Something has taken over your throne

NOne of the things to notice is how the right experience, when it's assigned to the wrong concept, loses all its magic. That was what the last video we've seen — that's what it's about. This quality of depth, for example — usually the mind assigns that quality to physical space. Depth is of the space, or depth is of the ocean. The sky is very high.

But it's not possible to observe physical space. Whatever you're observing is mediated through the senses, and then you get to experience it. So when it is observed, it's not physical space — it's subjective, and in that experience there is this quality of depth. And if you just take that one quality and you start to explore it — is it a quality of distance?

No, because it's not visual distance. You also feel that depth in music. You could be wearing headphones, and the physical scope of what's going on is very small, but the depth is much deeper. And then when you feel emotion, it is the same dimension — this same quality of depth. So if we assign it to physical space, it loses all its magic.

It's nothing to do with you — it's now assigned to a concept. The experience is real, and it's showing us something very amazing. But because we think we have an explanation, it then becomes worthless in a way. So a lot of the time you hear, "Oh, I haven't had an awakening experience," or "I haven't had that brilliant experience," or you've had the brilliant experience and now it's ordinary.

But most of it is seeing how what is considered ordinary is not ordinary. There are many ways to start seeing through how one concept can turn on the blinders. It becomes very obvious — say if you think depth is the quality of visual space, you just close your eyes. The space you should be seeing should be the distance from the eyeballs to your eyelids.

But that's not what happens. What you observe is something much deeper. There's a space — that's the space in which a dream appears. When the eyelid opens and the world appears, it's in that same space.

Alright, let's do Q&A. Yes, Sasha.

QHi, and hi everyone. Can you provide some pointers on how to notice, how to be aware, that actually I'm not the doer — during mundane, regular life activities? For example, now I'm speaking... during meditation, formal practice, feelings coming and going, and there is Awareness and observation. But in the middle of daily life — work, family — there's a very strong illusion that I'm doing. Can you please provide some pointers?

NOkay, look — the first thing is that it is not the objective to always be in a certain frame of mind. If I'm busy with work, then it requires a certain mode of focused thinking. If your work requires thinking, it requires thinking. You can't at the same time be thinking, "I have to follow this pointer and look back," and do the work — because that's not how it works.

But any moment that there's a pause — if there's interest, it can be simple. It can be like: to whom is this perception appearing? And immediately, between the thoughts, or between the intake and outtake of breath, in that pause — to whom is the thought arising?

The answer is being answered in that pause between two thoughts. So between two breaths, it is arising to the Awareness. It's not arising to any identifiable thing. Where is this perception arising?

If we just question that in any moment, then you go back to the truth. It's not arising to a body or a brain or a person, because all those are fuzzy concepts. Again, those are assigning the Reality of what's going on to concept. And by assigning Reality to concepts, we're destroying the magic.

So the pointers are many, and there will be some which become just very instinctive for you, very intuitive — just: what am I? Or it could be just a slow blink. For a while it was just a slow blink in the middle of your work — just blink slower for a moment. In that slower blink, the whole world disappears and reappears.

QWhy is that happening? So there is some practice, some action apparently that I'm doing. Is it something that is accumulative, so eventually it becomes natural and effortless?

NSo what becomes final is that you realize the truth is always true. It has always been true, always the same way. All that can change is what's going on in a particular stream of experience.

And who's going to stop that stream of experience from ever deviating from just staying on one point? The one-pointed mind becoming eternal — that's not going to happen. Even if it did, it would happen for a few years, not for eternity. It's still within a stream of experience.

So what you realize, as experiences go on the same way, is that the truth is always true. Reality is always the same — that there's no individual sentient entity to be found in any moment, and any idea of me doing something is just a thought appearing in the experience, because there's no me to do anything. It just becomes facts, like the things we... for example, you take yourself to be a man. You don't think "I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man" — it's just known. You don't need to revisit the fact.

So in the same way, you know you're not a man.

QYeah.

NIt is going beyond the need for practice. While there is the desire to quieten the mind and so on, there are practices.

But at some point even that desire drops. For to what end should the mind be quietened, and by whom? It's only an objective the mind puts for itself and then goes around in circles. And when I say mind here, again, it's not an entity — it's just that there was a thought.

The thought was: once the truth is realized, thinking should change in certain ways, certain idealistic ways. But even that's just more thinking, and what's being dropped is the idea that the same thinking can continue. But it's not your thinking.

A key part of it is a certain detachment — that whatever happens, you are in your work, and you feel you're doing it for a while, and then there's the idea that maybe that was a deviation from what it should be like.

It's not. It's part of it. It's just full acceptance of what it is, as it is, without looking for something else there. Just pay attention, full acceptance.

The core here is just an understanding of the nature of the way things are. There's nothing to change, and nobody who could change it. It's just an understanding of the way things are. It's like the realization is at a scope that is even beyond the one universe.

How deep it goes — it's the nature of Reality. But from there, to then have something in this life continuously changing because of that — the scope is wrong. Some things do change, however, it's just like side effects or something. It's not the core of what...

I don't know — the scope is wrong, you understand? Let's say you're a physicist and you understand Einstein. He had such an amazing insight into the universe, but his personal life was quite normal — breakups and all that. In the same way, unless you're already at the point of being a sage who had given everything up, then you've already given everything up by the point you realize, and then you can sit there quietly, happily, because you already got used to not having anything.

But if in the middle of life this is realized, and you still need to carry on that same life, then aspects of that life continue — but the realization is there. Does that make sense?

QYeah. Thank you. Thank you.

NSo you don't have to follow all the giving up desire and all that.

All that can go on, but your viewpoint towards all of it kind of changes. So there's a kind of arc, like there's a story arc within the dream. In that arc, for a while, whoever becomes obsessed with the question in the dream will go through that. There will be practices, there will be pointers, there will be revelations.

But then at some point you have to see that all of this is also just happening in the dream. The truth was already realized a while ago, but because the attention is still on the story in the dream, that can keep going on and on and on. Did you see the video on Ajata?

QYeah. Yes.

NIt's like at some point you have to see that the dream world and the character together — they are the dream.

The character is not something apart from the dream. It is the dream.

There's no dream without a dream character that you supposedly are. There must be a protagonist through which the first-person view happens. So as long as you are still attached to that first-person view, there's still a person. But as soon as you see that even that view is part of the dream world, then that story can continue in whatever way.

But now your standpoint has changed. It's like you were totally immersed in the story and you took yourself to be the character, versus now you know you're reading a story and there's a character in it. That's the difference.

QYeah.

QIs this also kind of following up on what Sasha was saying? Any mundane experience — like looking at the chair in front of me, it's been always there — you take anything like that and you start saying, okay, what am I that's seeing this? How am I seeing it? What am I that's seeing it? And if you just... I guess the training that you need is to get that mind so focused.

That's why we study, we do math, we stay at it — all of that training prepares that mind to stay focused on that question. Because at that point the mind is doing that: what am I that's seeing this? And then you stay with it, and it invariably takes you — if you don't give up — it takes you... it's not the good old me, it's so familiar. I am seeing it, I know it's me, I'm so familiar. But what am I that's seeing this? And then if you keep doing this, it breaks that identification with that dream character.

You start seeing, oh, it's not the body seeing this. It's not the light going through the eye — it's not any of that. What am I that's seeing this then? The I that is so familiar to me. And it takes you there, slowly, slowly.

You do this, you keep doing it, and then at some point you say, oh, I must be that space in which all this is happening. Because I can't find me, and yet it's me — it's so familiar to me. So it starts breaking those beliefs, and it's like when it starts breaking, it kind of falls down on its head. And I think that's what you're saying — that at that point, when you keep doing it, it's just taking a half step back. It becomes so easy.

You can be doing anything, like you said — two blinks, half step back, you're back, you're there.

NYeah. The slow blink is just — in that blink you go back to the recognition. Things are still the same as they always have been.

QOkay.

NAnd yes, what you're saying is right. So there is that phase where there's questioning — an obsession with the question. That's what mostly happens when this is realized. Otherwise the blinders stay on. Sometimes it just happens out of the blue, but mostly it's those who become obsessed with the question, and there's that Self-inquiry period where it goes — it starts maybe in meditation, but then it expands. It consumes your whole day. At any moment it'll just — you keep going back. What is this? Who am I? What is this? What am I? And the concepts are breaking down. The blinders are off and the chair is no longer a chair. What is it?

You're seeing a light — a shape made out of light. But where is the light coming from? Same as depth, which cannot be a quality of physical space. Light cannot be a quality of a physical source.

The light that you see — where is the light coming from? And in the end, it's still me. It keeps going on until — then what is "me"? Because the "me" still remains an individual. And then that concept breaks.

There is no possibility of individuality.

In Nisargadatta's dialogues there was one point which — after I thought I'd understood it, I read it and it hit again. He said... I've forgotten.

He said there can be no such entities. It was about me and you. He said there can be no such entities. It's just not possible. All the questions and roundabouts begin with the assumption that there can be a me and you, and now we have to prove that it's wrong and somehow realize it.

But the insight is it's not possible, because you cannot take Awareness and split it and assign it to entities. What entities? What are they? An object? A soul, which we can only ever imagine as a something?

There's nothing in experience to which you can assign the quality of being able to perceive experience. And that's just the nature of experience. That's what I mean. It's just a truth you realize, and that truth never changes no matter what goes on. And even if thoughts consume a mind and you get lost in the thoughts and you play out a character, what difference does it make?

Truth is the truth — more fundamental than that. Once you see yourself not to be that entity, then... if you get to a point where you see, "okay, I thought I was this person" — you get to the point of saying, "well, this is not an entity, I'm not an entity." Once you get to that point, then it becomes easy to...

that it is — you realize it is not possible for there to be any separate sentient entities. It's not just that you know... the reasoning around this is, for myself, I realize that I am not a person, or whatever. No, it's the realization that it is not possible for there to be separate sentient entities. When the Buddha questions dependent origination and all that, what he's trying to point out is that anything observable, every phenomenon, every physical... any category of thing, it depends on factors. It's all dependent. It's all a dependent arising. Even Consciousness is a dependent arising. You cannot separate it from a working body, or whatever.

Now... as far as we know, in scientific terms, it's all a dependent arising. Now, in that — to which particular thing can you assign this property that it becomes sentient, owns that for a while, and then ceases to exist? It is not possible, because whatever is observed, it appears within Awareness. So any idea of being a particular thing appears within Awareness...

And you and I always go back to the Bahiya Sutta — in the seeing, only the seeing; in the hearing, only the hearing. So what can we call Nader? Nader is whatever is happening right now — that subjective happening — that is Nader. You cannot, in that happening, find one thing and call it "Nader."

As I observe these pixels, I can give... there's a name below it, but that's not Nader. But even from inside that experience, you realize that the happening is not there, and I am not that. The space in which all that is happening — if you want, it's inclusive of all that's happening. I mean, I know what you... there's a reason this channel is called "Untangle Your Mind," because that's really what you're doing. If I get this, untangle — everything is to think... I'm not good at untying knots. My wife always makes fun of me. I'm really bad at untying knots. I might be tying them first.

But yeah, it's worth going back to: why is it not possible for there to be separate selves? Why can't things become conscious? Because it's not your experience that there's a thing here that is conscious. It's not your direct experience.

That's what half of meditation is about — or maybe all of it is — observing that nothing here is what is sentient. It is phenomena appearing in Consciousness. That's all you could ever observe: thoughts, feelings, sensation. None of that can be assigned as "this is what is conscious."

So that's the first thing. There's no proof that there is even a single sentient entity in your direct experience. You have to see how much — again, to go back to what we started with — you have to reassess. So once we conquer the concept, go back and see again: what has this changed? If Nabeel is not this person, this body, this... then first of all, yes, Nabeel — let's say — is this world.

For me, the lamp and the chair and the sound and all that — all of that is Nabeel. Because it's all subjective. The dream and the character together constitute a world. You cannot separate them. They're one. And actually there's no character.

Thoughts are not a character. Memories are not a character. There's no character. There's a first-person view — we call it a first-person view because we assume there are persons — but it's not a first-person view. It is an intimate, direct view.

Who is in contact with the brain activity through which that world becomes real? Real as in experienced. Is it the brain that is perceiving its own activity? Because that's the substance on which the activity takes place.

Then you would need, for there to be a first person, something on top of that, observing that activity. And through that observation, it... came this world. But there's no entity, no organ, nothing. Reality is in contact with that brain activity, because obviously the activity takes place in Reality.

Whatever the ultimate Reality is — and it is said the ultimate Reality might be unknowable, because everybody is trying to observe from the outside and understand what the ultimate Reality is. But there's one quality that can definitely be known about the ultimate Reality, and that is this capacity to perceive that cannot be separated from Reality and assigned to anything. Because it's happening again and again — life, death, life, death, it's happening again. So it's a quality more fundamental than any one life, one body.

What is in contact with the activity taking place in these bodies such that it gives rise to experience? And once you have exhausted all possibilities and seen there are no entities, no such selves — then Reality is obvious. Reality is aware, and because Reality is aware, I call it Awareness.

And it cannot be something other than what you are, because in this world that is another, there is the Awareness — otherwise the world is not possible. And that is the core, at the core of the heart... [unclear]

Don't get your son involved in this too early.

Alright, I'm talking too much. Somebody else should...

QI have this struggle, Nabeel. Hi. Hi, everyone. I still cannot conceive there is only one Consciousness, because I don't understand how it is possible that if I am Consciousness, I can experience what you are experiencing. If I'm all of it, why can't I experience someone else's experience?

I'm so confused, because I know what I feel, what I'm aware of, what I'm conscious of — it's a presence. I know I am aware of whatever... My struggle is this: this one Consciousness, one Awareness that encloses everything — I am that — but it doesn't equate. I struggle with this.

NYes. Well, my experience — not yours — there are two parts to it. One part, let's leave it for later. One, which we do so often: it's that the "my" thing is wrong. The "me here" is wrong. But okay, let's put that aside for now.

Let's say we go to sleep, you and I, and we switch. So you wake up in this body. I wake up in that body. How would you know something has happened? Right now, you're saying you are you and I am something else. So if there's a switch, would you know that you are still Marina?

QI have no clue.

NNo, but when you wake up having memories and everything — even having memories, no experience. But even to be able to imagine that scenario, you acknowledge that the Consciousness is the same. Only the experiences, the memories, whatever — all of that may be different, but the Consciousness does not differ.

The experiences arising would differ. But can you describe a difference between you and me at that basic level of being conscious?

QWell, the ability to perceive — I suppose that won't change.

NBecause if you take that away, then you really don't exist. That is the core of what you are.

So what we are doing is only looking at the core of what you are, because the rest came later. It can't be what you are. It's like we have clothes and property and so on. It's additional. So the capacity to perceive, to be aware, to be conscious — that is the same. That is the basic, that is the core of Reality.

The content is something added. The content is infinitely varied. In this one life which you consider Marina's life, you've had many dreams, and they could be very different dreams. That's in one life.

The dream is like a coherent world. As long as it's there, it's coherent. Whatever the crazy rules in the dream seem to be — this is the world, this is the character, and these are the characters in it. But it comes and goes. And when it comes and goes, there's nothing between the two experiences.

Being aware is itself not an experience. There's no experience to being aware, until there is experience. Does that make sense?

QWell, I would — I mean, sometimes I know I was not aware. I was kind of lost in mind, and then in a few seconds I just click back and I'm aware.

NBut this is not what I mean when I say aware. Yeah, that's not — you cannot be not aware while the mind is still there. As long as there's experience, there's Awareness. Now, the only question is: when there is absolutely no experience, did you cease to be aware?

QWell, in deep sleep, I would not — I wouldn't know if I'm aware or not aware. I just sleep. I don't know. I have no experience of being aware during deep sleep. Without —

NBecause there's no experience to being aware.

That's what I said. There's no experience to being aware. When there's experience, it proves that you are aware — not something else, this or that. You. As soon as there's experience, that has been communicated: You Are Aware. When there's no experience, being aware or not being aware is exactly the same.

So why do we call it being aware? Because if you were really not aware and then the experience appeared, would it appear? It could not even appear. And if you were not the one who was aware, then it would appear to someone else.

So again, we're going to the core of what you are — not what the experiences and the thoughts and the memories say you are, but the truth of what you are. What you are in Reality. And in that, the only quality that you can hold on to for dear life — to not be proven that you don't exist — is that you are aware. Everything else can be stripped away.

You can lose memories. The life will end. When you go to deep sleep, the thing you consider yourself to be — "me" — is gone. Does not exist. The self does not exist in deep sleep.

There's a body there, but if it never woke up, who would call it the self? Eventually they would bury it. The core fact behind the concept "I" is the fact of being aware. Are you familiar with Sri Ramana Maharshi's teachings?

QNot very much.

NYeah, he made a distinction. He used this term "I-I" in the translations. I-I.

QI don't get it.

NThere's a distinction he is making between "I," which everyone considers to be I, and "I-I" — the truest possible meaning of I. But even the "I" everybody considers to be true, there is a fact behind it. The fact is this quality of being aware. That ground is so firm that nobody can say "I do not exist."

And if anybody tells you you don't exist, even though you want to experience no-self, you can't do it — because this is proving that you do exist. The fact of being aware. So that is a very firm ground on which "I" stands. But the "I" that usually stands is made up of all these other extraneous factors which are not truly I.

So we are going towards what is "I" — the true meaning of "I." And in that, right now, you are experiencing all lives. The true you — you're not just experiencing one life, but each life, what is it? It's a subjective experience of something going on.

And that something going on can be a closed system, a semi-closed system. So the experience is semi-closed — the experience represents what is going on in what's called physical processes. But we have separated this Reality into many different concepts. There's the physical, the mental, and so on.

No — there's one Reality. The experience is a direct way Reality perceives its own processes. And a very complex process is going on, taking place over 80, 90 years or whatever. And because it has this really powerful instrumentation — sensory and computational powers — it can come up with all kinds of thoughts and concepts.

It can build its own idea of what is me and what is the world. And you could believe it and live life like that. That's what everybody is doing. That's what all these dream worlds are. But in Reality, it's a belief.

It really is a belief — "I believe I am this, with this mind, with this stuff around me." This is a belief, and a very strong one. So we are cutting through those beliefs. In movies, there is often this scenario where two characters switch bodies and somehow they remain themselves.

It's impossible because there's no such entity. Once you switch, it's the same. It's exactly the same. As soon as you and I switch, we go to sleep, we wake up as each other — we are still the same. Because probably in these movies, they switch personality. They don't switch.

There is nothing else. Unless you put this brain and that brain, and still it, you know... It's not possible. But even to think of such scenarios is possible because you're assuming that core quality of being Conscious is the same.

You could go into a cat's body and experience being a cat, because the cat is also — at its core — this quality of being Aware. Have you heard that before?

QNo. But still I'm so confused, because I can't figure out how I am all of it.

All of it. I am that. They say you are that. I am that. But I don't have — I have the experience of my stuff, of my world. Not everybody's. You see what I mean?

This confuses me a lot.

NSo now we have to bring back the thing we put aside.

Because that's the harsh truth.

The harsh truth is that this "I" — that's talking about "my experience" and "I'm not experiencing the other person's experience" — that "I" does not even exist. There's no such "I." That kind of entity is not even possible, because that "I" is claiming ownership of this bit of Consciousness. What bit?

How can you cut Consciousness into pieces? "I have my bit, and only for a few years." In the last talk I was talking about — that's what we do with land. We all get a plot of land and this is my land.

According to whom, and for how long? Was it there before you came? The quality of being Aware was there. Then this body — long before this body was born, it was an egg in your mother's womb when she was born — and the cells replicate, the body forms, and at some point there's a threshold, and then there's experience specific to this body.

For that first experience to be possible, the quality of being Aware must be present. Who can claim ownership of that? The I that claims ownership of that is fake. It's purely thought. Once you give up that I, then it is clear that thou art That.

That which thou art — is it then That? That is the I.

QWhat should I do to just... I mean, "destroy" — it's not that I have to destroy this concept of... I mean, I am conscious, I am...

NYou are conscious. Look, I am conscious — just separate the truth from the additional concepts. This core fact: you are Aware.

You acknowledge "I am aware" because, you know, the way you're talking, you did acknowledge that. That quality is the same. The only difference is in the physical apparatus, the experiences, and so on. Are those you?

QAll the experiences — no, they are not me.

NNow there remains in the mind this concept that if the base Reality is Awareness, all experiences should merge and they should be one stream of experience where everything is known at the same time. That's what it sounds like. But why should it be that way? Is there something... what drives me crazy — I don't know — it should not be that way, because even in this one, you're not experiencing everything.

You're experiencing a tiny portion of what's going on. So there is some threshold at which point there's experience. Before that there's what I call peace. Perfect silence. That's the truth.

QYou call it the Absolute?

NThe Absolute. Yes, the Absolute means no qualities. However, I do associate the absence of experience with peace. To me, that is peace.

Because when experience appears, if you capture that moment and you observe where you were, what you were when experience appears, you were in an absolute peace. It is not a desolate nothing. That is home. That's why the sages go home so happily. Who's dying? What's dying?

QYeah. But there is still a you. I am. I am in a perfect peace. I am — prior to experience — but there still is an I.

NThat I is not an entity. An entity would mean if there's one entity there can be many.

Nonduality is the realization there's not even one. Then what is I? Then there's no difference between I, absolute Reality, God, nothing, something, everything — all these are dualities which don't exist except as concepts.

I don't think I'm helping you. Let's see. So, okay, let's go back to the simple one. In this one life, you've had many dreams in which you were different characters other than Marina. Is that true?

QYes.

NYeah. So now we're looking at a linear timeline in which you were dream world, dream world, dream world, dream world, dream world.

What if we expanded this way also? So there are many dream worlds simultaneously. If they can exist simultaneously, you could exist — you could observe this dream world of Marina and [unclear] and Sasha and so on at the same time, but they would be distinct. They wouldn't collide and merge. Why should that happen? Why?

QI don't know.

NNo, because that is the quality of one dream world — a coherent dream world. It's like, okay, at some point humans will have the technology to link two brains. What do you think will happen if we perfectly could link two brains? Would they be two separate conscious entities having one experience?

No, there would be one thing having experience. There would be one experience and no entity there. From the outside, and because of the concepts people have — if they have not realized nonduality — they'll say, "Oh, now there's a new person, that's Marina and Nabeel merged in some way." But actually, no. Two separate dream worlds have merged. Now there's one dream world, but none of them contained something that was sentient. That is the nature of dream worlds. They never can contain a thing that is conscious, because the dream world appears within Consciousness.

QI think I still don't get it, but I will keep on trying. Thank you.

NNo worries. It's like that. It feels like... I don't get it, I don't get it — until that "I" drops. Then you get it. Who gets it?

QYeah. Thank you.

NNo worries.

See, there's one moment I describe in one of the videos. It's one of the significant moments, and long before that, I'd seen, "Oh, there's no me, there's no sentient entity," whatever — blah blah, on and on. And yet you do not see how deeply it is true. And there will be a moment where it strikes you. How deeply it is true. That everything I took to be me — it's not possible that that is what is Conscious.

It's like a collision of two facts. One is that whatever is aware, only that deserves to be called I. Nothing else can be called I. And then everything that I took to be I was not conscious. You see how deeply it is true. Then all of that other stuff is not I. There's no such self.

So we keep returning to that same fact. Well, it's not fact until you see it as fact. But it is fact. And that's why nonduality gets so annoying — because you keep returning to "no self, no self, there's no self." But there's a point trying to be gotten across. And then you do realize the Self. So it's not a disaster.

QIt is a disaster. It's not that I don't realize — oh, sorry, sorry I interrupted you.

NNo, no, sorry. Go ahead.

QNo, it's okay. It's not that I — I know I have this — I know I am aware. I know I exist. I'm here. I perceive. I'm aware. It's just —

NOkay, stop there for a moment. Stop there.

This is how it will feel at first. It will feel that I will admit I am not aware. I am not the thing that is aware.

QCan you say it again please?

NHow this actually happens is that the belief "I am aware" — and who says that? — that "I" has to admit "I am not the thing that is aware."

So previously that felt like fact: I am aware. I, me, yes, I, me, myself, I am aware. But at the significant point, that "I" admits: I am not the thing that is aware. As soon as it admits that — that is not I. I get it, because I must be what is aware. Someone has taken over your throne and they're putting words in your mouth. They're speaking as if they are you.

You never speak, because you are the Awareness. How can Awareness speak? Awareness means just being aware. There's no other. Whenever there's a thought that is being listened to, you're not speaking it. You're not saying it. There's a web of thought.

QWhat's the point of this life then? What's the point of living here on this planet, with all this misery?

I just watched one of your videos on whatever is going on on this planet. So what's the point?

NThere's no point, and the suffering could be reduced by so much if we could get this one point across. What is everybody fighting for? Where does it all go wrong? Because it begins there: I am the thing that is aware. I am what is conscious, and this is my life, and I must fight for having everything I can get in this one life.

And even the afterlife — I've got to make sure that I get the best take there. That I is the wrong I. That is the small-s self. However, the thing is, there's no gap in going from that small self to realizing your other Self, because you are always the same. You cannot change what you are. There's again an overlay on top, and that is wrong. If I say I am what is Conscious in the usual sense, how arrogant.

How did I get this power? Who am I? Who am I to claim that I am the thing that is Conscious? Oh my goodness.

Okay, I'm going to give you a headache today. Because...

QOh my god.

NSo there's a moment where it hits you how deeply the teaching of no self, which was maybe the first thing you heard about nonduality, is true.

There is no self, no me, no I. No person — and all the misery that humans cause each other is because of that assumption.

QBut so this sense of being, this sense of Awareness, I assume I am, is still part of this character. So everything this character, this body-mind does, it's on another level — completely another level.

I mean, this body-mind has gone through all its stuff, and it will go through whatever will be, on autopilot. If I say I am aware, and who is saying I am aware is not Awareness, then everything is going on autopilot. It's that this body is doing whatever it's supposed to be doing, based on evolution and whatever law.

NYeah. That is why it is said you are not the doer.

QYou are not the doer. But then what am I?

NThat's why you go to the core of what you are. The one thing you cannot take away from the true I — it is the quality of being aware.

Nothing else deserves to be called I. If it doesn't have the quality of being aware, that is not I. With no interaction with this body-mind, there is no interaction. This is the interaction.

Look, this is the interaction. The point of contact is what — somehow — what is going on in each of these bodies is turning into this subjective world. Billions of worlds, just if you take humans — infinite worlds. If you take all the species on all the planets, all the universes.

Why is it possible for there to be experience? Because in Reality, Awareness exists. It's fundamental to Reality. There's nothing else which could be called Reality — more real than Awareness.

Because of Awareness, there is a point of contact. And not just the point of contact — it's the point where you go from mere possibility, mere imagination, or basically being nothing, to something. That is the point of contact. If there was a body and all this was happening, but there was no experience, what is the difference between nothing and the something?

There's no difference. It's just nothing. Awareness is the point where experience appears. That's the point of contact — it makes it possible. Not "it." I — I makes it possible.

And from that point on, it's just Awareness and all the experience this body-mind is doing on autopilot, basically.

Yeah, I mean there is a role of Consciousness in... you see, I don't go there much because it's more theoretical. Without pleasure and pain and so on, survival is not possible.

So life has taken something — Awareness — that is available in nature, available for free, and it has used that for its purposes. How does evolution work? Even when you go through the evolution of how the eye formed, at the first point you need a cell with a bit of a depression, and then you have to distinguish between light and not light. It has to somehow change the behavior of the organism.

And this seems not possible without assuming Consciousness. Otherwise, how do you... otherwise you need another way to train the system. And there's no cheap way to train a system, as we're learning through computation and all of science and so on. But anyway, that's a tangent.

There is a role there, but the most fundamental role is: without Awareness, nothing would exist. There would be no experience, no life, nothing. Who cares?

QIs it wrong to say Awareness is a force of nature? Is it the same thing — Awareness and force of nature?

NForce of nature. Yes. Yeah, nature... what drives... it's a good starting point, but you should then see how fundamental it is. First of all you see it as a force of nature, like gravity — it's universal, it doesn't matter what point in the universe you're at, there's the law of gravity and the law of electromagnetism.

But then you see Awareness is more fundamental. You get to the point where the ultimate Reality and Awareness are synonymous. You cannot distinguish. There's no other possibility of ultimate Reality, because Awareness is where you go from nothing to something. Awareness is the only quality you know where space and time can appear out of nothing.

When you go from deep sleep to dream, what is happening? Isn't there space and time? In deep sleep, or like general anesthesia, there's no space, no time. And then there's the subjective experience of when space and time begins. So now we have one quality of Reality we know, in which space and time can appear. But then you still go on a hunt, like scientists, finding some other quality of Reality in which space and time can appear — and that must be some other kind of physical space and time, which we already know is relative. It's confusion.

What can be called Reality must be most real at any point, in any life, at any moment. And through direct inquiry, that quality is that of being aware — that is most real, most fundamental. It's not a theoretical one. It's not a nice belief that we are all one and all that. There's no "we."

QOkay, Nabeel, thank you. I have to elaborate. I mean, I don't know if the mind is necessary in this part.

NYeah.

QThank you. I'm just using your conversation to keep digging.

NYes. Thank you very much. There's something in the chat. Let me see.

So [unclear] asked — maybe just making a statement — that while looking at that screen without any other thought or point of view... See, when we break it up like that, looking at the screen, it's still trying to break up Reality into subjects and objects. And that is part of the core of nonduality — that there are no separate subjects and objects. When we're describing the dream world, we're saying the dream world and the character together constitute the dream.

The subject and object in the world are one experience. Actually, this stream of experience — whatever we should call it, let's call it the world — in the world, you can never find a subject. And whatever object appears is subjective. One big subjective world. And "I" is the Awareness which is the fundamental basis of that world's existence, that makes it possible.

They're just looking at the world. What's going on in it? They're just seeing, hearing, and so on. I like to call it the happening. When we say something is happening, definitely something is happening — it's because that experience is here.

It's so real. It's happening in the moment. If you take the whole of whatever is going on right now, whatever dream world is being perceived — that is called the happening. So when that is happening, you are the happening. You can't find a separate you in the happening.

You are the happening — the hearing, seeing, feeling, the whole of it. If you have an experience where you feel the vastness of space, that happening of that experience is you. The depth is the depth of what is I. And then when nothing is happening — what are you?

Yeah. Then you are that nothing — what the brain will call nothing, because it cannot conceive. It cannot compute. That's the end of the computation. You are the nothing in which anything can happen. And when something is happening, if we try to split it up — then there's this "me" perceiving something happening, there's someone else perceiving something happening.

It's all a conceptual split, which has created confusion. Any last questions or comments? Thank you everyone for joining.

QThank you. Bye-bye. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye.