Swamiji: … We are here on earth and became human beings. What wrong is there that we are human beings, with senses, minds, and organs? What is wrong is that we will die! That is the only wrong. [Laughter] Otherwise, a human being is most wonderful. If he is most wonderful, then what is his purpose? This has not been recorded in books written by our elders, or persons who have the sense of otherness. The sense of a human being is the sense of otherness, or that there are chaytan (sentience) and jar (insentience), an aware mind and not aware feet and teeth. Why is it that a human being believes he is aware because of the mind, intellect and ego-sense, but his ribs, shoulders, stomach, feet, and hands do not have awareness?
Human beings never question such things, therefore there are no schools in the world where such ideas are questioned. Only in India, the teachers in the Upanishads tried to question them. They questioned, inquired, continuously remained in inquiring, and produced the result—that a human being is born for the purpose of unfolding a better intellect than that which people have provided him. Our intellect is made through schools, parents, personal experiences, and things. The intellect has been made so strong and wonderful, yet it says, “I am born and I will die.” Why is this? What kind of intellect is it which says “I am born and I will die”? No human being has eyes to see the intellect which will be born and which will die. Such thinking has not been introduced to us.
Therefore, when you hear me you find out that I am thinking differently—in a way which you never think. Even when you hear me and understand, “Whatever he is saying, I have never thought of it,” yet you were very proud of your mind and intellect. Then either you will leave me—my speaking and your thinking—or you will be interested in thinking further. It is the case with all that you never give your intention about what it is you do not know. You simply say, “I don’t know,” and get away. Then there is no schooling for you, no teachings for you, for you do not offer yourself as a deserving person who should be given knowledge. Yet for me it is obvious that you, having come over here, are deserving, because why would you come? You have your own places, homes, families, friends, work, business, money, and possessions. Why would you come to a place where there is nothing of the kind that you need to experience? Then it is clear to me what you have come for. But it is not clear to you, having come over here, what you have come for. Now you have become big and we cannot say anything to you, because you think that whatever you are is perfect. So I say, “Fine, you are perfect. You are all right. Have a cup of tea and go home.” Then when you go home, you go just the same as you were when you came.
Thus, from my side, we call you creating situations so that you should be able to be free to ask and express what it is you do not know. You heard Devindra say, “Whatever you are saying, Swamiji, but my difficulty is the waking state.” Now, how can you leave the waking state? So the difficulty will remain. Soon, expressing, “Difficulty, difficulty,” you will die, and then you will not have known what the purpose is of your existence. You are born with a definite purpose, which nobody has told you. And you do not say anything. You say, “Well, I don’t know.” If I say, “Yes, this is it,” then you say, “No, I can’t understand.” That is the situation. …
I can only tell you that which should be the answer to your question. You don’t have a question, so you don’t have an answer. Then we say, “Have tea and leave.” But then we find you have not come for questions and answers. You have a question that you want to be accepted as a person who is of the type that he likes himself exactly the way others should also like themselves. So you like self-awareness. In the Upanishads it is said, “You love your wife for the Self’s sake, you love your child for the Self’s sake.” They do not say, “You love your dead wife for her dead body’s sake.” It is clear. You came to know that whatever Swamiji is going to say, the Self is that. Because of that Self, you love a person—you love your cow, horse, pet, bird, and wife or husband for the Self’s sake. That means you know the Self.
But nobody asks, “What is that Self?” You answer, “I don’t know. My Self is myself. [He points to his form.] Why should I not love my Self for the body’s sake?” If you love for the body’s sake, then why would you not like to love a dead body? You also respect it, but only for a few minutes or a few days. This opens your heart, mind, or eyes, which is not the outer eyes. The outer eyes are meaningless if you have no intellect. But you say, “No, my eyes see.” If your eyes see, then why do a sleepy man’s eyes not see? Why does a man who is unconscious not see? This means a human being is not a human being only with senses—all the senses are also found in a dead person. So we take into consideration your lively body, treating it to be born, and treating it that it will die. Why? Because you think you are born and you think, “My mother died, and one day my turn will also come to die. So in between, whatever life is, we should do something with it.” Now, what is that which is its purpose? What is the aim of a human being? Jonty (Prakash Anand)?
Jonty: It seems to me, Swamji, from what you have said today and what you are always saying—you said today that a human being is wonderful, but something spoils that. That which spoils it is the sense he is going to die.
Swamiji: Now, I have asked him, and according to you I should not have asked and would have continued, and we have continued for forty-five years. If you continue in this way, many more years will pass and you will not hear. So we are sure now that when anybody joins, we have to let him know the fundamental truth for which a human being has come on earth. Please, what is the purpose of human birth on earth?
Jonty: Given what you said, that the only thing that really spoils a human being’s sense of wonderfulness or joy is the sense of death, then the purpose of human life is for him to free himself from that sense of death.
Swamiji: That I did. What about you? … Why did you not fulfill that?
Jonty: I feel I have fulfilled that, Swamiji. I met you and I believed what you said.
Swamiji: Then that is the purpose. He said this, so you should question him, has he become confident about it?
Satyendra: Have you become confident?
Jonty: I am completely confident, yes.
Swamiji: Yes. You can check now, if he is confident that he is deathless, what about you?
Satyendra: Swamiji, I often wonder that the awareness of immortality perhaps takes place in the mind?
Swamiji: All right. If you say that perhaps it is in the mind, this shows you are doubtful about it.
Satyendra: Well, I believe it takes place in the mind, which is my opinion.
Swamiji: Okay. So you are convinced it takes place in the mind.
Satyendra: I could stand to be corrected by you.
Swamiji: But why?
Satyendra: If you have a different opinion, I am open to suggestions. [Laughter]
Swamiji: But not open to accept it, which is clear.
Satyendra: Yes, it is hard for me to accept something that conflicts with the sense of logic that I have.
Swamiji: That is where I come in. I say your sense of logic is incorrect.
Satyendra: Yes.
Swamiji: I don’t say it is stupid. [Laughter]
Satyendra: I appreciate that. [More laughter]
Swamiji: This clears the point. Every human being is working on the basis of his intellect, treating it to be true and correct. All right. The fact is now, which Guruji says, the intellect is incorrect. Therefore, you have to inquire and check why the intellect is incorrect. You say, “I know only this much, you tell me”—as you said. I say it is incorrect because it says, “I am conscious” and it says, “I am unconscious.” If the intellect says, “I am conscious,” then it should be conscious. Why should it say “I am unconscious on the level of my body—my shoulders and stomach are unconscious, and they are me”? Why is your intellect so full of two that it knows, “I am aware and I am not aware.” Therefore, this intellect should be improved.
I suggest that improvement. Then you should practice. Scriptures may suggest this, Guru may suggest it, but if you are not there to practise, it will not work. You have to practise to make your intellect purified, or expanded. That means, you will have to change your view. If you cannot change your view, then you will be left without getting the result. Those people who do not practise are being assimilated just for the sake of a show. Otherwise, they do not deserve to get self-confidence in their intellect that the Self is immortal. This is a kind of correct buddhi (intellect), rather than an incorrect buddhi, in a human body. Then he will come to know that, without it being his fault, he received an incorrect buddhi. He wanted to have a correct buddhi, but there was no education, no educator, and no teacher who could have said that the incorrect buddhi does not exist. But you say, “No, it exists.” That is the human side. Such human beings will not be confident. As long as they are sitting with me, out of courtesy, or out of a norm and standard over here, they say, “Whatever, Swamij, you are saying is right, but I’m not really going to do it, I’m not going to listen.”
The purpose of human life is to attain, out of this present day intellect, that which is Pure Free Forever, Unborn Unchanging Undying. You should practice this. I leave you over here and allow you to talk, yet it is clear to me that you will do your practice, because you have come over here for the purpose of knowing “What is that which I am not doing?” I have made you aware that you are not doing the practice of knowing whether the intellect is permanent or temporary. You have concluded the intellect is permanent, which will be seen in Dr Murray, whom you think is a new person, who is a fully developed intellectual, and who knows, “Whatever I think, that is right.” But I said to him, “It’s all right, whatever you think is all right in terms of relative things and forms which are seen by human beings. But it is incorrect, because you are not seeing what is permanent. That which is temporary, which means it will remain and will die, is what you see.”
Your intellect is saying, “The world is changing and it will die.” The world means “I and my mind are changing and will die,” and you don’t like this. If you don’t like it, then there is some element in you that you should recognize. When you recognize, “Oh, I have that Self intellect which is Pure Free Forever, but it is invisible, it is hidden,” then you ask, “How should I be convinced?” By changing your intellect, or changing your view, that your intellect is permanent. Your intellect is not permanent, because you are only attending things which are impermanent, and your intellect became that. That will bring you death. You will not have this idea before your death that you are undying. You will say, “I am dying.” Though it is the body that will die, you will say, “I am dying.” Then your intellect with its “I” will go there and again take birth and will again be the same thing.
The purpose of your coming over here is that you should know you have an undying intellect, and an undying intellect will be an unborn intellect. When you say you are unborn, it means you should not think of your intellect and associate with what it says, that “No, the body will die.” Let it say the body will die, but you should have the correct, shuddh (pure) buddhi, or intellect of Self Realization, which says, “I is that which has never become the body, thus which will never die.” This is over. Now, Aadi.
Aadi Shakti: Swamiji, you were saying that the human being associates with the impermanent intellect, as in human life there is a great dimension of impermanence in which we engage for the daily purpose of life. I find, as a sadhak (practicant), I must keep the attention on the permanent, as the changing is coming and going and will never stop. How to increase the power to remain with the Unchanging?
Swamiji: The answer has been given: practise. Yes, Heidi (Hridaya Priya). There is no way. We create a situation for each one to hear how difficult it is. If you think it is so difficult, if you think it is impossible, then don’t even try. But if you think it is difficult but possible, then continue doing sadhana (practice). The answer is there. Before you never had an answer for what to do. You said, “It’s changing, changing, everything is changing, so what can I do? Wherever I go, there is changing.” Nobody gives you the way out. Here, at least I’ve given you the way out. But the way out will be only when you exercise it, when you follow it. For that, we create a situation again and again to hear that the answer is to practise.
Aadi: Swamiji, I wanted to create a question for you, because you placed so much attention on that, but I don’t feel I don’t practise this, and I don’t feel I’m in a state where I am overwhelmed by impermanence. I’m just aware that my practice is not complete, it still wavers.
Swamiji: Nobody is responsible for that. It is only you who should bear the brunt of it.
Heidi: … We make the purpose of birth everything that is happening in the field of change, because we develop, with confidence, in our intellect, which sees the changing. It seems to me that when you use the word “confidence” what I’m having to practise is confidence in what I perhaps don’t see with my intellect which has not yet been purified, and have confidence in that which you speak of, that the practice of it is going to bring the sense, or bhavana, of birthless and deathless.
Swamiji: Yes, it will only come when you have heard me. But you are hearing yourself and you are postponing it, saying that it will come, that this bhavana will come. It will never come if you don’t change this. If you have confidence in this intellect, it will never happen. You have to know that this intellect—which I have spoken of and you have heard—does not decide correctly. Why would you have confidence in it? So you should doubt it, and then inquire. Then you will come to know, “The intellect has not worked for me.”
Heidi: Swamiji, that’s amazing. So I need to doubt everything the intellect says.
Swamiji: If you doubt it and you come to know it is all incorrect, only then will you leave it. If you have shit on your foot, you have to clean it, then it will be pure. Otherwise you will say, “Well, everybody does this, so I should have it.” [Laughter]
Heidi: That’s exactly how it works.
Swamiji: Then you are unfit for that. You are reaching there, you are a very intelligent and aware person, you have practised it, and you came to know that the intellect is incorrect. The intellect says, “I am born to my father and mother,” but I am saying, “Prove whether you are born to your father and mother.” Have they the ability to make you?
Heidi: No.
Swamiji: Then why does your intellect say that that is correct? It is Siddhant Kal (the time of the principle that is beyond time and space), that is why I don’t mince matters and don’t postpone it. Either you do it or you do not do it. So I sometimes say, even to Satyam, that you do not listen to me. Why? You have confidence in your rotten intellect. I say rotten so that you can understand, “Why does he say rotten? Is it actually rotten? I’m seeing that it’s all right.” Then there are two things: you accept it, be confident, and then go home or anywhere; or else you do not become confident in this and you remain confident in what is doubtful, and remain in that. If you say, “This is also essential, that is also essential, that is also essential,” then everything is essential. Why would I like your essentiality on me?
Heidi: Swamiji, when you say, “Leave that,” it really strikes a chord with me, and I would just like to have the power to leave that, the way you say.
Swamiji: Power you will never have, because you would like to have power. You have already understood! Immediately, in your words, you changed.
Heidi: Right!
Swamiji: The diamond that you put on glass slips again and again, it doesn’t stay. Then why should I worry about you? I call you, thinking that you are the one who can do it. You have taught your students and people, you are convinced what your Guruji says is right, but if you do not do it, how will you have an effect on him, or on anybody else who will come to you? So you should be that. Then it will benefit you and you will become deathless. Then there will be no worry, which comes again and again in your head. You want to be worriless—and worry is stupid! [Laughter]
Jaya: You said that you believe your intellect is correct that your mom produced you, but how can she ever make you? When you tell us this then I start believing, “Oh yes, I am incorrect, and that intellect is incorrect.” But then when you went a step ahead and said that the incorrect intellect just does not exist, how to completely believe, with conviction or faith, that what exists is just the correct buddhi?
Swamiji: That is very correct. I talk to people who are not a hundred percent sure that the Self is immortal, the Self is blissful, so the day you know the Self is immortal, the Self is blissful, our talking is over. Our eating and drinking, or sitting and enjoying, will start. This talking is because in our group there is always somebody sitting who is not certain about it. In order to make him certain, we give a kind of paraphernalia around him that he should be trapped in it, and he should not be able to digress to his own position. When you are aware, then Awareness is your stand. Then you cannot say, “My shirt is aware, my skin is aware, my relation is aware, my shoes are aware.” Aware is aware. That’s all.
Awareness is your shuddh buddhi, where no form made by the imagination reaches. No photograph can reach over there. That is where the formless existence is in you. Now comes the question, as you say, “How should you hold this?” For that I give you the clue that you are the Knower. Whenever you fail to understand, then ask, “Is my Knower the mind or is my Knower the Knower?” In this way, you will know the Self. Then you will say that whether vrittis (mental waves) come or do not come that “I am Akshay Kumari, I am a child, I am this, I am responsible, I am not getting this, I am not getting that, this is not happening,” still you are aware, that’s all. An aware person goes, but he doesn’t care for the body, whether it’s cold or not cold there, whether someone is getting full care or not. You are aware, that’s all. As Awareness, you go. Wherever you are, that is Free—Pure Free Forever Awareness.
But the moment you have to attend your patients, as Dr Murray does, you have to become a doctor. Keep knowing, “I am a doctor to these patients, but I’m not a doctor to the aware person. The aware person is the aware person. So I am a doctor to the physical body, I am not the doctor of Awareness.” In this way, Awareness is to be held. That we call Atma (Self), Paramatma (Supreme Self), Pure Free Forever Self. In the situation when you hear, you conclude who is definite and who is not definite. You immediately compare this to yourself, which is the only body. Aparajita.
Aparajita: Thank you, Swamiji. I really like when you say that a doctor is a doctor of patients, not a doctor of awareness, the way you disengage us, that the body has its own niyati (destiny) and all its rules, but don’t superimpose that on your I, or your Self. That aropit (superimposed) awareness has to be cleaned somehow, with your blessings Swamiji. Only then can the dawn of the clear buddhi come in our system. So then would the practice always be to just keep disengaging it?
Swamiji: Always. Every kind of activity which gets you engaged in that wrong practice is not for you. The problem comes here because you are not yet fully aware. Whatever semi-awareness has come, that is also awareness. Suppose your mummy and daddy are old. They have also tried for this through the working system, but they have not reached. Then that type of work which does not allow you to reach, why are you going to practise it again and again? Change it, and practise that which benefits you. To me, personally, this benefits [indicating, with his hand. being in satsang], so I’m doing it. [Laughter and applause] That will happen, you will all become like me. …
This is a new tradition which will not be applicable to the old tradition. You will be easily influenced by old traditions. … I have made you free. Just listen to your freedom, what suits you, not to what Guru has said. Many Gurus say, “You should listen to my advice.” Doctors will say, “You should not eat this and that, and then you will be healthy and my medicine will work, otherwise it is not going to” That is a different field, and this is totally different. This uniqueness you should know. Who is it who is talking to you? Akhilesh.
Akhilesh: This is just good luck that we are here in your company, in the nav sarjan, the new tradition, that we are able to hear and get drenched in the grace of the knowledge that you are immortal. Swamiji, is that karma from the past, or how does it work?
Swamiji: When we have found the formula how to make gold, then we use it. [Laughter]
Akhilesh: So I’m going to stick to I am immortal, I am blissful. [Laughter]
Swamiji: That is the only formula. Yes, Mary.
Mary: Thank you, Swamiji. I was thinking how inspiring it is that you give us the opportunity to ask you. I was thinking yesterday when you said, “I say that I am Unborn,” the way the mind goes about it, it says, “Yes, well I’m born now, then I was Unborn, and that Unborn I am now,” but that’s a wrong process.
Swamiji: No, no, you are correct. You are Unborn even now. Because if you are born, then you will die. So you are Unborn. Then you will not die.
Mary: I won’t die. The body will die.
Swamiiji: No, that’s wrong. Again division: jar and chaytan. You again became a human being. How soon it happens! You become free, and you become bound immediately. It’s a kind of rubber band. As long as you stretch it, it is all right; if you leave it, it again goes back.
Mary: So I should just stay with I’m Unborn.
Swamiji: That’s all.
Mary: Even seeing the mike, I only know Unborn.
Swamiji: You are never eyes, never nose, nothing. You are I. Just I. And that is Unborn. On the level of that, it became your shuddh buddhi. The tool I’ll call a tool, but for you it is only I. That will work. Guru is a kind of karchi, a ladle. You make sweet halawa (a sweet dish), you make a salty dish, you make in between karayla (bitter gourd), the karchi remains a karchi. It neither has any sweetness, nor any incorrect or bitterness, a karchi is a karchi. So Guru remains uninfluenced. You should be a karchi. You must know, “Am I influenced by someone, or not?” If you are influenced by a wrong thing, then you are not a karchi, you are not Pure. [Laughter] If you become influenced by your own idea, “Is my I immortal, or my body?” you lost the chance. The body and I is I, but you, being born, live in society where they have all told you that you are only a body. And you think you are chaytan and a body. Whereas I am saying you are only Pure Awareness. As you know Mary, you should know Pure Awareness.
Milan: … It seems what you are describing has never become bound to become free. I just want your clarification on this aspect. I know I am understanding you, but at some point I realize that if a challenging situation arises in my life, it appears as though I forget. I realize that that’s a changing phenomenon, or my mind, and the Being is unchanging. Yet it seems like until I’m with you I don’t have the power to understand that.
Swamiji: You have understood with your intellect. I say the Taj Mahal is worth seeing, and you heard it. But suppose you have not seen it and you say, “Because I have heard it, so the Taj Mahal is worth seeing, but I don’t want to go there.” I say, you are unchanging. Your intellect is saying, “I am hearing unchanging, but whenever a dire situation comes, then I forget.” That means you have not realized it—that I am saying unchanging, so you should know unchanging. Either do it or don’t do it, it is your choice.
Milan: But what I’m witnessing now is all the issues, any difficulties, any changing phenomena, are not present at this time.
Swamiji: Why at this time? They are never present at any time! You are just consoling me, that “Swamiji what you were saying, you’re right. But not at this time.” [Laughter]
Milan: Thank you, Swamiiji. …
Dr Murray: … When you talk, there is an aspect of me that rejoices and just wants to jump up and say, “Yes, yes.” Then there is this other part that seems so stubborn and resistant. … It almost blanks out and doesn’t want to jump up and say, “Yes, yes, I am free,” which you cracked me the other day and made me do, and it was just so spontaneous and true when it came out in that moment. That moment was the Real. Then, everything else is the unreal. I just have to remember that. But I can’t do it myself, I really can’t do it myself.
Swamiji: You should be detached from the unreal. That’s all. Keep knowing the unreal, but remain detached, remain uninfluenced by it. The body is unreal, but you have to live with it, with the body, actions, things, and all that. When the body is unreal, you should not remain attached to it. No rag (attachment) for it. Just that. Then whatever you are doing, you are doing selflessly, anything that you are doing. You have a wife, children, grandchildren, this and that, but you remain That. No attachment. It is all detachment. Detachment is called vairagya. That means the body is born so the body is to be used, we cannot drop it. The mind, intellect, and senses will function, but you keep knowing they are unreal. If they are unreal, then you are not attached to them. That’s all. Only detachment will work for you. You came to know you are cracked, you are free. You are free, then what is this? This is unreal, it is not free. So to a bound thing, you should remain detached. Bound things should remain for you as utility. Your shop, your things, your forms, they’re all changing and will all die. You will leave them. But you will never leave You. You will be always You. You are immortal, you are blissful. You will leave this shop even, this house, the body, but you will go with You. Always. You will be like You, rather than you will remain with the dead body.
Dr Murray: Can I ask you about the Me? There is the “I am,” and there has to be that change in identification, to know I am the Knower. But then there is the individual sense of “I am.”
Swamiji: The individual sense we accept when we talk. You have never been an individual. Your you is sky. Sky has never become any individual drop from a cloud, any air bubble, any solid earth, or material stone. You are sky. That is where I is. So your I that you should know is sky, not that the I is this body—which you have learned. You have to change the meaning of these words which you have learned. The meaning is paramarth, the supreme meaning, or Supreme Being, that sky. Who has come out of earth? You are all sky. Clouds never come from earth, they come from sky. And when clouds drop, it is sky. But the cloud says, “No no, my children are getting dropped.” [Laughter] That is where cloud consciousness is your identification, because it became separate.
Dr Murray: It is so beautiful!
Swamiji: Thank you. Remember it and enjoy. That’s all. You will be delighted all the time, whenever you remember my words. …
