Transcriptions of Meetings with John Sherman

"Self-inquiry will not make of you anything that you are not already, but it will, over time, destroy the false belief that you are at the mercy of this body, this mind, this story, this life. That false belief is the root cause of all human suffering whatsoever." John Sherman

A Meeting in Ojai, California - February 10, 2007

Save the World

It's just kind of amazing to me. I have been doing this now for going on 8 years, and still, every time I open my eyes, I have no idea what I am going to say to you. It comes as much of a surprise to me as it does to you. If it comes as a surprise to you at all, it is as big a surprise to me. Satsang is an amazing phenomenon. I know that, in the beginning, when I was in prison and I first met Gangaji, I had all kinds of highfalutin ideas about what satsang might be. Then, when I first got out of prison and started attending satsang, I retained those highfalutin, weird ideas of what was going on in satsang. I thought that it was some kind of an event in which somebody who had attained what I wanted sat with us and maybe, if I were lucky, some overflow of grace might jump out on me. It never occurred to me that satsang was a conversation, a give-and-take between the one sitting up on the chair and the ones sitting on the floor. It never occurred to me. It never occurred to me that the expression of satsang was, like every other kind of conversation, something that changed and evolved over time. I thought that it was something like the word of God, hewn in stone, and whatever it was that the teacher said, that was it. There wasn't any room for it to change or evolve (or even devolve) at all.

Complete transcription of a Meeting with John Sherman on February 10, 2007 in Ojai, California.

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A Worldwide Online Meeting - April 15, 2007

Hello, good afternoon, or whatever it is wherever you are. It's afternoon here. I cannot tell you how happy I am to see you all in here, and to make use of this amazing and remarkable technology whereby we can gather together without regard to where we live, and speak about the gift of Ramana Maharshi. Sometimes, it occurs to me that I ought to be able to find a way to say something different from what I generally say, for no reason other than to keep people's interest. Sometimes, it occurs to me that I should try to figure out some way to say it differently, or what really occurs to me is that I am probably just saying the same thing every time I speak with you, wherever I speak with you. Really, I have so little to say. There is so little about Ramana's gift. It is so simple and so lacking in complication, that is almost impossible to enhance it, or find new ways to approach it, or find new interesting and entertaining aspects to it. In fact, if I had to choose one thing that, above all else, characterizes the practice of the self-inquiry that I received from Ramana, it is simplicity. The truth is that the simplicity of this is both what makes it so profoundly easy, and so profoundly difficult to communicate. It is easy beyond words to do, and to reap the benefits, and it is difficult beyond comprehension actually to communicate the essence of it through speech.

Complete transcription of a Worldwide Online Meeting with John Sherman on April 15, 2007.

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