Satsang with Premananda, Tiruvannamalai, India, 2004
PREM: We've asked ourselves this question, who am I, and today I would like to go a little more deeply into this question of the 'I'. Most of us have now got a clear sense that there is something we could call the big 'I' which I call the Self or the Eternal Self. The word eternal is indicating that this Self never changes. It never changes in the infinity of time. So bodies are coming and bodies are going, the Self remains. Satsang is suggesting that we are this Self and that we are not the body and we're not the mind. When I say mind I'm including the mental thoughts and the emotions. Both these things are mind. So when we look inside and say 'I', generally, we don't mean the Eternal Self. We mean my story. So my story we can call the identification with 'I'. This is also called the ego and I'm calling it The Fortress.
When we're very small there comes a moment when, as a baby, we recognise somebody on the outside and a little bit later somebody says, probably Mummy. I can remember recently in Germany going to a beautiful retreat centre near Bremen. The owner of this retreat centre had a ten day old baby with his young wife and we had a Satsang meeting one evening. We were sitting very quietly in a circle and he came in with this baby wrapped around, against his heart and simply sat down quietly. Nothing was said and after some time he left with the baby. There was an amazing sense of God entering and God leaving. I could sense that in this silent space. When this baby entered there was a feeling of everything opening up, a kind of expansion and equally when the baby left there was something like a slight contraction. Of course, I'm talking about something very subtle. This baby would have no real sense of separation. Although the baby was out of the mother's body, for the baby it would not be so different and the parents were very sensitive and kept the baby wrapped around and close to their body much of the time. But at some point that baby will get bigger, as they do, and they start to crawl around. One day they stand up and a bit later they start to talk and somewhere in that process they say, 'Mummy'. A bit later, 'Daddy', and then probably 'baby' or if baby has a name they start saying, 'Shakti'.
From that beginning there starts a sense of separation because there's baby and you. John and Kate, so we are two. That creates the beginning of separation although energetically we may be still very close. The baby may still feel totally one with the mother and everything else, the world is a little bit hazy, not so clear, not so defined, but gradually things get more set. At some point some toys are offered and then maybe another little friend comes to play and the other friend, not realising, starts to play with the toys. He picks up one of the toys belonging to John and John grabs it back and says, 'MINE!' because by now John is totally identified with the toys and thinks they're part of him. The other little boy is trying to take them away. He experiences this as if somebody is taking something of him away. Then Mummy comes in with a cold drink and Mummy gives a little cuddle to Johnny who's come to play. Little Johnny likes this so he gets a little bit more hugs from Mummy and suddenly John gets really pissed off and starts crying because in that moment he feels like he's losing his Mummy. He also identifies himself with Mummy and believes Mummy to be somehow part of him.
This is the beginning of this whole game which thirty years later results in my story. This story is built up very slowly brick by brick. Later when you are in your twenties, maybe you have a red sports car and again it's 'my sports car'. Maybe you get a girlfriend or a boyfriend and they're, 'my girlfriend or my boyfriend'. So this fortress, this castle is built up brick by brick. You don't exactly notice it because all around you other people are busy building up their fortresses too. So it seemed very natural. Everybody's busy with their bricks and cement. You can see it around here in the outside. First thing that happens is that people put a little fence around their bit of land and then they start to build up their house using bricks and cement, 'this is my house'. It probably has a front door and maybe a gate and it maybe has a padlock and a bell or maybe it has a security guard, maybe it has barbed wire and guards with rifles. So what you see on the outside is a reflection of what's actually happening on the inside. If you go to some local village here you'll find that they don't even lock their front door and they probably only have a front door to keep the monkeys from coming in and they're constantly inside each others' houses. But if you go to somewhere like Los Angeles and you go to one of the rich areas you find, first of all, there are tall walls. You can't even see the house and then the gate has some kind of fortifications, probably some video cameras, a little guard house and if you should come to enter there then they check your credentials.
Once we've built up our fortress then naturally we need to protect it. So in Los Angeles you build a big wall and in our own psychology we have all kinds of defences and occasionally we let somebody come across the bridge, over the water and into our castle. We call this person a friend and this friend is only let into the outer room, whether it's the outer room of the house or whether it's the outer room of the psychology. And then occasionally one of these friends becomes more intimate and they're allowed to come a little bit deeper into the castle. They maybe get invited to the dining room and in special cases they get invited to the bedroom. This is very intimate. Almost nobody gets invited there because we have to defend our castle.
Generally speaking, the ones who get invited more closely they're the ones we like and what that means is that they're the ones that agree with our story. I have my story and you have your story and if your story agrees with my story then you can become a friend and if your story's very different from my story you become an enemy, no chance to come into the castle or even you might be throwing things from the wall of the castle, 'Go away! Don't disturb my story'. I like my story very much. In fact, I've come to believe that this story is me. So, of course, I have to be very careful with my story and who I allow to come close to my story. 'This is a terrible person. She's always wearing pink. I can't stand pink!'
For example, last year I was coming to Europe after five years and I hadn't seen my father and mother for nearly five years and so I wrote my parents a letter to say I was coming to Europe and it would be very nice to come and stay with them for some time. My father is now eighty-five. He's basically, quite a nice guy and there was a time when we, pretty much, agreed about everything. Then I went off and took my own journey, life's journey and so now thirty years later we, pretty much, don't agree on anything. After I'd sent this letter I telephoned to say, 'Well, I'll be coming soon' and I was told that actually I wasn't really welcome because they would prefer not to meet me. I was rather surprised about that and so I wanted to know some of their reasons and there seemed to be two strong reasons - it turned out that on my father's side, they live in a small rather nice village in the English countryside, and he was afraid that I might be coming to set up an ashram down the road and with all my strange ideas I was going to destroy his reputation because he's quite a well-known psychiatrist. He's published many books and he wouldn't like his son to set up an ashram down the road and spoil his reputation. And then as far as my mother went - she was very, very upset because when I was younger and they were younger they has made many sacrifices for me. Now I'd thrown my whole life away and wasted all their sacrifices. So I didn't get to meet my parents.
These fortresses are very well constructed and very strongly defended and somebody like Premananda is a big threat to the fortress. He has all kinds of secret weapons, some of them electronic, amazing electronic devices that can penetrate these defences, can catch you unawares, naked in your bedroom or naked with your ideas, naked with your beliefs, in fact, naked with the whole story. So this kind of person needs to be watched very carefully. In fact, you might need to create some special kinds of defences because his whole effort is to get inside your fortress. In fact, he always carries in his pocket a big lump of explosives, he's always looking for a little hole where he can stick it in and blow a big hole and he's always trying to look for that brick that could be the one that brings down the whole castle because the foundation stone has got 'I' written on it.
This foundation stone, if we could get to that one stone, the rest of the castle can fall down very easily and hence this idea of doing Self-Enquiry because it brings you to this foundation stone. Instead of taking the castle down brick by brick, there's a possibility of the whole thing collapsing in one moment. And this castle which is so carefully built to keep the other people from coming in has the effect also of keeping you from going out because you're very busy defending your castle. How can you possibly go out and leave the castle defenceless? Premananda might be hanging around with his explosives! So these very rich people with lots of fear, living in these big mansions with big walls around, with their video cameras and security guards, they live not so different from prisoners in prison. The only difference is maybe that they are their own jailer.
Satsang is making the suggestion that you can live your life without the fortress. You don't need it and anyway, it's only an idea. It doesn't really exist. So right now as I'm talking you can, perhaps, come in touch with your own story and you may have a few stories, a few different identifications, a little pack of stories and you offer different stories, perhaps, to different situations. And deep down what is the fear? What are you actually defending? Your basically defending an idea that isn't true. It's a false idea. It's an idea that many people have, but that doesn't make it right.
The first step is to be very honest and also very clear. First you need to be really clear about who you are and who you're not. If you see clearly that you're the Eternal Self then clearly you're not this story. Then you can also see there's really nothing to defend. But if you're really attached to your story and you really believe you're this story, then naturally, if somebody comes along and wants to take away one brick you will feel that you're being attacked and you will defend because this is me. In this retreat we have a wonderful opportunity. It's rather a unique situation. It's almost an impossible situation in the ordinary daily life. Here we have a situation where we have about twenty people who understand here is the Eternal Self and here is my story. We can help each other to see clearly that I'm not this story and naturally this is a little difficult because we have been holding onto this story for many, many years. It's very comfortable. This castle has become our dearest friend, very close, very comfortable. When somebody comes wearing pink clothes it becomes very uncomfortable. 'How can she possibly wear pink clothes and that blonde hair? Ugh! And that little dog she's always carrying along. Terrible person!'
Maybe you can see that if you believe, 'I am a person and this is my story' you can also believe that everybody else is a person and they also have their stories and life becomes quite complicated. You have to decide who you're going to let into the front door and who you're going to keep out. When you look around at the other people in this retreat you can quickly decide, 'I don't like that lot, but over here they're lovely people. They would never think to wear pink. Hah! They have all the same ideas that I have. Very nice people. But those lot over there, they're very difficult.' We quickly divide everybody. He's a yes and he's a no and so on and so on and to maintain this complex game it requires a lot of energy and effort because you never know when somebody might come and attack your fortress. A word is enough. Just one word could be enough.
Maybe in my talking you can get some sense of the tremendous effort that's needed to maintain this story and the kind of tension you have to live in it because you must always be prepared, 'Who is going to attack me next?' and very quickly it's easy to become even paranoiac that 'they' are trying to get me. And if you happen to be President Bush then you send your armies out to attack this enemy because you heard he might have some weapons of mass destruction and he's clearly a terrible person without noticing the number of people that you put to death in Texas when you were the Governor of Texas. I think about two or three hundred people were put to death while Bush was the Governor of Texas but, of course, when Saddam Hussein does that he's a terrible person. It's done, of course, in a very nice way, we have a legal system. We are right and he is wrong. And maybe you can see that this is the same story that goes on day-by-day in our own lives.
It's really important to see all this. This is where Awareness is very helpful. What that means is that you see a situation and instead of saying, 'that person is making me angry, you say, 'why am I feeling angry in this situation with that person?' The reality is that nobody does anything to you. On a much deeper level everything that happens on the outside, we are actually creating. We create it in each moment. There's the story of the Buddhist monk sitting in a rowing boat in the middle of a lake. He'd gone there because he wanted to be very quiet and undisturbed and he's sitting in his boat with his eyes closed and suddenly there is a loud 'Bang!' on his boat and he opens his eyes, very angry and he's going to shout at somebody and he discovers there's another boat, but it's quite empty, just drifting on the current. So that anger is totally his anger. There's nobody he can blame. And this is how we live our lives. We're always blaming the other person. The other person is doing something to me, but it's not true.
You need to be very honest. Once you have the Awareness to understand what's happening then you need honesty because you have to be honest to take the responsibility for what you're creating. And this kind of honesty is very rare, not that many people are that honest. This retreat is set up with a certain structure and it's set up with a certain intention. And the intention is that you see this fortress that you're living and also with the intention that you see another possibility and that is the possibility to live with no fortress. And the whole intention of this retreat is that you go in two more weeks with no fortress. And instead of living in Los Angeles behind a big wall with security guards you just have a small bag and you walk across the world, totally available and just saying hello as you go, moment by moment. This is the real Freedom.
We're here together, we're here as mirrors and these mirrors are very friendly mirrors. There's no authority figures here. It may look like daddy and mommy, but actually, it's not so. Even the birds want to come to Satsang. So we're here to help each other. So we have different tasks. For example, we're setting up this room together. You might get to be working with people that you like or people you don't like. Whether you like them or you don't like them it doesn't really matter because both can be of benefit. In fact, the people you don't like are a little bit more useful. It's not so easy to use the mirror of people that you like but when you don't like somebody you can become more easily aware of your story. When things happen that you don't like you can also use that to see something about your story. When everything is sweetness and light, that's not necessarily the best mirror.
One of the reasons that people become involved in spiritual things or spiritual life is become they want to feel good, they want to be happy and peaceful. This is not a wrong idea, but it has to be a real Peace and real Stillness and a real Happiness which means no fortress and so what usually happens is that there are certain bits of the fortress which are doubly reinforced, much more strongly defended. As you know, most castles when you come in they have a kind of inner tower. This inner tower is more strongly defended. Even if the enemy gets into the courtyard they can't get into the inner tower and also we live our lives like this. That inner tower also has to go. We hold onto this inner tower very strongly. This kind of situation can put us in touch with that inner tower. Some particular issue which is so deeply held that if this deeply held belief is attacked or even shown to us it's so threatening that we defend it really strongly. So it's very common that after some time a student will go from loving the teacher, 'He's such a lovely person. I love him so much.', and then it changes because this lovely nice person says or does something that you don't like and then there's a little resistance and then he says something even stronger and it touches something down in the dungeons of the tower, deep underground and then what happens is a tremendous resistance. 'He might see my darkest secret. I must defend it.' So then you find that same student who was loving the teacher and it's often the people who are somehow most close to the teacher, who suddenly become very resistant. For example, in this room two years ago, after about ten days there was a man who thought Premananda was so wonderful that without me being able to stop him, he was touching my toes and telling everyone, 'Premananda's so wonderful!' Only three days later I said something to him. He got completely angry, left the retreat the next day. A month later sent me a long email telling me what a terrible person I was and hasn't talked to me for two years and he tells everybody else what an awful person I am. We might, in fact, meet in one of the chai shops because he comes here each year. You'll recognise him. This is a missed opportunity you see. For the teacher it's a little hard because the person that was kissing his feet one minute was the next minute attacking him. This is a little bit hard for the teacher, but actually it's more sad than hard because these moments of deep resistance, they're exactly the most valuable moments because it gives you an opportunity to see what is down in the dark dungeon where you don't want to look. I mean it's very comfortable to have a nice, sweet teacher who always makes you laugh and makes you feel good, but this can be somehow a bit limiting and if you really want to be free you've got to be willing to see the things that you don't want to see and actually, they're things that you can't see because the things that I'm talking about are in the blind place, blind spot and to see those things you need the help of a teacher. And all the teachers understand that and when a student becomes resistant and goes away there's a feeling of a wasted opportunity and it's very often the person who is closer to the teacher. For example, in the case of Osho Rajneesh there was one man called Shiva and he was Osho's main bodyguard. He was like the team leader of a whole group of bodyguards and of course, this was a special position so he got to live in a small room right above Osho's room. And he was a very good-looking man. He had big orange hair right down his back and he was of course, very powerful, very special person, always standing next to the guru and he was very handsome man. So all the women of the ashram were throwing themselves at his door. So he had a very nice lifestyle and everything was very good for a number of years and then there came a time when Osho went to America and there was a different person coordinating the ashram and suddenly he found he didn't have this special job anymore. I don't know exactly, but maybe he became a truck driver and he got very sad and this very fine person, he became just very ordinary like everybody else, but for him it was much worse than that. He found he didn't have this closeness to Osho and so he got more and more unhappy and finally, he just left one night. And then he wrote a book. It wasn't a very friendly book, 'The God that failed". In fact, it was a rather unfriendly book, telling all kinds of nasty things about Osho. This is a very normal pattern. It happens all the time and in the end that man lost an opportunity because there was an opportunity for him to see something that was so threatening that he had to defend it in such a strong way that he actually had to leave. Probably he found another teacher, naturally a much nicer teacher, much better teacher, says all the right things, never wears pink and for some time everything works very well until there comes a time that this is a good teacher and he'll also say something that you don't want to hear. And then the whole thing goes again. And so you find in the spiritual world there's s whole bunch of professional seekers and they go from one teacher to the next, but they never really look. They appear to look. They naturally look to some point. They don't want to see this dark secret because there's so much fear about it.
So it's totally OK to become resistant, but use it as an opportunity. it's a wonderful opportunity. You can talk to Shakti Tara because she's been through this situation with Premananda. Last summer, just before she was going on holiday for about one month, in about two days she went from thinking Premananda was a wonderful person to knowing that he was totally unreliable and that she could never trust him again. She wrote him a three or four page letter explaining this. I keep it to show it to her sometimes. And then she went on a holiday, but she couldn't get rid of Premananda. So almost everyday she had to remember what a terrible person he was until finally she met a friend. She can tell you the story in more detail. But basically, she met this friend and this friend said, 'why you don't look at what's going on inside YOU!' So she did that and about the same moment Premananda phoned her and we talked on the phone for quite a long time and somehow the combination of the friend and the phone call something opened up and she saw what was going on and she became open again and since that time she has been a kind of, even the most dedicated supporter of Premananda and Satsang in Germany.
So it's not a bad thing to become resistant, but it's really a waste when you don't use that moment. She had written this letter telling me that, 'Thank you very much, but goodbye. I can never trust you again'. So these are, they can be wonderful moments with great possibility or really they can be just a kind of tragic waste of an opportunity.
And this happened very often around Papaji. Sometimes it was very funny. So I remember, for example, one day some man was sitting with Papaji and Papaji got pissed off with this guy. He felt he was wasting Papaji's time and wasting everybody else's time. So he told this guy, 'Go out!'. Sent him out of the Satsang and he did that very rarely, so it was kind of shocking and everybody could kind of feel that. It was almost like they were having to go out.
Anyway, the next day Papaji was talking to a woman and during the conversation her boyfriend, the subject of her boyfriend came up. So Papaji said, 'Oh! Bring your boyfriend to sit with you now' and then she said, 'Well, actually Papaji, he was the guy that you threw out yesterday' and then Papaji laughed and there was no problem for this guy to come back.
There's a woman in Germany giving Satsang who Papaji threw out of the town, said, 'Go! Leave the town!', but now she gives Satsang in Papaji's name. So it's not wrong and it's not bad if these kind of moments happen. It's kind of natural, but be honest in that moment and have the courage to see what you were doing because the teacher is not really doing anything. Try to see it, otherwise, there's a kind of wasted opportunity and actually we don't have so much time. This meeting that's happening here in these three weeks is really special, really beautiful and it's really precious. So many things have come together. We have a beautiful place. We have everything we need. Some people were even telling me yesterday, 'We have too much'. And we have wonderful people come together. There's a lot of love here. Now I'm not talking about Hollywood love, I'm talking about real caring. So this is a safe place. Everybody wants the best for you. So if something happens it's the best for you. Nobody's trying to be an authority. There's no school teachers here and even our school teacher has recently resigned. So we are all here together and we can support and help each other to see the bricks of our fortress. So use these mirrors and even when it's a little bit uncomfortable or it's so painful that you can't stand it, you're so upset, that's a great opportunity.
You can think of my father who is eighty-five years old and when he was eighty, he and his son had such a strong meeting that he doesn't want to meet me again because there was something that he doesn't want to see and he would rather leave this world without seeing it because somehow it's too painful.
So for me, I think it's very beautiful that we've all come together for this time and three weeks may look like a long time, but already the first week is almost finished. So we can use each moment to be really present and take this opportunity. It's a wonderful opportunity.
QU 1: Before you said feelings and emotions are all the mind, but I'm wondering about what is this feeling of the Self? How can I recognise if it's the Self who is telling me something or if it, if this is possible at all?
PREM: It's very possible because you are the Self. So when you're really connected to the Self you absolutely know that and the Self is something that doesn't change. In fact, the Self is the Pure Awareness.
QU 1: So when there's a feeling coming is this illusion?
PREM: If a feeling comes that's real, but if you then attached to it and say, 'this is MY anger' then you get lost in a story, but if you can say, 'anger is happening now', then anger is no better and no worse than some other feeling. There are many kinds of feelings, like a painter's palette, different colours and there's boring, there's excitement, there's fear, there's happiness, there's many different feelings. These are all natural and there's not one that's better and not one that's worse. They're just different. As soon as you become identified with this feeling then it probably takes you into a big story and if you see it just as anger is happening, you'll find that it changes quite quickly. It doesn't really bite. So my advice would be to completely allow whatever the feeling is. So, for example, Marcus was very pissed off two days ago and I said, 'enjoy your day being pissed off because maybe next day he would be happy all day and he wouldn't have the opportunity to experience being pissed off. Just imagine a life where you're always happy. It would be very one dimensional. And what is being suggested is that rather than make constantly judging, 'this is good, this is not good, I like this, I don't like that', what is being suggested is you simply accept everything as it is. And when you have that kind of acceptance life has a kind of easy flow and when you're constantly judging good and bad there's a struggle and somehow a lot of energy is going into that. Not a great way to live.
One month ago we met in Pune and you got quite upset about Premananda. You sent a couple of pissed off emails and you were pissed enough that, in fact, we didn't meet. Now you've come here and I don't have any sense of you being pissed off anymore. You were able to see and take responsibility for whatever it is. If that is true then Premananda was very useful because without him making much effort he made you so pissed off that you didn't come for ten days and now you're here and something new is happening. And like with Shakti Tara there is some benefit of that. If you can be honest you can see that something happened, but it was happening in you and that Premananda really didn't do anything. There's a famous Spanish story about Don Quixote. He was always fighting windmills because he thought it was the enemy. And we are going through our life and we're constantly fighting windmills, but it's all happening inside of us. And I'll do my best to piss you off again. And when you're not so attached to your story you can say, 'thank you', because in getting pissed off there's something to see.
For example, last time I visited my father he was eighty years old. In fact, I went for his eightieth birthday and I went on my best behaviour and for most of the three weeks it was pretty friendly and easy. Well, I thought so. Maybe not for him, but anyway, there was one evening we had a fantastic fight and I think, this fight made my mother a little nervous, but that was very beautiful for me and I didn't love my father any less because naturally I love him, but for him, he doesn't want to see something and just by me going my own way for thirty years, in itself, is difficult for him because he's the kind of father that likes to control things, particularly his children. So I have two brothers and sister and they have about eight children, so they're a big family and he is the GRANDFATHER! He's rather comfortable with this position and he's rather uncomfortable with Premananda. So better to say, 'Don't come'!
So a little courage is needed. When things get very uncomfortable that's when you need a little courage.
QU 2: I take my heart or I want to tell an example because I was wondering when my heart started closing more and more and one key experience for me was many meetings with Leela.
PREM: Which Leela are we talking about? This terrible one? Oh, the terrible Leela, yes.
QU 2: And I'm very thankful for it. I have a problem when people come with some demands to me. I want to please them and Leela was attacking my fortress.
PREM: She's one of Premananda's secret agents actually.
QU 2: Yes, she ran into the fortress.
PREM: Yes, she's also got a pocketful of explosives.
QU 2: And all the time this is happening I'm getting strange. I don't have to do anything, but I realised right now. Why I'm getting angry about myself because I'm strange. So that's the way this game starts and then one word is enough from somebody else and the heart shuts down. Thank you Leela.
PREM: She's very dangerous, actually. She has a couple of the most dangerous things. First of all, she's s woman. This is very dangerous for men and, of course, she is also a loving woman. This makes her even more dangerous. So we have to be happy that we have such a dangerous person here.
QU 2: And I like her very much.
PREM: Careful! She might come and attack you. An important trick is to take the advantage of all these mirrors, but don't get caught up in the mirrors because then you're getting caught up in somebody else's story. You have your story and the other person's story and then everything gets a little bit more complicated. I'm going to talk about love affairs separately. For me love affairs are the ultimate illusion. It's very easy to get lost in that kind of story.