You are the mountain | Self-inquiry in real time (Live Satsang)

NAll right, let's begin. So whenever there's the sense of "I," or the thought "I," you should see that as just a signpost. The task here is to find out where that signpost should point to — what is really "I." So when you start investigating, it very quickly becomes clear that the signpost keeps moving.

Until you have a child, you never identify as being a dad or a mom. But as soon as you have a child, that is what "I" means — that atom of identity. It's just a core part of your identity suddenly, magically. And that's happening throughout life.

What you call home, who your closest friends are, what your ideals are — the signpost continues to shift. So how do you get to the bottom of it? What is the core? What is actually "I"? And then as you investigate, you'll notice that the one thing that doesn't change — there's a mountain always in the background. The signpost points here and there, but there's a mountain in the background, and that is the fact: "I am."

That is not changing. That is the factual part of all this. So you say, okay, let's go in that direction. Let's walk to the mountain. And as you're walking to the mountain, the "I" is still undefined — there's no... What is "I"? I don't know. But the meaning of "am" becomes clearer.

When you say "I am," the second part — "am" — what does that mean? The usual, thought-based "I" is changing based on circumstances and all that. But the "am" is what is pointing out that you are present in a way that you're not changing moment to moment. When you say "I am," the "am" is about being present — now, and now, and now — not changing during the now.

So the meaning of what it means "to be" is becoming clear. And the most the mind can say is, "Okay, you are now, but maybe later you will cease to exist." But then you look again at your mountain. "Am" is saying more than that. It's saying you're real in a way that it's not possible for you to be an illusion.

And what the thought is saying — that you might cease to exist — it's considering time as more real than this. What "am" is saying is: this is more real than time. To be present now is more real than anything else. And to then assume that at some point in time you would cease to exist — that's saying time is more real than this.

So you keep walking to your mountain. What does it mean to be? I am. And after a while, you see the signpost. It keeps moving in the wind. But now you have a landmark. You don't need that.

The "I" always means: to be present, real, aware. That is the meaning of "I." But what's the point of all this anyway? All those questions which humans ask — is life worth living? What's all this suffering for?

What's the point of life? What happens after we die? It's all because the worldview is built around not knowing what you are. What does "I" even mean? And because the signpost keeps shifting, you don't know.

But you walk to your mountain. And then the "I" is undefined. There's no thing that is "I." But you are. Real, present, aware.

And then you are the mountain. To be the mountain is to be that one firm fact, as everything is moving by. The seasons change, things grow and die and all that, but that fact remains. Who would like to ask a question?

Yes. [unclear].

QI don't even know what my question is. As I was listening, there was... trying to understand what was happening. The mind was trying to understand something, trying to understand and put it in perspective. And then there was a millisecond where I heard the message.

And now anger is here. Everything is just — I feel this emotion coming up, and it's anger, or I'm labeling it anger. So in the millisecond I heard the message, there was no meaning — or that's how this is being interpreted right now. Now I'm trying to give it meaning. Does that make sense?

NThe message was not that there's no meaning. The message is to find out what you are. What does "I" mean? What is the anger about?

The anger is again just the wind moving the signpost around. We find that landmark — when you say "I am," what is that telling you? Are you eternally angry? Anger is just a thing passing by.

Once you're not referring to the shifting signpost, you look from what you are. That's all — the standpoint changes. It's not wrong to try to understand; that happens at one level. At another level, it's just intuitive. But what was the anger about? Can you express that?

QThere was something that was touched with your message. Something was... known to be true. And then there was just a claiming. It felt like a claiming, or wanting it to be different. It was just, as you said, a movement that just keeps coming in.

NMhm.

QAnd what I've noticed in my life lately — which shocks me — is there's a lot more joy and fascination and curiosity. I'm normally filled with anxiety and worry and all this. But the more I listen to your videos, or read into similar material, there's this joy coming in. But then there's the conditioning, the habit, the usual things, patterns that roar in.

And I think when I say what was the anger about — it felt like that roaring in of the usual conditioning. So what was it about, or what was it for? It just feels like it's conditioning — a type of fearful conditioning. I want to know, I want certainty. I want to know exactly what the "am" is, what the "I" is.

NThat's not wrong. You have to get to that certainty. So calling it anger is maybe not right. It's just driving you to figure it out.

QBut in this joy and this curiosity that I've noticed, that's different lately — I don't know how to explain it, but there is a type of certainty. And the certainty is being more okay with the uncertainty.

NLike I said, the "I" is still undefined. How can you define infinity? How can you define Awareness except by being aware? You know what you are, but you can't define it. You can only put words on it and so on.

When you feel the joy — there's a resonance. When you hear the truth, because it is so simple, it's obvious, it resonates. You get it. And then there's that conditioning maybe, where the mind is flipping here and there. But that's why we return to the landmark, which is always there.

No matter which way the signpost is pointing, it will point in the opposite direction — it doesn't matter, because you're not referring to it. The mind's "I" is just a variable. It's pointing here, there. It keeps changing. It's pointing to a role, it's pointing to a mood. It becomes so important because it's my mood.

But you are realizing what it means to be. What are you? What is the Self? In one of the early videos, I covered this passage from a Zen master, who said, "Mountains do not lack the qualities of mountains. Therefore, they always abide in peace and always walk." He talks about mountains walking.

He says mountains walking is like humans walking. But because you don't know your own walk, you should observe the mountains walking. The mountains do not lack the qualities of mountains. You do not lack the qualities of you-ness. So what you are, you always have that quality. It's never coming and going.

And it's the same with anything you observe, anything you know of. That's how it is. The sky is always sky, wind is always wind. How can you be something that keeps shifting and changing? No, you always have the quality of what you are, which is the quality of being aware, real.

The "I am" captures all of that. When you look at it — I am. I Am. What is the teaching about? Mountains walking. Obviously mountains don't move, but he's saying mountains are walking. So when you walk on the road, you can observe, like usual senses, "I'm moving through space, I'm walking." But if you look and open your vision to include the periphery, it looks like I'm still and things are passing by.

It's just a change in the standpoint you take. So from the view of the mountain when it walks, things move by, seasons change. Snow comes and melts. The anger's gone now. Where is it now? It's not there. And you remain.

QLast time I was saying I still get depressive thoughts and so on, and the mood that comes with those thoughts — it doesn't matter.

NYou are the mountain. You see the hook of the signpost.

QThank you. That was very nice. Thank you. Thank you.

N[unclear].

QHello Nabeel. Hello everyone. Had a nice day listening to one of your not so recent videos — but not too far back — from the Ashtavakra Gita. The "into the peace of dissolution" is kind of really rather beautiful, and I love so much of it, but there are just little bits of it that — obviously nothing really important because it's in the first part of the video — I just don't quite understand.

I think the whole concept... if I read it to you, it's the second paragraph. It says, "The universe arises from you like the foam from the sea. Know yourself as one and enter the peace of dissolution." The bit that I don't get — and it comes up quite a bit — is this thing: the universe arises from you. That's quite a statement, like foam from the sea.

It's beautiful and it's very poetic and I love it, but I don't understand it. Quite often there's a reference to that somehow you create the world, you create the universe. I've got to ask — can you flesh that one out for me? Because that's just too intriguing to just walk past. If you would, sir.

NIt's not just poetic. It's very literal.

When the sages talk about the universe, they're not talking about the hypothetical universe. Look at your universe first. How does it appear? We'll talk about the hypothetical one later.

QOkay. So you're saying... my experience, my understanding, my Awareness of my world — that universe. Is that what we're saying?

NSo in the morning when the universe appears, this is the universe. How does it appear? It appears in you. It doesn't appear like you — it's not like it was there and then you start to observe it. The way the world appears, it suddenly appears.

Where could it appear except in you? Otherwise, you would have to be something outside the universe — something separate that then suddenly starts to observe it. But it's entirely subjective. We know that all of this is entirely subjective.

So where can a subjective world appear except in Awareness, which is what you are? If you're really curious, you can start to examine this as you go to sleep. Have the intention: "I want to observe when I wake up — I want to catch that moment and observe it." Try to observe as you flutter between dreams.

Sometimes don't care so much about the content of the dream — we want to see where did this dream suddenly pop up from.

QI know one of your videos — a little while ago you were talking about observing the mind disappearing, and maybe it wasn't such a great way of doing it. That's what we're talking about here.

NSo the warning was: if you try to catch yourself going into sleep, that can be quite horrifying if you approach it a certain way, with a certain identity. But dreams are easy — when you've already gone to sleep and then you're fluttering between wakefulness and sleep, you're very peaceful.

And that's where it's quite... you can investigate. If you have that curiosity to inquire, you can investigate. And it doesn't need to be a full-on dream. Even just seeing a vision — where did it come from? Where was it? What kind of space does that exist in? It becomes clear how subjective what we call the world is, and all that it exists in is just pure Awareness.

And pure Awareness — you can't quantify it. You can't qualify it. There's just no experience to pure Awareness except being aware, with all these worlds appearing within it. So now we can talk about the hypothetical universe. What is it? It's just all these separate subjective worlds — separate, but all these lives are the universe.

The universe is not a thing. If there's no experience, what is the universe? It's nothing. Matter — when we break it down, we don't find a solid thing at any point. So if there's no experience, the universe is nothing.

The universe is all these lives appearing in Awareness — that is the universe. And I don't just mean human lives. I mean all lives in this universe, or any universe — they must appear in that Reality which makes subjective experiences possible.

QSo is this kind of going to the thing about deep sleep, the dream state, and the waking state — that the dream state and the waking state are all dreams?

It is all actually a dream, and only the ground state, or deep sleep, is Reality in effect. Is this the kind of realm that we're going into here with that?

NBut dreams and deep sleep — there's still investigating with the tools you have on hand.

Even deep sleep is still relative to this life. When one body is in deep sleep, another is experiencing. But it points you to what that ground state is. Your ground state. What is it?

It is just purely being aware. Experience may be present or not — the ground state is still there. That is the ground state. Being aware. Whose ground state?

It's just the base state. So this investigation is just helping clarify it, and we just use the tools we have on hand. But we shouldn't go so far as to say deep sleep is the absolute state. Actually, it's... because deep sleep is relative to one body, one mind.

You're still observing this body, but experience has shut down for this particular body.

QI still find it incredibly intriguing. I feel like there are some bits missing to my puzzle still. I still feel like there's maybe a deeper understanding, or a clarity, that I don't quite get.

Not going to give up. Not giving up. I intend to continue with the investigation, but I don't know. There's still a space there — a little bit of the puzzle that isn't quite slotting in. But thank you for grilling me.

You promised that you would do that. Thank you.

NSo maybe let's consider that analogy — foam from the sea. So that is when you try to question: what is experience? Even when you get to "there's Awareness," but then there's experience and there's no experience.

So what is experience? That is the foam — when you look at something, there's still a duality. That thing — the phone here, or the computer — it's insentient. But there is Sentience, and there is the insentient phenomena.

The thing cannot be what is aware. The thing is what you are aware of. But then you can break that down also — what is being experienced is not a thing. Every dimension of what you would describe — the color, the shape — it's just a little movement in Awareness, which is a dimension of Awareness. You pull it this way, you put it that way. So when the waves crash, the experiences come out.

Still the ocean. The ocean's moving. Yes, Victoria.

QSo, Nabeel, in the experience — is Awareness the one that observes the experience, or is it the experience itself, or the creator of the experience, or all of it, as in a dream?

NSo when you get to the bottom of it, there is no subject and object duality. That's the main point.

There is no duality between subject and object. So when there's experience, it does feel like that — that's the general feeling — that there's a subject and then there's the experience being observed. But as we look at it more clearly, there is no subject. There's no subject to find. It's just the experience. And what the experience is, is Awareness in action.

But yes, Awareness is the aware. So the experience is observed by Awareness. There's no other subject possible. There's no separate subject possible. But in the happening of the experience, it's actually more amazing than that — the experience itself is Awareness in action. It's like...

Reality can be still, and in that stillness there can be these tiny movements. And those movements are experienced by Reality because Reality is aware. So when it really hit me, the way it was — I always thought of myself as a subject, the real subject, and all this stuff is happening. Why is it happening to me? Why is this life this way?

But then the realization is that there is no... except for the happening itself. Everything that happens in Victoria's life — that is Victoria. From the outside we can see a face, we can see a body. But in the actual experience of this life, for you it is not about the face and the body.

It's about whatever happened, whatever was experienced, every aspect of it, which from the outside is impossible to observe. That is Victoria's life. That is the happening, and that is what Victoria is — the entire happening. So it's not wrong to call it a universe. When Ashtavakra was talking about the universe to the sage, that is a universe.

It is immense. It is not a small life, because we're talking about every instant, every moment, every aspect of experience in every instant, in one life. That is an entire universe. And in that universe you find who you are, because even that universe is not big enough to contain You. You are the Awareness in which all that happened — the entire happening.

And then the duality comes crashing down. What subject, what object? The experience is Awareness in action, and Awareness observes the experience. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Christina.

QI would like to know something about Jesus. I was talking to a Christian friend and she asked me what you say is so empty. "We are all Awareness, and Jesus Christ — I'm so in love with him." And what you say about a task in life a person could have... it sounds like Awareness is everything, and it feels a little bit like there is no doing, no plan.

Did I explain? Do you feel that way, or is it just... I don't feel that way, but talking to other persons is really difficult for me. I try to — when she says this, I'm very glad she's so happy with her relation with Jesus. I said, "Yeah, it's fine that you're so happy. I'm glad about it."

Yeah, I mean, should I say something about it, or does it seem too stupid?

NIt's right. If I were to design a religion that was easy to spread, it would not be this. You don't go and tell people you don't exist. In Reality, it's only for... see, even among those who are interested in these questions, most are still just interested in progress — their own spiritual progress.

There's a very tiny... the odd ones out, which drop into this final hole, wanting to be... It really doesn't make any sense to talk about it. I tried to, and I just didn't get anywhere. When I started this channel I thought, okay, who's going to listen to this? But okay, just put it out there.

But actually, YouTube does a pretty good job of finding those who might be interested. It's like a tiny portion. But sometimes it shows it to the wrong people — as soon as I see the comment I know, okay, it shouldn't have shown it to that one. Look, it is — you can definitely have simpler versions, simplified versions trying to represent the truth, and they appeal more to the standard view of the world.

But you look at what Jesus was saying and try to understand, and he is saying the same thing. So if you come up with a version where you're just loving a personal Jesus — everybody wants a personal Jesus — that's not trying to understand what Jesus expressed. And if you say something is empty without ever seeing from that standpoint, you don't know. It's empty from the outside.

When you think of Awareness as a thing, it's empty when I try to explain it. When I try to explain it, it seems there's nothing I can say. Like, one of the things she said — oh, nothing is planned — but what did Jesus say? He said, "Not my will, but thine be done." He's giving up his control. Not my will — he's given it up.

So it's the same thing, said a different way. "Before Abraham was, I am" — what did he say? He risked getting stoned by saying that. He said it to people who believed in Abraham as the greatest prophet. He said, "Before Abraham was, I am."

He's not placing himself before Abraham. He's saying, "I am" — that actual fact of existence that predates Abraham. So the clues are there, but religion has taken it and commercialised it. It's often turned into a business for power. And there are very few in each religion who got to the bottom of it, and they are usually the outcasts — the ones who were tried by the court, like Meister Eckhart, and those of that kind.

QOkay, thank you.

NBut what does happen is you can start to feel — like you were talking about — joy. I think he's accidentally gone off mute. Let's mute him. So what this is giving many people is something beyond the superficial life. It's you turning to something deeper.

And that part is why religion is so strong — it's giving you something more. You look up to something bigger than yourself, and while still being a little self, you feel like there's a higher Self. And that is the appeal of how it can be used. But it's not getting to the truth, which is what that tiny portion of odd kind of minds want to get to.

QI think I struggle with... when I listen to you, it seems all truth, perfect. I love to listen to your podcasts and it seems so clear, but in daily life I don't have anybody to talk about these things with, and so normal life is a little bit difficult in comparison. So you said something about it — you said when you are with your daughter, you're just a normal father and things like that. I would like to have something more about that. How to live a normal life knowing about this.

NSo let's just go back to that analogy — the signpost keeps moving.

When I'm with my daughter and she says, "Dad," you play the role of dad, but it doesn't change the truth. That landmark is there forever. And when you look in her eyes — I look in her eyes — what is she? You just keep that fact in mind.

What are you? What is everyone else? Where did this universe appear? You're just aware of that fact. The rest is the same. It works the same way. See, when you get to whatever the truth is, it must explain things as they are. What's usually expected is: everything will change.

When I lose myself, everything will change. I will see the world a different way. No — the truth explains everything as it is already happening. But it is so revealing that it just wipes away the old model of the world, and it's just so obvious. This is the truth. This is how it is.

QThank you. I just don't talk about anything, because there's nothing to talk about when people don't understand it.

NYou have to see who is worth talking to about this. If someone is happy with their life, or with their beliefs and so on, you leave them alone. It's only for... Usually you see most of the sages had something driving them.

I don't know — they saw... like the Buddha: his insight into suffering was beyond what most princes have ever had, such that he could leave his kingdom and just walk away. What Ramana Maharshi experienced — he experienced death. He had the seizure that set him off on his journey. And it's not for everyone. There's something like — what happened to Jesus? Why did he turn out that way?

Why? Well, that's too long ago to know for sure. But it seems like there's trauma involved. There's something involved like the deep questioning. Since the way he phrased everything is about his father, and he never knew his father.

So maybe it has something to do with not having a father. But there's some painful, sharp end of the stick that got — that pushes you this way. If you're happy with your life, or you've found a nice religion, you're never going to go this way. But those who become aware of the sad state of how things are — the normal view — who lose their religion, who realize that God as the way that all these religions talk about is evil...

Then you might start to see things this way.

QThank you.

NLet's consider that the line Jesus said just came to mind: "Before Abraham was, I am." He says this to try to explain what he has understood — about God, about Reality.

So what he's realized is that what he thought as "I" is not actually "I." What that "I am" signifies is existence itself, Consciousness itself. And of course that was there before Jesus was born, before Abraham was born. That's what he's trying to express.

But from the normal standpoint, which almost everyone has, what he's saying is: "I was there before Abraham — like me personally, Jesus — I am a higher prophet than Abraham." That's what it sounds like, and then he gets stoned. But that's not what he's saying. And there's no word for Consciousness back then.

"I Am" is the word for Consciousness. If you had no other word for Awareness and Sentience, how would you express Consciousness? What is it? It is just that "I Am" — those seemingly two words capture the essence of what it means to be conscious.

Yes.

QHi, Nabeel.

NHi.

QSo the landmark and the signpost. I kind of get it. "I Am Awareness" — it gets more and more clear. You feel it. You're so intimate with it.

All the experiences — where do they come from? Yes, I am Awareness. I'm aware of all this. But... I know they say this comes from nowhere and all that, but the depth is infinite when you just look at it — when you turn this towards the experience. What you're aware of, where does it come from?

Can you talk a little about that? It's infinite. It blows your mind. It's me also. It's I. The experience is also... Can you talk about that a little bit?

NLook, when the base Reality is Awareness, then when events happen — when anything happens — let's say for trillions of years, nothing happens. Actually, there's no time. But then whenever something happens, Awareness is there to notice it. But not everything is rising to the surface of experience.

So that's a tricky one. Why does some stuff arise as experience and other stuff seemingly doesn't? Well, I don't know. It's good that it doesn't, because I don't want to be aware the whole time of everything going on. The analogy would be: the ocean is aware, and in the ocean, if there's a fish moving, the ocean is aware of the fish. Now in this ocean, the fish is not aware.

The fish is not sentient. The ocean is sentient. How does Sentience observe the fish inside it? It would become the fish, in a way. It feels like it — I am the fish. I'm this little fish, and there's another fish there.

And it's also experiencing... the ocean is experiencing all of the fish at the same time, because the ocean is Awareness and not the separate little fish. But then to make it more... so that's the analogy side of it. But then where it really hits home is what I was saying to Victoria. Awareness is not just... it's not a subject.

Awareness is whatever is happening — the actual happening is Awareness. The happening of it — when we say something is happening, what do we mean by that? The happening is the actual observation of whatever is taking place — the sound, the feeling, the sights — and that is Awareness in action. Anything that ever comes into existence is only Awareness appearing, taking a temporary form.

It is never two things. It's like — further in the Ashtavakra Gita it says, how can bracelets, armlets, and rings and so on be anything other than the gold they are made of. So there's still a lot — the mind continues to try to split things into the scene and the seer, the sound and the one hearing, and that is exactly the duality which is wrong. There's no separate self entity.

Yes, Neil.

QThank you for that. That was brilliant. That's really just what I needed to hear. Oh, it's so funny. But now I just took these out — can you hear?

NYeah.

QSo when you were saying, you know, Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am" — as you were talking, I'm going, okay, what's the difference between understanding this intellectually? It makes sense, and then... I'm missing something. There should be a felt experience. I should know it from a different place. And I became aware I'm looking for an experience. Then your explanation of the ocean and the fish hit home.

It was just brilliant. I wanted to say that, and I'm going to go back over it and listen to the video. And I just want to go — but then — but there's really not a "then." You explained it. It's just something you can't digest from the mind's perspective.

NThe thing that befuddles the mind is that there's no experience to being the ocean.

There's experience to being a fish. There's no experience to being the ocean. That's the big puzzle. The ocean is pure Awareness — pure Sentience. What do we mean by pure? It means there's no experience in itself. It's just Awareness.

There's no experience to being just Awareness. But in Awareness there can be all kinds of experience. But they will never be defining the ocean as a whole. They're just an example. Look, this is what you are.

The "I Am" is the core fact of being the ocean, because nothing else... you can try to find something that is aware. There's nothing.

QThank you. Just something you were saying there about being in Awareness — that there's nothing there, there's no experience.

That when I'm aware of Awareness... There's a — to me there's quite a deep sense of joy in it, even though it's not a thing I appreciate. There's no form, there's depth, and there's peace, and there's just that Awareness. But you say there's nothing there — nothing at all. So there's no experience to being Awareness?

NWhat you are describing is the moment that you are aware of the fact of being aware. You're not aware of Awareness as a whole. That's not possible. You're aware of being aware. It is a difference. The being aware is just knowing that you are aware, and not depending on experiences to make you happy.

You're just — that's the bliss of Self that comes out — just knowing what you are. But what I'm saying is there's no ground experience to Reality. Experiences come and go. They are the fluctuations. And when there is experience — when that means there is Consciousness and the mind is not building up the illusion of self — instead you are just aware of the fact of being aware, then yes, you can feel peace and joy, and all that bliss comes out, which is just the fact of being aware.

So true. The ocean is still looking through the fish. But instead of just observing the world as the fish, the fish had a brain big enough to question: what am I? And realized, oh, there's no "I" in this.

"I" means ocean. And in that fact, there's joy. There's brilliance. Amazing — oh, I'm not a little fish. But still it's not possible to experience the ocean as a whole, because that would still be experience and not Awareness.

QI do struggle with the differentiation between Awareness and Consciousness and experience. It kind of... I lose the — if there is a boundary, maybe the boundary happens in here somewhere. But the one thing that I can say is, I think that Awareness is beautiful — or my understanding, my experience of it, is that it's beautiful. And is this... going back to the Ashtavakra — the dissolution, that is the breakdown of the little me, that's the dissolving of that identity.

And becoming Awareness, and to know myself as Awareness only — is this... am I getting that right?

NThe process of dissolution is where you lose the small self. You realize there's no small self.

And what previously horrified you — or what horrifies the followers of certain religions — is actually amazing peace. I do not exist. Yes, that's what I wanted. I didn't want to exist. But I exist in a different sense, a universal sense.

That's the only way to be satisfied with existence — to not be a tiny thing being thrown about in the waves.

QI think my wife often says to me, "Neil, you are the problem." And I think maybe she means it in a different way, but sometimes I look at that and it's like, yeah, I want to dissolve. I've had enough of him.

I've had enough of that character. I just want to... yeah.

NYeah, that's perfect — that I should make a video about that. "You are the problem."

I have to agree. Okay, thank you. Okay, there's a question in the chat, so I'll do that and then we'll get to Victoria. The question in the chat is from Rohan: What is suffering? That essential capacity to suffer — how does it relate to mind, self, symbolic thought, animal sentience, etc.?

So there is what the Buddha meant by suffering, and what we usually think of as suffering. The usual suffering we care about is just pain and emotions and so on. But there's more to it. First you have to look at the scale of it — not just my suffering.

Mostly, what people go through in life, and what they hope for in the afterlife, is just "my suffering goes away" or "My little circle of people go to heaven, and the rest can go to hell — who cares." And it's like... how can you believe that? That is the myopic view of suffering. First, we expand it — look at the problem as it is.

It's really heartbreaking — not just humans. Life is brutal. Seeing these rainbow lorikeets that come to our garden for the apples — one day a cat caught one and walked away. It's sad, but also it's the cat's instinct.

So you see the scale of how wrong this is. Why is it required that one thing eats another thing to survive? There are so many ways you start to see this — life is something we struggle for, we love it, but why? It is so painful.

Most humans who have ever lived have lived as slaves. If you look at all of history, most humans spent their lives as slaves. So suffering is seeing life and not being able to find the saving grace. First of all, you see — why is this cycle being perpetuated?

And even if you get to wealth and happiness and whatever, after a while it's just rotten. It's just empty. And that is what drives the questioning.

If you really feel it, if you realize what suffering is — not my suffering, but the scale of it — and how life... there's no balancing the scales. If you just look only at life, you try to imagine then a God who will balance the scales. But how? By sending more people to hell? I don't have an answer. But suffering is what drives this question.

Who has seen not just their own suffering, but started to get an inkling of the scale of it. Then you can go down this path. Because I'm not satisfied with judgment day where half — or more than half — of the race still goes to hell. There was a portion in the holy book I used to subscribe to where there's a group in heaven, and God shows them people in hell. And all they can think of is, "Oh, thank God we're not in there." To me, that just destroyed my sense of morality.

If you see that, you should feel sympathy. You should cry. You should beg God to forgive them. Instead they're like, "Oh, thank God we're not down there." That is the complete blindness to the suffering, and to what would balance the scales. Yes, Victoria.

QWell, my question — you've partly answered it — was about existential fear. So sometimes I'm walking the dog, or just washing up, doing normal things, and I'm thinking about this small self and its non-existence. And then this terror comes over — absolute terror, at the very least anxiety. And I assume it's the body-mind-ego not wanting to end, not wanting to exist.

Even when there's a knowing that there's this Awareness actually observing. But I'm just wondering how you deal with this. Is it just an... well, it is just an experience, but sometimes it's all-consuming.

NI mean, it goes away through being clearer on what it means that there is no self. The anxiety and fear are only there because there's the idea — it's subliminal maybe — first there's the idea that there is a self and it will cease to exist, and then you see Reality as it is. But actually the truth is there is no self, so there's nothing to fear, nothing to lose, which — if it doesn't even exist — the fear is to lose something, but what is being said is that thing does not exist. So what is the fear about?

The basis of the fear goes away once you see that it's just the signpost saying, "Oh, but this thing over there is still going to stop existing" — but then you look, and there's nothing there. What thing is going to stop existing? Even when we say "ego," I often get questions which say "ego" — well, ego has already assumed there is some self. The ego is considered as an entity which can create thoughts, has some intentions, or it's not allowing me to accept.

What do you mean? That ego is then a self-entity? Exactly the kind of self we are saying does not exist. There is no such thing as ego. Actually, there are thoughts which are coming because of the assumption of a separate self.

Those thoughts can be egoic because they're assuming the self — it's just the starting point for that thought. But there's no ego as such, and there's nothing to lose. So when it finally hits home, you realize there never ever was such a self. It just didn't exist. That's the peace of dissolution Neil was talking about.

We expect fear. Who expects fear? The kind of thinking based on assuming a separate self leads to the idea there will be fear. It creates the fear because that thinking is based on all that. But what happens in Reality is when you see that — when you know there's no monster under the bed — the fear goes away.

It's not that you have to fight the fear, or you have to experience it fully, or so on. You just need a bit of clarity. Walk to the landmark. Yes, Marina.

QHi, Nabeel. I'm wondering, do you ever get upset?

Do you ever get into some kind of fight? And how do you deal with difficult people? Because everything you explain makes sense in itself, but then you have to deal with day-to-day life. I just had a very annoying discussion today and I just wanted to kill the person. I couldn't stand the argument, the stupidity of the argument. So I wonder what do you... This is my question.

NI keep my circle of people I deal with very small. So the more people you deal with, the more annoying ones you meet.

QNo, I mean in work — because this was a work situation. So you have to face it. You can't just drop it.

NYeah, I have those as well. Annoying things will continue to be annoying. It's just perspective, and how you don't get stuck in it. A flash of anger is fine, but if you get stuck in it and you can't go to sleep at night, then that's the one you should fix.

When dealing with people, it kind of forces you to put on your mask and act as a person. Nisargadatta used to say things like that. I forgot the exact quote, but it's something like — for the sake of continuing to operate in the world, you continue to use your masks and your roles and so on, while you know the Truth. And even in that annoying person, what is behind the person is the experiencing of that life, and behind that experiencing of life is Awareness. There's the level we operate at and the level we know to be true, and you can hold them both at the same time.

You do become more detached. In the end, the only people who can make me argue now are the people I love the most. The rest I can just ignore. Which is true in most cases — the people you fight with hardest are the ones you love. That's crazy.

Yeah, go ahead.

QDo you keep your stand? I mean, when someone confronts you with their ideas and you have your own ideas — as a person in the working world, if the arguments get really annoying, do you just drop your stand and leave it? Like, think whatever you want, I don't care at this point, I'm not going to get too deep into this argument.

NSo I've become, at work, more argumentative I guess. Previously I was shy — I would just hold back, keep it to myself.

Now there's less holding me back and I don't care what people think. So you can end up being more blunt. But you should be aware that you can be more blunt and offend more people more often. So that should temper what you choose to say or not say.

Yeah, at some level the persona changes. I used to be shy, never ask a question, never say anything — now I end up being quite blunt. And I don't like confrontation, so you learn to just see: okay, this is the point where I should stop. Maybe a few times you go wrong, and then you realize — okay, let's stop there.

And at another level, your mind will be saying, what's the point of all this? Because you've seen — what are we going to achieve in this life? Whatever work we do, we do it with laser focus, but you also know... what's the point? It's kind of pointless. Sometimes it's maybe just for the sake of having an argument. There is no point in arguing really.

Life — dealing with life with this knowledge — is an interesting game. And that's why, mostly throughout history, what would happen is you would just walk off, go to some mountain, and live there.

QOkay. Thank you.

NAll right, any last questions or comments?

Yes, Leslie.

QThanks, Nabeel. I was just wondering, getting back to this point of suffering — the extent of suffering... Is the suffering only perceived to be suffering if me, as an individual, perceives the others as separate, as subjects, instead of just the oneness?

Would there be no suffering if my perception of Reality was taken from the standpoint of being aware that everyone is just part of this whole big mechanism — like all the cells in the body make a body? So all the people in the universe, all the things in the universe, are created as one, not separate from anything else. There can be no suffering then, can there? The suffering is the perception of things being separate and having their own identity — that is what is painful. So it's going towards what is called the End of Suffering.

NBut suffering is still suffering — suffering does not end in the conventional sense of pain and emotional pain and all that, and that's still going on. What you realize is there's no one that suffers. But suffering is real, suffering is happening. But who is it happening to? That changes everything. If it is a child suffering on its own in the world, it breaks your heart.

When you see the child as they really are, then it still breaks your heart that there is suffering. But then you also see not just a meek little thing, but the ocean itself is knowing this body, this form, this little boy, and it's suffering the experiences of that body. Experience is the suffering. The End of Suffering is realizing experience is suffering.

And then you accept it, because who will reject all of experience as a whole? Not Reality. For you to reject it, you would have to again step out and be a separate self and say "I don't want this experience." Suffering — even love leads to suffering, mostly. The End of Suffering is realizing there are no separate sentient selves that suffer individually, live and die and get reborn.

So then it changes the flavor of suffering, doesn't it? It's just that then you have to either reject all of experience as a whole, or embrace it, because that's how it is. And then even the rejecting or accepting is again trying to judge as a person, which also has to drop off.

QYes.

NSo then suffering doesn't become something that's bad, or a wrong, or to be conquered, or to be fixed. It becomes part of the soup of experience — of Awareness that just is. So it's like, you know, a big fish in the ocean is biting a little fish. The ocean feels the pain of the little fish, and it feels the hunger of the big fish. And both are suffering.

But the ocean itself is perfect. And we return to that knowledge. And that's what the Buddha tried to pass on. The Dharma is about the ocean. What is the ocean like?

The ocean is perfect. It's just pure Awareness — perfection. Even when you have suicidal thoughts, the thoughts are about you as a person and about this life-like experience. But there's no way to hate Awareness itself. That is the Beloved.

You cannot hate Awareness. It is just so natural. You can hate this life, or one life, or my life, or me as a person — but you cannot hate Awareness. That is the one constant. That is the Beloved. It cannot be hated. All right, thank you all for joining, and we might do another one this Saturday because I'm on leave.

Thank you, and have a happy new year.

QThank you, Nabeel. Thank you. See you next time. Thank you. Thank you.