Water That Cleans the Mind | Satsang + Q&A

NThere was a question just last night. So I thought I'll talk about that. The question is something like: what is the process to empty the mind? What is the process to empty the mind and see it happen? It reminded me of a Zen koan, so that's what we'll talk about.

You might have heard of it — most of you will have heard of it. It's the "wash your bowls" koan. There's a monk that's new to the monastery — goes to the master, Joshu, Zhaozhou, and asks him to give him an instruction; to teach him. And the master says, "Have you had your rice gruel?"

The monk says, "Yes," and then Joshu says, "Then wash your bowls." That's the answer: "Then wash your bowls." And if you Google it, the consensus wisdom is it's all about mindfulness, about being in the present moment, or finding enlightenment in the mundane tasks. But that's not how you understand a koan.

You see, when the master speaks in these koans, it's always from the highest nondual standpoint. So what he pointed out to the monk in that instance — in the description of the koan, the monk at that moment has some deep insight. So you have to see what was just communicated, so you try to grasp it.

The monk has asked for instruction. This is the instruction: wash your bowls. So what's it talking about? It's obviously talking about the mind. Okay?

It's about emptying the mind, which is what this question was about today, in the comments. The rice gruel — you've all had it. Because nowadays when you start this stuff, the punchline is already known. There's no self, or whatever direction you're coming from, or the Self is all there is.

The monk, if you became a monk, has already been exposed to Buddhism. So you've had that punchline. You know what it is. There is no self. The kind of self we all imagine ourselves to be — that is not real.

There is no separation between self and the world. That is the rice gruel. You've all had it. So now the point is: wash your bowls. Now, this is again a point where everyone believes what you're supposed to do is either you put the bowl there and you look at it really carefully, and somehow it's going to clean itself, or you try not to look at the bowl and it'll go away, and that's enlightenment.

But both are wrong. It's not about no effort, or in effort trying to turn away from the mind and then it goes blank. It's about washing your bowls. About going to town on — take that insight that was handed to you, you know, whatever the one that resonated most with you, let's say.

So maybe it was there's no separate self. If that's the insight and you understood it, you start to apply it to your mind. When you wash your bowls, you need water. The water can't come from what the master gave you. The master gave you the gruel.

You've had it. Now you wash it with water. The water is what pours out from inside you. That insight will spark in you different aspects of how your mind works in the wrong way.

It's making the wrong assumption. It's thinking of you the wrong way. Because that one insight is enough. It has many implications. If you're not the body, everybody says, "Yes, I've seen I'm not the body." But that is a major implication on how the mind behaves.

It exposes so many wrong ways of thinking. Similarly, if you're not separate to the world — is that how we act? Is that how the mind acts? All right. So washing your bowl means when that initial insight is now pouring out and cleaning up your mind and all the wrong ways of thinking. And once you wash your bowls, what do you do with it?

You put it upside down. Your whole world, your mind is flipped upside down. What you thought of as the self turns out to be just an idea, thought pattern. There's nothing substantial to it. And what was thought of as the world, or not-self, or something that exists after you die — you know, all of that — it becomes so real and so intimate.

That is the Self. So that is the way to empty the mind. You wash your bowls. I can only give you the rice gruel. The prison food. You can add a bit of spice in it or whatever, add some music to it.

But after that, that's the way. We can keep fighting about is there effort required or not, but there is a process that takes place which cleans up all the wrong concepts we had. Just because of that one insight. Because our self-image was wrong. What you thought of as yourself was not what you are. And that washes the bowl.

If you just keep the bowl there and you expect it to get clean, it's just going to get mold. And after a while you get hungry, you want to eat gruel again — all kinds of different gruel — and it's going to mix with the mold. Either it'll make you sick or make you high, but you're not getting the point. So that's what Joshu said: "Wash your bowls."

We'll start there. Let's go into Q&A.

QMay I ask a question? Somehow it won't let me raise my hand.

NYeah, just go ahead.

QCan I go ahead and ask?

NYeah. Go ahead.

QOkay. So I guess good evening or good afternoon. I don't know which. But you know, I've been rehearing one of them, and this sort of like has been consuming me today. Right. This was the video that says beyond the senses.

You know — and it's this video that basically says that there is this substrate or something like this that's receiving all the experience. It's not me receiving the experience, but there's something else that's receiving experience. That just — there's all these experiences like the sights, the sound — the senses are doing their thing but there's something behind, if you will, I guess, that's receiving it. It's not me. Correct. And that's just —

NShould we address that first or you want to finish? Because —

QYeah, please go ahead, because just rephrase it or talk about it — it probably helped some. But it seems intuitively of course, but at the same time, as soon as I say it, it's like: is it that obvious? I mean, how can it be that obvious? That's kind of the fight I have in my mind. It seems appealingly plausible. And it's like appealingly obvious even — and then something in me says, "Come on, is it really that sort of blatantly simple or something?"

NI mean the first thing I want to point out is when you say something like it is not me but something else that is experiencing, that is obviously absurd. Can you truthfully say that you're not aware of this experience?

QThe me I'm talking about is a local —

NYes. But then again, because that's where it'll go in a loop.

When you say it's not me and something else, that's again created a separation. So "me" is obviously — yes, in nonduality circles, "me" is just a word you got to just shoot down every time. But it is you. You are the one who are having this experience. All right. It's not something else. It's not — because that's the direct knowledge.

This experience — you're having it. The question is it's not the me the mind builds up. Because that me is a human being with this body and this personality and this set of memory and so on. That "me" is actually what is being experienced.

That is the experience. There is — in the mind there are boundaries between world and person and so on — but actually it's one big experience, all interconnected. And what is having that experience is You. And that is obvious. That is blatantly obvious.

So that part is correct. Now the only thing is being very clear on what you are and what is just an experience that's passing by; the transient. We're sifting like what is unchanging and the truth. And the actual Self.

Versus what is a flow of experiences, happenings, feelings, whatever. But it's just dimensions of sparks in Awareness.

QSo how do you get to this? Like how do I firsthand see this? I can hear this. It sounds plausible. It sounds not even more than plausible.

It sounds like sort of obvious, but then there is this counter-argument I make is like: come on, there is this local guy. You know that's obvious too. So there's these two things are fighting each other and it's not an easy reconciliation between them.

NSo what in that local person is conscious? What would you say?

QSo when I hear your videos, I mean, it's convincing. There's nothing. There's nothing here. I mean, video about the light that falls in the eye and stuff — and there's nothing in here that is inherently me. Like I mean, this local me is not there. It's so plausible. But then from minute to minute, it's so real. This local guy.

NThe guy is not real. The world is real. The world is real. And when we say the world, the world means not just — it's not physical.

QYeah. The world is not physical. I think we went over, right?

NThe world is entirely subjective. You're seeing from a certain — this experience right now. It's from a certain perspective. There's feelings involved. There's sensations. It's not just physical objects and a subject, a conscious subject. That whole world — once we see that, there is no conscious guy here. "Guy" is part of the experience.

And actually if you look for the guy all you find is thoughts or feelings or sensations. Those are part of a world. The point is not that there are not an infinite number of subjective worlds, both now possible, potential, whatever. That's true. There are any number of dreams you have even in one life.

So those are worlds. Each world comes with a protagonist, the dream character, but nothing in there is conscious. Once we've validated that nothing in here is conscious, but I am conscious, that is where the clarity comes from. There is only one point we're making. We're not saying this world is unreal.

QYeah. It's not about unreal.

NThat is a direction given so you just make a clear distinction between Self and not-self. But in the end, all is the Self. Where does the dream appear? Where does the dream world appear? What is it made of?

It's like the very fabric of everything is Consciousness. There's no other material. In direct experience, anything you see or feel, it's Consciousness. And then we can formulate theories about the universe like a physical universe and so on. But they all exist in Consciousness.

QAnd when you say Consciousness now, you mean the Awareness, correct? You're like equating these, I think. Yeah.

You call it Awareness sometimes in the videos. So Awareness goes —

NYeah, it's right. So I make a bit of a distinction because Consciousness in our minds is always associated with experience. There must be some experience then you can say there's Consciousness. But again that's a duality because experience is not the constant.

There are points when there's no experience and then experience appears and then disappears and so on and so forth. So Awareness is to distinguish between that. One of the core questions that was left for me when I was washing my bowls is that I cannot be Consciousness because I'm not always in a state of experience. So what happens when I go to deep sleep, or I've fainted in my life. So I know like the process of everything shuts down and comes back on. So what can I be? Like there's nothing left!

And actually that "nothing left" is the answer. The "nothing left" is I. In the end there's no actual good word for it, but I know that I am aware even when there's no experience. Because what you see happens is as you emerge from that state where there was nothing — no experience — when that first experience comes, you're immediately aware of it.

What are you then? So at that point, that's the core point of the inquiry I went through. Doesn't have to be for everyone. It depends what question hits you hardest. And if I were to give it a word, the only quality there is: aware. I'm being aware. If you just add, in English you add a "-ness" at the end to turn a quality into a noun.

That's what I am. Aware-ness. Or you could — if you try to describe it scientifically you would say that's emptiness because there's no quality, nothing — but that's again the wrong perspective. Now I've turned it into an it or a thing I'm observing but that's not what happens. You are That at that point.

And forever from that point, you can't be anything else.

QCould I make a brief point please?

NSure.

QWell, when I was going through the same kind of thing and the mind was getting stuck in the way kind of thing, I found that helping — listening to silence — I could listen to the substratum and that seemed to help clear the mind. Not get it stuck in the way kind of thing.

NYeah. Do you want to describe it a bit more?

QWell, basic. Well, if you're going through a formal meditation, you're just sitting and you're listening and look — the kind of ego kind of disappears and just listening to the silence and nothing else. The silence seems to take over and the mind just vanishes kind of thing. You did tell me at a point that I was Awareness, and I didn't quite believe it at the time. And then eventually I thought, well it's kind of difficult to explain, but I think I had the knowledge that I was Awareness but I didn't have the direct experience.

And then eventually through time it just kind of integrated where I would get glimpses of it. It would be like I don't exist and it was like maybe pure Awareness and then it just — every time it was just like an integration process. It just generally happened and you just keep listening to the silence all the time. There's different various teachers that say — like the prayer of silence, silence — like St. Teresa of Ávila or other teachers that prescribe silence kind of thing and it really helped me at that point. That's all I wanted to say really.

Is that helpful in any way?

NNo. No. We're gonna wait for SK. What you're saying definitely —

QIt's like you could hear the sub — if you know what I mean — you can hear the substratum of Reality, which is You, if you listen to silence, is what I'm kind of trying to say. That has been my experience anyway through formal meditation, and then the formal meditation disappears and then it's like you're in meditation all the time. If you know what I mean.

NThe extreme of that is what's called "cessation."

So I'm sure some of you — like — you can even go through cessation and still be confused. There's no end to the confusion, until you see what is it that's confused. The thinking is confused. It's the mind that is confused.

Even the mind — like you've seen if cessation takes place you see there is no such thing as mind. It's just a collection of phenomena. They're interconnected. What is confused is only — at the point there is confusion, the "thinking" is confused. There's some thoughts arising and those thoughts are confused.

But Awareness is never confused because at that point that confused thought is one aspect of that world. The sky is still really blue, the sounds are still very clear. But because of how thoughts are treated — as long as there's a concept of self, the self-image of a local I, me — thoughts are given the highest priority. This is the most intimate, most me part of all this. That's what it feels like.

But when that starts to loosen up, then the thought is just like a noise or something extra. And then there's that space to see: I'm not confused. This is a confused thought. Sure. This is a confused thought. But I remain what I am. So there are many different ways to arrive at that clarity. But I think a simple one is to see what is it that's confused.

It's only the conceptualizing — the thinking — that's confused. But then there's the part which you all know is blatantly obvious, that is always blatantly obvious. And Truth will be found in that direction, not in spending more time on the confused thinking.

QDid I ask about your formal practice, Nabeel? You still have a formal practice?

NNo, not anymore. No.

QSo it's just like integration then. It just — it's dropped off.

NSo I was meditating quite a bit for a while and it just becomes like just another thing. When — what happens is like there used to be this idea that if I could stop all thoughts that would be the perfect state. I did stop all thoughts, but what was left was still noise because I've got tinnitus.

QOh.

NIt was the wrong goal. It was the wrong goal. It doesn't help if thoughts are not there if you don't get the truth. So that like wrong direction and then you realize, oh, okay, that's not it. What is it? And you keep looking and because I was into the dialogues of Nisargadatta and I was chasing what is this Parabrahman, this —

So went through that path. That was actually kind of helpful. But in the end, yeah.

QWhy is it the wrong goal to stop thoughts?

NWhat will it achieve? Like — when thoughts stop, it's not what we expect.

It's not suddenly filled with bliss or whatever. Like thought is not the enemy. It's just something going on. It's like you know you can get fed up with noise, or sometimes there's noise and you're fine.

You're feeling fine. You're feeling good. The problem is how we relate to thoughts. Goes back to how we identify with thoughts as being something very intimately mine. Even though theoretically we've seen it like, oh, I'm not the one thinking, there's no "me," but the thoughts are very intimate.

Nobody else knows "my thoughts." That's like that's very deeply ingrained. Losing that is more important than silencing thoughts because once you silence thoughts, there's still other stuff. You feel the other stuff much louder.

The ringing in the ears is so loud. How are you going to stop that now? Because you go to doctor, they say there's nothing wrong. It's something in your brain. What are you going to do now? Or you might have some pain, or you're feeling a bad emotion and you feel it so deeply because now there's nothing else. Now you're feeling that emotion which you could have repressed with thought.

So just ending thought is not going to fix anything. It might give you like temporary relief if life is going well and you're not thinking it's good. If you're in a war zone and you're starving and thoughts stop, it's not going to be — it's still going to be miserable. So —

QIs it true to say it's more a total acceptance of the thoughts and everything that's going on? It's more a surrender.

NI mean what I talk about most is Self-inquiry. So the point of Self-inquiry is to know for a fact what the Self is.

If there's a goal, that's the goal. What is this? What am I? Even when I say that's the Self is like creating — oh there's "The Self" and there's "me." No. What am I?

When you answer — or for some that's like okay I'm not interested in what I am, but what is real. It's actually the same question. What am I? What is real? Getting to that — a clear absolute answer that you know as a matter of fact — that is what ends it.

Then there's no need for any practice or anything, or doing changing anything, because there's nothing — there's no individual to change anything. Like whatever is changing is changing anyway, as part of a process, like plants grow, my brain grows and prunes itself, and so on, whatever.

QDo you actually think you could get there without any meditation or anything, just through this belief that you are the Self would get you there?

NNo, it's not. Belief will not get you there. No.

Belief creates religion, which does not get you there. It's not belief. It's like what we started with. Wash your bowls.

You have — meditation is part of the rice gruel. It's important at some point, when the monk joins a monastery they get that initiation, whatever. Meditation was important because otherwise you never look at the state of your mind. What is going on in here? Why am I so miserable?

And why do I never get happy, even after I achieve what I wanted? And so on so forth. What am I so anxious about? So that first part — meditation is important.

You look at the state of — what is this calamity that has happened? What was born? What am I? But then if you — once that answer becomes clear, you can meditate if you like, it's just sitting. It's just sitting quietly. That's fine.

But this practice means you're trying to train something, you're trying to get somewhere. But then when you realize what the Self is — what all this is about — the scope of all that is wrong. Because the scope of meditation or any practice is about one person, one life. But the scope of Enlightenment is an understanding of the nature of Reality, and the nature of Self, which is the same.

When the scope is so wrong — the scope is global, but all the practices are local. Local. But it's not that you shouldn't do them if it's helping in some way and they're part of the rice gruel.

I don't say just stop and do nothing because we eat the gruel and then we wash the bowls. And then turn them upside down. That's the last part when everything turns upside down because what you thought of as me turns out to be smoke. Smoke and mirrors. Yep. An illusion.

And what you thought of as not me, the world — that is you. What you thought of as absolute nothing — that is you.

Because when experience appears and you perceive it, what are you at that point? Awareness? And nothing. To the mind that's nothing. Later on, you can now say Awareness because your mind has shifted a lot already.

But if you tell someone on the street — like if you take general anesthesia, what's left? Is that Awareness? They say, "No, that's not Awareness." We call it Awareness after we've gone through some circles.

But it's the same as nothing. Absolute nothing. Definitely. But that is what is — once your bowls are upside down, that is the Self. That fundamental basis for perception to take place. That is the Self.

Yep. All right, let's keep it going.

QWhen you get a realization, Nabeel, and it seems as if you haven't changed but everybody round about you has changed. Is that a part of it — that you actually see people when thinking they're getting lost in their heads?

Have you ever had that experience where you think you haven't changed but other people have changed?

NNo. You might see that. Like you will start to see how thinking works.

Not just your thinking — thinking in general. All thinking in general is built around idea of a separate self. You're starting to — because you're now not so trapped in "my thinking" — you start to observe things which were happening all the time, but you start to see how certain personality traits come out and how people behave. But that's again — it's somewhere on the way you observe that.

But again, it still has that idea of me changing or others being wrong. So the me and others is still the dual concept of self. And then that also falls away. And then I mean you can't fault someone.

Again, someone is the wrong word. When there's a dream and there's a character, even if you realize it is a dream, the story plays on, you're still playing it as that character. That's part of the world, which is what I was trying to say.

There's no separate self to find, but there are all these subjective worlds, and each of them is filled with characters. And one of the characters seems to be the one you're playing.

QYeah. And you said that sometimes if you're interacting with a person, you are making a judgment on that person and that's my conditioning that's making that judgment, my ego.

NIt's not like — there's no "my ego." That's why the core thing is again we always come back to Self-inquiry. What am I? When you're judging someone, the first mistake is there's already a concept of I, and then there's the other person.

You cannot have a second person if you don't have a concept of the first person. Somewhere in there there is that concept. So Self-inquiry brings it back. Well, who is judging whom?

Is one thought process here evaluating another thought process there — and it cannot — there's no access to that thought process from this thought process. It's actually a judgment of like a puppet. You've created a puppet of that person and that's being judged by another puppet. Like it's weird.

QSo basically my self-concept is judging their self-concept kind of thing.

NYeah. But those self-concepts are not conscious. So it's an unconscious process going on because —

QOh, it's —

NYeah. The brain is a wonderful instrument.

It's trained to learn, to evaluate, to self-assess and change things. And as that is happening, You who are Awareness, You experience that. That whole — whatever — we don't have any direct access to a physical world. That's what science is telling us as well.

Everything you're experiencing is happening in the neurons. It's taking place on — that's the physical thing on which the activity is taking place. You don't experience any sound outside the body. What you hear as sound is something happening in the body. When you see someone, that is some computation going in the body.

So these organisms are being experienced. By what? If the conscious thing is not in the organism, who is observing it? That is the Self. Now, if that is the Self, you have to find out for yourself — then can you only be observing this one organism?

Because then that again creates something hanging on top of it. That's the concept of a ghost or a soul. It's still a separate self. When you get to no separate self, you realize nothing has to change. All these experiences, they don't have to merge into one stream of experience.

They are being experienced simultaneously. But because Awareness does not have any thoughts of its own, any personality, any form of its own, each world is like a self-contained bubble.

QYep. Yep. I've seen that. I've seen that in one of your videos. It was showing you different bubbles and things in it. Yeah. It's all in the same Awareness.

NBut you can have two bubbles in a river and they're not joined. The river itself in this case — the river has no feeling of its own, has no thoughts of its own.

And that's why I say it's an absolute nothing. But that nothing is aware. Because that part cannot be denied.

QSo when you become the river, is the feeling undeniable? Is no doubt? It's like, oh, there's absolutely no doubt there. Or is it like there's a hazy middle where it's like, I don't know what the heck's going on or something like this? Or is it just like — you know — is the feeling of becoming the river just so visceral that you simply can't have any doubt about it.

Like what's that transition feel like.

NRight. So — nothing can become the river. The river is already the river. You are the river.

You are the river. How do I convince you that you are the river is the problem. And I can again I can only give you the gruel, the prison food, and you got to eat it and then try to digest it and wash your bowls. So — there is no doubt left. Yes.

When you see what all these sages are talking about, and you can see they had no doubt. So either they were foolish or they just — because the foolish kind of belief is — you can also tell the difference.

The conviction which comes from belief or opinion is very different to the conviction of a sage. The wisdom of a sage. Sure. So there is a point where it's perfectly clear, but it's not that there's a feeling to being the river.

Because that would be the feeling of what's going on in this body. Because there are all kinds of feelings right now in the river. Where else would they be? Sure. All feelings, all awakening experiences, all sages, all the minds of every sage ever — it's taken place in the river.

The river does not change. When that sage dies, that mind's back. Gone. Gone where? It's same as it always was.

The river has no feeling and that's very hard for the mind to get over because it wants that final boom. Boom. So that's okay. If that's why I said Nisargadatta's teaching was really — it was very powerful because when he throws you towards the Parabrahman, the no-attribute state, what he's pushing you is to see what are you when even Consciousness is gone. If you can catch that — and many people keep asking me how you can catch that, but that's — it's not a formula. I can try to explain.

QThat was going to be my next question.

NWe can talk about it. But if you can catch that. That is where the doubt is just destroyed because you see what happens is there's nothing — there's a gap in experience, a gap in time. It's like anesthesia.

If you've ever been unfortunate enough to have that. Like 10, 9 — and then you're back — 8, but time's gone. What happened? But because we do it in a way where you catch it happen, you see that first initial sense of being come up. And together with it comes in some experience, whatever.

It's not a thought — thoughts come a bit later. It's "I Am" but without words. It's just a feeling, it's starting to — something is there now. Now there's something. And then time starts to tick again, there's space and in that space you can have sensation, thoughts, and so on. If you catch that happen, and then —

Catch that happen in a way that the question was: what am I at this point? Well there's nothing there. There was nothing there and now there's a sensation or whatever a feeling. That "nothing" must be I.

Because you know what else became conscious of that whatever thing appeared — it was I. So that is I. And that I does not exist in time or space because you can without a doubt see how time starts tick-tock right at that point. There was no time, no space, nothing — that is cessation.

But again I don't want to set you an impossible goal or something because as I was going through this I heard people who had gone through cessation and so on and they were still confused like what's going on here. So now I don't think you need to go through that to understand this because you are the river and there's many ways to see that you are the river — but eliminating doubt is yes, it's a worthy goal, being clear on what the Self is.

QSo talking about this anesthesia — people talk about when you wake up you should wake up slowly — that is stretch the moment when you're just from asleep to waking up so that because in that gap is what you're talking about. You know I've tried to do it — it never really has worked for me to try to take that moment which is at the boundary of waking up or being awake, say right, and being asleep and just like stretching it or something. In, you know, sages have said I've read about it and you know but it's never really sort of worked. I don't know if you have any tips or comments about that or something.

NSo if you — that is the right point to bring your inquiry. Okay. But you're not trying to stretch the moment or anything. We can't do it. Who's going to do that? What you're doing is making sure that the Self-inquiry is naturally taking place as you're drifting between sleep and wakefulness, or sleep and dreams. It works great in the mornings.

Early morning if you wake up a bit early before you're supposed to and you just lie down and you let the mind drift in and out — sleep, dreaming, waking, whatever. And if you're so obsessed with inquiry — if you start to think about Self-inquiry, you'll wake up. It's over. It's too much thought-based. But when you're obsessed with Self-inquiry, it naturally might occur at that right moment where you catch the dream appear, or the awakening process appear.

And even then, I don't know — for some it might be enough proof or evidence or whatever, I don't know. There's some point where the doubt gets cut. Where the doubt is gone — and that can be different like it depends on what was causing the doubt anyway in that particular thought process. But yeah, it's worth trying. It did help me a lot because for me the main question was: all right, fine, I am not a person, not a body, not a mind, whatever. But I'm not even Consciousness. Because Consciousness came at some point and it's going to leave. So what am I? That's why this was important.

Any other questions, comments?

QCan I just say thank you Nabeel for all your content. It's been really helpful and I love watching it every week or whenever a new video comes out. Thank you. And also something I wanted to say was thank you for holding these little meetings because they form a trigger for me. You know that like the day of the meeting I'm just like — you know I get hung up on one video which is the best thing that's possible — is kind of like let that thing swim in my head. So it's really helpful and so I appreciate that you're holding these video meetings. Thank you.

NThank you. So, while we are on the topic of cessation as well — so the other — so if sleep is not working then meditation is the other way.

So I went both ways. So, like Davie was saying, you try to listen to the silence. But for me I found out, unfortunately, I can't get to silence because of the ringing in my ears. So I said I'm going to turn that off as well. How do you turn that off? And I realized every night it does turn off in some way because when I go to sleep I'm not aware of that ringing in my ears.

So I'm just going to do it while meditating, which is something Ramana Maharshi has said and I think I've read it a few others like: try to go to sleep while awake. And it's a very powerful pointer. You can do it — how do you go to sleep? You should first assess how you go to sleep. If you try to go to sleep it doesn't work — you're just lying there thinking. If you try to go to sleep it's very hard. How you go to sleep is you're just finally fed up being awake. You're not interested in anything. Not even your own thoughts. Not interested. And the thoughts are still coming. You're not interested. And they just lose energy and die off. And this ringing in the ears is happening. And okay, I'm not getting angry at it anymore. And I'm not interested in the thoughts about it either.

If you can really lose interest in everything again this thing happens where the world disappears, mind disappears — and that's how we can approach it in meditation.

QI think I heard you talking about that in one of your videos where you said you just turn away from it kind of thing.

NYeah. I think if there's one lever we have it's interest. The brain is designed like — you could sit and say I'm going to meditate on the breath, I'm just going to focus on the breath and ignore everything. But it's boring.

So after a while there will be some kind of thing which will interest you. So if you put the interest in the right thing — so even to be disinterested in everything I had to be interested in this losing-my-mind objective. So there was an interest. It was just a kind of interest which is total disinterest. So yeah, you've got to set the direction of the steering and let it go.

Anyone else?

QHi. Sorry, I don't know if you can see me. I just joined the call and I'm not sure of the context but I've been watching your videos and I have a question. I can watch my mind. I see my mind but then I struggle with who is the seer. Then I struggle to find the place to place my attention. Then I start thinking the seer is the mind itself pretending to be the seer. And then my attention just — then my attention comes back again. Then I realize that was the mind pretending to be the seer. So I struggle where to place the attention, the seer's attention. And who is the seer? I feel like I'm trapped. I feel like it's all mind. And I know I am out there, but where am I? Then I get scared because I feel like I'm everything then. So I feel like I just don't know where to — and I know this is the mind talking.

NYeah, I think that is — whoever starts this inquiry will go through what you're going through. Because first of all the mind will try to find a physical anchor. A location in space like where in the body am I? And actually the seer is not — there's no place in the body you can point to and say that's where I am.

Although initially it might feel I'm here or I'm here or whatever.

QYes.

NBut you will find that actually those are all points in the world and this here is the one witnessing all of it.

QRight. Yes. But then the question becomes — first the first phase you have to question is there a seer?

NWhat? What if there is no seer? What does that mean? If you can't find a seer.

QYes. Either there is no seer or there is a seer, but that's outside of time and space. I feel like there is no seer.

NThere is no seer. Are you not seeing this right now? Wouldn't that be right to call you the seer?

QYes. Yes.

NSo there's like two things to knock against each other. That's fine.

QYes.

NThere's this core direct experience. All these sights, sounds, sensations — what they are appearing. They are definitely appearing to you and not to something else somewhere else, some God somewhere else, whatever. No, they're appearing to you.

QRight. Yes.

NAnd then the other part is you can't find yourself in all this because this is what is being witnessed or observed, whatever.

QYes. Yeah.

NSo don't struggle too much with the mind or the mind trying to trick you or confuse you or whatever. That's actually not what's happening. The mind is your servant. It actually wants to serve you. But its idea of you was wrong. It thought you were this one body, this one person in the body and then it starts to come up with all these silly little plans and aims and so on which don't really make you happy or whatever.

QYes.

NBut it was not — the mind is not something to fight with. There is no entity like a something called an ego that you have to struggle and knock out. There is no such thing because that would be then a separate self or a separate entity — a conscious entity — but we're not finding any. But the fact is you are conscious.

QYes. You're having this experience.

NYes. The first thing to see is there's no physical seer. It's not possible for there to be a physical seer because if someone is observing you what do they see? They see a physical body. That's not the seer. The eyes are not the seer. Even if you look at the brain, it's not the brain that is seeing because it's the brain activity which is resulting in seeing.

QYes.

NSo there's no physical seer. Yet I am. That is the fact. The I Am is fact. And you go through that process. Blah blah blah. No seer. But I am. There's no form which I can point to and say that's me, yet I am. And that's all the crazy conversation we had earlier about nothing and cessation and so on. You get to the point where you're comfortable with being absolutely nothing because you are. As a matter of fact, you are. It's not even you exist because existence is between two points in time. You're beyond that.

QYes. And sometimes during my struggle I pray so hard to God to just release me from this mind struggle. And I do find it just disappears. The mind just disappears and there's only vibration and everything and nothing and then the mind comes back and says okay now we know — let's come back to it or maybe this is not it — and then I'm back again. But I know there is a marked difference from where the mind just goes quiet, just almost is gone — but then it creeps back in and then I wonder: that nothingness — was that the mind as well?

NSo well you have to tell me — what are you calling the mind? What disappears and comes back because you are observing it disappear and come back. What is it that you're calling the mind?

QSo I feel like there's almost — now there's the seer and the seen. I know the seen is the little neurotic mind. That one I've identified. I know and I can catch myself sometimes and say, "Oh, there she is." But then the one that says — oh, the attention, the Awareness — that's the one now I'm thinking, so who is this one now? The seer and the seen. I feel like I'm neither of them. But then —

NYeah because the seer and seen — the distinction is still creating a duality which is not actually real.

QOkay.

NYou cannot — nonduality is all about realizing how all of these separations are not real. There's no seen and seer as two separate things. There's the seeing — the seeing takes place. You are aware of the seeing but the seeing is not separate from you either.

QRight. Yes.

NAnd when you say mind what it sounds like is just there's some kind of thinking coming back. It's not. It's just thinking. And thinking can be confused. That's what I was saying like who is confused? The thinking is confused. So if you know it's a confused thought we look past it.

QYes.

NOr we try to see what's the confusion is about. You could try to go that way and you pull that thread and it's gone. The confusion is gone — which is one of the things I explain is you can trace the whole process with any kind of sense — hearing, seeing — you can trace the process: light going in and whatever happens there's no physical seer so then that search is over. You can never find a physical seer, a physical conscious entity.

QYes.

NAnd that thinking should just die off once you see through that confusion.

QYes.

NThere's a voice coming and going and it's just thinking. But what are you in that whole process? Even when you're praying to God, the God is less real than you. It's just you are praying to a higher entity, something bigger than this body, this mind. What is that? That's — yeah, I think it sounds like that part might take some time. Some parts take time and then the confusion starts to die off.

QYes. Yes. And I do see the unreality of it all. But I think because I had a spiritual experience and I'm waiting for that — you know that nothingness that I experienced in my spiritual experience where I was nothing and everything at the same time. I experienced unconditional love, peace, joy that felt — it just permeated through the whole eternity. I was bigger than me and I was part of it.

But we seemed — it was bigger than me but I was it as well. So because it was so grand and now the experience of the mind I know is not real and I sometimes go to that place where the mind just — it's still not grand enough. I feel —

NI mean you've had the vision. You have had — you wanted a vision of Self. You've had a grand vision. But now what's wrong is expecting each experience to be grand. That grandness to stay forever. This little body can't handle it. Like — when you're sick, have you observed how hard the body works just to breathe, or you know how hard it is for a child to learn to walk?

QYes.

NEven to balance on two legs is a very hard thing, which our brains just make it very natural. But if you have some problem you realize how hard it is.

QYes.

NSo that expectation that experience in this little body-mind should remain grand is asking a lot of this little thick creature.

QYes.

NSo you should take what you've seen and not — it's more about what it has taught you about Reality and what You are rather than going back to a grand experience.

QYes. Experience might will get good and bad. It'll keep fluctuating. That's fine.

NYes. Yes.

QYeah. I feel like the experience was a blessing and now —

NYeah, that is You. The Nothingness — if you look when that happens — if the experience is then later thought of, if you try to go think and evaluate that experience the only way to do it is it's the mind doing it. So now the mind is trying to evaluate what it cannot evaluate.

QYes. Yeah.

NBut when it happened, you were the nothing and in that you saw that mind is — this mind is just part of the whole.

QYes.

NBut you — there are actually no parts to that Whole. You cannot chop and cut it into pieces. So the inquiry should go into: well who is saying — who is looking at the nothingness and saying oh that was grand and now I'm so little. Because that is not you.

QYes.

NIt is — that is the process to look through and see oh actually you're — that's just a thought process going on, and what are you is what you were at that point, that has not changed.

QBut Nabeel, when I had the experience my mind was still there. I was just chanting a mantra and then all of a sudden the top of my head opened up and there was light and that light was that love and peace and like I was transported to a different dimension. But then I wonder why my mind still remained. I was so scared. I was so scared to merge. I was so shocked because I lived — I was just a normal human being. I never knew there was something else out there. I was just chanting a mantra because I don't even know what the particular reason was but I was obsessed with the mantra but the mind was still there — it was still saying oh my god — like it was so scared — and then because of the mind I returned. So I feel like I'm stuck with this little me that keeps me tangled.

NYou just have to pick it apart what you're talking about. That you return and so on. Like the mind is not a conscious thing. The mind is an experience of what's happening — some of what's happening in a body. In that sense, there are many minds, but they're not conscious entities. Each mind is actually a world, a subjective world full of colors and sounds and emotions and all that. So in that whole world is built around this idea of me. So even as you're having this spiritual experience — or you know people take different substances and really expands the mind and whatever — that whole world is built around a certain belief. It's very central. It's very core to it. It's not a thought in the usual sense that people think of as a verbal thought. No, it's billions of years of evolution are built around this: protect this thing, you know, spread this thing and so on and so forth. And even as you're having these experiences, it's breaking down boundaries that are threatening to that process that was built. And you will experience that. You'll experience the fear of whatever is happening in the body. But the point is to look at all of that happening and see what am I in all this? Which part was I? And the mind will use "I" in many ways and all of them are wrong because it's using I as a synonym for the body, I as a synonym for a person, sometime the "I" is the mind. What is it?

Well it's all just experience. Where does the experience appear? No matter how mundane, or how amazing, where does the experience appear? That is You. Quite clearly the experience appears to You.

QYes.

NThat's what we getting down to when we cut — there's lots of fireworks, some people don't have fireworks, whatever.

QYes.

NBut the Truth is simple, it's clear, we get to that and then you're fine with whatever.

QYes. And it's been a slow process because when that happened a lot of things opened up and I — so many — I got caught up with the — you know when the veil — and you connect with this — things start happening you know mysterious things, supernatural things and you can get caught up with that and start thinking you know wow now I have powers. But then I slowly — that still didn't satisfy. So you know I slowly gave all — I saw all that is mind as well. The experience wasn't but what came with it afterwards was mind as well.

NSo it's all built around the idea that there can be separate conscious selves with powers, control and so on. Like if you think of something and it happens and you know those kind of powers you realize, oh my god, my thoughts have power — and you know when you think of something or — it's just other things that people think you're crazy to even mention but you know —

QBut I realized all that was just mind as well and the question is still there — the burning, you know, wanting to know. I don't even — I feel like me as little me doesn't even own that. It's like my soul just wants freedom.

NWhat is the soul? You said "my soul," right? So look into that. Can you have a soul?

And if you have a soul, if that is the thing that's conscious, then you would be the thing that's not conscious. It's just again another going in a loop where you're creating another identity.

QYes. No, I and I see it all. But the nothingness scares me, but — thank you.

NNo worries.

All right. So we're over time. So if any of you want to drop off that's fine. If anybody has a last question happy to answer.

QCan I just say Nabeel that when you find out that you don't exist it can be quite a shocking experience as well — that the fundamental reality that you thought you were isn't true. It's quite frightening. Would you say?

NSo, it's only shocking and frightening when there's still a concept of me left. If there's no concept of me left, it would not be.

So yes, I've approached it from both sides. So if you approach it as — and it's not something you can let go as in okay now I'm going to practice and stop identifying with myself or whatever — it just — yeah it is. But if we approach it, if it happens in that way, what you see is a nothingness. It's like what you know what we're just talking about. It's yeah, it's vast, it's empty, and you're tiny and you're about to get snuffed out of existence, or you don't exist.

There's those kind of feeling, but that's because the mind is still stuck on I'm one thing and this is this greater Reality, which is not true. It's still trying to hang on kind of thing. It's just the clarity is not there yet. So that's why my way of trying to communicate this is I'm not trying to push any of you towards a great grand experience. I want first there to be a clarity of what the Self is, and then no experience is required.

Nothing new is required and you skip all of the drama and all of the bad terrible experiences — the I'm dying, I don't exist, and so on — and you get stuck in that hole. It's just because the mind was confused. Because there is no separate conscious self. There's no separate conscious entities.

Which means who's going to die? Or who existed and is now ceasing to exist? And so on. It's all wrong. The base fundamental Reality is Awareness in which all these worlds appear and disappear, and in those worlds all they have is dream characters, but I love all the characters because behind the characters is who? It's the Self!

So, it's at the same time like it's not like you realize it's a video game and you go around you gun around the people. No. Because who is going to feel every single thing happening in this world or any world is the Self. So that's the gentleness, the love of the sage because you're seeing the Self in all eyes. And so yes — I think the gentle path is to just inquire in the most mundane ways, just clean up the mind, wash your bowls, and then you might have — like all the normal experiences will have new dimensions to them.

Just seeing light will mean something different to you. Seeing space will mean something different. All right, let's call it a day. Thank you very much for joining and staying late and for a nice conversation.

QThank you again. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.