In an effort to gain a continuation you need to have an identification with mind, so that the flowing thoughts will be held in attention and you will grab them. You are no longer using thoughts, thoughts are using you. They are creating a ‘me’ and causing the attention to be directed at the thoughts, rather than just let them pass. Maya as Maharaj says ‘Is very, very, tricky, always pricking from backside’ If you are truly holding on to beliefs or ideas about yourself. The actions, through these thoughts, through this form you are taking as yourself as who you believe yourself to be this person, are going to reflect that. They will naturally be selfish instead of the Selfless Self. Every time there is an idea of a person forming, that is a time to be with you through Mantra. Mantra through the experience without an experiencer being created. Seeing there is no deed there is no doer, there is no experience, there is no experiencer. You Mantra’d through that experience remaining with yourself, without taking form. Automatically there is no fear as no form was taken with which a fear could attach. Without taking a form there is nothing that can attach to you. Not taking a form, you remain as you are formless. Don’t give formless to mind to try and imagine what formless is. You don’t allow any ideas or beliefs to take form, or any concepts to form. The primary form or concept ‘I exist’ or ‘I am’ all of the other concepts arise or are birthed on that. Rather than just remaining, and knowing without knowing anything. Nothing needed to know. No next. Any time a form is trying to be created using mind to know about a next, Mantra. A pull is there, gone. Any thoughts that were flowing through designed for that thought creation, this person you believed yourself to be, if you remain with yourself through Mantra in the experience and no thought form, or personality was created and identified with, than the thought just flows. The more personal the thoughts are, or the more personal your attention is, remain with yourself through Mantra. If you continue to remain with yourself you are going to see. You are going to see clearly the Reality through the illusion. I remained with myself through that experience and no experiencer was created, no doer was created, no sense of doer-ship, therefore no karma. Moving, passing through. No blockage, no sense of time, no sense of a linear time line or cause and effect. No ‘my life’ or anything related. Just here. Fully! Absolutely fully here. Tension free because there is not a you experiencing a sense of what you need to do or how am I to survive, nothing.
Body form is just to know yourself. All of this is arising on your Presence. You get to know yourself. You are everything in all things, there is no way for you to know, you don’t know ‘you are’ or ‘I am’ until spirit clicks with the body and you say ‘I’. Then like Maharaj says “all the concepts come along with, appear with that I” So many concepts appear with that ‘I’. I is identified like a stamp on this body, this is ‘I’. Looking around from the point of this ‘I’ you see parents, you see brother and sister, need of education, need of food, need of water. Body is like a plant, if you don’t give it food and water it will die. Presence needs this body in order to continue knowing itself. It uses this body and becomes attached with this body wishing to perpetuate existence. Maharaj uses the example of the ants. Presence once it knows itself in form and believes this form as itself wants to keep this. Even Presence as an ant, if you pour water the ant is running here and there for self-preservation. Presence knows itself, it does not know what it is, yet there is a desire to continue the knowing this sense of existence. Fear arises in the form of the thought ‘I could die’. Looking around other forms they can die, you go to funerals of others who have died. The belief settles in that ‘I am this form and I am going to die’. Prior to beingness, prior to this sense of Presence, prior to one hundred years, I don’t know myself. You get to see that in every moment with Mantra, you can start to see the “living” without myself. Spontaneous existence without any story, without any person in it, this spontaneous no-knowing. You show this sense of self, this mind sense this ego sense, you kind of rock it to sleep by showing in every moment. Like Maharaj says “have courage to step forward” continue to step forward. In the stepping forward you start to catch this process as it is taking form. That it is not true. There is no need to think and worry about what to do. You don’t get caught up in all these thoughts and labeling depressive thoughts, there is no getting caught up in the illusion anymore. You can’t, because there is no ‘me’. That ‘I’ has to come first and then everything appears upon that spontaneous Presence. But if that ‘I’ is formless, meaning you have not taken the form in thought, or body form, continuously just here spontaneously in the moment, there is nothing to land on, there are no ideas or beliefs that i can hold about myself. When they do start to form, Mantra. All ideas or beliefs have to do with this illusory unborn child. Who you are not.
Your formless nature provides the energy and the power for the flow of thoughts, for the body movement, to move all these things. It is in everything. There is no real character because there is no you. That spontaneous existence, like Maharaj says “is automatic fearless life, tension free life, peaceful life, happy life”. It will also be seen that these things that you are clinging onto that you believe are you, your personality, memories and all that, when these are cleaned and cleared you will be responding in a more universal response not a selfish sense a Selfless Self response. That automatically erases any of these ‘character defects’ or whatever your saying ‘personality flaws’. Through Mantra and knowing yourself in a real sense it will be seen that all of these were added on. Much of these ‘character flaws’ or ‘vasanas’ were there for you to see and give up, discard as not you. Everything is about giving up. Like pebbles on the road, pebble in the shoe is for you to notice that there is a pebble in the shoe and then you toss it. Selfless Self is doing this automatically as you remain with yourself through Mantra all of the illusory thoughts are cleared.
Yes we are speaking about Mantra. Truly as Maharaj says “Mantra are the words”. Shivoham, Soham, Aham Brahmasmi, I am Brahman, etc. The Mantra given in our lineage goes back to Dattatreya and are very powerful words. But any Mantra, if you have not actually taken formal Mantra initiation, you can use any of these as Mantra to invite the attention of the invisible listener, even Thy Will Be Done. Just to allow the flow of thoughts, you experiencing yourself without any ideas or beliefs about yourself in the moment. Thy Will Be Done, that works, Aham Bramasmi, Soham, Shivoham, I am sky. Anything just to keep the mind busy, and you being able to see from behind. Your always there, but all this mind activity is blocking. So if you can keep the mind busy saying ‘I am sky, sky I am’ repeatedly. Once the invisible listener is contacted, so to speak, you invite the attention of the invisible listener seeing behind the clouds of ideas, beliefs and concepts. Knowing yourself in a real sense through body form, and then observing, without an idea of an observer. Even no idea arises that the observed and the observer are one and the same. Without a form of an observer and observed there is just the observing, with no ideas or beliefs behind that observing. Nisargadatta Maharaj states it beautifully “All the people are in the room and I see them, when they leave I don’t see them”. There is no train of thought, just come into the room, just like now, you look to the right of the monitor and you see the people, and when the session is over, you won’t see the people. Every moment, Mantra be with you, invite the attention of the invisible listener, concentrate. You are given so many opportunities. This life, this spontaneous arising in each moment. Like Maharaj says “Every moment is so very, very important” Instead of sharing about how you went through something and should have done Mantra, Mantra. Then you will see, ‘I went through this thing and there was no me going through it, everything just kind of, I could not really describe it, it was almost as though I was interacting with my own reflection in a mirror, and somehow I knew that everything was arising on my spontaneous Presence, and there was just a two-way communication with myself, recognition in the projection constantly, but everything is arising from me, including this body, which I am currently using, yet I am no longer identified with’.
‘I exist’, ‘I am’, how I exist I do not know, but I am here. Because you are closest to body, and after long association with the body, you automatically believe and accept ‘I am this body’. This body comes with a label or name, and relations, and a chain of concepts acquired through body knowledge. But you are not body at all.
Q: I have heard that some people recognize Self in deep sleep, but there is no body there? I am a little confused.
The only recognition in deep sleep is that something, you, enters the sleep state, go into deep sleep, dreaming and then come out the other side, so something was absolutely continuous that all these states appeared on. Just one continuous process. You did not just ‘go away’ and then come out the other side. It was a continuous process and all of these states arose on your Presence. Going to sleep, dreaming, deep sleep and waking up, it is just continuous. Just like ‘birth’ and ‘death’ same sort of idea. What was there before ‘birth’ will be there after ‘death’. These are states that arise on that spontaneous Presence. Presence identifies with the body and the thought comes ‘I feel that I exist, and I believe that I am this body “somebody”. After long association with the body and all of the body knowledge that I have acquired, all the things I have seen this body has needed, and the things which I worked to acquire for this body, all the actions that I believe are being done by this body, because this body is labeled ‘John’, people said ‘Good job John, or bad job John’. So I took these as my own. When this thought train is in motion it is moving automatically towards the idea ‘people die and so can I, things can die, and I am a thing’. That is terrifying. When the belief sets in that ‘I am this body, that everything I am is this body, and naturally this body will die’, the struggle to maintain the existence as long as possible commences through thought. ‘What happens to John? Who is John? Like Maharaj says show me ‘John’. Show me a sample of yourself. Is this body yourself? no. Siddharameshwar Maharaj goes through the whole gambit of the ‘subtle body, the physical body and all these bodies’ and finding the ‘I’. Where is this ‘I’ here? It is not here, it can not be found, or presented as something. There is a belief and an attachment with the body. Keeping with your Selfless Self through Mantra, these beliefs will slowly, silently and permanently be erased. Beliefs and ideas, concepts and all of this body knowledge will be erased, you will know yourself in a real sense. You will instantly know as Maharaj states ‘I am not body, I was not body, I am not going to remain body, body is not my identity’. These illusory thoughts about the body are not for me, just discard the layers that appear on Presence. No confusion.
John Richards
Sadguru Shri Ramakant Maharaj Dakshina