We know ourselves daily as relative persons, relative to each other. So Alka was the one who was giving a departure for Keerti Narayan, and when she said antavahak, then I came to know that you do not know antavahak. We have never studied it. We have studied the external; or you have closed the eyes and you imagined the internal. But antavahak, you do not know. Though you know “innermost,” for you, “innermost” is your mind or intellect. So the words are there; but the innermost is that by which you came into form as a human being. A process must be there, there must be some source. It starts somewhere. The moment it started, that is antavahak.
Water is water. But the moment its fluidity begins to move, the water now says, “I am external. I am something other than me, the water.” That is antavahak.
Everybody knows, “I am the source.” Antavahak knows the source. But as soon as the water becomes an iceberg, it is antavahak.
So Pure Being is unborn, unchanging, unappearance; and when it appears, yet you do not know its eyes, or ears, or anything like that, it is antavahak.
At the level of antavahak, the thinking that “I am” starts. The moment “I am” starts, you begin to make sky out of your “I am.” You do not understand that if you have made sky, then you must be “I am”; so “I am” is lost. You make the air; “I am” is lost. And gradually, falling, falling, falling, falling, and becoming a human being—“I am this body”—then you make eyes, akash, air, all the gross bodies. That is antavahak.
When Alka said antavahak, I came to know that you would all start waiting to see it in the evening, or at any time. But by then something else will happen, and you will not remain the same as you were at the moment when you heard it and you got it. What did you get? We ask you to come and explain it. But you are concerned only with seeing the body coming and seeing the body going, and hearing that in which we are expert: “You are great,” and “You are a principal,” “You have been a wife,” “You have been a mother,” “You have been this,” “You have been my mother.” And she does not say that Keerti is everybody’s mother. Keerti will also not say, “I am the mother of everyone.”
Other than Guru, nobody says, “The whole world is my baby!” At this stage, the antavahak remembers, “I am pure.” But the moment you turn into antavahak and say, “I am antavahak,” you forget purity. And then all this starts, and you remain forgetful. It is called adibhautik, physical. So you interpret antavahak, at the most, as the inner mind. But no, antavahak is much more inward than the inner mind. The inner mind has to have the sense that the forms seen by the eyes and heard by the ears are real, physical. It will never know that they were never there. This is the difficulty of a human being. So Alka is right when she says that the work of Guru is very difficult!
Samadhi will never help you. Yam, niyam, asan, pranayam, pratyahar, dharana, dhyan, and samadhi—they are called eight steps, eight paths. But samadhi will never release you; you will never become Yog chitt vritti nirodh, or samadhi. Why? Samadhi has been interpreted as “the mind should not be there.” So people start dharana, dhyan, meditation, and they think, “Now dhyan will go into samadhi,” or “dhyan will lead me into samadhi.” Yet you have watched—you have been in samadhi for fifty years, but your mind is still there. So it will not work. You can meditate for fifty years more, it will not work. Why? The moment the yogi wakes up, after three days, four days samadhi, or even one month samadhi, when he wakes up, he wakes up as mind.
You have to cancel the mind in the waking state. You do not have to do much cancelling, brushing it aside or sweeping it with a jharu (broom), or anything. You just have to know that mind never existed. You become liberated! So it is not that you are in samadhi. If you are in samadhi, how could you come here?
But name and form—we use name and form, because we are human beings. We will never be free from name and form; also, we will not be in existence as name and form. So I am saying again and again that you have the capacity to know that name and form was never born as a one-day-old child. Now this has become your knowledge, that name and form has been cancelled. Yet it is through name and form, through becoming a human being, that this knowledge has come. Why? Because it was already there. So when name and form have been removed, it is there.
Yes, now go ahead.
Alka: The word antavahak comes in the scriptures all the time, and from time to time Swami ji uses this word. And the description and explanation that you gave was just fantastic. How I understand antavahak is that you said one might think it is the inner mind, but it is much deeper, or much more inner, inner, than that. So, Swami ji, I understand now that it is just Dehi (Indweller), or Pure Awareness, Shuddh Chetan; and when, as if, arising takes place in That, and then, as if, the movement goes outward, at that point the antavahak is there, which still has the memory of “I am pure,” yet it has the potential now to move forward, towards name and form….
Swami ji: “I am.”
Alka: “I am.” So then antavahak….
Swami ji: As long as it knows “I,” it is one with the Shuddh. But the moment it says “I am,” it becomes antavahak.
Alka: Then it becomes antavahak!
Swami ji: And then there is a possibility for the antavahak to forget, when it associates with its creation. Creation is not separate, but the antavahak will call it creation. So sky will become second to it, and then antavahak will say, “I am sky.” Then antavahak remains the same, but it will say, “I am air.” The same will say, “I am fire. I am sun. I am water.” The same “I am” is becoming “I am earth.” And then it will say, “I am antavahak.” It means, now, the tanmatras. It will say, “I am space, but shabd.” So shabd will be sookshm-ati-sookshm (subtler than the subtle). Shabd, then sky; and then sparsh, touch, will be sookshm-ati-sooksh. It will be close to “I am,” because “I am” is becoming everything. So now the antavahak has extended itself into five, five, and five, and in this way, the twenty-four tattwas come.
Without describing all of them, I am letting you know that you are pure. But you will know it only when you become a human being. So the human being will start saying, “I feel that I know my Self. But how is it that I call this body my Self?” Then he will be confused. But not everyone; most will just be forgetful. If forgetful remains, then there will be the jeev. Self, jeev, mind, ego, intellect, senses, person, individual; individual atom, individual flower, individual leaf, individual sky, individual earth, and all that. So he can make millions and millions of forms, vrittis.
But at one time, someone will come to know, after hearing Guru. Guru will say, “Why do you say that you are a human being, you are the son of Dasharath, or son of Amitabh, or daughter of Amitabh, or wife of Amitabh? You have never become a form!” And the person will say, “No, I know only this, that I am a form, and this was the name my mother has given, or my brother has given,” or something like this. But Guru says, “You still have the same awareness who knows that you are not born. Who is that which knows that you are not born? And who is that, now, who says, ‘I am born’? Both should not be equated as just the same.”
Alka: Okay!
Swami ji: One says, “I am born as a body. This is my body, and I am this consciousness.” This is called viparyaya buddhi (mistaken intellect), dhokhevaz buddhi (cheating intellect), illusory buddhi. It is not there. But the snake is visible, whereas it is a rope. How has the rope become a snake? How has the Pure become Alka, a form, a snake? And now you will say, “Well, it doesn’t seem to be that I am Alka, but then how should I know that I am anything else?” And Guru says, “You don’t have to apply all your senses. Keep them in your pocket, or in your space. But I am saying it, because I am already That, which is before antavahak, and I made antavahak. Antavahak is a mechanism; it has to be made—the sense of otherness, the sense of illusion. Only then will creativity start.”
So I, the Pure, Shuddh, is the source. Therefore, whatever the creative Maya, or creativity, or illusion, has created, it sounds real. Why? Because it belongs to That. But it is not That, because “I am” has come in between. How did “I am” come? (Swami ji gives one clap of his hands.) Kak tali nyaya!
So the human being is not a human being. He is illusion! (Swami ji claps again.) It happens, and there is no reason, no cause. It is akaran. Akaran means shuddh. So if I say that you are akaran, I am saying that you are shuddh—which means I am eliminating this, which you see, and then, seeing this, you say, “I am born.” This is mental, this is illusion. And now ego-intellect-mind is a human being. The whole body is the man, the mind. But he does not say that he is mind. He says, “I am chetan, and my body is other than chetan, my mind is other than chetan, my eyes are other than chetan.” How can these avayav, these limbs, these organs, become anything else but you? They are all you. But there is some sense of division, some sense of duality. This illusion says, “No, no. You are no more. I am!” And from “I am,” this world is.
Then there are two things, form and sound. People have come to know this, as human beings, alert human beings. They say, “Well, the world is nothing but sound and name. Everything visible is based on sound and name. ” And then come all the senses, which are your avayav. You cannot say, “thumb I am not,” “finger I am not,” “middle finger I am not,” or “nails I am not.” How is it that you know, “I am the whole thing,” yet why can’t you know, “I am the whole”? There is a gap between these eyes and your eyes. But eyesight is one, drishti. It is all one. Millions of times you say it is all one; but how can you know, “all one”? If I say to a centipede, “You have two legs,” how will he understand two legs, man? That is where the difficulty is. So we take time and continue evolving.
Evolving means that without me, your eyes cannot see that which is now hidden. But for you, the word “me” is the body, and you are fixed in it. Therefore, you will immediately doubt: “Well, this statement doesn’t sound good to me.” But then I will say that without me, there can be nothing in the world. Again you will doubt: “How is that? River is not he. Mountain is not he.” You will doubt; whereas I am before antavahak. I am Shuddh, where there is no world and no man and no mankind, no time and space. But that is to be evolved. Evolved means that all this, which you have got, is to be brushed aside. Avaran has to be taken off. Then you are there.
So we say, “All this world, where is this?” There is no example to communicate to you. So we say, “Do you know water?” You say, “Yes.” But you do not say from where it came. We say, “Do you know water?” You say, “Yes.” “Do you know the drops of water?” You say, “Yes.” “Do you know how the drops become a river?” You say, “Many drops together, and many, many together, and then they become a river.” So you think one is multiplicity, and all the multiplicity together will become this world. For you, one atom becomes a mountain, when all the atoms are joined together.
Then, slowly and slowly, you come to know who is knowing this. You will come to tell me, “Maybe my mind is knowing.” And I am there to tell you, “How do you know that your mind is knowing? Who is that?” You can say, “Well, I sleep, and I know everything in the dream.” Then there is a chance for me to tell you that when the dream was not, when you as a sleeper had not made the dream, your eyes were in the deep-sleep person. They had not yet gone to the dreamer, and yet everything in the dream happened. So what is that? Then you say, “Well, but now the dream figures are not.” And I say, “Then what was that?” You say, “It might be some space, akash, non-existence.” I say, “That which you know as non-existence—that is the dream.”
So non-existence is akaran, shuddh—which the human being ignores. As I say, he is Atma-hanta. As soon as he is born, he is finished with the Self, as if he himself has ignored or killed the Self. Atma-hanta. And this happens to everyone. Many times, on television, you see that some wife has killed her husband, some husband has killed his wife, some husband and wife together killed the children. What is that? They are expert in hanta! By birth, each one has killed his Self. Then why would they not kill anybody else? The sense of duality, that is killing. Grahana (eclipse), nafrat (hatred)—the sense of duality, or hatred. How did hatred come? It comes because you know that your wife is your wife, and somebody else’s daughter has got nothing to do with you. And we keep saying this all the time, and we pass the time, and we say, Om shanti shanti, go home!
Alka: Om shanti shanti, that’s right!
Swami ji: If there is no hole in your pearl, then how can I thread it? How can I put a door in it? So the Guru is never a Guru who gives information to an idiot. If he is seeing the sun, and he shows the sun to a blind man and says, “The sun is there, the sun is there,” that Guru is useless. The Guru should know who is able to hear what he says, who is capable of knowing it, having it.
And that is what all of you are. I have never invited you, but you are there. This means that it is your choice. Your choice means your own Self, who has not only made you as a person, but who has made you as Himself. And He still exists, so the knowledge goes in. All of you are born totally detached from your parents. You can see your detachment when you were a child: your mother was carrying you, you never carried your mother. Your hands and legs were lying over there, and wherever she took you, you just went. But it takes time to discover, uncover, the sounds or words or communication that lead you to your Pure Space.
Still there are five minutes. We close the eyes and see Keerti Narayan going easily. Easily means, as you say, take it as it is. Take it easy. There are words and phrases and hearing and speaking, but unless Guru speaks, you will not be successful in taking it easy. Easy is shanti. Easy is Atma. Easy is That who is not born, and who has no thinking of becoming this or becoming that.
A lot of time has been passed in knowing what I speak, in knowing how to understand and communicate. And that is a human being. We have succeeded in finding out that we are all human beings, and we are experienced in our fields. But this is a new knowledge, a new experience. You have seen the world of dream, and an experiencer is there, but that is the dream experiencer. So Pure Experience, or Anubhav, is not recognized. That by which the dream figures are known, that type of experience is recognized; you have experiences in the waking state, in your own country, in your city, in your family, and that experiencer of the family and country and city is recognized. But Pure Experience is not recognized.
But now, at this time, there is only Pure Experience, Anubhav. It has no subject and no object. Therefore, you are not ordinary, day-to-day types of human beings.