Escape From the Spiritual Ghetto

Welcome, just welcome.  It is just so wonderful to be here in Boulder again.  Are there those here who have never been with me?  Wow!  That's somehow surprising, but wonderful, really.  I also see there are a lot of old friends, some of my oldest friends in life here.  Let's get this show on the road, then. 

You know, I have been in this kind of peculiar role for about eight years now, and over time, what has happened is that I have less and less to say.  I really have very little to say, but the bizarre thing about that is that it seems like the less I have to say, the more I talk.  (Laughter)  We just came from Chicago where I had almost nothing to say, and talked for an hour and a half. 

I come here, as I come everywhere, to try to be of use to you. I am not a master or a guru, I am really your servant, and that's why I come here: to be of use to you. I come to bring to you, as clearly and straightforwardly as I can an account of what I have seen in this life, in this meeting with you, over the years.  I am not very spiritual; I don't have much truck with spiritual discussions, spiritual conversations, and metaphysical niceties.  I just don't have much interest in those things.

What I have seen, as I reflect on my time in this role, is really quite simple.  All of the craziness that goes on in our minds (all of the madness, the wanting and not wanting, getting and not getting, wishing I were this, wishing I were that, and wishing I were not what I am), all of the useful and harmless practices that we may engage in to try to quiet our mind (or make our mind more clear, or end thought, or make the body better, or make life better, get a better relationship, get a better partner, get more money, get fame, etc.); the practices that we undertake to get rich, or to get famous, or to get love, or to get rid of what I don't like about me, and hold on to what I do like about me, or get experiences of spiritual ecstasy or get enlightened, or quiet the mind, or sweeten the body, all of those things to me are in the same kind of boat: they are things that I do in order to try to make myself acceptable to myself, to try to make my circumstance and my situation acceptable to myself.  And they are all in the same bag to me.  They are okay.  There really isn't anything wrong with any of them.  There is nothing wrong with spiritual meditative practice; there is nothing wrong with yoga; there is nothing wrong with trying to get rich; there is nothing wrong with trying to get poor; there is nothing wrong with saving the world; there is nothing wrong with any of it. 

There is a sense of a problem that afflicts us as human beings.  There is a sense of a problem, a shortcoming, a sense of life as a false promise that afflicts us as human beings, and no matter what practices we are engaged in, this sense of life as a false promise, of things falling short, remains in the background.  Sometimes it is very big, and I am filled with yearning, and longing, and heartache, and heartbreak for the horror of being born human and not being able to break free of the human limitation.  Sometimes it is quiet, and just kind of a little nagging hum in the background.  It is always here.  And, sure to God, we know by now, because we have been trying to do this for thousands of years, that nothing that we do to try to fix our lives has any effect whatsoever on the underlying problem, because the problem doesn't have anything to do with what is happening in our lives.  It doesn't have anything to do with what I am doing about what is happening in my life.  It doesn't have anything to do with whether my mind is crazy, like a squirrel running in a cage, thinking, thinking, thinking. It doesn't have anything to do with any of that.  The underlying problem and the cause of the heartbreak in all human existence is a false belief about what we are.  And this is not news; this is not something we haven't been told before.  And I'm going to tell you again.  The only problem in human existence, the only thing that makes human existence problematic and unsatisfactory is a false belief about what we are.

Now, if we have ever had a spiritual interest, we recognize that.  We say, "Oh, yes, misidentification.  I've got to do something about that.  I've got to get rid of ego!"  I tell you that ego is no problem, really.  Ego is no problem.  Life is no problem.  The stupidity of our minds is no problem.  Our greed, and lust, and hatred, and aggression, none of those things are the problem.  The problem is a false belief about what I am, and what I falsely believe myself to be is not some component of my life, some aspect of my life (ego, or greed, or contraction, or smallness).  What I falsely believe myself to be has nothing to do with the components of my life, which are after all always shifting, changing, coming, going, here today, gone tomorrow anyway. I wish it were gone, it stays; I wish it would stay, it goes. 

What we falsely believe ourselves to be is our lives, the totality of our lives, the whole of this individual human consciousness, the whole of the universe that is "my life."  The whole show: the history, the train of thought, the desires, the aversions, the wanting, the not-wanting, the getting, the not-getting, the memories, the projections, the expectations, what I want in the future, what I want to become, what I want to be, what I wish I weren't, what I wish I hadn't done, the room that we sit in.  All of these human manifestations that are in our mind now, as we sit here, that are the components of our life.  The stars, the sun, the moon, the planets, the galaxies; what we see, what we know, what we understand, what we don't understand, what we wish we understood, the wishing itself, the compassion, the sweetness, the quietness, the aggression, the hatred, the hostility, the endless din of thought, all of it.  Not a part of it, but all of it. 

I falsely believe myself to be my life.  It is really critical that we see how absolutely profound and fundamental this false belief is.  If it were some component of my life, then I would be on the right track by trying to do something about that component by trying to fix my body, or quiet my mind, or kill my ego.  But if it is not any component of my life, but the totality of my life, then every moment that I spend trying to fix my life in the hopes that this fundamental problem will disappear is useless. It is not the trying to fix the life that causes the problem, as it is trying to fix the life in the hopes that by so doing I will rid myself of this underlying dissatisfaction of being human. Every moment I spend in that is just wasted effort, and actually is wasting the life itself, wasting the sweetness, and the beauty, and the horror, and the drama in the life itself; trying to find what needs to be killed off, what needs to be held on to and kept here at all cost, all of that itself being a part of my life, an aspect, a characteristic that arises in my life that defines me as a person.

So what to do?  In the willingness to see that the possibility is more profound and more fundamental than I imagined it to be, if it is true that the problem is a false belief that I am nothing other than my life, there is nothing else to it than that, then what can I do?  I'm not aware of this belief.  I can't see it, I can't taste it, I can't touch it, and I can't define it.  It is, in fact, the lens through which I see my life.  It's like, if I wear these glasses.  If I take off my glasses, because I'm nearsighted, the whole room gets blurry, and fuzzy.  Now if I didn't know any better, I would think this is just the way things are.  I can't see my nearsightedness. What I see is this blurriness and fuzziness. And if I put the glasses back on, what I see now is the sharpness.  Still, I'm looking through this lens.

So, the false belief that I am my life is the lens through which I perceive, receive, and operate within my life.  I can't do anything about it.  I can't make it go away.  I can't somehow, by force of will or by some advanced spiritual understanding, rid myself of this false belief, because the advanced spiritual understanding itself is something that has arisen within my life; something that I see and perceive through this false belief that this is me.  "Now, I am the one with an advanced spiritual understanding."  "Now, I am the one who believes myself to be infinite, radiant, eternal consciousness."

So, what to do?  Well, what to do is really very ancient and overlooked.  What to do, the only cure for this false belief, the only solution to it, is the truth.  Just that: the truth.  If I am to rid myself of the lie that "I am my life" (and if I rid myself of it, that proves that it was a lie), I must do so by seeing the truth of what I am.  Nothing else can possibly work.  It is really obvious and simple, when you consider it.  Nothing else can possibly work to rid myself of the lie that I am my life alone, and the lie that I am my life alone is what makes it seem that I am at stake in the life, that I have to get this right.  I have got to make this life be right, because I am at stake here, and if I do something wrong, I'll go to hell.  And if I do something right, maybe I'll go to heaven, or nirvana, or somewhere like that. 

But I am at stake here.  Every moment in this life, every thought that passes through my consciousness puts me on the line, at stake, at risk.  And that's the essence of the problem.  It is that fundamental sense that I am at stake in this life that causes me, first of all, to engage in this vicious and ruthless internal warfare by which I seek to destroy the things about me that are bad, and enhance the things about me that are good.  This vicious, ruthless, merciless internal warfare is projected large upon the stage of human existence as a whole, which is what causes me to take your money, or to take your life, or to go to war against you.  There is nothing else to it but this sense that I have to be right because I am my life, because I am this history, this consciousness, and this point of view.

Now, the possibility of ridding myself of this lie is actually the easiest thing in the world.  This business of seeing the truth of what I am is easy beyond even the ability to comprehend it.  It's not hard.  It doesn't take merit, it doesn't take understanding, it doesn't take doing anything about the other things that I'm doing in my life.  It doesn't take ridding myself of wrongness, or making myself a good person; it doesn't take quieting the mind, it doesn't take any of that. It just takes looking at myself, directly, face to face, with my eyes wide open.  And the really good news, the magnificently good news is that well, that's easy, right?  I mean, I'm here, right?  I'm never not here.  I'm never absent, I'm never missing.  There is never a moment, in all of the time that I am aware, there is never a moment in life, in the world, when I am not here.  Here I am, unchanged.  I am the same as I was when I was 3 years old.  It's not like, you know, I have to learn a new trick or anything.  I am here—self-evidently, obviously, beyond all possibility of denying, I am here.  I can deny that you arehere.  I can deny that you're all here!  I could be strapped in a gurney in Guantánamo Bay, being pumped full of hallucinogenic drugs, and this could be the result of it.  I may not even look like this.  (Laughter)  This body may be itself made up.  My thoughts may be intrusions from some other source.  My thoughts come and go; my body changes.  You are here today, gone tomorrow.  But me?  I'm always here.  Like it or not, never absent.

If anybody here has any doubts about their existence, they should speak up.  If anybody here has any doubts about their presence, they should speak up.  But I have yet to meet anybody who can deny that they are.  So, if I am here always, if I am self-evidently here, if nothing can dissuade me of that, then how hard can it be to look at myself?  How hard can that be?  It's easy!  You just stop for a second, and look and see.  Is it not true that you are here, as you have always been here? Isn't it true that you have never changed, that you have never been affected, that you have never been helped or hurt by anything at all? Is that not true?  And what is that?  That's you.

I can stop just for a moment, and get a sense of this.  Now, it's the case that, because I am so fond of this life and my addiction to it (and my belief that it's me), I can't really see myself exactly, but I can get a sense of this “being here.”  I can do that for just a second.  And then, of course, here come the thoughts again, and what that means, and what it is, and how it agrees or disagrees with other spiritual teachings; how it fits into some other idea, how it fits in my life, and what it means to me.  And how do I do that, and what does that say, and all of that.  So, I seem to lose sight of myself, but not really.  There is never a moment, never a millisecond when I am unaware of myself.  But I get distracted from that, and I get into the thoughts, and I follow the thoughts, and I go back to trying to fix myself, I go back to trying to get better, and to get more quiet, or to get more clear, or to get more charismatic, or to get something.

That notwithstanding, I have looked at myself directly, consciously, with full intention, and I have seen the reality of what I am. That has happened.  And if a few days later, or a few minutes later, or a few weeks later it occurs to me to do so again, I can stop again.  And I can just say, "Wait, hold it. Hold it just a second.  Have I changed?  Is there anything about me that's different now, because I have spent the last two weeks pursuing stupidity?  Has that hurt me?  Has it helped me?  Am I not here?  Am I not the same?"  And I can get the same "Ah!  Yeah!  I'm here!  Yes, I am."

These moments of clarity are what we have come to call, in the spiritual realm, "glimpses." And as we return to this belief that we are this life, we determine that if “ I am ever to be free, I must do something so that I can hold my attention permanently on this reality and refuse to put my attention on thought, desires, stupidities, pain, and suffering.”  But that is a lie.  That is part of the lie that "I am my life."

Truth ends the lie, but not like a lightning bolt, not with a bang: "I'm enlightened!"  Bang!  "I am realized!"  Bang!  "I am awake!  All my confusion is gone.  There is nothing here but clarity.  All my selfishness is gone.  There is nothing here but compassion, and love, and sweet understanding, and openhearted generosity." Truth destroys the lie, but it doesn't "wake you up", because you have never been asleep.  Truth destroys the lie, but it takes time to eat away that lie.  You don't even see the lie.  There is nothing you can do about the lie, except this:  look at yourself, directly, just for a moment, as often as it occurs to you to do so.  Look at yourself, taste this water of reality, of permanence and unchangingness, whenever you can, whenever it occurs to you to do so.  It doesn't matter what you are doing in between those times.  Nothing about anything you are doing in between those times has any effect on you at all.  It doesn't hurt you, and it doesn't help you.  The only thing you can do that has any consequence whatsoever is to take a moment and look at yourself.  Look at what is real; look at what is permanent, look at what doesn't change.

This is my experience, and the experience of many the people that have been with me.  Over time, before you even know it is gone, this lie that you are your life will vanish, and your life will reveal itself to be sweet and easy, no matter how hard it is.  Your life will reveal itself to be not a field in which you are at stake, at mortal peril, but just life.  We have these spiritual ideas about these things, like "life is bad," and the hallmark of awakeness, realization, and clarity is a detachment and a kind of antagonism toward the life and how it unfolds.  The idea that we have, the idea that I had at one time, was that there would come a time when this whole life would be transformed, or transcended, turned into something different, something new, and I would no longer be at its mercy.

As the false belief, the lie that you are your life alone is wiped out, my experience is that naturally, without any effort whatsoever, you just kind of relax and fall back into your life, in a way that is more intimate than you can possibly imagine; in a way in which there is no sense of separation and fear about the way the life unfolds.  And, in the absence of the idea, the sense that you are at stake in the life, I promise you:  this internal vicious, ruthless, merciless war that goes on within you, in which you hold onto the good and kill off the bad, will disappear like a bad dream. And all of your inclination to hurt your neighbor, to do something to diminish your neighbor in order to enhance yourself, that too will disappear like a bad dream, because we are all in this together — and you know it.

This is the practice of self-inquiry that Ramana Maharshi turned on its head.  This is how I speak about the practice of self-inquiry. And I'll tell you something else too:  there is nothing spiritual about self-inquiry.  It is absolutely not spiritual.  It is totally practical.  It is a method whereby you can destroy the lie that you are your life.  And I have a metaphor that I have been using everywhere else, so I might as well use it here too, in order to drive home the point that this has nothing to do with spirituality. There is no spirituality, it is all made up. There is you — and that's all. There is nothing else but you.  That is all there is.

Self-inquiry is like medicine. It is not like a spiritual practice. You don't do it in order to make your life better.  You don't do it to get better experiences, instead of bad experiences.  You do it to cure yourself of this disease that is the lie that you are your life.  And it is like any other medicine. If I get sick, and I am feverish, and aching, and nauseous, I may have some idea of what I have, but I have no consciousness whatsoever of this vast battle that is being fought for my body, and the way in which the disease-causing entities work, and the way in which the body mobilizes itself, and how it is that I came to be sick, and feverish, and aching.  I don't have any conscious awareness of any of that.  And when I go to the doctor, he talks to me and says, "You've got to take these antibiotics for this length of time, this many per day."  So I start taking the antibiotics. I have no conscious awareness of the warfare that is now being fought within my body, with the help of these poisonous entities that go out and machine-gun down the bad guys.  I don't have any sense of all of that going on, but what I do have a sense of is that, as I take the antibiotics, today I feel really bad, tomorrow I feel a little better, the day after that I feel a little better, the day after that I feel a little better, and before I even really know that the sickness has departed (I'm still taking the antibiotics) I feel just fine.

Self-inquiry is like that.  It's like medicine.  You don't take it to get high.  You don't take it to get spiritual.  You don't take it to get ecstasy, rapture, bliss, or oceanic consciousness.  You take it to get over this disease, and you do it as often as you can.  And, like antibiotics, no matter how true or false your understanding may be of what is taking place, just taking the medicine, just looking at yourself directly, will cure the disease—and it will be gone before you know it is gone.  And, finally, you will see what this is all about, and you will find that life is sweet, just as it is.  And if you want to continue doing meditation practices, then you will see the usefulness of them, which is not to get you enlightened, which is not to get you free of misidentification.  It's just to make you feel a little better, to make you clearer a little bit, quieter a little bit.  And if you continue doing any of your practices, you will see what they're for, what their purpose is, and not think that you are at stake here.

So this is all I have to talk about: this medicine, this infallible sword of Ramana Maharshi.  This infallible method is absolutely guaranteed to finish the misery in your life; and it is absolutely guaranteed to finish the idea that there is something missing.  It is not going to turn you into a saint.  But it is not going to turn you into a sinner, either.  (Laughter) Anybody wants to come up and talk to me?

Hi, John.

Hi, it's good to see you.

It's really good to see you.  I am still hugely scared to do anything like this, to speak in public, especially in front of a lot of people.  This is very redundant, because I'm always very scared about this. A lot of my old friends are here.  But you know, I felt very lost in the last year and a half or so, and like you've talked about in some of your podcasts and your writings, I felt a sense of desperation and not knowing where to turn.  I had the Talks book by Ramana, and I had been toying with reading that some, but I really started to read it during these feelings of desperation, and it really hit home for me; Ramana's words always have, but even more so in this time of hopelessness.  But there's so much that didn't make sense, as you've talked about with some of the people who have asked you about Ramana.  Things would be confusing, and he'd explain things one way to somebody and then another way to someone else, the same issue.  I was looking around Thanksgiving time for Ramana on YouTube, which I just discovered, and there was a link to you.  So, knowing you the way I have, I said, "Let's see what John's talking about, and see what's going on."

And it hit me like a bolt of lightning into my soul, the things you said were so true for me, they really resonated.  Everything you said was just so clear, every word you said just hit home to me so hard and so profoundly.  I don't own a computer, so when I'm at somebody else's house, house-sitting or something, I will make CDs of all your podcasts.  Almost every night since then Thanksgiving, I have listened to one of your podcasts.  I take a bath, I just lay back, I listen to your stuff, and I cry, and I melt, and I mean, John, I swear to God you've changed my life so much. I feel such hope and such promise and such connection with the truth that you speak. You have changed my life, like I just said, I love you so much, and what you say!  And I know you hate that, you don't like to take credit for that and everything, but you have blown my mind to smithereens, and I just love you for it, and even with this fear (I'm starting to calm down now), I had to come up and tell you that.

I didn't want to tell you in the hallway. Usually I approach you after the meeting, and I'll say "Hi" and then kind of sheepishly say things to you. This time I wanted to come up and tell you just how much you've meant to me, and I'll continue. I was talking to Carla today about the potential of maybe even moving to Ojai, just to be close to you and to hear this directly, as I have tonight.  I love what you say, I love you, and I love what's happening to me. And I just thank you so deeply from the bottom of my heart.

My, oh my!  Well, you are very welcome. You're very welcome in Ojai.  So, are you doing what I ask you to do?

I take the medicine all the time.  I have three little fine-tuning questions that didn't really necessarily come up tonight, but they come up with me all the time and I thought I would maybe take this opportunity, if I could, to ask you.

This is a good time.

You have talked about drinking from this well of the presence that we all know that we are, which is so obvious to me. Do I need to have the conscious engagement of my mind, almost saying, "I am here, this is me," really recognizing consciously that that is me, or, can I just look at this presence that is so easy for me to see right now, even as scared as I am, since the presence is so obvious...

Yes, it is, isn't it? The involvement of mind is of no consequence.  If you look consciously with your mind, that's just your mind — one aspect of your life trying to do the right thing.  It's okay.  It can't hurt you.  But it can't help you either.  All that you need to do is just what you just said. Just for a second, just look.  "Ah!  I'm here."  And then, all of the effort that you may expend with your mind to try to do it right, or to try not to do it wrong, to try to really be focused, and so forth, that's okay; it can't hurt you.  But the medicine is this "Ah! Right. Of course! Yes. This." It's just the looking.

One aspect of this false belief that "I am my life" is that my mind has to be doing right. It has to be understanding it, it has to be accepting it, it has to be choosing it, it has to be doing it right.  Therefore, I come and I say, "Do I need to do this?  Is this what I need to do, or is it enough just to stop and look?" There's nothing to it but the looking.  All the rest of it is just keeping busy, keeping yourself occupied.  Just look.

If I am looking at that, then that in itself is the recognition that I'm asking about, right?

That's it. That's all there is. There's nothing else to it. And the well that I speak of is precisely this certainty, this certain reality that I am. That's the well, and the thing about the water in that well is that quickly you come to see (you may not form this understanding in your mind, and it doesn't matter if you do or not) that this is the water I've always been looking for.  And that's why you go back to it.  This is what I've always wanted, and that's why I go back to it.  So yes, just look.

And don't worry; don't try to stop the determined mind from doing something, and making this work, and making this happen. That can't hurt you. It can't help you, and it can't hurt you. And the proof that it can't hurt you and it can't help you is that, in the midst of it, you can stop for one second and see if you've changed, if you really have been affected by any of the clarity, the confusion, the determination, or the lack of determination.  "Am I not still the same?  Was I not just like this when I was three?"

Those are the times of biggest recognition for me, when I'm involved in all that head-spin, and then I do as you just described, and I just see that I've always been exactly the same.

Yes, that's right. And the thing that I'm trying to get clear here, that I really don't want you to have any misunderstanding about, is that the head-spin doesn't have to stay, and it doesn't have to go, since it's beside the point.  The point is reality, so that everything that happens in this life story, everything is beside the point.  You don't have to stop it; you don't have to keep it going.  You don't even have to stop trying to stop it.  All you have to do is look at yourself as often as you can, and the time will come when it will just come to a kind of easiness on its own.  An easiness that nothing you have ever done can possibly bring about.  Do you follow that?  Is that helpful?

Very. You said something that led to the second of these three questions, and the second one is maybe silly. Does it matter that I don't actually recognize that, all my life, this has been what I've been looking for?

That doesn't matter.  I mean, what recognizes it?  Some aspect of your life, right?  "Oh, okay, that's right!  I get it, I'm not my life. I am instead, I don't know, awareness." That's just one more accretion in the life.  If it happens, it doesn't hurt you, right?  This is really an excellent question. This is really an advanced question.  Really!

It is in our nature, as spiritual aspirants, to look to our minds to determine whether what we are doing is effective or not. And I tell you that it is without consequence, what is going on in your mind.  It's inconsequential.  All you have to do is look at yourself.  And the hardest thing about making this offer is to communicate the absoluteness of the irrelevance of what's going on in your life to the possibility of being finished with the idea that you are at stake in it.  You don't need to understand it, you don't need to know what you're doing, you don't need to do it right.  You don't need to do anything.  All you need to do is look at this that is always here, that you know is here.  And it will do the work.  Do you follow that? 

Yes.  Yes. 

Good. 

I am almost embarrassed to throw out my third thing, which is the most ridiculous. I'm only going to ask you because it comes up every now and then for me, and I know it is just more head-spin…  What if this 100% continual awareness, the presence that I am, that I am always aware of, that I always see, what if that was just awareness, a constant awareness of what in fact I am, which I have not even recognized yet? Is that ridiculous?

What's the question? I don't get the question. 

Instead of indicating if the presence that I feel that "I am here, I am, I exist," what if that awareness was in fact only awareness of what I really am, which is something that I haven't discovered yet, rather than the presence is what I am?  What if the presence is the awareness of what I am?  Is that ridiculous?

Pretty much. (Laughter) Well, here's the thing: there is nothing but you. You're never going to find anything anywhere that is not you. And the simplicity of you is self-evident. Look at what you know to be permanent. Look there. Look at what you know never to be absent. Look there. And it doesn't matter that the mind begins to spin these nuanced and sophisticated distinctions — that's what the mind does. It's what it does, it's part of life.  It won't hurt you, it won't help you. Just keep looking at yourself. And don't worry about whether it's really yourself, or just the awareness of yourself. What you are really looking at is the knowing of reality. And that's all. Don't worry about all that, just look. Just look. You know. You know what is here. You know what doesn't change. The rest of it is all just, "Wow, this could be like a subset of reality here, a subset, a kind of an awareness reality instead of a reality reality." (Laughter).  Don't worry about it.  Just keep taking the medicine.

I will.  Definitely, John.

It's obvious the effect it is having.

I'm so glad I came up.  This has really been great.  I love you.  Thank you, John.

I love you too.  Anybody else?  Yes.

* * *

So I'm sitting here, listening, and when you say who I am, I'm trying to figure out... I'm in my head, trying to see it. So what would it look like?  What does self-inquiry look like?

You.  Consider this. In the first place, I didn't say "Who are you?"  That's a different strain of self-inquiry, equally valid, equally helpful, but just not what I'm talking about here.  But consider this.  It's my experience in this life that everything I ever did in this life, every thought I ever thunk, everything I reached for, everything I tried to get rid of, everything I tried to hold on to, everything I tried to wish weren't here, every instant of this life in which I was doing things, every instant I spent thinking, doing, wanting, not wanting, getting, not getting, all of that, I see now that it was all done in an effort to find out what I am.  There is nothing I have ever done in this life that wasn't done trying to know what I am.  And for most of the life, this takes the form of trying to become something, trying to get rid of what I don't want, hold on to what I do want about myself, and create a persona that is effective and stable, and that I can live with; something that makes sense to me, and that other people will like and not despise, and so forth.  My experience is that every single moment of this life was spent trying to find out what I am by trying to become what I want to be. And every single moment in this life, what I was doing was absolutely without effect, except to make me more miserable, because it was so important that I become what I need to become.

This self-inquiry finishes all of that, and instead turns attention directly to the reality, without honoring the idea that I am my life. This self-inquiry is what the other wants to be. Self-inquiry is following this natural desire, which is all there is to you, to know the truth of what you are, in a direction that is likely to bear fruit. You are here. You are never gone. You are never absent. Thoughts come, thoughts go, desires come, desires go, relationships come, relationships go, money comes, money goes, and through it all, you are here.

I'm still here.

You're still here, you're never absent. That's you. That which has never changed, has never been missing, has never moved, that!  That which has never been hurt, never helped, that!  That you are!  And this is obviously not the first time in history that this announcement has been made, but what I'm hoping is that we can get beyond the initial reception of it, in which I try to be that which I am, by following the descriptions of that which I am, and trying to shape myself into that which I am.  Self-inquiry is simpler than that.  It doesn't ask you to do anything, except look at that.  Do you hear this?  Just look at it. 

Who I am, right now.

Just look at it.  Look at the permanence. 

What doesn't change?

What doesn't change.  And you know that it's here, right?  It's not a mystery, it is here.  It is ordinary. Its ordinariness is one of the reasons that we are able to ignore it.  If it's permanent, it's ordinary.  Nothing could be more ordinary than you.  Do you see? So, look at that, just for a second. Don't worry about what's going on in the mind. Don't worry about any of that. Don't worry about your continuing efforts to build a persona that is acceptable. That will go when it goes. 
 
It feels like there is always a lot of effort.

There is a lot of effort.  And that's okay.  It will go. I promise you, it will go. Not by you trying to stop the effort, but by looking at what is real. That's all you can do, look at what is real. And, in my experience, it always bears fruit. It really is infallible.

So, who am I in relationship to the world?

That's my question. Who are you in relationship to the world? This is a legitimate question, and it can be as effective as what I am recommending here. Who are you in relationship to the world? Who are you who sits here talking to me like that? Who are you who entertains these doubts, and thoughts, and so forth? In the presence of these doubts, and thoughts, and desires, and disappointments, and all of that, there certainly is a sense of somebody here who is subject to that, right? It is true that this permanence isn't subject to it, but there is a sense that somebody here is afflicted and affected by all of that. Look at that.  Look there.

This is the other line of self-inquiry.  Look there.  When you say to me, "I'm confused," I say, "Who is confused?"  Not in order to further confuse you, and to kind of brush aside your confusion, but as actual practical advice. Who is confused? There is somebody. There is somebody within this vastness of permanence and reality; there is the feeling of somebody here who hurts, who wants, who doesn't get, who is neglected, who is deprived, who lacks, who wants to be good.  Who is that? Look there. Look now.  What is that?

The one who is asking the question.

Yes. Who is asking the question?  Look there. Find that one. And don't confuse yourself by spiritual understanding which says, "Well, if I see it, it can't be me, because I am the one seeing it." Know that there is really this deep sense of somebody affected, somebody wanting, somebody lacking, and look at it, see what it is. And, I'll tell you what will happen. If I ask you to do that, and you do it (and you can do it, nothing stops you from doing it), if you look straight in the eye of this wanting one, you will see that there is nothing there. Tell me, if that is not true. It is only there when I don't look at it. When I look at it to see for myself what it is, it turns out that there is nothing there!

The person looking is seeing that there is nothing there?

Don't go that far, yet.  You're going too far. You will see that there is nothing there. What remains?  What remains, when the one who is afflicted and disturbed disappears? You! The reality, the permanence, the unchangingness, that's what remains. That's "Who am I?"

"Who am I?" can lead you directly to reality.  In my own spiritual melodrama, I was really the worst of the worst in this regard. I really took quite a beating before I got finished with it. It is not uncommon to hear this "Who am I?", "Who asks?" and so forth. And it is not uncommon to hear the invitation to discover that there is nothing there. There is a great relief that attends that. But, in my experience, what we mostly do with that is we say, "Ah! What a relief! That feels really good. That's it. That's what I want, that good feeling." And we go on about our business; we continue to try to make our life so that the feeling of relief will stay. We go on with our lives, trying to make our spiritual peace with that feeling of relief, so that it will stay, never suspecting that the only point of looking at that suffering, afflicted one is to find what remains when it is seen that it doesn't exist. And that is taking the medicine; that is where the medicine resides also, because when what I think I am is gone, what I am remains as always, the same as it has always been.

This is the test. If what you see is different, then it can't be the reality I am talking about. If it is new, if it is fresh, if it is a relief, if it feels good instead of bad, it can't be the reality I am talking about. But if you look at this aching, miserable, hateful, hurt, contracted child, and discover that it's missing, what remains is reality—pure, clear, unmoving, unchanged, unaffected, unhurt, unhelped by any of it.  So that is what I have to say about "Who am I?"  Is that helpful?
 
I find that my mind goes to try to wrap around it.

That's okay. It doesn't matter. Even when your mind is trying to wrap around it, are you not still the same?

Yeah.

That's the point.  The point isn't what your mind does, but what you are. Everything comes back to this. Are you not still here? Are you changed? Are you made better, are you made worse by any of these things? Are you not? Look at that. Just look at it. Not to convince yourself of anything, but because it will cure the disease that is the lie that "you are your life." Don't try to stop your mind from squirreling around; that's a wasted effort.  Look at yourself, directly. 

When I was in my own desperate spiritual melodrama, I walked around with Talks with me.  I had created a huge melodrama. I was on the outs with Gangaji. I was worthless, I had thrown away everything that had been given to me, I was the stupidest human being on the face of the planet, and I was suffering just to the degree that you deserve to suffer by being the stupidest, most idiotic human being on the planet.  I thought Ramana didn't make any sense...  And not only didn't make any sense, but I already knew who I was, that wasn't the problem. I already knew who I was: I was infinite, eternal, radiant consciousness.  The problem was all this other stuff going on.

But because I was desperate, I finally turned back to Ramana Maharshi, who is the source and the wellspring of all that comes through Papaji and Gangaji.  I finally turned back to Ramana, and I walked around in prison with Talks and I would read it every chance I got, and it didn't make any sense. I used to get so irritated when I would read Ramana telling somebody, "Just find out who you are, and everything else will be taken care of. Just do that, everything else will be taken care of." And now I tell you, just look at yourself, and everything else will be taken care of. It's a promise. Okay? Is that helpful? Anybody else? Yes. 

***

Can you speak about doing this practice, in the times when we're particularly distressed? And maybe it's no different, but ...

It's no different.  Who is particularly distressed?  It can't be you.  And if we do the practice in order to rid ourselves of the distress, then we do that out of the belief that we are our lives. And that's okay, I mean, here's another thing about this whole business.  It really doesn't matter if you wipe out that belief or not.  You are what you are, nothing can change that. You are what you are, no matter what you believe yourself to be.

The only reason for doing this is to rid yourself of this misery. That's all. And if you like the misery, it’s okay.  It doesn't hurt anybody, it doesn't hurt you, and it doesn't help you. So that, if you do the practice with the idea in mind of ridding yourself of distress, then you are doing the practice as a part of your life, which is not what you are. And I don't know what it will do; it will do what all spiritual practices do. It will be kind of effective for a while, and then it will prove itself to be not effective. And, of course, you will blame yourself for that, because that's what we do. Even if you do it from time to time, as a way of making your life better, that doesn't matter either, if from time to time you also do it just to see what you are, just to taste this reality, this unchanging certainty. All the other stuff you do, even if you do self-inquiry to get more money or whatever, all that is inconsequential. It can't hurt you, it can't help you. And so long as, whenever you can, whenever it occurs to you to do so, you stop for just a second, for no reason whatsoever other than to see what you are, and just look and see:  are you here? You are, right? No doubt about that, right? Look at that. Look there. Look at that doubtlessness, that certainty. You won't be able to say anything about it.  You won't be able to name it, won't be able to do anything with it. (Laughs)

I do this practice of self-inquiry. It helps to hear that it helps to not do it in a goal-directed kind of way, but just to do it. To do it, just to do it, to be it, really...

Just to look at yourself. You already are it. You can't be it. You can't be it. You already are it. 

So, I do that practice, and then what?  I may do that, you know, sitting on my couch, and then I have to return to my life.  And so, is the idea just to weave this practice into every moment?

If you do this practice of looking at yourself just to see yourself — that's the only thing you're doing, you're looking at yourself to see yourself — what I predict is that you will discover that there is nothing else you want to do, except be conscious of this ever-present awareness, this ever-present knowing of reality.  That's what I predict. I call it a practice in order to dispense with spiritual correctness, because I don't have much truck with spiritual correctness. I just read that Papaji said, "When duality vanishes, oneness vanishes, too." (Laughter) So, I don't have any truck with spiritual correctness. But I have to speak to you as if you were somebody else, right? And I call it a practice because it is a practice. It is something you choose to do, and you do it. But if you do this practice, whether you look at yourself to see what it is that is afflicted, wondering what the outcome of this will be, and you see it vanish, and then you look at what remains just for that instant, or whether, whenever you can, when you are driving on the street, checking out at the supermarket, or whatever in the world you may be doing, you just take a second whenever it occurs to you, whenever the thought comes to you of "What should I be doing next," you look to see if you're not the same, everything else will be taken care of.

Thank you.

Is that helpful?

Yeah.

You really can't do this wrong. And I am kind of living proof that that you can't do it wrong, because I did it worse than anybody can imagine doing it. You can't do this wrong. And once the investigation takes hold of you, it will teach itself, it will inform itself, it will instruct itself, and it will correct itself as you go. Once you get the scent, it's like a hunt. Once you get the scent of what you are looking for, nothing can stop you. Nothing.

* * *

I have a couple of lawsuits going on, I've got a little boy that wants to come live with me and go to college at CU;  I've got a major love affair that's temporarily on the rocks, and I see all those things through that witness. And I also feel it all as the sort of a thought-bundle that is called me. It's not going away, even as you speak, and I see it, and I've spent time on Ramana's mountain alone, and I've been around the world, and read everything, and studied everybody, and still the sense of individuality remains.

And why is that a problem? 

It's uncomfortable to deal with these two lawsuits, one in Colorado and one in Hawaii, and my little boy, the girl, with that awareness that you speak of as the overviewer that makes me just a little antsy to... Where will I get rid of that thing?

You don't get rid of it. It's not a problem. It doesn't hurt you, really it doesn't. You speak of seeing this through the "witness," and you speak of seeing it through the "overviewer." Who sees that? Who sees the seeing of the witness, and the overviewer?

The same creature.

You, actually.  Not the creature, you.

I.

You. Prior to the creature, the source of this permanence.  Is there not permanence here?

Yes.

That's you.  It's not the witness.

I can remember it, from when I was three years old, this same creature.

It's you. The permanence is you. The creature comes and goes in you. The witness comes and goes in you. The sense of awareness comes and goes in you. You are the permanence. So there is nothing I can do to help you with the romance on the rocks. I can't even help you with the dissatisfaction that this creature remains, that this sense of individuality remains.  I can't help you with that. That doesn't touch you.

How can we get rid of the formula that seems to want to get rid of some part? There seems to be two things going on here. That's the essential dilemma of humanity. There's a sense of "I", and then there is the larger, prior consciousness that sees that.

The problem is not that. The problem is not the presence of these seemingly two things. The problem is the belief that I am my life, when I am actually this permanence that is untouched by any of it.  Now, it doesn't mean that the life isn't adventurous, or doesn't need to be corrected, or things don't need to be done in it. But that takes care of itself. That creature is taking care of all that.

The only problem is the belief that that creature is you. And, in my experience, you can rid yourself of that only by continuously looking not at the witness, not by confirming in yourself that "I am doing this right, because I'm looking at this from a standpoint different than the creature," because you are not. You are prior to the witness. You are the permanence. The witness comes and goes. You have never moved. You are not I, you are not the creature, you are not the witness, you are none of that. It is really hard sometimes for us; actually, the hard thing is not to do it, but to be willing to do it, rather than honor all that I already know, and all that I am trying to do, and all that I understand, and so forth. That's the difficult part. But it doesn't take much. I mean really, here you are.

Here I am.

Just like you've always been.

It is growing, there is more comfort now. I'm 64, and it's better than it was at 24.

Yes.  That's right.

That's all I've got. It's still an incredible experience to be both of those.

But you're not.  You're not!

I know.

So why do you continue to say it? If you know, why do you continue to say it?

Everybody in the world, all of us, except for saints and masters, and I've met a few in my life, most of us have a sense of our own life, and...

And what is the problem with that?

Nothing really, actually.

And it's not like I'm asking you what the problem is, in order that you can tell me nothing is.  Obviously there seems to be a problem with it. What is the problem with it? It is the sensational experiences associated with it, right? And the problem with these sensational experiences is the certainty that I am affected by them. That's the problem. You know, really, that's the problem. And what I am telling you is that you are not. And you know you are not, and all you have to do is look at that which is not affected by it, again and again and again, and the whole story may or may not continue in the same way it has been, but without you being at stake in it, without your head being on the block in it. 

So it's been helpful. Talking with you and doing all the work that I've done in my whole life coming up to now. It's helpful and more comfortable.

I am really happy to hear that. And I hope I can be helpful to you.

No, this is fun.  This is the first time I've ever come up anywhere.

Well, I'm very proud of that.

This has been good for me.

Let me hear from you, if you will.

Yeah, I will.

Write to me, okay?
Well, is there anybody else?  We could maybe talk to one more person?

* * *

There is this one thing that is left over from Santa Monica.  Actually I am here to admit that I didn't take my medicine today.

Sinning, are you?

I was going to take an Advil before I came here.  And I was going to say I forgot, but I really didn't because just before I drove away, I remembered, and was like "No."  So, I've been sitting here with this uncomfortable body, but I have been taking your medicine, ever since you brought it up again. And the other part of that is that it's actually an imaginary medicine for an imaginary disease.  I think you said this in Santa Monica, too.

Of course it is; it is a metaphor. I will come up with anything that might trick you into looking at yourself. Really, it doesn't matter to me what it is, it's all story, and it's all made up.  Anything I can say that will trick you into looking at yourself. I feel like it is my job to get you to look at yourself. That's my only job, by hook or by crook, by trickery, by smoke and mirrors, whatever it takes. The medicine is a pretty good metaphor.

And some of the things that you bring up are just reminders, and you talked about going back to when I was 3.  I had an experience a number of years back, where I was back somewhere around my birth, I'm not quite sure whether it was before or after, but that same awareness was there. 

No difference, huh?

And I could say, "Well, it was a metaphor" but it felt real.

It is real. You are eternal. You are not subject to time and space. The whole manifestation creates time and space because awareness requires it.  Awareness calls forth you and all of it.  Papaji said once, "The self is endlessly interested in seeing itself," and that's the truth, insofar as we can speak the truth with such paltry words as "self," "interest," and "calling forth"...

Finally I just wanted to thank you. The thing that has really struck me is the simplicity of Ramana.  And your brand of simplicity is also wonderful, just as Gangaji's is as well, and there is always something a little bit different there. But it's really the same simplicity, and I just really appreciate that.

Oh, you're very welcome.  I'm happy to be of use. Well, this has been really quite remarkable. I might as well throw caution to the wind, and tell you that I have another really unspiritual agenda.  I confess that I, as John Sherman, want things. What I most want in life now is that every human mind hear this possibility. And the reason is, first of all, because hearing it is not a big deal. It doesn't really take much. We get together like this, and we talk about things, and we wrestle but really, hearing it isn't a big deal. I tell you:  you are not your life, and all you have to do is look at yourself to finish the idea that you are. Hearing that is not a big deal.

And I think back to the fact that, throughout human history, there have been people who have stood up and told us this same thing. God knows how they have said it, but they have told us the same thing and, by and large, we have taken what they have said and diluted it, complicated it, corrupted it, and turned it into religion, spirituality, and all kinds of stuff like that. But, from the very beginning, people have been telling us this same thing.

You are what you seek. Doesn't that sound familiar? You are what you seek, and that's the truth. We live in an era now that is exciting beyond any era that we, as human beings, have ever enjoyed or suffered in. We live in an era where it is actually possible that, in one lifetime, every human being on the planet hear this possibility.  And imagine what it would be like if, a hundred million of us, a billion of us were finished with the belief that we are at stake in this life. Imagine what that would be like!

So, I find that I have in my later years become what I had always despised. I have become an evangelist, a kind of an old-fashioned, revival-tent preacher who wants nothing whatsoever in life, but to be able to say this to every human being on the planet. And we can, you know, we really can. We've got the Internet, we've got television, we've got radio, we've got the technology to reach everybody with this possibility: the problem is not anything that you are doing, the problem is just a false belief about what you are. And it is so easy to be done with that, because here you are.

We are all in the same boat. This whole idea of individual liberation is a fairytale. There is not two.  There are not two human minds anywhere to be found. There is not a separate human consciousness anywhere to be found. We are in the same boat, we are in this together. And so long as there persists in any human mind the belief that they are bound, that belief persists in me. And that's why I am an evangelist.

We've got to break out of the spiritual ghetto. We have to get out of the spiritual ghetto. That's why I don't talk so much spiritual anymore, because I want to talk to everybody. I am going to talk to everybody who is involved in spiritual activity, and I'm going to talk to everybody for whom spiritual activity is despicable and stupid.
I am endlessly grateful for your time and attention here tonight.  Every time I come back to Boulder (and I don't get back here as often as I would like to), I feel like I'm coming home, and reporting to those from whom I arose what I've seen, what I've been up to.  So this meeting tonight is my report to all of you.  And this meeting tonight is my prayer that all being—and especially all human being—know itself, and know that it knows itself.

So thank you for this meeting.  I am your servant, truly.   
Om Shanti.  Be well.  Know what is true.

© 2007 John Sherman. Some rights reserved.

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