Your negative thoughts are just a twitch | Live Satsang

NSometimes you notice a muscle starts twitching. It's just twitching uncontrollably and you can't do anything about it. You just look at it. If it's not causing pain, you don't think about who's to blame, what should I do about it, how should I stop it.

You just observe it happening. There might be some concern if there's pain, or you might need to eat a banana or something. But that's not how we treat thought. With thought, what is the difference?

If it is a recurring negative thought which is aggressive or depressive or causes anxiety, isn't it similar to a muscle twitching? You're not causing it. You can't stop it. But there's the idea — the thought behind the thought — that there's agency.

That either there is an "I" who is thinking the thought and should not be thinking the thought, or there's some ego which is doing this and it should be hunted down. So just that assumption that there's agency behind the thought has completely changed the perspective on it. Now there are a lot of other thoughts — a lot of other twitching — and that's causing pain. But actually, if you notice — because at this point in life we've all seen what we're familiar with in all these recurring problems.

For me it's like clockwork. Around 8 o'clock — I can check the time whenever it happens — I've had my dinner, I'm sitting down, about to do my piano practice. And if the day has gone a certain way, a lot of pointless meetings and maybe I ran too much in the morning and I'm tired, there will be that twitch, and the thoughts will start to rise. Because all my life I'm a depressive — I have a depressive mind, let's say. It hasn't changed. But when those thoughts arise, you have to see what it is.

You didn't cause it. It's a twitch — a spasm — because, the same as a muscle, the mind has been put through the grinder. It's been put through all that stress, and it has not been given enough nourishment. So that produces the problem. But when the thoughts are coming...

Even if the thought itself is depressive — let's say the thought says "I would rather not exist" — what is the "I" the thought is referencing? That is immediately seen. Once you have this realization, what is the "I" the thought is referencing? That is not I. The "I" in the thought is just referencing that agent which produces the thought.

That's the assumption that there's an agent producing the thought. And when the thought says "I," it's referencing back to that assumed agent which does not exist and is not you. And that just kills and snuffs out the problem. Because then you can observe it in many other ways.

You don't have to observe it as the "I" which came packaged with the thought. You can look at it as... you can look at it as the laughing Buddha. You can adopt all the personas that your mind has learned through these teachings, through the gurus that resonated. If you've seen Ramana Maharshi's portrait — which a lot of you would have seen — what resonated with you in that is that beautiful smile, that loving, gentle smile.

And it isn't just a photo. You have recognized, you have understood what that smile is. And so you can then apply that loving, gentle smile to that thought, which is just a twitching process with no culprit behind it. No one to blame, no one to fix.

And it will be fixed by treating it gently and seeing what the actual cause was. So it always goes back to what is meant by "I." The thought can never contain any information about what is meant by that — what is meant by "I". Even though the word will be there, the "I" will be there, it will talk about the Self, there can be thoughts about Awareness, but they contain no information about what Awareness is.

It's impossible for thought to contain that information. The only reason this conversation can happen is because beyond the thought, you know what it is to be aware. That's important — that where that knowledge is not coming from thought, that is Self-knowledge. So there's the actual Self, and when a thought says "I" or "me" or "you" or "us," that is never the actual Self.

All right. Who wants to ask a question? Yes. Henriette.

QHi. I'll try to make this as coherent as I can. It's kind of related to what you said, but I was kind of prepared to ask this question anyway. So some people talk about spiritual bypassing. The way I understand that is that some people, when they go down this path of nonduality or such things, will ignore their feelings with this idea that "oh, I'm not the person, so that doesn't matter, who cares about that."

And then other people will talk about how this is not something we should do, which I also kind of feel like — repressing or ignoring feelings is probably not good. So where I get kind of confused in this whole thing is, I feel like if feelings want to come up, one should let them and let them just do their thing. But... if I sort of consciously try to let feelings come up, or just, okay, let's just deal with this, okay, go ahead, do your thing — it inevitably gets entangled with thoughts and stories and rumination, which I don't want to do. So I don't want to get bogged down in stories and rumination, but I want to sort of allow the feelings to come out, or pass through, or whatever it is that they're trying to do.

So my question is basically: do you think it's important to feel the feelings that come up, and if yes, how does one avoid getting entangled in thoughts? Because in my case, thoughts inevitably come along with them — there's a story built around that particular emotion, and then I start thinking, and then it's like, no, no, no, I don't want this. But then I don't want to be pushing the thoughts away, so it's just like, okay, let the thoughts be, don't mind the thoughts — and I get all bogged down in that whole thing.

NOkay, good question, and glad you could make it this time.

So look, it's all about again being clear on what you are. You are what is aware. So when a thought or feeling arises, there's no question of you being able to avoid it. You will be aware of it. That is the role of Awareness.

Awareness cannot be unaware. When a thought has arisen, or a feeling has arisen, that is going to be perceived exactly as it arises — how intense it is, whatever it is — you cannot change that. But then, as in the Ashtavakra Gita, in the latest chapter, Janaka says, "Therefore I neither accept nor renounce." You get to that point because you are the Awareness.

Who is accepting or rejecting is again part of another thought which is arising. It's just the thought — in the thought there's the, "Oh, I should accept this," which has agency to accept this, or avoid it, or reject it. That is the wrong "I." Whenever thought speaks of I, it cannot correctly speak of I, because thought, as I said, can never contain information about what you are.

Thought cannot understand you. Because you are prior. You are more fundamental. You are the Awareness in which the thought can take shape. So it can try to reference — okay.

But even with simpler things, like a rose: if someone has never seen a rose, thought can never describe to that mind what a rose is. But after the rose has been experienced, then thoughts can talk about roses. So thought is using, and mixing up, and confusing, what is meant by I. And so we take our stand — and that stand is also built by the clarification of thought — but the stand is: "I am what is aware."

The rest is not talking about what I am. It is the experience of what's going on in all these bodies, all these minds, in all the different worlds. It's just clarity. Always coming back to clarity on what is meant by "I."

Can you stop a thought, or feel a thought more or less, or can you avoid the feeling that comes with thought?

QNo, I guess my question was kind of more like... how to sort of encourage... I mean, I absolutely intellectually understand that emotions and thoughts are going to come and I will be aware of them whether I like it or not. But how to sort of encourage the emotions to come — I'm not sure if I can explain it. I don't want to try to ignore them.

I know that Awareness is going to be aware no matter what, but this one, I don't want it to be repressing it. I want it to be allowing it to come up, but without getting entangled in it — I guess that's what I'm trying to ask. Is there a way for me to encourage them to just go ahead and come out without... I mean, there are different methods that different people talk about, like body awareness and things like that, but inevitably I get involved in the story of whatever the emotion is tied to. I don't know if I'm making any sense, honestly. Every time I try to explain something it comes out way different than what I'm trying to say.

Do you know what I mean at all?

NYes. But it will always seem like we're speaking at cross purposes.

QI know.

NI just want you to go back to the one fact, which will change how this works.

When we say we should let the emotions come out or whatever, it's all still assuming an agency which is not your concern. It's not your role.

QYes. Okay.

NWe can talk about how should we make the mind calmer and so on, and that's well known — because you take some time off and you sit quietly, or you go for a walk, and all that helps. That's pretty well known. It's just our lives are busy, or whatever, and so on. And then, silence is the cure in that sense, because in silence the emotion will come out. In sitting quietly in the dark, the emotion will come out.

And yes, I think the one thing the mind should do is always try to remain true. Follow the path to the truth. If you're trying to avoid what has happened, not look it in the face and so on — that is where it goes wrong. Then you're creating the wrong stories and the wrong...

I'm not good with conventional answers.

QNo, no, I don't need conventional answers. I just wanted to hear [laughter] what you thought.

NThanks. Thank you, Hannah. You had a hand up.

QI did. I put it down again. I just wanted to say — I was going to say really quickly, Henriette, that I really related to that. I put my hand down when you said body awareness, because if what you're going through is that, you can't just let it all flow and you're trying to relate differently between the thoughts and the feelings.

I mean, you said body awareness. I just only found that really recently.

QDid it actually start to make any difference?

QI just really focused on what the body's feeling and sort of following that around. [unclear] — much more honest, you know.

QYeah. Sorry — I literally said body awareness because I saw you put your hand up and I thought she's going to say something about body awareness. So that's why I said that, because I knew you were going to say that. I don't know why, but I knew.

QYeah. I find the head — if what you're wanting to do, if what the feeling is wanting to do is to feel, then just following that around... the head doesn't have any room. You will do it afterwards, like Nabeel said — there's no one even driving the thoughts or choosing or anything like that. But if you're having trouble getting to the depth of something and you want the mind out of the way, for sure.

NSo, one thing that helped me, I believe, was seeing — what is the baseline?

You get caught in a kind of storm. Sometimes it's highs, sometimes it's lows, but what is the baseline? Is it just nothing? Is it just depression? Because when you're depressed, you feel that's the baseline. The baseline is desolate, desert, nothing — no feeling, a pain in a way. It's a pain of not having feeling. But then through this inquiry you question: what is it like just to be aware?

If you're not referencing the moods that come because of thought, what is that baseline? And then the baseline is very beautiful. It is not a desolate nothing. It is the peace — what is called ananda, in a way. "Bliss" completely misses the mark, but if we call it the bliss of sleep then it kind of makes sense. It's just the perfect peace of being aware, of being here.

And then there are these peaks and troughs, and the feelings are just deviations from that norm. No matter how far we go from the norm, things always revert to the mean. First of all, that knowledge is there — that it will always revert to the mean. That is the baseline, the ground. And then the deviations start to weaken.

You might deal with your drama or whatever, but then because the baseline now is known, it's calming the whole storm. I don't know why... because you had those highs and lows — a lot of it is because of the confusion of what you are. As you understand the baseline, you understand what you are. Now, what will take you so high? Because the thought cannot grab you in the same way. It cannot snowball. It cannot.

It's like things wind down just to that basic point. And what you're talking about does happen in a way — you deal with the emotions and whatever — but the core reason that is happening is that you are realizing what you are.

Oh, I don't know if Hannah wanted to go again. Is your hand still up? Oh, sorry. All right, Neil. Are we good?

QGood morning, everyone. Morning, Nabeel.

In my past life — I'm reverting to the past this morning — I was reading "I Am That" just a couple of days ago, and one of the... I guess this is slightly divergent from what you're talking about. It's slightly different. But it was about the guru, and I guess with Nisargadatta, he would have had, in his time, all these people coming to visit him, and that was a major aspect. I think in my time, when I was younger, the guru was of ultimate importance — or so it seemed at that particular time. And some of his thoughts and responses about how important that is were quite interesting. In one part he was saying, "Well, you don't need one," and then, as he often does, he totally contradicts himself: "You can't possibly move on unless you have a guide, a guru, a teacher" — whatever name you want to put on it. So there are so many contradictions. As I say, in my previous life I had a guru, and it was like he was the main man — that was it, that was kind of the focus in many, many ways. But I guess my question, or what I wonder and how you feel about it, is this: the thing that struck me was, "No, the guru actually shows you the Sadguru inside." You look to this figure, this wise man, but it's actually the true guru isn't that person at all — it's the one that's inside. I found that quite fascinating and quite intriguing. And I've got to ask — I seem to remember you saying once that your guru was Nisargadatta.

Please forgive me if I got that wrong.

NYeah, I mean, yes — Nisargadatta is the guru closest to my heart. See, when Nisargadatta in those dialogues has a certain technique. When someone goes and asks him a question, first of all he's probing and finding out from what standpoint this person is asking, and he wants to shift that standpoint to the absolute standpoint. So if someone asks him about whether you need a guru, and he can see that this person is asking about a physical guru — being in their presence all the time and soaking up their energy or something — then he will say, "No, you don't need the guru, you don't need it that way." But to someone else he will say, "The guru's grace is necessary." But then he's talking about the actual guru. The Sadguru is the Absolute. By being that only, by being that, can you realise the truth. If you are not that, you can never realise the truth — you're just the thought talking. And so, depending on the standpoint, either there's no need for a guru, or the guru is necessary. To me, the best guru is a dead guru — [laughter] — because it clears away all the problems that come with gurus. Is it a charlatan? Does he want my money? Is he going to abuse me?

If you choose a guru who did it with nothing in it for them, you have the repository of knowledge there. Soak it up. The real guru will then sprout in your heart. I never met Nisargadatta, but it is as if he came and knocked me right back into what he wanted to explain. You can read it — it doesn't have to be a physical presence. Physical presence of what? Because the guru is saying there are no sentient entities. What physical presence are you looking for? With Sri Ramana Maharshi, his Sadguru was the mountain in which he lived — Arunachala. It meant something to him. He's not just saying this thing is a Sadguru, because it taught him: as you go through your journey, there will be that inner voice, that inner wisdom pouring out, and that is your Sadguru. And it can be a mountain, it can be a sunset — [laughter] — when it teaches you. But in the end, the Sadguru is the Self.

Because the only way to learn and understand all this is because you are aware — because you are already That.

QYeah. Thank you for that. It's amazing how all those years, it's like it's all inside of you. That's the end of it.

That's where it begins and ends. And I guess that's the thing — shedding the external problems, issues, misconceptions, misunderstandings. But yeah, thank you for that.

NSomeone was telling me about a course they did, which had a profound effect on them.

But as you heard them tell about the course, and they're aware of it, to most people it's like a cult — it's got its pyramid marketing and all that. And a lot of nonduality has become — I don't know the exact percentage — some portion of what is true, and the rest is profit-making, maximising profit. So even if you come across something that gives you 50% truth and 50% maximising profit, you can get something out of it. But it is also a risk of getting lost.

So that's why you should find the one source which resonates as really true — which doesn't have those qualities, which you can't even suspect of that. Like — I don't know, he's not here today — but we always talk about it: you find that one teaching and it's perfect, and you know, if I understood this one teaching, that is it, I'm done. You find that...

QI'm here, by the way.

I also wanted to make a comment now that you found me. [laughter] So maybe it's kind of... so Awareness — if you start with Awareness and just go to the depth of it, it's kind of recursive, to the point that Henriette was making. So you've got feelings, they come up. The thoughts will accompany that. You can't help it. They also come up, and you're acutely aware of that. Awareness is acutely aware of those feelings and thoughts, because that's the job of Awareness — it cannot help it. Then what's the... how do you get out of it? Awareness — for me, Awareness is also aware that it is aware of those feelings. So if you take that stand, you can put a bit of a distance between yourself and the... selected twitching that you were talking about.

Nabeel, what is the mechanism of — I mean, by definition you are acutely feeling that, and it's all-consuming. It could be all-consuming. How do you get out of it? It feels like... so, Awareness is also aware that it's aware of the feeling. It's hard to say, but it's a way of putting a bit of distance between yourself and those things that are consuming you. And I guess, take your... go to that — what you say — take your stand on that side. It helps. I don't know if it makes sense, but yeah.

NSo what I was describing — when this twitch appears at night, sometimes on work days, mostly... now I'm going on holiday so I think it'll disappear for a while. But when it comes, it's not the same as it used to be.

Because when you don't know, when you're just relying on thoughts to define what you are, they can drag you down to the bottom of the pit and keep you there for a while. But now, as this comes up — and initially it might seem like you need to do it consciously — but as Awareness, you see: oh, this thought is not referencing what I am. It's not expressing an opinion that is true in the absolute sense. It's just the opinion in this thought right now, and it is coming with this package of emotion, which is depressive. Fine. Fine. As Awareness, the depths and the highs go up both high and low. I've experienced much worse and much better. All of us have, probably. A human life will never reach the bottom of the pit nor the highest peak. Sometimes you go to those elated or extreme experiences, then you see how high does it go, how low does this go. So as it is happening, there is an acceptance, just because you know this thought is not talking about what I am. It is not caused by a culprit that needs to have anything done about it. There's no agency. It's a bit of that look that I talked about — Ramana's look. What is that look? Try to understand.

Just a loving calm, with a little smile, with a hint of... whatever hits him. Bone cancer, whatever hits him, it will be accepted. It will be lived out, because that is the way, that is how it is. And Awareness cannot say no. Whoever says no is part of the thought arising. It's just the thought arising. Whoever says yes, now I will live like this, is also part of the thought arising, because Awareness has always been this way. And then in the heart — which is not ruling what's going on here. When the mind is ruling it, the heart gets encrusted, and then these things can take over. But when the heart also has a voice now, in a way — when you're looking from there — that is the difference. Because you have taken your stand from a different place. [unclear] likes this one, I think — or was it Max? — "Take your stand in the Absolute."

I plant my feet there and then come what may. Often in my dreams there's this recurring thing where a huge tidal wave comes and it's just inevitable. What do you do? You just take it. There's no outrunning it. Nothing. And that is from the mind's perspective — giving up the idea that it, as a single thing in the universe, has some bit of control over this bit of space within a certain frame of time. And once you give up the control... Who has given up the control? It's just that it was thought assuming more control than was available.

Yeah, go ahead.

QThe issue of control — that word... It's all illusion, isn't it? I mean, we don't have control over anything in our life, only how we choose to respond to it. Do we not?

NThis is one of those depressive thoughts, though. See, when it says "we don't have any control" — where's the "we" that has come in that thought?

Now you, as Awareness, should immediately... I'm not saying you don't have any control. Once it is clear what you are, there's no desire for control. There's no question of there being any other will other than that will which is your will. But your will is different from how the mind conceives of it, because it's splitting things up. So there are many cross purposes and different willpowers fighting against each other.

QBut once... there's still desire — sorry — there's still desire, even if it's to want to see this for what it is and to experience the truth of this. There's still desire, even if there... is the desire that I know... that's the question you keep pointing to — who is wanting this?

And I can't get an answer.

NYeah, because the question is stopping that kind of thinking in its tracks. It has no answer. Like I said, the thought can never contain knowledge of you, what you really are. So when a thought says, "But I still have desire" — that "I" which is in the thought is the wrong "I."

It's just using a synonym, which I also have to use when I'm pointing back to you. It's the wrong "I." What "I" is it talking about? There's no such "I." Desire arises. When mothers have to give birth, pregnant women have to give birth, you give them an injection of — I've forgotten the name — but it makes them want to give birth, it makes it easier. The stimulation, the desire to do it... before that there was a lot of fear and so on, but if you have enough of that chemical, you have the desire to go through with it.

Something traumatic, something so difficult — if you look at it as a man, it's hard to not see how dramatic it was. I cannot see how women are so courageous. It's so formidable, what they do. That day my wife went to have a child... What causes that? Even the acceptance there — you can see it was some injection that helped.

So there is a process taking place. Nobody owns the desires and so on. However, because the desire is experienced — when we say something is mine, what we are actually saying, what is actually mine, is the intimacy. I know this so deeply that it is mine.

It's not someone else's desire. That sounds absurd too. This is not someone else's thought. It's me who's experiencing it. So there's some truth to that, and that is the intimacy of the experience being known firsthand.

So okay, let's consider a thought experiment. It helps clarify things. So imagine... cinemas already are stunning and so on, but imagine we improved that experience and now you can experience the movie through any of the characters. So you experience it perfectly as that character. You can watch it as the hero — AI immersion, but beyond what we have today — it's so perfect that when you go into it, it's perfect.

When you get shot, it hurts. "Ah, I'm dying!" [laughter] Because you are experiencing that, and that cannot be denied. Awareness experiences each and every activity in perfection, as it is. And that's why, when there's a question of can we accept it more or not — there's just no plausible way that is possible in Reality. It's only the process you could control a bit, so that the pain goes down and so on, but Awareness will experience it as true — true to what is actually going on.

Okay, so going back to control — in the same thought experiment, when you were playing the role of the hero or the villain, you will feel in control. "My devious plan is hatched," and whatever — you would feel in control because you're experiencing it so intimately. And that's how life can be lived out. This is my life, in that sense, because I know it so intimately from the point of birth to death.

I have the perfect knowledge of this life. There can be no more knowledge of this life than you possess. How do you know this life so deeply? This body, whatever it's doing — how do you know it so well?

So there is then the truth that when we're talking about bodies and minds as separate things, that's also completely wrong. The form itself is Emptiness. And as the form changes and goes through whatever that is — being experienced because the Emptiness is aware, was always aware — and then the form started taking shape from the Emptiness, it gets experienced until the form dissipates back to where it was, what it always was. So when the questions of control and so on come up, just talking of Reality as in — it doesn't exist, it's not like that.

Who cares about control or not? It's only the thing that assumes that they are separate beings with separate purposes and so on.

QI have this image in my head that there is just complete darkness, but there is light in the darkness. And everything is emerging as a blip — peaks and, like a heartbeat. This image is like a plant pops up, then it dies.

An animal, a bird, is born, then it dies. And this image is like everything is this blip in this Emptiness — start, peak, end; start, peak, end. And when I look at that, I'm like, well, I'm not experiencing this. This is just an image in my head.

So where is this memory, this image of creation, coming from? Is it just a thought? But I've been seeing this since I was ten. It's a recurring thing that I've had all through my life, and I could never understand it.

NSee, the mind is an amazing instrument, and it can build us these visual representations — or experiential representations — which get close to the truth. And what you're seeing is amazing. I don't know... I don't know, because I don't know what it is. It's still an experience, but it is representing this truth that form is Emptiness and Emptiness is form, and each life must take place in the singularity which has never split.

All the knowledge you have gained is telling you the same thing. The big bang was not an explosion. It was an expansion. So everything is still one singularity. Life starts and ends exactly back at the same point, and multiple lives are happening in parallel. What you're talking about is a mental representation of your understanding, and maybe the understanding started very early, which is amazing because it's intuitive. Now you're saying you're not experiencing what the model is telling you. You're not experiencing it. But think about it — how would the experience be, as the Emptiness? As the Emptiness there's no experience, and then there's a blip. The experience is entirely of that blip, and then that blip is gone, and then again there's nothing, and then all these blips happen in parallel, and each is experienced perfectly as a separate blip.

That's what's happening. You are experiencing it. So the way to see that is to then look at the boundary — even in this life, you have experience, then you don't have it, then you have it, then you don't have it. So you look at that boundary and you see: oh, actually one part of my mind seemingly gets it, but the other part had this stark boundary between life and death, experience and no experience. But actually it's not stark — you're there, and suddenly there's experience, and nothing changed about you. You were there. [clears throat]

QInteresting.

Thank you for explaining. I've been dumbfounded by this for a long time. Thank you.

NI think it was in this latest video where I talked about the Heart Sutra a bit as well, and I talked about what Janaka is saying. He's saying — and Janaka, the way he speaks, this has all happened in a dialogue — so this is trying to show you he has not had any additional amazing experience within the span of the dialogue. Ashtavakra just pointed him back to what he is. He accepts it and he says, "I'm done." And then he talks about the tranquil state of knowing Self alone is rare, even among those who own but a loin cloth.

So it cannot be expected that in each and every life you can know what Sri Ramana Maharshi went through, or what [unclear] was talking about as the Absolute. You can't get there as a state. You can get there as a perfect understanding. If you really, really want it, you might get it as a state, but there's nothing there to see, because it's just the point where there's no blip — it's going out of your current blip and coming back to the same blip.

So what's the point? So Janaka says that because it's so rare, he doesn't care. He might have it, he might not have it, but he has seen the truth. And so in my commentary what I say is: look, we only have been passed on these teachings because all those great teachers came back. If Sri Ramana Maharshi had stayed in that cave in the catatonic state, who would say he's such an amazing... he's Bhagavan and so on?

Nisargadatta came back, and he said, "Oh, beingness is like the smell of urine," but he came back. That's why he's talking. Then he wants to get rid of it again and go back to being what he is. But that was also his persona. He's just using it as a teaching device. And in the Heart Sutra it is most beautifully expressed — when Avalokiteshvara comes back,

he doesn't say, "Listen, Sariputra, you've got to experience what I just experienced. You've just got to..." He says, "Listen, this form itself is Emptiness." So this body is also Emptiness. The thought arising is also Emptiness. What is going wrong is the content of the thought.

The information in the thought is taken as somehow more important — more... expressing something more important — than the actual fact of the thought being perceived. That is the actual knowledge. The content of the thought is just the entertainment.

QI get it. [laughter] Thank you.

So now depressive thoughts are depressive and hilarious at the same time.

NYes. So I can sit there, feel the depression, and laugh at it. [laughter] And also laugh at it and then play the piano, because the piano is so beautiful. And then the thoughts go away, because they can't take root — they said life only gives you loops.

The hooks are yours. Just straighten your hooks and you are free. So when the thought comes with the loop, you don't put your hook in it. You just look at it.

What is it? What it is really expressing, quite clearly, is that you are what is aware. And all these great sages come back and say, "Oh, the Self is pure Awareness." And then the thought says you are aware. There's no contradiction.

It is explaining to you what you are.

QGosh, just listening to you say this... I'm a very visual person and my brain makes a lot of images, and what I'm seeing is myself with every part of my body tied into pretzel knots — by me. [laughter] [clears throat] Nobody's ever done anything to this one. [laughter] This one's just been creating all of this up-and-down roller coaster of emotions and pain for all of its life. This insane mind is crazy.

No blame for anyone. It's all on this one. It's crazy stuff. [laughter]

N[laughter] I mean, you're not even experiencing a thing. [laughter] The thing here is like a colony — a colony of 30 trillion cells working in concert. And you hear the symphony of that colony in action.

That is one blip multiplied by infinity. I also had some visual experiences, more early on. The first one — the next day is when the real search in earnest began. It was very visual. I was using this meditation app, Waking Up, if you've heard of it — Sam Harris, that guy.

[laughter] So I was listening, and I went beyond the guided one and went a bit deeper. And then visually I saw, in the empty space, all thoughts or sensations represented as bricks of light — as stars, let's say. And there was no central authority. I knew this logically — I knew there's no central authority in the brain — but then you see it.

Visually seeing it can be very powerful. It's like, oh, what am I? There's nothing here. Nothing. Wow.

[laughter] But that was the half answer. "Nothing here" is not "I Am." Later on I found out...

...and then he throws you back. You thought, "Oh, okay, I'm starting to understand nonduality. There's no self." "Oh, but that's still a bit depressing, isn't it?" So as it becomes clear that the thoughts are never speaking of you, then the question "Who am I?" is an even more powerful pointer — because then that stops the next thought, and instead of looking in the thought for an answer, you see what you are.

When you say, with all this kind of sinking in, then you say "Who am I?" — or "What am I?" — you know the answer is not in the thought, but in being this present, aware fact. So you ask "Who am I?" And it's not you asking. It's now a friendly thought helping you stop the other one asking — well, what is this "I"? And the "I" that is you is always there, always the same. So always available to notice. So in all the teachings, I find Ramana Maharshi's very basic instruction — which seems for beginners maybe, it is also the most powerful — it still works at the most advanced level, whatever level, because it is simply pointing you back to the core truth and the fact of what is the Self.

QYeah. Guess it's this morning. It just seems — the thing that I picked up from him, from the book at least, was the "I Am" meditation — "I Am That" — and I found it, if that's the right way of describing it, effective. I can't think of a better word. It certainly is very powerful. Once again, I hate the word meditation actually, but that thing — that taking you back.

And I recently came across another — I'm not even sure which book it's from or when it was — but the next one was the saying: "I Am" is "I Am Unborn." And I found — you recognise what I'm talking about. And I found that, just like you talk about levels — I don't know if it's a level, or it's an expansion on a way of focusing on the "I Am" — but that word "unborn"... it's almost like, just by saying it, or thinking it, or dwelling on it, it seems like that is what that is. That place — the real us, the real... I can't put it there. There isn't a word.

That is that place. And it was just that different nuance — that change from just "I Am" to "I Am Unborn." You think, well, that's nothing, but it's like, no — there's so much in that. I guess you've been there.

NYeah, that same statement. Yes. And there are many aspects of what this is expressing. "I am unborn, was never born, cannot be born." It's also from that older Self — when you realize it, it's like, oh, I am unborn — that previous ego was born and now he's unborn. Unborn. What does it mean?

He had an even more ridiculous statement — something about his unborn children being the same as the ones which were born. He's resetting the idea that being born is somehow different to never being born. Because there are no separate sentient entities. What are we talking about? I liked it. He says, "I am the child of a barren woman. I am the child of a barren woman." He didn't say, "I am a child." He said, "Consciousness is a child of a barren woman." Got that one. Because if he says "I," he's moving — it's putting him in the position of not being the Absolute. But once he took that stand, no, he's not budging. Which is the true I. Even from that perspective, being the unborn Consciousness — Consciousness was born. I was not born. When birth happened, what happened? Consciousness appeared. The knowledge "I am" appeared. That is the birth. And I was there to witness that. And this I is the absolute I.

Never born.

QYeah. It's just quite inspiring. So thank you for that.

NYes, [unclear].

QSo I'm...

I'm easily aware of the intimacy of Consciousness, of Awareness, within this character, this manifestation of Awareness. The thing that just blows my mind is when I look and I'm talking to Nabeel or to Hannah or to other people — they're not there either. Their Awareness as well is playing out in the form of a person that looks like it has an identity, because there's a personality and there's conditioning and there's a social structure and everything that they fit within. So that creates the world that we're in.

The thing that stops that recognition of the other not being an individual as well is when you get what appears to be good and evil in the world. Yeah. The emotion comes into it. Then the emotion — the intimate experience that you described so beautifully — comes into what is going on.

And it just feels so harsh that it's all just Awareness playing out these... good and evil.

NI mean, it is tragic, in a way — if Awareness was aware of and created a world through conscious choice, that's how the mind imagines it. Why would it create this situation? This was not created consciously.

Why would you create a world where one thing has to eat another thing to survive? Only a cruel god would do it. But we find there is no cruel god. There was no intention. And Awareness is choiceless. It is the base Reality.

And because it is the base Reality, when things happen in Reality, they get experienced. And so, as both the victim and the perpetrator, both sides will be witnessed. Experienced as if you are the perpetrator, as if you are the victim. And there's no way to change that, except if that thought process recognizes that the self that it held as God... What everybody actually operates as is not obedient to any god they believe in, but to themselves. The "me" is the actual god.

If you see the falsity of that god, that is what fixes the good and evil conundrum — because all evil is carried out from the selfish standpoint. First you start with yourself, then there's your small circle, then there's a group. If you're a predator, just an animal, it's again this sense of hunger. "I, me, want to eat." It's all based on the wrong... it's the blinder that has been put in place through evolution, which is a survival game.

The process over time has put blinders on, so that the real Self is hidden in plain sight. But there's the idea that "I am this organism," and that function is operating at full speed ahead — because that's just what it is. Until, in humans, there's enough capacity that if the question is raised — what is this "I"? What is this self? — then we can cut through that barrier. These are blinders because of the conditioning of the organism itself, because the organism is designed to survive and spread its gene pool and all that.

And so even in the case of the worst villains in humanity, the Awareness was the same, but the sense of the small self was so strong. It was never questioned. Its ideals were never questioned. That's how we go around when we never question my ideals, my righteous opinions and all that. My religion, my race.

But the blips are small and few, and the Absolute is permanent. And so the scales are more than balanced. But that is why I like Nisargadatta's last few dialogues, because they're so open. That is his honest view of Consciousness — it is, to him at that point, worthless.

There's some worth in it. He was perhaps too harsh in how he wanted to explain himself. But in terms of gain and loss, there's nothing from being born. I gain nothing from being born, and I will lose nothing at that.

QJust one more thing to carry on from there. In a lot of the nondual talks that I've heard on YouTube, they speak about Awareness, awareness of true nature, as being peace and love. That can't really be if Awareness is just Awareness. There's no experience to just be. When experience is present and your attention turns back to the true Self, then you realize yes, I am the silence. I am the peace.

And the love is just natural in that knowledge. But the Absolute is prior to any experience. Love, the feeling of love, is an experience. The felt peace is also an experience.

NBut there's a deeper peace which is not what most of these teachings are like. There's a desire that the base Reality should be just some high kind of happy feeling, but that's not true — and it's also not untrue. When I had the cessation — it was a few times — when you emerge from cessation, which means the absolute gap between experience: no experience, no time, no space... when you emerge, that first experience does not attract you as much, because you know you're already in a perfect state. It is not an experiential state, but it is the perfect state.

Because look — what would be perfect to Reality? What would seem perfect would be the baseline, the ground zero. That is perfect. Then there are highs and lows, which are okay for a while, but if you stay there too long it becomes... you know. So there's a deeper truth to it, but often the more flippant version is what's presented, which is not true. Even in normal circles, when someone dies, we say "rest in peace" — realizing that resting in peace, to not be conscious, is to be resting in peace.

QYeah, I have this question coming and going, which is: how is it possible that Awareness can lose Awareness, or can be veiled by X and Y? It looks like Awareness can be hidden somehow.

NGood question. So look at it this way. Awareness is always aware. But if there's nothing to be aware of, what is the difference between being aware and not aware? If we just narrow it down to sound — if there is no sound, is there some difference between listening and not listening?

There's no difference. But when the sound appears, as soon as the sound is heard, you know there was listening. But what is moving?

QI'm sorry to interrupt, but I lose my train of thought... it looks to me that — how can I say this?

It looks like in the world there are many events that are not directly... it looks like those events are from unawareness. When there are those wars, horrible things going on, it looks like Awareness is not present.

NSo that is the not being aware of what the Self is — that is different from just being aware.

You're not saying that Awareness is not aware, or... it doesn't match. How can it be? Awareness cannot not be aware. No. Awareness is just the quality of being aware. There's no intrinsic knowledge in being aware, except that whatever arises, it will be known. The knowledge of what the Self is is called Self-realization. That is rare.

Each life in which that is realized is precious, because most lives are lived in complete ignorance. Almost all lives are lived in ignorance of what the Self is. But the ignorance is also just at the level of thought, because this Awareness is always aware of each and everything happening. If in that Awareness the voice comes up and keeps saying, "Oh, I'm this little thing," and so on — it's just a little thing.

The fact of what Awareness is does not change. But occasionally the question arises: what is this little thing? Where is the thing that's aware? And then that thing shuts up for a little bit. [laughter] And Self-knowledge can shine, both because it requires there to be the knowledge "I am" and that knowledge not being hooked to a wrong identity.

QBut how is it possible — I mean, why is it a recognition happening only in such a few people? I don't even know how to say this. How is it possible that this recognition is only for you?

NYes, you're right. I mean, once you see it, then it's absurd. How could this sham be pulled off? How did I get so fooled by a simple thought? The "me" thought — a single thought fooled this brilliant mind, whatever, the big brain, whatever. So that is the conditioning. In Buddhism they often talk about conditioning. It is so strong because the entire process here is built around that belief in me being a separate thing. The experience is built for that too. The pain and the pleasure — it tells you, "Oh, if you hit the wall, it's going to hurt." So the wall's not you. However, the wall is the mind.

But the experience is designed in a way to segregate this part — me — that part — danger. That is the conditioning. It's hard to break through the conditioning. As long as the whole game has been set up as a survival game — and not by someone, but just because of how things happened — it's ended up being a survival game. And so when things need to survive and go from simpler to more complex, even the most complex will have this very strong conditioning on thinking of itself as a separate thing in the world, with the need to survive.

And so the Awareness is of whatever is going on in the organism in the process. But the Awareness is not of "this organism is wrong," because that happens in the organism — the computation that realizes, "Oh, I am wrong." I got a question in a comment from Murad. I think he said how can the inferior know the superior — like, how can the small self give itself up and realize the Self? He was being rhetorical, I think. His comments are always very amazing. But see, the inferior can never know the superior. The inferior is this organism and its activity — the brain and even the thoughts. They can never know the superior, which is Awareness, which is the Self. But what happens — and that's how Ramana Maharshi describes it — is the self, the false self, bows its head in shame and admits, "I am not the thing that is conscious."

As soon as it admits that, the Self is there, shining as the Self. Awareness is the actual Self. It was always there, and all the nonsense was operating through that conditioning.

QYeah, I don't even understand how mind works — how all this stuff going on inside what I would say is my mind. I don't even understand why. What is it? Where does it take its energy? Where is it coming from? Why is it so powerful? Why is it a part of Awareness? Is it created by Awareness? This mind — where does it take its energy, its power to condition so much?

NThat's the step-by-step process — that's where I find science very fascinating, because it explains step by step how you can go from tiny little wave particles to these very complex things at such an immense scale.

Yeah, it is. In that sense, it's mind-boggling. But it's also inevitable when the baseline is infinity. You're starting with infinity. The infinity is an absolute nothing.

However, how the mind thinks of nothing is that nothing will always stay nothing. But actually in Reality, nothing contains the potential of anything — all possibilities. That is nothing: where there's the potential, but nothing there yet, no time, no space. And with that infinity, there's bound to be this, and many others.

You take it step by step. When I speak, I often say too much. So the mind is a mechanism for this body to survive. So the mind is strictly bounded to the body.

It's not aware. It doesn't take anything from Awareness — it's just a process, a mechanical process, elaborating any kind of inputs. See, when we think through how the body behaves and does different things and so on, Consciousness is not required for any of it. The scientists can explain everything. But still, I find there's an assumption there. You can't get this process going without Consciousness. Why did this conditioning have to hone itself for pain and pleasure? Why did the brain evolve with all this capacity, expanded just to stitch together all the various senses into one coherent thing which you experience? There's a feedback loop. Consciousness is somehow there — a feedback loop which allows this organism to learn.

And again, the problem is we're cutting things off with stark boundaries. Even the body — these are all semi-permeable membranes. It's not a completely distinct object. It's many tiny things working together. All the membranes — they can be breached. All the boundaries the mind is using to try to think through this — you question the boundaries, and then it starts to dawn on you. Oh, that boundary was not fixed. That's not fixed.

Okay, thanks. All right, any last questions before we end?

All right, wishing you all happy holidays, and we'll probably have the next session after Christmas. Thank you. Happy Christmas, everybody. Happy holidays, everyone.