Silence Is Key
Silence is the crux of this teaching. I remember once I was being interviewed on the radio, and I suggested to the host that we be silent for a few minutes before we started speaking. She was appalled, “You can’t have silence on the radio!” she said. I replied, “Well, let’s just try it. Let’s see. We won’t blow it up.”
In fact, it was really beautiful, partly because it was so unusual. There is a natural beauty to silence itself, but in a place where it is assumed there can be no silence because that would be “dead air,” it was discovered to be truly alive. And the silence made the discussion that followed have even more depth and more aliveness too.
So, at any point while you are reading this, or at any point throughout your day when a moment arises, you always have full permission to just stop and be silent. That’s what this whole teaching is pointing to.
I met my teacher, Papaji, thirty-six years ago. After I had been with him for a short while, he sent me out to meet you (by which I mean anyone who is reading this, or has found a connection with these teachings in any way). He sent me to meet anyone who might be interested.
At the time I was sure he was making a mistake. I remember saying to him, “What do I say? What do I do?” Because I hadn’t studied the teachings in abstract or intellectual terms. He said, “Just be yourself and people will catch fire. Those people who catch fire will ask you questions, and then you will answer those questions.” And that has always been how I teach.
I don’t know if you have caught fire yet, but there is a fire burning that is inviting you. It is your own consciousness, the life force that goes by your particular name. It is that life force I am speaking to and to which your mind can be in service.
The Awesome Power of Mind
Our minds are an awesome force. Our ability to think, to act, to make art and music, or to make war and create suffering, is an unimaginable power. We assume that what is going on in our minds is reality, or a commentary or distillation of reality. We are very busy figuring out how to deal with reality. But our minds are more like what we know today as AI. Our minds are extensions of this intelligence that comes from the beingness that we are. And like the fears we have of AI (and maybe we have these fears about AI because we know our own minds), we fear that our minds will take over, start running the ship, and steal our life force.
That is generally what happens. There are some people blessed with quiet minds who are naturally at peace, but most people in the East as well as the West have become victims of their own thinking, of their own mind’s power.
The Discovery Beyond Thinking
When I met Papaji, I asked him in all earnestness and readiness as I thought, “Please help me. Please show me where freedom is.” He said, “Just be still.” Since I had practiced meditation for some years, I assumed in my mind that I knew what “just being still” meant. I assumed a meditative posture, and I became quiet. And he said, “No, no, no. Not that. Closer than that.”
I recognized he was pointing me to the stillness that is already present, that the mind stream comes from and returns to in a moment of meditation, or between thoughts, or in a moment of falling into sleep. He was pointing me to that, as I am pointing you. You have your own capacity to actually stop your mind.
In all of the meditation practices that I had attended, I had never considered stopping my mind. I was most enamored with Zen meditation, which is about becoming aware of the mind and aware of the thoughts. But the idea—the thought—of stopping the mind was totally foreign to me, and I assumed it was in fact impossible. That is, until Papaji said, “Stop. Just be still. Don’t follow that thought, whatever that thought may be.”
At first, there was a kind of struggle. We are profoundly conditioned to follow our thoughts, or to go to war with one set of thoughts using another set of thoughts, often someone else’s. I had never considered what he was saying: just immediately, in this moment, don’t follow the next thought.
When I allowed that in I met the fear that arose, the fear that if I didn’t follow my thoughts I would be in trouble, or in danger, or I would regress from the place I was in—all of which, of course, was composed of thought. When I was just willing for a moment to not follow the next thought, I recognized that who I am doesn’t need to be thought. It is here. It is already free of thought.
Worshipping the False God of Thoughts
Thoughts can be beautiful. They can be enlightened thoughts. They may also be complex and earth-shattering, or life-giving. They may be horrific thoughts of punishment, or torture to ourselves or others. They may be war-like thoughts. Thoughts are our artificial intelligence, and as thoughts they have no soul. The soul is where you are.
Thoughts can, of course, reflect the truth. But when you believe them to be true in and of themselves, then you are worshipping a false god. The worship of that false god will turn into unnecessary suffering.
Whether that makes sense mentally or not, somewhere you must know that I am speaking to you about your own capacity to recognize the truth of your inherent awakeness, freedom, or love. I know you have certainly tasted that and perhaps realized it. But if you rely on thought to keep that alive, it will fail you. It will turn that pure truth of yourself into an image or thought of yourself. And thatwill have reams and reams of thoughts that follow it, both positive and negative. And from that there will follow some war-like tendency, either toward yourself or toward another. That is how thinking coopts the peace that is naturally present.
It Is the Mind that Wakes Up
I had been interested in peace for many years, and I had looked for it in lots of places. Until I met my teacher, I never considered that peace is already here. I looked for love in lots of places, in lots of ways of being, never considering that love is already here.
I looked in lots of places for my version of enlightenment, which I thought would make me be happy all the time, never even considering that true enlightenment is already here. It’s the light of your own nature. Your mind, which is the generator of thoughts, can recognize that and surrender to it. So it is your mind that awakens to the futility of its thoughts and returns home to the source of it all.
This Is a Living Inquiry
When Papaji sent me to speak to people, he didn’t tell me particular words to say. He said, “People will ask you a question and you will see where that takes you. Just speak from your own experience.” For these thirty-six years I have been doing that. It is always fresh for me. It deepens my realization, and it deepens or awakens anyone who is listening closely or reading these words.
That is why your questions are an essential part of this teaching. Naturally, the conversation that arises from question and answer involves our minds and enlightens them, allowing our minds to stop so that we can recognize where this light is coming from, where this light always is. So that we can recognize true Home.
I welcome you here as part of what Papaji promised me would occur: that people would catch some spark and appear with questions. I invite you to ask your spiritual questions. Of course, if you have no question, that is fine too.
I invite you to a deeper discovery of yourself, to fall into yourself while awake, not waiting for tonight when you go to sleep, but fully awake, right now—to fall into yourself, to recognize the spaciousness of your own beingness.
