In these meetings, our major goal, our major purpose is to turn to the Heart, to turn inwards. We are dealing with Something that is already present as our own Being. It is not a thing to come, but rather Something present already. Therefore, our purpose is to get in direct contact with What we are, right now, right here, at this moment. When we talk about the Nature of Consciousness, about the Nature of Being, we are dealing with Something ever present. The mind is continually looking for new experiences, new sensations, but your Being is not a new experience, nor is it a new sensation. Your Being is that present Reality!
We spend a lifetime reinforcing and upholding this false identity, that is continually seeking, looking for, trying to find something new. The mind does this because of its dissatisfaction. The nature of the mind is to ward itself off from the Heart, from What is present now, here, at this moment. All our interest in Satsang is to verify What we are, to get directly in touch with What we are at this moment, at this present moment. The mind has created the time. The mind moves within time. So, the mind is constantly looking for experiences and sensations. When you do this, you identify with the body and the mind.
All the human misery is based on this identification with the body, on the illusion of an identity present inside the body. If you are someone inside the body, you are attached to the notion of time and space, living in search of experiences and sensations. Your whole life spins around this central idea: the idea you are a person.
One morning a man stood before Ramana Maharshi. He was a missionary and also an English teacher. Upon entering and prostrating himself before the Master, he was in great sadness, as he had lost his son in the war. At that moment, he asked the Master, "After all, what is the way to achieve pain liberation?" Ramana looked at him, remained silent for a few minutes, and then answered, "All your sadness is only in your mind." Ramana told him that all that pain was being created by thought. The Master told him, "Your sadness is only your thought; your True Nature is Peace." And He continued: "Your remedy is to investigate, within your own Nature, who you are. You feel sad because the thoughts say your child no longer exists. If you still believed in the thought that he was alive, you would not feel any sadness."
Ramana also told him a story I will tell you here. It is the story of two young men who went on a pilgrimage together. They arrived at a village in northern India and one of them died. The one alive got a job and started working. After a while, he decided to return to his city, but in the meantime, he met someone, another pilgrim who was going back to his city before him. Then, he asked the pilgrim to tell his friend's family that he had died. So, the pilgrim spread the news, but in doing so he changed the boys' names. As a result, the deceased's relatives and friends were happy since they believed he was alive, while the living pilgrim's people were grieving and depressed, crying, believing that he was dead. The news was mixed up!
So, Ramana told him that, and this is what we are talking about in this meeting here in Satsang. As long as you identify with the idea of the person you believe to be, your whole world revolves around thoughts. Identified with the body and mind, you are a person in the world – a world of beliefs, concepts, conclusions, opinions. This is the sense of slavery, of an ego-identity.
Enlightenment, Awakening, or God's Realization, is the ultimate break with that "I am someone" belief – someone who has a family, relatives and friends. In the mind, you always live in fear of losing what you have, and what you have only exists in your head. This is your world! What I am saying in Satsang every day is that You are already Peace, Freedom, Happiness, but only when you have nothing. When you have nothing, You are Happiness! When you have something, you are miserable.
Your sense of person is so miserable that it projects misery beyond body's life. You hope to die and go to "the other side," to meet your fears, desires and attachments, to meet some people who are "on the other side." Fear is the basis of the mind. Due to fear, the mind has created all sorts of attachments to things, people, places... This is the miserable state of the person, of this "me," of this ego.
You need to "die" to all of this, to the person you believe to be and to "die" to all the things you believe you have, which means stopping looking for experiences and sensations. Peace, Freedom, Love, Happiness is present here and now when you are not present, when your mind is not present, when those images in your head are no longer present. Then, in fact, you "die," your world disappears. Now You are beyond life and death, beyond the illusion that one day you were born and one day you will die. You are that Space that is never disturbed, that Space that does not move.
Here you are in a room and you can move the furniture inside it. You can move the objects inside this room, but the room space does not move. When you Realize the Truth about Yourself, You are that Space that does not move. All your relatives will die one day. One day, you will lose all the things you have. When you lose your own body, you lose everything! When, physically, your body goes to the grave, you lose everything, instantly, immediately, all at once. But now you know you are not the body; and since you are not the body, you do not lose anything. This is Realization! Jesus called This "to be born into God's Kingdom." One day He said, "One who believes in my words will never die!" If you also trust my words, at that moment, you can go beyond the illusion of this "person." In this Awakening, in this Realization, you are born again!
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