Sentience has no form | What "I" actually refers to (Satsang) [public version]

NEvery now and then I confuse someone with the use of the term Sentience. You don't often see it in spiritual language. And the way I use it, it doesn't even match the dictionary meaning of the word Sentience.

The first part is simple enough — it matches the dictionary. It's the capacity to sense, to feel, to know. So more generally, it is the capacity to perceive, the capacity for experience.

But where it diverges from the dictionary is that there's an assumption that there are sentient life forms. Sentience belongs to things — to sentient things, entities. Animal Sentience, human Sentience, even possibly machine Sentience. There's this question: what does this belong to? What has the capacity to experience?

But that is just an assumption. Of course, it's a very hard assumption to question, because all our lives we have thought of ourselves as a thing in the world, and of course you are sentient, conscious. So it's, of course, sentient things. Until you have some odd insight or experience, or you come across the words of a sage, nobody ever questions this assumption that you are not a separate thing. What thing?

But once you start to question it, that's when it gets interesting. What thing? What is the thing that can be said to be sentient? If there are sentient life forms, we should be able to point out exactly what form it is that has this quality or capacity.

But then you question it and you can't find it. All the things you can name, they're not conscious. Even the brain — it's not one thing, it's made up out of many things, and they're not conscious, as far as you know. As far as you know, you're definitely one, whatever. You're not made out of many stuff. You're one, and you're sentient.

So that is where you realise there are no such things as sentient entities and sentient life forms. Sentience has no form. No form.

And that does two things.

One is, if Sentience is not a quality of things, then it is just the way Reality is. It becomes quite obvious. Of course, of course nature has the capacity for experience. Hence all these lives, all these experiences — it is a quality of nature. That experience can appear again and again in all these lives over all these millions of years or whatever. It's not someone's quality or something's quality. It's a general law of nature. The capacity for perception is there.

Whether it appears, when it appears, how it appears — those are separate questions. But the capacity is there. That's the first thing it changes: it's not a quality of things, it's the quality of nature.

The second thing it changes is much more intimate. Because all your life you thought you were a thing that happened to be conscious or sentient. But if there's no thing, then you are Sentience itself.

There's nothing tying you to this body or this life and so on, because the most natural thing to you is this capacity for experience. The experiences keep changing, but this is what you are. And because this is not a quality of things, that completely changes the meaning of I. I is not an individual conscious entity. I refers to just the Capacity, which is universal in nature. It's just... deeply, the deepest and the most true thing you can know about Reality is that this Capacity exists, and that you are it. You are That.

So it's actually the same dictionary meaning. Sentience is the capacity for experience. You just take away the assumption that it belongs to things or life forms, and see what that does.

All right, let's go into Q&A.

QHello. Hi. Hello, how is my voice?

NYep, I can hear you, Eren.

QYes. First of all, hello everyone. I will say that the time of the satsang is very, very difficult for me. I was wanting to join this satsang for a long time, but the time in Thailand is very hard. It's 4:00 a.m. in the morning, and I said, should I sleep, wake up early, or not sleep? And I said, let me not sleep. So I'm [unclear]. Hello everyone.

NI'll try to do it at different times.

QYes. But I will ask my question, Nabeel. You said that there is no magic, but in both Dharmic traditions, in Hinduism and Buddhism, there are siddhis, right? What are you thinking about siddhis? Do they exist?

NSure. See, when you see it this way, all of the world is subjective. All of the world is experiential.

So when the world is subjective, many things are possible if your mind believes in it. Just by believing in something, you change a dream. The world is subjective. So what someone believes deeply — like, they believe they have some powers, or someone else believes they have powers — it seems to be true. You see the proof in the world, because the world is subjective. You are creating the proof.

However, to the sage, siddhis are just a separate topic. It's a side issue, inconsequential, because we are only interested in what is the absolute truth, and siddhis have to do with lives and powers in the world and things like that, and the individual.

QThey just... they are not part of the teachings. Yes. Almost not at all given attention. But you say they are real, right?

NReal in what sense? They're not real in the absolute sense.

Even, let's say, someone's really good at playing a sport — isn't that a siddhi? There's a combination of talent, ability, and practice, and that is what siddhis are too.

But if you tell me that someone can levitate, that I would not believe. Until [unclear]. So it depends there. A lot of these things can go into superstition and belief and take you the wrong way. We never talk about superstition here.

QRight. Okay. The next thing I will tell them. There were people — as I said, I was watching this satsang for a long time — there were people that are not convinced about how things are, and there is changing your idea, your mind, in this process. And these unusual things actually helped, it helped me a lot, the things I experience in the meditation. And if it gets deeper, things get clear and unusual, not at all secular materialist that do this. I mean, just meditation, deep meditation, is magic already.

Very, very, very unusual, and this is actually a good thing. See, this pure meditation, good deep meditation, kind of changes your world view. There are things that you literally see, there are very unusual things, and you get open. That I saw in satsang, that deep meditation is already very unusual and it changes your mind.

NYeah, that part I agree — that the opening of the mind often involves seeing aspects of the mind you never saw before. You took the world to be a very exact place with exact rules, and then something breaks the rules.

QYes.

NYeah. All that happens.

QThere is some very magical thing gets entered, and that's deep meditation, and it should enter your world and you should see, what is this? I didn't solve this before. What is this? And you think about it, deep meditation, and it's very, very good progress.

NBut you should not associate it with—

QI don't associate it with magical powers and so on.

NYeah. So for example, when I close my eyes, I could say, oh, I see all kinds of patterns and lights and so on. And I could start to believe, oh, I've gained this power because I've realised, or whatever. But no, everybody can notice it if they just... if you go down the same path and meditate and so on. When you close your eyes, even in the dark there's light, there's patterns. You dream, don't you?

The other thing is, for example, you're meditating on the breath. Often the breath will flow into the world. If you're doing it with eyes half closed or so on, you feel the walls are breathing, or the floor — the whole world is breathing. You see it. You have to see it.

But that does not change... that is all subjective experiences. And they're opening your mind to what the mind is. The doors of perception are opened. And there's immense variety to what... the extremes of experience and what's possible is infinite.

But the thing we discuss here, the Self-inquiry, is always to then remain focused on arriving on what is the Self, what is real, what is true, because then all these things can often pull us into thinking about the wrong things and following the right and wrong practices and so on. Thank you.

Antonio, hi.

QNabeel. Can everyone hear me?

NYep.

QOkay. So I don't want to go into too long of a diatribe, or qualify too many of the things I want to ask you with kind of useless circular stories and all. So I wanted to first, I guess, ask you: are you familiar with the anti-guru UG Krishnamurti at all?

NMhm.

QOkay. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. So if you are, there's probably not too much I need to kind of preface this question with. Which, in great regard, I found UG, his style of teaching, after — I think like many people who find him — after a lot of just being, okay, you know, I'm not trying to do this forever, I'm not trying to meditate for 50 years, I'm not trying to sit around and play games with myself. And so UG's very big on not mystifying things, not making things into very self-perpetuating reifications of the continuity of our thoughts, of our mind, of the self.

And so my essential question for you is one of the... I mean, one of the big things, I think you can find a lot of similarities between UG's life and the Buddha's, especially the coming to — which, it's a term I think I've heard you say before — the Natural State. And pretty much this recognition of almost the thinker, of the thinker questioning his own existence as being absurd. Not because the answer is, no, I don't exist, but because an answer can never be found. That questioning is essentially the thing that cannot answer its own question. It's a closed circle, and the one who is questioning will never find that answer.

And for many reasons that UG talks about, and in my experience, I've found that this is almost inescapably true — that the thing that you're using to try to escape out of this is actually part and parcel of the entirety of the mechanistic structure and system. The thoughts, the mind, everything that is involved in this kind of reflexive and reflective nature of the self and of the mind and of our thoughts, is consistently creating a continuity that you can't escape, and that in the end there is some form of almost exhaustion and the surrendering of it.

And UG was very clear. Every time people would ask him, how do I do this, how do I reach this Natural State, he'd always tell them, I don't know. He'd constantly say, "I don't know." He'd constantly say, people get very mad that I tell them it was acausal. Despite everything — he would always say, "Despite everything I did in my life, it still happened." It was this almost complete and utter, you know, as Buddha said, truly I've gained nothing from total enlightenment. That it was a complete loss of much, and not a gain of anything.

So I guess my question to you is that it seems like this thing that everyone's searching for, this state, this becoming — it's the search itself and everything that perpetuates the searching that is continuing to create the problem, to create the continuity, to create the reification. And that you cannot find yourself in a situation, while you still search, in which it's possible. And even the waiting itself, the waiting for something to happen, is still the belief that there's a gap to go across, that there's something still that is to happen.

So for you, I want to hear from you something along the lines of whether you also believe that this is almost an acausal realisation, the coming into the Natural State. Because, very much, I guess the last thing I'll say about this is that in the Western tradition that I come from, there's a great concept within it of grace, right? That no matter what you do, no matter what you try to achieve, how you try to become, or to reach some sense of theosis, whatever you want to call it, in the Western canon it's very much not something that you can do. It's not something you can achieve. It's not something you can will into happening.

So yeah, I would like to hear your thoughts on the fact that this whole thing that we're chasing and we're pursuing is acausal, and the pursuit, the chase of it itself, of even questioning the self and that there's something there, is perpetuating it further.

NYeah. Sure. So the Natural State is always present. It's out of time. The acausal part is always there. It's the Natural State, and the Self just means you. You're not other than the Self. So you are always you. So the search and all that, all that it is doing is taking away attention, or not allowing you to see that.

It's like someone's looking through a window and you're trying to tell them about the window, and they just keep looking through the window. So whatever you do, whatever they do, they're looking out the window. You say, look, look, look at the frame, and then they look to the side instead of understanding what you're trying to point out.

So the search is often part of how you ever arrive at this. Like, the Buddha did go through the search. I know a bit less about UG Krishnamurti, but there's a process. And that process is only to start the question. The answer is always there, because the answer is the constant factor.

The True Nature, the Natural State, is only referring to what you already have. So it's not a loss either. It's not a gain and it's not a loss.

QTrue.

NIt is Sentience. You are sentient. The only problem is Sentience is always associated with separate entities, separate things. That's what I started with, that assumption. Once you take it away, then yes.

Yeah, the Natural State is the state where experience can appear — any experience whatever, all kinds of magical experience, whatever — but that is changing. That's what the Buddha saw. The End of Suffering is seeing through this idea of separate entities, separate selves that would somehow have to be saved individually, one by one, because that is impossible. And he saw through that, and that to him was the End of Suffering.

QYeah. Thank you.

NChris, nice to see you again. You're still on mute.

QAll right. Can you hear me now?

NYeah.

QAll right. Good to speak with you again. What Eren spoke of just now, and then your response, just brought a little bit of a question to me. In the United States there seems to be, commercially, a focus, or like a group of people that focus and they talk about it a lot — not so much on siddhis, but maybe manifestation and the power of manifesting things for oneself. If someone finds themselves where they are looking for that power, whether it be siddhis, whether it be manifestation or other things which really are focused on the I, on the self... One of the things you mentioned was maybe getting distracted or focusing on the wrong thing.

For those that are interested in focusing on what is: what, in your experience, what would you feel would be a good, almost like a homing device, to kind of get them focused on that I am, that silence after one says I am, before anything else, that beingness? Because oftentimes in that spiritual pursuit there are so many things that could be a distraction.

I remember Robert Adams one time spoke about a bird that saw this other bird, a beautiful bird up in the tree, and focused on the bird, and every time it would focus on flying it would stop somewhere, at one level, because there was some fruit that it got distracted by. Again, at the end it did finally realise that that bird was itself. But if we get stuck, if we get distracted, if there's something that pulls this I towards something else, what can help someone bring them back?

NMhm. It's hard to help someone else. Because the interest always comes from inside. So in a certain life, if there's more interest in something else, it's hard to change that from the outside. It's like what we see with our children: when we want them to be good at something and we try to push them, it always backfires. Whatever they get good at, the interest comes from them.

So I only talk about this stuff to people who are already interested in it. And it's hard to convince someone, or all that, because you're not convincing someone. You're trying to talk to the actual Self, and all the other stuff is the me, mental chatter. And if that is strong and if that dominates, then it's hard to see through that.

All we can share is... if they ever get interested in Nisargadatta, you give them the book and so on. Then they might see it. But all this stuff, it just means the realisation is not there, because all this is about the individual self trying to manifest and so on, so on. Or it might even be for humanity as a whole, but it's still thinking in terms of that group.

Whereas once you see that Sentience does not belong to things, then the entire universe and all the other universes — whose are they, and who has manifested them? All of manifestation then belongs to the Absolute, and so there's nothing to do, or—

QThank you.

NYeah. Thank you. It doesn't mean... when you get a chance you can always give a little pointer or so on, but without imagining it will immediately have some impact. To convince someone, that's hard to happen.

All right. Who's next? [unclear]?

QHi, Nabeel. Thanks. Can you hear me?

NYeah.

QThanks for the last video, this video — really appreciate it. I was waiting for it for a long time. So, there's infinite amusement — I mean, infinite capacity in all kinds of mind — and that's the desire that brings mind to the world, basically, and...

NYou're breaking up a bit.

QYeah. Let me go mute.

NYeah, he might come back. Let's go with Razi first. That's all right, [unclear], we'll go with Razi first. He—

QOh, you're also breaking up. Is it me?

NNope, you're breaking up. Let's go with Charles and see if maybe it's my internet. It's a curse. There we go. Siddhis!

QNo, that was me. My microphone was off. Okay. Can you hear me now?

NYes, we can.

QThey were breaking up for me as well, so I'm not sure. It might not be there. I have a question about Awareness. You seem to say, and I've heard others say it as well, that there's Awareness even when there's not awareness of something. And I don't get how you could know that, because if there's Awareness with no content, even knowing that that's happening is a kind of content in itself.

NYeah.

QAnd there's even a place... I was thinking about this because I remember, a long time ago, and I just looked it up. I'm going to look on my other screen here. There's a place, an old one, where the Buddha says — I'm quoting — "Just as two sheaves of reeds might stand leaning against each other, so too, with name-and-form as condition, consciousness comes to be; with consciousness as condition, name-and-form comes to be." As in, they arise together, I guess, is the way it's been interpreted to me, and that makes sense to me. Now, is this just a semantic difference, or are you seeing something different?

NYeah. So when you're saying that, if there's no awareness of—

QYeah.

NThey just... it's the same as no awareness. It's the same as nothing.

QYes.

NWhen I call that Awareness, or some sage like Nisargadatta calls it the Absolute, they're increasing the scope of what you take Awareness to be. Because otherwise, yes, otherwise we're talking about how the Buddha is talking about consciousness, which is a subset. What he's talking about is when there's experience — that is interdependent with all the other factors which lead to experience. And so consciousness is not the Absolute in that sense.

But Awareness, or Sentience as I began with, is only the capacity for experience to appear, and that capacity does not require that the experience is actually there at that moment.

QOkay. So if you just describe it as a capacity, I guess that makes sense. Or I guess you could use the word potential.

NYeah.

QOkay, that's fine. And we know nothing about where that comes from.

NYeah. So at that point it's a bit theoretical. It's potential, potential energy, and so on and so forth. But where it becomes nonconceptual is when you catch experience arise. So, from that, where there was nothing — same as no awareness — let's say experience arises and you become aware of it. How is that possible, if there was really no awareness?

QI have no idea.

NIt's not possible. So we're just naming. And we're giving a name to that precondition.

QOkay.

NThe perpetual precondition in which anything can take place. Because if That was not there, then nothing would ever take place. There would be the absolute nothing, in which nothing can happen. If that makes sense. It means that's imagining a different reality. A reality in which no experience is possible. Which, in other words, is just nothing.

QOkay. But then you seem to then take it on further and to say that my awareness and your awareness are not separate. And I see how that might logically follow from that Awareness always being there with or without content. And I'm not saying that I have access to the content of your awareness — I don't seem to, except in so far as I make inferences based on what you say. And that seems to be a step.

And this isn't just theory for me, because I'm really struggling with what I see in terms of a practice: the approach you're suggesting versus the Zen approach that I have been doing. They seem to say no self, no self, no self, where you seem to be saying yes, Self, itself — just telling me, suggesting as a practice, to identify with Awareness. So it's not stifling the sense of I, but to say yes, I, and that I is the pure Awareness, and your pure Awareness is no different from my pure Awareness. And in fact they're not only the same kind of stuff, like separate glasses of water, but it is the same water.

NYeah. So, in Zen, there's the — I think it's called the Zen Death or something — there's the point where all experience has ended, gone, no sense of time, nothing.

Satori. Which... is it kenshō and satori, the final one, where what happens the master is not able to describe it, because there's nothing to describe. Nothing happened, except then the return of what we take to be life, or myself. When that appears — when it appears, you catch where it appeared — That is not an individual me or you. Or you can stop calling it Awareness as well at that point. It's the same as no awareness, nothing. But you realise that nothing is not nothing.

That is the — it just takes away all the... your awareness and my awareness concept. Or even Awareness, that word, can also be discarded, whatever. But just to talk, I use words like Awareness and Sentience and so on, the Absolute. When you notice the reappearance of the world and experience and so on, again you can notice where it appeared, and it removes that idea that Sentience belongs to things, that it's my awareness or your awareness or anything. Anything that's different then is what is appearing next, and you've seen through to what is actually the Basis, the True Nature of what You Are.

Even in Zen they talk about True Nature. The no-self is to show you that nothing is the self, no particular thing. Even consciousness is dependent, and it's taking you to that Absolute, which I would still call I, because it cannot be not-I. There's no difference between I and not-I at that point, because when experience appears, it does not appear to something else or someone else. There's no distance. It appears to You.

You are That. Except that That is not something we can in any way split up. There's no attributes, no individuality, no one. It's just... yeah, I will just keep talking in circles if I talk about That like I'm doing now.

QOkay. Thank you. I think that's all I can absorb for now. Thank you.

NThank you. Rachel.

QHello, Nabeel. I would like to have you speak to getting to a point where there's a level of joyous contentment and no desire to pursue activities, or any doing other than basic function. There's no interest. It's a happy place to be, but when living with others, it isn't a happy place with those around me. So I'm... can you speak to that, please? That being in that place.

NSo for a while I was — yeah, I was in that place for quite long — but then you give that up too. Because if you try to maintain that, you're again just trying to hold on to a state which was only... it's the honeymoon period of realising the truth. It happens for a while.

QYeah. I don't feel like I'm holding on to anything, Nabeel. I think it feels—

NYeah, go ahead. Sorry. I'm just saying, it's the expectation that that would last for the rest of your life that is wrong.

QHow long does it last? Does it just kind of end at some point? Because this has been kind of happening for a little while. And we're retired, so we travel and we go to places. And if I'm sitting looking at a beach, I can be there sitting looking at that beach all day long.

NYeah. So what you notice is that peace has no conditions. It's unconditional. All the other stuff, the disturbances, have conditions, and those conditions are happening all the time, most of the time. And so... but as soon as you lose interest, then the peace is there. The joy is there.

QYeah.

NBut that's the nature of life. In life there'll be lots of stuff going on, and you can't expect to just dodge all of it, unless you walk away to the mountains like some of the Zen masters.

QThen you have a simple life where most of the time we—

NYeah. But if you participate in life then things are difficult. My company is going through restructuring and blah blah blah and you have to find a new job. It's actually happening right now, to me. So what should I do? Should I just still try to sit in joy? No. It doesn't matter. Who cares?

The scope of the realisation, like I was saying, is understanding the nature of Reality, the absolute Reality.

QRight.

NAnd so the joy, at some point in this life, how long I can sustain it — it's pointless, it has no... See, fine, yes, when the mind is disturbed you bring it back. That's like the last video, about how Ramana Maharshi said the source of the breath and the mind is the same, and that gives us the clue. If you can't control your mind, just notice your breath and you'll find it's shallow, the rhythm is off, and just a little bit of noticing that, brings it back into equilibrium, and it affects the mind. So you understand how things work.

When life is bothering you too much, then you see through it all. Like, it's just like a dream and so on and so forth. Those are the ways back to peace. But there's no consistent staying in a guru state. All those ones are mostly the ones playing on stage. They're not the actual thing.

QWhat... the living with someone who has no interest in this practice, or even discussing any of this. It's very easy — I find it very easy to just stay in that place of peace and observe, and then I start looking at the process in another. But I'm very cautious to not say anything, because this has nothing to do with me. But it's the action, the taking action, the doing, the doing, the doing, the going, the superficial: let's go see this. And I'm like, okay, let's go see this.

There's no genuine interest. And I'm coming across as not being interested in my husband's life. That's why I'm asking, because I'm just very happy. But someone else, with their entire life process, is integrated into mine. And I'm trying to be very cautious.

NI mean, look, interest, we cannot manufacture it. If you're really not interested, you're not interested. What can we do? But I think once you see that deep down everybody, this is what they are, you can interact with all kinds of minds, because you know what is at the bottom of it. You don't have to talk non-duality and all this stuff.

But it's much easier for me. Like, most of my life I had a lot of social anxiety and couldn't talk to people and so on. Now it's quite simple, because you recognise what the actual Reality is. It's not the surface person, or what they think about what I am.

Once you know what I means, then see how you can make it a bit more carefree. Yeah, your husband is not your husband. He is—

QI can't tell him that.

NEven without... my wife is not interested in all this. She's watched all my videos and so on, so she's actually understood more than I would expect. But I don't talk to her about this stuff and so on.

QI'll give it a go. Thank you.

NYeah.

QI'll give it a go. Thanks.

NThank you. Eren.

QNow, I was going to ask this: what is the difference between... I mean, what do you mean, there is Awareness and Absolute? How do you map this Absolute to Awareness? Is it something different, something unmanifest? And how do you map... what do you think about Jesus's Trinity in this, Absolute to Awareness? I mean, there is Awareness, like something metaphysical that almost doesn't exist and you perceive it, you know it. The Absolute is invisible to—

NMhm. So Awareness is just another term for the Absolute. It's emphasising a certain nature of what the Absolute is.

What I was talking to Charles about: when you realise what the Absolute is, you don't see something or you don't understand something or so on. Just start from that initial starting point, where anything could appear. The Absolute is where anything relative can appear.

Everything else is relative. It appears, it disappears, it changes and all that. But to the Absolute that does not apply. The Absolute is what is beyond time and space and this life and whatnot.

Why can it be called Awareness? Why can the Absolute be called Awareness? Because when anything appears, how does it appear? It appears as experience. That's perception. And that means the Absolute is aware. Not a thing is aware, or a person is aware, because all the things and attributes of a person, or what you could call me, appear later within the Absolute.

But for those things to appear, the Absolute has to be there and is aware. And this is not just... I can talk of it as a logical reasoning kind of explanation, but what you see for yourself is that in meditation, or sleep, or just out of nothing, you lose everything. There's a blank spot where all experience has gone. Everything. There's no world, no you, no time, no space. And if you can catch it, you realise with absolute certainty that everything you took to be yourself came later and is not what is aware.

QYes, this is realised. I mean, order is important. What comes first, what comes later, is very important. And you see that Awareness comes first. I mean, you think that you're born into the world, you see the world comes first, but the world appears in Awareness.

NYeah. The world is appearance. You asked about the Trinity. Well, that's—

QTrinity, yes. What do you think about Trinity? Where do you put Absolute and Awareness in the Trinity?

NMhm. So it's just... I mean, I'm not an expert in the Christian understanding of it, but you often see things in terms of dualities and trinities, and that's just a way to point back to the absolute unity. Because even the Trinity resolves into the Unity. The Father and I are one. The Father is the Absolute before.

QWhat is the living spirit? Yes. What do you think about living spirit?

NYeah. There's various ways you could say it, but I think they're all there to point back to the actual truth, which is the unity of all this. So when you say the Father and I are one, it's like the mind realising that I cannot be separate to the Absolute in which I appeared. How could it be separate? Because it's just feeling, sensing, knowing all that, and that is not separate to Awareness. That is the Awareness in action. Awareness itself.

So the Absolute, Awareness, Consciousness — these are all ways to then... you start with where the mind is at. If, to you, only the world of experience is real, you're pointed out, where does it come from? It's all taking you back to the Source, the Godhead, and then the absolute Unity of it all.

QThank you.

NRazi, you want to have another go?

QIs this better?

NYeah.

QYeah. I was going to ask you the question, but then automatically it was like, how do I... blank, whatever question, then I have to see through that, to see through that. And I was just seeing through at this moment, and then I was just talking to reset my order. Like, right now mind activity is quite low. You can just use the word awareness.

But then in the background there is that I am aware, or I am so calm, and that I, of course, I talk to you. It's quiet. I can see through the eyes. There's no I right now. It's just talking happening. So I guess I just don't want to ask a question just to ask a question, like we're not really seeing through in this. And then you talked about actual Reality. Can you speak to that? Just the very basics, and not something that's complicated, but something...

NYou're still breaking up a bit, but I got the point about I am aware. And the I is still connected to a personal I: I am aware. It's just, you go back to the inquiry. Who am I? What am I? What particular thing is I? And you can't find one. There's no such thing, but you are.

It's that assumption that there are sentient life forms. But what is the form which we can associate with Sentience? Does it have to be in a human shape, a human brain? All that is stuff we learned. You don't feel yourself in the shape of a brain. You have no shape. All the shapes appear to you.

What am I? The I has to point back to what is actually truly I. It's without any assumptions. You are this capacity for experience. Experience is appearing because you have this capacity. You are the Capacity, because there's no separate thing that you are and then you have this capacity. You can't be separated from This.

So, I am aware is correct, but just the I cannot be a personal thing, because if you feel that way you have to find out what is that thing.

Sorry, you're breaking up, so I don't think we can hear at all. Next time. Naader, let's try you again.

QRight, Nabeel? I'm going to shut the video, so hopefully this time I come through. Is it okay now?

NYeah, that's better.

QOkay. So, just to set the context, that verse from Ashtavakra that says the tranquil state of knowing Self alone is rare. So, going to that state, you kind of bounce back. Like, you go there, you bounce back, and the mind immediately wants to — okay, said, oh wow, look at this — so you quiet the mind and focus it, you go there, but then the damn thing bounces right back, because it found something really...

And so you find that you go there, you dip in there, you go to that timeless moment, and you come right back. I know you talked about this and you said you don't have to go there. Like, just don't turn that into an attraction or another thing that you get hooked on. I know that, but practically it gives you — it's like a charging station. You just do that and then it gets you going for, you know, centred and peace and serene for a long time. So it's a practical thing. It's an oxymoron, I know, but can you talk to that? Like, what is... is it the desire still, that the fact that you can't stay there? Is it something that would... you know what I mean, right?

NYeah. So first of all, that statement, the tranquil state of knowing Self alone — what does it actually mean? There's a few different ways you could take it.

The deepest meaning would be before experience. That is the tranquil state of knowing Self alone. Then there's only Self, without anything you could differentiate or make any distinctions with. That is rare, because only once in a few years you'll have a sage like Ramana Maharshi who was totally out of it. He was in that state, you could call it that way, state of knowing Self alone.

But then you would say, when all this (experience) is happening, is this not knowing Self? This is also knowing Self alone, because all forms are the Emptiness. Emptiness is the forms in themselves. Because all these forms are Awareness taking shape and colour and sound and so on, feeling. So actually every moment is knowing Self alone.

So that statement is just taking apart the goal. One is, if you're trying to get to the state that only happens once in a billion lives, then there's very little chance you get there. And even if you do, like, it happened, but only for — it's a timeless moment, which you can't repeat based on desire or so on. Just the end of time, and then life resumes. So that's why that state is rare.

However, then that is also the state which is after death and before life. So how is it rare? That's a very interesting statement for me, because it's rare and not rare, because it is the Natural State.

And then, what is knowing Self? Is it about knowing a state? Because all states, each perception, each experience, is knowing Self.

And so if you just see it that way, then it's also much easier to be in the state of equanimity and peace and whatever, because you're not expecting, and the desire for shifting things a little bit is going away, and then everything as it is is knowing Self.

QOkay. So I think, as he was talking, that verse continues by saying, therefore I neither renounce nor accept. So that's exactly why that "therefore" is there, an explanation. Because as things are happening, in the seemingly not that state of knowing Self, if you neither accept — if you relinquish, basically, if you don't let the desire of not having that thing in that moment... just take the moment as it comes, without having a desire of it being something else. If you do that, then every moment is like Self, like you just said.

So I think that was my second part: so what is that "therefore" after that?

And you got me. I mean, that's the answer. So you don't have to be necessarily in there. You can be in any state as long as you neither accept nor renounce. And that's the attitude in life, every second of life, basically.

Yes, thank you.

NThank you. Chris, hi.

QI'm in a similar situation to kind of what Rachel said, with having a spouse that really isn't interested. Kind of what I've been trying to work towards is, first off, trying to be present. Because oftentimes — no, not oftentimes, but sometimes — whether it be an activity, which actually the activity is easier, because I just try and be present in the moment. And personally, again, that's just my personal experience, that kind of takes care of itself, because I'm just present.

Sometimes a struggle that I have is trying to steer the conversations, when the conversations come to be about others in a way that sometimes leans towards the negative, without coming across like I don't care about what you're saying. It's funny, sometimes she refers to me as like the devil's advocate, because I try to give, okay, well what about a different perspective, not just one — of course, after listening.

But in doing that, one of the things more recently that I found is, when those instances come up, whether an event comes up or a conversation comes up, I can kind of feel internally in the body that resistance. And I found where I used to be more likely to, I really don't want to do this, I really don't want to do this, to just being aware of that. It's actually physical. I apologise if you hear the dogs in the background. I can feel that change, that resistance, and then just kind of watch it, is the best way to describe it, and then it kind of softens in a way.

I don't know if that's something that you've experienced, and if that, or there's again anything else that may kind of help those of us that are maybe in a similar position. And I know you did give one answer, it just kind of brought that to my mind when she spoke.

NYeah. So what's happening is, instead of being carried away by the way the mind works, you have the self-reflection to see what's going on. There's a bit of distance. You can see, yeah, the resistance is there, whatever, I'm starting to get angry. Whereas... and that's really the mindfulness that we brought to this, the initial practice, the mindfulness and so on. It helps once you have the insight.

Once your self-identity is not tied up into I am this person, this thing and so on, it's much easier to see these things with a bit of detachment, a bit of distance. And previously, where you would realise only later once you've already got into the argument, now you can catch it earlier.

But what is frustrating is, you will find, why does the mind still work this way? Because you've understood something so amazing, so deep and profound, and then the mind still works the same way. So there's still often the desire, like, I should be able to rewire this whole thing. But that's not what's on offer.

What's on offer is just a circuit breaker. It's just the main switch, but not that you can rewire the whole thing. It might still change a little bit here and there. But the main switch is very powerful. If during that we always just turn attention to, okay, so what am I? What is she? It can influence what comes out next.

QThank you.

NThank you. Liam, nice to see you again. Still on mute.

QHave we got it now?

NYeah, I can hear that.

QGood to see you. Good to be here. And, no, I'm just reminded, you know, I come from a very perfect relationship really, and I just wanted to share about that. No, it's just, a friend of mine was asked once was he happily married, and he said 100%, he says, but I can't say the same about my wife.

But no, I find that I just have to cultivate and practice things in so far as that I don't suffer from guilt, and I have to say there's neither right nor wrong in the whole thing, that it's kind of happening in Consciousness. But Nisargadatta used to say desirelessness was key. I try to kind of be aware of that, you know, to bring my consciousness to it. And I do find that I don't start chasing my tail, and I do find that, you know, I'm in my 77th year and I have more money now than I ever had when I was younger. Now, it's just because the money seems to come to me because I don't chase it, and I'm not trying to kind of invent it.

I used to use these manifestation techniques one time and they were successful, very successful. I made a lot of money one year. But I had a mentor, a spiritual advisor, who said to me, he said, "You're looking for some kind of an awakening of the material kind." He says, "You're on the wrong track, you know." So I stopped it.

But, you know, I just find, I thought I'd share that with people anyway, and I think I tried to be as humorous as I can. And I'm sorry I was late coming on. I'm not great at the technology, and I was at a particular place and they were running late, and anyway I went back and sorted out. But it's good to be here and I really appreciate what you do. Mind yourselves and stay well. God bless you.

NThank you, Liam.

QHi, Nabeel.

NHi.

QGood to see you again. Just, [unclear] mentioned your new video, which I picked up the last couple of days and watched it several times. I love the video, the actual word, but like the mandala thing going on there, and what you're saying. And it's not an aspect that I've... I don't know if I've actually grasped it entirely, what you're getting at, what you're pointing to, other than: so your breath is an indicator of the state that you are in, and the state you're in is reflected in your breath.

So if you notice your breath, as you describe it, being ragged, so you're saying it's a reminder to kind of come back into the Awareness? I wasn't quite sure what... I know it was taken from Bhagavan. I wasn't quite certain what your... I know it's not about controlling the breath, I think you're quite clear on that. It's not a doing exercise. It's not... because I've been there, so that I wouldn't want to ever go back to trying to control my breath. But at the same time, it's interesting that you've made a video and you've gone through all that effort to point that out. I haven't quite got it. Could you please?

NYeah. So what you're saying, yes, that's it. We're just understanding the relationship.

The breath is like an indicator, and you can notice it with a bit of detachment, which is hard to apply to the mind. In the moment that the mind is caught up, it's much easier to return and notice what is the state of your breath. And just the noticing changes something. That's the key.

Like, all of us, many of the questions today are about, how do you rein it in? You don't rein it in in the way you would a horse. There's no reins. But just the act of observing the breath changes something, because there's a relationship between the rhythm of your breath — how slow it is, how calm it is — and your mind. Even in the middle of sports, what you would do is try to bring your breath under control before you take that action. So even in activity, it's possible.

And so that's what it's first of all for, pointing out that instead of trying to control, understand this relationship. And it's not a very personal thing when your mind is going berserk. It's just a system which is out of equilibrium, and You, as the witness of that, just your act of witnessing it with your true nature — not taking yourself to be a participant, but just observing — changes it. It slows down the breath. It brings, or whatever, brings you back into the flow.

And the end of that video, really the point of it, is that you notice that happiness, as Ramana Maharshi calls it — happiness is not something to attain through meeting some criteria, some conditioning, like you go through this whole journey to get there. It's just there.

It's just the nature of Self. When the mind desires, it goes out and gets lost and so on and tries this and that. And when the desire is met, the happiness you feel is just the absence of desire. Desire is gone and you feel happiness. But we associate the happiness with the thing you just got. However, it is the nature of Self.

And so it's a very simple exercise. It's more on the practice side, this thing, but it's not in terms of something hard to do or something to remember and so on. As soon as you notice the breath — once you have heard this, and you notice the breath, it's ragged — you just take a deeper breath, or blink your eyes slow, and all that stuff I say. Just slow down your thinking. And there it is. There's the joy you wanted, the happiness you wanted.

And then you can also see how to share it. Like, some of the conversation today is, how do we share this with someone else? What we're trying to share is not the statements about non-duality and this stuff. What we want to share is the happiness.

And the happiness is in their very nature. If you could, you know, all you have to do is calm things down. Take a moment. It's fine, and that cannot be lost, and it's not far away and all that stuff. And so that was fine. It's, like always, only the disturbances of life get in the way. But that is just, again, this equilibrium shifting and changing. The brain's working hard, the body is taxed.

And to me this breath stuff is interesting, because in my youth I had a lot of asthma attacks, without taking the inhaler and all that. And you realise how much effort a single breath is. When breathing is hard, you realise how hard the body has to work just to get that little bit of air in and turn it into whatever energy and so on.

So much effort goes into that, and often we are ignoring what's going on in the body. You're taking it personally, like you have to control it somehow, or you're doing something wrong and so on. But if you just observe it as, this body is trying to function, do its best, and where it's going off — it allows it to function better, and you notice the calm, which is the Natural State.

QYeah. Yeah. That makes complete sense now. So thank you for that. Thank you.

NThank you.

All right. Any last questions? Liam, did you still have your hand up, or is that from the last time?

QI think it's from the last time.

NAll right.

QSorry about that.

NOkay. No worries. Right, let's end there for today. Thank you all for joining. And if you haven't seen, the channel now has a website which has transcripts, if you want to read instead of watch. I'll put the link in the description.

QYes. Thank you for that.

NThank you.

QThank you.