Listen to Me, Not to Your Mind

We walk anywhere, whether it is a smooth road, a hilly tract, or there is no road. We sit, whether there is no floor, no house, or there are only rocks. We are sitting, and we are singing Mukti Bhav Tum Patay Jao [Alka had just sung this song, Unfold the Sense of Freedom]. Why? Because we see that under the sky, whatever is visible is all bound—as bound as these mountains, rocks, and trees are, as bound as these people are, going from one place to another. They are bound by their bodies, their houses, their families, and their stomachs—for everybody is bound because of hunger.

If everybody is bound, then what does a human being want? He wants to remove this bondage. What is the bondage? It is hunger. He is bound by hunger. But before he is bound by hunger, he is bound by his life. He is a body, born as a human being. […Swamiji says Namastay to someone who has greeted him on the road]. Those people are going, and they are going to work. The aim of people is to remain in life, that their bodies should not be perished. We are not rocks or posts, not even gadgets or cars. We are human beings. So we always think, "What is that which is a human being?"

A human being is a person who is not asleep forever. A human being is also one who knows that dreams are there, but that he is not supposed to keep dreaming his whole life. He is not supposed to be in bed all twenty-four hours, sleeping and dreaming. No. He also has to get up, so he is in the waking state. In the waking state, he finds himself, that he is a human being. In deep sleep, he does not find that he is a human being, thus he does not find hunger nor does he find bondage. He also dreams, and in his dreams he is a lion, an elephant, a camel, a dog, and a pup. He can become everything in a dream, and he can turn back and again become a human being. When he is dreaming, he does not mind what he has become. Even if he is dismantled and is no more a human being, or he is dead, he does not mind. So what is it that in deep sleep he is free? Why is it that in the dream state he is not worried about anything, although he is afraid of danger and is joyful after eating food, getting a good dinner, and having good company? He is even happy after getting married, having children, and looking after them. He is happy and unhappy—but he is not worried.

So happiness and unhappiness do not form a human being’s worry. But in the waking state, he is worried. At that time, he has no clue of happiness and unhappiness: he is just a worried person. Why is he worried? Because in the waking state, his mind arises. So what is the cause of his worry? The mind. The mind has arisen, which means it was not there. Therefore, the mind must be like a ghost consciousness. It is just an assumption. It comes in the same way that a child sees a ghost in his shadow, or in the evening someone sees a ghost in a stump, or someone misunderstands that a person is coming to kill him just because he has a little knife in his hand.

Thus, misunderstanding is the name of the mind. Also, it is the understanding of things, such as the eyes see the mountain and the mind understands that it is a mountain. A human being sees the sun, he sees faces, he sees forms, he sees everything. He says, "This is a tree, a mountain, a river, a car, and a road." He sees them. But what happens when he sees something incorrectly, or he sees an illusion, such as a snake in a rope? Later on he finds that it was a rope, but in the beginning he has misunderstood that it was a snake, and due to the presence of this misunderstanding, he is afraid that the snake is going to bite. The snake is not there, it is a rope. He is there, and he is not supposed to be afraid. But the moment the mind comes and he turns into the mind, then he is afraid.

So who is afraid? The mind. But the mind is not there, a human being is there. Thus a human being cannot be called the mind. And he is free—if he does not have the sense that he is the mind. Then he will not be afraid. Since the mind thinks that he is a body, so it thinks that a ghost is there or a snake is there, that the body is there and then other bodies are there. But when the mind is not there, then Life is there. And for Life, there is no danger, no fear of death. So a human being is supposed to know who is afraid, fear-stricken, and worried. He is supposed to know that he is Life, and that Life is eternal. Eternal means unborn, undying, and unchanging.

Thus a human being is capable enough to know his True Nature, True Form, or True Being as that which is free from the mind. But it never happens that in the waking state he is free from the mind. What happens then? He becomes the mind; he thinks that he has become the mind. He has become the mind, and the mind became the body and senses; the mind also became other bodies and other situations. But when the mind is in deep sleep, which means that it is absorbed in Life, then Life is eternal, Life is free, Life is not worried, Life is not agitated. Life is not even worried that happiness should come or unhappiness should not come. It is just There.

Life is Pure, Free, and Forever. This is being said to a human being who has become the mind, and who has become the mind with a sense which is making the mind. There must be such a sense, otherwise how would he say that "I am the mind"? A human being says, "I, the body and mind," or "The mind is the body am I." Thus there are three things: I becomes the mind and the mind becomes the body. And the body, mind, and I are mental thinking. So this I is a mental I. As long as one is stuck to the mental I, it is called incorrect thinking. Incorrect thinking means that he is something but he thinks himself to be something else. Therefore he is not the I, mind, and body of the type that he thinks he is.

Yet this thinking arises, and no one knows where it arises from. It is maayic, illusory. Maayaa means that it is imagination, it is not there. Maayaa will not be known, that it arises, unless there is a Guru who should give this information and let the thinker know, "You have never been thinking or the ego-sense. You have never been misunderstanding. Also, you have never been the understanding of the mind. You are Pure Knowledge." In deep sleep, Knowledge is pure. In the waking state, Knowledge is mixed with the mind. It is mixed with imagination, the ghost, or illusion.

So if one listens to Guru, then Gurus says, "Listen to Me. Don’t listen to yourself—because you are listening to your mind." The mind is a ghost. It is illusory. Yet all the time, you are listening to your ghost and getting worried and upset. Who is getting worried and upset? The very Being, who is free, who is just Pure Knowledge. So the moment that Pure Knowledge becomes the body, then it became the sense of separation from Knowledge. A human being is in separation from Guru, the Knowledge. Guru and Knowledge are one and the same. Guru, in the form of a human being, came to know that he is Knowledge, that all of you are Knowledge, that all the things which are visible with the senses are Knowledge, that even the senses and body are Knowledge. That is why he is Guru.

So Guru and Knowledge are one. But a human being becomes the mind and begins to suffer because of the idea of separation, that "I want to see Guru." Now how will a human being be able to see Guru? He himself is Guru. But he thinks, "I am the mind." This is the mistake, that he thinks, "I am the mind. I am the body. I am long/I am short. I am educated/I am uneducated. I am travelling. I belong to this country/to that country." He has all kinds of imaginary thoughts. The whole field of mind is imagination.

Imagination is not real. A person sees a snake in a rope, which is not real, yet he imagines it. He thinks, after having this imagination, that there is river in a desert, when there is no water. Before this imagination arose, before the mind arose, he was sleeping and was alright. There was no sense of water. That means that it is imagination which is maayaa. So maayaa is the mind, the mind is imagination, and imagination is thinking. Thinking, maayaa, imagination, the ego, intellect, mind, senses, and body—the whole field became maayaa. Why? Without the mind, nothing is known. Without the senses, nothing is seen. In this way, the whole field became maayaa. It became the mental world, the maayic world. It’s a kind of magic world, or imagination.

This is for anybody to understand: it is not that you can remove it. It will come daily. The waking state cannot be removed. But in the waking state, you can hear Guru and Guru says, "You should just know that this sense of the mind, sense of the body, and sense of it being real is incorrect." That’s all you have to know. It is illusory. It is incorrect. You can know this with what? With Knowledge. So if you do not become Knowledge Pure, then you are always the mind. Whatever the mind will think, you will think you are. You will say, "I can make it, I can remove the world, I can remove pain and suffering." You will speak like this. So human beings are trying, but they are trying in the waking state—becoming the mind, they are trying. If they can get away from the mind and become just pure human being—pure just like a rock, tree, or mountain, the sun, moon, or a creeper are—they will become ever-free.

A human being is such a wonderful person, with all the senses, that he can see the world, he can drink, eat, smell, grasp things, talk, listen—and know that it’s all illusory. But illusory does not mean that it is not there. A human being begins to think that as a snake is not in a rope, so the world is not there, that as river water is not there, so the world is an illusion. But illusion means the incorrect thinking that I am I, I am the mind, I am the body. You are neither the mind, nor the body, nor the I. You cannot remove these three things by shuffling them or sweeping them away. But you can understand that it is the constitution of a human being, which he himself is, which says "I am," which says, "This is my mind, which thinks," which says "I am the body." Now he can continue living with these three things. He can continue driving his car, coming over here, walking, watching the scenes, and all that, because he has been made now. He cannot unmake himself—because he has never made himself. This means that the mind has never made him, so the mind cannot unmake him: it is the Self.

Now the Self is making him, but it is only the Self that a human being does not know. He knows that he is the mind, the maayaa, and all that. That is why as a Guru it is difficult for me to convince human beings that they are Pure, Free, and Forever. I will say this, because it is just possible that as a human being has got a name, so if I say, "You are that who is Pure, Free, and Forever," then he can also get this. Now Pure, Free, and Forever will only be that which is not changing and not dying. That which is not changing and not dying should be unborn. But you think you were born.

So from your very childhood, you are in the field of maayaa. Although it is innocent and ignorant, but you are in it. So the maayaa field is to be known, that the whole field is maayaa. In this maayic field, the entire movie is of maayaa. It is a maayaa city, a maayaa world, a maayaa body, a maayaa mind, and maayaa thinking. After hearing this, if anybody gets opened, which means gets freed from the mind, at that time he is Free Being. Free Being can know the fact that "This is all illusion and I am Free Being—that too, I have no name to call myself as Free Being. Neither I am I, nor I am you. I am only That which has no name."

That is only Pure. If I say "Pure Consciousness," a human being again interprets it with illusion, because his illusion, as the I in the waking state, does not go away. His waking state never goes away. If it does not go away, then illusion does not go away. Therefore, there must be a device that the waking state should go away, which means it should be transformed into the samaadhi state [the fourth state, the vision of Oneness]. This means, his waking state intellect should be purified. If it is purified, it is expanded, and it is left alone, unmixed with this illusion of I, mind, intellect, and body. Then he is Free. He is always. [… Swamiji asks Alka to once again sing Unfold the Sense of Freedom.]

So Amaram Madhuram is Liberation—liberation from the I, mind, intellect, and body. It is not that I have to remove the body, senses, intellect, mind, and I and finish them. I have to know this, that I am Amaram, I am Madhuram, I am Immortal, I am Blissful. That is singing and knowing, that is everything that we can do. Only a human being has the potential of knowing this. It is called Knowledge, and it is One without a second, indivisible. It is Love. A human being can know that Love has no duality, Knowledge has no duality. It is only with illusion that duality comes. When duality is not there, whatever remains—we don’t have to give it a name and call it Non-duality or Indivisibility—it is there. That is what you are. When you know "That is what I am," then you will identify with That, rather than with this I and body. This identification is called ego-consciousness. The same identification with your Reality is called egoless-consciousness. This is the whole secret of the science and knowledge. You are Free. Thank you very much.