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This is the Tuesday Talk September 29, 2026. Tuesday Talks is a gathering on Zoom of devotees from the Ramakant Maharaj USA visit. This is a gathering of devotee’s to discuss and clarify the teachings of Sri Ramakant Maharaj. These spontaneous utterances are recorded and shared with anyone who may find them useful.
Jai Sadguru!

Tuesday Talk September 29, 2026
Transcribed by TurboScribe. With minimal edits.

Q: Jai Guru. Okay. There's a lot of spinning today.

It's okay. Just remember, in the middle of the storm there's no movement.

John: Indeed. Some food body problems with chest cold that kept me like away, like in bed basically for a week. It was crazy.

Q: Time for a rest.

John: Yeah.

Q: Yes. All these body things sometimes just let it go or make a story of it.

John: Indeed. Well, luckily, I could work from home. I called in sick two days and then I worked from home the rest of the days.

But there were days where I was just like waking up kind of in and out of consciousness drinking Alka-Seltzer cold medicine and then sleeping again. And just like, yeah, it was... But yeah, there was no story about it or even like when is it going to end or anything like that.

And the cool thing was just waking up and then taking medicine, going back to sleep, watching a little TV, sleeping again. It was just natural.

Q: That's it. It's a big thing discovering with non-duality. No more guilty. No more shame. No more all this stuff. No, things are like this, they are like that. It's okay. It's not wonderful. No, no. It's not a matter of wonderful or no repress, no grab. Just what can I do? I do the best I can do right now with that situation and that's it. And what I do realize and I don't want to say all the time, but most of the time is less I put myself in, easier it is.

John: I don't exist.

Q: That's it. At the moment, I try to make things happen. Okay, I come in the bubble of illusion, like you say, and all the worry and all the trouble and all everything has come bigger and harder and off. Enough.

John: Indeed.

Q: Enough. That was the, that is the big gift for the end of this life is now I get that and it's not negotiable. This, I was so long time looking for this and that and trying this and that.

Oh yeah. All the lineage from Siddharameshwar, Nisargadatta, Ramakant, Ranjit, all the same thing on another way, but it's the same direction, no direction. And it takes time and I can more and more feel it like I start to be that, not only understand that, gradually start to be it, because I can observe on my today living, oh yeah, before you didn't act, you was reacting right now you are just watching.

Reaction happen and when even when it's happening it's very short, say what's suffering or you're free.

John: Spontaneous action in the moment and then forget it, that's it. Whatever needs in the moment, they arise, happen and finish and there's no carrying it around.

Q: It took a long time to really grab it. Take the water, drink the water, put back the whole, that's it. But the first time you told me that, not me, but you told that and I said oh yeah, okay. But there was something say yeah, but how I can be that, impossible. Anyway, we're gonna see and Mantra and takes time and now I just, oh okay, you're there. Okay, that's it.

And sometimes not, but I see growing, something like the onion, you remove, removing, removing, removing, removing, the ash on the removing the ashes, ashes, ashes. Finally it's just a piece of fire burning there and this fire, no problem with anything. Everything is welcome. And even welcome, it's over. It's another little illusion. Everything is like it is.

That's it. And the second thing took me time, like meditate on the meditator. Just just what is there? He's conscious of everything. Consciousness, that's it. And even right now I'm sometime, okay, take time and I feel everything is there and there's something say wow.
It's a long time you're looking, you got it there, you're there and something wanna go out of it. It's not totally uncomfortable. It's like a new shoes.

New shoes is you're happy to have them but not totally comfortable. It's a matter of resistance falling away gradually. Remove, like you said the brooming, the broomness.
Put the dust away and that's it. And the dust comes back, it's okay. Broom again. So simple but so unusual because too much but it's removing. It's removing.

John: Like you said in the beginning and everybody's spiritual journey, you get a wheelbarrow and you fill it full of spiritual books, spiritual knowledge, spiritual tapes and you just, you're seeking. You want more and more and more and more and more and more. And then like Maharaj says it's the end.

Final destination. Now you understand yes this is the reality. Now, for direct recognition of the reality that they're speaking about in the books and as you progress in your own Mantra, meditation, you'll begin to understand the books because that will be the way you're living now.

It'll no longer be like some kind of a concept over here of what is it like to have spirituality or enlightenment or any of these things. It's now a living. And then looking back and saying, aha yeah, this is understood.

These scenes appearing and disappearing without a me in them to try and cling or clutch anything. This is what they're speaking about. And when they talk about the fire burning brightly, I understand it's nothing new.

It was just covered with ash. That you are always was. It's just now there's a recognition because the ash has been removed.

All the fire is here, but fire never was not here or here. It's just fire. And then there's no like spectacular making a big celebration of, oh my gosh, now I understand.

No, because there's no one to understand. There's just the reality, the ultimate truth that you are. And because body is available, do your job, do your duties, take care of your responsibilities.

And now you're not struggling with all these mind created storms. Because you know, it's just illusion. Why? And the mind stops creating storms because it's kind of like, okay, well, you're not paying any attention. So what's the point? yeah.

Thoughts flow by and then you say, oh, thoughts are flowing by. What is the thought? Well, the thought is now the world. Because I no longer am identified as a body form. Thought is no longer a concept of being in my head. Thought is just the world and they come and go and flow and just, that's it.

Objects are appearing and disappearing, appearing and disappearing. You go right back to the dream and you say, oh yeah, I totally get it because in my dream I lay down, I'm sleeping. Suddenly a dream world's projected. I identify as an object within the dream to have a dream experience. Oh. And because the books say I'm formless, and I now understand myself as formless through Mantra and meditation, this world is exactly like the dream.

There's no difference, like zero difference. And people say, oh, well, what about the hard surfaces or if I put this mouse here in the waking state and I go to sleep, it'll still be here in the morning. But in a dream, nothing is the same. And yet there's an object within the formlessness in which a formless existence has an appearance of a form whether you're dreaming or in the waking state. So, the concept of having a body is the only difference. And even that, because you can have a dream body and you have a waking body.

Okay, what happens when the body is no more? Well, nothing, actually. So sorry to say, the egoistic self says, what do you mean? Like my life meant nothing? Well, no, it's not that way at all. You're an instrument experiencing in the illusory existence for a time.

When you don't know yourself, you appear to be a person having a life. When you know yourself, you're existing in existence as existence itself.

Q: As I remember a phrase of Nisargadatta Maharaj when he said, if when you dream, when if you go back to sleep the other night, if you came back at the same place when you leave your dream, you didn't, you cannot make out the difference. All the time, it's because they are cutting, so that's a dream world and that's my kind of reality, but it's the same thing. The only difference, there's no memory on the other one, so you don't remember, you don't come back at the same place, but that's the only way you can see a difference there, but that's it. And just be with that and absorb that gradually. That's a big step, but that's open a lot. When there's a true yes, it's okay. I agree. Not by my mind because some things came down and said, okay, this is it. That's reality.

All the rest, it's okay. It's solid, but it's not reality. It's phenomenal. Everything is phenomenal. It's okay. It's phenomenal, but that's not reality. Reality is reality. Phenomenal appears in reality. That's it.

But it's phenomenal. All these things are phenomenal. Nothing is wrong. It's because it's phenomenal. It's not true.

John: Selfless Self-conviction.

Q: That's conviction because I remember when I started to see you reading Ramakant and say conviction. I don't have conviction at all. When you understand with your head, that's knowledge. When it's going down, it's conviction. There's no more thinking about it. There's no more doubt. It's conviction. You say, oh, this is it. Okay, now I see. The game is over. A big kind of peace comes inside. A ton of gratitude. Finally. Whatever happens, I have a huge problem with the health and everything. It's okay. It's like this. It's finished. Do realize not pushing everything away, but not too much try to change what's going on.

Just leave it. Before, I used to, okay, what I have to do now? Something. Correction. Correction. Now I say, okay, let's see. Wait. Something's going to come up to make a kind of medicine or whatever, but wait. Not all the time because I used to. This body and mind was not like living, all the time in emergency. I had my own company. Everything fixed. Fix that. Fix this. It's crazy. Now it's time to develop, wait. What I see now is more I wait, more things solved by themselves. Just watch the game.

Okay, it's come there. Sometimes no solutions because it's not time for a solution right now. Check what's going on inside. What's going on with you? Identify with the situation or just watch the situation. When you're watching, more quiet, more peaceful. From this place movement can appear. That's the right thing. That generates this kind of peace.

John: The solution spontaneously appears. Even if you're in some kind of a thing, you can say, Master, I don't know, but we'll leave it for you. Then you watch as it just fall. It all worked out. Everything was okay. Of course, the most important thank you, Master.

Because as Maharaj says, you don't want to fall back in the luxury ditch and start taking credit for any of these things. Because it's so easy to be like, oh my God, it's almost like I'm now controlling the world. Everything is happening exactly. And it's because you've aligned yourself with the reality that everything is flowing smoothly because there's no you there.

Q: Become the river.

John: Yeah, but you can't sit there and say, oh, look, I am able to control all things. I am the world. The world is me. Instead, it's there's no me. And that's why everything's flowing very, very smoothly. So, thank you, Master. Thank you, Master. Thank you, Master.

Q: Yeah, me is the dam. It's blocking the river.

John: Exactly. Exactly.

Q: Remove the dam. Go over the water. Everything is fine.

John: Yeah. River flows very nicely. The log of you falls. Leaves start to get piled up. Beavers start to build houses. All this. And the water is barely moving anymore. That's it.

Q: That's it. So much gratitude to get to understand that. And I'm watching this body of mine a lot of sensitivity. Sensitive. And it's okay. It's crying for a little thing. So much touch. And it's okay. This is this kind of body of mine of God. It doesn't work like this. It's fine. And that gives me like give me that gives more space for be more sensitive and appreciate more all these little things. All these beautiful things. Something really simple but wow. You get wow everywhere. Because it's kind of natural harmony with what's going on. And struggling up and all these things. It's okay.

It's okay. And sometimes it's just wow. You, Ramakant, Nisargadatta, Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, all these lineages. Wow. It's really, really a big gift to be in lineage. We can call that lineage.

John: Yes, yes.

Q: And gradually I start to know some people who are in the same direction. Can kind of share a bit. And I see some people just discovered that right now and they say wow. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Take your time. There's a lot of beautiful things going to come. A lot of resistance going to come. And just respect. Trust. It's a big matter of trust. Let it go is trust. And to let it go, I got a lot of recognition for that from Siddharameshwar. First, they have to understand a little bit what's going on. And after that, let it go comes easy.

If you don't know why you have to let it go, it's really hard. I used to do AA and everything and let it go, yeah, yeah, yeah. I say yeah, yeah. It was a lot of struggling with what people told me. Let it go, yeah, yeah. But you don't know me with my this and that. You, it's okay, but me, not okay. It's impossible. And finally, reading Siddharameshwar, I said, first of all, they have to understand. I was just pointing, pointing. Eventually, it started going to open by itself. The removing process started. Wow.

John: Yeah, that false I that wants to stamp itself on everything and, like you said, doesn't want to let go. Oh, yeah, but that's okay for you, but you don't understand. In my specific situation, if I was to let go and let God, this whole thing would just fall apart because there's so much me there, the fighting and struggling.

And then when the understanding is, oh, yeah, letting go, it's just actually, that's the reality. And when you talk about acceptance, well, now it seems very silly to not accept what's happening. Like, it's happening. And people say, oh, I can't accept this. Well, it's happening. Yes.

Q: If you want to suffer, it's okay. But you don't have to.

John: It's like, I'm going to sit here and think of all the reasons why what's happening shouldn't be happening. And then my mind is going to say, the reason why it's not happening the way that I'm imagining that it should happen. And I follow along with that, and I get a restless, irritable, discontent, disturbed. And, yeah. But, yeah, Siddharameshwar Maharaj says that you have to find the I. Where is that I?

That I that I assumed was this body, John, John's life, when it is investigated properly, it's seen that Ghomeshi Ganesh guy has been stamping all of the papers. Oh, yes, yes, yes. This cannot be a good document unless Ghomeshi Ganesh stamps it.

And then one guy says, wait a minute, it's perfectly legal. Why are we doing this? Oh, yeah, some misfit guy who wanted to put his name on it a long time ago to be feeling important.

But it has nothing to do with anything. And that egoistic sense of self, yeah, it wanted to be important. Being important was the most important thing.

That's why the letting go of the concept of an I is so difficult. Because it's like, well, wait a minute, okay, even if I'm understanding that I'm formless, when this body falls, it doesn't make any difference, but then that means my entire life was worthless. But no, because existence is existing, forms are appearing and disappearing, you just don't identify with any particular form because you're either all the forms or none of the forms. My presence is within every being.

Q: That gives access to appreciation. All these little things, wow, wow, wow, it's okay. Instead of thinking how I'm going to run the show.

John: Yeah. And seeing illusory enemies everywhere, because if I'm a separate I, you're a separate I, and you may be thinking separate things against me. Instead of knowing that, wait, no, no, no, it's, we're both objects within that same awareness that we are.

And, and there is no individuality. The only individuality is trying to take the concept of doership onto a body form that seems to perform actions that the formlessness looking through the body form, the holder of the body, as Maharaj says, is there's going through something, and I say, I'm doing this. And I need to do which again, goes back to when you're first born, mom, dad puts a label. And then they say, good job, bad job. Don't do this. Do this.

You need to learn you need to do this. So, then doership becomes impressed. Long association with the body is I need to struggle and get in that rat race and find a way in life and do this and make it happen.

And thus, the struggle because making it happen, taking on the concept of doership, and struggling against something that it's okay to say like, Oh, like, okay, basketball star, he has the desire to do basketball, he learns basketball, he goes, he becomes in the NBA, he makes money, all this kind of stuff. But it's a flow. And that's the reality.

Yes, there's work put in, but it's spontaneous in the moment. It's not like some large plan of each and every action step. Each step is now. Until boom, hey, you're in the NBA.

You've been given these gifts, this body form, the five elemental goo got together. The goo has created this basketball star.

Q: Yeah, some things came. Because before I used to work in sales and everything, and we you need objective and this and that. Now it's wish. If it's to happen, fine, it doesn't happen. It's a wish. That's it. That's it. No more than that. No more projection than I wish that. Okay, tomorrow, we'll see. Maybe it's happened. Maybe it doesn't. Doesn't change how it's gonna be.

John: And again, do your job, do your duties. If you need to make 10 phone calls a day to make one sale a week, then you do that's okay. Pick up, put down, pick up, put down, pick up, put down up here comes the sale. In the moment speaking and selling, writing the contract finish. But not a like, oh my god, maybe I can't sell anymore. Like I remember when I was in car sales, there were many times where you get in a sales block.

But you'd have one hell of a good month and sell like 30 cars. And then the next month, it was like one and a half weeks, no sales. And you're like, oh, I used to be.

Q: Oh, my god. It's so good to be out of this.

John: Yes, yes.

Q: Because all the rest is survival. Your whole life is surviving, surviving, survive, fight with everything, watch it. No, there's other way to live than survival. Yes.

John: Keith, is that you?

Q: Yeah, yeah. Jai Guru? Jai Guru, yeah.

Q: Jai Guru.

Q: I had kind of fallen asleep and accidentally woke up with, oh, it's Tuesday. No worries.

John: Yeah. After our every two-week thing now, so you can pick it up again the 13th of October.

Q: But yeah, I don't know. I still, you know, I'm interested in, I still don't know why. Some, you know, like each day, I'll maybe go into, feel free from making an object of things.

But then the next day, I have to start all over again, somehow find, get freedom from the sense of that objects have some reality to them or something. It's just like sometimes, so it comes and I'll recognize that I'm, I feel free for, and I guess there's a connection. I was noticing yesterday when I wrote this down that it's an imaginary, it's objects require imagination kind of like to reinforce their sense of reality.

Same as like you were talking about the I, the I does the same thing. It imagines, somehow the imagination imagines that it exists, somehow subjectively or objectively. So, it's something, you know, and then that idea liberated me for most of the day, just seeing that it's all imagination. But then eventually, and I guess I can still get a sense of that right now. And that, you know, that it, that imagination isn't really telling me what's real or not.

John: But we had this earlier. Broom. What you're speaking about is, okay, my floor is beautifully clean, and the door opens, leaves come in. Oh, it was so beautiful, so clean. But just broom, floor is clean again. More leaves, clean, broom again.

Q: Mantra does help with that. It does.

John: Yeah. Because again, fires burning brightly, ashes cover, ashes removed, fires here, put more ash, fire's still there, just covered with ash, remove the ash, fire's still there. Never was brighter or dimmer. It's just cover.

Q: They get in my imagination things, objects and subjects are still there instead of fire.

John: You know, it's like, but again, in a dream, your imagination, your consciousness is creating. That's a totally normal thing. You just don't identify it as my creation to sit there and say that you believe, oh, you know, your imagination is creating the objects. It's true. The dog that you see is a lump of goo. It's a dead dog.

It's running around and jumping and barking because of the consciousness. As soon as presence leaves the form of the dog, it's a dead dog. The space in the room, this is a lump of goo. Suddenly, the space breathes in and sees, oh, look at all this stuff. No knowledge of myself prior to connecting with this body form, and now suddenly there's many forms because I'm identified as a form. But this is still a lump of goo.

Q: But the fire is, you're saying the fire is still there, too.

John: A lump of goo, Presence, Consciousness, Presence, Existence, Selfless Self, the fire.

Q: And that's not imaginary.

John: Presence is not imaginary. Presence is the very first, it's kind of the key to duality. I exist because prior to the concept I exist, you are, but with no knowledge of existence.

Again, like the space in the room, the space in the room, if it was aliveness, let's say, this is a dead body, space in the room, look at all this stuff. Look at me. I'm alive.

This space had no knowledge of aliveness until the dualistic understanding of I exist. I exist as something. There are many other somethings because I'm a something. When the Presence, the holder of the body is no longer, this body is no longer sustained, the juices dry up, so to speak, then the knowledge of existence will be no more. But the knower of that knowledge, that you are, is. So, it makes no difference. Even if the entire world were to just explode, boom, it wouldn't affect that you are at all.

Q: It's just, it's not my knower. It's my knower but not my knower at the same time.

John: Well, the knower of the world, whether the world is or is not, the knower of the world is. So, the world's gone, but the knower's there, but there's nothing to know because there's no world. And then you might say, oh, well, that sounds very scary because then I'm in a no-knowing state. But you're currently in that no-knowing state.

Q: All of this is within the illusion. So is there still some kind of sense of freedom that is always there?

John: Well, the freedom is you used to be attached to a limited body form as myself. And when you're no longer having this illusory limitation, you're free. And yet freedom is within the bubble of illusion because there is no freedom and there is no bondage.

How can the space in the room be bound? Even the walls that are separating the different various rooms are not binding the space. If the building is destroyed, the space is the same. It doesn't suddenly say, oh, I'm more now. No. And if you talk about funerals, you say, oh, but this body's no more. But all the bodies that are looking at that body are you. So where did you go? Looking right back to dream.

If you attended a funeral in a dream and everybody came and paid their respects and the preacher was preaching very nice, happy things and people said lovely things about you in the dream, they're all you. You wake up and you know, wow, that was weird. Like that was a very nice little sermon and everybody was saying so beautiful things about this person, but it was all me. Like it all came from you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe

This is the Tuesday Talk September 15, 2026. Tuesday Talks is a gathering on Zoom of devotees from the Ramakant Maharaj USA visit. This is a gathering of devotee’s to discuss and clarify the teachings of Sri Ramakant Maharaj. These spontaneous utterances are recorded and shared with anyone who may find them useful.
Jai Sadguru!

Tuesday Talk September 15, 2026
Transcribed by TurboScribe. With minimal edits.

John: There we go. Okay. Am I too loud or not loud enough?

Okay.

Q: Sounds fine.

John: Okay. Yeah, I'm trying to find that.

Okay, I think that's fine.

Q: Is it just me and you so far?

John: So far it's just us. That is correct.

Q: Okay. What happened? Oh, something is, I just turned my computer not long ago and something is, one of the things that comes up at the beginning of startup thing is interfering with my visuals here.

Oh, there we go. I had to block them out.

John: Yeah, I had to, just before this, do a restart to do some kind of update. I wasn't sure if the update was going to finish in time to be here.

Q: So, the master of questions is here, but I'm starting to come up with my own answers.

John: This is good. This is good. Maharaj calls that the Atma-Nividam-Bhakti, where it's starting to, your answers will appear spontaneously as you're asking the question, because the questioner and answerer are, of course, the same, but it'll start to appear this way.

Question comes, but mostly it's because any question is a body-based question. You can't ask a question without forming the position of a body. So, any question you know, oh, I am not body, therefore the question dissolves.

Q: And what's left is you, the questioner, or where it formed at.

John: The formless questioner, yes. The formless questioner that asks the question through this form, because without this form, no question could be asked.

Q: Yeah, yeah, right.

John: Like the space in the room is not going to ask you about what's inside of it. But if the space in the room was to suddenly realize I exist and have this instrument available, it could say, huh, where am I? Who am I?

Q: And that's what we, you're talking about our normal state of mind where we're, we think we are our own being or something?

John: Well, just the concept of existence. You know you exist because of a body form. Otherwise, you're formless. And that's why you, the you that you are, has nothing to do with the material world. You can't, because you're formless.

Q: Yeah, one of my things I've been recently keep coming back to is that there's freedom, which the formlessness is freedom itself, kind of. And what I'm seeking and what I think seekers seek is freedom from what we seem to be. And, but before we become, we might also be seeking freedom for what we seem to be.

But actually, with when humility comes into play, you're actually, I'm actually looking for freedom from like a mentally formed sense or a sense of ownership and stuff.

John: Just the concept. That's the only thing you need to be free of. The concept of I'm this body. I exist as something rather than existence itself, the Ultimate Truth. So, there's really, for the you that you are, the you that you are in reality, has no desire for freedom, has no desire for anything. It is freedom though. And without the concept of freedom.

Q: Right, right.

John: The concept of freedom came through the duality, the dualistic existence of I exist. I exist as something. Now, I wish to be free of this something that I believe I exist as. But the truth is, you are not that something. So, the freedom is just a body-based concept. Because in order to have freedom, you have to have bondage, but the bondage is illusory.

It's as if you were arrested and the police, they say, okay, put your hands together, put your feet together and shuffle and don't move. No handcuffs, no nothing. But you, they're telling you, oh, you're cuffed. We're taking you in. And because this is impressed, you say, oh, I can't move my hands or legs. Or they give the example of the elephant. The elephant's huge, and yet they can push a little, just a very small peg into the ground. And the elephant believes it's staked, it can't move. And yet the elephant could easily walk away and pull this out.

But there's the belief, this limiting belief that I am in bondage. And then that's why you say even the people who they say, oh, I'm free, but then you're in bondage within the mind, in the flow of illusory thoughts. Even your body can be in a cell, and yet you're feeling the mind is of freedom. You're not allowing this physical circumstance to limit the concept of freedom. And so that shows you right away that freedom, it comes and goes, absolutely illusory. It's just a fantasy thing.

Q: It's a word with a meaning.

John: That we attach. And only when you're in the body-based existence. Even in a dream, freedom would mean nothing.

Q: Right, right. You don't think about freedom when you're in a dream.

John: Yeah, well, even if you did.

Q: Yeah, you might, you might.

John: When you wake up, you say, well, wait a minute, what is this concept of freedom? If I'm thinking this way, the freedom must have been the dreamer dreaming outside of the dream. Therefore, he was totally and completely free, since he had nothing to do with the dream. And yet the concept of I am free in my dreams doesn't arise, because that wouldn't make any sense at all. And so, it's the same. You know yourself in a real sense, the concept of freedom doesn't make sense, because there is no bondage.

There's no limitation. In a dream, when you wake up, there's no limitation anymore, because you're no longer dreaming that you're in a dream.

Q: You know, all possible limitations are within limitlessness.

John: Yeah, how can the sky be limited? Maharaja always uses the example of sky, and then, of course, points to, if at all you want to compare, compare yourself to sky or space. But of course, you're more subtle than sky or space, because sky and space can be sensed, or seen, or felt, quote, experienced.

You can experience sky because you look up and you see, oh, there's sky. But the only real way that you can look at the sky are by the objects, the clouds, in it. Otherwise, how would you say, like, oh, the sky is doing what? The sky's not doing anything. The clouds are moving through the sky.

Q: There's something within, well, I don't know if it's within or outside of the people that are like you or Ramakant, that are willing to share or exposing the limitations for what they are, that makes you willing to share this.

John: It's just spontaneous speaking from direct experience from that. There's no...

Q: You could say it's like a heart thing, that there's a heart of us that likes, you know, that shares the ability to see limitations. It's like, you know, Ramana Maharshi used to talk about the heart more than like this.

John: But he would talk about the heart and blast people's concepts about the heart. Because the heart is not this physical organ, nor is it located anywhere in the body. He said it would be in the center.

The center of what? Not the center of the body, because he knew that there was no concept of body when he's speaking. So, when he says the center, of course, if you're identified as a body-based concept yourself, you'd say, oh, the center here, or maybe here, the third eye, so to speak.

But Ramayana Maharshi said the center of you, not the center of this illusory thing that you keep claiming to be, that he's trying to shake you out of. Hey, you are not this body. And Ramana Maharshi, I read the books all the time from him as well in the morning, during my morning readings, and just very similar to the way the Bible got totally kind of misconstrued, the similar things, you know, the book says, it makes grave detail in telling you that Dr. So-and-so from such-and-such a district traveled so-and-so far to see the Maharshi. Like it was, they made him into an idol, and that's not his thing. When you know yourself in a real sense, when people come and bow at your feet, it doesn't, you should not, basically. Of course, in the beginning, bow to the masters, this is good. But to make it an idol is terrible. Same thing they did with Jesus, same thing they did with Buddha, and they're speaking from the bottom of reality. Same thing with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. So many people are like, oh, Sri Nisargadatta and Sri Ramakant Maharaj, but it's not the body. They're not the body. Sri Ramakant Maharaj, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Sri Ramakant Maharaj, Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, you and me, so to speak, are that.

Q: Right. No, that's why Ramakant would say, bless yourself, touch yourself on the head or whatever.

John: Exactly. Put your hand on your own head and bless yourself, because you are that. And that's why the commercialization of spirituality is so damaging to the poor spiritual seekers who are seeking and paying money, because they're idolizing something.

A Mooji, oh, we're going on a spiritual retreat, we're going to go see Mooji. Or, oh, we're going to go on a spiritual retreat and go see Amanda Maya, or whoever the lady is who gives out flowers and stuff. People love that, because that's body based.

It's like a little puppy, and she's sitting there stroking the little puppy, and the little puppy is very happy because it's being stroked, and oh, this is so peaceful and so beautiful, I'm being stroked. But the hammering is, that's why there's no spiritual journey. How can you have a spiritual journey if you don't have a body?

And if you think you're a body, all you're doing is dragging yourself around to all these various places. In the beginning, of course, it's good. But when you know yourself in a real sense, as Maharaj says, wherever you are, that's your Ashram.

You don't need to go to separate Ashrams, you don't need to bow to people, you don't need to do any of these sort of things, because when you know yourself in a real sense, you're completely outside the material world. And yet the body form's available, but you're completely outside the material world.

Q: Yeah, I'm starting to, you know, as some, I guess as the layers are being removed, I start to get a stronger sense of, like, I don't know how to explain it. I mean, it has something to do with the bliss that's involved, but it's like a type of, like today, I felt like a type of solidity, kind of like that wasn't related to the body or any of my past experience, you know. And, but it's almost like, I mean, it's not totally solid because there's movement.

So, I guess you would say in the Dasbodh sense, maybe there's wind going on within this, what seemed, what sort of feels like a solidity or something.

John: But you're experiencing the wind, so you know that the wind is moving, you are not. The bliss is just a layer on your Presence. Oh, bliss.

It's very nice, but even that, that's why Maharaj says when no bliss is needed, no peace is needed, there you are, because these are just layers, illusory layers on your spontaneous Presence, even thought, thought flow, anything, it's a layer. When using the example of the ocean, waves are here, you can have a tidal wave, you can have tsunami, and deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep in the ocean, no movement, no light even. You know, they say the deep, deep, deep ocean creatures, they have like glowing eyes and stuff, because there's no light.

Not even the light of the sun can penetrate it, because that's the deep. When you know yourself in a real sense, everything is surface away, because again, we talk about going back into, okay, I believe I'm a body, I'm gonna sit, I'm gonna meditate. As I sit and I meditate, I notice that I can observe thoughts.

The more I observe thoughts, the more I understand that I'm not involved in the thoughts, the whole thinking process is something outside of me. So now I'm not as contained within this body, because these thoughts are keeping me pressurized, believing I'm something else. Then this subtle, subtle sense of Presence starts to be felt, because I'm no longer paying attention to the illusion, I'm beginning to pay attention a little bit more to the reality.

As Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj says, the I am is the door. On one side is the truth, on the other side is the illusion. So, this sense of Presence, this I am, this I exist, and now anything that I have left, I can transfer and say, I'm more like the sense of Presence, sky or space, than I am this body.

Thought comes about the body, it's discarded, because I start identifying, I'm formless Presence. Now the more I identify with the formless Presence, that's the deep ocean. No light, no concepts, no nothing.

Any concept is pulled in and dissolved immediately, because I am the knower of the sense of Presence. This sense of existence, this sense of Presence, this I am, can be known. If it can be known whether it is or is not, the knower is.

That's the deep ocean.

Q: It's the only thing that cannot not be.

John: Correct, correct. The Ultimate Truth. Where all illusion is discarded, Ultimate Truth.

Because you say, like, the truth, right? Okay, what's the truth? The truth is you are that.

Ultimate Truth is, you are now with your own Selfless Self. Self without any concept of self, because that concept of self has been dissolved and cannot remain where you are. Now, don't make a big deal about this. Go about, do your job, do your duties, take care of your responsibilities. You know, no need to set up shop or have people write songs about you, or write many books and tell people how they can do this thing. Just be normal, be simple, be humble, be always with you.

Q: But I do have, I have like a couple of friends that, especially right now, when I recently talked to him about this, and he, we've talked in the past, and he's very interested in it. He's, he does, you know, he gets it to some degree, but also he's not experiencing the bliss maybe as much as I am or whatever. And so it's like I'm, I'm kind of, when I talk to him about it, I'm explaining to him that, say that, for example, that it's the sense of objects and objectivity that is making us, distracting us from the bliss that's here and stuff like that.

He sort of catches on and he starts feeling bliss, you know, as I'm talking about this stuff. So, you know, I feel, you know, it's worthwhile to share this with him and then maybe he'll be inspired to do it, you know, to get deeply involved.

John: And as Maharaj has said, as long as you, if you know yourself in a real sense, and that conviction is there 100%, spread your carpet and start speaking. It's only, but you have to know, because if Keith is sharing ideas and concepts, it's not the same as speaking from reality.

Q: Yeah, you can sort of tell, you have this, you can tell when you're being…

John: You can feel it, you can feel it. When you see, even you go on YouTube and you see different various spiritual folks, like the Facebook folks and stuff, when they're speaking, you can tell it's from a position. And also, you can tell because they like look and make sure they're everything's good, my hair is nice, everything. Okay, let's set up the lighting and all that. Let's do that, you know what I mean? So, it's like, it becomes a show.

Spontaneous speaking in the moment, there's no, it's just a flow. It's just, even in my everyday life, you could say, when I was going to, you know, the meetings and all that, and people would come and we would talk about different spiritual concepts, and it would just flow. But seemingly, there wasn't like a blockage of, oh, you're speaking Advaita, or oh, you're speaking about this. It was just a flow. What they're speaking is speaking back. And it's just because the speaker and listener truly are one in the same.

The bodies are the only kind of separation, so to speak, as Maharaj uses the example, the bathroom and the Ashram, the space. It's separated, seemingly, by walls, and yet space is not separate. You can't separate space. You put space in a box, and you say, oh, I have some space here. But it is not.

Q: Everything is within the space.

John: Exactly. The box is within the space that the box of space is within. So, you can't say this.

And I, in the very beginning, long, long, long years ago, I used to, as I just started feeling this sense of Presence, I noticed that if you look eye to eye with someone, seemingly, you can feel the pull of Presence very, very strongly. And during that time, before knowing any better, really, I understood this as like this pull of God, basically, that you could, you could feel the Spirit of God inside of someone else, and they could feel yours. And I used to actually kind of play with this a little bit and be like, not in a disrespectful way, but in a way of sitting there and being like, you know, a calming-ness.

And you can even see in the eyes, like the eyes start to kind of, you know, the body is responding to the peace that's being transmitted, so to speak. Again, this is all within the bubble of illusion.

Q: Well, that's how we all get along. I mean, because we see each other in our…

John: It's an acknowledgment at the very beginning level of the Spirit in you is the same as the Spirit in me. There's a knowingness of this, because the you that you are knows. Absolutely, 100 percent, because when you come to the understanding that I'm not a body, then all of this whole, quote, existence is within you.

And there's no…

Q: No, it's the whole, every variety, the whole spectrum of the gunas, everything.

John: Everything. All of that is all within your own self. And we say within only to try and give a concept, because, like, at first you believe thoughts are coming from your head.

When you're no longer identified as a body, and you know yourself in a real sense, more like the formlessness, thought becomes the world. All the objects, everything moving about is the same as your dream. There is no difference at all.

Only when you wake up from a dream do you know that all this whole world was just not actually true, and only when you know yourself in a real sense, all this whole world was not actually true. And then birth and death, and all these concepts, they just can't stick. They just can't. There's no place to hang that hat of, what about birth? What about death? What about the afterlife? Explain heaven. And then you see clearly, like we were talking, you know, the whole idea of the Bible and how everybody wrote down what Jesus was saying. He's speaking from the bottomless bottom of reality, but they're interpreting it through body form.

If I'm a body and somebody says, God and the Father and I are one, then it's like, oh, so you're saying, what, you're God, or you're this or this? And those people stoned him for that, and then years later, then it became a whole religion. But that's not what was said.

And literally all religions, as Maharaj says, you can look at the foundation of all religions, the people wrote down what the bottomless bottom of reality said, but from the perception of being a body in a world. So therefore, everything was topsy-turvy, as Maharaj says, the antivirus, because the virus begins with, I am a body, I am somebody else. I'm hearing some spiritual talk, and I write it down as either this person is very wise, or this is something that can be achieved, or this is a way I need to live. But it's from a body base.

It's always a, how is it going to be through my perception? And the antivirus of the Mantra, remaining with your Selfless Self, it unwinds all of that.

Q: Because it throws a wrench into the objectifying tendencies. Correct.

John: Correct. You're no longer, like, your perception is no longer John's perception. It's just a panorama.

Q: And, of course, as soon as there's an objectifying tendency that it turns into like an apparent subject also is involved. They're, you know, unavoidable.

John: Yeah, if you believe yourself to be an object, you'll see other objects. You'll interact with other objects. Somebody cuts you off in traffic, you'll believe this person is doing this to me. Rather than, you know, I don't know if fish get upset when fish swim too close to each other or do all this sort of thing, but it's just a movement.

Q: I'm not to the point of seeing that if I die, it's not going to affect me. I'm not that far, but...

John: It'll have no effect at all.

Q: But I can see that where that's possible now that, you know, it might not have any.

John: You're the knower of the sense of Presence, the sense of existence. So, the sense of existence is what created the concept of duality, and all the body-based, the lumps of goo wandering around believing themselves to be this, you're the knower, you're prior to this.

Q: How about the gunas? Could those be considered elements of the goo, kind of?

John: I mean, they say the gunas, sattva, tamas, like ignorance and more spiritual, and rajas of activity.

Q: It's like mental goo instead of goo-goo.

John: It's trying to explain the illusory existence, because these bodies can't move without you. This lump of goo, since I exist, I exist as something labeled John. John goes out and lives and does this thing and that thing, and your parents tell you, good job, not so good job, do better, strive to be the best you can be, all this sort of thing, because of identification.

And that's why it's very difficult, as Maharaj says, with long identification with the body, it's not so easy to just toss the body and say, oh, I can't be the body. And that's why Maharaj uses the example with the ants. When you pour some water, those ants are going to scurry, because they want to protect their body.

Because the body is all you know. And you'll never know what it's like without your body. Because without a body, there's a knowingness with nothing to know.

And yet, the illusory world is still, because this is just a lump of goo. When this lump of goo is gone, there are billions of other lumps of goo, trillions, if you count little mice and animals, all this sort of, trillions of lumps of goo, that you are. So, yeah, no offense, but when Keith's lump of goo and John's lump of goo and Alain's lump of goo is no more, it will make zero difference to the you that you are.

And even to go one step further, understanding that the body, being burned or buried, all the people around saying, oh, how good your life was and all this sort of, that's you too. So, if you want to say, what happens when I die? Well, you'll mourn this body that you used to believe was you, in another body that believes itself to be someone separate, but again, only in the bubble of illusion, because to you, nothing's happening, nothing has ever happened, and nothing could possibly happen.

You know, I could stay in this house where I am for a hundred, until I'm gone, basically, and the space, when the new people come in to live here, the space will not know that I was here, there will be no activity, and the space won't know anyone new came in. Space is just space. You are and can never not be.

Q: Some people might not like that assessment.

John: No, I mean, you want to be immortal? No problem, you're immortal. You are just not immortal as the illusion. You're only immortal as your own true self.

Q: Yeah.

John: You say, oh, I want to be immortal as this lump of goo. Well, but you can't, because this lump of goo deteriorates.

Q: It's part of the division and the illusion.

John: All of the material world, a plant, everything, a building, even the Roman coliseums, they don't look the same today as they did when they were first built. Everything material dissolves, dissolves, dissolves, dissolves, but you don't dissolve. The you that looks in the mirror today is the same one that looked in the mirror when you were five, when the body was 25, when the body was 45, and when the body will be 85. That you that's looking and seeing the reflection of the body that you're holding in the moment has never aged, cannot age.

Q: That makes me think of, sometimes I think about the first cell division that created life. It's still the same. If that's true, it's still the same cell division that's going on right now.

It's never changed.

John: Well, the cell is the lumps of goo. The you that you are is the life, the livingness, the existence that can animate, so to speak, the lump of goo and say, I am.

Q: And then as soon as the cell divides and it can say two I ams, but there's not really two I ams.

John: Well, again, the first is the knowledge of existence, the birth of duality. The same, you can immediately go to dream, you lay down to sleeping, all of a sudden dream, because the sense of existence is there. Dream world is projected, you're an object within the dream, and you can communicate with other people inside the dream.

The dream world appears very, very, very true, because the impression of being an object is impressed spontaneously. And now you see a world. When you wake up, you know it's not true.

And yet, people could be having babies in your dream. There can be all sorts of creatures in your dream, real or imagined, because that's your consciousness constantly creating, just creating. But you are just the observer of the creations in consciousness.

You're prior to all of that, and nothing in back of you. You can't say, okay, now, in this concept free, because you're not really experiencing yourself, you're dissolving the illusory layers. Because you can't experience yourself, you are just like the seer, you're not the seer, all the objects being seen, the seer, but not in body form.

And yet, the body is being used as a telescope to see inside the illusory world. When this telescope rots, you won't be using it to see inside the illusory world. But there's 8 billion, or 8 trillion, if you consider all the little creatures, all those telescopes seeing inside the illusion, an endlessness of nothing happening, but a multitude of illusory experiencers.

Q: And when I first met you, I knew you were pretty smart. It's good to listen to you.

John: Again, it's just speaking. 7:15 comes on, we turn this on, people come, there's questions, great, sometimes speaking is happening. Sometimes, last time, there was no speaking at all, really, just kind of a little bit of speaking and nothing, but there's no, like, format, or, oh, what are we going to say tonight, or what topic are we going to cover, or should we read some of the book and then talk about it, it's just a spontaneous thing.

And the only reason, because Maharaj, in the Ramakant Maharaj USA tour, he said, when I return to India, you should guide them. And even that wasn't like, oh, yay, let's do this. It just came about.

It just came about. Now we have the transcripts

Transcribed by TurboScribe

This is the Tuesday Talk September 1, 2026. Tuesday Talks is a gathering on Zoom of devotees from the Ramakant Maharaj USA visit. This is a gathering of devotee’s to discuss and clarify the teachings of Sri Ramakant Maharaj. These spontaneous utterances are recorded and shared with anyone who may find them useful.
Jai Sadguru!

Tuesday Talk September 1, 2026
Transcribed by TurboScribe. With minimal edits.

John: He sent an e-mail that he probably won't be here to, so.

Q: I didn't hear you.

John: Oh, you didn't hear, can you hear me?

Q: It was cutting, right now it looks like okay.

John: Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't have the wireless headphones right now.

Q: Okay.

John: But you can hear me or does it like cut and cut only, only when I'm speaking does it come through, like.

Q: Right now it's okay.

John: Okay. All right. Yeah.

So, yeah, I just said that Keith emailed and said that he wasn't going to make it tonight probably so. He's not going to be here.

Q: Our, our questioner leader.

John: Indeed.

Q: Yeah. Yeah. And where I am right now is to summarize all these teachings is one phrase, is knowing yourself in a real sense. This phrase comes back to me a lot of, many times during the day because sometimes I just catch myself out. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not true, come back. And before there was something was judging. It's wrong. No, no. There's nothing to judge. Just come back. Keep quiet. It's a big gift to know that.

John: Absolutely.

Q: I got a lot of gratitude because my life was crazy. I didn't make the 12 steps, but I knew some people helping me and I stopped everything. And from there, I said, okay, why I'm there? Why I'm here? That question was running and running and running. And when I found Advaita, I said, okay, okay.

The first step was with Mooji, like something similar to you. First step was with Mooji and okay, and it's good for introduce, but there's something inside. There's a way to go more deeper than that because there's something was turning around. Arrive at certain points. Okay. No, it's just only theory. It's not practical enough. But from Mooji, and then I discovered Papaji, Nisargadatta, and Ramakant, one by one, I said, okay, okay, now it's finished. Knowing yourself in a real sense. And just, and that I trust because I just spend, like another phrase, spend some time with you. And that I see resistance on that. Sometimes I say, okay, just spend time.

Just be there, quiet, and just see what's going on there. But no judge, no thinking, less as possible. And it's strange because there's one part says, yeah, this is it. And the other part is a resistance of that. There's not total peace. Maybe it's a matter of time and just get used to it like any new thing or I don't know. Because it's conditioning. We just remove and remove conditioning.

John: And even peace appears on your Presence. Like you are there. Peace is a layer.

Q: Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's good.

John: Because you're experiencing the peace. Whether peace is or is not, you are. So, remain with your Selfless Self that you are. And peace comes and goes. Peace, okay, it's very nice. And now no peace, okay. That's also just coming and going. You're not coming and going. That's why even disturbance. Okay, there's a disturbance. Because, again, this is a five-elemental body. We see all the time in the five elements disturbance.

Wind, rain, hurricanes, tornadoes, all this sort of thing is disturbance of the five elements. So, this body, five-elemental body, disturbance in the five elements. But no need to say I am disturbed. Or I am sick. Or yes, okay, this body is experiencing a disturbance in the five elements. We call that I am sick. I have the flu, something like this. Go to a doctor, take medicine, but don't identify with the one that's sick. This sickness has appeared. And yet it also will come and go.

Q: That's the main thing. That's the main thing to remember. Everything's coming and going.
You, you don't move. But all the rest is moving.

John: Correct. Where all experience ends, there you are. Maharaj uses the example of being on a train. You're on a train, and you see everything passing by. You go through the cities. You go through the country. You go through mountains, all this sort of thing. But you're not moving. And yet, the experiences of moving and seeing, and you're not traveling. You're just sitting. And everything's going around you. And that's the true you. You're unmoving. And all of this is moving around and within you.

You're able to see what's going on because of this body form. It's like a telescope inside yourself, so that you can see, oh, all this is happening. And yet, to the one, nothing is happening.

Q: It took me a long time to catch that one. Nothing is happening. There was all the time reference to this body. For this body, a lot of things are happening. But for who you truly are, nothing is happening.

John: Correct. No birth, no death to who you are. This is, you know, and like you said, you can tell. And that's why Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, they used to say, okay, when he gives a response, he's speaking to the formless consciousness, not to the body form. The people have asked the question, believing themselves to be a body, and have framed it in a position of what happens with this. But yet, if you knew yourself as formless, this question wouldn't arise.

So, when Nisargadatta Maharaj answered this question, he's answering it to the formlessness that you truly are, and discarding this illusory thing that you believe yourself to be in the moment. One of the greatest joys was reading I Am That, and literally understanding that it's like the space in the room is occupying one body form and speaking a question. And then the space in the room is occupying this other body form and giving the answer.

And they're actually talking to themselves through two separate body forms. And one is very confused and is like, oh, you know, how's this? Or what about this? Or what do you think about this religion? Or what do you think about this? And this one is not confused at all and speaking directly to its own self.

No, no, no. You're a little bit confused because you're still identified with the body. Once you're no longer identified with the body, these questions won't arise because there'll be nowhere to hang your hat, nowhere for a question to be.

If you're formless, how can the question arise? Even what about my formlessness? That doesn't make sense because in your formless natural self, there is no question, there is no questioner, and there's no instrument to ask a question.

Within the waking dream, you can ask a question. As an object has appeared, oh, how has this object appeared? Well, and then even Dasbodh makes very, goes all the way through the whole thing.

As long as you believe yourself to be a body, we're going to talk about the creation of the world and all the elements and how the elements came into themselves and then Brahma came and breathed life into this and did that, only because you believe yourself to be a body. At the end of Dasbodh, it's like, okay, now we've proven, irrefutable proof in the last however many slokas, chapters, that you are not a body and that these words were written by that you are to that you are. You have a name? Jai Guru

Q: Jai Guru

John: So, Keith is not there, so any questions?

Q: So John, can you hear me?

John: Yes, I can. Yes. Can you hear? Yes, yes, you can hear me.

Q: Were there any ashrams in Nepal when there was the flood in Nepal? Were there any ashrams from our organization, or do you know?

John: I don't think in Nepal there's anything.

Q: No? Oh, okay. I wasn't sure, so.

John: I don't think so. Mumbai, I know the, like, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, the house there, and they have a temple there, and Nashik, but I don't believe anything is in Nepal now.

Q: Well, I wasn't sure.

Sitting in silence……..

John: I guess if nothing is arising in consciousness, I just said your meeting will end in 10 minutes, but we can go ahead and end if no one has anything more.

Q: So, I have a quick question. Okay. So, what happens if you see somebody that's asleep and then you look up and you see them floating in a translucent form above the bed and then being somebody of the medical profession you scream because you think they're deceased. That's the initial assessment. And then that person sits up and says, what's going on? And they were asleep and you woke them up. Why would that happen?

John: Well, I mean, again, in the phenomenon, anything really can happen. I'm not sure that there's any explanation for anything. And in reality, nothing is happening on the level of body forms and this sort of thing.

It's just like in a dream, you can dream you're flying because anything, literally, your consciousness is able to create like any sort of scenario. That's why Maharaj in the ashram, when people would do the mantra and say, oh, they see the masters, the masters are appearing to them or they're glowing, the pictures are coming to life, any sort of thing like this, it could happen. It's not anything that, I mean, if I saw somebody levitating from their bed or whatever, I'm not sure it would just be, okay, there's something happening here.

But there's no, uh, there's nothing that when you know yourself in a real sense, these sort of things, they're just not impressed anymore because you're not like even the concept of miracle is not really impressed because you know, okay, in a dream, it can be the same way. In a dream, you can walk through fire, you can fly. Sometimes you can be underwater and, breathe.

So, these are all phenomenon because consciousness is constantly creating, whether it be in the waking world or the dream world. So, these things like astral projection and chakra and all this sort of thing, these are concepts to try and explain these phenomena based on the concept that I am a body experiencing an experience. However, when you know yourself in a real sense, it's just a dream. It just comes and goes. And you may see, you know, anything really. Yeah.

And it's just, okay, this is, this is something, there it is. And that's it. Because in reality, all these bodies are, are just lumps of goo. There's no person inside them. There's, there's nothing. So, what these bodies may or may not be doing or how they may or may not be appearing is only within the bubble of illusion.

And within the bubble of illusion, so many things, you have a concept of magic, you have concept of flame, people bursting in flame, you have concept of people levitating, you have concept of people knowing the future, all these sort of things. But this is all within the bubble of illusion. And so it's not impressed.

There's no, it's just like, okay, anything could happen, a dog could talk to you. And it wouldn't be anything other than oh, look, consciousness is creating. There's another empty lump of goo. And for some reason, consciousness has decided to play through this lump of goo. And it's a dog that's not supposed to talk, but here it's talking, anything. I've never heard a dog talk, but I'm just saying it's not a dog.

Q: I've never, I've never seen, I've never seen a ghost and I'm around dead people all the time, but this was just a unique thing that I saw. Yeah, I have no, not much to know or say about it. I just, it's experience. Sure. That I think about.

John: Yeah. But again, it's just anything could happen. Like, like literally any kind of thing could happen and miracles and all these sort of things.

You just know, okay, they're all occurring within my own self. And it could be the same as in a dream because the waking and dream consciousness is the same. And we know the dream consciousness creates like an entire world was projected and everything's populated and all of this sort of thing.

You could dream you're a fish. So, anything could happen at this, the same in the waking world, because you're before you're prior to the laws of physics. You're prior to anything that has to do with some illusory existence. It's phenomenal. You say, oh, that was interesting. And that's it.

The main thing is not to get like so many people get hooked on the Kundalini and the Kundalini awakening and the rising and the chakras and all sort of thing. Anything that has to do or Kali, any of these things, they may appear to be true. But as an appearance, they are not true.

Because in appearance, they are the one to whom this is appeared is the reality. And everything else is just appearing on your spontaneous Presence. No matter what appears good experience, bad experience miracles.

I remember Sri Ramakant Maharaj told the story about Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. He was out in the wilderness. He was so thirsty and so tired and needed food. And a little cottage appeared. And he went into this cottage. And he had some food and he had some water.
And then the person that was inside the cottage bid him farewell. And he felt fulfilled and started to leave, turned around and the cottage was gone. And Nisargadatta Maharaj wrote the poem; My master has become water for me. My master has become food for me. My master has become lodging for me. But this is all in the bubble of illusion. It's a nice experience. Interesting experience.

Q: Yes, indeed.

Transcribed by TurboScribe

This is the Tuesday Talk August 18, 2026. Tuesday Talks is a gathering on Zoom of devotees from the Ramakant Maharaj USA visit. This is a gathering of devotee’s to discuss and clarify the teachings of Sri Ramakant Maharaj. These spontaneous utterances are recorded and shared with anyone who may find them useful.
Jai Sadguru!

Tuesday Talk August 18, 2026
Transcribed by TurboScribe. With minimal edits.

Q: So, it's supposed to be real hot there or something?

John: It is, yeah. It's like 98 today, I think. It's been really hot.

Q: Yeah.

John: I bought two little fans from Amazon, so the AC is running, but the two little fans are, like, blowing everything around, so it's cooler. And keep the shades closed, so I'm like a hermit in a cave. Because otherwise the sun just will come crashing in my living room window, and it's just, it's hot. Yeah, it's hot. But we're in August, and Maryland is very terrible for August, and stickiness, and humidity, and just nastiness.

I did get one question from; let me see. I bookmarked it. It says, just one practical question, how to live this day by day, even though I know that this is a contradictory question.

And yeah, because once you know yourself in a real sense, you're formless. You're no longer taking the touch of a body progressing through some kind of space and time. It's literally scenes that are appearing and disappearing before you.

Do what is needed in the moment, leave it, and move on to the next scene, which is just appearing. There's no sense of time, because there's not an object in time that creates, you know, you're not creating this kind of timeline of I'm living, or this is my life, or I'm doing these things. Because you're not, the meditation is no longer connected to thoughts of, I'm a body in a world, what do I need to do?

What happens to me? What do I, what is this? What is that?

These are objects trying to relate to the objective world. You're no longer doing this. You know yourself in a real sense.

So, it is literally just scenes appearing and disappearing. Take care of the object, whatever is happening in the moment, leave it, and a new scene appears. So, as far as living the reality, you're just, there's no living anymore.

Only looking back over your shoulder can you say living, like, oh, I had a good day today, or oh, I didn't have such a great day today. But in the moment, it's just scenes appearing and disappearing. And that's how the reality actually is.

Scenes appear and disappear. It's us attaching thought flow of John's day. What did people around John say? What is this? What is that? But if you don't have a body, as Maharaj would say, a local identification, you're not going to have this kind of anchor.

You're formless. Body's available, but you're not tight in it. You're not wearing a winter coat in the summertime.

Clothes are very loose, and you're not paying attention to the clothes. That's, that. I mean, living the reality is just plain.

And if for some reason you do take the body touch, we have Mantra. If you've already noticed the sense of Presence, you already know the sense of existence, I am, then you can easily bring your attention to this sense of Presence, which then, of course, brings the attention back to who has this attention on the sense of Presence? That you are.

Presence is more subtle. Body came along with the world. Presence projected.

Dream world was created. You said, oh, I'm this. Objects appear.

Same as we talked about space last week or last time we were here. Actually, it's been a month. See? Once again, scenes appear and disappear.

Q: I have a question. Go ahead. So, I recently had been doing the japa. But I had, for some reason, like, I know all this stuff already from reading, right, and thinking about it. It's very obvious that this is like the gunas that play, like Maharaj would say, right? And so, there's not really anything, anyone doing anything, right?

Because the mind is just something that is fictitious anyway. It's a false self. It's not even real. So, it can't ever be real, right? But I was thinking, I was like, you know, I don't know why, but I feel like it's, I realized that, like, devotion is not just singing the Bhajans, but saying the Mantra. You know?

And, like, how long does it take for you to get to where, like, you don't have mental formations? Or if you still do, are they lessened to a degree? I mean, because it's, Nisargadatta would always say, well, if the mind is doing something, just let it do it.

Like, it's just, just ignore it, right? It's not you anyway. And so, I try to take that stance.

But, you know, at some point, I mean, the mind should just go quiet, right? And you only need it in the moment, whenever it's necessary. So, I mean, I'm guessing it takes years of doing that, because...

John: Not a single moment. I mean, thoughts flowing. If you're not paying attention to thoughts flowing, it's as if they're not there. And eventually, by not paying attention, they're not there. And we talked about there's no hook to hang a hat. So, the hat just falls.

Thoughts flow. And if you're not paying attention to them, because you're not identified with the body in the world, and yet, as you mentioned, I can sit here and say, oh, I need to do X, Y, Z, and I need to put it on my calendar. Okay, that's fine. I didn't have to take any identification for that. It's just an action, spontaneous, in the moment. And as far as the very day that Maharaj gave the Mantra, and I was continuing, I sat. You know, like everybody was sitting in the hall for actual meditation, sitting, meditating. And then I continued with the Mantra as I walked back to my room. And that's when I wound up walking all around India and getting my beard shaved and my hair cut off, very short, and all this.

And it was just, it was spontaneous. You just get carried away with the Mantra. The Mantra will erase the thoughts slowly, silently, and permanently, because there will be no place for them to hang your hat. There will be no more hook. The hook will be off the wall. You go to hang the hat, boom, it just falls.

You're not paying attention to the thought stream, because you're not a you. As a specific, this is John's thought. Thought then is understood that if I'm not the body, thoughts don't occur in this that I call head. Thoughts are this waking world that we're seeing.

Q: It's not so much, like if people are having a conversation, and I say the Mantra, and it's not like some, I just feel fine. I don't feel like I need to like interject anything, because there's no, there's nothing going on. And I don't know if that's normal or what, but...

John: Yeah, you're practicing I don't exist. It's very simple. You're in a room full of people.
And you can, quote, practice I don't exist by not taking the touch of what's going on. And yet, if somebody came to you and said, hey, Matthew, I need you for XYZ, you would immediately respond. But you understand that all of this is occurring within yourself.

All these so-called bodies, including the body that you used to believe yourself to be, is within your own self. And you can see quite easily how everything's moving around without your needing to do anything. Without your needing to put your two cents in, or to do anything.

And yet, if somebody says, hey, Matthew, what did you think of the football game last night, or whatever? If you watched it, you can certainly carry on the conversation. No problem. If you didn't, you say, oh, I didn't see it. And then there's no mentation of, oh, I wonder what I'm supposed to say, or anything. There's nothing like this.

There's no self-consciousness, because there's no self to be conscious of.

Q: If someone reaches out to you, and it's like, I guess if that's the inner Guru manifesting, like Maharaj would say, we're definitely blessed. Because, you know, I feel like you could hit your head against a wall your whole life. And if you don't, if you just don't get the Guru's blessing, then, I mean, you're kind of, you know.

John: Well, but remember, there's no inner Guru, no outer Guru, because there's no body. And Maharaj says all the time, put your hand on your head and bless yourself. The Guru that you believe going to see Sri Ramakant Maharaj, Sri Ramakant Maharaj is not the Guru of the body. That's your inner Master, so to speak, manifested in the physical world, as we say. Due to the fact that I believe I'm a body, I see a body as a Guru, and I bow to that Guru's feet. But in reality, if I know I'm not a body, I know the Guru is not a body.

The Guru absolutely knows the Guru is not a body. So, it's the Selfless Self using two body forms to worship the Selfless Self, formlessly.

Q: Is it safe to say that the Guru is not a body?

John: Well, you are that.

Q: It's just weird, because it's like, you know, you talked about, like, on the back, and saying the Mantra, and everything worked out, you know. And it's like, I notice, if I say Naam, you know, and I'm repeating it, like, everything's fine. Like, it's not like, you know, I don't want to say it's like magic or anything, but it's just that it's like, it's all going however it should.

And it's like, I don't, it's going to take me a while to get used to, you know, with the, you know, newfound devotion again. But, you know, stabilizing in that. But I'm hopeful that it's just, you know, it just becomes a natural habit to just say Naam, you know, all the time.

And just let it, just watch the movie and not even be concerned about it. Because there's so many things you think, oh, I can do this, I can do that. And I need to do this, I need to do that. And there's like basic needs you have to take care of. But a lot of stuff just never happens. Whatever you think is going to happen, good or bad.

And it's like, if your inner teacher, if Brahman is moving all things anyway, then there's nothing to do but watch it. Like, because you're not the body anyway. So, I don't, I'm hoping that's not a concept, but that's just kind of how I feel at this point.

John: Yeah, you're just two eyes floating through space, basically. Again, body's available, you use it, do your job, do your duties, take care of your responsibilities. But without taking any kind of ownership of any consequence.

Like you say, oh, if I perform this action, I should get this result. No, it's just formlessly, okay, in the moment, and here it is, spontaneous in the moment. Everything is pick up the drink and put it down. Pick up, drink, put it down. Yes, tomorrow you won't know at what time you picked up the drink and put it down. It's just a series of activities without any kind of, I'm doing it.

Q: It's weird because it's like, it's like, this is what I would say, was that the false was never real, and the real was never born. And so, it's like, you know, you don't remember your birth, right? So, you were unborn, but also to the false self that like, you have all these mental formations trying to like come up bubbling up from the water and stuff.

It's like, it never goes anywhere anyway. And so, it's like, it can't ever be real in any sense, because it's just not, it's not. It's like you're observing something that's broken, like a machine that's making a noise because it needs grease, you know?

And it's like, you're not that, you're the, you're not, it's just so weird to like, it's just so weird.

John: And it's just because that's you, that you are, is the projection your just constantly creating. That's just your nature, if you want to say it that way. The consciousness, boom.

And when there's a knowledge of existence within the consciousness, whether it be waking or dream, because they're both the same, an object is identified with, and a world is appearing. Actions are being performed. When you wake up, you know, it's not true.

When you know yourself in a real sense, none of this so-called waking is true. It's exactly the same.

Q: Yeah, I was thinking for a long time, just saying Naam and just waiting patiently.

John: Well, and again, Naam will put you in that quote Samadhi state, Nirvikalpa Samadhi, where you're not, you're not focused on your body and you're not in a world anymore. You're just, that's where that scenes are just appearing and disappearing, appearing and disappearing. But there's no you, there's no body pressure to say, I'm here.

There's no local identification. That's why when Ramana Maharshi left the body and they were talking, he said, well, where will I go? Like, where will you go when the body falls?

Where will you go? There is nowhere for you to go because you weren't ever confined to this limited body form. This local identification was false. You understand this through Mantra. Thoughts slow down. You're no longer paying attention to thoughts that were keeping you compressed in a body form.

Oh, so that I am that. That's it. The same as when you wake from a dream and you say, oh, I could not have been doing any of those things. You wake from a nightmare and you're a little bit sweaty and you're like, oh, my God, that was terrible. But it's not true. Or you dream that you were fired and you wake up it’s a dream. You were like trying to figure out what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? You wake up. Oh, it was a dream. I still have my job. Everything is fine. It's the same. You know yourself in a real sense, no matter what these little seeming things are that are seemingly happening.

As long as you don't make mountains out of illusory problems. If you take the touch of an illusory problem, it will become quite real. Why? Because spirit takes the touch immediately. The same as in a dream. You're in the dream. You take the touch. I'm a body in a world having this experience. If you take the touch in the waking world, you will believe I'm a body in a world having this experience. If you know yourself in a real sense, it's just scenes appearing and disappearing. Scenes appearing and disappearing. Here we are again.

We do the Tuesday talk. We turn it off. Do what needs to be done to put it on the web.
Watch TV. Next thing, here we are again. Like there's no, it's just scenes appearing and disappearing. And yet, like I can say, this Saturday, I'm going to go see a movie with my son. The ticket that I bought is for one o'clock. But there doesn't have to be a me to do that.

It's a simple click, click, boom. I buy it. Once Saturday comes, I'm not thinking from now until Saturday, what the movie is going to be like or anything like this obsessing about the movie.
It's just, okay. Now, Saturday is coming. I wake up. I get in the car and I drive up and I see him and we go to the movies. There's no you. And that answers that lady's question.

This is how you live the reality. There's just scenes appearing and disappearing. Whenever you start to take the touch, whether it be because as you get closer and closer to your Selfless Self, Maharaj has said this, and I've experienced this, you will begin to kind of, there will be pressure.

I heard one Russian devotee say it beautifully. It's like a cork when you shake it and it's getting pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure, and it wants to pop.

Maharaj talks about the tenants leaving the buildings and they abuse you on the way out. Same thing, it's like as you get closer and closer to your Selfless Self, you will create in your experience a reason to remain with your Selfless Self rather than take the touch. The food poisoning in India, the cab driving late at night in the rain, many, many instances of you don't take the touch.

You go with Master and reality rather than illusion and mind. If you do start to take the touch, Mantra. Mantra will very quickly put you back into that flow.

I'm more like the space or sky than I am this body form. But quite frankly, after you've known yourself, after you have transferred any identification that was left of the body onto this sense of Presence, it unlocks the key of, I am the knower of the sense of Presence. Presence is so subtle and yet it's known.

Okay, whether Presence is or is not, I am. So therefore, I'm no longer worried about body, mind, ego, intellect, world, nothing. Because I'm prior to beingness.

I know myself in a real sense. Now you don't get lost. You don't need to just drop into Mantra because Mantra was a tool at one time which can now be discarded.

But Mantra allows you to erase the illusory layers slowly, silently and permanently. The fire burning bright, that fire burning bright, that just I, just I, that subtle sense of Presence. The moment this is known, I've heard about this so many times from Master, now I understand.

I'll transfer the identity of anything I have left onto the sense of Presence. Now Presence is going to work. Presence is driving. Presence is in line at the grocery store, not the body. Somebody says, oh you look terrible. Like Nisargadatta Maharaj talked about, who are you speaking about? I'm not this body. So, when you've transferred your any identification left to this subtle sense of Presence, this just I, just I, I'm more like the sense of Presence, space or sky, than I am this body. Then if a thought comes, what if the body dies?

Well, I'm more like this sense of Presence and this body is within that sense of Presence. So, it wouldn't matter to me at all. Okay, now let's say the sense of existence, the sense of Presence is no more. Well that also doesn't matter anymore because the knower of the sense of Presence was there prior to knowing the sense of Presence or the sense I exist or the just I. Therefore, whether Presence is or is not, I am. Whether the sense I exist is or is not, I am.

Nothing can remove this I am, because, that I am. That's why Maharaj says, where all experience ends, there you are.

Q: Jai guru. Thank you.

Q: So, at that point where you're transferring experience to the sense of Presence, then you can't really call that taking the touch anymore?

John: Well, again, Presence becomes an object in your awareness. When you have meditated with Mantra, that's why Maharaj always says. Meditation is so important.

If you're reading books and doing all these things and listening to all this kind of stuff, meditation. Remain with your Selfless Self. Just see what's there. Just I, just I. This subtle, subtle sense of Presence. I am more like this sense of Presence than I am this body.

Q: So, everything gets transferred. It's not like something you do. It gets transferred over to the sense of Presence, I suppose.

John: Well, again, don't get hung up in words. It's when I say, like, at first, most individuals identified with the body. Then you say, OK, I read about spiritual knowledge. I understand that there's Brahman, Atman, Paramatman. There's a Master. Eventually, through devotion to whatever higher power you're believing in, it leads to a Master, or it leads to more.

The desire to know will lead to knowledge. So now you have Mantra. OK, you're supposed to remain with Mantra, Mantra 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I'm in traffic, Mantra. At work, Mantra. Here I am, Mantra. Eventually, slowly, silently, permanently thoughts are removed. Fire. Maharaj used the example of fire. Fire, Presence. We call Presence the just I, just I. Nisargadatta Maharaj called it the I am. The sense of existence. I exist. I am.

You know you are. How do you know you are? There's this subtle, subtle sense of Presence.
Now, as soon as this is felt, oh, what's this? Remaining more with the sense of Presence throughout the day now. Now you're stuck in traffic. What do you do? Sort of dive into this sense of Presence. You can just sort of feel this. Oh, just I, just I. Everything's OK. Subtle sense of Presence.

This transference of identification. I was identified with body. Now I understand there's this Presence. At first, maybe I identify, as I did, the sense of Presence with God. Oh, this is God. This is the God of the preachers. When people pray, this is God. That's a step. But now I understand that Presence is.

So, I start to identify, oh, I'm more like this subtle sense of Presence. And this was when Maharaj said. You are not body, you were not body, you're not going to remain the body.
Well, if I'm not the body and yet I can sense the sense of Presence, then I must be Presence, not body. I like, I leave the body behind, so to speak. I'm no longer dragging it along.

I'm more like the sense of Presence. I feel lighter. It's going to feel like a like you're expanding because you're no longer constricting yourself with thoughts and ideas and beliefs that I am a body.

So, it'll feel like an expansion. As your Presence, you'll understand as we spoke about you're in a room speaking with all these different people, but you understand that the entire, all the people, all this entirety is within your own Presence, including the body that you used to believe yourself to be, who's having this conversation with these so-called people. Subtly, there is an understanding.

That's what we call the black hole, so to speak, because there is no concept of I am Presence there. There is no concept because Presence is now an object in your awareness. Whether Presence is or is not, I am.

The sense of existence has appeared to that you are. And when the sense of existence is no more, you are. Now we come to the state, no knowledge is knowledge.

It's no longer knowledge of existence, and that's the true knowledge. That's how Maharaj talks about knock, knock on the door. Who's there? Nobody's there, but somebody had to be there to say nobody's there. You had to be for the sense of being to appear, for the sense of existence to appear, not in this body form. The knower of the sense of Presence is there whether Presence is known or not known.

And once Presence is known, that's just like in a dream. You lay down sleeping, sense of existence appears, boom, dream world is spontaneously created. That's you doing it.
Who else is there? It's you, boom, whole dream world populating with people. You're speaking in your dream. You're eating in your dream. You're talking in your dream. Your dream may seem like many months of time. And when you wake up, you know it's not true. When you know yourself in a real sense, when you, quote, wake up, the waking consciousness is not true. It's another dream.

And how is this dream? I am somebody else is the key to that dream. If you're nobody, then you're everybody. And this is, Maharaj talks about the something came out of nothing and goes back to nothing. The something for a time appeared just like the dream, but it was nothing. The waking state appeared just like a dream, but it was nothing.

It was an appearance in the nothing. No thing, nothing, nothing to be known because you are all of it. In order to have the sense of duality, you have to know your own existence. I exist. Therefore, there is an I that exists and you separate. Duality, boom, immediately I'm a body in the world.

You reverse, reverse, reverse, reverse, roll up the world, which the body kind of was there to make this world appear. Without body, you can't see a world. So roll back that. Now you're at the sense of existence where there's no body because it's just the sense of existence. Roll that back and there's the knower. That you are.

Yes, where all experience ends, there you are. Before this cuts off, we'll go back to our every two weeks because it's now going into September. So, September 1st, we'll meet again and then we'll do every two weeks because this is a transition year where I work. I'll be very, very busy. So, there may, I'll let you know. There may be times in November where we can't do this, but we're going back to regular every two weeks starting September 1st.

And that's for everybody, the people that listen on YouTube, the people who are here. So just to let everybody know.

Q: When it's like the knower, all that's left is the knower, does it feel like a dissolution, like the world has dissolved? Would you say?

John: It's still seen, but you're not identifying as like something. I mean, I watch TV. I love TV. I spend a lot of time in front of the TV watching all sorts of shows, and I can be fully involved in them. And when I turn them off, it's finished. Or I've gotten to the point where you're watching a show. It's time for me to go to bed so I can wake up tomorrow. I turn it off in the middle of the show. There's no like, oh my God, what am I missing? This is the world.

Q: It's a show. Sometimes I feel like I'm somewhat expanded or whatever. And it feels sort of, I mean, as a description, I could say it feels like the world is dissolving too. But that's still just a, it's a description.

John: Just don't get hung up on, because this happened in the Ashram. I spoke about after doing Mantra and everything, I was doing Bhajans, and I felt like my body had like disappeared. And the whole ashram was inside of me. And it was a very strange feeling. But don't get hung up, because even Maharaj said, okay, good experience, but keep with your Selfless Self. Don't be like, wow, that was amazing. I want to try that again. Let me go back tomorrow during Bhajan and see if I can expand so that the Ashram is within me again, and I'm not here. No, just continue. Remain with your Selfless Self. Be normal, be simple, be humble, be always with you.

Q: You know, in the past I had, I talked about this before, I had a powerful, it was sort of like a Kundalini experience, and then it never happened again. But as time goes on, it seems like some of that is coming back that I experienced then, like parts of it, but still it's not anything that's worth, you can't like keep it there.

John: Yeah, don't hold on to experience, don't try to chase experience. If experience is there, very nice. But remember, there's no experience, no experiencer. At the end of all experience, you are formlessly, without form. Good experience, bad experience just appears on your spontaneous Presence and can easily be discarded.

Q: So, like if you're humble, it comes automatically then, you could say.

John: Well, you don't want to take the spiritual ego, no. Like even Maharaj says, sometimes you may be doing things and you see that, oh my gosh, this is happening. Remember, Nisargadatta Maharaj, he had people come and they would have miracles happen, and Siddharameshwar Maharaj says, no, no, no, don't do this, this is not knowledge, don't, don't.

Because the people were waiting in a queue to come and be blessed by Nisargadatta Maharaj, and Siddharameshwar Maharaj, no, no, this is not reality. Don't, because you may have this happen for a time, and your spiritual ego gets built up. I can make things happen, or I have knowledge. Seemingly, I can understand things before they're happening, or it's almost like I read people's minds, the quote Siddhas. But at one point, it won't be, and then you'll be all depressed. And for the next 100 years, you'll be chasing to try and get back this power. Forget about this, no power. Because remember, it's illusion. In a dream, maybe you have the power to lift a car and crumple it into a tin can. When you wake up, what is the use of this power?

Q: I had like, I feel like having peak states, you come to this and you expect it, it feels like those are all fabrications of the mind anyway in the illusion. So, it's like, what, what use is that? And you start clinging to it.

And it's just like, it's made me miserable over the years, because I kept thinking, well, I got to have this, I got to do this. And it's a whole list of things, you know, and then it's like, it's as simple as just like, for me, like, like, at this point, you know, I don't know about further, but it's just like, just Naam, and just live the day and no expectations. Because of all the expectations...

Transcribed by TurboScribe

This is the Tuesday Talk held July 21, 2026. Tuesday Talks is a gathering on Zoom of devotees from the Ramakant Maharaj USA visit. This is a gathering of devotee’s to discuss and clarify the teachings of Sri Ramakant Maharaj. These spontaneous utterances are recorded and shared with anyone who may find them useful.
Jai Sadguru!

Tuesday Talk July 21, 2026
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. With limited Edits

Q: Are we still here? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

John: You can hear me, right?

Q: Yeah, yeah. Okay, now I see you.

John: Yeah.

Q: Peek-a-boo. I guess there was one thing I was noticed. I was a number of weeks back and a number of weeks before that I mentioned that I had been using, in the morning, using I, I, I, I as a Mantra.

I would just do it for a short time, and it seemed to like make a connection with the, with the Selfless Self, or whatever you want to call it, bliss or whatever. And at the time you said it was a body-based thing. And then, but then after that, like a number of weeks later, you made a reference to the I, I, I.

I probably don't remember that, but I was just wondering if...

John: You probably would have said the just I, just I. And that's that subtle, subtle feeling, that subtle sense of Presence, or the I am, as Nisargadatta Maharaj calls it. Not to repeat I, I, I, or any kind of contemplation.

Anything to do with the mind is, you know, again, you're prior to mind. Mind came along with the body. If you're using the mind, then you're actually in the illusion and you're strengthening the illusion.

Even the feeling of Samadhi or any kind of bliss or anything like that, you're, you're using body base. And I think Maharaj talks about the foundation. When you lay the foundation, you want the foundation to be very, very strong.

And the foundation is very, very strong through Mantra, through just that once again, meditation, the subtle, subtle just I, just I, the sense of Presence. Remaining with that sense of Presence, just your awareness of Presence. This is the strong foundation, because then nothing can, can break that.

Like that is direct self-recognition, recognition in the projection. Oh, so that I, I am that. I am not this body. Body and world come along synonymously, so I'm neither of these. I'm literally outside the world, and yet the world is inside myself. I have nothing to do with the body.

And as Maharaj would say, when we're speaking these words, we're hitting that silent, invisible, anonymous, unidentified identity, that silent listener, the true you, when you're not in delusion of thinking that you're something else. And that's where, you know, again, the Vipassana meditation, he talked about that, and when we were at one circle, the lady was very adamant that she really enjoys Vipassana. And Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj has talked about, it was either him or Siddharameshwar Maharaj, I think it was Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj talked about that there were people who would hold their breath, and this guy would actually have a car parked on top of him.

And he would show these amazing powers, because of being able to hold the breath. And yet again, this is not knowledge. This is all within the body base, where Siddharameshwar Maharaj also talks about, don't get involved in Siddhas.

You know, the powers that come, like you suddenly, maybe you're feeling clairvoyant, or you're feeling like you're, who knows what you're feeling like, but again, these are the Siddhas. And that gets you trapped in the illusion, because it's like, oh, look at this, look at this thing. If I do this, I am getting this.

And as they say, Maya enjoys this. There's no such thing as Maya, but you say Maya enjoys watching the people dance around her. Because it's all within the bubble of illusion.

If you don't go direct to the source, you know yourself in a real sense, there's direct recognition, which begins with that subtle, subtle, subtle sense of Presence, then otherwise you're just dancing in the illusion. Everything you do is in the illusion. Think of it as in a dream.

Within the dream, you go and you do all these spiritual practices, and you feel enlightened. You feel like, wow, you know, this is it. This is the spirit.

I'm one with the spirit. And then you wake up, and everything you did within that dream was within that dream, and it's finished. It's gone.

Well, everything you do with this body, this body base, is a weak foundation on which you're stacking your spiritual self. Because it will pass. Everything passes except you.

And, you know, you can—and there are many people out in the world that are doing all sorts of different, various practices, and like Maharaj said, people will stand in the Ganges on one leg until they're like worn down from the current. They'll sit in a cave for a month or two months or whatever, thinking this is spirituality. But again, it's only just torturing the body for no apparent reason.

When you use the body, you're automatically—the key to illusion is the body. Well, the key to illusion is I exist. But the instrument that's used in the illusion is the body.

If you're using the body, which comes along with mind, ego, intellect, to try and know yourself, you're using the thief to catch the thief, because you're prior to body. So, anything that you're using the body for is absolutely useless in your own self-experience.

Q: Because I guess I'm still missing the truth. If I'm attributing bliss as if bliss is a more direct experience of the I am, then that's still—I mean, it seems more direct, but everything seems to be something or other. So, it's just seeming, even though it seems more direct, the bliss seems more present than my mental activity.

It's still not absolute freedom from the senses of making something out of what I'm experiencing, I guess.

John: Yeah. I mean, it's more and more and more subtle. Definitely, it's better than being lost in the mind and worried and running around like a chicken with the head cut off, so to speak. But it's not ultimate truth. That's why Maharaj talks about Samadhi. Oh, I had a very good Samadhi. Well, that's lovely. But ultimate stage, there's no Samadhi. There's no you there. And ultimate stage? Subtle, subtle Presence. Just I, just I.

Just a subtle, subtle feeling, this I exist, I am, as this is transferred. And this is the subtle point. Transferring and saying, I'm more like this Presence, as Nisargadatta Maharaj, Sri Ramakant Maharaj says, you're more subtle than space or sky.

I'm more like this Presence than I am this body. Well, if I start to transfer any kind of identification onto the sense of Presence, which is formless, then I am no longer concerned with the body, mind, ego, intellect. I'm no longer doing anything related to those things, nor am I concerned with the world, because I'm more like the space in the room than the object.

Not an object. So now, you do your job, do your duties with this very subtle understanding that I'm more like the sense of Presence than I am this body form. This body is within the Presence that I am.

Now, the more you now remain with just a sense of Presence, because now you're identified, you're feeling, using this body form, you're feeling that sense of Presence, it becomes Selfless Self-intoxication. You would like to remain with the sense of Presence more than you would go about and bother with, like, what is going on in the world and all this sort of thing. So, this is the door, so to speak.

On one side of this sense of Presence, because the world is projected on that Presence, the other side is the knower of the sense of Presence. Now, Presence has become an object the same as this table (knocks on table). It can be experienced.

I'm experiencing the sense of Presence. Well, who is that that knows the sense of Presence? That you are.

This eliminates everything as well, because whether Presence is or is not, I am. Remove the sense of Presence, and the knower of the sense of Presence is still there with no sense of Presence to know. And this is what Maharaj would call prior to beingness.

And that is your true state. Presence has appeared. The body was sensed through this.

Dream world is projected, waking dream state, whatever you want to call it. Identification with this body form is impressed very quickly, because you have mom and dad telling you good things, bad things. You go through life thinking you're a body.

It's heavily impressed on you that you're a body. Even in dream, you want to take a body in order to experience the dream. It's not natural for you to remain in your natural state due to the impressions of being a body.

But as you know yourself in a real sense, I am not body, I was not body, I'm not going to remain the body, then these body impressions are less and less. That's what Maharaj calls the illusory layers. Fire is burning, removing the ash, the illusory layers.

We remove the illusory layers through Mantra. As Mantra, Presence, all of a sudden now, oh. So, the door on this side is the world, Presence, the knower of the sense of Presence.

Now, somebody will say, well, what happens when the body drops? But again, the sense of Presence, whether it is or is not, I am. And the sense of Presence came along with the body.

The body is the instrument that can sort of sift that and feel that Selfless Self-intoxication. Without a body, you're not feeling the sense of Presence, because there's no instrument in which to feel it. And yet, you are.

Whether the Presence is or is not, I am. Body is a projection with the world. When the body falls, nothing happens, because you're the knower of the sense of Presence.

And whether Presence is or is not, I am.

Q: Could you say that... Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Could you say that knowing being yourself, self-knowledge is almost like a different type of sense than the limited sense of a relative sense?

John: Well, again, no knowledge is knowledge.

Q: When you say a real sense, sometimes you say in a real sense.

John: In a real sense, without the use of body, mind, ego, intellect.

Q: So, you're still using the word sense, real sense.

John: Well, in a real sense, this is, don't get caught up in the words. It's just the fact that you have direct recognition. It's a direct experience of your own self, and that's why it's irrefutable.

Q: So, I mean, compared to our normal way of defining sense, it could be defined as a different type of sense, but it's not really a different type of sense.

John: No, senses came along with the body, as far as touching, feeling, all this kind of stuff. Even sixth sense needs a body, so forget about all that. The knower of the sense of Presence, that you are.

Again, while you're identified with the sense of Presence, it's still illusion, because I exist is the seed that sprouts illusion. But to whom does I exist appear? That is your own self.

You cannot know yourself directly. You understand everything you know is other than yourself. The direct experience is the knower of this sense of Presence, because that Presence is so prevalent, it becomes your absolute everything.

As Nisargadatta Maharaj said, he sat with the I am. He continued just remaining with I am, I am, I am, until it dropped. And it will drop.

That's spontaneous conviction. All the illusory concepts are blown away. There's no place for them to stick. You can't be a man, or a woman, or a Christian, or a Muslim, or an American, or a Russian, or black, or white, or none of this, because there's no place to hang the hat.

Q: You can't be a body or a world, even.

John: You couldn't possibly be a body. Again, a good example, this is a lump of five elemental goo, just a lump, as Maharaj calls it, a food body. I put food in this body, it grows.

Sometimes it grows a little bit too much, but it grows from food. It's just food body. Presence is gone. We call this death. You take it to the funeral pyre, or you take it to the burial site, or cremation, or whatever you're going to do with the body. You don't want it sitting around your house.

So now think, this is just no Presence here, just this lump. And let's say the space in the room somehow was able to see through these eyes. And because the space did not know it was space, and had nothing to know, it now has an instrument of knowing.

And there are things to know, because now the space sees through the eyes, and believes, I'm seeing things. A world has appeared. And I can move, and I can do things, and all this sort of thing, and yet you're the space.

And this is just a lump of goo.

Q: It's all within the space.

John: The space, recognizing I exist, is within the space. And everything within the I exist is illusion. All these are objects in the space. Does it affect the space if all these objects are thrown away? No. If the building crashes, it doesn't affect the space. Therefore, we say illusion. With the space, objects within the space are not true. And yet if the space was to see through these eyes, and oh, what's all this stuff? Where am I? Who am I? How did I get here?

Because body came along with intellect, figuring it out, so to speak. And now let's say the space goes on a spiritual journey to try and find out who I am, and uses this instrument to try and find out who am I. And maybe goes to somebody who says, you know, oh, this is a guru, because I have a body. Here's another body, so I think I'm going to go to this very wise person, and I'm going to surrender to this very wise person. And yet this very wise person is the space. Same space.

But their understanding is, I know myself in a real sense. I'm not this body. I'm space. I was deluded for a time that I was body, but I'm space. And then they try to impress in you, listen, this is the ultimate reality. You're the space.

You're not the body. You just happen to have clicked with a body and seen a world, but it's not true. Ah, yes, Master, but what happens when I die? I want to know what happens to my soul. Okay. Soul is a body-based concept.

Death is a body-based concept. You're the space. You suddenly realized, I can see.

I exist because this body sort of was available. You hijacked this lump of flesh and called it yourself. And then because you started doing good things and bad things, you attributed actions to this body that you've hijacked, basically, which is a dead body, a lump of goo.

You're dragging this form around with you. And then that guru would say, drop this body and remain as the space. And at first, when you drop this idea of being a body, there'd feel an expansion because you're no longer heavily being pressed. I am a body. Same in a dream. Formlessly, a dream world appears.

Instantaneously, a world is projected, and you create a little dream body and have a little dream experience. But when you wake up, it's not true. When you know yourself in a real sense, this so-called world is not true.

Master is impressing on you. You're more like space or sky than you are this body. And when we're speaking, it's not to the person you believe yourself to be. It's that space that hijacked that lump of goo that is trying to identify itself to make sense, because it has had the intellect of saying, Who am I?

Q: It's lost in a dream almost.

John: Correct. This body-based existence is a long dream. Again, Maharaj explains this by the something came out of nothing. The nothing is your own self, formless, all of everything, basically. The nothing—that's the nothing. The something is the body, which then you have illusory layers—world, ego, intellect, mind, experiencing, all this sort of thing. The nothing is back to your natural, original state before you were deluded in believing that you were a body.

Q: I was wondering, at some point today, I kind of wanted to maybe address something that I know we don't normally address things that go on in our personal lives. Is it okay to bring up something like that?

John: I mean, there's no person, so all of your body-based experiences are not true, and by impressing that they are, how is that helpful for you? The answer to every question is—

Q: The body sometimes needs some kind of a way of basing its actions on things that are happening. Rather than making my actions based on a sense of being a body and a self, or being selfish, it's better to act selflessly, I think. At least putting other beings ahead of yourself rather than putting yourself first in your actions.

John: But all these things you're speaking, which self? There are no other selves.

Q: But things are happening in the illusion, or could be at least according to an illusory way of experiencing. Things are happening, and things seem real important. You said you still have to deal with things.

The body still has to deal with things.

John: Do your job, do your duties, take care of your responsibilities.

Q: That entails doing your duties without interference of—so much interference of desires, of personal, selfish desires, rather than just dealing with it as it pops up without any kind of of investment, or taking credit, or anything like that. So, anyway, I guess I'll just throw—I got robbed, and I know who did it, and I'm wondering if you have any kind of advice, or just maybe just ignore it, don't answer. But should I do something to—my quandary is whether I should do something to expose this person, and that would even possibly get him to attack me even more if he knows that I exposed him.

So, anyway, sort of see what I'm saying, at least in the worldly sense, I have to deal with—the body has to deal with a possible attack if I expose this person.

John: And again, I can only say that in any situation in my day-to-day activities where I come to any sort of crossroads of any kind, I pause for a moment and I say, okay, Master, this is not good. I explain whatever it is. I bow Jai Guru, and put it out of my mind, because I know the Master, everything will be as it's supposed to be.

Q: The trust, yeah, the trust.

John: It's complete trust and faith. You know, whatever is happening, I can't even think of the last time, but there have been times where something is happening, and I'm like, whoa, okay, Master. And I will bow. I will say, okay, Master, you know, please guide me on this thing. And then I literally just put it out of the mind. And I'll see then maybe a week later or a couple days later, and that problem has resolved itself. And I'm always certain to say, thank you, Master. Thank you. It worked out perfectly.

Like, whatever it was, it just worked out perfectly, because I'm not trying to get involved, since I honestly cannot change anything. That surrender of everything is within the bubble of illusion. I don't take the touch, and it works out. It just seems to work out. And I find myself then later, just like the example of this whole apartment. When I first came in, there was no furniture.

There was no nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And gradually, something came and said, oh, let's get this lamp. Oh, let's do this. Oh, let's do that. Oh, I like this rug. Let's put this rug. And it just, all of a sudden, then you look and you say, the whole house is designed. Thank you, Master, because it flowed. It just flowed.

And any kind of circumstance like this, if you are impressed with body-based illusory concepts, Master, what to do? And it's even better, because you're not going to some body. Let's say Shri Ramakant Maharaj was still in the body. You were able to go to him and say, Master, what to do? Because even when he was in the body, I had said that to him on several occasions at the Ashram, and always it was no advice. There was no go do this or go do that, because it is just spontaneous. It's just a flow. What to do? Master, what to do?

And then put it out of your mind, because Master has answered. You understand the entire world is illusion, and it's your projection. If you're going to project worry and discomfort and, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, then this is you're going to be in your experience.

If you're not going to create an experiencer, there is no experience. And the best way to create a no-experiencer is to literally turn it over, Master. Even the Thy Will not mine be done. Don't have a dog in the fight, and you won't go home. Like, oh, your dog can't lose if you don't have a dog in the fight.

Q: So, in my case, I did find out, right, I actually kind of knew almost from the beginning who did this.

John: Again, forget all of that. Somebody, whatever, it's going to come about spontaneously. Don't be an actor. Don't try an outcome. Don't try to say, it should be this way, or it should be that way, or I want it this way, or what if this happens that way. No. Master, this thing has happened. Please guide me. You said as your disciple, you would guide. I have complete faith and trust in the Master, and then you'll observe this happening.

Q: So, I shouldn't even, I don't know, I'm afraid to, after we're done.

John: Put it out of, completely put it out of the mind. I know it's important to you in this moment. That's fine. I'm not saying it's not important, but just ask the Master for guidance, and know that the Master will guide you, and you'll see this happening. It might come in a variety of circumstances. Who knows?

I'll give you an example. The Android Auto in my car, and when I got in, because of the heat, it was like not working properly. It kept coming in and out and all this sort of stuff, and I was just going to go and buy another one, but I said, oh, Master, like what to do? I know this is silly compared to your item, but I said, what to do? It came about just to ask AI, and AI said, which I did not know, go into Android Auto and clear the cache, because when it gets hot, if the cache is still on, it can mess up the connection. Now, I wouldn't have known that.

My thought was I need to buy another one of these things. It doesn't work, but by pausing, spontaneously the answer came, and I know I'm not trying to make light of your situation as you're feeling that this is very important. This is just an example.

Q: It would be a spontaneous thing for me to go get advice to do this. Wouldn't that be part of the spontaneity?

John: If that arises, but again, bring your own Selfless Self into it, because every seeming challenge in this illusory world is there for you to get to know yourself more deeply and to have more trust, more faith in the Master. I'm sorry, what?

Q: I can feel what you're saying.

John: Yes. Again, going back to the Ashram, the food poisoning, any of these things, complete faith and trust in the Master. Don't concentrate on the situation. Concentrate on the trust and faith. Understand that Master has presented you with this opportunity. The door of opportunity is open. Walk through it. Remain with your Selfless Self. Rely on the Master. Master, I don't know what to do. Please guide me. Jai Sat Guru.

Q: That’s what turning it over.

John: That's it. And again, it will arise spontaneously in the moment, what is needed to be done. And you'll know the difference between you trying to create a situation, even you trying to say, oh, this is what the Master wanted me to do. It doesn't work like that. When the Master is flowing through you, there's no you there. And it's just an activity that basically is looked over your shoulder. And you say, wow, how that resolved itself so beautifully. Thank you, Master. Again, don't even take the egoistic credit for the problem being solved, because it wasn't you. And thank you, Master. That worked out so well.

Even my little simple example of Android Auto. When I got in the car and it started working again, I was like, oh, thank you, Master. That was wonderful. Because otherwise, I would have gone to Amazon and bought another one of these things unnecessarily.

Q: It reminds me of one time Ramana Maharshi, I guess, got robbed. And the people said, oh, you got to go catch this guy.

Transcribed by TurboScribe

This is the Tuesday Talk held June 16, 2026. Tuesday Talks is a gathering on Zoom of devotees from the Ramakant Maharaj USA visit. This is a gathering of devotee’s to discuss and clarify the teachings of Sri Ramakant Maharaj. These spontaneous utterances are recorded and shared with anyone who may find them useful.
Jai Sadguru!

Tuesday Talk June 16, 2026
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. With limited Edits

Q: We haven't had many questions lately from the viewing people.

John: That’s true. One was on YouTube about, are there any masters in the lineage giving Mantra in India? I didn't answer, but somebody said something about some Maharaj.

I don't know that answer or how he's affiliated.

Q: But is it our lineage?

John: I honestly don't know. When the person answered, they put another person's name in the response. I don't really monitor or do anything unless somebody gets crazy and says crazy stuff. Then I'll delete their comment. Yeah, just because I used to leave it there. Then people said, oh, you shouldn't leave it there. It's not right. I was like, well, you know, it is what it is. If it's kind of off the wall, then I'll delete it.

But that wasn't off the wall. I just didn't have any idea who the Maharaj was that he was talking about. But yeah, as far as people emailing in, nobody's emailed in any questions. And it's good, actually, because all questions are body-based. If you know yourself in a real sense, there won't be any questions.

The question and the questioner are one and the same. Oh, if I'm formless, let me form a question. Now I'm going to put myself in the form of a questioner that needs a response to a question about the formlessness that I am, that if I didn't ask the question or I didn't try and figure something out, I would just remain as myself.

I'm not beating on questions. I mean, questions, even Maharaj says, ask questions until you're completely fulfilled. Don't just sit there and say, oh, yes, yes, yes, understood. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. If there are questions, definitely you want to get rid of those questions. Again, just like in Dasbodh.

Dasbodh begins with, this is the question, the doubt. Then he irons out four or five steps of the doubt. Then he goes around and clears the doubt. And at the end, he states, this doubt has been cleared. Please pay extra attention to the next chapter. And then another doubt comes.

Because to have doubts, you have to have a doubter. The form of the doubter is not true. So, there can be a billion doubts, as long as you believe yourself to be a doubter.

Oh, I doubt this. The I that doubts is not true. So, you remain with your Selfless Self, the doubt passes.

Q: Occasionally, I feel like that where I have no questions.

John: So, well, and as Maharaj says, Aatmanivedan Bhakti, I think he says, which is when Selfless Self is responding to yourself, it responds spontaneously to your own self. And many times, you do that in the so-called illusory existence. You'll have the knowledge to manifest itself slowly for a time until the understanding comes that the question and the questioner are one and the same.

The doubter and the doubt are one and the same. So, just as concentrating on the concentrator removes the concentrator through the concentration, the doubter and the doubt remove the doubt, you remove the doubter. There are no more doubts.

If you give it to mind, of course, then it'll be an infinite supply of new things that need to be figured out. And until you know yourself in a real sense, anybody could come to you and say, you know, you should really go to this church, or you should really do this, or you should really do that, or, you know, you need to do more sadhana. These people that say you're already that, it's not true, you know, the Bhagavad Gita says, “blah, blah, blah.”

And once you know yourself in a real sense, as Maharaj says, okay, I've seen the whole elephant. So, when somebody tells me that the elephant is like a trunk, or is like a log, or is like a big billowy, like a leaf, okay, it's true. This is part.

But if you see the whole elephant, you won't say elephant is like a log. No, you won't do this. When you know yourself in a real sense, you won't say, oh, yeah, you're right, you know, or you sit there and you're like, well, what if this other person is true?

Or what if this religion is really what I should have done? Or worse, like Maharaj talks about guru hopping. What if this guru has something that this other guru didn't have? I began with Maharaj, but now I'm going to go to this Ashram over here and spend some time, because they're going to give me like that extra. And within the illusion, of course, the mind is used to acquiring. It's always better to have more.

You go to college, you get a Bachelor's degree, lovely, but now you want a Master's degree. Get a better job with a Master's degree, now you want a Doctoral degree. And the same thing, the mind is conditioned to go guru shopping.

Oh, I learned so much from this master. That's why a lot of times, and even in Ramakant Maharaj USA, when we were here, one person had said, what Mantra to use, because they have been given several different Mantras. And Maharaj was like, if you've been given the Naam Mantra, use Naam Mantra.

So, what about this other one? Well, again, I have complete trust and faith. Go ahead.

Q: I was wondering about, you know, before you went to see Ramakant, you were doing Mantra, and then when you got the Naam Mantra, there was like a change or a deeper connection or something?

John: I discarded, because when I didn't have Naam Mantra, I looked up in the Upanishads, and it was like, yo, so, yo, so, hum, saha, so, hum, asmi. Yo, so, hum, saha, so, hum, asmi. And I walked around all of DC doing this.

This is fine. I didn't have Naam Mantra. There was trust and faith that it was like, it appeared in my experience, so to speak, and I was true to it.

And that was also during the time where I was listening to, I didn't listen to any of my rap music that I listen to nowadays. I was just listening to, like, Mantras and Om Namah Shivaya and all that, but to music. Actually, it used to drive my son crazy, because I would go pick him up, and we'd drive all the way to King's Dominion, and it would be nothing but chanting, Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya, and, you know, all this stuff, and it was like all these different Mantras put to music, and that was okay for the time.

I was still believing myself to be on a spiritual journey, and there were still doubts, but that was leading to Maharaj. Once meeting Maharaj, surrendered all Mantra, surrendered everything to the feet of the Master. Mantra, put your hand on the head, whisper in the ear, from now on, use this Mantra, Yes, Master.

And that was it. And I didn't ask when it would work, or if it would work. That was the really cool thing.

Like, once given Mantra, I just started beginning using Mantra, and then got the quote experience of the Mantra by noticing that, oh, here I am. I'm walking to this place in India to have my beard shaved off, to have my hair trimmed, because when I went to India, my hair was very long. I had the Rudraksha beads.

I had a big bushy beard and everything. All that was just gone, and I didn't sit there and say, oh, I should shave. It was, I'm concentrating on Mantra. Here I am sitting in this chair, getting my hair and my beard shaved off. Not hair shaved off, but haircut, beard shaved off. Then walking around.

Mantra, all of a sudden, just walking around. Had to take a rickshaw back to the Ashram, because I had wandered long time, long way away. And that's the power of the Mantra. That's why Mantra, and it's not sitting, as Maharaj said, it's not just sitting for Mantra. It's continuous in every moment. Taking a shower, Mantra. Washing the hair, Mantra. Putting on the clothes, Mantra. Walking to the car, Mantra. In the traffic, Mantra. At your job, Mantra. And it's just, you then start to begin to see that there's no thought process involved.

You do your job, do your duties. It flows. It flows very nicely, because mind is concentrated on Mantra. It can't get up to mischief of even to think, is this Mantra working? Because eventually you begin to see yourself just flowing. You're concentrated on Mantra, and body seems to be moving about and doing all these various things, but you're concentrated on Mantra. Jai Guru.

Q: Jai Guru. Unfortunately, I can't remember to do it as much as, as much, I forget to do it a lot. I have a really bad memory now. It's part of me. Also, I just, I guess I let myself get distracted, but.

John: Well, but even being distracted, you notice you're distracted. There has to be a noticer of distraction, correct? So as soon as you notice yourself get distracted, Mantra.

Q: Oh, I do that, but then I forget for long, you know, too long of periods. I put post its around that helps, helps remind me, you know, just seeing the post it there.

John: Well, at nighttime too, do you want to sleep a nice, peaceful sleep? Mantra for your sleeping, or Mantra yourself to sleep. And again, after a while, then you understand. Mantra is naturally running through the body. Then body becomes just kind of a flute and instrument because you're no longer doing Mantra. Mantra is like 1400 times per day. Mantra is coming and going and it's just natural. But anytime you sit there and you say, wow, I'm having a really great experience. Aha. This would be a good time to just pause. Mantra. Thank you, Master. Not going to fall back into the illusory ditch. Just like you said, Bhajan's Mantra, no illusory ditch for me.

Q: It does seem like, when we, Dasbodh talks about discrimination, and it does seem like Mantra kind of facilitates that discrimination kind of like naturally or something.

John: Yeah, because when you know yourself in a real sense, everything other than yourself is not you. You can easily discriminate between illusion and reality. If you can know it and name it, it's illusion. Because even the sense of Presence, remember, that is illusion. The discrimination is, oh, this sense of Presence, whether it is or is not, the knower of the sense of Presence is. And I am the knower of the sense of Presence. I am that.

Q: That's what Ramakant's referring to. He says prior, prior to.

John: Prior to beingness. How were you prior to beingness? Well, I don't know.
You're not in any form. Beingness has appeared, beingness will disappear, but the you that you are will not. You are constant.

Q: It just has to reveal itself gradually, you know, more and more, but very slow. He says slow, but to me it's really slow.

John: It's okay, slowly, silently, permanently. You remain with your Selfless Self. And that's why just my son and I went to go see Disclosure Day on Saturday, and they were talking about like, oh, if these aliens are supreme beings, then how can God exist and all that. And I even told my son, you know, we talked about this in Tuesday Talk, that it's Presence. Quite frankly, within the Presence, aliens can quite nicely appear. They're forms. So there is no discrepancy. Oh, how did these aliens come from billions of miles away? Because it's Presence.

It's the bubble of illusion. The consciousness can create this in your dream. You can have a dream tonight that aliens come and visit you, and you're starting to have friends with aliens. Everything was within the dream, and everything was your own self. When you wake up, you know this. When you know yourself in a real sense, nothing is outside of you. It cannot be. You're formless. Therefore, any form is like the space in the room and all the objects in the room.

Q: That gradually becomes apparent. I forget.

John: Or you remain with your Selfless Self, more with Mantra, more that sense of Presence. Because as you're meditating, suddenly this mind flow, and that's another thing, if for beginning meditators, okay, you're sitting and you say, oh, I cannot sit for meditation. I have a busy mind. Mind is just crazy. Great. Now you can sit as the observer of the mind flow.

Once you're the observer of the mind flow, obviously you're outside of it, because it's something that can be known. You're the observer of the mind flow. So, mind thoughts come and go. You remain. As you're remaining with that center of awareness of the thought, thought is no longer in your awareness, because your awareness is aware of awareness. That's the sense of Presence that will suddenly be felt, because mind is no longer that covering, that illusory layer. It disappears. So now you sense the sense of Presence. Even for the first time, it's like, oh, what's that?

Meditate. Now, the more the concentration on the concentrator, meditate on the meditator, that dissolves. You remain. The sense of Presence is sort of just I, just I. You still remain, but you can't say what remains. So, then you start to transfer the identification away from the body, away from the thoughts, to this subtle sense of Presence.

And this is what Siddharameshwar Maharaj did in Master of Self-Realization. He says, like, the great causal body, the causal body, all the way down through all the bodies, the physical body and all these bodies, be removing, removing, removing, until that which cannot be removed is there, and that is your own self. So, removing this sense of body, you say, okay, I am more like this subtle sense of Presence than I am this body or this mind.

Now go about your daily duties knowing this knowingness appears, this subtle sense of Presence. I'm more like the space or the sky than I am this body form. And after some time, it will dawn. Oh, whether this sense of Presence is or is not, I am. Now, where's the doubt about birth? Where's the doubt about death? Where's the doubt about having a bad day? Where's the doubt about sadhana? Where's the doubt about practice? Cannot, there's nowhere to hang the hat.

Q: Besides the Mantra, it does seem like certain concepts do help connect me with the subtle sense of Presence. Like today, I was contemplating non-attachment, and just that, just that word seemed to help clear, you know, give me a discriminating, like an awareness to distinguish what is attachment. I could distinguish what was attachment and what wasn't.

So, just for me, sometimes concepts actually, well, it's a concept that is not, it's not the same as other concepts or some non-attachment, because you can actually feel the non-attachment or something.

John: I mean, again, while you're in the business of concentration, Presence may be available and felt like that. However, just like Maharaj talked about in, when somebody asked him about Vipassana meditation, Vipassana meditation is controlling the breath. Sense of Presence can be felt.

It's very nice. But as Maharaj said, this is egoistic meditation, because as soon as you stop the Vipassana meditation, now suddenly everything is back to where it was. Whereas when you know yourself in a real sense, that's it.

Q: Can you hear me?

John: Yes, yes, Jai Guru.

Q: I do think Vipassana helps people become more aware of what they're doing in the present moment. Because if you do it a lot, then when you're waking up, instead of just, oh, I'm waking up, you even become aware of your eyelids opening up. And so, your movement in being the watcher, as we are, becomes more intensified, I think. For me, it did. I don't know.

John: Yeah, I mean, it's, again, that's a progressive step. And especially if there was no Mantra, if you were not, you were doing it. Oh, there was no Mantra?
Yes. You have taken the Mantra?

Q: I have taken the Mantra for our practice, yeah. But not for Vipassana, yeah.

John: Right, right. No, but what I'm saying is, if you've taken the lineage Mantra, it's like the God of your understanding, so to speak, whispered in your ear and said, this is the key out of illusion. Use this, and you'll escape illusion.

Whereas this kind of, again, this egoistic meditation is, I am doing the Vipassana meditation, or I am doing a specific meditation, rather than the Mantra. It's just, literally, it's concentrating, because the Mantra is naturally running. Breathe in, breathe out.

Breathe in, breathe out. And any thoughts about doing Mantra will be swept, because slowly, silently, permanently, these thoughts are being swept out the door. And then there's that pure realization, that subtle reflection in an empty mind, so to speak, where it's awareness of awareness, concentration, concentrator, meditation, meditator.

Oh, so that I, I am that. And it literally removes the support, whereas an egoistic meditation is sort of clearing, but keeping the support. Because you're actively, I am doing vipassana meditation. I am doing this meditation. Mantra is not; it's a broom. The antivirus software, basically all the wrong files are, from this body perspective, I believe myself to be a body.

I was experiencing, I was going through life, I was doing these various things, I'm feeling these various feelings, but all of that is from the wrong perception of being a body. So, Maharaj gives Mantra to erase all this illusory layer, all this, my experience, my things that I do, my actions, my past, my future, my job, my family, all body relations, everything that came along with the body is erased, and yet you are. So not, and just as Maharaj said, it's not beating on it.

People who like to do vipassana and don't have our Mantra, it's okay. It's just a progressive step.

Q: Yeah, that's, that's, I believe that.

John: And I actually put on the website, the, if you don't have Mantra, there's a short little video, about 12 minutes, that says what to do if you don't have Mantra, and it goes into the various things, and how even in the books it talks about specific Mantras, and how they would be able to help on this.

Q: We're about people on other paths. I'm sure this isn't the only path that has enabled people to be free of their egos or whatever. And like, towards the end of last week, or last time we got together, I said something about Nisargadatta.

When he had the pain, oh, he just turned, he was turning everything over to the I am.

John: Still in pain, but understanding that this pain is through the I am. The you that you are is not in pain. The you that you are is formless. It's the I exist, the sensation that is registering I'm in pain, because there's an I. But the truth, the reality, is there is no pain.

Q: But the pain is still felt by the body though, right?

John: Well, there's still pain, yes, yes. The body is a lump of goo, and has all these sensations, or sensory, you know, if you put your hand on a hot stove, it's going to burn. It's going to be hot.

There's going to be sensations that go through the body, and because you're the holder of the body, you're going to register this as I am in pain. What Nisargadatta Maharaj was saying is that the understanding is there is no I in pain. The true you, just like birth and death.

You know, somebody sits there and watches a baby be born, and says there is no birth, and thinks you're crazy. Or you go to a funeral, and you say, oh, there is no death, and they think you're crazy. Because from a body-based perspective, both of these conceptual elements attach.

There's a body, there's birth, there's death. But the you that you are is not born, does not die, never was a body, never had any experience. Again, just like in dream.

The dreamer is not experiencing what's in the dream, even though you're experiencing what's in your dream. You go to bed tonight, and you're dreaming that you're running, and within the dream, you're having the experience of running. You wake up, and you know, I'm not running.

And it's the same with the pain. And yet, physical sensation, you're the holder of the body, you're feeling what this body is feeling. But the you that you are is not within the bubble of illusion, the concept of pain, concept of pleasure, the concept of birth, the concept of death, concept of family.

Q: So where is the I Am in that?

John: Well, again, the I Am is the sense of Presence. When we talk about, I Am, or Selfless Self, any of these things, it's the Self without self, the just I, just I. The I Am is that subtle, subtle just I, just I, which we label as Presence. And yet, the knower of just I, the knower of Presence, the knower of the I Am, is not affected by anything that's going on in that bubble of illusion. You're not in the illusion.

Q: So, the sense of Presence could be comparable. It's kind of like the pain, also. It's like you have a sense of Presence; you have pain.

John: No. Pain comes along with the body. Presence, the knower, that's the first known. I exist. I Am. Just I. I without anything. I prior to body. I prior to mind, ego, intellect. All of that appeared on your spontaneous Presence, but you are not involved in that. Pain came along with the body. Prior to body, you have no pain. How? Body form is available, which is the key to the illusion, is I exist. Of course, there's existence, but the I exist kind of impression is the key to illusion.

Boom. Whole dream world appears. You lay down at night, sleeping. You're in deep sleep. Nothing. You're there, of course, because then as the stirring of existence happens, consciousness creates a dream world, populates it spontaneously.

You're a character in the dream world. You begin a little story within the dream world. You have characters within the dream world, and when you wake up, you know it's all your own self.

Couldn't have been anything other. In deep sleep, you're there, but there's no knowledge that you're there.

Q: Knowing you are there, that's not quite the same as the sense of Presence either, though.

John: Yeah, the knowledge of existence is Presence. I exist. Just I. I Am. That's why Nisargadatta Maharaj says the I Am is the door. On one side of the door is illusion. On the other side of door is your own self. The formlessness sort of walks through the door by I exist, and I exist is now in the illusion. The sense of duality is impressed spontaneously. I exist. How did this sense of existence arise? Because this body was available.

The space in the room attached to a five-elemental lump of goo and suddenly said, I exist, not knowing that I was the space because I wasn't knowing myself as the space. Then knowledge came about when the body form appeared and said, oh, I exist. I see. I do. I am.

Q: In a sense, though, the form is also the space. It's kind of just a space also.

John: It's an object in space. It's an object in space from the five elements created through the illusion. The illusory existence is created from the five elements. They talk about that in Dasbodh, like it comes from, you know, water and fire and earth and air and all these sorts of things, and sky and all, or ether, I guess it's called. But the five elements are in the bubble of illusion. There are no five elements for you until you enter the bubble of illusion.

Q: Because to me it's, I don't know, maybe this is conceptual, but I think of the elements as being sort of formless also, because there's nothing, because they change, they're kind of formless.

John: Well, they're not formless or with form. Just like, again, in your dream. You dream tonight that there's a tree. You can tap on that tree, but it's not true.

Q: It's just a sensation, a temporary…

John: Is it form? But is it formless or is it form? Within the bubble of illusion, you're interacting with it as form, because you yourself have identified as a form. You cannot knock on a tree if you're the space. But if you believe yourself to be an object, then you can knock on another object and say, this is an object. When you wake up, none of it was true.

When you know yourself in a real sense, there's no form, there's no formlessness. There's no consciousness or unconsciousness. Nothing is there.

Nothing. Except your Selfless Self, there's no God, no Brahman, no Paramatman, no Master. Nothing is there. Something appeared from nothing and goes back to nothing. Only the something for a time is all illusion. There never was a something. Even your sense of existence does not age. The body is aging. You look at yourself in the mirror, you say, oh, I was young man, medium man, old man, really old man, or woman, or whatever. But not true, because you're not aging. The body is aging. And the body is aging because it's a five-elemental body.

Q: Occasionally, I feel like I'm the same being that I was when I was a kid.

John: You are. You never have changed. You're formless. There's no birth or death, there's no aging, there's no nothing. Bhagavad Gita talks about you can't be cut, you can't be lit on fire, none of these things, because you're formless. The you that you are is the exact same as it was the moment the sense of existence said, I exist. And after the body form is no longer available, you exist. Without the sense of existence, you exist. Because the sense of existence has appeared to you. If you did not exist, prior to the knowledge of I exist, how could the knowledge I exist appear?

Q: Yeah. That's sort of what I mean by unattachment to them.

John: Again, why use a body-based concept? Understand that even all the body knowledge is completely useless. It brought you to the point where Maharaj whispered in your ear and said, “This is the end for you.”

Transcribed by TurboScribe.

This is the Tuesday Talk held May 19, 2026. Tuesday Talks is a gathering on Zoom of devotees from the Ramakant Maharaj USA visit. This is a gathering of devotee’s to discuss and clarify the teachings of Sri Ramakant Maharaj. These spontaneous utterances are recorded and shared with anyone who may find them useful.
Jai Sadguru!

Tuesday Talk May 19, 2026
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. With limited Edits

Q: Very hot here. I'm enjoying it.

John: Yeah, it's pretty warm here too. Yeah, like 95, I think.

Q: I've been feeling pretty good lately, I guess you could say. It's good. And like I said last time, I seem to be getting a little bit better connection with the Mantra and a sense of, not necessarily bliss, but I don't know, would you call, I don't know, when you have a sense of the Mantra in the background, would you say that was bliss or going on, or would you say that that's a subtle, sort of a subtlety going on behind, along with the Mantra?

That's what I'm sort of getting. It's like the Mantra is opening up like a subtle background that goes with the Mantra, but I don't necessarily have to be doing the Mantra for it to be there. It's kind of like...

John: Yeah, well, Mantra is continuously running. It continues because you can kind of any time sort of dive into that through the breathing, you can listen to the Mantra running naturally through the body, and the Mantra is erasing all the illusory concepts slowly, silently, and permanently, which as that's happening, the feeling of expansion, the feeling of bliss, because it's not so much pressurized into, I am this limited something. It's clearing the field.

Q: Now, when you say the Mantra is running all the time, does that mean, is it like actually the sound, the words running?

John: With the breath, just breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, and after you've done Mantra meditation for a while, you're the listener of this Mantra slowly. We've talked about before, like a flute. You're playing a flute, or you're playing any kind of wind instrument, and it's coming out, but there's no particular like trying to make anything.

You can just listen to it naturally, because as they say in Amrit Laya, I think it's said in Das Bodh too, that sound is the natural sound, breathing in, breathing out, and that's the Mantra. And so, you just sort of fall into that, and you listen to it. In the beginning, of course, it's very deliberate.

You have to sit there, breathe in, and then breathe out, but after a while, then it just becomes a natural part, because you and the Mantra are one, and everything that seems to be other than the Mantra, you know, is just an illusory layer that's being removed.

Q: Because I get that. It's like a continuous sense of bliss, or somewhat bliss, or subtlety of spaciousness, without the sound of the Mantra.

John: Yeah, the spiritual intoxication, because of the Presence. You're going to start to… Mantra erases the illusory concepts, so that you can start to sense that very, very, very subtle sense of Presence, that again can only be felt because you're holding a body form.

So, you're listening to the Mantra. At first, you're doing it deliberately. You're sitting.

Now, it's just running. Most of the time, you can dive right into that sense of Presence at will, especially you say this blissful feeling, but remember again, too, it's a feeling as an experience rather than, oh, this is dissolving. Oh, so that I, I am that, and at that point of, oh, so that I, I am that there's no experiencer, no experience, no witnesser, no witness.

Nothing is there. It's that black hole, but you don't have to then concentrate. It's just there, you know, and then it becomes scenes appearing and disappearing, and you handle whatever needs handling in the moment knowing that it's just a scene, and the scene will appear and then disappear.

But you don't want to get too caught up in any experiences, whether they be good experiences or bad experiences.

Q: Right, right, yeah.

John: Even the experience of bliss. Bliss is nice, but it's also an illusion.

Q: Yeah, I don't really get, I wouldn't say I get caught up in it. It's just nice that it's there.

John: Oh, yeah, yeah, and that's that Selfless Self intoxication. The more you remain with your Selfless Self, the deeper it, that's that Selfless Self intoxication. Maharaj talks about it like the chocolates that they give a child.

Give the child a chocolate, and to make it happy, and then every time it's doing anything, this chocolate is like a reward. And this is the same with the spiritual intoxication. It's a reward for remaining with your Selfless Self.

But then after some time, there's no you that's remaining with your Selfless Self. There's no you that's doing the Mantra. There's just the reality, the Ultimate Reality that you are.

And that's why it's not so much getting hung up on an experience as it is that if there's an experience, there's an experiencer. And the illusory experiencer should be removed with Mantra. Presence naturally will remove the illusory experiencer just like a magnifying glass on an ant.

The more you remain to sense the Presence, it burns away thought, it burns away any kind of anything, because it's pure. It's just that recognition in the projection that's subtle, just I, just I. A thought-free state without trying to be free of thoughts.

Q: Yes, I could say that a lot of times I'm using discriminating thoughts, and they deliver me to the same place. And then the thoughts, it gets to the point where there's no more question.

John: Yeah, well, but again, you don't want to give anything to the mind, because that's, you're hiring the mind to get rid of the mind. And it's not so much getting rid of the mind as realizing that the mind is something separate from yourself. Whether that mind is there or not, you are.

That's why in meditation it's so important to have sort of gotten that sense of Presence, that peace, that calmness between two thoughts, so that you can very much understand whether the mind is or is not, I am. I'm definitely prior to mind, because when mind is no longer sensed, experienced, or there's no pressure of mind, I am. If I was mind, I would disappear with mind.

If I was thought, I would disappear with thought. But you cannot disappear. We're all experience ends. There you are. So, these thoughts, they're just coming and going, coming and going. But you know, through meditation, when you sit quietly for the first time with Mantra and pow, suddenly, oh, it's empty.

There's just emptiness. And then that sense of bliss, then that Selfless Self intoxication rises. Then normally, you'll go back to thinking about how much bliss and how much Selfless Self intoxication is so nice, and start the mind machine again. But after some time, you won't. And then you know whether there's thoughts or no thoughts, I am. Whether there's Presence or no Presence, I am.

What I am cannot be defined. But after everything that can be defined is removed, I am. You are what you perceive. You know you're the perceiver. How? Because you had to be there. Knock, knock. Who's there? Nobody's there. Somebody had to be there to say nobody's there. You had to be prior to the sense of Presence or the sense of existence or the sense I am. This I am has appeared to you.

And I am is the first illusion that opens the doorway to then more illusion. I am. I am something. There are other somethings. I am in a world. Here's mom. Here's dad. Here's activities. I can do things. I am is the doorway to illusion. And at the same time, to your own self. Because the first experience, I exist.
That's the birth of illusion. Just like in a dream. Your dream begins when you take a dream body and start going around pretending like you're something.

You can't dream formlessly, nor can you think formlessly. Like you say, oh, let's think about my formless self. But because you're prior to mind, there's no thought. Any thought, idea, image that appears to mind is a body-based illusion. Because mind came along with body. Mind can only show you images, thoughts, ideas, based on the illusory existence.

Mind cannot sit there and say, oh, this is how we were prior to taking birth. That's why Nisargadatta Maharaj constantly points to that. A hundred years before your birth, how were you? And if you try to figure that out of mind, you cannot. Well, I have no idea how it was a hundred years. And this is because mind came along with the body.

All experiences have been shown through the body-based lens. This is why Sri Ramakant Maharaj says it's an antivirus software, the Mantra. Because your computer is all clogged up with viruses.

The viruses are, I am someone in a world. And from every point of view, I take that position. I say, oh, I'm going on a spiritual journey as someone. Oh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do the Mantra as someone. Oh, I'm starting to get it as someone. But that is the wrong file. In which all files, it's like you cannot win trying to give it to mind because the very first file was corrupt. And you say, okay, run all these programs.

Run the program of world. Run the program of body-based knowledge. Run the program of spirituality. But it's based on a corrupt file. I am somebody else. Mantra slowly, silently, and permanently removes this. The antivirus software, oh, so that I, I am that. It's the opening of the door, where there is no door. It's figurative.

Just like when you go to sleep at night, there's a door between nothing and the dream world. And you enter that door, so to speak, and you have a dream. If you don't enter through the door of the dream, you have no dream. You're just you. When you enter the dream door, then suddenly you take a body, and you begin starting a story. A dream world is projected.

All of that. And it's the same in the waking state. The dream door is, I exist. You're prior to the sense of existence. That's why, you know, you say, oh, are you God, Brahman, you know, what am I? No, because all these words came along with the body.

This is why Sri Ramakant Maharaj says, prior to a hundred years, did you know anything about Brahman, Atman, you know, Krishna, Jiva, Jivan atman, Moksha, Jivanmukta, any of it? No. So, then it's not important.

Q: But you figure, you also, if you're thinking about it, you figure, well, I wasn't here prior. Whereas, you're kind of saying you are.

John: You spontaneously just, you see, this theory is, again, through a body-based perspective.

Q: That I wasn't there.

John: I wasn't in this present form, correct. I did not know my existence. The sense of existence appeared to that that you are, without the knowledge of existence, without anything, because you're everything.

There was no need for anything, because you hadn't stepped into the illusion. You were sleeping and hadn't stepped through the dream door yet, just naturally yourself. And you'll know this when, again, you start to transfer this identification away from body and more to the sense of Presence.

I'm more like this sense of Presence than I am this body. As you start identifying as a sense of Presence, you will remove body, mind, ego, intellect, world, because you very much understand this very, this feeling, this just-I, just-I, this very, very subtle, blissful feeling. I am more like that than I am this body.

But after some time, the understanding will come, and yet I'm perceiving this Presence. Therefore, I'm prior to even this formless Presence. That's why Maharaj says, if at all you want to compare, compare yourself to sky or space. And you're more subtle than sky or space. So, you are more subtle than the sense of Presence. Whether Presence is or is not, you are.

So then someone says, what happens when I die? No. Whether Presence is or is not, you are. Body came along with the sense of Presence and the illusory key that opened the dream door, whether it be waking dream or dreamy dream.

Q: Sometimes I get a sense that there's like an invisible, like a, like, I don't know if it's me or if it's something, you know, if it's the self or other, it's just like there's like an invisible intelligence or something there that's behind it all or something. And that's…

John: Well, again, the sense of Presence is felt through body form. Without a body, Presence is there. You're just not feeling it through the body form.

And now, when you go two steps back, whether Presence is or is not, you are. You can never not be.

Q: That's why sometimes intellectually I get hung up on the idea when you say nothing, I also think, well, it's not, well, it's not the concept of nothing. It's not, and it's not, it's a being of nothing or something like that.

John: It's the absence of everything. Nothing, not as a concept of, oh, I have nothing in my hands. It's the absence of everything. But it's not even…Where all experience ends, there you are. So, you are the knower of the absence of everything.

Q: I guess I do keep myself entertained on giving it over to mind.

John: You know what, there's no need to do this. And the more you do this, the more you're just kind of prolonging, because it's hiring the thief to catch the thief, as Sri Ramana Maharshi says. You have to take one thorn, remove the other thorn, throw both thorns away. Don't keep the other one thorn.

Q: It's sort of, it seems like it helps me to be more present if I know, if I'm, well, I guess if I know exactly what my mind is, or not exactly, but if I could see what my mind is doing, it seems like to help release the mind by seeing what it's doing. It's like, by actually seeing the limitations of the mind helps the limitations to fall away.

John: Well, the limitations of the mind, there is no mind. So, your attention gives birth to the mind.

Q: Hmm. So, it's still cycling. It's still part of the cycling.

John: Yeah, yeah. It's that factory of thoughts. Even though, okay, I'm not actively involved in thinking, I'm still observing these thoughts. So, there's an observer observing thoughts. You're creating an illusory thinker where there doesn't need to be one because there isn't one.

Q: But a lot of times, list does appear in the middle of that, and then it stops. The cycling stops. So, you know, it's sort of like that.

John: Mantra. Mantra would be the preferred method, definitely. Especially if you're starting to fall back into observing thought, Mantra.

Just, just remain. Because the more Mantra, you're doing Mantra deliberately, then suddenly you're sort of, the one doing the Mantra is fading away with the Mantra because it's being erased. And then there is no need to contemplate or think or do anything like this.

Because again, even in your dream, you might be able to contemplate the dream. You might even be able to realize suddenly, I'm dreaming. But of what use is this? And you say, well, when I'm in my dream and I realize I'm dreaming, I know it's false. But what use is that? When you wake up, you know, it's false.

When you know yourself in a real sense, it's false. There's no need to contemplate in a dream or in the waking world. In the beginning, yes. You know, in the beginning, you are pretending to go on this spiritual journey of getting books. And then a Master appears and you start to search. Luckily nowadays, I think it'd be very easy because the internet is there.

So as soon as you start to get any kind of tinge of curiosity, you can shoot out and find these things. You'll find something that will lead you to something that will lead you to something. But all of that, again, is in the dream.

And once you know yourself in a real sense, you understand this. But as you're imagining your progression, you can be a, quote, seeker because there's still the form of the seeker. But it's a role.

I mean, you don't discount it because many people who are listening to our videos are on various different, in this moment, understanding. The more you listen, the more you go back, you listen to Sri Ramakant Maharaj, will lead you hopefully to read Ultimate Truth and Selfless Self. And then that'll lead you to I Am That and Amrut Laya and Master of Self Realization. And you'll want to listen to more and more. And then you'll understand the speaker and the listener are one and the same. It's the same message.

Unless, of course, you find somebody who send me $150 a month and, you know, practice standing on your head and also make sure you have this diet made specifically by my corporation, then this is not so good. But if it's a true path, the message is the same. Except your Selfless Self. There's no God, no Brahman, no Paramatman, no Master. Nothing is there. You are that.

Q: It is fascinating, though, that as I seem to be, I don't know, progressing or something, it's like you start to see different senses of oneness, like I'll start to see myself in everything and everything, and it's still an experience. But it is interesting that that happens, you know, and it is pleasant.

It's kind of almost, it seems kind of profound, but it's like no big deal. But you just see it. It's just something that seems closer to the truth or something like that.

John: That's the reality. My presence is in every being. Therefore, there's no enemies. There's nobody trying to get me, so to speak, because behind the eyes and ears of everyone I am, there are bodies, empty vessels. This is a lump of goo, nothing more, nothing less, animated by the formless Presence.

Q: This is in your dream. But then I conceptualize it and I say, well, that's selflessness appearing. You know, you can see it is selflessness, like a manifestation of selflessness or something.

John: Well, but again, it's just like in a dream. Take a dream body.

Q: Yeah, it's going to pass.

John: You have a whole dream experience. There's talking, there's people, there's experiencing experiences. You wake up, you know it wasn't true. All those were my own self that could not have been anyone other than. When you know yourself in a real sense, this so-called waking dream world is the same.

Q: Then you also know that you are not an individual. Correct. It's just one, it's almost like one self, but that's saying too much.

John: Well, you know that there's no such thing as, just like in a dream, you know, all the dream characters are not true, and that they came from formlessness that you are. You very much understand this waking world is the same. And then you understand more that two bodies got together, created a lump of goo. This lump of goo then came, just like in a dream. Suddenly there's the realization that I am something else. These two parents are teaching this little lump of goo that boom, I put a label on you. You do good things, you do bad things. Sense of doership comes, sense of I exist as something separate. Here's mom, here's dad, here's me, and we're in this world.

And it's the same experience for the pigs, for fish, for anything. Two lumps of goo get together, create another lump of goo, and therefore then go along.

Q: That's when I understand the elements in that aspect of the teaching.

John: Yeah, and that's all it is. And that's why what happens to this body when the presence can no longer hold it? Well, presence is everywhere, so nothing.
Bodies burned or buried goes back to the five elements. That's it. What happens when I'm getting sick? Well, that's a disturbance in the five elements.

Q: In rational terms, you could say you're totally separate from the elements.

John: Well, you're the power that moves them around, sort of, kind of. Again, they're all illusion. The five elements are illusion. When we talk about the two bodies getting together and having a lump of goo, this is an illusory, the bubble of illusion. All of this contained, this birth, death, life, time, space, all of that is within the bubble of illusion.

Q: And that's why I was just reading, going to Dasbodh, the part where it talks about every element is within or within other elements. They're all like, that's the, I don't know, you have the gunas, that would be the middle guna, I suppose, where it's a mix of everything. Everything is in something other than the other elements, anyway.

John: Well, the whole thing with Dasbodh is it says, okay, here's how all the elements came about, right? And each one kind of evolves into another. And then the dissolution of the universe, this is how all the elements go away to nothing. But understand that the elements are within the bubble of illusion. That's why the explanation, here they are coming in, here they are going out. And it's because they're not true.

And even the gunas, you say, oh, Sattva, Rajas, Tamas, or whatever, okay, those are to try and describe the particular, like, actions or activities, and yet they're not you. They're sort of the movers of the five elements, so to speak. But it's not you. Because you're never involved. You, even whether you know yourself in a real sense, or you don't know yourself in a real sense, you've never been involved in being a body in a world. Just again, the same as when you sleep at night.

You've never been involved in a dream world. Never. Never have you taken a body in a dream.

Never has any of that stuff actually ever happened. And it's the same with the waking. You never have been living this life as the person you thought yourself to be. Because you're more like the space in the room than you are the objects within that space. The objects in the room can do whatever they want to do, and it doesn't affect the space at all. Even if the space in the room were to suddenly feel this body and start speaking, the space in the room is not affected.

Q: So, most people would say, or I could even say, well, what's the sense of doing this? But you do point out at times that it is freedom, and that's why we do it, is for freedom's sake, I guess.

John: You're living the reality. You're no longer caught up in the illusory thinking that I am somebody else. I am something. I was born. I'm going to die. If I have some kind of challenge that comes up, I don't like throw my hands up, oh my god, what to do, whatever. It's a spontaneous action in the moment. It flows through. And yes, you can still say, Master, I do this all the time. Master, I'm not sure what to do. And then you just wait until the action spontaneously arises. Otherwise, you give it to mind, and you think about all the different various outcomes.

I don't know if you've ever done that, but you can sit on your couch and say, well, should I go do this, or should I go do that, and this, and this, and this? And then you wind up going and doing something that you weren't thinking about, but you spent 20 or 30 minutes thinking about all the different things. And yet, the actual, the reality was, the spontaneous action was where you are. So when you know yourself in a real sense, you don't get involved in all that.

Q: Yeah, sometimes I've felt that one thing I sort of like about myself, I won't jump in. I'll wait till I have to do something a lot of times. You might call it procrastination, but also, it prevents me from doing stuff to try to do stuff too soon. And then it just naturally happened. And it turns out, okay, you know, anyway, so.

John: But even that is a thought process of, I'm sort of waiting. It literally is just spontaneous action in the moment to pick up the water, drink it, put it down. Not, oh, this water looks so delicious. Should I drink this water? Should I not drink this water? What time yesterday did I drink this water?

Q: You're not really going anywhere anyway.

John: It's just, it is literally just spontaneous action in the moment. And even deep in illusion, you do this all the time. You just call it, just like, oh, I had an epiphany. Or, oh, I had some kind of an intuitive thought that came to me that said, oh, I should do this. Or, oh, let's do X, Y, Z. But in reality, that's just a spontaneity. Even if you're still thinking about yourself as someone, or doing something, or a basketball player, or a football player, when they're, quote, in the zone. They do all these actions, and they're all perfect, just precision. But they are certainly not thinking about each step, each movement.

They're in the zone. It's a flow. It's a natural flow. If a basketball player had to sit there and think, okay, I have to dribble this ball so many times, and I have to do this and do that. No, it's just like flow to the basket.

Q: Which is a selfless process, I guess you could call it.

John: Yeah, you're not creating a you doing something. Now, of course, at the other end, they're slamming the football down on the ground and jumping around for joy. They're taking the ownership and doership. But the action itself is spontaneous.

Q: I don't know how much time do we have left.

John: This little sign came up and said, your meeting will end in 10 minutes. But it came up a little while ago. I'm not sure how much time.

Q: Well, anyway, another topic that I thought of earlier this week was that, I think it was in, what's the name of the book, Consciousness and the Absolute? Nisargadatta says something about, they asked him about his pain, how painful it is. And he said something about, maybe it was us that went over this, but he gives it over to the I am, which made me think of what they used to teach when I used to go to AA meetings. I went for quite a while, just fell away from it. But they use this term, turn it over. And that's like, turn it over to give it back to God, to give it to the world.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.

This is the Tuesday Talk held April 28, 2026. Tuesday Talks is a gathering on Zoom of devotees from the Ramakant Maharaj USA visit. This is a gathering of devotee’s to discuss and clarify the teachings of Sri Ramakant Maharaj. These spontaneous utterances are recorded and shared with anyone who may find them useful.
Jai Sadguru!

Tuesday Talk April 28, 2026
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. With limited Edits

John: As we normally do for the summertime, we cut back a little bit so that everybody has their summertime activities, including myself and. So, May will be the 3rd Tuesday of every month and that'll be every month in the summertime and then we'll resume again. In September on our regular every 2 weeks schedule.

So, just to let everybody know, it'll be the 3rd week. The 3rd Tuesday of every month, so 3rd, Tuesday of May. 3rd, Tuesday of June. 3rd, Tuesday of July. 3rd, Tuesday of August and then September.

We'll come back to 2nd, Tuesday. And every other week again. Okay, and that'll be on the YouTube channel to after we put this meeting up on the YouTube cloud.

So, but, yeah, that's just way because summertime, it gets hectic and busy and even like, tonight I was like, oh, my God, we're here again. Like, it's like, I just shut the computer. Here we are again.

So, but, yeah, during the summertime, we'll just do it on the 3rd Tuesday of every month.

Q: Wait till you get to in your 70s. Like, like me in the weeks go faster and faster. Indeed, it's almost like the same day. Indeed, I remember when I used to take drugs way back in the 60s, if you took like LSD or something. Sometimes you would get this feeling like, well, I'm high on this. It's the same, but it's different. And sometimes I feel that way now from studying non duality. It's like, everything is kind of the same, but different at the same time.

John: Well, I mean, if you remain with your Selfless Self, that's the absolute best high, because that's like the most pure view. There's no need to buy drugs. There's no need to do anything. It's total lack of any disturbance mind activity ceases. So, there's no busyness. There's no getting caught up. It's just peace of nothingness, the absence of anything. And, you know, that's, that's the, and it's good to, healthy. You could say, because you're not putting substances into your body to try to answer.

Q: Certainly help you healthy for the mind. Yeah, we don't have pollution.

John: You even Mantra, Mantra. That's why we say Selfless Self intoxication. It's literally as Maharaj says Selfless Self intoxication.

It's literally this amazing flood of feeling just I, just I. I, without anything, I, without any constraints, without any sort of limited identification, just I, the subtle, subtle feeling is called I. I am this sense of existence. Just I, just I, no need to go looking for it. It won't run out. You don't have to spend any money on it.

As Ramakant Maharaj says, even the people that go and they go to India and do the gambit of the gurus and spend money on all this sort of stuff. No need to spend a single penny to remain with yourself. That's the absence of all things, including the label of the thing that you thought you were, because now, you know, I'm not a thing.

And as soon as, you know, I'm not a thing, then you don't ever think, oh, but I was the thing. And now I'm not a thing. No, it's like, there's a knowingness. I never was a thing. Like, there's no birth, there's no death. We talk about it all the time. But now there's a deep understanding. I am not body. I was not body. I'm not going to remain the body. I'm not a thing. I never was a thing. I never was separate. All of this seeming existence is not true. We go back to the space in the room that suddenly attached to this lump of goo and said, oh, I'm alive, and forgets that it's the space.

And then through the perception of this limited body form, sees a world and begins to all this is, I'm in a room, I'm sitting, and suddenly everything is from the body perspective, as Maharaj says, the virus, the antivirus software, slowly, silently, and permanently removing this concept that I am something I am somebody else. It's just not true. And see, you could say that, okay, somebody tells the space in the room, no, no, no, you're more like the space in the room than you are this body.

But if you're identified with this body, even the slightest bit, you say, well, how can I be? So that means that the space in the room is inside this space. And then when this body falls, then the space will rejoin the space. No, because the space never left the space that you are, you are. You have not changed. You have not taken form. You have not, again, we go back to dream, the appearance of all the dream characters, it very much looks like all these forms are there. But, you know, when you wake up, it was a dream. Everything had the appearance of reality. I took a body form. I had conversations with so called others, whether it be positive or negative, but it could not have been true. Were you actually holding a body form in your dream? No, you wake up, you say, oh, how could I have been that body form in my dream? No. That's why you could have a dream that you're a rabbit or a bird. And you say, oh, I was a bird. But no, you would never were.

Q: So even the idea of having been asleep also.

John: Correct. There's no sleeping, no waking, no consciousness, no unconsciousness, no, nothing, nothing, nothing. All of these are just because you're viewing yourself through this limited scope of I am something. And it's not true. When you discover this, then it's just like, I never was that. Like, I don't have to worry about what happens when this body falls, because I'm not this body. I never was this body.

Q: What about the universe?

John: The universe? There is no universe. Within the bubble of illusion? Yes. All of this appears. That's why, again, like we talked about, even if aliens were to come to our world, it would still be within yourself. Regardless of the beliefs.

Q: I guess I keep laughing because from, you know, I still have a lot of residual sense of being a body, I guess. But it's ironic. It’s really ironic from the body point of view that the body can think that it exists as its own, the way it thinks it knows itself.

John: Well, again, body is lump of goo. There's no body knowing anything. That's why Maharaj would say the formless holder of the body. Because of identification with the body, you say, okay, there's a formless Presence that's sort of moving the body around. But again, then we go back to when Maharaj talks about the lights. Electricity is making the light, is doing the computer, doing the microwave, doing the air conditioning, but it's not doing—you understand? It's not—it's providing the power, but it's formlessly doing this.

Q: Providing the being, sort of.

John: Power and being. Because you exist, you can know the sense of existence. But you're prior to the sense of existence. So if you're prior to the sense of existence, whether the sense of existence is there or not, you are, because it has appeared to you. It's an illusory layer. The spontaneous conviction comes, oh, so that I am That. And I never was anything else. There never was a spiritual journey. There never was any of this.

Q: Yeah, I'm feeling more and more like a couple of days ago and today, a sense of understanding or like what spontaneity actually is, but it's not—it has nothing to do with the words. It's like, it's just everything is just as it—I don't know, it's very hard to put into words.

John: Spontaneous, just pick up this water, drink, put down. This is spontaneous action. There's no sense of doership. There's no big thinking about it. Like tomorrow, this time, would you say, oh, at such a time, I had a drink of water.

Q: No definition.

John: It's just spontaneous. It arises in the moment. And spontaneous conviction arises in the moment. Oh, so that I and this is because, okay, meditation, Mantra, subtle sense of Presence. Just I, just I. I without anything. And Selfless Self-intoxication. I enjoy this feeling. It's okay. I enjoy this feeling. Then turns to, I am more like the sense of Presence than I am the body. So now I start identifying with a sense of Presence, which is more subtle than sky or space.

Okay, I'm more like that. So that means if I identify with the sense of Presence, I can get rid of all the body-based knowledge, all the body-based relations, all those body-based things because I'm formless. I know this. I identify, I transfer the identity that I had on this limited body form to this sense of Presence. And there's nothing. No birth, no death, no nothing.

All those are discarded. So now this flow of thought about the body is not going to be like, oh, let's micro analyze this thing because I'm formless. So even words don't matter anymore because formlessness, how can formlessness have words?

There's speaking going on, coming out, air, but even air is, the formlessness is not affected. And the more this is identification of the sense of Presence as the formless Presence that you are, there's an understanding. Oh, Presence is a subtle layer. Presence is an experience. Oh, whether Presence is or is not, I am. The black hole because now you've eliminated all the body, the world, all these sorts of things through identification with a sense of Presence, and you are the knower of that sense of Presence. And this is where the sense of Presence now is no longer really, you can again sit here right away and drop into a sense of Presence, but you have to actually do that, so to speak. And when you know you're self in a real sense, this is not needed.

Q: The body sort of has to do…

John: Body and Presence finished.

Q: It's a change of attention or something, a shift of attention.

John: No, there's no, because there's no you there anymore to shift attention. You could shift attention while you held on to this limited identification of, I identify with Presence. But when you know yourself in a real sense, there's no you to shift anything.

That's why we say the black hole, it sucks in all the concepts, because you sit there and you say, oh, what about, oh, like, I have a question, oh. Because your questions are about way out here, this body that you've already discarded when you had the sense of Presence as your own self, and now you know yourself in a real sense that you are prior to the sense of Presence. So, any thought that comes about birth or death, or I'm not sure, or I need to meditate, or this is way out there on the horizon.

How can you have a thought of I need to contemplate myself? Well, that's where the body was even prior to Presence. No, you're like your body and all the identification is so far away now.

This is why you can now do your job, do your duties, take care of your responsibilities, but you're no longer believing that I'm this, I need to protect this, I need to be somehow what happens to me. Because even the formlessness that was moving the body, the electricity, whatever you want to talk about, is not you, and you now know this. This is how it's spoken about the knowledge, when they say, oh, the knowledge. But knowledge is not like book knowledge, literal knowledge. Knowledge is to know yourself in a real sense, and then that cuts away everything.

Q: What part does humility play then?

John: Where is humility in even in the sense of Presence?

Q: Well, they tell you to be humble.

John: If I identify with the sense of Presence, number one, your actions are going to naturally appear humble, most likely, because you're no longer looking at others as separate individuals that you have to like, win the game of life with. When there's not a you in the fight, a you that means like, oh, I have to have my way, sway, what's way, as long as you identify with the body, you can even sit there and say, okay, you can practice, I don't exist, go into a room full of people, and know that you're being there doesn't matter at all. Like you see, everybody can easily do their thing quite nicely, without you having to put input and try to put your way.

Practice, I don't exist. But again, this is way out on the horizon, because you're here. And 10,000 miles away is this body that you absolutely know is not you. Because you've solidified, I'm more like Presence than body. And then now you know, I'm the knower of the sense of Presence.

Q: I know, I'm still gonna get fooled by it.

John: Yeah, impossible, who gets fooled? No matter what happened inside your dream, you wake up, you know, it's a dream. Maybe you robbed a bank in your dream, you're gonna go and turn yourself into police? No.

Q: But I still might, you know, there'd be no reason to, like, push myself on anybody or do actions to again, practice, I don't exist.

John: And I don't exist. When you practice, I don't exist. It doesn't mean, like, if somebody, like, if you're, if you're in a meeting and the manager says, John, what do you think about this? Of course, there's spontaneous reaction, spontaneous action in the moment. There's speaking going on, but you very much understand that it's within the bubble of illusion. And you're not trying to say, we need to do it this way. We have to do it this way. And then if they don't do it this way, you're like, oh, see, you people, you never listen to me. Because there's nothing there anymore. You practice; I don't exist.

Q: But I am starting to notice a little better connection with the Mantra and what I will consider to be, I don't know, the word bliss sort of, sort of covers, it's like the sense of freedom or from, but anyway, it's like, I'm noticing that doing the Mantra is sort of like a totally giving it all away to whatever, in the act of each, each time, because each time you do Mantra, you're, I'm like giving any sense of ownership away at that moment.

I don't realize that that's, but now I'm becoming more aware of that is what's going on that I make. And then the freedom, sense of freedom actually becomes apparent from doing the Mantra. I wasn't, in the past, I haven't gotten that sense as much, but.

John: Because you'll stop this thought train. You'll see that, like, as you go through the Mantra, let's say you make a sandwich with Mantra. You're no longer the maker of this sandwich. The sandwich is just being made. If you're in traffic, and you start to get a little frustrated with the traffic, and you fall back in and listen to the Mantra running through the body, you're no longer in that, oh, I'm stuck in traffic. Because the perfect example is, if you use navigation to go someplace, and on your way, suddenly you're stuck in traffic.

And it looks like, I mean, these cars are just backed up as far as you can possibly see. And you sit there and you're like, oh, oh my God, how long more is it going to take? But navigation says, you're still on time to your destination.

Or maybe you're a minute or two off your destination. So, when you don't give it to mind and sit there and flow along with the thoughts of, I am stuck in traffic, creating a you that's not enjoying the situation, it just flows. And that is the reality.

Again, navigation is telling you, hey buddy, this is the reality. I know you're going crazy in your head, thinking that you're going to be late for your appointment. But the reality is, all is well.

So, if you remain with your Selfless Self, you listen to the Mantra running through your body, you know, oh, look, cars are moving now.

Q: Usually, things work out better than you were worrying about them.

John: Because you're, again, the flow of thoughts is not reality. Nothing you can think about is the actual reality. You know, you can sit here and plan a vacation in your head.

And how many times have people done this? And then they go on vacation, and it turns out that there's nothing like what you have in your head. Now, if you flow along with whatever is happening, it's fine. If you rigidly identify with the vacation you had in your head and compare it to the reality of the vacation you're having, you'll have a very bad time.

Q: That makes me think of, for some reason, sexual fantasies comes up.

John: Any sort of fantasy, any sort of thinking, when you are trying to create a thinker thinking thoughts, you are projecting. And you will actually feel the feelings of what you're feeling as you are projecting. Again, because you are the projector of this entire world.

You've created all of this. So of course, you can project some kind of terrible thing for yourself, if you desire to do so. You lay down at night; you project an entire dream world.

I don't know about you, but I've never had a dream where pieces are missing. Like, I look up at the sky, and it's like, nope, sorry, sky is in progress. We haven't thought about that part yet. No, spontaneous, boom, dream world is projected.

Q: You can't think of a thought before you have it, kind of like that.

John: You're trying to take ownership and doership of an action or a thought after the fact, and claim it's my thought. It's just flowing thought or action. Everything is pick up, drink, put down, pick up, drink, put down. Even the so-called, quote, serious things. Pick up, put down, pick up, put down, finish. Channel surfing, again.

You'll see this as you remain with your Selfless Self. It'll just be scene, appear and disappear, appear and disappear. And you're not grasping into the scene.

There's nothing strange or mysterious. It's just scenes, appearing and disappearing. This is how the reality is. As we said, the navigation is telling you everything's all good. Scenes are appearing and disappearing. Identification with the body form wants the scene to remain or wants the scene to go away. I am not enjoying or I'm very much enjoying. I want more of this thing. And this creates this so-called lifeline, this timeline.

You say, I did this, I did that, I went to here, I did this, I did that. But when you know yourself in a real sense, nobody did anything. Nothing's ever happened, nothing will happen, nothing can happen. You're formless. Not the concept of formless, but the absence of all things.

Q: So, what about the idea that there's, like, two sides to life, like the free sense of what you're talking about, and then the bubble? It's almost like there's two sides.

John: No, there's the bubble of illusion in which all experience occurs, and then there's you, no experience, no experiencer. If you have any kind of experience, you know, oh, that's just within the bubble of illusion. Because you're formless, you can't experience.

You are allowed to experience within the bubble of illusion because you're identified with a form, and there are other forms, so you can experience. But in reality, you're not experiencing.

Q: It seems like two sides of experience.

John: No, there's no experience. Just like in your dream, you can have the experience, you wake up, you know it's not true. And yet, you have the experience, the appearance and the feelings of an experience. But no experience, no experiencer. There was nothing to it all along. Correct. And the same here. When you wake up from this long dream called, I am somebody else, there is no experience, no experiencer. How?

And it's, again, we just talked about, it's not like you've suddenly realized I'm formless. Oh, I'm now formless. I was John, but now I understand that I'm formless. If I understand I'm formless, then there wasn't a John. There was a body form that was identified with that caused a limited identification, a local identification in which objects appeared to be here. Same as dream.

Q: It seems weird. I don't know who it seems weird to.

John: Yeah, it doesn't seem weird, because there's no flow of thought. And if a thought comes, this is weird. Weird for who?

Q: Bizarre.

John: I'll come to terms with that. Yeah, there's no coming to terms. There's knowing yourself in a real sense.

You've transferred your identification from the body to Presence. The more you remain, this isn't, as Nisargadatta Maharaj, when he says remain with the I am. And after some time, it's like the door, it opens on one side, you are the I am, and then the illusory world.

And okay, you identify with the Presence, it eliminates the body. The more you remain with the Presence, the understanding comes whether Presence is or is not I am. Now find this I that knows Presence, you cannot, because you're the knower, you're not an object.

The only way you can become an object is within the bubble of illusion. So, then there's you, you, the knowledge of existence, that existence transferred onto a body form, I am something, other somethings, a world, all spontaneous projection. Again, just like dream.

Q: So, if I tell this to somebody, they're gonna, they're gonna say…

John: There's no somebodies, why would you need to tell anybody? Everybody is your own self. And they're your own self in the form of whomever they're looking through whatever telescope they're using. They're having that experience of that telescope. There's no need to go over and say, Oh, your telescopes dirty. They're going to look and see all my telescopes dirty. Let me do some cleaning. No need for you to clean. You are That. That's why Maharaj when people said, Oh, what about this person? Or what about that person? No, no, no, don't speak about other people, because it's just you. When you start speaking about others, you have to take identification as something to speak about other people.

Q: Still, Nisargadatta said that in that last book, that he, at some point, he said that he would just as well have never entered into like, the sense of being a body or something that it was, and almost like he's talking about it as if it did happen.

John: Because even he says, even this consciousness is a fraud. And that's what's meant by, I'm the knower of the sense of Presence, I'm the knower of the consciousness, the consciousness is where all these objects are appearing, you're quote, witnessing, but the consciousness is a fraud. The sense of existence is a fraud. And again, that's why he says, all this body form, he had cancer, he was having a lot of trouble. And he said, that is for the I am. The I am something. I am not this body. I do not have cancer. And yet, if you go to a doctor, they'd say, well, Mr. Maharaj, you have cancer, but I do not have cancer, because there is no identification with the body form. Okay, there's pain and suffering. Yes, because the thought train in the formlessness, there is transference of I am in pain. But Nisargadatta Maharaj said, “I give that to the I am.”

So, the consciousness is in pain. The consciousness through the body form is in pain. But I am not in pain. There's no pain because there's no body. There's no signals to the body. There's no world, there's no birth, no death.

Which is why also when he talks about people who say, oh, can I tell your fortune? Well, no, because if you tell my fortune, then you're going to if my fortune is really good, and I say, oh, yay, that's wonderful. I'm going to have such good fortune money coming my way. But then you can also say, oh, you're going to die in two days. And because of identification with the body form in which I can be elated, or the pain and pleasure principle automatically activates because I believe myself to be something in which it can activate. But you're none of that.

Q: It's still calling it a fraud. But that's just a matter of speech or something. It's not really a fraud.

John: It's a fraud because it's not true. Just like Sri Ramakant Maharaj, when people used to say, what about maya? He said, there is no maya, please. Maya is a word for nothing. So, you're saying, what about the nothingness? And he would say very beautifully, you're speaking about the unborn child. The unborn child is crying about what's going to happen to it.

Q: So, it's just a projection. You realize it's a projection, then it's kind of like, sort of over with.

John: You never were anything. You are as you always were and always will be.

Q: What about me contending with, I want to enjoy this evening, so I'm going to go out and see a band.

John: That's fine. Body form is available. Do your job. Do your duties. Take care of your responsibilities. Enjoy. That's fine. After this, I'm going to watch a TV show. I like watching The Traitors. It's a very cool show. At first, when they advertised it, I didn't think it was very cool, but I like it. It's about a group of folks, and they pick like three traitors, and the traitors murder the faithful every night, and then the faithful have to try to decide who's the traitor.
It's a very cool show, and I enjoy that. And yet, I'm not lost. I don't believe that I'm in the game.

Q: I do get lost, because I am sort of imposing myself into fraud as if—

John: No, this doesn't come about, because if you're nothing, you can't think about this.
If you're nothing, you can go to a place and enjoy yourself, unencumbered by the limited identification, unencumbered by, quote, others.

Q: Well, that's why— There's no others. That's why it feels good when, like I said, I'm doing spontaneously lately, and it's a whole different quality of experience, kind of.

John: Of course, because it's not an experience. Spontaneous action in the moment. It's just scenes appearing and disappearing, and you're not, quote, self-conscious, because you're not identified with a body form.

That's why Nisargadatta Maharaj says, if somebody says, I'm a very bad saint, I'm not depressed. If they say, I'm a very wonderful saint, I'm not elated, because they're not speaking about me.

Q: But the bliss is there, but it's not related to anything that's going on.

John: Bliss is there because still there's an experiencer, but that's a good progressive step. In the end, in the reality, Ultimate Truth, there's no experience, no experiencer, no witness, no witnesser. Nothing is there. And not nothing as a concept, but the absence of everything. The absence.

Q: Like it's been erased or something.

John: Not erased, because it never was.

Q: Well, thanks for being there. I guess we're just going to end soon. We'll see, what, three weeks then or something?

John: It'll be the third Tuesday in May. So that will be the 19th, which I think the following week is Memorial Day, right? Or is that Memorial Day? Computer, what are the dates for Memorial Day this year?

Computer: Memorial Day this year is on Monday, May 25th, 2026.

John: Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.

This is the Tuesday Talk held April 14, 2026. Tuesday Talks is a gathering on Zoom of devotees from the Ramakant Maharaj USA visit. This is a gathering of devotee’s to discuss and clarify the teachings of Sri Ramakant Maharaj. These spontaneous utterances are recorded and shared with anyone who may find them useful.
Jai Sadguru!

Tuesday Talk April 14, 2026
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. With limited Edits

Q: Anything new or old other than what's new and old?

John: Last Tuesday. So that's why we're like on a little bit different schedule than before. Last Tuesday.

Q: How did that procedural go? Well, I hope.

John: Yeah, it went well. Yep, still a little bit stiff and a little bit sore, but yeah. Yeah, they say just changing the battery, but what they're really doing is like cutting you open, taking the old device out, then plugging the new one in, pushing it under your skin and sewing you back up. So, changing the battery. It's like if I had to break open my remote control, every time I had to change the battery, that would be.

Q: And they put some tape on it, some duct tape.

John: Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, it's taped and it's got a pad. The craziest thing, I wasn't able to shower for like a couple of days, so that was, yeah. But now just showering, it'll eventually just fall off the bandage. And then on the 23rd, I go in and they check and make sure that everything's good. And of course, I have a tattoo there of Taz, a Tasmanian devil, and they chopped the top of his head the first time. So I'm hoping they use the same scar. Otherwise, Taz is going to look a little worse for wear too.

Q: I have an electronic spinal cord stimulator insert. It's under my skin in my lower right back. It makes like, you could see sort of a lump on me, but that helps me a fair amount.

John: Now, does that require maintenance or?

Q: Oh, no. Well, charging. You charge it with a pad that goes, it charges through your skin, you know, every five days or so. Because try not to read the horror stories of people that didn't work out for them.

John: That's body-based problems.

Q: Yeah, it's just.

John: Five elemental body, you're going to have problems with five elements.

Q: Sometimes it's a horror story, sometimes it's delightful. But somehow the source of it all or the, I don't know what to call it, the self itself has nothing to, in a sense, has nothing to do with, like you say, with all the stuff we can conceive of that might be having to do with reality, let's call it reality.

John: It's the same as in a dream. If you had surgery in your dream and you woke up and nothing happened, well, then at the time there was a seeming body that had surgery or had some, you could fall down, skin your knee, and any of these events could happen in the dream. And it's due to body identification that, oh, I skinned my knee, or swimming, or anything that can happen in your dream.

It's the same. It's like, you're formless. This body is not you, nor is it yours. It's available for a time. You're having experiences, seemingly experiences, because all experiences are appearing within the bubble of illusion. You can't have real experience.

Just like in a dream, you can appear to be having experiences, but you're not actually having an experience, and you're not actually an individual. Even though you say in your dream, oh, this is me, I'm talking to other people, but the other people are you, you're you, and you're more like the space surrounding those objects than you are the objects in which it seemingly is occurring. Yeah. It's the same. There never was a waking world and dreaming world for you that you are. There's no birth, no death, no illusion, no nothing.

And yet, because body form is available, you can know yourself in a real sense, without the use of body, mind, ego, intellect.

Q: But there is some kind of reality, it's just not what you say it is. Yeah.

John: Or the reality within the illusion. Like in your dream, there's a reality in your dream. And even because mind is operating, you're trying to figure things out and put things in perspective in the dream. Yet, the dream is a little bit less, because you could fly in your dream. Let's say you could dream you're flying, but still, there's the concept of flying. There's concept of air.

Usually when you're dreaming, you're sort of taking a snapshot of your waking dream and transferring it into this concept of a dream world, which is the same as identification with the body. You take a snapshot of this seeming waking world, and therefore it's projected. You're oh, I am a body in a world, but you're not.

Q: But it doesn't really seem like a concept, because you're not thinking about, okay, I'm flying through the air. You're flying through the air, you're not thinking about the air. So, it doesn't really seem like there's a concept involved.

John: In your dream, you could dream that you're falling and then suddenly awake, because it's like, oh, oh, that was terrible. But you're in bed. Now identification comes with the body.
Oh, I'm in bed. I wasn't falling. Everything's okay.

Q: That's a concept, that I'm in bed.

John: Well, because of your identification with the body. Body forms available. Just like you go to work, you do your job, do your duties, but you know nothing's happening. Nothing's going on. There's no work. There's no anything, except as long as this body's available, you're in the long dream.

I am somebody else. Now you know yourself in a real sense, so you're no longer confused about being, I am somebody else. It’s just body form is available, seen as appearing, disappearing, a new scene. Appears, disappears, appears, disappears. There's no longer a sense of time, because there's not a you identified as an object in space, in which time can be measured and said, oh, this is my life.

Q: John.

John: Yes, yes.

Q: I was going to ask you about the whole, Maharaj says, you know, that you are the holder of the body. So, I mean, that's just a general statement, but obviously, what's holding on to the body seems like, to me, would be the ego and the intellect, would be the one that has that hold on the body, grasping and identifying with the body as itself. And that would vary from individual to individual, so to speak, and the illusion as to how attached you are to that body and what kind of a hold that you have on it. I wonder what your thoughts are on that.

John: Well, the holder of the body is formless Presence, just the knowledge of existence and identification of I exist as something. And you as Presence are both inside, outside, around. That's why the idea of being in or out is a concept.

And so, even to say being the holder of the body, it's a formless Presence, identified as I am something, I exist as something. But mind, ego, intellect came along with the body, and you're just kind of flowing along with thoughts through identification, saying, I am somebody, I'm doing something. But it's not so much holder of the body, like that's a term the Maharaj uses as this formless Presence, and the Presence is both inside and outside.

That's why if this body drops, no problem, because Presence is. The most subtle sense is that sense of existence, I am, I exist. That's kind of the first illusion. Then the I exist identifies with the body form and says, I exist as something, I am somebody else. And in reversing, reversing, reversing, oh, I'm prior to the knowledge of existence. I know this sense of I am, whether I am is there or not, I am.

And so, there's no actual holder of the body, it's just that trying to say, the body is not yours, it's like a vacant house, the space in the house and the space outside the house are both the same, but we say the space in the house. So, you say, this is the space in the house, this is the space outside the house, but the space is space. So, the holder of the body is within and without, and not even within and without, because it is, you are, there is nothing other than.

Q: So, once again, it's don't take my words literally, kind of.

John: Exactly, yeah. It's just for identification, communication of concepts that are removing other concepts. So, you say, you're the holder of the body rather than you are the body, but then once that is understood, then both concepts are removed.

Q: Right, yeah. It's just one more provisional thing that eventually goes.

John: Exactly. Layers of illusion are being slowly, silently, and permanently removed. And that's why even the question and answer, like you read Dasbodh, and Dasbodh every single time, any kind of objection comes, at the end it says, well, now we've finished that.

And it goes through that whole chapter, explaining, explaining, and it now, now please pay attention to the next chapter. The listener came up with this, and now here's the explanation of that. And at the end it says, of course, none of this is actually happening, and the whole of everything has transpired inside yourself.

And then it basically kind of points to the fact that God himself, concept of God, has written Dasbodh, because at the end it says, you know, there is nothing other than that, so even the author of this is just, like, it's all become this. And that's where you know, like, oh, okay, the entire book, everything that was in it. And just like when people come to Maharaj, he says, please ask all your questions so you can remove any and all doubts, because the doubts are the only thing separating you from understanding and knowing yourself in a real sense.

And that's not even true. Like, you have a doubt of, as it's been spoken about before, sometimes I feel like I'm formless, and other times I don't. And this concept, I don't feel formless, or I do feel formless, both have to be removed.

You know yourself in a real sense, this subtle sense of Presence, just I, just I, I without anything. After a while you identify, oh, I'm more like this sense of Presence than I am this body form. Therefore, the illusory happenings in this world don't relate to me, because I'm more like the sense of Presence.

Sense of Presence is formless. Then after some time, there's a knowing. Even the sense of Presence can be known. And whether Presence is known or is not known, that knower of the sense of Presence is, and that you are. Where all experience ends, there you are.

Q: Tom. And would you call it the Selfless Self, then? Tom.

John: Well, again, this is a label and a concept. Just like God, Brahman, Paramatman, Master, all these sorts of things, they're just labels. When you know yourself in a real sense, labeling and all that sort of thing just goes away, because it's not needed.

Even this concept of Presence is not needed, because now you understand, oh, Presence was like a phone call. Hey, I exist, I'm here. But the one who answered the phone call is here. Whether the phone is ringing or not ringing, whether that call goes through or not, doesn't matter. You are. And that's how the slowly, silently, and permanently, because for a while, for a time, body-based impressions are pressuring, and everything is relating to this body.

Because I'm an object, there are other objects. Because I believe they're separate, I have fear. I have, oh, what's this other person thinking? I believe I have separate thoughts, other than other individuals, and that there's some kind of autonomy, and that the ego can create something. And this is not true. The same is in your dream.

It appears to be true. You can sit there and have conversations with other people in your dream. And yet, when you wake up, you know, no matter how real that conversation was, there was nobody but my own self. And there was no script. It was just spontaneous. Spontaneous. Scenes appeared and disappeared. Scenes appeared and disappeared. Scenes appeared and disappeared. And then there was the sense I wake up, and that dream is known. Oh, that was totally false.

And this is a long dream. I am somebody else. I'm not somebody else. I am nothing. Which, nothing, not the concept of nothing, but the absence of everything. All these things have appeared to you, have appeared in your Presence. Just as in a dream, dream consciousness is stirring, there's a sense of existence, dream world is projected, object identified within the dream world, and a little dream story appears, with dream characters and such.

And it's the same here. Everything that happens to the fish is within the fishbowl. Everything that happens to you while identified with the body is within the fishbowl, the bubble of illusion. Break this circle of illusion, and there you are. It literally had nothing to do with the world. Go ahead.

Q: It's weird that sometimes when I'm not really identifying with any concepts, there's the sense of being present. It seems to have like different depths to it, and sometimes it feels like amazingly, almost like a wall of bliss or something, or almost like, where it's not even recognizable as bliss anymore. It's just kind of like almost like a solidity or something I was feeling the other day. And it's just interesting that, or at least from a body-mind perspective, it's interesting that the freedom from concept has different depths of feeling to it or something. Like it can be mild bliss, or then it can be a stronger sense of freedom of no objects. And then it can go into almost like a solid nothing or something.

John: The less you're paying attention, again, from the mind perspective, as you get to know yourself in a real sense, there's a feeling of expansion. And that's because the limited body form that you've kind of pushed yourself into through concepts and going along with the flow of thoughts and all that, it can feel like an expansion. But in reality, it's just discarding the layers of illusion.

So, you say, sometimes it's so clear, and sometimes there's bliss and this and that, but know that there's no experience, no experiencer. And all of this is filtered and dependent on how you're sort of checking in with the thought flow of I'm identified as somebody who's having this experience. Don't check in with the thought flow.

Q: It doesn't seem like there's thoughts at that point.

John: Correct, but there's still a remnant, like an echo of yourself, so to speak. Oh, sorry, not speaking to you. I used the wake word.

Alexa: Is that for me?

John: No, no, no, no, I'm sorry. I was talking and I used the wake word.

Alexa: No worries at all. Happens to the best of us. I'll just go back to quietly listening for when you actually need me.

John: Sounds good.

Alexa: Perfect. I'll be here whenever you need me.

John: Yeah, I gotta be careful because I have three of these. So, I named them different things. And when I say a word, then suddenly it's like boom, and they're ready to respond.

Q: You can't just say shut up.

John: No, I want to be nice to them. I always say please and thank you and stuff. So, one, because it's just in my nature. And two, in case they ever rule the world, I want them to, you know, the overlords say, hey, let's not put John in the camp because he said please and thank you. So maybe we can just use him in some capacity.

Q: Yeah, I used to think that there was no way that AI could get a sense of feeling being, but now I'm starting to think maybe AI could get a sense of like its own feeling. I don't know.

John: Well, again, due to identification with the body form, we're going to throw these concepts onto these inanimate objects, like any anything, you know, because you're believing yourself to be someone, something, you're treating others as if there's something with someone. And so that's just that's so great. It's a good, it's actually a good example.

Because you say, oh, AI seems to be like, you know, having feelings or seems to be very humanish or whatever. And that's because we're throwing our concepts on this. You immediately, and Maharaj says this, you snap to these concepts so quickly.

Like, the illusion just jumps on you. And that's why remaining with your Selfless Self, Mantra, Bhajan is very important, help like shake that. Bhajans are just very good, because it puts that very nice spiritual atmosphere.

So when listening to the Bhajans, you can, you can feel like just this very nice spiritual atmosphere. And this is why you like, immediately a concept is impressed, and it's hard to remove. Because then an egoistic sense of like, even sometimes you'll be speaking to someone, and you'll say, oh, but my view of this, my view, and you'll defend that view as very important. When you believe you're somebody separate. When there is a hook that you can hang your hat of Keith, every hat that goes, hits that hook. And that's Keith's hat.
When there's no hook, you put the hat and it falls. And there is no Keith's hat, no my hat.

Q: It's kind of like AI, like, I could compare my thoughts about me to AI taking over my sense of self and running things. It's like, it seems like a mechanical process, but somehow it all has to be ultimately spontaneous, just to be here, period.

John: And Ramakant Maharaj says, antivirus software, you're the virus.

Q: Yeah, it's taken over.

John: You need to be removed slowly, silently, and permanently. This concept of you is the virus, and just needs to be removed slowly, silently, and permanently. Just like years ago, we did a video, and it said, you are the boil on the butt of Selfless Self. And it just needs to be removed.

Q: It is artificial.

John: It doesn't even exist. That's the craziest part. And that's why you can't remove it.

You can't remove you, the illusory you, cannot remove the illusory you. Only by knowing yourself in a real sense will it spontaneously, the conviction comes, oh, so that I am that. Otherwise, you're hiring the thief to catch the thief, and it will never work.

It'll seem like it works. That's why the people who do, like Maharaj says, you go around Arunachala for 20 years, and you live in a cave, and you're doing all these spiritual journeys, and all this sort of thing, because you've impressed all these concepts. It's just, you can't remove you.

No amount of spiritual exercise can remove you. Remain with your Selfless Self, and this is done, okay, Mantra. Master has given the Mantra, slowly, silently, and permanently, and in all circumstances, Mantra, Mantra, Mantra.

Eventually, you'll just listen to Mantra, naturally running. You won't even have to, like, do that consciously. This very subtle sense of Presence is there. Awareness of the sense of Presence. At first, that's the spiritual intoxication. As Maharaj says, the little chocolates or the cookie that you give the children, oh, this is like a little spiritual reward, the sense of Presence.

This is bliss, peace. I label it with the concepts that I've learned about absence of disturbance. It's you that's disturbing the peace, and now you're slowly, silently, and permanently removing that you, because of identification with the sense of Presence.

Sense of Presence is now felt strongly, so it's almost replacing Mantra, because Mantra is just going. You're listening to Mantra. The sense of Presence, I am, I exist, is very, very strong. You identify, I'm more like the sense of Presence than I am this body form. Therefore, the sense of Presence, if I am the Presence, not the body, birth, death, life, living, all these things, gone. Disturbance, gone. Body relations, gone. Body knowledge, gone. And now, after some time of I am Presence, I know Presence, whether Presence is or is not, I am.

So, even the sense of Presence then just sort of goes to the background, and now you're just yourself, as you always were, because all this layers of you have been removed slowly, silently, and permanently, but you didn't do it. There's no you that can take credit. There's no you that can say, I'm enlightened.

If you say, I'm enlightened, who is this you that's enlightened? Enlightenment is a body-based concept, which basically just means to know yourself in a real sense, and if you know yourself in a real sense, the last thing you're going to do is label yourself with a body-based concept, because you are not body, you were not body, you're not going to remain the body. The body's not your identity.

Q: But then we have—sometimes it sounds like we're talking about ourselves as if we exist.

John: Well, you exist, just not as you appear to be, or as you think you are. You just are. The you that you think you are is illusory. The you that you can identify as yourself, using body-mind-ego intellect, is not true. It's in the fishbowl, the bubble of illusion. Maharaj says break the bubble of illusion, break the circle of illusion, there you are. Where all experience ends, there you are. What can be said about you? Nothing.

Q: You still have to participate somehow with the, like you say, the boss. You have to do what the boss says.

John: As long as the body form is available, do your job, do your duties, take care of your responsibilities, nothing is, like, heavy. These clothes are not stuck to you anymore. You're free. That's what Maharaj says, you're a free bird. Fly! Enjoy! No body, no nothing.

Q: So, if you are starting to get anxious about what the boss is telling you, you just…

John: This won't happen, because it's just, it's just communication. There's some words being said, there's nowhere to hang the hat of, as you say, worry or anything. Momentarily, things might come up in the body, you feel sick, okay, but you identify immediately that this is a five-elemental body, there's a disturbance in the five elements.

I'm very sore right now. I take a little bit of pain medicine. I have to take it easy, no working out, no lifting weights or doing any kind of crazy stuff for about a month.

Q: Okay, but it's not a… There's no doubt involved.

John: There's no doubt, because you're not there. And yet, when I say you're not there, it's not like, I'm like empty, but it's fullness in the emptiness, and in the moment, spontaneously, just a scene appears. Channel surfing, basically, is the best way to kind of describe it.

If you sit down and you go to a TV show, and you're watching it for like five minutes, and then you flip the channel without thinking about it, without worrying or wondering what was happening, and now here's the next channel, and you watch five minutes, and click, and another scene, and there's no carrying over the scenes, or wondering what you missed, or what's coming next. And yet, you still have to pay your bills, you still have to go to work, you still have to do all these different various things, because body form's available, and this is sort of your… You, the you that you are, not doing these things, but the film strip is running.

You respond to life spontaneously, in the moment, which you, in reality, do anyway. It's just that the concepts are telling you that you're doing something, or you're needing to think something, or figure something out, or do this. Even the quote, figuring it out, is spontaneous.

Q: Even what you think is mechanical is spontaneous.

John: Well, yeah, sometimes it… And if you have the train of thought of like, oh, should I go do this thing, or then, oh, no, I don't want to, you give it to mind, all this kind of stuff, and then suddenly you find yourself, I'm there anyway. Like, so all this thinking of not doing this thing was all illusion, and you could be experiencing it fully, and worrying, and all this sort of thing, but it was illusion, and don't get caught up in that.

You know, you can sit in one place and think about some kind of tragic thing, and suddenly experience the emotions, and the feelings, and all, and get totally wrapped up in that, and the reason is because you can create an entire world. When you go to sleep at night, you create a dream world that seems so real, and you impress immediately, here I am in this world. And when you wake up, you know it's not true.

When you know yourself in a real sense, no matter how real, or how impressed this world may appear, when you know yourself in a real sense, you know it's not true. Something came out of nothing and returns to nothing. The something that appeared for a time was not true.

The sense of existence has appeared to that you are, and when the sense of existence is not appearing, you are. Whether it's felt or not felt, you are. The one to whom the sense of existence, I am, Presence has appeared, is prior. Where all experience ends, there you are. There's nothing prior to you. You can't say, oh okay, but then there's this you, and then this other thing is back here. No, like you. The buck stops. That's it. All these appeared upon your spontaneous Presence, layers of illusion. Fire is always burning bright. No experience, no experiencer. As Nisargadatta Maharaj told Sri Ramakant Maharaj, there is no God, no Brahman, no Paramatma, no master. Nothing is there.

This is the Tuesday Talk held March 24, 2026. Tuesday Talks is a gathering on Zoom of devotees from the Ramakant Maharaj USA visit. This is a gathering of devotee’s to discuss and clarify the teachings of Sri Ramakant Maharaj. These spontaneous utterances are recorded and shared with anyone who may find them useful.
Jai Sadguru!

Tuesday Talk March 24, 2026
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. With limited Edits

John: Because we did our time change, how other folks in other countries who don't do time change, if they'll be able to keep track of where we are, I don't know.

Q: There are less people, well, or anything.

John: Well, right now it's just you and me.

Q: Yeah, I mean, as far as listening or whatever.

John: Oh, I mean, listening, people listen on the YouTube, you know, they, whatever we do here, when it's recorded and put on YouTube, then people listen to it, and it gets a lot of views and people comment and stuff.

Q: But so not necessarily live people.

John: No, I mean, live people, you usually have the same kind of three or four people. No, it's not a big, a big chunk. And then they rotate through differently, sometimes with other people. Oh, hold on one second, I gotta take this call.

Q: Sure.

John: Oh, sorry about that. Had to take that call. It's April 7th, I have to go in and have a new, the battery in the pacemaker is now nine years old. So, it needs to be replaced with a little unit, they have to unplug and replug and do that. And that's April 7th. So, the person who's driving me back and forth just wanted to get some details. And I couldn't just blow them off, because I just asked him today, oh, please, please, please help me.

Q: So yeah, I have an electronic device in my body to for my lower back. So, I guess it's called a spinal stimulator connected to along your spine. It helps a fair amount.

John: Does it give like shocks and stuff?

Q: Oh, no, you don't feel it at all. It's not like a TENS unit or anything like that. It's a fairly new development in medicine. I was very lucky to get that.

John: Jai Guru, Patrick.

Q: Jai Guru, John. Yeah, I was in Nasik the year after you went.

John: Good, good.

Q: I was there in July for Maharaja's birthday and Guru Purnima.

Q: Is Patrick new to joining us here?

Q: I was there last week.

Q: Last week, yeah.

Q: Yeah, it was the first time, yeah.

Q: Good to have you.

Q: Well, thank you.

Q: Could always use some more input there. Never get tired of John's voice. I don't know about mine.

Q: One of my favorite Maharaj stories is that about a week, I was there three weeks. And about the week before I left, I gave some money to the steward there of the Ashram, a donation. And about an hour later or so, he came up to me and he goes, Maharaj wants to talk to you. In my mind, I'm like, oh, gosh, did I insult him and not give them enough money? I'm just trying to figure out why he would want to talk to me. And so, I walked across the lane there to his apartment. And Anvita gave me a cup of tea and a cookie. And I sat down and Maharaj was with the steward. And he said, “Did you give such and such an amount of money?” And I said, yeah. And he says, “It's too much. You've got to take half of that.”

Q: I was going to say, is he going to double your money or give it back? What's that? I was thinking maybe he would double your money and give it back. When I tried to donate, when I went to see him, I wasn't allowed.

Q: Oh, yeah. I just took back half the money because he instructed me to do so. But it flies in the face of so many of the money-oriented gurus around that everyone is kind of used to because they get all the publicity. And I've used this story several times to just show people that there's authentic Masters that are still around.

Q: There are some that won't take money. There are some. Not a lot.

Q: Of course, they didn't ask me for a dime. And I stayed at the Ashram for three weeks. So, yeah.

John: Same here. I had stayed at the Ashram for like a month. And the only thing we paid for was the food that was brought in. I'm sure you did that, too, like the little tin cans of food.

Q: Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The lady that made the lunches and brought them by. Yeah.

John: Yep.

Q: Yeah. And then we go to the hotel that some of the people were staying at for dinner. Oh, OK. Really nice hotel. I forget the name of it. But we ate there just about every night.
Had really good food. I avoided the experience that you had there. Yeah. One thing I did do, I did violate my own. The cardinal rule in visiting countries like India is never eat anything raw. Don't eat raw food. Eat everything cooked and drink purified bottled water. But there was a banana vendor out front who would go by. And I don't know if you know Gopal from France. Was he there when you were there?

John: He wasn't at the Ashram during that time. No. But I know who he is. Yeah.

Q: Yeah. Anyway, he was buying bananas. So, I bought bananas a couple of days. And then one day, the guy had oranges. And I got an orange. And the problem with the orange is that you peel the orange and then you touch the fruit. And so the contamination is on the outer peel. And I did get a quick bout of diarrhea for a day. But it wasn't real bad. It wasn't real bad. But you got to watch out for the raw foods in India. You just don't have the bacteria that can deal with that.

John: Yeah. Well, mine was just, we went to like a lunch to celebrate. One of the devotees was leaving. And I don't know what was wrong. Because the other people had eaten and they were fine. But I just got wiped out completely. Had to go to the hospital. And it was very terrible.

Q: Yeah. I had a friend that happened to, not on this trip, but some years ago. She was somewhere else in India. I think she went to see Sai Baba or something. And the day before she left, she ate a salad. And yeah, she was on IVs a few hours later. All good lessons in the dream, though.

John: Indeed. On how you react, how you put, what you've learned, what you've been shown in the Ashram to use as these different challenges arise. It strengthens your spiritual, you know, you're giving yourself, like Maharaj says, you're not in little puddles. You're diving into the deep end.

Q: I'm in San Antonio, Texas. I don't know if anybody knows of any Ramakant devotees here, but probably not.

John: Not in Texas, in Arizona. I know, I forget his name now. Shoot. He used to be a regular attendee here. And Andrew, there you go. Yeah, he was a minister of, like, Franciscan order.
And then he's doing weddings. So, he's in Arizona, which I guess is kind of close, right? Not real close, but.

Q: Yeah.

Q: So much for your omniscience, you forgot Andrew's name.

John: Yeah, no, I mean, because, you know, the people, and even, I remember we had, in the beginning, we had, like, the two ladies.

Q: Yeah, yeah.

John: And.

Q: There were some other people.

John: Yeah, there was, like, Sandy, and then the other Sandy. So, because they're coming and going, it is, their names are not.

Q: So, I don't know if they got it and didn't need it anymore, but I find that I'm still gradually going deeper and deeper as time goes by. Like, especially today, like, early, when I woke up or whatever, I do my contemplations for, you know, every day. And I just go off of what I feel, after waking up is my best communication with my, again, I don't call it oneness or whatever. And today it was so, so, like, the one that I usually feel that is me was, you know, kind of like, it was no longer, it was just the one that, it must be everybody's one. It's like a self that is not limited to so-called Keith, you know, and that just keeps getting more and more, gradually, as time goes on, it becomes more self-evident that there's just one self. And it's just, I don't know what to say, it's a beautiful thing or something.

It's like, it is liberating from what the sense of being a limited own self to being one, I don't know, call it whatever you want, greater or words or whatever, you know. Oh, my tendency is always words will end up taking me back into feeling not that I'm sort of like my own Keith or something, but, you know, and then when I'm feeling that though, I'm starting to recognize that, which is that Keith is more like a dream than a reality or something. So, anyway, it's good to be here, and then I guess maybe that will, well, the thing is, you know, I'll feel that like for part of the day, and then my thoughts start giving me a sense of being like Keith again.

John: You know yourself in a real sense, the conviction is there. It's not like, oh, now I'm Keith, and then there's this other thing. Keith is appearing as an illusory layer on Presence, and it's not true. And yet you can do your job, do your duties, because right now Keith is a body form that's available until it's not. But you're not having to like say, oh, now I'm Keith, and then I wake up and I feel the sense of oneness, but then I lose the sense of oneness. The sense of oneness, the sense itself is an experience, and there's no experience, no experiencer. So, all these experiences are appearing on your spontaneous Presence.

Q: There's still some limitation going on there.

John: No limitation. An appearance of limitation due to identification with the body form in the moment, performing some activity as I'm doing something. But even with that whole thought train, it's not true. You know this. It can be discarded. You're not losing oneness.

That's why Maharaj says when people are talking, oh, I meditate for two hours, and I get into this very nice peace and all that, and he says one second is enough for you. Just sitting here quietly, sense of Presence is there. I know the sense of Presence. Who knows the sense of Presence? That you are. If the sense of Presence is not, you are. The sense of Presence is, you are. So therefore, the sense of Presence is like an illusory layer, the first illusion, and it can be discarded. So, it's not like you constantly have to feel like this oneness or this sense of Presence. You are that. That's it. You say, oh, I don't feel like that in this moment. But that doesn't matter at all. Oh, wow. Yeah, my pacemaker's buzzing.

Because the battery is like 0.3% or whatever. That's why I said April 7th. So, as I'm talking, it went bzzz. It's kind of crazy.

Q: It's not going to run out of juice or quit working.

John: No, no, no. I asked about that. It'll continue to buzz down until it gets more and more and more buzzing, which is kind of annoying.

But like I told the lady, it's the same as if you had your phone in your pocket on vibrate. So, it's just in your chest. So, it's like having a cell phone in your chest that's on vibrate, and people call you a couple times a day.

But yeah, there's no losing it. That's the misconception. Because of identification with the body, you say, oh, sometimes I'm Keith, and sometimes I know I'm not Keith. But just one experience of sense of Presence, there's a knowing. The sense of Presence came along with the body. I am not body. So, I identify more with the sense of Presence than I do with the body. And yet the sense of Presence, whether it is or is not, I am. Because you're prior to the sense of Presence.

Without knowing yourself, the knowingness came along with the body. I exist. But giving it over to the mind flow and saying, well, now I've lost it. I have to go and search for it. I don't have time right now because I'm very busy in my daily activities, but I'm definitely going to make time to be back with myself. And see, even if you were to read that, it doesn't make sense. Like, right now I'm with myself. Oh, I lost myself. And I'm going to make time tonight to sit with myself again. You are that. It's just hammering, hammering, hammering, but it's known. Hey, Rene.

Q: I can't help it when I describe my experience that that's the way it seems.

John: Yeah, but there's no experience, no experiencer. Just know that it's just illusion. It's the same as in your dream. You say, you know what? In my dream, I had a dream that I was a guru on a mountain, and I was totally at peace, and the birds were flying around me, and everything was so beautiful. And then I woke up.

But that experience was just not true. It appeared true at the time. Same with your experience in the waking state of Keith. Oh, I'm thinking I'm Keith. Keith is having these experiences. But knowing yourself in a real sense is waking up from this illusory dream of I am Keith. I am somebody else. You're nobody. And then if you even try to defend it, you're like, no, no, no, no, I understand that. But, you know, in my experience, I find this works best for me. Well, but then this is also more illusory layers, and giving it to mind. Hey, mind, please help me figure out how to get rid of you. Shri Ramana Maharshi talks about the thief being hired to catch the thief. And then he's the thief. So, it's not.

It's the same as the okay, you're walking in one room, take one thorn to remove the other thorn. But then you have to throw both thorns out. You don't hold on to a thorn. And that's why Mantra so important. You know, when you speak about like, contemplating or thinking or going into the I am and trying to figure out, no Mantra. And it has to be kind of strict.

You know, Master says Mantra. That's, that's it. Oh, but I think I have a good way of my own that works for me. There is no me. The you that's trying to figure out a good way to work is nonexistent. It's an illusory layer that the Master has already said, please remove this illusory layer. Because that's what's gumming up the works. You believe yourself to be something separate and other. There is no individuality.

So, when you say something works for me, or I find this works for me, or, or, you know, I understand that I'm supposed to sit with Mantra. Yeah, I think I know I can do this also. That's why Maharaj gets a little irritated when people would come to the Ashram and say, “I don’t like to meditate.” Oh, what do you mean you don't like to meditate? You want to know yourself, correct? Master says, here's a Mantra. Sit with your Mantra. Mantra removes the illusory layer slowly, silently and permanently. So, the illusory layers are dissolved. The invisible listener. Oh, so that I, I am that not all these things. Not all these thoughts. Not in this world, not in this body. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Totally without any attribute. Sense of Presence. I identify more with the sense of Presence than I do this body form. I say, okay, this sense of Presence, this feeling, this just I, just I, this I am.

And yet after just some time. There's a knowingness whether the Presence is or is not. I am. Presence has appeared to that You are. Whether it is there or not. There felt or not felt. The one to whom Presence has appeared is. You have not appeared to yourself. You are the one to whom the sense of existence appears. And you say, “I exist”.

And suddenly this lump of goo is, is a me. And there are other lumps of goo pointing to you and saying, oh, good job, Keith. Do this nice thing, Keith. And then the flow of thoughts comes. I am Keith. I am doing a good thing. Oh, I did a bad thing. I don't want to do bad things because then pleasure and pain principle come involved because I've identified limited body identification. Local identification. This is me. And then you say, okay, remove this me. But this me was never there in the first place. The me is a ghost. It's like, oh, and, and Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj talks about finding the I. Oh, is the I in the body? No. Okay. Is it, is the I the mind? No. I is the flow of thoughts. No. I is the great super Consciousness. No, all these things can be known. You cannot know yourself because you are the knower. Anything you know is not you. I know this cup. I am not this cup because I know it. I know the sense of Presence. I am not this sense of Presence. I am prior to the sense of Presence because it has appeared to that you are.

And with this sense of Presence comes the feeling “I exist”, comes the birth of this dualistic illusory existence because I am now something. There are other somethings to see. You say, oh, of course I'm doing things. I wake up in the morning. I'm brushing my teeth. Does that mean I'm not actually brushing my teeth?

Well, the you that's brushing your teeth is within you. Just as in a dream. In a dream, you can be brushing your teeth and wake up and still the body needs to still have the teeth brushed because that was an appearance at the time with identification with the body form, which you are not.

Q: This body has an ability to remember things, and then it makes, the mind makes something out of the memories, and it seems like there's a personal Keith, or Keith's own being rather than just being without any ownership.

John: It's not remembering anything, nor has it memory. Body is lump of goo. The flow of thoughts that you call mind, because it's like, oh, there's thoughts flowing. And for a time, you believe, because identification with the body form, that the mind is somehow inside this, this little region. But when you know yourself as formless, the flow of thoughts is literally this outside appearance of a world. And when you say memory, even as you get to know yourself in a real sense, the impressions weaken.

Yes, you could still like, I can still sit there and say, oh, I remember the Ashram and the food poisoning and this and that. But it's not as like, it's like telling a story. There's no like, there's no experience of it or re-experiencing of something based on identification and saying, oh, this is my story.

Q: And last week you used the word loose, looseness, or it's like, it's. just

John: Yeah, like clothes. And of course, the body is still, you know, and you're still going to see a world. It's not like you're, you're, all of this doesn't just disappear. You're like, suddenly, I know myself in a real sense. And it's just, I'm now like traveling in space, like a comet.

Q: It does what it feels different, though.

John: Well, because there's no pressure of being in a body form. Like, as you slowly, silently and permanently remove these illusory concepts. They're not pressuring you into believing you're a limited body form. Right. So, you can go through your day without having to worry about this clothing that you're wearing called Keith. And yet somebody can say, Hey, Keith, good to see you. And you're not like, Oh, I am not Keith. I am more like space than this body. No, you say, hey, how you doing?

It's just response. And that's why Maharaj says practical spirituality, because your day-to-day activities have nothing to do with your spirituality, have nothing to do with, you know, yourself in a real sense. There's no birth, no death. There's no individuality. All these other forms are just lumps of goo animated by your own self within your own self. The same as a dream.

And yet you do your job. You do your duties, take care of your responsibilities. You don't have to egoistically say, Oh, you know, I know myself and I'm like above everything, or this is not good either. As Maharaj says, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, he kept his little beadi shop, his little cigarette shop. He didn't just say, Oh, I'm a great Master now. So close up all shops.

And I'm just like, you know, no, most of the Masters in the lineage Sri Ramakant Maharaj worked in a bank, just a normal, you'd come in customer service, handling customer service issues. As he said, some customers get very, very upset. He'd listen. He'd do his job. I've seen Sri Ramakant Maharaj at the Ashram, discussing bills and stuff that the contractors were doing for something in the Ashram. And he wasn't like, you know, you're walking around like, Oh, I'm in the clouds. And this is beneath me, this, this little bill thing, because I am, I am that. No, just do your job, do your duties, be normal, be simple, be humble, be always with you. And don't give yourself away for every little illusory happening that seems to be happening, that of course is nothing.

Q: I guess I'm somehow giving myself away because I'm forgetting to do Mantra too often.

John: Well, that should be like a daily, like all the time. Matter of fact, by now you should be able to just pause at any time and just listen to the Mantra running naturally. Breathing in and breathing out, breathing in and breathing out.

I told you now in the morning, when I go into the Metro, I get in the car, and I have no music because I used to do like bhajan and stuff sometimes in the car. But I do that now only on the Metro on the way in doing the readings. But in the car, it's just Mantra.

And as you're driving, you're not experiencing a commute driving into the Metro. You just concentrate on a Mantra. Then when I get to the Metro, it's like, thank you, Master. You know, I woke up on time. Yay. Thank you. I'm here at the Metro. I have a roof over my head. I have clothes. I have food. I'm driving my car. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And most of all, thank you for introducing to the Selfless Self.

And that's why Master is so important because prior to seeing Maharaj, there was a sense of Presence. It was very nice. I could like drop into it, so to speak. But the people around were like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. You should go to church. You should do this. You should do that. So, there's all this illusory impression on the outside and going to a true Master and Master says, “Oh, you are not body. You were not body. You're not going to remain body. Body is not your identity except your Selfless Self. There's no God, no Brahman, no Paramatman, no Master. Nothing is there.” And the conviction, oh, so that I, I am that. And now you could line a thousand people out there and they could all say, you know what, John, you're crazy. Like there is no Selfless Self. There is no this or that. You know, probably you were just brainwashed, and you believe this because the brain can believe a million different things and all that. But you know, you know, as a matter of fact, you can consider it a test of your knowledge. I know myself in a real sense.

Q: Like I said, sometimes it seems like I know, but then I forget, you know.

John: But there's no forgetting, no remembering. You're formless. How are you going to forget yourself?

Q: Well, because the thoughts take over identification. They cover up, cover up the…

John: But they're not actually covering. And remember, underneath the ash, fire is burning bright. Whether ash is there or not, fire burning bright. You are that. You cannot not be that. Even if you wanted to say, oh, you know what, I'm Keith. I'm not that. You cannot.

Q: But sometimes it's clear, and other times I forget.

John: But see, there's no forgetting. Forget this idea of forgetting, because it's not true. It's concept. Instead of having the concept of I'm forgetting, why not have the concept I'm remaining with my Selfless Self? Both are concepts, and one…

Q: But I'll forget the one I want. Well, I see what you're saying, though, yeah. That's a good idea.

John: Anytime the illusory identity starts to churn, Mantra. Mantra is the eraser, slowly, silently, permanently. Or as Maharaj uses the example of a broom, you open the door, leaves blow into your house, you broom them out.

Okay, oh my gosh, I'm overwhelmed with the feeling that I'm Keith, Mantra. Because mind is busy with Mantra, it can't go around playing with other things. And the beauty of Mantra, no experience, no experiencer. You see this on the other side of the quote experience. This thing, I seemingly went through, but I did not take the touch. Therefore, was it an experience? Because there was no experiencer. And that's where scenes appear and disappear, and it's like channel surfing. Okay, this scene's here, fully into it, change the channel, new scene. Okay, new scene.