Here with you, we are investigating all these aspects related to this Truth of Divine Revelation, this Revelation of God. And there is a subject here that we need to approach and examine: it is this matter of experience, this pursuit, this search, this intention to obtain or achieve experiences in order to have an encounter with Divine Truth. So, one of the things here, one of the topics to be investigated, is this matter or this thing called experience. Why do we value it so much? What is the truth behind this so-called experience?
Here with you, we are taking an approach to the Truth that reveals God. And what is the Truth that reveals God? Truth is not experience; the Truth that reveals God is the awareness of Self-awareness. Notice the difference between learning about Self-awareness, which is what we address here on the channel with you—and here we refer to the Truth about Self-awareness! Some call self-awareness this approach of introspection, self-analysis, self-observation to change something, to alter something, to undergo a transformation as a person, having as a principle this transformation or change based on a desire, a will to change, to become a better person or a person who better aligns with their purposes, their ideals, their life desires.
Thus, in order to improve, a person aligns with a model of personal self-improvement due to a desire—for example, to get a promotion at work or achieve a certain result in a relationship with someone. So, they want to improve, they want to abandon certain aspects of themselves that they perceive as bad, as not good, as unfavorable in that connection with the other person, in that relationship with him or her. So, in terms of improvement, refinement, also with a purpose of self-interest, to obtain personal and naturally egocentric results, human beings seek improvement, and this improvement is this self-improvement through this thing called self-awareness. That is not what we are dealing with here with you. Here, the word "Self-awareness" refers to this encounter with oneself, merely an encounter with oneself.
Knowing what it is to observe your reactions is, in fact, knowing not to interfere with them—it is merely becoming aware of them, and then something happens when this is present. We know nothing about this. All our training, all our education is aimed at obtaining, achieving, conquering, changing, or altering things—of course, with a purpose, and the purpose is personal, the purpose belongs to the very “I,” to this “me,” to this very ego. Here, our approach, when we use the expression "Self-awareness", is for the investigation and clarity regarding the awareness of the “I,” the awareness of the “ego,” for the end of this entity that separates itself from life, that separates itself from the other, and therefore has nothing to obtain, nothing to achieve, nothing to gain—since this “person,” this “I,” this ego, is nothing more than a set of reactions present here, in this so-called human figure, which is nothing but conditioning, given that this “I,” this ego, this sense of “person” is nothing more than a formation of thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, and conditioned perceptions. See what we are investigating here with you.
We are investigating the truth for the end of this conditioning, which is the conditioning of the mind; the mind, made up of emotions, thoughts, sensations, and perceptions—we have present the very brain and how it processes all this. All of this is part of this conditioning of the mind, this so-called mind within us. Here, we are studying with you this question of the “I,” this study of ourselves for the discarding of this conditioning, which is the conditioning of the mind, which is mental conditioning. This is what we call Self-awareness here. Now we can address the very issue of experience. And what does experience have to do with this matter?
See, in general, people think of experience as something they need to obtain in order to have a vision of Divine Truth, of the Truth of God, of the Truth of their Being. Thus, here, when we discuss with you this matter of Spiritual Awakening or Spiritual Enlightenment, we are investigating that the foundation that brings this Revelation is not experience—I say it again—but rather an approach to oneself in order to investigate the nature of this “I.” And the nature of this “I” is structured upon and based on conditioning, and this mental conditioning is nothing but experience, and this experience is the experience that this “I” has sustained throughout its continuity. Thus, what we can have through experiences are conditionings. We cannot have, through experience, the awareness of God’s Revelation; what we can have through experience is the continuity of this element that places itself within experience as the one who has lived through it. This element is this identity; this element is the very “I.”
When you go through situations, they are remembered, they are stored. Storing situations requires memory, requires acquired information, requires recalling the situation. That situation is memory. Therefore, this memory, this recollection, this remembrance is experience. When you recall something here, you have a stored experience.
If yesterday, for example, I said something to you, and at this moment you can remember what I told you yesterday, what you have from yesterday, here, now, at this moment, is a memory, a recollection, an experience. This experience creates the illusion of an identity here—the “I” that is remembering. So, notice: what is the truth about experience? Experience is the memory that sustains the experiencer, which is the “I,” the one who went through that experience, stored that memory, and is now talking about it. So, what does experience bring to each of us?
More knowledge, more memory, more of the past. So, what can we acquire through experiences? Knowledge, memories, the past. This forms the “I,” this “me,” this ego. So, notice, we cannot come into direct contact with the Truth about God through the past, since the Reality of God is that if this Reality is present, It has no reference to the past within It.
If this Reality, which is Divine Truth, is present, It reveals Itself in this instant, and in this instant, there is nothing from the past that can comprehend or grasp its meaning. Notice, we are not dealing with something that exists within time, that is part of this time as we know it, which is past, present, and future. We are dealing with something indescribable, unnameable—this Reality that is present. Since It has no stored image, no representation of Itself, has never been seen, and will never be seen, it is not possible for an element coming from the past—the experiencer—to have any record of It. Every concept, image, or idea you have about Truth, about God—what you have about it is still part of thought, it is a photograph of thought. And thought is an element present within you as memory.
Every thought is memory. Every thought is something that comes from the past. So, you do not have a portrait of Reality, a portrait of God; therefore, you cannot have an experience of God. Because who is this element that will have this experience? This element is the “I,” and this experience is nothing but memory, and this memory is thought. Therefore, experience is memory, which is thought, and this “I” is the idea of this experiencer with this remembrance.
So, perceive this clearly: the Reality of God can be ascertained, but it cannot be experienced. It can be ascertained, but there is no element to ascertain it. Thus, we can only have an approximation of the Truth of God when there is precisely the discarding of experience, the experiencer, thought, and this “I.” Therefore, the truth of an approximation of Self-awareness is the awareness of the absence of the “I,” the absence of experience, the absence of the experiencer, the absence of the past. When this ends, we have the end of this conditioned mind, since this conditioned mind is the very presence of this conditioning, and this conditioning is nothing other than thought itself, which, when it appears, makes use of this pronoun—the pronoun “I”—with this idea of “my” or “mine.” “My” experience, like “my” things, “my” memories, “my” purpose, “my” house, “my” car, “my” name, “my” story.
So, when this pronoun “I” arises, we have this conditioned mind present with this idea of having things, of possessing things, of having acquired things. These things are material, intellectual, physical, mental, and, in reality, all of this is still within the scope of the dimension of thought. When I use the pronoun “I” and this “my” or “mine” arises—“my” car, “my” house, “my” family, “my” name, “my” story, “my” joy—we bring this idea, we bring this model of belief, this model of thought, this model of experience to this experiencer. So, what is the truth about this Divine Science, about this Science of God? The truth about this requires the presence of this learning about ourselves, discovering what this sense of the “I” is with this idea of “my,” of “mine.”
We carry this “my” and this “I” with us. This is within this form of mind program structured in knowledge and experience. It is knowledge and experience that bring us this conditioning, that give us this conditioning, that bring us this sense of the “I.” Looking at what happens here and now—and all we have here and now is life as it happens, without the past. When thought arises, it arises at this moment to interpret, to evaluate, to accept and reject life as it happens, at this moment.
And we only do this based on this experience, this experiencer. In you, the element that likes or dislikes, that wants or does not want, that accepts or rejects, that carries this feeling of pleasure and pain—see, from a psychological standpoint, this element present in each of us is nothing other than the experiencer. Therefore, everything the experiencer can assume is something he has lived and recorded from the past. Thus, every encounter he has with the present moment is based on his background of memory, recollection, remembrance. So, this element, which is the “I,” which lives off experiences, being the experiencer, cannot have an encounter with Reality. All it can do, based on experience, is maintain its own continuity, always interpreting, evaluating new situations based on its background of past experience.
All we can do as experiencers—notice this—is maintain the continuity of the “I.” The experiencer, I repeat, cannot have an experience outside the scope of the known, and the Divine Reality is not within the known. We are dealing with something that is beyond time, beyond the mind, beyond thought. This is the importance of Self-awareness, as this Self-awareness dismantles the sense of an identity present in this moment, since this approach of a new perspective on this moment puts an end to that identity, which is always maintaining the continuity of experience, always relying on what it has lived in the past. Therefore, the beauty of the importance of Self-awareness, of this encounter with this new learning about ourselves, is that looking at this moment without placing the experiencer, without placing this “I,” without placing this element that comes from the past to evaluate this moment based on its background, we have in this moment a contact with life in this instant, in this moment, without the “I,” without the experiencer. When, for example, you have a thought, it is just a memory that arises here, in this instant, something that comes from the past, but when you place an identity in this thought that slides with the thought or slides into the future or the past—into the past with memories, recollections, into the future with imaginations, ideas, and projects—when this identity arises, as soon as thought appears, we have the continuity of the “I,” of this experiencer.
And here we are inviting you to the awareness of the truth of this moment, where time does not exist, where this past and this future do not exist. Therefore, learning to look at this moment without placing this present element, at this instant, we are before this Attention, this perception, this new perspective, this perceiving without the perceiver, this awareness without this element—the “I”—being involved in it; it is when, at this instant, we have the Revelation of the awareness of this Being. This revelation is the very awareness of God. Perceive this clearly here. The Reality of That which You Are is not the “person,” it is not the “I,” it is not the experiencer.
The Reality of That which You Are is this perceiving, this awareness, this seeing without the past. The clarity of this is the Truth that Life is present, Life itself being the Divine Reality; this Reality is the Reality of God. So, when the mind falls silent, when the brain quiets down due to the absence of this “I,” this experiencer, this element that comes from the past to judge, compare, evaluate, like or dislike, accept or reject what is here, in this instant—when this element is absent, we have the presence of non-separation; it is when, in this moment, your contact with him or her is not the contact of someone with him or her—it is the very contact of Life with Life, because at this moment there is no other. He or she is You in your Real Nature, You in your Being. Can we discover what it is to look at life without the past and, therefore, without the experiencer, without the “I”? So, this contact with the moment is the contact that reveals That which is beyond thought and, therefore, beyond the past, experience, the experiencer. We are before Life itself.
When people ask what Advaita is—we have a playlist about this subject here on the channel… Advaita is non-separation, it is seeing without the observer, it is listening without this element being present in listening, which is the listener, which is the “I.” It is perceiving without the perceiver. It is a contact with Reality without the past. See, this is not an experience, this is the awareness of pure Being, of pure experiencing, of pure living, of pure Divine Life. This is what I have called Real Consciousness; this is the truth of Advaita. Advaita is an Indian expression for non-separation, for non-duality. So, what reveals the Reality of God?
The awareness of this Being, and this is Advaita, this is the presence of pure Meditation, of your Natural State of Being, free from the “I,” free from the ego. This is what we are working on here with you, telling you that in this life, yes, this is possible. Two days together. You have the link to our WhatsApp group in the video description to participate in these online meetings on weekends. Besides these meetings, we have in-person meetings and also retreats.
If what you just heard resonates with you on any level, that is the level of your own Being. Here is an invitation. Leave your like and subscribe to the channel, okay? See you soon. Thanks for the meeting, and until next time!
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