Move Beyond the Limitation of Person-Hood
Zmar Silent Retreat, Portugal. 11th May 2013
[Mooji:] Om. Namaste, welcome everyone to satsang today.
Very happy to see you.
Okay come.
Start there, let's see.
[Questioner:] When you say...
when you say
'You stay in the Self,'
who do you mean?
I want to see clearly.
[M:] Yes yes yes yes yes.
[Q:] It's not the mind who says,
'I am meditating now, and going into the Self,'...
[Mooji:] Let me try to explain then what I mean by that,
because...
I mean always it's the Self.
Always it's the Self in,
you may say, one of three aspects, you see.
Either it's the pure Self,
which is free from receiving any advice,
or any instruction, you see.
Or it's the sense of being; when it extends you can say...
I'm using my words to say it extends
into what we may call consciousness;
the field of knowingness;
the sense of presence; the sense of being;
the feeling 'I Am.'
When you feel 'I Am,' that is consciousness itself
announcing itself in the body:
'I exist, I am here.' Like this.
This sense 'I Am' means that.
And this 'I Am' is not a person actually;
it's not a person, it is just the sense of presence,
of being, of life. You can say it like that.
But as soon as it manifests...
It needs also the body to have...
to feel it's own sense of being.
But it is not exactly the body.
The body is an aspect of itself,
but it's not what it really is.
But as soon as the body is there -
because the body is needed for this consciousness
to have the diversity of experiencing -
[Q:] Yeah. [M:] then comes the feeling, 'I am the body'.
Everything seems to help the consciousness,
to support it's believing that it is the body.
Starts with your parents also.
Everyone has the feeling 'I' - 'I Am' - 'I exist.'
No parent gave this to you.
They don't baptise their children: 'Your name shall be I or I Am.'
The I Am, it's there; it arises in the body spontaneously.
It is not the name and it is not the body, actually.
But somehow it gets gradually converted into the belief,
'I am the body.'
Once this belief 'I am the body' is formed, like this,
then other information can come
on top of this
fundamental belief, 'I am this body.'
And that which is not a body
begins to live as though it is the body;
it is the identity 'I am the body.'
And that is what is referred to as the ego.
Now the ego, of course, the root of it is the same Self.
The sense of being arises from the Absolute,
from the pure One, the perfect One.
But as soon as it arises as the beingness,
it needs the body to express.
Then it identifies with the body,
and the secondary identity comes: 'I am the person, this is me.'
'I am a man,' if you have a male body,
'I am a woman,' if you have a female body.
And then also, 'I was born in this place.'
And almost, thereafter, every time we use 'I,'
it's almost in relation to 'I am the body.'
[Q:] Yeah.
[M:] You see, but it's not the true import of 'I'.
'I' really is consciousness.
The secondary extension - 'I am the person,
this is the kind of person I am,' - the culture,
the conditioning that took place for this mind and consciousness,
is embraced as a fact, you see.
But still at the root, it is consciousness.
And for a while the consciousness can live in this limited,
what you may call,
mode.
It can live with the sense 'I am a person'... for a while.
Then something inside begins to urge it again to
go more deeply; to come this way, rather than out through the senses.
It seems like the mind
begins to go shopping through the senses
and it wants to make its life here;
it believes 'I am from here, I am a human being,
this is my planet, this is my home, this is where I must save,
I must make this place beautiful.'
That is what I call the philosophy of that extended consciousness.
But, what brought you here?
Something is not enough on that realm.
Even if you have everything that is offered
on the realm of the body-mind belief,
something will feel not enough;
something is missing, there is a missing piece.
Nobody has to teach you this.
It's something inside, like a hollowness inside your heart.
And that will be your stimulation,
something that begins to motivate you to look,
to satisfy that yearning inside yourself.
So, who is receiving this advice?
Turn your attention to this: who will receive it?
It is the beingness in it's belief, or under the hypnosis
that it is only a person, you see.
Then it is yearning to move beyond the limitations of personhood,
because when it identifies itself with the body... The body is limited,
and something on some level in us knows intuitively
that some part of us is unlimited.
You don't have to bet taught that.
It can just be something very... a subtle feeling inside.
If you are over-educated you may lose temporarily this feeling
and just only respond to what you perceive to be facts,
scientific facts; which are not facts for you really,
but just what you believe.
And belief makes life, you see.
Then, sometimes as you begin to turn your attention inside,
some of your beliefs are beginning to be exposed as untruths, for you.
And that can be painful; it can lead to a sense of instability,
of fear, like your world is falling apart.
But this falling apartness is also very important.
in order to somehow wipe the slate clean again almost,
to come back to your original intuitive self-knowing.
This is what we call the play, or the game or something like that,
and no being escapes it.
So it is the consciousness itself
which has become a little bit distorted or polluted by
a lot of thoughts about itself which are not truths.
They are beliefs, but they are not fundamental truths, you see.
And then at a certain point they won't be working anymore.
You see.
[Q:] And this is why we practice this,
to...
to discover this...
these lies.
This is why it has to be practised for sometime until
it is no more.
[M:] In the beginning you may not even realise that they are lies or untruths;
it may just be that you are tired
of something;
that all your projections are not being fulfilled;
your dreams are crashing or something.
Something must stimulate a u-turn
of attention.
Otherwise we tend to be going out looking for fresh adventures,
and again coming to the same place.
And this can go on for, some say lifetimes, many lifetimes.
You may not accept or believe or feel pulled by that,
but it has been expressed like that,
that this is not your first life, you see.
Thousands of lives - from the very basic now -
now to human form,
which is said to be a very auspicious form to have,
because with a human form the consciousness can contemplate itself
and again come back to its original sanity;
its wholeness;
its completeness.
And even if it doesn't completely fulfill that exploration,
on the way it is tasting the fruit of introspection, you see.
And that brings deeper encouragement inside to press on.
It's not just promises: 'In another six months you will get something.'
Some paths seem to be like that.
You have to work hard, hard, hard, and then the fruits will come in a year, two, three years.
But I am inclined not to speak like that.
I tell you what you are searching for is right here also.
If truth is infinite, if it is timeless, if it is omnipresent everywhere,
then it must be here now also.
So, why would I have to wait for three years?
What will cause me to wait for another three years,
except that somehow I am so clogged up with my own concepts
that it has no appeal to search for what is called Truth.
And for a while, there will not be that.
And that will also be an authentic stage in consciousness;
that it is completely fixated or mesmerised by the world
and has no interest at all in spirituality.
That is also an expression of consciousness.
But I don't think this is how it is for you who have come here.
You may not know what is driving you,
what brings you here.
Maybe you are the only person in your family that has this attraction,
I don't know.
Sometimes whole families come too.
There's no way of really knowing.
But you are here, and I say let's explore together.
If you feel something, then follow that vibration; see where it comes out for you.
[Q:] Sometimes there is imagination or thoughts which...
which are
blinding the truth...
are so extreme that it is like,
it seems like it will never end.
[M:] Yes.
It ends when you discover
that your Self is not outside yourself;
when you realise that,
that you don't have to search somewhere else;
it's not somewhere else.
For a while we must go through all this confusion;
this multiplicity of concepts;
so much belief, so much practises.
They are, somehow, the training of the mind to do these things, like that.
And we will go through them according to your destiny.
You will follow certain pathways.
And in the meantime,
even if they end up to be illusory and you come to see that,
they will still have played a path,
a role somehow, to bring you to where you are now.
[Q:] Yeah. After, sometimes when there was this
extremement, is gone...
I only recognize that it was just a concept after it is gone.
[M:] Yes.
Now you will begin to recognize it as a concept during it's visit,
not only after.
You see.
This is what has to happen, you see.
If you're only free when your storm is gone,
then you are not really free.
Storm or no storm, something here will be greater than that.
It's not that your holding on to a lot of learning,
but somehow the force of your own inner presence
outshines any phenomenon.
It is just like...
It's not that you know so much;
in fact you have the feeling you don't know anything at all,
And that is a power in itself because
sometimes I think we know too much, or we think we do.
And then you don't know if you really know it, or just think you know it.
But the one who doesn't know anything has this beautiful
opportunity to be empty,
and that's a very powerful place,
because in the state of emptiness you see things very clearly;
it's not confused by other concepts and projections.
You don't need to over-learn; some people over study,
and then somehow they can't get rid of this baggage of study.
It is much simpler than this, you see.
But for a while,
something motivates us that if I study enough, learn enough,
then maybe I will conquer it.
Then sometimes it turns out that even this study
becomes a subtle form of avoidance even,
of the direct seeing.
At a certain point, some people are also afraid of directness.
They prefer to do fifteen steps to something.
They want time and they want to enjoy the journey
and who they meet
and have a Facebook about it and all of these things;
they don't want it directly.
And then others, they don't want anything indirect now;
they've had enough, enough indirect:
'This stop and then this place and that thing and a full map'
to get to where you already are.
So, it just depends on what has happened inside you - you see -
whether you have more mileage to do,
in terms of your belief.
Here, I point you to that.
If Truth is infinite, if it is timeless, if it is omnipresent - everywhere,
then it must be here now also.
[Mooji:] But Here - you know - is undiscovered;
the majesty of Being, in you.
Is there anything in you that feels something for this?
You look up - even an ordinary person, you look up in the heavens
look at the stars,
look at the rainbow,
listen to the birds sing,
and you must have a sense there's something very, very
majestic about this,
something much, much greater
- you are here - than just be looking for a job to pay your rent.
There must be something more than this, come on.
And something inside you, a curiosity, an urge,
is burning for something, to discover something,
something magical, something beautiful.
And that yearning takes you here.
What you are searching for is right here!
A video extract from the satsang DVD
"If your Heart is Open the Lord will Arise from Within."
Zmar Silent Retreat, Portugal.
11th May 2013, Session 2.
www.mooji.org