Contemplating the Moon | A Deep Conversation on Self and Suffering [public version]

NThe light of Consciousness cannot be coming from an external source. It's not a reflected or a borrowed light, because it is the light of the one that is conscious — and whatever you are, that is what you are. That is the starting point. The core fact, the fact of being conscious.

You've probably heard of this analogy of the master pointing to the moon. Master points to the moon and most disciples look at the finger. And they inspect the finger. We're going to take it a bit further, but that's not how it's told. But what really happens is most disciples inspect the finger in minute detail. Maybe you should chop it up in pieces and look at it. Those are all the spiritual texts, the teachings and so on, but they're just pointing to the moon. And to look at the moon is to consider the fact of being conscious. And then the rest of the crowd just quickly looks at the moon and then they just go back to the master and they want him to explain: what did we see? What does it mean to be conscious?

And then the master still points at the moon. And then someone will say, "Oh, I looked and I saw only half a moon." And they will say, "Oh, yesterday I saw the moon, but today it's too cloudy. I can't see it." And someone goes off track and they talk about, "Oh, in the moonlight, I saw the fairies dancing." It's all besides the point. The point is the moon, the fact of being conscious.

So someone wanders off and they sit down and they just contemplate the moon — that is the one that is taking the right step. And you can bring all your modern knowledge, everything you know, and apply it. The question is just about: what is this fact of being conscious? What is it explaining? And now we know the moon is just a rock. It doesn't have any light of its own. How did the moon get to be so bright? And there's a clear parallel with the body and Consciousness. The body is also just dust, stardust put together in certain ways. It cannot be conscious on its own. Just as the body needs food and water and air and needs gravity and it needs the electromagnetic forces and the strong nuclear forces, it cannot manufacture Consciousness on its own.

And the moon has no light of its own, but it is reflecting light. And those are all the experiences that are appearing because of whatever this body being here. So consider the moon. How did it appear? It's just there in the night sky. It's all dark around it and it's somehow so bright. And you might consider that just around the boundaries of the moon — it cannot be that there's just darkness there. Because if you put another rock there, it'll be just as bright as the moon.

So that whole darkness is filled with light. And it just so happens that there's a rock there and it's reflecting the light and that's what catches the attention. And so it is not the moon possessing the light, but in the wider night sky, it's filled with light. Now you might say, I want to look at the sun where the light actually comes from. But that's what I said: that the light of Consciousness cannot be coming from an external source because it is the light of the one who is conscious.

The analogies — there's always a point where it breaks down. This is the point. There's no sun except the one that is conscious. The light is of the Self — self-luminosity. And so the fact of being conscious is known because of what the Self is.

And so the distinction between light and darkness and all that — if we look at this clearly, it just drops off. When the light is reflected you see it, then we say light; in the darkness we say there's no light. But actually the reflection is possible because what is considered darkness is filled with light. You just need a rock. All right, let's go into Q&A.

So there was a question in the comments about why do we feel separate and why does Reality present itself as a duality. Start with the second one first. Does Reality present itself as a duality? Actually it doesn't. Look at it. The duality would be that there's an observer and the observed. Actually, there's no observer. And then you look at the observed and the supposed duality is that all these things are separate independent things. And no, they're not. Then it's entirely subjective. Instead of a thing, you find a sensation or a sight and sound.

And they're no separate things. And Reality presents itself as it is. It's just light. It's just the light of Consciousness. And there's no separate conscious things to find.

So it's presenting itself as nondual in nature. Why is there the feeling of separation or the sense of duality? Only because thought has been given the highest precedence. The model built in thought is taken to be the true model of Reality, and Reality as it is is being pushed down. The model where it is me and the world — if that's taken to be the true model, then you can create all kinds of things, feelings of separation and anxiety and all that. But Reality must be nondual in nature, or you see that it is not.

You have to look for yourself. Either it is nondual and it should be clear when you observe it, or it is dualistic and then you have to find out what that is. That duality is rooted in these centuries of human conditioning stored in this physical form. And then the human education system continues to reinforce what the parents have learned, because we then receive that from them.

QWith all of these centuries of conditioning, what comes from inside of us is seeing ourselves as separate. As we grow up thinking this is what we are. So that illusion of what our life is is seen as our Reality and experienced as our Reality. But then when we start getting into the kind of teachings you're teaching, we see all of this as false.

Isn't there a process to deal with the loss and the grieving of who we thought we are when this shift occurs — to saying that who we thought we are, we're not? Because there are times when I feel great heartache thinking about this. When I look at my husband and see him in pain and floundering and guessing, how do we deal with the pain and loss when some kind of shift occurs?

NYou mean the loss — you mean just pain and loss as they appear, or the pain and loss of losing an identity you thought was real?

QThe pain and loss that I — I no longer identify with the experiences of my husband.

What I do is I look at him and all I feel is compassion that he's unable to see the view that I've come to know as my truth. And I try to explain and he ends up laughing because there's so much confusion when he listens to me and I see it in his eyes. But then I see him hurting and pining over the loss of his parents, the loss of his family, and he is now alone. And the only thing I can do is say, "Okay, I need you to give me at least 10 hugs a day."

I don't know how else to support.

NYeah. I mean, there's no simple answer to if someone is not open to these questions, to pondering it for themselves, to looking at the moon and contemplating it. There's no way around it. Everyone arrives at the answer for themselves. And mostly people are just looking at what's visible in the moonlight. Only a few look at the moon. Only a few understand what that explains.

But there's no such thing as only a few. So there is no different — at the end you realize: what is the point of realization? Whether you realize or not, what difference does it make? Because it's still an event in the one dream which is going to end at some point. And then the Absolute does not remember things. It's just experiences come and go. But the Absolute is the Absolute. So when you see your husband, you know what he actually is. And that is the beauty. What takes away the — even in pain you know: what is it? Who is it?

And you might not know you are king, but if you're king, then—

QThat is true. And in addition to that, because the ego comes back and the conditioning comes back. All of these things — once the experience dissolves into coming back to the present life, living with someone when they hurt and when they're in pain and when they're suffering, it seems to feel much more intense.

It seems to feel much more intense and I don't know what to do with that.

NSo yes, it can be more intense because your mind is less thought-based. It takes things in as they appear. And you look at things very clearly. The emotions, feelings, they're very strong. However, we should know that is looking at the moonlight and the things in the moonlight, and then we turn our gaze back to the moon. The fact of being conscious — what is it explaining? We always want to return to the core fact of what the Self is.

If we look at the transient in minute detail and then you pick that one moment where there's a lot of pain — yes, there's a lot of pain, but that is the one instant. And what brings peace is just realizing the nature of Self which is not transient, which is the Absolute changeless factor.

The transient can never give you peace.

QRight. Oh okay. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. Thank you.

NYes, Neil.

QHello. Hi, Nabeel. How is everyone? I've been reading my most favorite guru book — his book. Again, I'm a little obsessed with Nisargadatta at the moment and I love his direct and just unrelenting kind of way of answering people's questions. And I keep coming up with a kind of a similar thing with him, a kind of a thread maybe of a way that he answers questions. And it is quite full on. And sorry, I always do this, I apologize. His quote was: you must give up all you have read and heard and just be. And it's there. That's kind of — I know there's more to just saying that. When you just say that, you just think that's it. Done. That's all you have to do.

Just throw away everything you've ever read, heard, and believed, and experienced. Throw it all away and just focus on — or just be. Just be. How do you feel about that? That builds — that's almost like, there you go, there's the end of the story almost, or that's the doorway which you need to go through in the Absolute perhaps?

NI mean that look — but when he says that, it's to someone who has spent years searching. So they've absorbed everything they need to, and then he can say that: just be. You don't need more knowledge. You don't need more information and you don't need to go from guru to guru, because there were people coming to him who had been to Ramana Ashram and so on. Why are they doing that? Stop it. You have all the knowledge. There's no big secret at the end of all this, because the first thing you would realize as you were born is the truth.

It's the fact of being conscious, and then to just be is to stop there. That is the fact. What are you going to find in a book or so on? And Vedanta is the end of the Vedas after all the books. Then when he says just be, it is not just go back to living as a person. It's living without the illusion of being a person.

QYeah. Yeah. So I think I do appreciate that. And I think that that particular dialogue there does go on and it is indicating — like it's not, well you don't just forget it all and just go and have golf or play tennis or whatever and that's it. There's still — I'm a bit nervous about talking about effort because we know that that isn't what it's about. There's a certain kind of — I was scared of saying "doing" — there's something that you know you use language to try... you know you don't just... and I don't use the word meditation anymore. I don't know how you — it feels to me like all my language has become redundant since coming upon nonduality and Nisargadatta in particular. That it's hard to even talk about it, talk about what you're feeling, because it just seems the language that I'm used to using is redundant in many ways. And you start talking and it's like, well it just sounds like gobbledygook in a way, because you're talking about something that can't be expressed. You know, like the old — the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao. You can't put this thing into words and the more I try to express it it just seems to fall apart. Hence I come to this, to you, to what's going on here. It's just nice to be with people that maybe feel similar things or experiencing similar things. And I can't — sometimes I was thinking today: why do I keep doing this? What's my reasoning for doing it? And in some ways, I haven't got a reason. There isn't a reason. It's just — I'm here and it's good. I enjoy it. I like it. I like the community and the clarity that's here.

I don't know that I'm adding much to it this evening, so I'll shut up. But yeah, thank you.

NWell, that's good. So just be involves attending satsang or going and playing tennis and golf. It's all fine. Everything's included in just being. The only thing is we're trying to look from that clear standpoint. Once you arrive there, don't go back. Don't go back. And when you say we try to express it, it's only in this small circle that I speak like this. I don't try to explain this to someone who's not interested in these questions. What's the point? But then we should say that every moment of every life is expressing this truth.

We are just doing a lousy attempt at trying to express the inexpressible. But the inexpressible is expressing itself. What is the moonlight? Why is the moon shining in any life? You don't have to be aware of the fact of what you are. The fact of what you are is just making everything possible. It's making every experience possible and every dimension of every experience. Like we will categorize something as pain or sadness and so on. But even when you look at sadness — you know it can be like yes, you're looking into an approaching storm or you're in the middle of a storm. But still you can be awestruck by it.

How deep, how fathomless, how — what is this? And every moment expresses that. And so we don't have to do anything because it's already being expressed perfectly. But to those who are interested in the truth, we can gather around and talk even though the talk is pointless.

QYeah. Thank you.

NYes, Mike. Oh, you're on mute.

QThank you. I said I have a pointless question then. You know, we talk about Awareness and nonduality. We talk a lot about it from an experiential perspective of okay, that's me. I'm here experiencing this experience. What about talking about it from the architecture side, the orchestrator, the creator who dreamed all this up? And what aspect of that do I actually have as a part of me? And if I have that, why am I so blind to it?

NSo the idea of a creator doesn't quite work once you see that the Self is just Awareness. The Self is purely — the only quality you can associate with the actual I is that I am aware. That is I. And being aware does not in itself have any quality of planning and doing and all that. That's the idea of separate agents in the world who have power to do things. Awareness only has the quality of being aware. But what is missed by the mind is how fundamental and amazing that quality is. Because if you don't have that — if there's no... which now it's not possible for me to think like that — but let's say there's no such quality as being aware, then there's nothing and nothing is ever possible. You can't get started.

But when there is Awareness, anything is possible. The moon can appear in the sky. That is the first step and then whatever follows. Awareness is only the experiencing of it. It's not doing anything or planning and performing that. But what's happening is there's the base Reality and that is what I call Awareness, because the base Reality has the quality of being aware. And of course in Reality — when in a Reality where anything is possible, things happen — when the things happen, because Reality is aware, those happenings are experienced and those are all these lives.

But the traditional ideas of creator and created, they don't work in nonduality because that is itself a duality. Those ideas were important to pass down the understanding but it also made the understanding wrong in many ways. Like when we have when God creates Adam, the greatest of God's creations — what is so great about Adam is that he can name all these things. So what is Adam? Adam is the mind, the intellect, the specific part of the mind which is called the intellect where higher thought becomes possible.

Before Adam, that was not possible. You just have the base animals and then you get the intellect and can name things. Once you name things, you can have higher thought. You can start to find reasons. You can start to understand relationships. But then Adam ate from the tree of knowledge. Which means the intellect assumed that it was the thing that is conscious and that is the sin.

And that's where you fall from grace. Once you assume I am separate, I am a thing that is conscious, separate to God, separate to Reality, you fall from heaven to earth. And then the realization where you are united is you realize — the intellect realizes — I am not the thing that is conscious. I am a web of thought. I'm a web of ideas and concepts. In itself, that's brilliant. A tool. But the creator never split. The original Reality never split.

And that is — Reality is all that can be said to have this quality of being conscious.

QThank you. Thank you.

NYes, Victoria.

QHi. Nabeel, can you please remind me what one can do when there is suffering — either watching suffering or suffering oneself — and that cloud comes over, whether it be anxiety or depression.

And for me the truth just is gone, and understanding and that oneness, that sense of oneness is gone. So there is separation and it's like a loss of connection. And personally what I do is I watch your videos and other videos and try to get the understanding back to be reminded. But there are times when the cloud is just so thick and it's almost — yeah. It's like a fall from grace or a spiral into a darkness where there is no light. And it's refreshing to hear you talk and other people talk, but when I'm on my own, yeah, there just is no light. The knowing has gone.

NSo I mean, so that is maybe the point of these talks. That's the point now — in that you are building and clarifying your own understanding. How do you know darkness?

There has to be light to know darkness. The light we're talking about is the light of Consciousness. So whatever appears — it can be suffering and pain and the most terrible things you witness — the witnessing is made possible by being conscious. That is the light that is always there and the light you must return to. Like I said, that light does not have an external source.

The light of Consciousness is not a borrowed light or a reflected light. It is the light of the Self. So we're returning to that light. So even in sorrow, in someone's looking at someone grieving or not being able to give them an answer, you recognize in them that is the light. Their sorrow is the evidence that they are the Self.

They might be unaware. The Self is not aware of what the Self is. It only happens occasionally because all the identities are in the dreams. They're the characters, the personas we wear. But the Self's only identity is that of being aware. And we just sort of see that — you see that everywhere in every instance of life, in every experience, whatever it is. And instead of trying to — you know that the end of suffering is not the end of suffering as a human mind imagines it, because that would be the end of experience. You cannot have experience and yet not have suffering, because even if you start with that — you started in heaven and there's only good experiences — after a while the bottom of the good becomes misery. You see how boredom works and all that. And just having too much becomes pain, like I want to give it up, I don't want it. So we return to the basic peace of being aware and there's a peace in knowing what the Self is. And you are building your own understanding, your clarity, and that is why the finger points to the moon. You contemplate the moon and don't just look at what the moonlight is showing you, which is all the things in the world.

I was looking for a sutta and I ended up reading one which I've never seen before and it's an odd one. So the Buddha goes to — someone invites the Buddha to have dinner. It's a smith and the smith serves him some tender pork. And the Buddha obviously does not eat pork, but because I guess he's a guest he says okay, give me the pork but don't give it to the monks, give them the other food and throw the rest. So he eats it — do not offend or I don't know whatever — so he eats it and then he gets dysentery. So he has these few days of puking and pooping, not a good time. And he's at the verge of death and he tells his Ananda, his disciple, to go to some other city. So they're going there and sits by some place and he says bring me water, bring me water and so on. And so it goes on like that. And he gets water and he gets better. And then it's a very odd sutta. Like you wonder why is this a sutta? And then he says — because he's now worried once he gets better that people will think that guy who gave him the pork has done some evil and he should be punished and so on — he explains that that man is our friend. He gave me the gift of perfect emancipation.

Gift of perfect emancipation. It's like before that the Buddha had the perfect awakening, but now after this he has the perfect emancipation. It is being freed of the idea of avoiding suffering, or that suffering is — and what you feel during suffering, the hate and the anger and why he did that, why I chose to eat it and all that. It's not that it seems the Buddha experienced that, but he became emancipated by overcoming that. And if he had not had this trial he would not have had the chance to overcome all that.

I'm not saying suffering is a test and you should have to go through it and so on. No. But when it does appear, then — and then it is being lived out to our understanding — it is a way to then not be so moved by that in the wrong ways. To not be at the whims of whatever the mind throws at us. If it throws rage at that person who gave you the bad pork, you can then look at it in the light of what you understood: that look, he just meant well. He just spent maybe a month's salary to buy that pork for the Buddha.

You look at all the way the mind thinks the wrong ways about pain and suffering. And to do that is you continue to recognize what you are, what the other is, what everything is. Yes. The isness.

You're on mute if you're speaking.

QSorry about that.

NNo worries.

QSo I find one of the more difficult aspects of nonduality is not the concept itself but trying to understand — yes this is a dream, yes we're all one — what is the purpose? And I know it might be an ego-driven thought. But I find that I came finally to nonduality through the Law of One. And I'm wondering if you've ever heard of the Law of One and what are your thoughts on that?

NNo, I don't think I've heard of it.

QThe Law of One — oh, sorry. Go ahead, Cole.

NNo, you can go ahead first.

QOkay. So this is going to sound a little out there, but this was a channeled communication that was done in the early 80s by a group called L/L Research.

So they were channeling an entity by the name of Ra. It's a collective intelligence. And so they documented all these channelings and it's free to actually see on their website. But as I was going through it, every experience we have in their view — in the view of the Law of One — every experience we have in this dream is meant to help us evolve consciously, which is kind of contradictory with nonduality because in nonduality that's all there is. It doesn't need to know anything because it already does. So I'm in between those two concepts but yet I know the Absolute is the Absolute. So yeah, I just was wondering if you had heard of it and what your thoughts might be on it.

NSure. I mean, if it was the 70s and 80s, there are probably psychedelics involved.

QYeah. No, no. This was a — it's highly documented. If you are interested, it's a very well documented channeling and everything is free, like they've made this free for people to go through. But yeah, I'm teetering. It's like I oscillate between, you know, trying to justify this experience and then reaching the ultimate truth in that, you know, we are all one and there's nothing really to be learned because everything is already known. But you know, it's kind of like a paradox there.

NYeah. Which is the signature of the Absolute, I think. I mean, when you have these kinds of extreme experiences, you're still working with the same mind, but some doors are opened, using connections which are usually blocked from each other and so on. So it's still like suddenly becoming super intelligent in some ways, but you're still limited with whatever knowledge was absorbed until that point. So it's in those terminologies which are things you are familiar with and some which seem completely unfamiliar but there are combinations of what was there. You start to understand knowledge you already had, different perspectives. So oneness is something that appears in all many religions and in different ways and so on. It's a continuing theme.

Oneness of everything, of Self and other, of the world and the Self and so on. So that theme is there and it has truth to it. But as soon as we start talking about entities, then that's not what nonduality is really about. Because it's about there's no separate entities. That is the final going deeper we find. There's no self, no individual self. That is the actual oneness. Not even oneness because there's not even one.

And then you started with like what's the purpose? And then you don't think in terms of purpose but in terms of — like what Neil and I were talking about — like it's about Reality is now being expressed by all this. Everything is an expression of Reality and you see it that way. It's not about purpose but it is beauty. It is the beauty of Reality. When you take a Reality that is infinite potential and have the power to take that potential, make it actual. When we say actual, what is actual? Actual is the experiencing of the moment. That is the nature of Reality. First of all, anything is possible in Awareness. And Awareness can take a possibility and turn it into a lived experience. And that is what every single moment is.

It is an expression of Reality. Explaining what Reality is in a perfect way that can never be achieved with words and concepts. In every moment that is happening in any life — whether you know of it, like whether it's obvious what is happening or not — that is what is happening. So it's not about purpose but it's about expression, beauty, truth, Reality as it is presenting itself as nondual in nature.

QSo would you consider self-improvement a trap?

NNo, I improve myself in the traditional way. Yeah. Like I'm learning piano. I just picked up pickleball because my daughter got interested in it and my wife — you do stuff that's just the normal stuff happening in life.

QRight. But that I would say is more for enjoyment, you know.

NYeah. I mean even at work, like everything we do, humans do, is for enjoyment at the end.

QWell, I mean some — well, but some people, you know, will make a whole list of goals and, you know, have their whole year planned out as to how they want to evolve, you know, and I'm wondering if that is actually a trap in and of itself since there's really nothing to improve.

NI mean well yes, the spiritual progress thing is — yeah it's not real. Like what kind of progress?

QYou see my conundrum.

NThere is — like for example clarity. Is it progress? No. But there is deeper clarity. You can be clear about the truth, or you can be forgetful. So it's just again like progress and purpose — they are one way of seeing things. There's a certain perspective. But the perspective, if you apply it as the Self being Awareness — Awareness is not really deciding what happens in the dream. But in the dream if there's a storyline that gets lived out, there's nothing wrong with any storyline. And if there's a — it's just there's a clarity to okay this is worth doing, why not, versus if it causes harm then why would you do it.

QJust, you know, really quick and off topic — just wanted to thank you for making groups like this, making this available to people, because this is not something that many people want to talk about. They just — I think ultimately it's their, you know, it's the death of the ego and that's something that, you know, I think maybe everybody's experienced it here. It's quite an experience. And the ego, you know, I still find myself fluctuating and oscillating back and forth. But just the fact that you make this available to express ourselves and hear other people come up with questions and stuff — I thank you immensely, on top of the videos which are outstanding by the way. I mean, they are poetic and the music and everything. It's just incredible. So I just wanted to thank you real quick and that's it.

Thanks everybody for giving me the time.

NThank you. Yes, we have [unclear] next.

QHi everybody. Just a dark room and the video doesn't make sense here but I'm happy that everybody is here and listening to these questions and answers. And for me a question arose: is there compassion at all? Is there compassion in this world where so many suffering — starting from your relative, sometimes from the kids when they hit the head against the corner of the table, or even more deeper sufferings. Does suffering exist at all? Is there something that exists and how does it change through this way? If you consider the way [unclear].

NAll right. So let's start with compassion. What is compassion? Even without recognizing all this, without realizing what nonduality is and so on — you're recognizing in the other person the Self. You're not looking at them as a thing. You're not objectifying them. But compassion is what you feel when you recognize in them: what is the Self? What are they? They are conscious and they're undergoing an experience.

And you know that experience to be painful because you've had similar experiences in this life. So compassion is actually an expression of recognition of the Self. That's why I say this knowledge is not that important to spread. I don't feel the urge to do it while I do it. It's that love and compassion are built on the recognition of what the Self is. You cannot truly love a thing. You cannot love an object. You only love that which is conscious, which is the one and only Self.

Compassion is an expression of that knowledge being there intrinsic whenever the mind clears up and not thinks in terms of objects. And then suffering — yes, it is happening. Suffering is pain. It's trauma. It's these experiences. When you love, you're open. You're vulnerable to suffering. And so life is that tradeoff: to love, to be, to love, to exist. When you accept life, then you accept that loss will happen. It's inevitable.

And the only end to suffering is looking past birth and death beyond rebirth. When there's no birth and rebirth, there's no here and hereafter. And that is the end of suffering. Okay, if you think in terms of even separate lifespans then the suffering is the actual Reality. But when you see past that there are no actual separate lifespans.

When we say here, still the mind is thinking of a local here — my here. But the Buddha says when you go past the here and hereafter, that is the end of suffering. So not a local here, it's not my here. This here and any other here is the one Reality, and hereafter is thinking of something after this life — rebirth, death, another life.

There's no hereafter. When you're neither here nor there nor in between the two, that is the end of suffering. And in the end of suffering, the suffering is there. But it is also there at the same time as joy is there, as love is there, as compassion is there. All of that is there.

And then underneath them is the solid changeless Reality which is perfect.

QYeah. Somehow I feel this suffering as glimpses, because when you understand this existence deep enough or deeper, every day the love increases — like it's like everywhere — but at the same time the suffering also increases and it comes together somehow. Of course mind understands and it doesn't exist and you can look on it from the side and it disappears and it comes from nowhere. It goes nowhere. But still — will it disappear at all? Because the tears are just coming out and it's like at the same time it's not only suffering, it's the bliss at the same time, but it's suffering. So it's hard to explain.

NYeah. I mean what you will see is that that is still within this lifespan. Like all the end of suffering the mind conceives of is only for one lifespan and so the scope is wrong. What does it matter if suffering ends in one life? It's pointless. If I care for that then I'm going back to being egoic — I want my suffering to end. And so you look past that and the bliss and the suffering and the witnessing of suffering are happening.

But then you have to look through the Buddha's eyes which are not looking in terms of lifespans and separate selves. You try to look with that eye.

QBasically nothing have a reason—

NEven — sorry.

QBasically nothing have a reason. Happening don't have a reason. It just happens.

NYeah. But like it's a consequence of the nature of Reality. Like what I was saying — don't think in terms of purpose. Look at it as the nature of Reality being expressed and there's beauty to it. There's awe in it. Amazing. Wonderful. And there's no intention behind — if you know, if you get hit by someone and you think they did it on purpose, it's different than if they accidentally knocked you over.

So if there's no intention then it's not actually evil. There's nothing to fight. And the fight is then — it's just to stay true to the knowledge of what the Self is.

Thank you. All right, Razi. Welcome back.

QHi, Nabeel. Good to be here. As you were talking earlier, what came up for me was your channel describes my current predicament very well — Untangle Your Mind and so on. On one hand as I sit here and when I sit on the cushion so to speak, there can be glimpses of just beingness. Okay, like just thoughts are just maybe not there for few seconds but there's a recognition of just being. However when I get off the cushion and I interact with other people, especially loved ones and people close to me, the perception is it becomes very focused. Where when I'm on the cushion or I'm here it's very soft — there's even a sense of me kind of is not there for some time. When I interact it's the entanglement of the mind and it becomes like — just today, you know, she said something to me and I got triggered and I was like my mind was like all of this stuff and I was really — there was a lot of anger, intense anger and rage. And I came back and I'm like what am I doing, what's happening. And still that the perception is very narrow, sense of I is very intense. Even though as you say I know better, but that thing just — all that stuff's like fire, like it just burned. All the Awareness — it's not burnt but just the perception is very solidified and the compassion is not there. All of that's out the window like she shouldn't have said that, she shouldn't have done that. And I sit here and I'm like I'm sitting there I'm like just trying to breathe and just be here. I had actually a completely different question but then when you talked about others I'm like this is more relevant — my daily life. And just to have no separation but there is still separation occurring and an entanglement is still happening and I know intellectually but when I'm interacting there's entanglement happening very quickly and in that moment there's not enough space to allow what is arising to arise as it is without wanting it to be different. Could you speak to some of what I'm sharing? Just trying to be honest with what's occurring.

NYeah, I mean to be honest, that is the functioning of a mind. And realizing this does not mean that the mind will completely rewire itself. Okay. Only the core sense of I we can in the moment catch it. You could — if you return to it, if you're clear about it enough, you would not stay angry for long. It'll be a flash. The flash will still be there. Okay? Because that's how this brain functions. Okay? It functions like that first. But then we found that the self that creates the anger around which he, she and you know the whole argument will begin is around the wrong concept. If you can see that in the moment then the thing cannot snowball. It just fizzles out. Or you might catch yourself going through the same behaviors, but at the same time inside you're laughing at this nonsense going on because it's like an automaton, you know, autonomous function. You're not doing it and neither is she. And then you see, oh, actually we just — it's just what happened in the moment was inevitable. Like it's deterministic — that based on if you start with this universe with its starting conditions and you have those two children born and have them grow up in the environments, go through the life and you reach that point and that exact thing happens every time.

Nobody did anything wrong. And on both at the same time Awareness was experiencing both sides of the argument, both sides of the feelings and everything else imaginable. And as that sense of that realization of what the Self is, it becomes the core. The mind is now, you know, it's not just focused on what the moonlight is showing — turns back to the moon. The fact of being conscious. Then all these things start to fizzle out. Yes. But still there is, you know, the brain functions a certain way. It's built its connections.

Yeah. You see the science about it. You know, until the age of seven, you create lots of new connections. Then they slow down. By 16, you're not creating much in new connections and then it's just pruning it. Now, you can just prune the tree a bit, but you can't expect it to regrow itself.

QAs you're saying — the understanding — like now even now I can see that which I took myself to be is still a thought process within both of us now and with you. And I'm like yeah I was doing this and she was doing that and even that is seeing. Now that — because I think why did I do that? Even the thing that is "why did I do that" is not truly who I am. That was being missed and still very much missed but at least there's an understanding because I've taken that to be me my whole adult life — to sit and see like wow that's so familiar that I just think it's me and I am doing all of these things.

NThe other thing to note is how the mind must objectify someone to build up its anger and those kind of emotions. You must objectify the other as a person with intentions and in control and so on. Once you see that that's not who they are, the mind cannot go that way much. It'll go a few steps and fall on its face.

Compassion comes from knowing who the other actually is and not — it's not other. You can't objectify someone. When you objectify them, you're thinking of them as what? A body, a person with intentions, a separate self entity which you know does not exist. So you've created a voodoo doll and poking the pins in the voodoo doll.

QYeah.

NYeah. And you see the mind doing that and then you catch it in the act and it's like — like the cartoon.

QWhat then what actually exists then? Because as I sit here and I perceive she — that person only exists in my perception. So what is really happening? Isn't it everything just happening inside my own Awareness, in my own Consciousness? So who is the other?

NThere's no other but you cannot reject that on the other side is also the Self. So there's extremes in philosophy. What you're almost headed towards there is called solipsism where, you know, only I am aware and the rest are just in my mind. No — it's not my mind.

Yeah. There's no me. How can I have a mind? There is experiences, perceptions appearing in Awareness and what I thought to be other — what I'm already admitting when I interact with the other as if they are conscious — as I'm admitting on the other is actually the Self. Is the same I. Is the Awareness.

QI'm not able to experience that at this moment for whatever reason. I can tell it's one field but I cannot experience the other as just Self. How can that—

NIt's by understanding the nature of Self. We're saying the Self we have realized is aware. The Self must be what is aware.

QYes.

NSo when you interact with me right now you talk to me. You are also admitting that on this side is someone that is aware. Are you?

QYeah.

NYou're assuming that — you're operating based on that. You're not talking to a screen. Or what?

QYes.

NSo, you're already giving that gift.

Yeah. It's a bit of a gift that you give to the other side. Yes. I admit you are conscious even though I don't have perfect proof of it. Okay, I'm not going to think of you as a zombie. I see you as you are. And that is seeing the other as they are. You've already done it. The mind's already configured for that. That part is already there. When you interact with someone it's already admitting yes on that side is also there is experience, there is Awareness. And we saying okay then drop the mask. Look beyond the mask. Look in those eyes and see what is looking back. And it must be what you find yourself to be because what you find yourself is only the Awareness. So behind the mask on any — everywhere — is just that. Cannot be anything but that because then that would not be what is aware. That's not the one you care about.

QOh that sounds beautiful.

I will try that.

NYeah. Thank you.

QThank you. Another.

Hi Nabeel. Hi everyone. I have a question but I wanted to kind of add one more — ask one more aspect of the previous conversation about the flash of anger coming. And then — so I get that part. One part I wanted to ask on that one is — is this acute pain like, or sadness or these emotions, things that pass — yes — but what about like how did Nisargadatta see this cancer, actual pain that constantly was there, wasn't going away? How does a — like you said internally you are laughing at it because you know what's going on. It's a little harder to laugh when you're under that. So how would one condition their mind to kind of look at it? Just that's one of — but my question is something else but if you can comment on that a little bit that would be great.

NPhysical pain is just pain. Because you are aware, when the body produces pain you're aware of pain. The pain is communication. The body is raising an alarm and that alarm appears to Awareness as pain and there's no way out of it. And you can read Nisargadatta's last few dialogues and he's quite pissed at the state of affairs. He doesn't need it. He doesn't want it. He says, "I didn't ask for it." The sooner I get rid of this Consciousness, the better.

QBut sorry to interrupt. But he says, "I take my stand in the Absolute." Was he taking his stand in the Absolute in the presence of that pain? Like that's what I'm trying to—

NYes. Once he — like even his earliest book, he has taken that stand. It's just he switches the words when people start to misconceive of what he's expressing.

To take a stand in the Absolute is to discard all concepts of self and never go back to accepting them.

QDespite the fact that you're experiencing acute pain, you still maintain that.

NYeah. You can. The pain is there. Because he knows what he is. He is the Absolute. The Absolute is aware. That is intrinsic to Reality. It's not a quality of some other thing or something that was born.

That is his own nature. And because he is aware this body doing whatever is causing him to have that feeling of pain. He cannot stop it. It's his nature as the Absolute to experience that. He has not shifted an inch.

The way the mind thinks of it is actually very weird to them because once you take a stand there as not a person, not a thing, nothing that was born, as just the Awareness — of course it's natural. All experiences appearing to the Self. The way the mind thinks of it is there's a person in a world and there's a body. So the person is experiencing and then that's going to pain and you're experiencing that. It's actually very convoluted. The truth will explain things as they are.

It does explain things exactly as they are. So you've been experiencing pain all your life.

QMhm.

NSo when you realize the truth, it should still explain why you were feeling pain all your life. It won't be that pain disappears when you see the truth because then that's not explaining what happened before.

QYeah. What's mindboggling at this point is that pain is being very acutely experienced. Like maintaining that standpoint while you're actually — it's not that the jnani doesn't experience the pain. No, very acutely they do. It's like one of your videos about like a witch being burned. So those are — of course they are mindboggling because mind is, you know — but yeah. So okay so I think I got it. So you still maintain that standpoint and despite the fact that that experience is happening is being felt.

NYeah. I mean I have this funny thing — what do you call a thought experiment? Yeah. So there's this idea that the jnani must be like — you know how people imagine the Buddha perfectly at peace always, the half smile and never can be taken out of the calm. So I have this thought experiment. So you put your favorite guru on a stage. Okay. And let them talk. And then behind the stage you should have like an untrained dog and you suddenly release it and when it barks — whatever, however calm the sage is — they will jump out of their seat.

If they don't they're actually a fake because they are forcing themselves to be calm in a situation where the body should not react that way.

QYeah. What is it proving?

NIt proves that the mind's idea of a sage is as being a perfect calm in all situations and never feeling pain. That's not how it is. The body has to react a certain way when it expects danger. You know what the feelings of fear are? The blood flowing into the legs. The body's preparing fight or flee — fight or flight. The blood's going into the legs. You suddenly feel oh my — I've got goosebumps because of that happening. Your heart rate goes up because you're ready to fight or run.

And that is all physiological in how the body should operate. It is.

QSo just to be clear, the guru will jump when the bark comes?

NYeah. Yes.

QThis is like the test of Self-realization in Ashtavakra — like when you say no you don't put the — it's not like that.

NThat the body is still going to do the body and all that. Exactly like that.

Yeah. And all the audience will then say oh that sage was a thing but they don't realize what it means to be a jnani. Then — it is only to see as even as that happens nothing has shifted in the understanding. Even if in that moment the mind is — it will be engulfed by the like the split-second decisions the brain makes — you experience that and so on. Yeah you just experience that. You were not involved in the decision making or doing anything. You are the Awareness in which that experience takes place.

QSo it's unmovable. That stand in the Absolute is unmovable. You are — it's like you're looking at your own body and mind per se. You're still in the Absolute. You see the suffering and experience all that but it's unmovable.

NYes.

QOkay. Got it. Sorry. Real quick, my actual question now. So I was hung up on this for a long time — the desire and the power of creation. Those — Absolute doesn't have desire and Absolute doesn't create per se. Like intention — doesn't have intention, doesn't have desire. Those are properties of the mind. The mind develops desires. The mind can focus and can make things happen in the world. Is that a correct statement and understanding?

NI think when you get to this point then you have to also question what is meant by mind. And actually to think of the mind in that way and having intentions and power over the world is again shifting the Self into that. You've taken the entity and you're now calling it the mind. But what the mind is as it is perceived — there's no intention to it. Actually when an experience takes place the actual underlying events have already gone through the chain of cause and effect and then there's experience. So you cannot flow backwards like the mind cannot then go back and rewrite the chain of cause and effect. Experience is always appearing at the end of a sequence of events happening.

Yeah. So the mind is not an entity in itself. It's a loose term. And as we talk we use it — we switch here and there and yeah it can get a bit confusing. But if you sit and you consider it what is the mind, all you'll end up with is a classification that captures all of the experiential phenomena. The thoughts are the mind, the sights and sounds are the mind and so on. The feelings are the mind. What is an intention? It's just an experience of thought. And the experience of thought — behind it whatever took place, all the chemical reactions have already taken place. So they're not in control of an entity we can call the mind.

QI see. So yeah, this is a big one because you do see like one sees that one creates — like I know this is like actual Reality in life. You want something or you know and you create it. And I think that it's like Sentience. Same way — same way that the sight being experienced, that's Sentience. There's nobody in there. It's Sentience. It's an Awareness. Same way desires come up by themselves. Same way creation happens to respond to those desires. Just the same way you experience the sight, see the colors. It's the same thing, same mechanism. And in all of this, there is no doer. I think that's the only — yeah. Is it more correct to say it this way?

NYeah. Guess there's no separate entities doing things. And it perfectly matches what science is explaining too. There's no separate things planning and doing things. It's all a symphony of interacting forces and fields and it's too complicated for a human mind to think of it beyond models, conceptual models.

It's intricate rather than complicated. It's intricately one.

QYeah. I think that's the biggest one. When you say there is no doer, it seemingly contradicts from our daily life. The moment we open our eyes in the morning, this notion of I am doing things is there. So this is a big hangup. How to train your mind to look at this until you actually get to the actual understanding.

NSo to look at it — so where you see a contradiction, you stop there and look at the same moment with this standpoint, the Absolute standpoint. And it'll be the same moment in the same way and you can see that it can be seen without any idea of doership. When there is a desire — at the point the desire arises, before that did you choose it? No. It just arose. When it arose, what is it? It's the experience of craving or wanting. That's so — desire is just an experience. It's a certain kind of experience. Why does desire arise? It's all based on things that the body went through and the environment it grew up in and all that. Even thirst is desire. Is it wrong? No. It's just the body creates that — you know it has a need, it creates and you feel it as desire. And desire is the end again of the chain of cause and effect. The experience is the flowering of — you know in Reality that whole chain of cause and effect flowers or expresses as an experience.

QYeah. And the pitfall for me at least has been that desire actually creates what it wants by itself. I know how long I thought I was doing it. So the desire comes up. Desire could be okay thirst you drink water that's easy but complicated desires in life that are seemingly unreachable and you follow yourself — follow the fruition of those to actual Reality. That's the pitfall. That's where you get stuck. You think you did it. It's — no, it's all happening on its own. It's just so — you're witnessing it so acutely just like that seeing and pain and all that. You think you're doing it, you know? You're just witnessing it.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

NAll right. Any last questions or comments before we close the call? All right then. Thank you all for joining.

QThank you. See you next time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Nabeel. Thank you.