Satsang with Premananda, Tiruvannamalai, India, 2004
PREM: Welcome to Satsang. The Self is radiant. The Eternal Self is like a shining diamond. The Self is subtle. The Self is stillness, peacefulness. Nothing moves. Emptiness. With no boundaries. A constant. Never changing. The mind arises from the Self. The world manifests from the mind. When the world is there, the Self is not there. When the Self is there, the world is not there.
For example, we go to bed at night and in the beginning we have a light sleep and some dreams are there. These dreams are like thoughts. There's not so much difference between the thoughts in the waking state and the dreams in the sleeping state. Then we go into a deeper sleep and in that deep sleep there are no dreams. This is the Self. So everyday we spend maybe six or seven hours in the Self. In this deep sleep there's no world. The mind-body organism is functioning, but there are no thoughts and there's no world. When we wake up in the morning we feel a deep sense of nourishment. This time in the Self nourishes us.
We're ready for the new day. There's a small moment between opening the eyes and when the mind really starts being very active, then there's an opportunity. When you first open your eyes, in the beginning the mind is not busy because just one moment before you were sleeping and now the eyes are open and nothing has happened. The mind is very still and in that moment the Self is present. So if you wake up with a great Awareness, you can just simply wake up in the Self. And when you bring more Awareness to this, you can expand that space of the Self before the mind becomes busy, becomes activated.
We've looked at this small booklet from Ramana Maharshi, 'Who am I? and he says very clearly that when the world is present then the Awareness of the Self will not be there and when the world is not present the Awareness of the Self is present. Yesterday in this long Satsang, as time went by, you noticed that everything became quieter and quieter in the room and everybody was affected by that stillness. It was like all the minds quieting down and by the end of the six hours there was a tremendous stillness. Several people experienced a wonderful peacefulness. There was a different quality and that quality is not possible if the mind is very active.
So how to still the mind? There are many different techniques. You can meditate, you can do breathing exercises, you can say mantras, even you can constantly repeat the name of God. All these different techniques will still the mind, but unfortunately, the stillness depends on the technique. When you stop meditating or you stop the mantra, then the thoughts come back. How to still the mind in the way that the mind doesn't reappear, that the mind doesn't bite? Again Ramana Maharshi suggests there's only one way. He says this is the most direct way to bring realisation and he says that when you ask yourself, 'who is doing this?', then this question brings you immediately to the answer, 'me'. Then when you ask yourself, 'who is this me, who am I?', there's no actual answer. But the effect of asking this question is to bring your attention from the outside to the inside. It brings your attention to the Source and there at the Source rises the mind and from the mind the world. So when you constantly do this Self-Enquiry your very strong attachment to the world out there becomes weaker. Your attention starts to come more easily inside and your attention rests in this Source. At the Source nothing happens.
It's very still and as you experienced yesterday this stillness feels very peaceful. You recognise it as something very familiar, very close because this is our True Nature. There's nothing to do. The mind would always like to do something and this is a completely different project. You don't have to do anything. In fact, any doing is taking us away from our True Nature. As we come into this non-doing we lose interest in the stories. We lose interest in our own story and we lose interest in the other person's story. We lose interest in the story of the world. Everything falls away and as it falls away we don't want to go anywhere, we don't want to do anything because we understand that the Self is complete. Nothing is missing. There's no desire because desire comes from the idea that I am missing something. 'If I had that then I would be complete.' Desire is always making us move to the outside. The Self is complete. There's nothing to get. It can't be any better because right now it's complete.
Once you come to see that 'I am the Self' you don't want to go somewhere and you don't want to do something. Right here is enough. Of course, you may go somewhere, the body may move, the mind and body may respond to something. Maybe it suddenly starts raining and you move to a dry place or maybe you're cold and you move to the warmth. There's no better and there's no worse. So life becomes a kind of play, lila, divine play. Things happen, body moves, the mind is active, but all the time I know I am the Self, I am whole and complete. Nothing is missing. There's a deep relaxation. All our striving and struggling finishes. The beauty of Arunachala, that it seems to make this statement that this is the place. Stop here! As if it's the end of the road. Here we can stop and everything is taken care of.
It was beautiful to come to the meditation this morning because just outside the room there's a beautiful black bird sitting on a wire. Last year he was also sitting on the wire and the year before he was also sitting on the wire. That little bird really likes that piece of wire and so he's just playing here. Every morning he sings his song for no reason at all.
When you stop for a moment and you look in a big mirror, you find out everything is wonderful. In fact, you're exactly as you are meant to be. Just like that. Just like that little bird sitting on the wire. When you look around at the other mind-bodies in this circle, everybody is unique. There aren't two the same. Even the identical twins are not so identical. This existence is so abundant, each one unique, each one a perfect manifestation of God. We just have to accept it and to stop the war, to stop this constant desire to be different, to be somebody, to say to God, I'm sorry God, but, actually God I don't like the way you made me. You should have made me a little bit fatter or a little bit thinner'. What is happening here in this retreat is not that we're all trying to become perfect. Perfectly like who? The beauty of this community is that each one is unique, but the energy that comes through, the Self that illuminates each mind and body is the same Self. So we are not separate. We are absolutely the same, the same one. At the same time each mind and body is absolutely unique. So we're simply invited here for a short time to sing our song. You can simply say 'thank you' and be very grateful and enjoy the play.
This is perhaps, the beauty of having this retreat here in India. We're so close to celebration. Wherever we go in the street there is a kind of celebration of the moment and this makes us feel more alive. In the West things have become a little bit serious. We have a strong sense that we have to do something. We're very busy. We have no time and here in India there seems to be always time because the moment is important and we can feel that. Somehow this opens us up and we love India, but it's not really India. We love this feeling of aliveness. There's a kind of space inside and we're encouraged to celebrate each moment.
Would like to ask a question?
QU 1: You say that when the Self is there the world is not there. What exactly do you mean by this? Do all objects disappear?
PREM: No, the objects don't disappear, but somehow, the force of the objects changes. The attention is on the Self and the attention is not on the object. the world doesn't disappear. For example, I see the world in the way that you see the world, but my attention is here, in the Self.
QU 1: So you see the pictures, but you are not attached to it? No story about it.
PREM: Yes, there's no story about it in the way, for example, that I might say, 'Oh, I hate the rain. It's so wet today'. But if it's raining I put up my umbrella.
QU 1: And why?
PREM: There's no reason. So, for example, our friend Hans, he puts up an umbrella when the sun shines. So this is his play.
QU 1: OK, so we can say it takes out the seriousness out of it?
PREM: In the sense it takes away this serious response to the objective world, that it's real.
QU 1: So it's like living in a cinema movie and enjoying the pictures?
PREM: It's not really enjoying them or not enjoying them. It's just like that.
QU 1: All the time?
PREM: All the time. When you're established in the Self, then it's all the time. Doesn't matter what the play is outside. I remember once, a friend of mine in Lucknow, he was talking about what had happened to him. He had an Awakening and his life changed and Lucknow was, in those days, a very polluted city and so he was saying that even when he sat on his scooter behind a big truck, everything was wonderful. So then, in that kind of acceptance, that kind of play, the quality of life changes because things become very simple. Because when you're not choosing and when you're not judging and when there's no need to do something then life becomes very simple.
GABRIELLE: Is it like you see it there, but there's nothing to do about it, just let it be?
PREM: Yes. Could you hear her? So she was asking if it was like that you see the world and it's like, you just let it be. You remember John Lennon had a song with the Beatles, Let It Be. I think he learned that when he went to Rishikesh with the Maharishi. As soon as you have a big investment in changing the world, then you've got a big job because you're basically saying, 'Well, God you didn't do it quite right and so I need to change it'. So then you're very busy for your whole life. And people are very uncomfortable if I say that the world is OK the way it is. Then they say, 'Well, what about the beggars, what about all the sick people, the starving people. You know, what about the wars? What about Hitler? What about all these nasty things that happen'? And people are very uncomfortable if I say, 'Well, this is the play of existence. This is the play of God'. They want to change it. They want to make everything nice.
QU 1: It is without any problem. That totally feels so for me at the moment.
PREM: And you know you have a tendency to be a person who would like things in a certain way, so this 'I' could be very helpful because now things will be a little bit awkward. So in a way, you'll be more available to the moment and maybe less available to your idea about the moment.
QU 1: For sure at the moment. I'm wondering myself about how less problem I have with this. Really nothing and it's really easy to see things because there's no problem.
PREM: Yes, one is less problem than two.
GABRIELLE: So when you're in the Self you only see the good things about things and never count the bad things? (ten year old girl) Like with the beggars on the street, you only count all the good things about the beggars on the street?
PREM: So she's asking if you only see the good things and not the bad things and the answer is that you don't judge what is good and what is bad. It's just like that.
GABRIELLE: It's there so why don't let it be. You can't do anything about it.
PREM: So then she's asking why don't you just let it be? And I'm saying that you do just let it be.
QU 2: Since two days I can experience that the 'I' dissolved and there is the body, there is the mind, the consciousness and I'm wondering how it is possible to create, that the 'I' is creating itself out of these things again and again. Because actually there is no 'I', but it really feels like.
PREM: But is it more like a shadow of an 'I'? Like a kind of, empty skin, you know, like there's no guts to it?
QU 2: (Laughing) Well, this sense of 'I' is very familiar to me, so it's very easy that it's reinforced itself every moment again, especially if I'm walking and doing and speaking.
PREM: There's a very strong momentum, you know. As you say, it's constantly reinforcing itself.
QU 2: It's like a real strong illusion. It's a really strong illusion, but there's still this sense of 'I' even in the middle of the consciousness. Maybe it's more this kind of 'I am'. Yesterday I got upset because you made so much filming and then I asked myself, 'who is disturbed?' and then it was gone. It's really, really amazingly working this Self-Enquiry.
PREM: This simple remembering of 'who am I' is so strong.
QU 2: Yes, and I can use it everywhere, every time.
PREM: Yes, Ramana Maharshi was asked if you should do this all the time and he said, 'Yes, you do this constantly until the moment of Realisation', because the mind is so programmed. We've been experiencing everything from this 'I' for our whole loves, every moment for thirty years, forty years, fifty years and so this Self-Enquiry is constantly bringing us back from that. And in the beginning it's not so easy to come inside, to come back because our attachment to the objects are so strong and our belief in the movie of the world is so strong, but as you do this Self-Enquiry that starts to become weaker and this huge investment in the world gets to be less and less.
QU 2: Out of this I can see how important retreating is or staying with a Master for longer periods.
PREM: Yes, that's why we were saying yesterday this is a wonderful opportunity. By choosing to come here with a group of people who want the same practice and who support each other, this is a wonderful moment in your life. And in the regular daily life, in a busy Western town there are strong structures. There's a family and there's work. Society is there and we are somehow fitting ourselves into all of that. So it's much more difficult to come to the Source and so it's not necessary to leave the world. You don't have to go to the Himalayas to a cave for twenty years, but you need to make your own cave, to be in the world, but not of the world. We've become so much conditioned that it's like if we are in the world we have to be of the world and it's not true. For example, I've lived now for about twenty years or thirty years in the world, but not of the world and so I'm a kind of strange person. People can feel that, you know, I'm not really fitting in.
GABRIELLE: You're fitting in here in your own way.
PREM: But it's OK.
GABRIELLE: I think that's what's meant with priority - our Awakening has to be first priority.
PREM: Yes, this is absolutely needed. If you don't make it your first priority you have no hope, because if something else is your first priority then, naturally that puts you in all the structures of society and the world and the family and so on. So then you're in the world and of the world and so you will never meet the Self. So this is very important, you see, it's very important and people have the idea, 'Oh yes, it's my first priority', but it's not. For example, Andrea, remember who played music at the inner sangha weekend. When she first met me at a weekend, in about five minutes she was telling me, 'Oh, Premananda I know you're going to be my guru'. She's been with quite a few different teachers, but somehow meeting me was very particular for her and then she was telling me, she had such a strong connection and she was very kind to offer to arrange some Satsangs. She works as a joint manager of a boys home with her husband, so we had two very nice Satsangs in their place and then she came to the inner sangha. She also signed this paper and that first weekend she was very positive and she had all kinds of ideas, you know, what we could do on other weekends and I responded to her interest by inviting her to come and play music with Sylvia in the other Satsang weekends and then I get a big email from her telling me that she's leaving the inner sangha because she can't afford the time to come to the meetings. So four weekends a year is too much time for her. She's busy with the boys home and she's busy with her family. So I don't really know how to respond to her now because for me it doesn't add up. Four weekends is about ten percent of her year. So if she won't even give that much time to be totally focussed on Truth, what's the point? And she actually understands a lot of things, but she doesn't live it. Not at all. So if you want to achieve something it has to be your first priority.
QU 2: It helped me to see my ego two days ago in this fortress Satsang to really get a taste, from the ego because before I always this sense of 'Wow! That's the way I am' or whatever, but really to taste this ego structure is horrible.
PREM: Yes, because another way of looking at the fortress is that we've constructed for our selves a beautiful gilded cage. Our own prison. Once you get a taste for that then everything starts to change because actually, you know ninety-nine percent of the human beings they never come to see that. They live from their birth till their death completely in the story, completely believing the story with no idea that there could be some other way to live. When you really get a sense of the fortress then something changes.