When the Truth Changes Nothing and Everything | Nonduality Satsang [public version]

NSo a couple of years ago I revealed a bit of this to one of my friends, but his response was very interesting. He said, "So what?" "Even if what you say is true, so what?"

When you are in that state of wonder or awe and the realization is fresh, the question doesn't arise for you. Of course, this is the most important thing in the world. But so what? When you come back to earth and life is the same, everybody's still miserable.

Each life is being lived in its isolation. Just that experience, then experience, the next experience... Then what does all this mean? When we say there are no separate selves, in effect it doesn't make any difference, because each life is an island.

So it's actually a very incisive question. And often we fool ourselves when we say, "Oh, I think I've understood — I just need to see it deeper." But actually what you're not seeing is the "so what?" That's the blunt question.

So the Buddha arrived upon the End of Suffering, and yet there's all this suffering. So what? And no matter what I say, or what you read, you could still say, "So what?" So the answer cannot come from outside. But it's worth seeing it for yourself, especially when you are not in that happy state of mind.

Because then you will arrive at an actual answer. The Truth does not change anything. That's the thing about Truth — it just explains things as they are. It's just insight. And life proceeds the exact same way.

So, if you think about what does this do for my life, or how does this help — it does not. You gain absolutely nothing. And yet it does change everything, just not in the way everybody expects. What does it change?

Because if there are no selves, if there is no persistent self, then who are all the problems and worries about? See, it's very hard to explain. "So what?" Because when you see from that point of view, it's true — there's no point to it, if you take the stance of that subjective life. Yes. And that is why it's really just not so much about the relative, but the Absolute.

It's an Absolute Truth. And while the relative continues the way it does, if you can just in that blink, in a moment return to what is absolutely true, that is going to change the "so what." Then the "so what" is not applying to the insight or the Truth. It's applying to everything else. It flips.

Yes, life is not great. So what? It's not a dismissive "so what" anymore. It's not that argumentative "so what" — it's wisdom's "so what." The view from Saturn, "so what?"

What does it matter? When you're worried about someone, but you know what they are — yes, there will be the pain and whatever, but so what? Look at what they are. And life will go on this way and eventually end and you'll forget everything. So what?

Because your value has changed. All the things you're trying to hold on to were never yours. There's one true Treasure that is yours. But my friend would still say, "So what?"

So let's go into Q&A. Hi, Michael.

QHello. I have a question, but you made me think — when you talked about understanding, at the beginning of A Course in Miracles it says your understanding adds nothing to the truth which we are trying to understand.

But you're one of the first people that I ever heard — if I understood you correctly — to say that the mind can come to understand its limitations as a construct, and willingly defer and take a backseat to Awareness, if the ego has an interest to choose to be silent and leave that open. And then I just recently heard you quote Nisargadatta saying that there are no individual beings, only food bodies that understand "I Am," so that I think I'm at that point where I'm willing — my ego is willing to step back. I'm very interested in learning more, but it kind of stops there, and I'm working with that. I want to see if you have any insights to get through that.

Comparing it to — there's a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Have you heard of that? They have these tricks that you play. It gives you a task, but it's a task that the left brain is completely incapable of understanding or doing, so it gets you directly into your right mind, which is usually dominated by the left mind. And I'm wondering, when we're at the point where intellectually our ego is willing to say "hey, I'm just a construct, I'm just always in the past or I'm in the future, and there's a better way" — I'm curious to know, are there things we can do to open that path? I'm thinking non-judgment would be a really good one, because the ego is never going to be non-judging. That's kind of all it does all day long.

But are there things we can do to open that path?

NYeah. Most of what all these traditions prescribe are about that. All the meditation techniques and so on — they're slowing down the mind.

They're bringing you to a state of calm where you can look at the state of affairs mindfully. And you see where is the ego? It's just thinking. And then you see the flaws in that thinking. The arrogance sometimes, or the idea that you understand something when you don't really.

You start to see through the gaps. It's all the standard stuff — mindfulness, meditation, slowing down, introspection. We're led to believe there will be a moment of comprehension where you can't unring that bell. You're not going back.

QI feel after meditation, and wonderful experiences and moments of lucidity... it's a constant effort to not just be slipping back into the hamster wheel of mind. But that's good to know — just keep practicing those things. And does it grow? You implied in one of your talks that the mind can get on board, and it doesn't always have to be a huge breakthrough — it can be a gradual surrender.

NIt's immediate, when the mind just accepts: I am not what is aware, but Awareness is what contains "me". Then there is no "me". Then the mind is diffused into all its component parts — that's all it is. The touch, the sound, the seeing, and so on. That's the mind.

And Awareness is You. You are there. Of course. So it's just a very slight shift for the mind taking the self to be a thing, some kind of thing — objective entity, something, and giving that up. That's it. And yes, the rest is all just spiraling around that little truth.

QThank you.

NNeil.

QHi, Nabeel. Hi, everyone. My latest area of interest — and it does relate to one of your videos where you were talking about sleep and dreaming, and there's a Rumi poem about waking up early in the morning and how the worlds meet — I've found... I thought I'd come to you with my position with that at the moment and see if you can help me with it. I don't quite get the connection between sleep and waking up, and the implication — in quite a lot of stuff that's out there, and that Ramana Maharshi wrote in particular — that you create the world.

You go from that state and you actually create the world, and not only the world, the universe. Your mind, or your ego if you like, manifests this whole thing. From one perspective I kind of get it, and from another perspective it's like... this sounds crazy. It's a really crazy thing. How on earth could my intellect, my ego, my mind create all of this when I wake up? There was also that little quote about a spider — that it takes the web from its abdomen and spins the world, and then it goes back to sleep and sucks it back in.

All these kinds of analogies about that thing — I find it incredibly fascinating, and I can't quite... I really thought I'd like to ask, and appeal to you to shine a little bit of light on that one and how you see it.

NYeah, sure. When it is said You create the world, that "You" does not refer to the mind. It does not refer to an individual you either.

It refers to You — the aware You, the universal You. So first, to see it for yourself: the scope is still limited to this life. When the world appears, it appears to you, and you make it possible, because you are aware — the world can appear. If you are not aware, the world cannot appear.

That's why you make it possible. When it is said you create the world, it is not created in the sense that we expect, like a watchmaker makes a watch. The world is not designed, it is not planned — but it is made possible by that quality, your quality of being aware. That part is easy to get to.

But when it is said You create the whole universe, again the mind stumbles, because the scope is still individual. It is still thinking in terms of, "Oh, my world and my universe is different from that physical universe," and so on. But once you have seen what the Self is — if the Self is just Awareness — what is the universe? The universe is not a physical thing.

What we can call the universe is — if you take all lives together as a whole, all experiences — that is the universe. Because if you take out all of that, what's left? Nothing. It's not physical, whatever. It's just nothing until there's experience. So you make the whole universe possible. You create it. That is "creation".

When an experience is made possible, that is the point of creation. It's just that the Creator does not plan and produce things in that way. And that's what confuses the mind. And the other is the scope of it.

Because the experience just appears. The world appears, the dream, and you're not choosing what's going on in it. And then because the story is interesting, you get into the story, but you miss the point — How is this even possible? And that is the point.

QI don't feel like I've already got that, to be honest. It's just... it's like one of those bars of soap, you know — try to grab it and it just goes. I guess maybe it's trying to understand it in a conceptual manner, as opposed to understanding it from the point of Awareness. I think I'm going to have to live with that one a bit longer.

Thank you.

NThank you. Hey, Pav.

QHi Nabeel. How you doing? Maybe I don't like silence, so I thought I'd put my hand up.

I'm just continuing on from last week. I had a chat to you last week, and what I've come to rest on when I fall back into being too connected to objects and things like that is by looking at a video that you did a long time ago, in regards to a metaphor of the sky — or it could be a pond or something like that. Now when I look at the sky, I understand that the sky is empty, and the formations that form in the sky — like clouds and wind and other things that permeate through the atmosphere — the sky remains the same. What appears in the Emptiness disappears. And I see myself more as a transient pattern of experiences rather than something solid. It's easy to see when you just look at nature — everything arrives and disappears, comes and goes, and they have different timelines, etc. But it's the conditioning that I'm really responding to all the time — my own conditioning — and recognizing that those conditionings are more like ripples in a pond. The pond is the Awareness. It's clear, always clear. It never permeates anything but what forms on it.

So those ripples to me are like tension. Understanding that, there is behind all of that still Awareness. The sky is always a sky. It never blemishes, it never changes. It's just Emptiness. So I go full circle back to the... "form is Emptiness, Emptiness is form," and things like that. But anyway, the reason I said that is it brings me back to ground zero all the time, and thoughts appear in my mind and I just see that as just a thought — it's another ripple in the conditioning that I am. I just thought I'd say that because I find it useful, and maybe other people find it useful. I picked that up on one of your talks way back.

So yeah, that wasn't so much a question — it's just something that may be useful. Metaphors just help conceptually, sure, but for me it ends pretty quickly. When a thought pops in my head, it's the thought that drives everything, so I let it go and that's it.

NYeah, so that is good, but you're still making the mistake of thinking you are a transient pattern — you still... like you said, "the conditioning that I am."

QOh, sure. Yeah. I don't actually think I'm the transient... I recognize that that — yeah, it's a play on words — but I kind of recognize that that's... I'm not a solid self. It's conditioning happening. That's pretty much it.

NYeah. And in that, the only thing then is to see that what you are is only the Awareness. It is not something other than you. You are what is aware, and then all this is happening. And so the way we see the world — when we think of Emptiness, or whatever, Awareness — the mind imagines it as a container. And a container is an object, again. Even space is objectified in the mind to be a container.

But this container which is You has no form, and it is simply the quality of being aware.

QAbsolutely. Thank you.

NThank you. Henriette.

QI wondered if you could... well, sometimes in my life when people have died — like most recently — I've always been far away from the person who's died, like relatives or even friends. It sort of becomes weirdly clear that they were never an individual, in a way. I don't know if I can explain what's in my head, but it's this feeling of — when they're gone, they're not any more gone than they were before.

Whatever I thought they were as an individual, when they were here versus when they're not here, it doesn't seem to be very different. It sort of points to the fact that the individual isn't an entity in itself, because it doesn't seem to be any more real — or not much more real — when they're alive versus when they're not here anymore. I don't know if that's making any kind of sense.

NYeah, death always puts into perspective our ideas of self and others and so on.

Like when I first saw my grandfather's body when he died — it was long ago, I was young — there's something about seeing someone you thought of as a person alive, as them, and now it's just a body. Nisargadatta uses terms like "food bodies," and so it's shocking you into looking at it that way. Ramana Maharshi called his living body a corpse — it shocks you into seeing that you're associating life and Consciousness and Sentience to a thing which is not. And when you think of someone as another person, again that is just imagination — that's you thinking of them, that's not them.

So what are they, as a fact? And what are you, as a fact? That is the only anchor. That is the "so what." Until that comes into view, then the "so what" is resolved.

And there will still be grief, because the mind does not get it. Where are they? What were they? Where did they go? It doesn't get it. But you can get it. You can see, they cannot be anything other than what you are.

Because you take away the quality of being aware, there's nothing. Anyone, anywhere, That is what they are.

QThanks.

NThank you. Hi Nikesh.

QHi everyone. I was just going to say what you were saying about the body, to try and understand, so that Neil can probably get something out of it. The way I looked at it, or look at it, is that if you got rid of the whole universe, it would only mean something if Awareness was there. If Awareness wasn't there, then it wouldn't matter whether the universe existed or not.

And so in the same way, if Awareness wasn't looking at a person, and being with them and living with them, it wouldn't matter whether they were there or not. So in the same way, we do actually create the universe — as in, Awareness creates the universe and Awareness creates everything else. And that's why I think Ramana said, "You create the universe." I think that's the way I look at it. Anyway, I don't know if that makes sense.

Just trying to help with what I thought.

NYeah, that's right. There's no something or anything before Awareness. It's like the prior condition, the prerequisite for anything.

And to the sage, they have seen through... when we say the creation of the universe, what could it possibly be? Even if all these lives depend on a physical universe, where could the physical universe appear? Because even what we call the physical universe is space and time. And in it things and so on. Where can space appear?

Are there two kinds of spaces? Like, there's physical space and then there's mental space. Do you know of two kinds of spaces? There's only one kind of space — with three dimensions, the length, breadth, height, whatever. It appears in Consciousness.

To the sage, they see things very bluntly, very straightforwardly. Space is what we know of what space is, you can observe it. And you know where space appears. So when you think of a universe and tell them of a universe which depends on space, then they know what that depends on. You cannot change that dependency. When the universe appeared, there's nowhere else it can appear except in Awareness.

Now in that universe, you can have other lives pop up. They also pop up in Awareness. And if you only observe that little dream world and say, "Oh, but I don't have access to the rest of the universe" — that's taking the role of the character in the dream, and not looking at what Awareness is. The sage is looking directly at This is the Self, and that destroys all categories and distinctions we make between lives, between the physical universe and subjective life, and all that. It's just very clear because they understand what is the most fundamental fact about Reality. Everything else builds on top.

QJust to finish... I mean, that to me leads directly to: I don't exist as I think I do. I think that's enough.

NBut you do exist, right?

QYes. "As I think I do".

NYeah... The thinking can never capture what is beyond thought. But the thought appears in That, and That is You. The thought can point You back to yourself as You are. So again — the mind does get confused around that. So yes, you are aware. Everybody knows that. So what? Everybody is aware. Insects are aware, let's say. So what does it matter? What is the sage trying to say — "You are aware"? Why does it matter?

Because they are not meaning You as an individual thing. They are saying the most fundamental fact about Reality is this Awareness. Do you know this? You can check this for yourself. There's nothing more fundamental. And you possess this quality. You!

What does that make You? And then my friend will go on about, "Yes, but so what? Mum still got cancer — what do you do?" Yes, that's true. Both are true. So there's the point of view from the life within the life — there's that point of view. And that point of view is actually not wrong, but the standpoint is relative. It's not the Absolute Reality.

And most lives, that Absolute standpoint is never understood, never realized. All that's happening here is you realize, "Yes, all that is true in its space, but this is the actual Truth." And then you return to that. You stay firm with that. Take your stand in the Absolute and don't budge. You don't budge. You never have budged. You see then all the patterns that Pav was talking about in the Sky, which is I.

QYes, I'm sorry, I can't resist jumping in there. When you're there — when you say you're making a stand in Awareness, when it's actually happening, when you're in that place — I don't know about how you use the word "experience," how it feels for you, but there's... there's no questions. To me, it goes back to that root — "go back to the root of the root." To me, that's what it's alluding to. That is what happens. That is you going back to the Absolute Reality of Awareness. But it's such a conversation killer in a lot of ways. You come to a Satsang like this and you want to express how you feel, but you just cannot do it.

I find you just... you dance around and around that Awareness, and it's just it. For me, it answers — like your friend saying "so what" — I'd love to meet him, because it's just so not "so what." It's like, yay! In its simplicity, in its purity, there are all the answers to everything in so many ways. It's such a beautiful thing. It's such a beautiful place.

And in a way, I can imagine — I have spoken to people about this as well — and I get a lot of blank looks. Most people I know that I ever talk about it with just think I'm completely mad, gone completely crazy. And I can understand it. I don't judge them harshly for that, because sometimes — I mean, you were saying earlier about creating the universe — it's just like, you're mad. From a worldly sense, it's insane. It's completely mad. And yet, coming to know yourself as Awareness — that's a beautiful thing. Know yourself as Awareness alone. There's so much wrapped up in just that statement, that place that it takes you to.

So I'm not really asking a question other than I'm... when I'm taking my stand in the Absolute, it's just... there are all the answers. There's nothing left to say, really, other than... I heard it once described as going up to a child who's got a sweet in their mouth and you're asking questions and they're just going like that. It's like there's nothing to be said. There's nothing more. It is complete. It's perfect in itself.

NYeah, that's exactly right. So when you are viewing all this with the knowledge of Truth, there are no more questions and everything is clear. But then you see where is that "so what" coming from, and you realize that's where you were most of your life anyway. You know that place too.

That's why it's said there's a hair's breadth of difference between heaven and earth, and that is the hair's breadth of difference which is so hard to get across. And so when my friend said, "So what," I was just stunned — how can I not get that across? That's the hardest part to communicate, and that's why you see most of the world is not interested in any of this that we talk about. Because the obsession is with what is happening in the life, and the Absolute is looking back — where did all this begin, where does all this end?

And with that, when you see, yes, everything is explained. It's perfect.

QYeah. Thank you.

NThank you. Michael.

QMakes me think the ultimate "so what" is Awareness.

Although "so what" is sort of a judgment. But if Awareness has no aspect, is there anything other than the individual mind that wants to know the truth? Awareness doesn't care if we pursue the truth. Doesn't care. Sometimes you feel as if your destiny is to learn the truth and something is pushing you toward that. But it's only your own ego, your own mind that's thinking there's something you should know. Awareness couldn't care less. It's not waiting for us. It's not like what it says in the Bible — "Oh, God is crying and waiting, and His hands are longing to hold you." No, no.

NIs it... Or... because you are the one longing, and you are the God.

QWell, okay, but that aspect of us is God. The ego is not that aspect, because it's an aspect. God has no aspect.

So you couldn't even say "so what," because "so what" is kind of a judgment — it doesn't matter. He's not even that. Anyway, I don't know. Does that make any sense?

NYes, because Awareness is prior to knowledge, to ignorance, to the search, to desire — all of that. So yes, Awareness does not create something out of desire or want or planning.

And then when things happen, it's also not like... You are the one who is searching. You are what is being sought for. Why are You being sought for? Is this an intelligence which has arisen...

Let's call it the intellect, or mind, or whatever. And its purpose is to understand the world, to try to categorize things, and so on. And if it comes across the question — "Oh, I haven't even understood what the Self is. What am I?" — that starts a search. And it's a funny search, because You have always been there.

You are simply what is Aware, present in every moment. The search goes round and round — You being there, and the thing that thinks it's you... that it's conscious, eventually realizes, "No!" You never participated in the search, except by being the Witness, by making it possible. And You were the target of the search.

QThe word "prior" is very helpful, because we often — if we do Savasana, or practicing death... what I think it is for me now: I'm going to think about what was I before, what was my state before.

Not what will death be, and emulate — except "die before you die." Go to where you were before this life. What was always you, the real you, the Awareness. Meditate on that — the prior state. I don't know. Just an idea.

NYeah, definitely. That is the core. As long as our contemplation is only about Consciousness and life, and maybe what comes after, it remains unclear. As soon as you go to what was I before this life began? What was your original face before you were born? What is the Absolute? That is where it is just piercingly clear, because everything else came later.

Consciousness came at some point, and You were there — because it appeared to You.

QThank you.

So you never participated in the search. But you did feel every single longing, every single emotion, and everything else in there.

NYes.

That is your role. As Awareness — whatever arises, it is experienced exactly in the form it arises in. So if there's a constant, quite dense chain of thinking, feeling, reasoning, memories, all of that. It can very much look like you are that. That is the concept of self. That is all I am.

QYeah. That's it.

NThat's the thing that fools us.

Fools the mind itself. And it's so perfectly rendered, and you're so perfectly aware of all the nuances of it, that no wonder the self arises and so forth.

And so if there's any... because the mind keeps setting its benchmarks. "Oh, if I got it, then I should be fearless." And then it defines fearlessness as the impossibility of fear, and then you're stuck forever. You're never going to get there.

Fearlessness is seeing fear arise, knowing what You are, not letting go of... You know what you are. You are Aware. Of course, You know the fear. You know it deeply. But you are not afraid. Fear is arising. And you find wisdom even in science fiction and such. Fear always reminds me of the Dune series, if you've read it. There's a prayer — the litany against fear, or something like that. It really just describes: fear rises, yes, I feel it, it consumes me, but I will look and see — when it's gone, what will remain is I. So that fear was the form you took in the moment, because every form is Awareness itself. It cannot be anything else.

QYeah. Thank you.

NThank you.

So when the Heart Sutra says it repeats itself — "Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form. This Form is not other than Emptiness." That statement is very important — This Form is not other than Emptiness. Don't differentiate it from Reality. Once you know what Reality is.

This body itself is Emptiness. By "Emptiness" meaning the actual Reality. Reality never split into a physical universe and what was before, and the conscious and the unconscious. There's no such distinction. Even if you try to split things into conscious and unconscious. No! In Reality, each Form itself is Reality taking shape.

And of course, you can have such amazing forms take shape that they create a very sensible kind of world with its rules, and everything makes sense, and then there's an image of what you might be. But all of those are forms that themselves are that Reality — the nondual Reality.

Yeah. Say something there.

QAll of now flows into all of now.

It's like also another aspect of the same thing.

NYeah.

QThat's... that came to me — to see through the concept of time, and time is not just the concept but the experience of time. You can look at the watch and the time is passing.

How can time be experienced, and yet time is not real — it's not the ultimate Reality? And one can realize that...

NYeah, that's what it is.

QIt's All of Now... It's recursive.

It's not flowing from point A to B. All of Now is now All of Now, and it has flowed into All of Now. And it can explain all of cause and effect and everything we talk about — because All of Now, all the forms Now, are transforming into all the forms Now, and on and on ad infinitum.

NMichael.

QHi, hate to abuse time, but no one else is offering. For you — if you feel at one with all — I think of bees or ants, where they are so at one and they communicate without... you know, we have so many ways of communicating with each other, yet they just almost telepathically create a hive and they work together. How do you feel being at one, but it's like 99 and 9/10% of the rest of everybody is like psychotic or something? They're not at one with you. What is that experience — to be at one without any reciprocation of that? Or does that not apply — is that not the level where you're looking for reciprocation, which would be the individual relationships?

NYeah. I mean, the ants and the bees — that kind of oneness is more that it would be mental connections in a way, like communication between minds and so on. But the "oneness" of the sage is seeing that everything is of the same essence. It's no longer seeing individuals. There's no colony — like, in a colony there's still... I don't know. It's not that kind of... like in science fiction we have the hive mind and all that — but this is not that. That is not the Oneness the sage is pointing to.

It's of the same Essence, of the same Reality. And seeing from that standpoint, it's the same view but you're just shifting the standpoint. You can look at this as: I am here, and all this is the world separate, and in it there are things and so on. That's the standard view. And the Absolute view is...

Is a wide open window. There's no frames to it. There's nothing separating you from the world. The world cannot be anything other than Awareness. And what you are is aware.

And what anybody else is, if they are, they are aware. And what are the rocks, which we say are unconscious things? They are just forms in Awareness. They are the seeing, and the seeing is nothing other than Awareness. So it's that kind of oneness where all your categories, all your distinctions, are falling apart — that is the single essence.

And it's not a fixed essence either. It's like the all... Like any... anything... whatever — That. And if nothing, then That! And that is the problem of why Nonduality is hard to express.

It just means no duality. No duality at all. Nothing and something, life and death, conscious and unconscious, being and non-being — completely eliminated. All simply by giving up the idea that I am an individual conscious thing. So when you do Shavasana and you just... that's all you are being asked to give up.

Okay, I'm gone. I am gone. All of this remains the same. The birdsong will still sound the same. I won't be there to hear it.

But the birdsong is birdsong. Blue of the sky is blue of the sky. It has nothing to do with a personal me. In Shavasana, we give that up — like, no me, all this remains. Awareness remains. Because it wasn't mine. It's not just mine.

I didn't have a portion of it. How could I? And then when you give up that self which never existed, then You are That. There is nothing else. No one else. Then You are aware, and that is your Identity, tying you to the core of what Reality is.

QThank you. That's very clear. And I think I understand you to mean that there you're not processing it with the mind, the physical body. Nothing about the physical experience — you're in that place that's not of this mind-body. And so you're not relating it to other mind-bodies. It's just oneness with all.

NYeah. Well, you're still experiencing through that body — the sky and the birdsong I'm talking about still going through the ears and so on. All we are giving up is the sense of identity which was built in this life — that specific persona thing that squeezed You into something individual. And in loosening that, we think, "Okay, I'm gone." Let's assume, because death is coming — die now, I'm dead. What has changed? All my thinking and problems are gone. But then you see what's left. That's what I mean. You focus on what would be left, what is unchanging.

And what is called the transient is actually the unchanging appearing as all these amazing forms.

QOkay. Just because someone dies doesn't mean sound will end, music will end.

NYeah.

QAwareness is without thought.

Thought is future. Thought is past. Just Awareness. No, it seems that's where we get in trouble — where we start probing what we're becoming aware of and compartmentalizing it, putting it into thinking of the future, thinking of the past, rather than just present Awareness, which is not attached to the individual. I don't know, I'm probably taking it backwards.

NYeah, so you can see thoughts in that way as well.

So even if thoughts are arising, and in that mode where we say "I'm dead" — it's not your thought, it's thoughts arising. So even after I'm dead, this "I", thoughts will arise. They just won't be my thoughts. Where do they arise? And that's taking you to the actual Self, the one Self — the actual Self. Rather than the one that was... cut itself off.

Naader.

QJust sharing this, so Nisargadatta says "I Am" is the first expression, the first exit from the Absolute, and also the last to give up to get to the Absolute. And also he says Awareness is even closer to you than "I Am." And these things can be felt, experienced — you just sit down and meditate and you start to say, okay, what is this thing that now is aware of all this?

And you get to the Awareness of everything. But then what's really hard is... Yes I am Awareness... is the... is the... for the mind. And I think this is one of the things that for me was, and still is, this thing that if I am this Awareness — like you said, "I'm gone" — but there's still the bird singing. The universality of the Awareness. It could get... it's still the mind trying to find the last thing. That's okay — it's my Awareness, yet the birds are singing, but I don't care because I'm not there. Just the universality of Awareness.

The fact that when you think about it, it's the same logical mind. People want to hear, "Well, prove to me — if I am the Awareness, and it's only... there is no individual self, why am I not thinking all the thoughts in the world at the same time? Why am I not seeing all the views that are possible at the same time? Why don't I see what you are seeing at the same time?" This is a little trap. It's hard to get over. And I know you talked about this multiple times — the sequence of experience. Experience is... that's... I think you realize this portion of that when the mind just shuts up and says, "Okay, that's it. I'm quiet now. Reveal Yourself to me."

I think it's the realization at that point — when you can't get there with the mind itself. You have to first get the mind to the point where, like Michael said, shut up, "You're not it. Just accept." And then it reveals itself to you. I think it's like that. Is it?

NYeah. When the mind is silent, all things are clear. All this stuff is clear. But you can go with the mind in harmony, instead of fighting the mind. Of course, because the mind is the one searching. For me, the mind itself submitted — its surrender is the mind not fighting the truth. It wants... it's ready. I'm done. Okay, fine. Whatever happens, it's fine. I'm ready to be proven that I do not exist. It's fine.

You can go in harmony. That question about why can't I experience all the thoughts and so on — it's just the wrong frame. Once you see, like what I was describing in Savasana, if you take out the "I", that wrong "I"... all thoughts, all birdsong — where is it being heard, Who is it appearing to right now? That is the Self. This is when we say the Self is Awareness alone, it is giving up all the other attachments we put to the Self — that there must be memories, there must be personality, there must be this and that. The date of birth. No, the Self is purely being aware. That is the only quality. And so when I say it was just hypothetical... Savasana — nobody actually dies. When you're doing Savasana and you die before the actual death, that is the actual death. The death of the concept of the small self is the actual death, because then you realize what the Self is. And that Self never dies and is never born.

Never born. When Nisargadatta talks about I-Am-ness, and what he's saying about Awareness is closer than "I am" — the Absolute is prior to the sense "I am" arising, before Consciousness. When the sense "I am" appears, with it there is experience, life, Consciousness — all of that is bundled together and tied to a specific organism, as far as we know, some kind of process in the universe. And the experiences are reflecting that organism. The activity in that organism — that's what is being experienced.

And so only when you look past all that, to where did this sense "I am" even arise, then you're looking at the actual Self. Because everything else came later, and it's tied to the organism. And if you say, why isn't this organism feeling all the other organisms — well, it's not connected to them. You're actually feeling thirty trillion, or however many cells are in the body — that's the colony you are experiencing, not one thing.

There's no one central agency in here. No central control. Even the brain is made up of many, many units. And what you're hearing, what you're feeling is the orchestra going on in there. And each organism is being experienced according to what's going on in there. That is the scale of it.

Once you take out the little me — in Shavasana, or meditation, whatever, however you take it out — the actual Self is experiencing everything, and is the experiencing. But the Absolute I — that same Self — is actually prior to any experience. So if there was no universe for trillions... before time, that's still the Absolute in which the universe appears.

QThank you.

NIf you recall Ramana Maharshi's death experience, it's pretty much describing the most... deepest way you can experience Savasana, or carry it out. And it just happened for him. He felt an immense fear of death and he just lay down on the floor, prone.

And he just looked into that fear. Okay. Yes. I'm dying. The body is gone. It's going to be burnt at the funeral pyre.

What is left? What is left? Just strip away things that you thought were I. Didn't need that. Didn't need that. What is left?

What is the one anchor around which all of the rest was built? And he found the actual I. I was aware when it all began. And if it all ends, who's taking that quality away?

Who did it belong to anyway? Can You cease to exist if You existed when there was nothing? When something appeared and You were there, then You are beyond space and time. There's no difference in the state in which life begins and what we imagine as the state in which the Big Bang took place. It's just... that's the point before space and time, before anything.

That is the root of the root of your own soul. Any last questions, and then we will end for today. Yes, Pav.

QHi Nabeel.

I just wanted to ask, have you done a talk on the ten fetters? And if not, would you be able to?

NSorry — the ten fetters. I haven't — not sure I'm familiar with that.

QYou haven't done one. That's fine, just asking.

NWhat is that?

QWell, Buddhism — I guess it's kind of like a pathway. Each fetter uncovers more of the awakening process.

NOkay. Yes, my knowledge of Buddhism is very selective. It's just whatever came across my path.

QThat's fine.

NHey Rachel. Come on.

QAll right. So I've been looking at your videos, and also teachings from Nisargadatta.

I listen — sometimes I listen all night long. I don't sleep. I just listen. One of the things that I wanted to ask about is this concurrent living process, where one can see that one is the Awareness only, and then concurrently going through life and observing how the conditioned response gets triggered, and seeing it arise and disappear. But it's creating some confusion.

It's very easy for me to see emotions arise when I'm interacting with other people, but when it comes to my husband, the triggers are stronger. I mean, 35 years of marriage — of course, strong triggers. And I don't know how to... stop the intensity. I'm just observing the intensity of what arises, but sometimes the sheer rage erupts in — how could there be peace and understanding and all of the Awareness that's arising? I'm like, something is wrong with you, girl. Something is very wrong with you. Could you speak to this for me, please?

NYeah. So that's when the... so what should flip. So what? Because that is judging what's going on, how this brain is configured. It works a certain way. And yes, of course, the people closest to us are often the ones we get most angry at, which is ridiculous, because they can push the right buttons. But...

QGo ahead.

NSee, most of the wisdom teachings come from old men who didn't have families and didn't have jobs. It's a certain demographic. And that already takes care of many of the things which trigger us and which make a brain go certain ways. And in a monastery, of course, there are less triggers.

QYes, I've lived in a monastery for three months at a time and yes, it is the most peaceful place. You see what triggers them, but there are no triggers coming for me. So yes, I've observed that. So go ahead.

NYeah. So it's just the stimulus being provided to the system and it reacts a certain way. It does not change the Truth. We are — the anchor is only what is the Self, that's all. What am I? What is he?

Who is she? Once that's it, that's all to be clear on, and the rest happens. So what? It's like — the scope is again going back to that narrow focus, the blinders-on focus. It happens. Yes, that's how life goes on. Life goes on a local path.

QSo, I guess there was an expectation on my part because I've lived in the monastery and I've seen what their life is like. I'm like, "Oh, so once I know that I am Awareness alone, something's going to shift in me and I'm going to suddenly be really peaceful and I'm not going to be triggered."

That was my expectation. But it's not happening that way.

NYeah, it's not magically going to rewire the whole brain. And even in a monastery, the true state of affairs is not what it seems.

As you've listened to the Master Huineng's story. Well we have our disagreements, we have our triggering with each other. It happens everywhere, because it's all human interaction. The monastery is a controlled experiment.

It's just reducing the kind of things that would disturb a mind, so that you can meditate and focus on getting to the Truth. Once you know the Truth, you don't stay... There's no need to stay in a monastery. You could, but...

QBut then I come home, and all the triggers are here as well — and the triggers are much more intense because I'm home.

What I've noticed is mild triggers are easy to see, observe, and disappear. But there are some deep-rooted ones that kind of feel like there is so much physical response to them — some of these deep-rooted samskaras — that I feel like I'm stuck.

NSo the main thing that makes an emotion so powerful is the way we look at it. If it is "my feelings," if your focus narrows into that and you accept this is... my rage is righteous or whatever — that's the fuel it takes.

But if there's a little bit of distance and you don't take possession of it, it fizzles out. The idea is not to somehow become emotionless. That part is going on. It's fine. The way to change your thinking is in the life — it's the natural ways, "Okay, let's change the way I think about that." But there's no "I won't feel this way" or "I will be a saint or something."

QThe happening is the happening, and with the deep-rooted traumatic hooks, the happenings are going to continue. But there has to be a point where the perspective shifts — to "it is not my history, it is not my conditioning, it's just a happening." So that the emotional response softens, with self-compassion and everything else that goes with the teaching. How does one create that, or does it just happen eventually?

NSome of it is just the way you're still evaluating the reactions — it'll just go away. I have no criteria to meet. For me, it's like, if I act out the way I act out, and I know how I want to improve this mind and so on, that's fine. That's going on on its own track.

But that is not judged against the Truth, because the Truth is Absolute. How I behave as Nabeel or whatever does not reflect on the Truth. Return to the Absolute — that's what you keep returning to. And when you're fed up with life, that's where you go anyway, because it doesn't last long.

QI admit that it doesn't last long. It's like a blip. It's a trigger. It happens. I see it happening. The emotions may just be so quick, the response to it may just be so quick, that it happens.

But then within a few seconds I see the reaction happening, and I catch myself. What are you doing? Who's doing it? Who's doing this? What happened? You were in a space of understanding who you truly are, and suddenly that went away. What the heck?

So that standard is also wrong — to stay in that state that you get to by meditating at a retreat for a week. That's not something you can maintain in real life.

Sad — the expectations cannot be met.

NYeah, that's what I was saying. Monasteries are a controlled experiment. They're trying to reduce the ways the mind gets disturbed and so on. But if we step back into life, then that's all of life. It's fine. Why can't monks have kids?

I think they should have kids. Then they will realize certain things. So all of this is just the normal happening. Then there will be... Because it always goes back to the basic insight that there's no separate self. So who is to improve in certain ways? All of that is happening at the level of the mind, and sure, that's not wrong — if you want to learn something or change something, that's happening.

However, the judging as an individual — or how I should not react, or what am I doing — that you should see is baseless.

QIt is. I know. It's just a happening. And the judgment around what's good and bad is so ingrained in the system that what arises with the happening is: this is bad.

NSo the judgment itself is a function of the mind. It's probably a talk for a different next time. There's the concept of the whipping boy. Humans had that for a while. What a terrible thing to do.

You can't beat the prince, so let's get another boy and whip that one instead — and just get the boy to be close to the prince so that he feels a bit bad about it hopefully. That's the whipping boy. And that's what the mind does. It's creating a caricature of self. That's you — it's going to whip it up, and somehow that helps it change behaviors.

But you just see: oh, it's not real. That's not you. And let it fix itself. Yes, I'll feel a certain way, but it's not you.

QEventually I get there, and then all of the bad feelings disappear.

But I don't stay in that place, even though I know it to be the truth. I don't live in that place. I reverberate. I seem to be reverberating to and from, to and from, because the mind still has all of the attributes that it does, and in day-to-day function during the day, that's where I place my analytical skills for functioning. Is there another way to function?

NThe mind has its function and you're not supposed to stop that. It's that again — so what? You realize the truth, and then so what? Because the mind behaves this way, there's a personality built over years, it's the same, changes slightly, whatever — which it would anyway. Nothing. You gain nothing from this. It's only a different standpoint. And in any moment you can take it up, or not take it up — it doesn't change anything.

It's just about what is true and what is habit.

QWell, just conditioning. Okay. I thought there was a magic pill. I guess not. I thought there was an easy way to actually have a change in perspective that is so deeply different. I find it challenging. So you're not making it easier for me, huh?

NJust change the bar you're setting.

QOkay, go ahead. Speak more to that. Is that what you're saying?

NThat's it. Just change the bar you are setting. The bar. That's what [unclear] is saying. The bar. Thank you, [unclear]. What is the criteria for success here? If the criteria is entirely wrong — what if the criteria is entirely wrong?

Because it's all based on what came later. It's based on the organism and its behavior and how it functions and so on. But the Absolute has nothing to do with that. The Absolute Self was there right at the onset. Perfect.

The Basis of Reality — the scope is all wrong. Whenever you catch yourself thinking like this, just know that's the change in perspective: the scope is wrong. And then you can address whatever the experience is, whatever.

QThank you. It took me a long time to get to the link because I've rearranged some of my emails. I'm very sorry I'm so late, but thank you very much for addressing that.

NThank you. Thank you. I think we had Andre's hands up, but he might have left.

All right, so we'll end here for today. Thank you all for joining. See you next time.

QThank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you.