Well, hello and welcome.  I would say good afternoon, but I think it is only good afternoon here in Ojai, and probably not for most of you.  But I'm happy to see you all here and I'm happy to be here with you.  So, let me begin.  

I have come to see that in these meetings — especially in these meetings where there is  a mixture of people, some of whom have been with me before and some of whom have not — that I pretty much always start at the beginning.  Sometimes I try to make it sound different.  I try to be less boring by making it sound a little different, but really, I always start at the beginning.

I come to speak about self-inquiry.  The reason I come to speak about self-inquiry is because, in my experience, the self-inquiry of Ramana Maharshi finishes the misery of human life.  It finishes the sense of being alienated from life; it finishes the sense of wanting and not getting — the sense of something at stake, the sense of life being deadly serious and miserable.  

So, I come here to speak about self-inquiry, and I have come to the point where I always begin with the lie, because the lie is the only problem.  The underlying message of pretty much all spiritual practice and spiritual tradition in the world is that we are not what we think we are, and that the misunderstanding as to what we are lies at the heart of all the sense that there is a problem here, that there is a problem in my life.  So, I begin with the lie.  It is important that we see that what is claimed, what must be true in order for self-inquiry to be what it is supposed to be, in order for self-inquiry to be true, then it must be true that the problem (the lie) has to go. And the lie is the belief that I am my life.  It really is that simple.

There is within us all a deep-seated, unseen, unconscious, unseeable, driving belief that "I am my life"; that what happens in my life, happens to me and what becomes of my life, becomes of me.   That the pleasure and the pain in my life are my pleasure and pain and, most fundamentally, that I am at stake in this life.   And that I have to get this life right; I have to have the right thoughts, and not the wrong thoughts; the right desires, and not the wrong desires.  I have to be good and not bad, I have to be smart, I have to be clear, I have to understand all.  I am at stake here, and whatever happens in this life happens to me.  That is the belief that "I am my life". And if it is true that I am my life, then it certainly is true that there is nothing whatsoever that can be done about easing my pain.  If I am my life, nothing whatsoever can be done about the underlying, ever-present sense that something is missing.  But the claim of all spiritual traditions — and most particularly, simply and directly, the teaching of Ramana Maharshi — is that I am not my life and that if I can rid myself of the belief that "I am my life", the inherent, underlying peace and love will prevail.

So, Ramana tells us that the solution to the lie, the solution to the belief that I am my life, is the truth.  The truth of what I am, that is what solves the lie.  The truth solves the lie.  And it is this that underlies the whole of Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry. Ramana Maharshi tells us that what self-inquiry accomplishes is to rid ourselves of the lie that we are our life, and that it is infallible in doing so.  It is the only thing that can do that, to find out the truth of what I am.  And Ramana offers us what seems to be two ways of approaching this self-inquiry.  One way is to inquire, that is to investigate, to use my conscious attention to look at, taste, feel, face, first of all, the nature of what this is that I believe myself to be — what is at the center, at the core of this person, this individual who is the life that is playing out in this mind?  What is the heart of me, really?  What is this me, really? And Ramana advises us that, in all cases, whenever anything is happening, whenever any thought is appearing or disappearing, whenever any experience is appearing or disappearing, always there is this person (this me) and it is always possible for me to turn the light of my attention onto this experience of being an individual, a person subject to the vicissitudes of life, subject to the changes, the pleasures and pains of life.  We can turn and place the light of our attention on the experience of being this me and see what it is.  And upon success in finding this experience of being me with the light of my attention, always I discover that there is no such thing to be found — it is fictional, it is a thought only. And when I shine the light of my attention on it, that thought, that experience of being me reveals itself to nothing at all; it disappears, it vanishes.  That is the one way in which self-inquiry is taught by Ramana Maharshi.  It is the inquiry into and the discovery of the actual nature of this that I believe myself to be, and seeing it to be nothing, to be freed of the idea that it is me.

The other seemingly different approach to self-inquiry, which also comes from Ramana Maharshi, is instead of revealing the underlying falseness of the individual I believe myself to be, to reveal the actual truth of what I am.  It is to turn the light of my attention not onto the false, but onto the real; to look with all my heart, with every breath, with every thought, to find some way to turn and find with the light of my consciousness, the actual reality of what I am.  Because if I look at the reality of what I am often enough, inevitability and surely, (without any question whatsoever), the idea that I am something else is gone.  It can't survive.  So, in this mode of self-inquiry, I turn my consciousness, my attention and the light of my awareness, as much as I can, looking for what I am.  Looking, thinking about it, really thinking about it.  Trying to figure out, how in the world can I get this experience of the reality of what I am?   And seeing that the one thing that characterizes reality is that it is permanent, it doesn't come and go, it is reliable.  So, that tells me that what I'm looking for, when I'm looking for reality, is permanence — it is something here that has never changed, that is always the same.  Something that is unaffected by pain or pleasure; that is exactly the same now, as it was when I was 3, or 5, or 15: untouched, unaffected by any of the comings and goings of human life.  Always the same — at peace, silent, clear.

It turns out, of course, that both of those modes of self-inquiry reveal themselves in the end to be exactly the same.  If I look at a phenomenon, a thought that I believe is me, that I believe is at the very center of this person that I know I am, if I look at that thought and it vanishes, what remains is what doesn't vanish — which is the same permanent reality that I find when I look with all my heart to find the actual reality of what I am directly.  So that, in looking for the false, I find the true, because the false disappears.  In looking for the false, I find the true, and in looking for the true, I find the true.  And it is this that produces the outcome of self-inquiry: it is not anything other than having had the direct, conscious experience of the reality of what I am.  And that erases the false, over time, and it matters not how I get there, by what means I come to see reality itself consciously.  It matters not whether I am looking for reality, or I am looking for the false.  If I get to the reality of what is here, that does the work.  Just that seeing of reality, again and again, over time, erodes away, evaporates, destroys, disintegrates the false belief that I am my life, my thoughts, my mind, my actions, my experiences.  That tasting of reality wipes away that belief.  It is the wiping away, the eradication of that belief that, along with it, eradicates this deep sense that I am at stake in this life, and that I am at risk, at danger of failing in this life.  Then, in the absence of the belief that I am the life, and that I am at stake in it, quite surprisingly, the outcome of that, the consequence of that is to discover myself relaxing back fully into the life itself — more intimately than I could ever imagine, falling into the life, dissolving into the life.  Because the problem is not the life, the problem is not the sense of separation; the problem is not the ups and downs and the vicissitudes, the comings and goings of the life.  The problem is the belief that I am the life.  The life itself is precious beyond comprehension.  It is a gift to myself that is greater than anything that can be imagined.  The life of humanity is magnificent beyond description, and it is seen to be so, once I give up the idea that it is me.

So, that is the purpose of self-inquiry.  Every time that I come and speak with people about this, I am really astonished that I can talk for so long, and at the end of it all, I know that I haven't in any way come close to what I am trying to say to you, because when I'm not talking about it, it seems to me to be so easy and so obvious.  It is so easy, I don't know how else to say it.  I know that there was a time when I was enjoying the spiritual melodrama, when I knew how hard it was, when I strained and tried with all my mind to take in, to receive, to be uplifted, transformed or overturned by whatever it was that the spiritual discussion was about, and I know it didn’t seem easy; it seemed incomprehensibly difficult.  I could not make sense of what anybody was saying about this.  And now, it’s so easy and it is so obvious: what you seek is what you are.  It is that simple.  What you seek has nothing whatsoever to do with doing anything at all about your life.  Nor does it have anything to do with being finished with doing anything at all about your life.  All of that is beside the point.  None of that has anything to do with you.  

In the end, I have come to see that the realization that is the outcome of self-inquiry is like termites eating away the structure of your house.  The inquiry, the constant tasting of the reality of what you are, even for a second, even if you don't know that is what you are doing, the little bits and pieces of touching reality are like termites in the structure of your house.  They are busily eating away everything, the whole structure, the whole foundation for the belief that you are a suffering individual.  They are eating it away.  You don't know what is going on; it seems like everything is still the same; it seems like you will forever be caught in this spiritual melodrama (or material melodrama) of wanting and not getting, until one day you look around and say, "Boy, it has been a long time since I have felt anything other than ease of being!" That is because the termites have done their work, unbeknownst to you, with no regard for you whatsoever.

Self-inquiry, truth, is all that can defeat the lie. Truth. And you are the truth.  You can't get away from the truth.  It is easy, so easy.  

Okay, I'm going to stop talking for now.  I will be happy to speak to any of you, to take your questions, your confusion or your disagreement, or whatever else you have to offer; I’d like to speak with you, so let us know if you want to speak.

Hi, John.

What can I do for you? It's good to hear from you.

Well, basically, what's going on for me (...) is that I have been inquiring even before I knew you, and the thing that is sort of exasperating for me, is that I don't have any sense of anything any different the whole time; no awareness is different, nothing like that. I just I'm not really sure where to go with that.  I have a lot of intellectual awareness, but no visceral sense of anything different than it has ever been, so I'd like you to address that.

What do you mean, "anything different than it ever been"? You're never going to be different than you've ever been. The life is different, right? It changes...

Yes, I know that.  I guess, for lack of a better word, and using the phrase you would use, I don't know the truth of what I am.

Well, you see, you do know the truth of what you are, but you don't know that you know, because you have not had the experience of knowing, and had it knowingly.

Right, so that's my exasperation:  I want to have the experience of knowing knowingly.

Well, you're here, right?

I am.

You know that, right?

Yes.

What does it feel like to know that?

Sort of empty.

The knowing that you are here is the knowing of reality.  That is precisely what you are: that knowing that you are here. There is nothing more to you than that.

Okay.

When we spend time in the spiritual arena (actually even before the spiritual arena — forget the spiritual arena), it is our nature, it is the nature of human beings to want something to be different than it is.  That is, if I think there is something that I can get that will solve my problems, then the solution to my problems is going to be a big hit; it will feel good, it will be something new and special.   And, of course, when we are involved in spiritual practice, it is natural that we would expect something new and special to be the outcome of our spiritual practice, if we're successful, because that seems to be what everybody is saying is the case.  But the fact of the matter is that if it is new and special, it can't be what you are looking for, because everything that is new and special becomes old and dead in time, and we know that.  So, what we are really looking for must be that which never changes, and that is you.  That is the only thing that is constant here, you, and that is this silent knowing that you are. Just that. It is not the energetic experience of "I am" or anything like that; that energetic experience is sometimes here, and sometimes it is not.  It is sometimes here, confirming my existence, and sometimes it just isn't.  But what is always here is the certainty that I am.  The absolute, uncompromising, unassailable certainty that I am here.  So, the point of self-inquiry is not to get something new, or even to make what is already universally present, universally present.   The purpose of self-inquiry is to erase the believe that I am this life, and the way in which it erases the belief is by the consistent, conscious experiencing, tasting, facing, looking at this knowing that I am, which is what you just did a moment ago.  That is self-inquiry.  And if you do that — if you taste that which you described to me as "kind of empty" knowing that I am here, that I exist, if you taste that often enough, the belief that you are the life will vanish; and this that you might call empty, peaceful, absolutely open vastness of reality, this silent reality that you already always know, you will always know you know.  Do you follow me?

Yeah, I do, John. You just clarified it.  I think you've always said it is really impossible to speak the truth, but I listen often enough, I pick up glimpses of what you're talking about.  And what I'm getting this time is that there is this recognition "I am here" and to keep my attention there whenever I can, and then just eventually the sense of "I am this life" will disappear.

That's right.  And the outcome of that is that that which you've been paying such close attention to, you will no longer be paying such close attention to.  And this subtle, silent reality, in which all of this happens, you will know that it is here always.  You will relax.  And you can relax into your life.

Okay.

Is that helpful?

Yeah. I am just pissed off that it hasn't happened sooner.

Well, you have to keep at it.  I don't know if you were with me when I spoke about this.  It's really a good thing to think of self-inquiry as medicine and not as any kind of spiritual endeavor.  Just as medicine.  Do you hear that?

I listened to that recording, and it makes sense to me.  Just trust the doctor and do it.

That's it.  That's it.

Thanks, Dr John. 

I'm very happy to hear from you. 

It's good to talk with you. Take care.

See you later.

We don't know what we are expecting, or we do have an idea of what we are expecting, and that may vary from person to person, but it always has something to do with everything being cleared up, with the life been transformed, transcended or fixed in some way, but that can only be useful to us if we are the life.  First, we have to find out what we are.

***

Hello?

Hi. Nice to talk with you.

Hi, John.

What can I do for you?  I read your e-mail the other day, and I was quite tickled at the idea of having Ramana's teaching translated into Irish, of all things.

I was joking... Nobody speaks Irish, so I think it would be a waste of time, to be honest.  Only 5,000 people or something speak it, and I don't think I can remember it from school anyway.  It's not going to happen.  I guess I just have a report for you, John.  I tried writing you e-mails a few times, but it just never seems to happen.  I still don't have anything to say to you, to be honest.  I came across your teaching maybe nine months ago, and some video maybe on YouTube, and I started listening to your podcasts.  Something you said about "you know you're here always, you know you've never changed", and I just started to laugh and it made sense to me!  I guess for a long time I've had an absolute drive in me just to know what I am, to be free of this (whatever it is).  Something in what you said, I just completely connected with it. I’ve done it.  And that's pretty much all I've been doing, I mean, I went to Asia, and just came back a few days ago.  I went there to meditate, and I spent a lot of time in different monasteries, and I just did what you told me to do.  I didn't even follow vipassana practices.  I gave it all up, and I just did that, and I can't really say anything other than that most of the old stuff is just gone, and I still couldn't tell you what I am or anything... It just feels better.  I'm sorry I can't put it in better words for you.

You're actually doing very well.  This is often a stumbling block for people in self-inquiry.  When I speak about the fact that we need to see what we are, with our lifetimes of habits in these matters, it is natural for us to think that what I am saying is that we need to be able to say what we are.  It is simply not possible to say what we are.  In fact, in my experience, the whole life is an attempt to say what we are.  You speak of being caught, held by a great, burning desire to know the truth of what you are for some time.  It is my experience that that is all we ever do in life, and for me — and maybe for a lot of other people — I didn't know that was what I was doing.  I thought I was trying to be good; I thought I was trying to do the right thing. I thought I was trying to figure out what I should be, and what I shouldn't be, what I should do and what I shouldn't do, and what I should get rid of, and what I should not get rid of and what I should think, and what I should not think, and so forth.  But all of that was driven by this underlying force of the life, which is the deep need to see myself directly, played out in indirect actions that cannot satisfy that desire to see myself directly.  And once where the gold is to be found is pointed out and heard, then it is to be expected that I would discover that this is what I've always been wanting, this is what I’ve always wanted to do, this is what I've always tried to do and this is what I have always failed to do.  And the truth is that everything is easier once you're rid of that lie.  Everything in life is easier, everything.  So I'm happy to hear from you, I am happy to hear your report. I think it was beautiful.

Thanks.  Just one other point.  Just listening back, I actually checked it a few days ago, because I knew I had heard you say this before.  You said that if you believe yourself to be anything at all, you will suffer. And for so long, doing this practice — I would spend hours and hours doing this, John and I still do this — but for some reason, it seems easier now, just more natural; I would just  look into space, looking for something, you know, as if expecting something to happen.  Trying to find something...  I only realized recently that ... It is hard to put in words... That is it, that space... 

That's right.  It's you, it's all you.  You know, the thing that makes self-inquiry infallible, and I am not exaggerating, you guys can all find out on your own if I'm telling a lie.  The only way you can find out if I'm telling a lie is to do this, which doesn't cost you anything, and doesn't cause you any trouble.  So do this, and find out if I'm telling a lie.  But I know that I fought mightily — even after I had finally heard Ramana pretty clearly — I fought mightily to understand, to see something, to get something.  But the beauty of self-inquiry, and the thing that makes it infallible, is that that doesn't matter.  If what you are trying to do is see yourself, everything works out in the end.  That's all that is needed, that you try with all your heart to see what you are, and you can't do it wrong and you can't do it right either.  You will surely, certainly not understand what it is you are seeing, and you will certainly be wrong about whatever you assign to it as a characteristic of what it is you are, but that doesn't matter, because every time you look at yourself directly, that is the medicine, and it starts eating away the lie.  And the lie gets eaten away even when we are totally unaware of what it is we are doing, as long as we are looking at our self, just trying to see our self, just wanting to know what is true here.  And the amazing thing is when people do this, when they really do this, they all report back in the same way, which is the same as my own experience with this.  Anyway, I am happy to hear from you.

Thank you so much, John.  I really appreciate everything you're doing, and the podcasts and everything.  Honest to God, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.

You're very welcome.  It is my pleasure.  Okay?

Thank you.  Cheers.

***

Hello, John.

Hello.  How are you?

Oh, well. I’m doing all right.  Good, good I can hear you well.

Okay, good.

I feel that I have a strong intellectual understanding of self-inquiry and of my true nature, but my difficulty is in my attempts to hold a focus on the sense of being here.  I know this has come up a number of times in satsang, about physical pain and chronic pain and things like that.  For me, there are some issues that can't be alleviated with medicines, so pain is a constant companion for me. I think in the last satsang, it was mentioned that pain is a way of pointing back to the self, but I didn't quite get that.  My experience is that pain draws attention to itself, and kind of away from the sense of being here, or perhaps it's the desire to escape that discomfort that results in my drifting off into not being present, and away from that sense of self.

Go on.

Well, I am just trying to look for and understanding all of this.  Ramana, I'm sure, in his last days was in a great deal of pain, yet it was said that he was deeply immersed in self-realization, and wasn't affected by it because of that.  So, I continually struggle with this issue.

Ramana was in great pain during the time of his illness, which led up to his death.  First of all, I would advise everybody to take with a grain of salt all the descriptions of the states of others as being "immersed in bliss" and so forth.  There is no basis for that.  The truth is that we are all immersed in bliss always, and this is what Ramana said again, and again.  And even immersed in bliss or immersed in realization as we always are, pain still is pain, and as the Buddha said, "is inherently unpleasant"...

We should take with a grain of salt reports from observers about the states of people like Ramana, their effort to explain them, saying that they are immersed in realization, or they are immersed in bliss, or any of that is.  The fact is that we are all immersed in bliss and realization, from the very beginning.  There is never a time when we are not that, and pain remains inherently unpleasant. 

Ramana never claimed to be indifferent to pain in the body.  Once, when he was bitten by bees, or something, hornets, or some wicked insects, Ramana explained that it was karma, and that people should just leave him alone, because obviously the leg that they were chewing on had it coming.  But he never claimed to be distanced or dissociated from pain, or from his life, for that matter. All of the reports of being immersed in self-realization come from on-lookers.  It was Ramana's consistent claim that all are immersed in bliss and realization.

You started by telling me about the difficulty of holding your focus on the experience of being here, present, and so forth.  The truth is that it is impossible to hold your focus on that, and it doesn’t matter.  The point of self-inquiry is not to get you to where you are constantly focusing on the reality of what you are, but to get you to the point where you recognize what the reality of what you are feels like, so you can notice that you are always aware of it.  Just so you know what it is that you are always aware of, so you can say, "Oh, that! That! Just that!"

As far as the role of pain, the thing about pain is this: if there is anything that can be done about pain, there is no sense whatsoever in enduring pain, if it can be dealt with.  Some pain cannot.  Some bodily pain is chronic, and nothing can be done about it, and it does very much call attention to itself — there is no doubt about that.  It is a strong magnet for attention.  Attention wants to keep an eye on it, and make sure that it is...  But without denying that, the strength of the experience of pain is the same as the strength of the experience of the subject of the pain, so that the fact that the experience of pain is strong implies that the experience of the subject is also strong, so that you have the opportunity... Again, it is not going to happen that you are constantly going to have your attention focused on reality, but the fact that pain is so strong (and creates such a powerful experience of being afflicted by it) creates also the opportunity of, just for a second, turning your attention away from the pain and toward to the feeler of the pain and find out what that is.  And that will be discovered that the one who is subject to the pain is inexistent, and that what remains is reality.  Then, of course, the energy, the power of attention will immediately reconstitute itself to hold the pain in its eye, and that's okay.

As far as self-inquiry is concerned, the time that is spent not looking at reality is beside the point, it has no consequence.  It doesn't stop you from seeing truth.  The only time that has any consequence is the time (whether it be seconds, minutes, hours, days, or whatever) that you spend actually looking at reality.  That's the only time that counts.  The rest of it doesn't affect you at all.  The fact that you’re caught by pain and can't get your mind off of it, that doesn't touch you at all.  Really.  Just stay with the inquiry. Look whenever you get the chance; whenever any circumstances arise that encourage you to look for this silent reality of what you are, in order that you can recognize that you always see it.  And everything will come out right.  But the pain won't go away because of it.  Pain may go away for other reasons, but not because of self-inquiry.  The pain that self-inquiry eliminates is the pain of the belief that "I am this life and everything that happens in it, happens to me."

That is very helpful, and it reinforces something that I've been noticing, as well.  I'll come to a point where I realize that I was away somewhere in my mind, and I bring my attention back to the sense of being here, and I realize at that moment, that I was not absent during those times when I thought I was absent.

Yes that's right.  That's exactly it.

And that's becoming more and clear to me.

The fact that this is becoming clearer to you is because of self-inquiry.  You see, the clarity kind of sneaks up on you.  It's not like a thunderbolt; it's not like a lightning strike.  The clarity sneaks up on you, because the clarity is always here.  All that happens is that, more and more, you see what is always here.  Okay?

Right, that makes perfect sense.  Thank you so much, it's just such a wonderful opportunity to be able to speak which you directly about this, so thank you.

I am very happy; you're very welcome.  Thank you.

***

Hello?

There you are!

Sorry, I had something wrong with my mike.  But now it's okay right? Do you hear me?

It's perfect, perfect.

So, I just wanted to say that we spoke two weeks ago, and you pointed to me that whenever I'm asking myself "who am I?", or whenever I am concentrating on the "I am", basically there is a division in me, and I cannot be this "I am."

What?  Could you repeat that, please?

I'm sorry my English is kind of bad.

It's okay. 

For a long time, I thought that this "I am" is something different, that it is real somehow, that when I concentrate on...  I can hear myself, I don’t know why...

It doesn’t matter.

No, it is okay. I think I've forgotten what I wanted to say, really.

Well, you were talking about the fact that we spoke before and when we spoke before, you expressed the idea that the experience of "I am" was reality and it was permanent, and I suggested to you that that might not be the case.  Is that right?

Yes.

And what was the outcome of that?

I thought that I was concentrating on this "I am" and I thought that this "I am" was real that is was something, and you said that whenever I am concentrating on it, it cannot be me.

Yes right, right.  I remember.

And I think that had been something for me, because I really thought that this is the end, I kind of identified with it and...

And what is your experience now?

I don't know. I think I lost it somehow; even this "I am", that I am this "I am".

Is that a bad thing?

No, no, actually it feels better now.

Well, I am tickled pink about that.  I don't know, well, that's an old expression... But I am very happy to hear that. And you continue the inquiry, right?

Yeah, but for most of the time, when I do the inquiry, I feel like a person is disappearing, rather than that I am seeing something.  There is something like space that is left.

That's you.  Not space, something like space.  It is awareness, really.  It is the subtlety and the inexpressibility of reality that has given work to an awful lot of sutra writers, sermonizers, and stuff like that, trying to say something true about what is true.  And is that that produces the idea that it is emptiness, and that that produces all kinds of ideas, but it is you.  And it is really absolutely unnecessary to have any intellectual understanding of it.  Thank God, because any intellectual understanding of you is impossible.  But it's like space, silent...

(The meeting was interrupted at this point, because the connection was very bad.)

© 2007 John Sherman. Some rights reserved.

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