How Long Will You Remain Awake?

Swamiji: … Identification has to be understood. I have to check immediately what you mean by identification.

Chaytna: I mean that when you wake up in the morning, you immediately start to say, "I—I woke up."

Swamiji: Then you do not say, "I woke up." You say, "The body woke up." That is the meaning of your I. Right? So you have made I the body, whereas I say that your I has never become the body—because your I has never even taken birth. This is not understood by a human being. If it is not understood, then he will suffer. …

The mind means attachment, or the sense or knowledge that things and persons should be permanent. Whereas the mind is meant for knowing things and persons, whether they are permanent or not; they are useful. That is what the mind is made for. Such as the eyes are meant for seeing. But seeing the avocado tree, you do not become the avocado tree, neither do your eyes become it. In the same way, seeing your father, you do not become your father. But a human being is considered to make himself one with his father.

Satyam: But Swamiji, seeing the avocado tree, I don’t become one with it. Rather I think that "I am here as the subject, and the avocado tree is there as an object," so that division…

Swamiji: That division is still there. I speak of the avocado tree so that you should not feel bad. You say, "I am Satyam, this name and form." You are never Satyam, never this name and form. You were not even born. That is what I indicate. That is I. But there is no language with me that I can please you and at the same time I can say that you should not be knowing that "The avocado tree is Me," or that "This Satyam-tree is Me."

So that which is not the tree is I. That which is not the body is I. Because the body is born and parents have seen it from the very beginning, they have made us completely crystallized in our awareness that the body is I. So when I became the body—You or I, which was never born, that is You or I—then that became born, which means the body. The body is changing in time and space, increasing, and it will die. Then the mind says that the mind will die, that "You will die, I will die." In this way, the trouble started. …"I’ll remain alive"—everybody thinks this. You have to check who says "I’ll remain alive." That could not be your knees or toes, neither your hair or nails, nor your teeth or tongue. Then why should that which says "I’ll remain alive" be equated with the body? …

That is where intellectual understanding or arguments are. Everybody says, "I don’t see anything before birth or after death, so why can’t you give me something in the middle, which is here and tangible for me?" There are millions of people like that. And you are supposed to be just a few persons. The problem is that you copy millions of people, who are established in knowing tangible gain. They are seeing everybody’s death, but they cannot see their own death. ,,, But you are the ones who came to know that I is not the body. If someone comes and smears black ointment on your face, how bad you will feel. But when you are I, then nothing happens to you. …

Why does a child accept A-B-C-D? Why does he not argue about it? Why does he accept 1-2-3-4 and then he enjoys for his whole life? He has not argued about it. In the same way, when I say that you are Pure, Free, Forever, why do you argue? In order to look like you are not arguing, you say, "Yes, yes." But you don’t accept it. The moment that you accept it, you will never compare You with food, skin, teeth, tongue, or anything like that. You will be You. But you think that You is a body. The body is changing, increasing and decreasing, and dying. And you are the one who is permanent—Pure, Free, Forever. You got mixed in the body, so whatever traits the body has became your traits. That is your practical reality. I say that if you want to be free, you have to change your view. That’s all. I’m not saying that you should break your eyes, ears, or brain. I just say, "Well look, you should not accept what the mind says. You should accept that which You are." You are the one who was not even born as a body. But now you are only the body that is born. That’s why this is the difficulty. …

The knowledge is not meant for people with no capacity. A sleepy man does not need your instructions. So you should understand one thing—which you are capable of. But I don’t know how long you will remain capable. [Laughter.] Such as a person in deep sleep has all the senses and the mind. But he does not know who he is, where his house is, who his relations are, which city he is in, and what is the world. He is asleep. Right? So the person with sleep does not know who he is. If the waking state person does not know who he is, is he not sleepy? That’s all. To such persons, knowledge is not given. Because the knowledge is that you are that who is Pure, Free, Forever. Birth you are not, death you are not.

You think that birth and death belong to the body. This thought is so rigid, perfect, and practical, or in between before birth and after death, that you say that "Birth and death belong to me," and that became your Me—which means the body. So Me is not being realized. The day Me is realized, then it is said that Me is like the sky. A jug is born because a potter has made it. But the sky is not born. Yet a human being thinks that because the potter is born, therefore the sky is born. So he says, "Because I, the body, am born, therefore the Self is born." That is where a human being is.

Satyam: … Then life is precious, it’s not nothing. Life is that sky…

Swamiji: If you say that it is precious, then next time you will say it is not precious.

Satyam: Exactly, it’s attachment.

Swamiji: Attachment of the mind, or ignorance. Attachment means ignorance. The mind has the idea that the sky is born when the jug is born. That is attachment. It’s not that a person loves the jug or loves the sky—it has nothing to do with that. But people say that a mother is attached to her son. That’s not correct. A mother loves her son, that’s all. In what way is she attached? They say, "She’s attached because she cannot live without her son." But she lives. Her son is in New Zealand or has gone to Vancouver, but it does not mean that she is so attached that she cannot eat and drink.

Attachment means that a person is fully convinced that he is the body. I say he is that who is Pure, Free, and Forever from such an ignorance that he is cloth or shoes. You understand that "I am not these shoes." But you don’t understand that "I am not these legs." Then you understand that there is something which is indescribable. We don’t talk about it. … I never speak to you unless I am sure that you accept it. Till then, I never speak.

This is a human being: He has unfolded the imaginative power, which he calls the real mind; whereas for me, it is the imaginative power, which means imagination. Imagination means that it is not real. It is like water in the rays of the sun falling on a sandy desert. If you know that there is no water, then you accept it, that’s all. Your eyes may see that there is a river. That’s where I say, "Wise thinking," which a human being does not have. …

Poornima: Swamiji, when you said before that Knowledge comes first and the body comes after because we still have the idea that the body comes and goes…

Swamiji: No, it’s not a question of whether knowledge comes first or not. We are human beings. If you were not, who would say that knowledge is first?

Poornima: Nobody. My idea that knowledge comes first is God, or the Source, from where everything comes.

Swamiji: You say God or the Source, because you do not know. In order to save yourself from becoming unintelligent, you say that this is your idea. You have made God or the Source as Formless somewhere, as if God and the Source are sitting somewhere away. It is like seeing the tree born out of earth: you will say that God is not the tree, that God or the Source is somewhere that the tree is not. What is the tree without the Source?

Poornima: It’s all the Source.

Swamiji: That you come to know. But how long will you retain it? That is the question. Because I know that you are That, so for me it’s not a problem. I can get you, because you are already That. But you accept that "I am That" when I say. Soon, when I am not there and you get busy with something else, then you do not retain this. So how long are you awake? You can say, "I really do not believe in the dream, because I am awake." I’ll say, "How long will you remain awake? The dream is coming again." [Laughter.] The dream comes and you say, "Swamiji, I saw the dream." [Laughter.]

Generally, we only talk that much the understanding for which we are made. You are not children now. You have the state which is elderly, which is of aware persons with minds, with things and forms and your relations and possessions. Therefore, you call your army, which you have made with your imagination. There are two hundred persons in your acquaintance, and that is your army. [Laughter.] A child makes two hundred toys out of earth and says, "It is my army." But daddy knows it [he laughs], that the child is stuck in the army, and if one army man is broken, he will be weeping. That is where wrong knowledge is. That is called attachment.

Attachment is of your imagination. Because as a body-form, you are imagination. The body-form is the imagination of your Self, or Being, in the dream. In the dream, how many bodies come? They are the imaginative forms in the dream. The same thing is here. You are forms in the waking state of the same imagination of that Being. Therefore, seeing these forms, to the forms I say, "Look, you are the imaginative forms made by the imagination of the Self." So the Self itself made the imaginary figures and imaginary world and forgot that this is imagination. It began to say, "The body is me. The world is me." That is where the Self is caught. Nobody else is caught. It’s not the ego. It’s not the mind. It’s not the eyes. God Himself—you can say God or the Self—the very Source Freedom is caught in this. He says, "I am bound." And he’s Free. It as if water would say "I’m caught in the iceberg." That is the kind a human being is. …

A human being has full potential of evolution. That you have witnessed. It doesn’t need many years, or incarnations, or much time. But he needs to hear about his true nature. Because he is himself Indestructible at the basis of his existence. Just because he is born, he has begun to live in a little house, or a cottage, or in a big building like Valdis or Girdhar [tall people in Kullu]; but they are just buildings. Every human being is a kind of house. But it is housed by the one who is dwelling. That in-dweller is Pure, Free, Forever, Unborn, Undying, Indestructible.

The nature of that is the Knower. The Knower is that which only a human being can understand—not animals or birds. Whether they have mind, senses, or bodies, every human being is endowed with the power that he can easily know that he knows things which are seen, sounds which are heard, the fragrance of flowers he has smelled, the taste of food he has eaten, the hard or soft embraces of human beings, the result of his work situations, and age and time. That means that the Knower is always with him. The mistake is that I say, "The Knower is with him," and he hears, "The Knower is with me, which means the mind is with my body, or mind-knowledge is with me." Whereas the Knower alone is.

The Knower alone is the basic reality or substance of which the mind or consciousness is made, of which the seer and seeing are made, of which the seeing power and listener are made, of which the human being who says "I am a human being" is made. That is the Knower. So the Knower alone is the whole body. If one realizes this, then he can easily realize that the Knower is all the bodies, the Knower is all the bodies sentient and insentient, that the Knower is all the things and forms in the world and all that which is from earth to heaven or sky. All that is the Knower. And the Knower is you, who a person thinks is just this little body-I. How much difference he has between his own True Nature and his spark, a little bubble, which is fitted in his body-form. Like the ocean—how infinitely vast it is. But when a bubble arises, then the bubble thinks, "I am an individual bubble-form, separate from the water. This body, since it will be broken, I feel sorry for that. And since it is born, as if it appeared, so I think that I am born."

Thus the sense of birth and death has become the cause of bringing all kinds of troubles to a human being, and he then suffers with the fire or heat of the body and mind and with all those divine powers, like floods, storms, avalanches, earthquakes, and volcanoes. He suffers all the powers because now he has the divided sense that "Those powers can attack me, influence me, and affect me." [Thunder crashes outside the room. Laughter.] Whereas he himself is all these powers. Once you know this, it is called Freedom—and you get Liberation. …