Texte

Amazing Grace - Wundervolle Gnade

Ramana Essentiell

Ich bin das Selbst

Blaupause des Erwachens

Kurzgeschichten

Poesie

Irgendwo

Nirgendwo

Lieder der Stille

Startseite

The absolute, the Self, can only be spoken about by straying into the use of dualistic words.
This is the finger pointing at the moon.

The Self is very subtle. The Self is stillness, peacefulness, never changing, eternal. The mind arises from the Self. The world arises from the Self. The people arise from the Self. When the world is there, the awareness of the Self is not there. When the awareness of the Self is there, the world is not there. The mind is simply thoughts. These thoughts arise from the Self.

To know the Self is simply to become quiet. Absolutely no technique, or practice is needed. And the Self is available right now, at this moment. If you are not knowing the Self, this Self, my Self right now - it is because you are somehow identified with the thoughts in your mind, and with your sense of I. My ‘story’. It is not possible to ever know the Self if you believe in my ‘story’. If you believe in I – I believe this, I believe that, I am this, I am that – if you believe all of that and if you accept that conditioning as ‘me’ you will never know the Self. You will always be living in your mind. And most of humanity are living in that way. At least 99% of people are living in that way. And 97% of people will never question that there could be anything other than their mind or ‘my story.’ They live from the moment they are born until their physical death in ‘my story’.

There are a few people who through some accident, or through some merit, come to know the Self, just for a moment. And somebody who knows the Self validates that moment. But in fact most of those 97% people on this planet have in fact known the Self – but they never knew that it was the Self. It was never validated, they just thought that some ‘experience’ was a bit strange, that it was so incredibly beautiful – the moment of the sun setting on the far horizon in the open desert – in that moment they could be knowing the Self, and they were touched in a way that they never knew before – but they didn’t know that it was the Self. So it got lost in the activity of the mind.

It is very interesting to understand what is the mind because everybody here has come to understand that I am not my mind and I am not my body. And by my ‘mind’ I mean I am not my thoughts and I am not my emotions. Emotions are also the mind. The mind is the thoughts, the mind is the emotions, ‘I feel this’ is the mind. The Self has a completely different quality. The Self recognises a feeling whatever the feeling is. It is not the same as a reactive mind that takes ownership of that feeling and says, ‘I am angry.’ ‘I am happy.’ This is the mind.

So this identification with I, ‘my story’ will prevent you ever knowing the Self. So considering one of our colleagues who left us just an hour ago. One week ago in this room, he announced to everybody, ‘I am free.’ And when he said that what he meant was, ‘I have awoken to the Self.’ Perhaps we believed it when he said it. This was a mature man of fifty-five who had been doing spiritual work for thirty years. He had two spiritual Masters and his whole life was focused on his spiritual work and finally he announced, ‘I am free,’ and he believed that he was free. If you were sensitive at that moment you could tell it was simply the mind talking. It was not the Self. The Self does not say, ‘I am free.’ Because the Self is always free. It is not a question of freedom or bondage for the Self. The Self simply is, so the Self would never say, ‘I am free.’ Only the mind will say, ‘I am free.’ Because it has a wrong idea. The mind can say, ‘I am free,’ but the whole quality is such that you can’t believe that.
When this person said it, I could tell immediately that it wasn’t true. He has a big, wide, intelligent mind. And in this mind he has constructed all kinds of entities, all kinds of spiritual phenomenon. He is a very sincere person.

The mind is very tricky. That very sincere person desperately needs female love because he believes he is lacking that. Which once again is not the Self speaking because the Self lacks nothing. The Self is absolutely complete. Only I lack something, only I want love. Only I desire something. The Self is absolutely complete. So this man as he was leaving Australia met a lady. That connection has been growing over the last two months through frequent internet chatting! Mind-to-Mind are the world of the chat and love affair growing. Suddenly in the middle of this retreat when he was supposedly totally focussed on the Self, to know and be the Self, I could sense that his energy was not here, that his energy was not really present here and was always Irgendwo else.

Then I noticed that he was having long two or three hour chats everyday and disappearing from the retreat. Yesterday I asked him, ‘What is going on?’ and he said that, ‘Yes, this woman is very important to me and maybe it is an illusion but I want to go into this love thing and I am going to Australia in the middle of February.’ He also decided that he was going to leave the retreat the next day so that he could see Sai Baba who he believes to be a great Avatar and then return to Australia to the woman. I, I, I – all ‘my story’. This is the man who was free one week ago. If you are really free you would never go rushing to a spiritual Master – what for? The Self and the Spiritual Master are the same as your Self. There is no difference between your Self and Ramana Maharshi’s Self or Sai Baba’s Self. It is just one Self.

So if you are really clear that ‘Ich bin das Selbst, I am not my mind,’ you don’t need or want to go anywhere. You can go; the body may go, but not to get something. The body moves for some kind of play but not in order to get something. If you move to get something from a teacher, a lover, from a tree, from a bar of chocolate – this is not the Self. This is I. If you stay in the story of I you can never be free and you can never stop the suffering or the pain. The pain and the suffering are there because of the identification with this I.

Just the other day another story about the mind. This is the selfish mind. What does selfish really mean? Selfish means the total identification with ‘my story’ – ‘my’, ‘my’, ‘my’! You are so identified with ‘my’ you don’t see anything else. The only thing that is really important is ‘my’ – this is selfish. I have a friend of fifteen years and shortly before this retreat started she e-mailed me for a room at this Ashram. So I arranged a room and she stayed downstairs in the Ashram.

There was some kind of trouble arranging the room because of sending e-mails and the like. I didn’t mind doing that because she is a friend. But she is also a friend that is selfish and who I have known always to be selfish. But she is selfish for a very good reason because when she was a little girl she had some problem with her legs – she was a spastic child. Something went wrong with her legs and they were put in metal splints. So when she was a small child she needed people to do things for her – her survival depended on that. So there was a huge conditioning of getting people to do things. For her being selfish was a survival need when she was a little girl. She had those leg irons maybe forty-five years ago, but in her psychology she still has those leg-irons. So all her friends have to constantly do things for her and if these friends do these things she feels that her friends love and care for her.

The other day I was leaving the ashram to go downtown and I was hoping that there would be a rickshaw coming. I met this friend at the gate, she was just going off on her scooter.

I said, ‘Hello, can you give me a lift? I will just take a couple of minutes I have to go and get something.’

She replied, ‘Oh! I am already late I can’t possibly wait.’

I said, ‘Oh! Please wait just a minute.’ She agreed to wait.

The next thing was, ‘I can’t carry anybody on the back of the scooter, I am not so good at riding when there is somebody on the back.’

I replied, ‘Okay, I will be the driver and you get on the back.’

She said, ‘But I don’t like sitting on the back. That’s not comfortable and I don’t feel safe.’

So it went on and on and finally we got into the town and I just went a little beyond where she was turning and then again the same thing.

She said, ‘I can’t take you for these extra two minutes.’

Later I was looking at this story and of course I don’t mind it because I have been aware of this selfish behaviour for the last fifteen years – so I don’t mind it. I thought about this woman? She is fifty-five years old and has been meditating for thirty years, she has been with maybe ten spiritual Masters and every year she spends time travelling around the world visiting different spiritual communities and teachers. She has apparently some interest to become free and know the Self. But she doesn’t even see that her moment-by-moment behaviour prevents her ever seeing. She can sit for meditation for the next thirty years and she will never be conscious of the Self because she doesn’t understand something very simple. When there is complete involvement and identification with the ‘I’, the ego, the Self will never be revealed. It’s impossible. I feel this is really sad because I love this person very much and I can’t show her this simple Truth. I can’t show it to her because she is not available.

This is how the mind behaves - this is the mind identifying. Even a mature fifty-five year old spiritual seeker who goes to so many satsangs, and who has been around the world many times is still totally identified with I every moment in her life. If you really want to live in the Self, everything has to go and I mean everything. Your beliefs have to go. Because if you keep them, there will be no chance of living in the Self. Keeping the mind identified prevents you being the Self.

At some point in this kind of retreat the mind begins to feel some kind of pressure. So what happens then is called resistance. The mind resists. How does the mind resist? Very often the mind resists by finding fault with the teacher or by finding fault with the wind, the cold, the food, the beds and so on and so on! The mind can’t look and be honest and see what is happening. Desperately it resists. No, I won’t come to the meeting! No, I won’t chop salads! No! No is the word of the mind and yes is a word of the Self.

The Self doesn’t mind what it is doing. So for example Ramana Maharshi, since he has left his body is considered a great saint and venerated by thousands of people. People come from all over the world to visit his samadhi. He used to enjoy waking early in the morning and preparing vegetables, curries and breakfast – he liked working in the kitchen. Being a saint doesn’t mean being special. In actual fact when you really know the Self there is a huge desire to make life very simple. Because nothing is going to make it any better or make any difference – the Self is complete, the Self is radiant and all-knowing – it has all wisdom and knowledge.

From my experience and I have met many awakened people, their lives are very simple. The world is arising from the Self – the way that you are living, knowing that Ich bin das Selbst. Ich bin das Selbst – there is nothing to get, Nirgendwo to go and nothing to do. If you believe that there is something to do then you are living in the mind. The mind is the doer, the Self is the non-doer. Mind believes that by doing things something can be gained. I will feel better. I will have more. The Self is complete.

Look at love between a man and woman, where one is meeting the other saying, ‘I love you.’ What is really meant by, ‘I love you,’ is that I believe that you have something that I don’t have and if I can get what you have, then I will be complete. This is again the mind. Mind believes that the other person has extra love and when that person comes and gives it to me, then I will be complete.

This is the basis of all love affairs and marriages; they are all based on getting something of love. You have two people who both lack something, trying to get what they lack from the other person. It works very beautifully in the beginning; in the beginning it is perfect. The other person is always there ready to give you that bit of something, that bit of love that you are lacking. So it is wonderful because you discover the magic wand and when you wave that magic wand that person appears and gives you exactly what you think you need and you feel complete, wonderful!

This is pure Hollywood, because as soon as that person can’t be there, the moment you wave your wand and they are not there, then you feel rejected and angry and the whole thing starts to turn into a nightmare. Because at the very basis of this situation you are expecting something from another, another I. So in the very nature of things, this can’t work, it won’t work! The tragedy is that while you are desperately trying to get a little bit of something from that other person, you are already complete, because the Self is real love. So you are already complete, tragically believing that you need to get something from somebody.

So if you are a person who still believes in romantic love, if you still believe that there is somebody out there who can give you that little bit of something that will make you complete, you will never know the Self. That belief that somebody out there will give you something will keep you from ever becoming whole, complete, quiet and being the Self. So tragically you will continue to look for that other person, that other perfect soul-mate out there and you think that ‘If I could just find that perfect soul-mate it will bring me the love that I have been missing.’

Those of us that are more mature have been doing this game our whole lives and every time we find out that it doesn’t work, we decide to try it one more time. And think, ‘If she had been a little bit more of this or that, then it would have been perfect.’ ‘If I hadn’t said that or if I had only remembered that she likes coffee in the morning, then it would have been perfect. I will try one more time. And this tragic phenomenon goes on again and again creating misery for everyone. The whole world is living in relationships based on this love, which needs to get something, because I lack something.

This is all mind! When you really know the Self, then you live knowing, ‘That I am the Self,’ ‘I am Love’ and a tremendous playfulness comes and you are happy alone. Because you are not alone, you are with the Self, you are the Self, the Self is everything, and the Self is nothing. The Self is complete. You can paint a picture, listen to music, go for a walk in the early morning, watch the sunset, simply sit or go for a swim and feel the water on your skin. You can lie in the sun and feel the heat on your skin. There is just divine playfulness (leela), a whole life transformed, because you are no longer looking for something or for someone to give you something. You know you have everything and all desire simply falls away and there is a tremendous contentment and peace and a great relaxation.

Suddenly you discover that just sitting and doing nothing, you feel the most tremendous bliss and radiance. You are sitting on the bench in the park and somebody comes by and says, ‘Hello,’ and in that moment you also say, ‘Hello,’ and something happens, there is a play, there is a meeting. Suddenly there is no point to life. It doesn’t matter what you do or where you do it or how you do it, in fact it doesn’t really matter if you don’t do anything at all!

You have to understand that existence is doing the work. I must do something, then I can have my lunch, pay my rent, and buy my new car, is a false belief. When you are using the mind you believe that, ‘I must make my life happy.’ This is the mind! And it is not true. When you stop, you discover that it was never true and that in fact this whole magnificent world and whole complex planet and multitude of societies is all a manifestation of the Self. It is not thousands of I’s or thousands of ‘my’s’ trying to get it together. It seems to be like that because everyone believes that I am doing my life, I am making my life happen. If you go to University they will teach you these things, how to have the right ambition, how to have the right will power and teach you how to be successful and how to make lots of money. In actual fact when you become quiet you find that the Self is just manifesting and you will always have lunch. You might even have a very nice lunch. There might even be desert with lunch; it could also be just a chappati.

So the challenge of these last days of the Retreat is that this is an incredible opportunity to drop your ‘story’. Everybody here is still running a huge story that you totally believe is necessary for your survival. Without this story you are not going to survive – it is not true. The belief in that story is exactly the thing that is keeping you from the thing that you apparently most want – which is the Self. The only thing that prevents you from the Self is your own ‘story’. And if you don’t see your own ‘story’ then you come and ask a teacher, the teacher can help you see your ‘story.’ That is why a spiritual teacher is needed.

It is an illusion to think that you can see your ‘story’ – you can’t see your own story. You can see everyone else’s story very easily. Tremendous honesty and insight is needed to see your own story and own attachments. This illusion that, ‘I can do it myself!’ This I is the mind, the mind is telling you that, ‘I can do it myself,’ but it is the mind that is the problem – so how can the mind help you get rid of the mind – this is just nonsense! Complete nonsense and even very mature spiritual seekers somehow believe in it. ‘I will do it. I will go to one more satsang; I will go to one more teacher. I will do it. I will take away my own ego. This is a very nice trick of the mind.

You can meet many people like that in this town, Tiruvannamalai. They have been doing this for thirty years. They have read all the spiritual books and been to all the famous teachers, spent hours meditating and years at Ashrams yet nothing has changed. They are not living in peace.