’t want to change, which means you don’t want to die. You say you don’t mind if death comes, you don’t mind because you know it is inevitable; but that which is inevitable, still you don’t like it. Why do you not like it? Because there is somebody who is speaking, "I’m undying, man." And what you have done? You have put undying in the association of that which is dying, dying, dying. You have made your ghee or butter into a puri—then what can the butter do? Whatever the puri is, you eat it and it is gone. (A puri is a type of fried bread.) You have got it mixed so much that you call the changing material forms Me, the undying element, the Knower. And that which is undying and unchanging is now… what?

Now check your body and all of your things—do they associate with you? Your shirt is in the company of your arms and body. It is there, but your shirt does not associate with you. Your hair is on your head but it does not associate with you. Your teeth are in your mouth and they work for eating but they do not associate with you. Your stomach and intestines are there as well as your heart and mind, and they work together to keep your nervous system intact, but they do not associate with you. Why? You are vilakshan, you are unique. But because you are not exactly the quality of that, this became the point of our study. You have the capacity to know that your mental world, your body world and the physical world are changing. Then why would you like to get attached to that which is changing and is not there? If you have eaten a jelabi or gujia (Indian sweets) in your dream, and then you woke up, why would you now like to remember that somebody has snatched it from you? It was not there. Therefore, the things that are changing fall in the category of changing, changing, changing and not the same, same, same; they are changing, changing, changing. And you watch them, from the very childhood you are watching; every change you are watching, yet you never change. Many of you may be 70 or 80 years old but you never feel that you have changed…nothing has happened to you, you are the same. …

What is that which is not changing? Your Chaytan never changes. Your jardh, your bones, your skin, your hair and your body are insentient; they are changing. But You, the Seer, the Knower do not change. Your mind changes, eyes change, senses change, organs change, but You never change. And that is where the excellence of a human being is—that he is so fortunate to have come to know, after study and examination, that the things which he sees all change. The things that I hear all change, the things that I taste and smell all change, the things that I grasp all change, the things on which I walk all change. But after everything is changing I sleep nicely in the night and I never change. In deep sleep you never change, then why would you change in the waking state, which has much more awareness? But nobody told you that you are unchanging, you are forever, you are the same. You never, never have become anything else. …

You are ever the same, Pure and Free, and that is the Self. Being that Self, you come to unfold a power that knows that this is the Self of everyone, which is mine too. This is the Self of the whole world, the Self of every thing and form. It may differ in action, it may differ in energy, it may differ in sentient and insentient aspects, but always the life is there. And if you are that life, then life is not going to meet death. What will happen? This knowledge will make you Madhuram—will make you blissful to know that life never changes, life remains just the same. …So in this way you come to know Amaram Hum Madhuram Hum is the name of life, and that is your ultimate reality, the highest awareness.

September 17, 2004