Are You Aware Now? by Ananta
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Which understanding will make you Real? Which idea will define your Self? What does Freedom mean to the Absolute? Who can bind the Supreme Lord? But I know now that this is all part of my game. Yes, Beloved, all going to sleep and awakening is just a part of our game. God became tired of His own game. I Am the Immortal One. This Being is my breath. Life does not concern me, neither does death. I Am the Immortal One. This is my only song. This song is not of love. I sing of That way beyond. The God of love serves me. And his joy is in your Heart. For some these are the ramblings of the mad-man, For others they are the Truth. When you find this mad-man in your Heart, That will be the end of all words. ~ Ananta About Ananta Ananta gives satsang with the blessings of his Master, Mooji. He lives in Bangalore, India with his wife, son and daughter. He often offers in-person satsangs twice monthly in Bangalore and occasionally in Pune, India. On-line satsangs on Youtube with Google Hangout and Youtube chat participation are offered Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11 am and Tuesday and Thursday at 4:30 pm Bangalore, India time. Satsang with Ananta Youtube channel and satsang link is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmc83jyrwpCNBT2xywXVoLg/feed Website: www.anantasatsang.org Facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/satsangwithananta Mooji and Ananta This book is a distillation of full satsangs between Ananta and the sangha or guests who came to ask questions and be in his Presence. All “in quotes” are shorted questions from those attending. Are You Aware Now? Table of Contents Preface: “Ananta, how did this happen for you?” Chapter 1: Beingness is Ever-Present 8 What Makes Up a Person 13 Freedom is Not a State 18 Can You Turn Off Awareness? 23 An Intimate Conversation with your True Being 25 What is Consciousness? 29 Consciousness is the One Doer 33 Guided Inquiry 36 Unity and Oneness 39 Not the Body; Never Born, Never Die 41 Doership 49 An Inquiry of Awareness Chapter 2: All Arises and Subsides in Awareness 52 Desires and Aversions, Vasanas 57 Simple and Available to Everyone 67 You Meet Your Own Presence in Satsang 75 How Will You Suffer Now? 79 Find the Buddha Within You 84 I Have Come To Take You Home 90 You Can’t Step Out of Awareness 92 Be Completely Empty of the World Chapter 3: Awareness Witnessing 97 There is Nothing to Fix 102 Consciousness is Not the Body 106 Trying to Hold onto Awareness 111 Am I Free? 115 Marinating in the Silence 118 About Problems 122 Appearances Can't Touch Our True Nature 126 The Witnessing of Every Appearance 130 As What Are You the Experiencer? 136 Get to the Root of It Chapter 4: Are You Aware Now? 139 No Resistance Means No Suffering 141 Consciousness and Relationships 144 Special Relationships 149 Inquiry: Where Do Thoughts Come From? 155 What Brings Complete Freedom? 160 The Idea of Separation is Only a Belief 165 Awareness Itself in This Very Moment 170 Inquiry: Are You Aware Now? 175 A Game: Guided Inquiry Chapter 5: Our True Position 178 Who is Aware of This Witnessing? 184 What it Means to Not Resist 188 Ego Rests on the Concept of Doership 192 Being Free in This Very Moment 196 There is No Separation 200 Contemplations 205 Where Am I? 212 Spirituality and Science 213 This is Home. This is Freedom Chapter 6: You Have Always Been Free 218 What Is the Mind? 222 Awareness is the Starting Point 226 You Are the Untouched Free One 232 The Illusion of Control 238 Being in Silence 240 Who is Seeing This? 248 What Does Freedom Mean For You? 253 Resistance is Non-Acceptance of What Is Chapter 7: Complete Simplicity 258 Don’t Try to Go Home, You Are Home 261 Consciousness Speaking with Consciousness 265 Rest in These Simple Pointings 269 What Sees Even This? 272 Truth is Not a Concept 276 The End of Suffering Itself “Ananta, how did this happen for you?” In the sense of what brought this Being into giving satsang or having satsang in this way? For a long, long time in the life of this person, there seemed to be no belief in the concept of God. There was this thought which was believed, which was that ‘All that don't have faith in themselves have invented this concept of God, just because they are scared; that they need something to rely on, therefore they have invented this concept of God’. And then some experiences happened where I came across a Being who was able to foretell the future. He was an astrologer; he was very accurate with foretelling the future. At the same time a lot of suffering was coming up in life. I came across this book called ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’. Because life created some openness, so first this book appeared. Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda's book ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’. It had some deep impact here. But if I were to look at it now, I am not sure what it was that so deeply affected me then. In reading ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ something was there about learning Kriya yoga, and doing some Kriya type practices. He was Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda. In Bangalore there is a Master called Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who teaches something called the Sudarshan Kriya. So I found that when I came to know about this, (this was in ‘97 or ‘98 most likely); when I came to know about this Sri Sri / Sri Sri coincidence, and the kriya / kriya similarity, I felt that I must go and try this. So I went to The Art of Living, learned the sudarshan kriya; and all the yogic practices actually helped in some way, because it gave some space here for some contemplation to happen. So there was a lot of interest in ‘The Art of Living’ here; and did many, many courses and programs with ‘The Art of Living’ with the ultimate goal of becoming a teacher with ‘The Art of Living’. But life, of course, had other plans. A lot of suffering arose because of some life events; things happened where a lot of suffering actually arose. With grace, there was this question which said ‘If you know so much, and you are so good at practices, and you are so spiritually evolved, then how can it be that suffering still continues?’ And with that question, the entire framework of the spiritual ego just collapsed actually; because I realized that I did not know anything at all. It was all just concepts that I was parrot-ing that were heard from others; I was just a parrot. Then with Grace, I came across Bhagavan [Ramana Maharshi]'s book ‘Be as you Are’. At a similar time, Nisargadatta’s book ‘I am That’. Reading ‘I am That’ actually had a very, very profound effect. It was a very frustrating experience also initially, because I just could not understand. Many times when he would say ‘The sense I Am, be with the I Am-ness’ then all these terms just would not make any sense at all. Then in looking for a teacher I looked for a student of his, because I knew that Nisargadatta Maharaj had left the body, so I looked for a student of his; and I found Ramesh Balsekar. So for a few years, any time I was in Mumbai, I would visit Ramesh. Ramesh, as you know, speaks a lot about non-doership; he used to speak a lot about non-doership. Something was still not completely clear; and when I was looking for disciples of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, then I came across these names Papaji, Lakshmana Swami, and there was a desire to meet somebody from that lineage. So when I went to Tiru for the first time, there was a feeling that I would like to meet Lakshmana Swami. By then I had seen a lot of Mooji's videos on Youtube, but there was no feeling that this one [Mooji] is going to be my Guru. So when I went to Tiru, it was mostly to do a lot of spiritual shopping actually; to meet all the Masters over there in Tiru. As Grace would have it, I saw Mooji first. I was late for satsang, I was waiting downstairs; and then I saw him come down the stairs. As he was coming down the stairs, this strong feeling came over me that ‘I have come home’. That my life is his problem now, and everything will be taken care of. This strong feeling came, and I gave him a hug. It was a short meeting. Then I always believed that the next day I went to him on the hot seat actually; but if you look at the dates now, there was one day in the middle which I have no recollection what happened on that day. There is no recollection of that day, of what happened in satsang, or any of that. I just remember that when I landed up on the hot seat, in looking at his eyes, all that was spoken, which was just an intellectual understanding earlier, was seen to be completely true. The person had completely dissolved, and all there was, was oneness, and pure love that was being transmitted from his eyes. All sense of separation vanished.