The one thing you don't owe to anyone or anything (Satsang) [public version]

NIn life we owe everything to events and circumstances just lining up a certain way. All your achievements, all your happiness, little moments and so on. But when the question is about your own true nature, about your own Self, can you owe it to someone or something?

No, because it's about your true nature.

So in these questions, you must find out what it is that you don't owe to anything.

And at first it might seem hard, because even this life, yes, you owe it to this body. You could say this consciousness depends on what's going on in the body. And the body was one egg among many. It depends on the planet, the planet in the universe, the universe depends on the beginning of space and time. So it seems that everything is connected and you owe it to all this happening.

And maybe there's a magical Creator and you owe it all to that.

But do you?

You look closer and what you see is: yes, okay, all that happens. But when this body forms and it starts to function and the first experience appears, you must be present.

You are there to notice it.

Your being there and your being aware — you do not owe to all those events and things happening. They can only create the experience.

They did not create you. You were there to notice the experience arise.

So whatever else comes — yes, that's not really your own.

That is the one thing you don't owe to anyone or anything. Nobody gave you Awareness.

So when we look at experiences and we try to find in there the achievements and the happiness and so on, then you only get those transient morsels, and they depend on all these complex things happening and so on. But when you find your own true nature, and if you can derive happiness from that, that is a different sort of happiness and peace.

So you should have this attitude: I don't want to owe anyone anything. I want to live by my own means.

I want to live life by my own means.

Even if you meet a sage, what can they tell you? What can they give you?

They can only point out what is your own true nature. Your most obvious true nature. That you are aware, that you are real. You're here, present.

But where it gets interesting is they point out there's no individuation in this true nature. You cannot take something so intrinsically... just nature... and have a little slice or sliver for yourself, and that one is for my mother, and then that one's for my children and my partner and so on. You can't split up what is so deeply just innately what "being" is.

This is what it means to Be. To Be means to be aware, to be real.

Everything else owes that existence to existing in Awareness — otherwise it does not exist.

So you cannot split it up. There's no my Awareness and your Awareness. It is our Inner Nature.

If you see it this way; as the Essence of Mind, as the Basis of experience itself, then that's where you can find that inner peace, that happiness, which does not depend on anything.

It's just linked to what You Are. You don't owe it to anyone or anything.

All right, let's do Q&A.

QNabeel, can you hear me?

NYeah.

QI see... this is Michael. Hi everyone. So when the pointers have all been absorbed and you get to that point where words and this experience of this construct have taken you as far as you can go, and words just are irrelevant as you go between two worlds — what role does this construct have to help open up a space to absorb the true dimension of our being, who we really are? Does that make sense?

NSo you mean the construct of words and thought, or..?

QYeah, this... well, this person who we think we are, who really doesn't even exist, and all the pointers have led us to understanding that. And then we're inching back and forth to this — that moment when you wake up in the morning where you realize, oh, this is my true nature, and you start slowly leaving that and entering this world of this construct of who we think we are in the world. And we're trying to straddle both at the same time in experience and yet not lose that dimension of our true nature. And yet we're constantly... the ego is pulling us into who we are, and all what you were talking about — this dimension, all these things we think we are.

Is there a role? Because it feels to me like it's the ego that's pushed me and brought me to that willingness and desire and yearning to know my true Self. But when you're at that, do you need to just not do — let go of that — or is there still a role for that non-entity to play in helping you make that final step into realizing your true nature? Does it have a role, or is it just open up to the new experience and don't try and put words to it, don't try and relate it to the existence now, just let it come with no effort, no doing?

NSo what you can see clearly is: what is it that exists and what does not exist?

The idea of ego itself goes away.

The seeing, the hearing, the thinking — those are still there. Those exist.

They exist because of your true nature. They are the Awareness taking form.

And the thinking is still there. The thinking need not go away.

And what was thought of as the ego was just thinking.

And thinking itself does not exist on an island. It's not living on itself. What feeds into the thinking is the senses and the memories and the feelings and all that. So it's one network, or whatever.

All this going on, it's going on because of your true nature, and in that the question arose and the answer just pointed back to what You were.

And then so what I mean by what does not exist and what exists — you're just separating. This was always the same. Only the ego did not exist. There was no actual entity. The ego or the person was all this happening, and the wrong idea of a self, an ego, a person. The construct is... yeah, that was just in thought. And it can be dismantled and still everything goes on the same way.

And the true nature cannot come and go. It's always what is most true.

QMy thoughts are leading me — let me tell me if you think this is effective or at all relevant. I find that when I'm thinking, I'm either in the future or the past, and I've stopped experiencing life through Awareness, just direct Awareness, and then I start judging, evaluating, thinking for the future, thinking of the past. So I'm trying as much as possible, while still functioning in the world and doing my job and taking care of business, getting back to just direct Awareness and experience, and as little as possible thinking in the past and the future, but trying to really experience the world, or experience experience. Is that a sound idea? Does that make any sense to try and do that, or is that just doing?

NIf you were to get there in that consistent kind of stability we're thinking of, you would owe it to certain things going a certain way, the mind changing a certain way, and the experiences stabilizing a certain way.

But what you want is to not look at what you owe to events and experiences. Anything you owe to an experience of being a certain way — that's actually looking away from what it is you don't owe to anyone or anything.

So it's just a subtle difference. Yes, the experiences are there and we can take joy in them, or you can be saddened by them, whatever. But there's something a step behind, more fundamental, which is already yours, and that is where you find the stability, because it is never changing.

QThank you. Thank you for your willingness to guide us. Thank you.

NThank you, Michael. Marina, how are you?

QHello. Can you hear me?

NYes.

QGood. I'm fine. I took notes. I tried to be clear on what is going on in here. If you don't mind, I have to read.

NOkay.

QJust to say something prior. I am reading Perfect Brilliant Stillness again, which is one of the books that really challenges me. It challenges "me" very deeply.

So I just said that this morning I went for a trekking and it was a very intense trekking. I was going downhill and at a certain point my knees were so hurting. I felt such a big intense pain and I said, "What a wonderful chance to just explore all of this."

And while I was feeling this intense pain I took it as a meditation and I was trying to find this discrete entity that was feeling this pain and I couldn't find it. Just the intense sensation of pain, and it was real, and it was located in my knees. But at the same time there was an acute Awareness of this body and this pain, and I was looking if there was any mind activity, and I was not thinking. I was very much concentrated in these two aspects and I couldn't find any thought going on like "I don't want this pain, this is very painful," et cetera. And the pain remained. While I was concentrated on the pain and being aware of the pain, the pain remained, sharp and completely unchanged. It didn't go away.

And I had the experience right on the spot that Consciousness doesn't alleviate anything. Just the fact I was aware of the pain was not soothing the pain in any way. My body kept walking. I was observing my body keeping on walking in an almost automatic way. I was not giving any kind of command, or I was even aware of giving any command. I was just observing, and it just kept walking, or it was resting for a while.

Anyway, it was very unusual, like a very unusual experience. I was aware of the body and the mind doing their things to bring the body back home. That was the object, the target to reach. So for me in this kind of experience the body and the mind are real. They are not an illusion. And Consciousness is also real. It is not an illusion.

And then to put together some information from the book — and this is kind of not just a question but just to expose my thoughts — the body and the mind, they will keep doing their things in accordance to their own conditioning, and Consciousness will stream through them, and at some point the body will die.

And so if there is no discrete entity to take control or ownership, it means that whatever is conditioned to happen, it will happen. No control whatsoever. Just aware observation. And this is kind of what I was observing this morning.

And this is my one billion dollar question:

So now what's the point? Where is the peace that passeth all understanding?

Like this body has been diagnosed of a genetic disease. I don't exist. There is no me, no control. And so the only thing that can happen is just looking, observing the conditioning unfold and be aware of this, and whatever will be will be. So Consciousness doesn't change the game of duality. Doesn't separate the negative from the positive. Only the ego tries to do it. But that is the illusion and an impossible task.

NVery good. I like that a lot.

Okay. So a couple of things to talk through there. The first is yes, what you realize is definitely true — that there's this odd expectation set up, and the mindfulness movement doesn't help. They say, "Oh, mindful of the pain and the pain goes away." No. No, it does not.

QNo, it doesn't.

NAnd they, you know, they'll use the example of an itch. "Oh, where's the itch now?" Yeah, itch can go away. But if your knees are hurting badly, it won't go away. Or if it's something more serious.

What mindfulness is doing there... like there's a point where you say this is a very extraordinary experience, but it's actually a very ordinary experience, only without assuming there's an entity there feeling the pain.

Yeah, the pain is there. At that moment in the entire universe. Who knows that pain?

You know it. But there's no separate "you" there in that moment.

Only You know the pain.

But you're not separate. There's no actual separate thing you can find that's "you".

So that pain, the view on that track, all of it — all of that at that moment is Awareness experiencing this one body.

And when Awareness experiences that one body, that whole world is "Marina".

And to be aware of the body does not mean to take control and say, "Oh, this experience should go away, that should be better" — because your true nature is to be aware.

So when pain arises, it will be very sharply in focus, and more sharply in focus when the thoughts are not dominating.

When the thoughts of "me" and "mine" are not dominating, actually you experience all of it much more sharply.

And then your final question on, okay, so what is this peace that surpasses all understanding?

But it's in the way you've written it, actually. You might slowly...

I think you felt it, and then it comes back, that same statement which sounds depressing. There's two ways to see it.

The depressing way is: yes, this body has been diagnosed with this disease, it has an expiry date, and yeah, all that will happen. All the pain will be felt, the memories going away and all that, and then there'll be death.

But the peace that surpasses understanding is standing firm in that Inner Nature. You don't owe that to anyone.

And all that is happening is events; circumstances. You're aware of them because of what You Are.

In the entire universe, nothing can claim to know that. You know it by your own true nature.

And you take the stand there: this is what I Am. I don't owe it to anything.

Whatever is happening here next year, next few years, whatever happened in the last few years — those are events.

QYeah. One thing that confuses me a bit about this book, which is so deep, is that this "I am, I am That, I am Awareness, I know I am feeling this feeling," whatever — what he describes in this book is just: you don't exist.

This is a hollow stick where Awareness is streaming through it. There is no musician inside. The musician is blowing its breath and so we move, we perceive.

So this confuses me a bit because it's like it's something impersonal. Consciousness is impersonal. So to me it sounds weird to say "I know the pain, I am conscious of."

Isn't it there is Consciousness? How can I say I am conscious if Consciousness is completely non-personal? It's just a language trick — or when you say "I am conscious," it's really meant I...

NSo that is like in the moment where you were not thinking in terms of self. The "I am conscious" is observed to be different than how it's usually taken to be in thought.

In thought it means, "I have this quality of being conscious. I am observing all this happening."

But in the moment it is happening, like when you were feeling only the pain and you couldn't find a self-entity, in the moment there's no such duality.

This — just the pain itself in that moment is You.

QWell, should we use this pronoun at all?

NI and You? Well... see, at the end there's no "it".

If there's no "it", what is left is I.

QIn the end, if you're going with words, because either there's no you and there's this Reality and the Reality is "it" and "That" and so on. To me, it sounds more reliable to say "it" rather than "I."

NFrom my standpoint, as long as... as long as we say "it," the job is not done.

Because there's this distance.

"It" — a distance.

It's not you. What are you then?

You must find that out. What is your true nature?

QI am being... I am being played. I am being lived. I mean...

NListen. Buddha-Nature. There is Buddha-Nature.

The Buddha said there is no self, but there is the Tathāgata, the Buddha-Nature.

And the question is: Do you have Buddha-Nature?

Does the dog have Buddha-Nature?

Nothing can possess it. Nothing can possess an intrinsic nature of what you are.

You are this Inner Nature.

And the Inner Nature is not consciousness.

So, that's where also the problem arises. Consciousness is when these experiences of certain sorts and so on. And in this life the memory starts and stops at a certain point. It's all human memories, human experiences, and the mind only references them when thinking, and thinking about Consciousness.

You Are. Think of "Are."

That's what it means to Be.

And that distance from "it" must go away.

It is not at a distance from You.

What David Carse in that book — that is not his final statement, that the Consciousness, Awareness, is streaming through these bodies and so on. Because from the deeper standpoint he does not think there are separate things and bodies and so on.

Yeah, that's just a way to try to explain: look, Consciousness is not owned by these things. It's streaming through them.

But then the next step is: What things?

There are no things.

In that moment you were not seeing... you weren't experiencing knees.

You're experiencing pain. There actually never are knees — there's sensation and pain.

What is a knee?

Everything, all things, owe their existence to Awareness and exist as some perception in Awareness.

What do you owe to being aware? Do you owe it to anyone? Anything?

QNo, of course not.

NSo that's what we focus on. Stay there.

I don't owe this to anyone or anything.

And through this Inner Nature, then yes, anything that happens, it is You who are aware of it.

Anything that happens in this body, that body or this body, whatever, any world — You as Awareness are aware of that happening.

The happening is a self-contained world.

And the peace comes from seeing: Yes, this world is falling apart, or this world's going to die off. You are the Power beyond all these worlds.

QYeah. One thing that I'm pondering is that in duality — which there is duality, from my viewpoint duality exists — then I don't know if any further exploration will change this. But duality: you cannot split bad from good, high from low, or whatever opposites. You cannot split. In this world there is an opposite. We don't like...

The ego doesn't like the opposite. But nevertheless this is duality. You cannot split the start from the end. It's one. It's only one thing. So for my problem, this is probably whatever the conditioning of this body is, and I cannot, I can't do anything about it. I just can't. If this is the conditioning, this is the conditioning. So it's not very peaceful at this moment. Maybe one day it will be, but this is the way it is. No struggle, no why should I fight? Is there anything I can do now? So that's it.

NYes. Yes. Actually what you said is not duality. You're saying two opposites always have that common link — the two ends of the same dimension.

So yes, when you get a life with it, you get the possibility of all the good things and you get the guarantee that it has to end a certain way. There's nothing to do in that sense.

And the peace, the experiential peace, is different from the firmness of standing from a Realization of what You Are.

QOkay. Thank you very much for your patience.

NThank you. Eren.

QHello. Hello guys. I was reading a sutta, a Nibbāna sutta. In this sutta something has taken my attention. I was going to ask you about this. In this sutta Buddha explains the way to Nibbāna, and it is as always step by step. First jhāna, first absorption, second, third, fourth. After then something is mentioned: being aware that space is infinite. So is this important step to being aware, to Awareness, Self-Awareness — perception of space, being aware space is infinite. What do you think about this?

NSure.

So in all the traditions there is like the stepwise approach, and then you often find a sudden approach, and it's usually the same tradition.

There'll be: you have to follow all this, and that's supposed to be how you get there. And you'll suddenly get a mystic, a sage, or someone who's just... they didn't do that, but they are obviously they have understood. It's the same in Buddhism, in Christian mysticism, and all that.

So the steps are there, but if you... and it's helpful, because otherwise you don't know where to begin. What do you do? That's how the mind works. What do you do? How do I get there? What am I supposed to do to get rid of all this conditioning? And so they're giving you something to work with.

And in meditation there are certain experiences which are common. So you go from thinking very firmly that you are a person in the world to starting to see, oh, actually now I can't tell the difference between subjective and objective. And oh, actually everything falls within Awareness. So these are describing and guiding the aspirant.

But in the end your True Nature is what you don't owe to anyone or anything.

If it takes any steps, it is not your True Nature. So you might take all the steps but you end up same place You were.

So it's a big circle. And how big your circle is — it shouldn't be that big.

How long does it take to take eight steps? Not very long.

But if you make the eight steps into eight ladders, and the eight ladders go all the way to heaven, then you'll be there forever.

QYes. No, but you have videos like "everything is you." Yeah, you are saying this kind of things, and it's not very obvious from the standpoint of "I." "Everything is you" and being aware of all space — there is something very similar. I think there is something like this a mind can do. A mind can be aware of space.

This is very, very important, good meditation. It eventually falls into being aware of all space, that you are aware that space is infinite, and the mind expands with this information.

NYeah. So those kind of moments come and they go.

Okay, so yes, I've had the similar stuff. At the end you arrive at: yes, I experienced as if I was all of space and so on. Yeah, I swallowed the universe, and then I was not there. And then when you're not there, then you are beyond space.

Then space might be limited, but what You are, your sight, your insight is turned towards, is beyond space, beyond time. So there's no size to that.

Just noticing this fundamental... what makes something real? What is fundamentally real?

And that is not a point in space and time. And it just takes you right beyond that structure.

So you're right. In meditation all that, if you can have those experiences, yes, they help. The only thing is: have it and you go on. Don't try to go back.

Thank you. Are you there? Oh, we can't hear you yet. No.

QCan you hear me now?

NYes.

QSo I just removed my... Okay. So I happened to find one of your recordings on Spotify about two weeks ago, on the Heart Sutra, and it punched a hole that is still open. And I guess somehow I was ready to face death completely, and your words kind of guided me through it.

So I've noticed since then that I can just rest in Awareness, and as long as I don't have a thought, I'm there. And when a thought comes then I might identify, and then it's like I'm locked inside for a little while, and then I will just go back and focus on Awareness and it opens again.

Yeah, it's... it was a very powerful reading you did there. And even if I rest in myself and I don't have a thought about it, then it's the Self, you know. It's not two. It's just one. And that's the same with everything. So whenever I don't have a thought about it, it's one.

NThank you. So yeah, the Heart Sutra is just powerful.

If what you're seeing opens and closes, though... Just look at it as phenomena coming into focus, and then you're seeing through the phenomena. You're seeing deeper into the true Reality.

In the Heart Sutra there's one line which is less... like it's not discussed so much, but it's really powerful. It says:

All phenomena bear the mark of Emptiness.

And then they describe what the mark is: no birth, no death, no beginning, no ending, and all that. No increasing, no decreasing. This goes a lot against... like when the phenomena is in focus, you'll say of course this is increasing, or the pain is increasing, or it's decreasing.

But the Heart Sutra says all phenomena bear the mark of Emptiness. And then you can see it. Oh, the increasing and decreasing are with reference to something that is not — it's a continuum which is not increasing or decreasing.

It's a wonderful way to arrive Home. If you... a few of these suttas and sutras and so on, because then they are always there, and they're just seared into your mind and always bring you Home again and again.

QWell, it's like you have to be willing to see it for what it is. And when you're willing to see it, when you're really willing to see it, to let everything go, then it's plain, it's simple, uncomplicated, and very straight. And there's a hole in everything. I mean there's no thing.

NThere are no self-entities of any sort.

QNo. So there's nowhere to land in anything. But Awareness works fine.

NYeah. You're out of questions now.

QYeah. Yeah. Yeah.

NThank you.

QThank you.

NThank you. Rachel.

QHello, Nabeel.

NHey.

QOne of the things that I remember reading about the Buddha is he said that no one... everyone has to achieve what he's achieved, or whatever that Nibbāna is. Everybody needs to do it on their own path.

He can't show you that. He can't take you on his path.

And what I gleaned from that was that what he can describe is only his path. It doesn't mean it's going to be my path or anyone else's path.

I have read so much, and I listen to people on this group talk about what they've read. But that phrase from the Buddha takes me back to that same statement. Everybody can only explain their path. That doesn't mean it's going to be my path.

And so when you talk about an immediate experience of recognizing that we are Awareness only, and that's the end of the story — that brought all of it together for me. Because until then I was trying to go through step by step of so many different teachers and it wasn't working for me.

The meditation is powerful. I have to say that the meditation is able to make the physical experience understandable.

But once I was able to quiet the thinking, that concept of time and space, everything that everybody ever says in this — it's about time and space. It's about time and space. It has time and space and being in a physical body. That's when you said we're not the body and not the mind. We are the Consciousness. We are Awareness.

Awareness is everything. And everything arises out of Awareness and dissolves into Awareness. That a light bulb went on when you said that. And you end up going back to that. But you had to say it... I had to hear you say it about twenty, thirty times before I really heard it.

So I just want to tell you thank you so much for that. Keep repeating it. Keep repeating it. We're going to get it. We're going to get it eventually. We're going to get it. And to say thank you. Thank you so very much. I don't have questions to ask you anymore. Thank you.

NThank you.

When any mind starts on down this track, it sounds like there must be a path and there must be an ideal, like at the end you should be like the Buddha, that perfectly realized being, the nāga, you know. But then if you did, you would owe that to everything that came before.

The Buddha was raised as a prince, so of course he had that regal poise and all that stuff. He must be a great orator. He probably learned from philosophers and so on.

Everything I can say I owe it to what came before. So all that has events and circumstances behind it.

But then you notice your Inner Nature which is perfectly real. It has that poise, the Buddha-Nature, immediate, perfect.

You do not need to take a single step. Stop moving.

But in the end, it's not that "we" are Consciousness. There's no "we". We are not Consciousness either.

QBut aren't we living within Consciousness? Isn't the body having our experiences within Consciousness, and Consciousness emerged from Awareness? Can you explain the difference between the two maybe?

NFirst of all, the body is not experiencing anything.

There's only one Power in the universe, or beyond the universe, which experiences anything, and that power is what is called "I".

That is the true I.

When any life begins, it's made possible by You being there first.

You are there and aware, and then the first experience is noticed.

When the body functions and, let's say, it creates an experience, it still cannot create That-which-is-aware.

That-which-is-aware is I.

I am That-which-is-aware.

I cannot call that an "It" or a "That", or something more amazing than what I Am.

QThe sage calls it mistaken identity.

NYeah. So whatever comes later, it builds the persona. It's got the memories.

And if you compare animal memories to human memories, you would immediately be struck by how the short-term memory of an animal is what, like a few seconds.

Even humans, our short-term memories are a few seconds, thirty seconds or something. And then we build episodes like that, and it's episodic memory which makes it feel like, oh, I just have this one life. I have this one thing. What one thing?

If that...

Who was there when this life began?

Yes, Michael.

QThank you. I think in the last Satsang you said Awareness of Awareness. The first time I ever heard anything like that, I think in Yogananda's book he talks about the eyes of the eyes and the ears of the ears. Is that kind of the same thing? What Awareness of... you mean being aware that the eye is not what's seeing, it's the Awareness behind the eye and the Awareness behind the ear? Or is there more to it than that when you said Awareness of Awareness?

NI think I said Awareness of being aware. There's no Awareness of Awareness.

But You are aware of being aware, which is Self-knowledge. That is Self-knowledge.

Just the simple fact you know you're aware, and that itself removes that last step. The distance from "Oh I cannot be That, I cannot be Reality Itself" and so on — that goes away, because You are aware.

It's the most obvious fact. And if Reality is intrinsically what is aware, like it's the most fundamental basis of anything, and You are what is aware, those two things collide in the mind for a while and then it resolves into changing the meaning of "I".

It's not Awareness is behind I. There was something within Awareness which pretended, or the persona, just the illusion of being You, but it wasn't.

And it's revealed that "I" refers to Awareness, the one and only Awareness which cannot be split up into parts.

And then you've lost your separate self. In exchange, you're now one with Reality.

QCould you just say, do you have any opinion of psychedelics?

NYes, I wish they were legal.

We have many other drugs which are legal which should be illegal, but this is one which can change the mind if taken the right way.

Of course the people who are vulnerable to psychotic episodes and so on who should never take it.

But if you have meditated for years, you have a calm mind, you've seen into these things, and then you're given the opportunity to take it safely, it'll give you all the proof you ever wanted. It'll show you everything as if, oh, of course, this is the most obvious truths, and it'll say it... yeah, it's amazing.

I have had certain experiences with psychedelics and they were quite powerful, but they are not necessary. I would say that because the insight is straightforward. It's simple. And whatever you owe to a chemical again is something you owe to some event a certain way.

It just reveals to you the depth of what is Mind, what is Consciousness.

And then in that moment if you can ask these questions like, okay, yes, you're showing me all this wonderful stuff, but what am I in all this? You're showing me, oh, Reality is so amazing, and but I'm still a thing. And then it will tell you.

It is the side to the Mind which can speak with such depth, with such wisdom. You feel like you're conversing with Reality.

It's like these kind of things, they give a Voice to something which is usually just the Heart which is locked away.

We might go back to this.

Wahab. Hi.

QHi.

NNice to meet you.

QI'll start by saying thank you for your videos, because this is first time me on your live, but I've watching your videos for over a year now. By the way I'm in Nigeria, and basically your videos have been very helpful for me as life, because I have a business, I have a tech startup I'm trying to do as well.

So my question for today is I'm caught... like I said I watch your videos literally every day. I set this reminder for this live, but then I was listening to one of your videos while I was arranging my room, then I remember that yeah I do have something I want to join today.

So my main question for today is I'm caught in between knowing I don't really have to do anything and me having stuff to do. Like I have a tech startup that I want to in Nigeria, and it's a bit hectic. I've been put in a position where I have to create content which is not really my thing. So now listening to your videos, I'm caught between knowing that I don't have to do anything. I'm doing stuff physically. I don't know if my question makes sense to you.

NNot sure I got all of it. Like, is it the motivation to live life is going down? Is that what you're saying?

QI'll say that because here I barely don't chat to people that much, because I barely chat to people. I am not the type that like to communicate, but then the business has put me in a position now that I have to communicate with people. And creating content is one of the means I figured out, okay, this is the best, but then creating content is also not my thing as well. So in between all of this there is a part of me that okay I can just stay and just don't do anything, that makes sense. But then by not doing anything I can come back to like computer work, but then that kind of work I like to do. But then when it comes to work that I'm not comfortable doing, like conversation and literally outreach, then falling back not doing anything tend to be like my best option.

NSure. So the instruction about not doing is only with reference to the path — the path of Self-inquiry. Like what needs to be done? There's no steps and so on. So there's a certain context in which that instruction is given. It does not apply to practical life. Don't apply it to that.

Especially because you're young.

If I were... because I have a daughter, she's eight. If I start to feed her all this as dogma, I'm brainwashing her. If I do that, it will not help her.

These are insights about what the mind is, what You are, your place in all this. And it should inspire you. It should inspire the mind to do more, to do better.

And even if your job has to be to talk to people, to present to people — my job is a lot about presenting. That's fine. You will notice you'll be in... like maybe you're talking to someone and you've got your persona on; your mask on. They have their mask on, but you're seeing through that to what they actually Are.

You're playing your role. They're playing their role. That's fine.

Is that along the lines of what you're thinking? Is the question something else? I think we've lost you.

I think we lost him.

Anyway, so there's a kind of odd split which you might feel. And what Marina was saying: the body walks home and it's working and you're not doing anything. The "do nothing" is actually just telling You what your role already is.

You don't do anything. Your role is that You are aware, which allows the doing to happen.

QNabeel, in one of your... one of the Satsangs you talked about this, your experience where you were camping and the channel switching. Remember?

NCan you repeat it? Sorry.

QOkay. In one of your videos, in the Satsang, you talked about this channel switching where you were camping, and coming like between the dream and the sound just changing. Yeah. So that's the context, as you know.

So when you come out of... when you're in dreaming pretty vividly and all that, so you're experiencing things, and then you come to this borderline where the seeing and hearing in this, in the other dimension, wakefulness, you're aware of that. But then there is that moment where you don't remember who you are. Like it's not that you're your person and you're this identity or this story that you have about who you are in this world and all that. That's not there. You don't remember. You're completely... but there is an Awareness that you are. Clearly you are. But then there is this knowingness that you can remember who you are. So this choice in there, where you desire to remember or not, and you're clearly like you're aware of that point.

So my question on that point is: so who is having that desire to remember? Because you can clearly stay in that point and not remember and just completely just see what comes, like witness, basically, without really any identity or presumed identity attached to that. But then there is that desire that comes and then you kind of remember, wake up per se, you remember, and then all the things start rushing in and all that stuff.

So I was trying to figure out like that desire that comes at that moment, because we talked about this before. Who is... desire is not a property of Awareness. Desire is this mind and all these... that's in the realm of mind and all that, not in the Awareness. Awareness doesn't have desire. So can you talk to that? I don't know if I'm making sense to you, but...

NYeah, sure. That makes sense, because desire and these kind of things we've always associated with someone desiring. There must be an agent behind it.

But once you see there is no self, there is still a desire. How can it be? Because you thought all that dependent on there being a self, an entity desiring it.

So think of it this way. Let's say you're experiencing a computer. Computer boots up. It's loading things in memory.

So first it loads the most important things. Oh, you start to hear, you start to see and so on. Inputs are there now. Screen's booted up.

And then there's a delay because it's a bit slow, the computer maybe. So it starts to load in stuff from memory. And when the process kicks off to load the stuff into memory, you are experiencing that process.

The process might have a priority. There was this everything going on, there was whatever thought was in mind maybe at that point, and then this process steps in, has a higher priority.

You would experience that as desire.

It is not your desire or anyone's desire. It's just the process getting a certain priority within the bigger process that is the brain and the mind and so on. And the experience of that, because all of this is very odd — we are experiencing chemical activity and physical activity, whatever — the experience of that is what is "desire".

It's a certain kind of mixture of thought, urgency, feeling.

The inkling of, "Oh, I'm forgetting something," is that search process going on somewhere in the brain.

We need to retrieve a certain bit of information because it's important for what's about to happen next, because you have to go through your day and do your job.

Nobody owns the desire. Does that make sense?

QYeah. Yeah. It is all that — dreaming in dream state, borderline to wakefulness, the desire appearing — all of that I experience. And that kind of says: okay, those are all in the realm of Consciousness. And I who was experiencing all of that, including the emergence of the desire — I am the Awareness that's aware of all that.

NYeah, you're just watching the desire bubble up, basically.

See, there's no precursor to experience. Experience is there or it isn't.

And everything that in the mind is associated with cause and effect is actually happening after the causes, and it is the effect.

Anything that arises in Consciousness has already gone through the chain of cause and effect, and it is then experienced as that perception.

So most of the things the mind beats itself up over, if you see through it, it's just the functioning of a brain; human brain.

You can overcome the beating-up part and just focus on, okay, yes, that helps. It's the learning part. It's a learning technique, and it goes wrong because when we're young and you're trying to raise children, you do it yourself: "Oh this is wrong, this is wrong." And then the brain starts to say to you, "Oh this is wrong, we shouldn't do that, this is wrong." It's a process. Learning requires failure again and again. Desire is a way to motivate, prioritize certain processes required for life. Like all this, just see it from that impersonal standpoint.

You are just aware, making it possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any final questions or comments?

QMy phone went off and I connected my laptop, but then I missed out. Yeah, I have to go watch the video much later, but then if you can just give me a good rundown.

NYeah, sure. No worries. You'll get the recording anyway. But yeah, the answer was simple.

There is the knowledge of Self which is for You and You alone.

And there's the living of life.

And it might sound the wisdom traditions are giving you a prescription of how to live life, but they're not. Once you know your place in Reality, it's a freedom.

To be liberated means you're not confined to working a certain way or doing certain things and not doing other things and so on. But of course, there's a clarity because You see others are not "others". You see what they are.

If you got a job, do it. Do it well. Progress in life.

Progress is good. Learning is good. I still learn lots of new stuff. It's what keeps the mind healthy.

QAll right. Thank you.

NThank you. All right, we're on time. So maybe let's end there. Thank you all for joining. Thanks for the conversation.

QBye. Thank you.

NBye. Thank you.

QThank you, Nabeel.