A Meeting with John Sherman in Santa Monica, California - September 28, 2008

It has been clear to me for some time that the whole cloud of spiritual understanding and spiritual insights from the past is of no consequence in the actual possibility of being free of fear, misery, and suffering in one's own life. I mean the whole cloud of the sutras, the shastras, the Upanishads, the sweet insights, and the more recent writings by Wei Wu Wei, for example, whom I have loved inordinately. I just mention him because that is a much more modern example of what I am talking about, and it seems to speak more directly and clearly to the modern sensibility than do the Upanishads, the Heart Sutra, or the Diamond Sutra.

But the whole realm of spiritual understanding is beside the point. The flashes of deliciousness and insight that have come to us, spiritual seekers, in our own life and have been reported by others in the past are just a commentary on reality. They have no usefulness, no value, no substance, no help to offer in the possibility that arises within human consciousness to be free of fear, to be free of the idea that I am in danger here, to be free of the idea that life is suffering. The whole thing is entertaining, it is very developed, and it has levels and layers. It is academic, it is philosophical, it is personal, it contains every aspect of human understanding, and human intellectual appetite within it — and it is useless. For the one who is tired of being miserable about being in this life, it is utterly useless and it has no value whatsoever. It has value as anything beautiful and artistic has value, but it has no practical value to the one who wants to be done with feeling like they are trapped in their life, feeling like there is something here that is dangerous and threatening, and urgently requires some attention and some fixing.

I have come to see more recently that the attachment to spiritual understanding is actually a form of mental illness. And it is a pretty serious one at that, because it is so hard to see around it. We go through our lives seemingly afflicted by the misery of being human, the false promise, the expectations, the striving, and the desperate, urgent need to develop and protect an identity, to become something that works, something that is true and clear and gives me what I need. And in the midst of all of that, which of course itself is a form of mental illness, and probably the source of all mental illness, is this sense that I am trapped in this life, and I have got to do something before it kills me.

For those of us who have stumbled upon the spiritual arena and the whole business of spiritual discussion, spiritual discourse, spiritual aspiration, spiritual attainment, spiritual states, spiritual definitions, spiritual understandings, spiritual paths, and spiritual stages of the paths, all of that is so gorgeous, it rings so true, and it resonates in the same way that religion resonates for many. I mean, it is a kind of religion, which itself is another form of mental illness.

And when we happen upon it, especially those of here in the West, we are especially vulnerable to the Eastern spiritual ideas and the Eastern form of mental illness in the spiritual realm, because it sounds so exotic. The words and the concepts seem to cut right to the heart of the matter, and they are so wonderful, expressions such as "Sat-Chit-Ananda." It is just a whole new world of possibility with new avenues of escape from my life. But it is new, it is fresh, and it's different from what we imagine to be the spiritual discourse in the Western world, which consists mostly of discourse around Christianity and its whole form of mental illness.

So, we happen upon it, we dive into it with both feet, we get really immersed in it, and there is never any end to it, nothing is ever finished. Well, of course, nothing is ever finished anyway, right? Nothing is ever finished. And there is certainly no finish to our exploration into this new ocean of understanding, and insight, and experience, and states, and explanations, and commentary. There is no end to it. We can occupy ourselves with it until we fall into our graves and never reach its end, never reach its conclusion. And those of us in the West, I can't speak for those in other cultures, but in this culture in particular, we are just swept up by the sheer magnificence and the age of it. These ideas have been kicking around for five thousand years, for God's sake. They must be true. They must have something to offer me. They do tickle my sensibility when I hear them.

Our attachment to these ideas is so deep and so strong, that we miss the fact that all of this understanding and insight, all of this offering of solutions to the trap of life and to the problems of suffering is actually a commentary about only one thing. We do not see this, but it is the case. It is all speaking about you. It is all talking about you. In every case whatsoever, these magnificent, developed, sophisticated, and truly rich ideas, insights, and systems of practice are all about you. And they are all supposedly designed to bring you to an end of your search for an escape from you. They are all designed to bring us to an understanding of reality in which it is made clear that there is no problem, that the problem is made up, and that the truth of you is untouched by any of it. That the truth of you is the source of all of it, and that the truth of you is unhelped and unhurt by anything that rises and falls within this life, within this consciousness. That is the core insight at the heart of all of them: You are what you seek. The whole problem that arises in human consciousness and in human understanding arises in the need to find you, to see you. There is nothing here but you, just you.

So, when somebody comes and says, "Look, forget all that stuff. You don't have to get rid of it, you don't have to throw your books away, you don't have to stop enjoying it, you don't have to stop chanting, you don't have to stop meditating, you don't have to stop any of that, but just for the sake of an experiment, just for a moment, forget all about that and look at yourself," we think, "What is that? What am I? What do I look at? Where do I go? What does it feel like? What do I do? What do you mean, Look at myself?"

Look at you. What could be hard about that? Look at you. I dare you. Just look at you.

Over the last ten years, I have become, I hope, less and less sensitive to the fond feelings people have about spiritual understanding and I am going to be even less so from now on. Here's an example of why.

We have a number of translations on the web site. We have translations in Hebrew, Dutch, German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian. Generally, they are translations of transcriptions of meetings, where we get together like this and talk, or translations of the Meeting Ramana ebook from 2004. What happens is that people come forward and offer to make translations of this material. They are inspired by our meetings together and by the things we talk about, the things that we see together, and they want to make this available to people in their own language. This is wonderful, and I cannot tell you how encouraging and how exciting it is to us to see this development of translations of our work.

The other day, somebody sent us a translation which happens to be in a language in which Carla is very fluent. Carla is a translator herself, fluent in a number of languages, and familiar with the subtle problems of translation. She read the translation, and she saw that although most of the translation was true to what had actually been said, when it came to things where I have a tendency to say, for instance, "you" rather than "True Self," it presented several problems. I am much more likely, for instance, to say just "you" instead of "True Self" or some other spiritually congruent term because you are what I am always really talking about. I am not talking about "True Self," I am not talking about something for you to become, for you to get, or for you to understand. I am just talking about you, just you, simply you.

Spiritual understanding is fine, religion is fine, psychotherapy is fine, meditative practice, yoga, all that stuff is really wonderful and can be quite helpful. But if you want to be done with this existential fear that you are at stake here, that you are in danger here, that you have to be really careful, that you have got to somehow become something that will save you, something that is good and true and clear and not confused, and that you have to become some identity, it will not be of any help to you. Of course, we fail to attain our goal, because identities are so slippery, they don't stay put for us, they are shifting and changing all along, which is why this urgent need to develop one is never satisfied. The other reason it is never satisfied is that the urgent need is arising from you, who are identity itself.

This life just as it is — in its actual, unfolding, ever-changing, shifting, moving, chaotic craziness almost — is itself what you have been seeking all along. These lives are not dangerous, they are what we want. They are the capacity that arises within consciousness to look at itself. That is what these lives are, that is what this creation is. So, if you want to be free, absolutely, once and for all, with no drama, with no big deal about it, with no becoming God-like about it, if you want to be free, once and for all, from the endless misery of trying to become something that you are not, or trying to fix what you imagine yourself to be, there is one thing you can do. It really is obvious; it doesn't take a Buddha to see it: look at yourself.

If the issue is that you are in danger, look at yourself. That is what I tell you. That is what I tell everybody I meet with: Look at yourself. Yes, of course, you have come here through some strange confluence of spiritual understanding and spiritual practice. That is all okay but, right now, just look at yourself. Just that. None of the rest of this has anything to do with anything, except entertainment. Look at yourself.

So, I say "you." I don't say "True Self." I say what I say, and it doesn't very often conform to spiritual understanding and spiritual ideas. All of the spiritual understanding is commentary about you. We don't need to talk about the spiritual understanding, because the spiritual understanding itself is just talking about you. So, we can just talk about you. Anyway, I tend not to speak in those terms — "Self," and "Buddha mind" and "consciousness," "awareness,"  "emptiness," "sunyata," "satori," "non-duality," any of that — because you are what is non-dual. You are that. That is the most concise statement that could be made about you: you are that. You are that non-duality; you are that source of creation. So, I talk about you.

Well, in the course of the translation, instead of just simply translating what I say, like "you," the person who is doing the translation either put the word within parentheses, or between quotation marks, or completely rewrote the whole thing, so that now I am talking to your "True Self." This is really not an accurate rendering of the actual discordance between the person's attempt to translate and the actuality of what was said, but it captures the essence of it. Instead of translating it as "you," or whatever is the second person personal pronoun in the language in which we are being translated, the person chooses to use expressions such as your "True Self," "awareness," "your true nature," etc.

The appearance of these translations is a gift of immeasurable value, because I want to talk to everybody, I really do. But as Carla and I were discussing this strange tendency that we see a lot, it struck me that this is crazy talk. This is a mental illness, it really is. A mental illness that makes it impossible for those afflicted with it to refrain from trying to make congruent what is at the heart of what I am offering and the whole realm of spiritual discourse up until now. The only thing that is congruent between what I speak about and the whole realm of spiritual discourse up until now is you. You are what it is all about. You are what all the discussions are about; you are what all the non-dual philosophy is about. You are what everything is about.

Of course, the source and the origin of the mental illness that is the attachment to spiritual understanding is the core craziness that afflicts us, the primal illness, the primal disease that afflicts us, which is this urgent certainty that is never examined, named, and is never talked about. Have you ever noticed that? The nature of the disease is never talked about. The only thing that is talked about is the result of the cure: non-dual understanding, peace, emptiness, open-heartedness, generosity, compassion. But the source of this, the beginning of it, and what gives rise to it is precisely, in the very first instant of the birth of the personal consciousness, the overwhelming, chaotic madness that seems to be all there is, as consciousness awakens to itself. In that moment, what we are confronted with is a maelstrom, a wild hurricane storm of movement, and energy, and hunger, and thirst, and satisfaction, and pleasure, and sensation of every kind imaginable, none of which has been catalogued, identified, none of which I know anything about, except that it is powerful. In that moment, arises what seems to be the obvious conclusion that I am in danger here. I don't know what I am, but I'm in deep danger here. I am at stake here, and I have to become something that will keep me safe. Later, that becomes more sophisticated, and I look to become something that will give me pleasure, or satisfaction, or fulfillment, or redemption, as I find more advanced escape routes over time.

But it is that first instant, that first moment of the arising of personal consciousness — the arising of me, of you — that the seed of that inescapable conclusion is planted in the heart of our mind: I am at stake here, I am at risk here. There is something terribly wrong; something really needs to be done here. We manage to survive those first moments of terror and madness and, as we grow, our understanding and enumeration of the things that will bring us satisfaction or freedom from fear become more sophisticated, more complicated, more complex, more able to contain the continuing wildness of life, the wildness of this creation. And as we go through life, we lurch from one thing to another. We go from trying to find peace, escape, freedom, liberation, sex, drugs and rock and roll, to children, family, marriage, job, money, understanding, education, psychotherapy, to finally religion, and then, oh my God, enlightenment!

All of that is driven by the same seed of mental illness, which is the cause of all the problem. And since the whole apparatus of spiritual understanding itself is a subset of the apparatus of personality, of persona, of a me, which itself is the strategy that we have settled upon by default as an attempt to protect ourselves and get something good out of life, since that cloud of mental illness is itself the blind effort to deal with the problem, nothing we do within that realm is going to be helpful at all. No amount of understanding will help you. I am sure everyone in this room has had the experience of profound understanding that was too profound to articulate. An experience of profound insight that was too powerful even to articulate. But then, that went. The sensations and the experiences that attended the dawning of understanding go. The sensations, and the great pleasure that comes with the arising of mute insight, they all go. And we are back where we were to begin with, still trying to do something, now trying to become enlightened, looking for a new identity to take on, a new identity to understand and work on, and shore up, and find what to do to make it happen and to make it stay. It is a new form of the mental illness, a new face to it.

But, if it's true, and it seems to me to be self-evidently true, that the real problem has nothing whatsoever to do with the symptoms of the problem, which are attachment, craving, clinging, resistance, aggression, hatred, and all of that, nothing we do about treating the symptoms or trying to make our minds better, or sweeter, or more conducive to receiving truth and beauty can be of any help to us. This is just rearranging the furniture, making things pretty. There is nothing wrong with that, but it can't deal with the underlying heart of the experience of human life as being essentially off. Sometimes really off, sometimes not so far off, but essentially off-kilter.

By the way, that moment is the sudden awakening that we seem to seek. That is the sudden awakening. That is the reason why the searching after awakening must fail, because the awakening is in the past. Thatawakening of personal consciousness is not guided by some benevolent entity, or even a malevolent entity. It is not guided by any entity at all. It is the natural impossibility within reality for it not to look at itself. That is all there is to it, and creation comes out of that. It is guided by nothing. It's guided by you, in the end. But if it's true that, in that moment of the awakening of personal consciousness, that rotten seed of the conviction that I am in danger here is planted and never looked at, never examined, never even considered, then it must be true that the only way to be finished with this horror story is to look at yourself, to see what you are.

You can actually start out trying to see what you are, but you already know what you are. The point is to look at you, just to look. It is much less than anything you can imagine. Just to look. This looking will likely produce no immediate good effect. It is not like doing dope or drinking, and it is not like the satori that comes in certain practices. It has no real effect at all. How could it? There is never a moment when you are not here, and there is never a moment when you are not seeing yourself, so the looking at yourself is unremarked as anything happening whatsoever.

This is not a matter of theory. This is not a matter of, well, it makes such sense that you have to do it, because it is so intelligent and so well thought-out. The only thing that recommends it is the fact that it works. I got a letter from a man the other day, and he started out telling me how "the vichara is just not working for me." He explained to me what it was that he was doing, and how his life was and, as he continued to write, he found himself writing how wonderful his life had revealed to be, and how really sweet things are, and how he has lost all real fearfulness, unhappiness, and addiction to spiritual understanding, and life is just really wonderful. He ended by saying something to the effect of "Wow! Look at this. I started out telling you how it wasn't working and it turns out it has done its job."

I get a lot of emails over time, from people who pretty much say the same thing as this gentleman said, except without having the delight of revealing to himself, in the course of complaining, that life has changed for him. But I get a lot of emails from people who are persuaded, just absolutely convinced that nothing that they are doing in the way of looking at themselves is having any effect whatsoever. Life is miserable, thoughts are bad, the experiences are bad, and I still don't know what I am... Which of course is absurd, right? How can you not know what you are? I still do not know what I am, I still do not this, I still do not that... There are still a few hanging that have not fallen yet, but those who have fallen, without exception, come to the point where they write to me and they say, "Wow, you were right! You were right!" It works. Pragmatism alone is what recommends this, nothing else.

Here is what there is to it: You look at yourself. You are here. You have never been absent; you are the background of all of it. You have never changed, you have never moved, you are what you have always been, there is not a moment that you do not see yourself, not a moment. All that is required is that, just for one second, you look at yourself, without anything. Just look at yourself. And if you cannot imagine what it is that I'm asking you to do, if it is incomprehensible to you how such a thing could be done, much less what effect it would have, try it. In retrospect, you will see how silly that is. Keep in mind that I am talking about you, I am not talking about your "true self," and I am not talking about your "God nature," or your "Buddha nature." I am not talking about emptiness, I am not talking about awareness, I am not talking about any of that. I am talking about you. Keep in mind that what I am asking you to look at is just you. You have to try it. If you try, you will succeed. You will succeed long before you know you have succeeded, and misery will be gone before you know it, literally.

My view is that the attachment to spiritual understanding is mental illness, but so too is the effort to rid yourself of the attachment to spiritual understanding. It is the same mental illness. It would be useful for us to think of it as mental illness rather than as all the other good things we think about it. It can't hurt, right? It doesn't diminish it. It is what it is, as they say.

I am not unfamiliar with the allure of spiritual discourse. I have spent quite a bit of time reading everything that I could get my hands on, speaking to anybody who would stop long enough to listen to me. This was, of course, in federal prison, so there were not many opportunities to talk about it. But I spent that time reading everything, thinking about everything, writing long pieces of my contribution to the spiritual universe. So, it's not that I am unfamiliar with its lure, its richness, its sweetness, and sophistication. It is just fantastically beautiful. But so is music. Neither music nor spiritual discourse is of any use in the fundamental issue of human existence, which is this feeling that we are trapped and in danger here. Like music, spiritual discourse gives us a period of enjoyment, pleasure, and then it goes. And you remain, as you have always been.

It seems like this fear we are talking about, and feeling that we are at stake rose out of something that seems to be inbred, something that we can't escape, which is something I call the survival instinct.

Yes, but what you call the survival instinct is exactly what I'm speaking of when I speak of that instantaneous appearance of the conviction that I am at stake and in danger here. Yes, that is right, that is the same thing. You call it survival instinct, I choose not to call it survival instinct because everybody knows what survival instinct is. We have already dispatched that, we have already dealt with that.

But isn't that inbred, something you just can't do anything about?

Look at you. Look at yourself. Are you afflicted with the survival instinct? Just look and see.

I think if I was in danger, if there was like a big animal coming at me, the survival instinct would kick in like that...

Yes, but that is different, that is not what I am talking about. And that's why I don't use that word. That is a natural feature of embodiment. That is not what we are trying to get rid of.

Fight or flight...

That is not what we are trying to get rid of. Choose well, flight or flight. I mean, you know it is not that. It is not fear that arises as a rational and sane response to imminent danger.

So all this is not coming out of the survival instinct? Where is it coming from?

You. Where else would it come from?

Why would I choose that?

You don't choose it. How would you choose it? Did you choose to take birth?

No, and I did not choose to have the fight for survival instinct. I did not choose any of it. I did not choose to feel like I am at stake in this life, either.

Of course, you did not. That is what I am telling you.

So, it's coming out of me, but I didn't choose it.

No, you did not choose it. You do not choose anything. You are the creator.

I created it, but I did not choose it.

That is right. The thing to see here is that it is so difficult to escape from, or to move away from the conviction that we have within ourselves that these persons are actors, and doers, and the deciders of things, and the choosers of things, and so forth. And I don't see any reason why we need to talk ourselves out of that anyway, because in our day-to-day life it sure seems like we are the doers and the choosers. That's fine, it doesn't cause any trouble. The only place it causes trouble is when it colors our view of everything, so that it becomes very hard for us even to imagine just arriving. You know, just arriving. No idea even that there is any such thing as me, much less that there is anything for me to choose, or anything for me to become. So the question, "Did I choose to take on this fear or did I not choose to take on this fear?" is completely irrelevant. The whole idea of choice is irrelevant in the moment of the awakening of consciousness. Where is there anything to talk about choice or no choice?

No, I don't see any choice.

It is just this, "Ah! Oh, my God! Oh! Oh!" And a totally automatic inward turning, contraction, totally faced with this wildness.

Let me go back to sleep...

You cannot go back to sleep now. It is too late for you. Once you look at yourself, you are done. It is much more useful to look upon these matters as being the result of the blind, evolutionary forces than it is to look upon them as something that somebody is directing, or doing, or bringing into being, because that is much closer to the mark, really. Consciousness comes. Who creates it? What use is it to ask that question? Consciousness comes. Here I am and here is all this wildness. That is not the survival instinct; the survival instinct is something that we learn as time goes on, and it has to do with the body. It does not have anything to do with this existential fearfulness and anxiety, this existential uncertainty and the need for an identity. It has nothing to do with that. If a car comes bearing down at you, for God's sake, get out of the way! I guarantee you, the body's going to make you get out of the way. But that is not what I am talking about.

I am talking about this underlying, nagging, ever-present, sometimes big, sometimes little, sometimes just a murmur of energy that says, Watch out! What is that? What is that thought? Is that a good thought or a bad thought? Is that a good feeling or bad feeling? Is that pleasure or pain? Is that me or something else? Is that something I need to change about myself? Is that something I need to become? Is that something I need to get rid of? That whole process seems to be automatic because we have become so habituated with it, but it really is not. It is the result of this seed that is planted in the moment of your consciousness awakening.

This is the only solution, because we are down to the final straw. There is nowhere to go after this. Once you see that the only thing that really matters is to look at you, there is no place to go after that. If I look at me, and I discover me to be a whimpering, fearful, vulnerable, frail creature whose life will end and who will never get what it wants, then I can never be comforted again with hymns, sutras, and shastras, and with sweet talk about eternal awareness. That is all gone now. Therefore, you can see why it might be difficult for it to occur to us that, Wait a minute. First, before I start worrying about what I should do about this, what I should do about that, what I should have, and what I should get rid of, let me look at me, the one who is doing, and getting, and getting rid of. The reason it does not occur to us, I suspect, is the fact that it really is end of the line. There is no place to go from here. Once you get here, the rest of it is not going to work for you.

Also, you say that looking at you is just so simple, because you know who you are, and yet I'm having a little trouble with that.

Well, are you? What are the symptoms of the trouble?

Who am I? Who am I looking at when I say "I?"

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter? We are not talking about the body or the mind or any of that, right?

No, the question, Who am I? has no value except to point your attention in the right direction. That is the only value it has, and then it can be discarded. It is the looking that counts.

I am trying to look at me...

You are looking at you. I have known you for what, two years now? Something like that. I remember you all this time... And you are doing it.

I just get lost sometimes. I do it, I get lost, I do it, and I get lost.

You do not get lost. But it is okay if you get lost, right? That does not hurt anything, and you can see that, too.

I start saying, Who is this me that I'm looking at?

That is the mental illness kicking in... (Laughs) You know, its okay, and it will go away. You will lose interest in it after some time. This is why it is so difficult to talk about, because on past occasions I have said, Find out what you are, and things like that, but the only purpose in saying that is to persuade you to move your attention in the right direction. It does not matter if the particular things that I say in order to get the attention moved there are beside the point.

You must see that the idea that you do not know what you are is itself an absurdity. It is absurd! Of course, you know what you are. How could you not? It is impossible for you not to know what you are. What is possible, and what is the case, is that we do not know what that knowing feels like. We think knowing feels like something else. We are unfamiliar with the ever-present reality of the irreducible knowing of what we are. And what happens, as you look at yourself, is that the need to translate that direct knowing that is ever-present into some object of knowledge, well, you just lose interest in it. Really, you just lose interest in it. It is not that it is bad, or sinful, or it is going to hurt you or anything, it is just not interesting anymore. And what is interesting is life. What is interesting is what is here, now. That is what is interesting and it has always been what is interesting. The things that we have felt to be in the way of our getting to the things that we really want are the things that we really want: the breath, the feel of the cool air...

You are talking about present awareness? I have heard that mentioned quite a bit...

I do not use words like that.

I don't hear you say "present awareness."

It is you. It really does not need to be contained within a concept. There is nothing wrong with trying to get concepts, but you cannot be contained in a concept, you are too simple for that. A concept is bigger, it is more complicated. A concept is after you, it is above you, it is outside. It is just commentary. It's not bad, but it doesn't have anything to do with this permanent knowing that is here, and the permanent awareness of this unfolding creation that is all there is for you here. That is all. And the commentary on it, Oh, that's cold, that's hot, that's this and that... Well, that's all very useful and valuable in day-to-day life, but it in no way enhances the direct looking at things. In fact, if anything, it gets in the way. The only thing you can do is look. Really, that is all you can do. That is all we all can do: look. We imagine that we can make things happen, and bring things into existence, and make things go away, but all we are doing is looking at these attempts to make things happen and to make things go away. There is nothing to you but looking, and I ask you to look at you.

I read a quote from Nisargadatta the other day. I like the Niz, he's great, he's pretty cool, you know. He had a couple issues, like smoking himself to death, and stuff like that. But one thing that he shares with Ramana, which is actually quite wonderful, is that neither Nisargadatta nor Ramana are beholden to any spiritual tradition.

Nisargadatta, because his teacher told him to hold onto the "I am" and then dropped dead. So, there was never the opportunity to indoctrinate him into all the meanings of "holding onto the I am" and what the "I am" is, and all of that. Nisargadatta was on his own in trying to look at himself. Ramana, too, was beholden to no spiritual tradition because he was a kid when this thing just hit him. And then he tried to understand it, of course, that's what he did for those twelve years, he was trying to understand it. And then, he tried to pass it on to us.

But there was this quote from the Niz that I read the other day, and I thought it was really very cool, and then I heard a very similar thing on Twin Peaks the other night... We just discovered Twin Peaks and we are blown away by it. Nisargadatta said, "The one who fears time is the prey of time. For the one with no fear of time, time is his prey." What we eat, what nourishes us, what fulfils us, what satisfies us, is looking at this unfolding magnificence of time. And in the absence of the fear, the looking at this unfolding magnificence is not hurried, or truncated, or packed into a bottle, or packed into an idea. It is just this open-mouth, agape looking at the splendor, feeding on creation.

The Twin Peaks quote was the Log Lady talking about the pitch that she chews. She said she chews pine pitch, and she talked about how some of the pitch isn't so good, it doesn't have the right texture, it's too runny, it just doesn't have the right texture. And some of the pitch is too dry, and too hard, and it just doesn't work right. But if you get the right pitch, and it's just the right chewiness, and it has the right texture and the right crunchiness to it, that's the pitch you want to chew. I cannot possibly explain to you what the link between the Nisargadatta quote and the Log Lady quote is, but if you see it, you see it. Anybody else?

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I wanted to thank you. What you said today is a confirmation for me, because I have been seeing that in the effort to relieve the anxiety and the fear of survival reaching for spiritual writings, spiritual tapes, the whole thing has not done it. So, I'm face to face with myself, because there is nowhere to go. I mean, this is the end of the road, so to speak. So I am seeing that and, at the same time, when you say things are what we want, then I have this question, Why is there the appearance of resistance?

We are afraid that we are at stake here; therefore, there must be resistance to everything that arises. There must be some initial resistance to everything, in order that we can examine it, and determine whether it is good or bad, whether it is going to help me or hurt me, or not do anything to me at all. Then, resistance can become attachment, and I discover this is something that I should be, and this is something that should be here, or it can become aggression, when I discover something I shouldn't be or shouldn't be here. But, you see, all of that is psychological.

The fact is that even the fearfulness itself is not what it seems. We relate to it in that way because of that first moment of shock and panic. And right from that instant, prior to having any understanding whatsoever or even any life experience, we are expected (by ourselves) to understand and define what is good and what is bad. In this, certain sensations come to be identified with certain bad things, and some of them come to be identified with certain good things, and the only reason that occurs is because we survive. And we automatically conclude that our opinions about this were right, because I'm still here. I am going to stick with that, and that is the way it is.

But even the fearfulness and anxiety itself is just sensation. Our response to it is the result of that first moment of shock, but the arising itself is just sensation. It is really the life force. The whole fearfulness and anxiety is just the life force. It is just sensation and, in the absence of this underlying, unexamined, mute belief that I am at stake and in danger here, and I need to become something that's safe, I need to figure out what I am, even these energetic arisings that we have thought to be driving us, like the whip that drives us to get right, to get real, to get false, to get whatever, even that reveals itself to be our food. They are just something to look at. That is all. The impulse to rid ourselves of it is gone. It is not like an awakening, an attainment of some god-like state or some god-like samadhi, or anything like that. It is just gone. That is why the Buddha called it a "snuffing out." The Buddha never spoke of it in those dramatic terms. Nirvana means, "to snuff out." It is just snuffing out that false belief, and since the belief itself is inconsequential and immaterial, and it does not even have an intellectual conscious component to it, when it's gone, it's just gone! It is just a remainderless disappearance. That's why sometimes we don't even notice it is gone for quite some time. But it's just you, here, just you, looking, looking, looking at everything, and less invested, less energetically entangled with the unfolding of things.

I heard you say, or I read something that you had said in one of your responses to emails, that once you see yourself, it becomes automatic. Is that correct? There is no getting away from it?

That is my experience, and that is the experience of many people who have written to me about it. Carla and I have been in this work for about ten years now, and in those ten years, I have been wrestling with this same personal apparatus here, and the same confusion, and misunderstanding, and difficulty in articulating anything true, as anybody else has. Over ten years, I have been trying to say clearly and without ornamentation what it is that I see, and as a result of that attempt and the result of the contribution that I get in speaking with you, I get better at it. You instruct me, you are my teachers in this work. You are the ones that show me whether I am on track when I am speaking and whether you actually hear what I say, or I am saying something so far off the base that you cannot hear it.

So, over ten years, I've said a lot of things that I wouldn't say now. I started out not knowing any better, kind of beholden to the spiritual ideas, and wanting to be sure that what I said was in compliance with what everybody else had said from the beginning of time, giving it the same validity that everybody gives it. Since we have been doing it for five thousand years, there must be some value in it, right? Over time, that has fallen away, more and more. Until now, when I see it as being mental illness...

But here's what I see. And this is something that may not be of any use to anybody, because I'm afraid it's a commentary on reality, just like all the other commentaries on reality. The point of it is to give you a context in which to reflect upon the value and the usefulness, and the actual nature of the vichara in life. It is not in order to give an instruction as to how things actually are, because how things actually are is right here in front of us. There is no need to comment on it, there is no need to define it, describe it, and slice and dice it, because here it is. This story is kind of a narrative to give you a context for what is the actual experience of one who engages in the vichara for a very long period of time.

All of creation is the vichara. It is that upsurge, that upwelling of things, of sensations, and objects, and thoughts, and experiences. That ever-unfolding creation is the vichara. The only reason we talk about self-inquiry is because that is a translation, and I think not a very good one, of an ancient practice of the Aryans when they came into the north of India. That practice was called atma vichara. This has been translated as self-inquiry, but this expression does not translate the vichara at all. I have looked it up in Sanskrit dictionaries online, and most of them give you a list of synonyms in English. The Sanskrit word "vichara" has a very long list of synonyms, none of which has anything to do with one another, so the translation of vichara into English as the word "inquiry" obviously falls short of the actual sense of it in Sanskrit, when it was an actual language spoken by actual people. We can't know what it meant to them, but from my own experience in trying to do self-inquiry, and seeing that self-inquiry has nothing to do with inquiring about anything, and nothing to do with anything other than looking, it became really obvious to me that what is being referred to as the vichara is this creation, which arises out of the impossibility for reality not to look at itself. And I don't know how to say it any different than that. If I say any more than that, it is way too much.

The vichara is the looking upon reality by reality, so the vichara is the whole of creation. It is not a practice that we perform in order to free ourselves from the foolish idea that we are at stake or in danger here. It is the whole of creation. It is the nature of being to look at itself. That is what being does, it looks at itself. And in order for it to look at itself, there has to be stuff going on. Therefore, creation! So, to me, that's the vichara. And our conscious entry into the vichara is hampered and thwarted by our contraction around the idea that we are these fragile entities that are in danger and at risk here, and we don't really want to go there, because that's wildness. There are no laws in the vichara. I have seen that when I speak of the vichara, it is actually similar to what they used to speak of as the Tao, except with a certain wildness to it.

So, here's what happens: we construct this apparatus of a person that has all these characteristics to it, all these defensive points, and good points and bad points, and things that need to change, things that I need to get, things that I need to fix about myself, and that's endlessly morphing, and changing, and moving. But that's me, and I'm working on it, I'm working on it. I will get back with you when I get it all together. That's where we're looking, and that's what we're doing much more than looking. We are actually trying to do something about this that in itself is just formed by the context in which it arises.

Now, somebody comes along and says, Wait a minute. That is all okay, you know, keep looking at that, no harm in that, keep trying to fix that. I mean, if you can find some practice that rids you of negative thoughts, go for it. Or something that makes you love your neighbors, go for it! So, keep on doing what you're doing, don't stumble. But, just for a second, look at you. When you turn to look at you, you are looking at the vichara, you are looking at you, and then you turn away and back into, Oh, I don't know if I got that or not. What in the world does he mean by that? I don't know. Is that my true self? What is it? And then, off you are into the realm of mental illness, and narcissism, and all of that. But the time will come when the thought comes to you, "I'm here, let me look at myself." And then, you look at yourself.

Once that first, deliberate, conscious movement of your personal consciousness to look at the reality of you happens, it does not stop. I have said it before. I used to say it, but I don't say this so much anymore, because I have felt that the need for it has kind of passed, but I used to say, "Don't take this really seriously." Let me say it again, "Don't take this really seriously. Don't give up your day job for this." Just whenever it occurs to you to do so, look at yourself. Don't worry about the times when you don't look at yourself, just whenever it occurs to you to do so, look at yourself.

I know it will occur to you to do so, not because there is something you are learning, or you are getting clearer or understanding better, but just because once you look at yourself, you have to go back. And whatever is needed within the apparatus in order to make that occur will appear. It might be the thought, "Oh, I'm standing in the checkout line. Didn't John say to look at myself then?" And I look at myself. Whatever is needed will appear. The only confirming sign of the vichara is that it continues. So, yes, that's what I say. Does that answer that question? Is this not your experience? Don't you continue doing it?

Yes, I do. And it's becoming natural. Would that be a good word?

Yes, it is natural. Perfect word. It is natural. Yes. It is your natural state ...

So, it's natural to look at yourself.

That's the natural state that Ramana speaks of.

I have another question that pertains to the apparent making of choices, which is very tormenting at times. I see now it is the underlying belief that I am at stake, and if I do not make the right choice, I will be in big trouble. I will not have the outcome that I think I would like to have, so that is all connected...

It is all connected. But should the idea arise that I've got to stop thinking that I have a choice in these matters, that's just another component of the mental illness. It is just another attempt to fix yourself, you see? There is no need to concern yourself with these things. There is no need to concern yourself with choice and no choice, and any of that stuff. If you had choice, then choice would prevail. If there is no choice, then no choice is the way it is, and none of your agonizing about it is going to change it one way or the other. So, for as long as it feels like choice, choose, and choose well. My prediction is that you will lose interest in choice. That is my experience. You lose interest in this whole choice business, and then the distance between you and your life vanishes.

Yeah, it feels like that. I do not really want to make a choice. Why do I need to make a choice? Well, that was very clear and thank you again. That is very, very refreshing. Thank you.

Oh, you are very welcome. I am very happy to see you.

****

When you said, Look at yourself, what came up to me was like when I was little and I did something wrong, and my mother, or a teacher would say that. You know you are little and you are trying to figure out what that really means, and you think, Okay, I am looking, it must be something bad because you look at her face...

Yes, I know. I think of that every time I say, Just look at yourself! I realize that, and when I first started saying "Look at yourself," I chuckled often about how it must sound like I'm Mom or something, "Child, look at yourself! Get a grip!" And I kind of consciously decided not to do anything about that, because if it produces that little moment of thrill, if it produces a moment of disorientation, then it's a useful thing to say. You can look at yourself. You are here, you are never absent, and you are never missing. Look and see. If it sounds like that's not the case, then prove to yourself that that is not the case by looking at yourself. Look and see if you are ever absent. Look and see. You are here, you know that, right?

I know that, yeah ...

You know that you are, there is no doubt about that. If you look, you can see that is the only thing that you are certain of. There is nothing else that has the certainty that your own existence has. Everything else is conditional. Look at that. Look at that certainty. See if you can see what that certainty feels like. But if you just set out with the determination to look at yourself, you will succeed, I promise.

Even if you don't know how.

You cannot know how. Nobody knows how. And those for whom the misery has departed can't tell you how, either. I embarked upon this adventure of the vichara with the worst understandings, the worst misunderstandings, the worst certainties, the worst convictions as to what I was looking for. They far exceed anything you could possibly imagine in the depths of their stupidity. And it didn't matter because if your intent is to see you, to look at you, it can't be denied. That is a promise. It may not seem that way, but it is a promise.

Thank you very much. I really mean it when I say to you that you are my teachers in this work. You are the ones that teach me how to speak about this effectively enough to penetrate the cloud of mental illness that is our nature. Thank you so much. I will see you when I see you, and please stay in touch with me. I love you all.

© 2008 John Sherman. Some rights reserved.

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