Satsang with Nome - You Are - Question 7

[Guest guest]

Another Q.: I have a good experience. Then, what makes it dissipate

is I am choosing a wrong identity. This goes unquestioned. When I

come here and listen to a discourse or you dialogue with others, it

always boils down to " Who you are. " From that assumption, one gets a

lot of " growth. " If I do not believe in an existent entity, there are

no sprouts. If I start to believe in an entity, I start to paint the

entity with different colors.

 

N.: Let's start with the belief. What happens? Does the real Self, of

the nature of Being-Consciousness-Bliss, which is described as Satya-

Jnanam-Anantam, True-Knowledge-Infinity, have the problem?

 

Q.: (laughing)

 

N.: Does that assume anything?

 

Q.: (laughing) No. That which the scriptures describe as the highest

doesn't have any problems.

 

N.: Brahman did not decide one day to become deluded, but Brahman is

always just Brahman. So, when you say that your experience fades,

what occurs?

 

Q.: My identity…I…it seems that I am never rooted in…no, I cannot say

that either. When I meditate on what is real, it seems solid.

 

N.: You are absorbed in that.

 

Q.: Yes, it seems solid. What happens from that to ignorance? What is

real is rock-solid. It is always there.

 

N.: It is unmoving.

 

Q.: It is unmoving. This other state is moving all the time.

 

N.: What is the cause and substance of the other state?

 

Q.: It is a chunk that breaks off from the Absolute.

 

N.: How does the Absolute become chunky (laughing) and break off?

 

Q.: (quiet for a while) I don't know. When I look from what is deep,

that does not explain it. There is nothing there to explain it. I am

not going to find pieces or even an entity to break.

 

N.: It is infinite, so there is nothing to break off, as if there

were an edge. It is absolute, so it is without modification. It is

you; it is the Self. So, there is no separate identity.

 

Q.: That is the beauty of it. If I just notice what I am taking

myself to be and who I am directly, it is not very complicated. If I

directly inquire as to what is really going on here, I see that I

made a mistake. I just had a type of belief in something, and that

belief really had no substance. It was really my Self imagined as

something else.

 

N.: So, only your Self is existing always. A mistaken belief; the

seed of that belief is the one who has it, and he, himself, is that

belief. It is a false assumption assumed by the false assumption

itself?

 

Q.: (laughing) We have that problem in engineering at times. They say

that here is the source and here is the destination, and…

 

N.: The engineering team of Brahma-Vishnu-Siva had the same

engineering problem. (laughter)

 

Q.: They call me and say that they have this disastrous problem. They

say that the source is going to be somewhere else, but they do not

realize that there is no source. They need to make a source. It then

runs out of control, because (laughing) there is no source.

 

N.: Maya's engineers are just like that. (laughter) There was no

source. This does not have a place at which it begins.

 

Q.: This seems to be like what you are describing.

 

N.: It seems to draw its power from Cit-sakti, the power of

Consciousness, so it is borrowed power, but it has no power source of

its own.

 

Q.: And it is between two imaginary things.

 

N.: So, ignorance and samsara are said to be rootless. Maya is said

to be beginningless.

 

Q.: Because, even though there is a belief in something being real,

but once that belief is there…

 

N.: The belief is the same rootless thing. The one who assumes, the

assuming, and the assumption, that is, the ignorant one, the

ignorance, and that about which he is ignorant, are the same thing.

[ed. Note: not the Reality about which one appears to be ignorant,

but the delusive notion that there is a realm of ignorance or a

substance to ignorance is indicated here.]

 

Q.: It comes down to the same answer. The solution is to find out its

rootlessness.

 

N.: Since ignorance pertains to oneself, the answer is to find out

the nature of oneself.

 

Q.: In the state of ignorance, though, it is hazy. Even the clarity

of noticing what is real requires some focus to recognize that this

state has transpired and there is a deeper state.

 

N.: From where does that focus, or discrimination, viveka, come?

 

Q.: Ultimately, it comes from the Self.

 

N.: So, it comes from the light of the Self, but, in the Light of the

Self, there is nothing else that remains. Such is called destruction

by Knowledge.

 

Q.: What would remain?

 

N.: You discriminate between what is real and what is unreal, between

who you are and what you are not. In this discrimination, you find

that who you are is the Reality and that the unreal has not come to

be at all. There is nothing existing corresponding to the unreal.

Thus, Knowledge is said to " destroy " illusion. It is in this way that

bondage is eliminated.

 

Q.: When you just said that it struck me: I should note how unreal

illusion is. This is what we have been speaking about all along. Duh!

(laughter)

 

N.: The final mantra sanctifies the statement. (laughter)

 

Q.: Once it loses weight, it doesn't have substance, so that there is

not much to investigate. (laughing) It would be good to see if it

ever could have any substance.

 

N.: That is a necessity. We must be so certain of our Knowledge of

the Self, the Reality, that there is no alternative possible at any

time. With that the very possibility or potential to be ignorant,

and, therefore, to be bound and to suffer, becomes impossible. Where

another, be it another state or another identity, is utterly

impossible, for all eternity, that is Nonduality.

 

Q.: So it is upon that that all discrimination and all practice,

everything is based. What does not live up to that should be

destroyed.

 

N.: (Silence)

 

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Not two

Richard