Adapted from A Meeting with John Sherman
Westlake Village, California - June 25, 2006

The way to be finished once and for all in this life with suffering, dissatisfaction and longing is easy. It is easier than you can possibly imagine. In my experience, the hard part is hearing the instruction through the cloud of all of our spiritual understanding. Throughout human history, we have seen numerous great beings appear among us, all of whom have had basically the same thing to say: quite simply that what we are seeking is our self, the truth of our self.

As it happens, these great beings all appear within spiritual traditions. That's just the nature of the beast, it seems. They all appear within one spiritual tradition or another, one spiritual set of understandings or another. In this country, we have become mostly enamored of those who have appeared within eastern spiritual traditions. I think that's because we are unfamiliar with the language, the syntax and the imagery, so we assign those traditional ways of speaking that come to us from the east an importance and an authenticity that we would not assign to utterances in a tradition that we are familiar with.

We hear these exotic ideas of enlightenment and self-realization, self and God-consciousness, Atman and all of that, and we think we know that the self-evident shining truth that we hear from these beings has something to do with the context in which they appear. So, whenever we hear anything that has to do with the fundamental issue of what I am, we automatically refer to these bodies of expression (the sutras, the shastras, the Upanishads, etc.) in order to authenticate what we hear and what we think. It is extremely difficult to penetrate the haze, the weight of spiritual understanding that afflicts us.

In the past seven years, I have had the experience of speaking to groups of people like us here, who have great spiritual understanding, and I also have had the experience of speaking to people who have no spiritual understanding, people who are just ordinary people who are not very happy with their lives and don't know why, but who suspect mostly that that's just the way it is. They are people who have no real spiritual understanding to turn to for comfort or solace or consolation. And it is my continuous experience that when I speak with those who have no spiritual background, they hear what I have to say right away. It is just like that, "Oh, wow! Yes, of course." Whereas when I speak with groups of people who are steeped in really advanced, subtle and sophisticated spiritual understanding, they are not so fast to hear what is being offered because, always, we who are spiritually sophisticated habitually have to refer to the traditions, to the writings, to the teachings of the past in order to make sense of what is being offered here. So, the hardest part is cutting through that fog of spiritual knowledge that afflicts us all.

That's the hardest part. The easy part is being finished with suffering and misery, torment, longing and dissatisfaction. And even as I say these things, I see very plainly that what I am saying is itself part of the spiritual tradition that we rely so heavily upon. I mean, who hasn't come before us and said, "You must be done with what you know, it is not-knowing that you are seeking. You must rid yourself of this spiritual understanding in order to know the truth." That too is part of this whole spiritual tradition so, as I say it, we all sit here and we all know exactly what I'm talking about because we have heard it before. We have heard it all before.

Now, these traditions that I speak of, the traditions of Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, they are all very beautiful, they are extraordinarily entertaining. They are subtle and sweet and wondrous to behold, and I have nothing whatsoever against them, except for one thing: they don't work. They just don't work. I mean, we have been developing and relying upon spiritual teachings and spiritual ideas for about 3,000 years now, and we are in the same boat as we have always been.

No matter what the practice is -- pranayama, meditation practice, mantra, japa, visualizations, breath watching, wall gazing, shaktipat, or whatever. For every one of them, someone had been involved in them when truth dawned upon them; someone has stumbled upon reality in the midst of it, and has therefore gone forward and encouraged us all to partake in the same path, the same method -- as if the method had anything to do with reality. But none of them work. Nothing we have tried works. That is why we are in the same old miserable boat that we have been in for the whole of human history, the same miserable boat of aggression and hatred, betrayal and suffering, misery, isolation and separation, because as beautiful as they are, as gorgeous as they are, they just don't do the job.

So, when we gather together for the purpose of seeing directly the truth of the matter, these practices and traditions are of no use to us. Just like all of the gorgeous writings and plays and so forth that we are familiar with. They are of no use to us here. It doesn't mean that they are bad or abominable. They are just of no use to anyone who really wants to be done with suffering and misery and dissatisfaction and torment in this lifetime, in this moment.

I never ask of anyone that they abandon what they have been doing or that they give up some practice that has been useful, entertaining or sweet to them, or even any practice that has been harmful to them. I never suggest that anybody give up any practice.

No spiritual practice, no material practice, no neurotic practice, none of that is relevant to reality. If it is necessary that we become saints, that the mind be transformed or transcended or killed off or emptied or whatever it is that we might think is necessary, if that is necessary in order that we can see reality and be done with suffering then we're sunk, really.

So, what I would like to see happen is for everyone to consider freshly what the great ones have suggested to us, prior to all of the commentary about what the great ones have suggested to us. And what they have suggested to us is that there is no problem apart from a false belief about what we are. That's what they all have brought to us. The only problem is a false belief about what we are, and this false belief about what we are is very much like our infatuation with spiritual ideas, in that it consumes everything. The whole reality that we think of as our self is this false belief. The whole of the effort to do something about my life, to do something about being good or bad, to clear myself, to transform my mind and my emotions -- all of that occurs within this entity that we falsely believe to be what we are.  So nothing that we do within the mind, such as trying to fix ourselves, trying to let go of things, trying to be clear, be quiet, be still, be this, be that is of any use to us whatsoever.

All of this done within a phenomenon that we falsely believe to be what we are. That's why I see no use in suggesting to you or to anyone that they exchange one practice for another, or that they relax, or that they "let go" of whatever it is that they are holding on to. Hold on to it as tightly as you will, it is of no consequence here; it is irrelevant here. Yearn to get enlightenment even; it is okay, that is not a problem. It can't hurt you; it can't do anything for you or against you. Yearn and seek spiritual experience with all of your heart. That too is not a problem. It has nothing to do with you. All of our effort to make what we do in this world conform to what we imagine to be truth, beauty and clarity is okay. It just doesn't do anything except keep us busy and entertain us.

Here is how simple it is. It is simple beyond comprehension. Our only problem is a false belief in what we are, which of course has given rise to the whole array of concepts such as ego-death, destruction of ego, getting rid of ego, transcending ego, ego is inexistent, ego this, ego that, ego the other thing. If it is really true that the only problem is a false belief about what we are, whether the thing we falsely believe ourselves to be is ego or not, then no new belief can solve that. If what all these characters have told us is true, no fixing of the old belief can solve that. Nothing whatsoever that is done or referred to within this that we have falsely believed our self to be is of any use to us in this. Nothing can fix the lie except the truth. If it is true that the only problem is a false belief about what I am, then the only solution, obviously and self-evidently, is to know the truth of what I am.

Nothing else will do. Everything else is a postponement. Nothing can really hurt us. There is nothing we can do within the mind that is of any harm to us. It just doesn't do us any good, except to keep us entertained and maintain our love affair with the story of me. Because that's what I believe myself to be, right? This wondrous, magnificent story that begins as far back as I can remember, and has continued to the present and will continue, God willing, into the future. It is this wondrous story of me as a human being who, after whatever difficulties and vicissitudes of childhood and adolescence gained adulthood, finally stumbled upon the fact that my problem is spiritual and not material, and I have in my spiritual practice attained a deep understanding and have enjoyed many spiritual experiences of awakening and samadhi. And I have gotten those, lost those, gotten them again, lost them again. All of that is the story of me, the wondrous, magnificent, incomparable story of me. And none of it is of any consequence. Nothing that I have gained, nothing that I have lost is of any consequence.

This is the remarkable, radical, revolutionary insight that is offered to us, thanks to Ramana Maharshi. Ramana stumbled upon reality as a sixteen-year-old boy, before the incredible weight of Hindu and Advaita tradition could sink into his consciousness. This is a great stroke of luck for all of us, because Ramana -- more than anyone -- has no interest in anything other than this: What are you really? Here and now, in this moment, what are you really? Yes, yes, I know, you have worked hard at your spiritual practices. Yes, I know, you have tried to be good people. I know all of that, but all of that aside, what are you? Good or bad, what are you, here and now, in this moment? This is the gift of Ramana. Yes, yes, I know, you have been hard working at your spiritual practices. Keep them up if you wish. Don't keep them up, if you don't want to. But keep them up or don't keep them up, what are you, here and now, in this moment?

© 2006 John Sherman. All rights reserved.