David: I’d like to see you have something. I’d like to see something really go off in you whereby, you know, you are really taken by your own divine self, that has no dilemma in it and that is very clearly understood and realized, in just a flash, without too much process going on. So you have to realize that it happens in the impersonal. It happens always in the impersonal but it needs the complicity of your mind. It needs your mind to come forward in understanding, curiosity and love and that, you could say, are the fingers or the hands that receives that experience, if you’re to use dualistic metaphor and the key is really, to just give the beauty of your attention. Give me that pad.
Participant: Oh, yeah…
David: This is symbolic of me not being able to give you any answer tonight, ok.
Participant: No, I know, I’m not writing it down.
David: What we are going to do is just meet heart to heart, just without any overlay, without any manipulation, without me promising you anything, without me asking you to do anything. I don’t want anything from you, right? I don’t want anything from you. You have to realize that, that there’s no desire, even that you become enlightened, that you become free. All of that to me is just verbiage. So, as you investigate in this way and you deconstruct the falsity of motivated desire, you start to rest naturally in that condition. You just start to rest without minding anything, without even knowing how it’s happening or to whom it’s happening. And so you begin to see vividly the silence, the quality, this rich living texture of silence that is not really even separate than the mind. So it’s not even a question of stopping thinking. It’s not about bringing your mind into stillness so that you don’t think and you somehow flash into something. That’s just already established tendency you have in you to be aligned with yourself, without any problem. Does that make sense?
Participant: That’s naturally there right now?
David: It’s there naturally right now, beautiful. So the key then is just be that, right? Don’t make any squabble. Don’t make any complaint. Don’t overlay any expectation on that and be grateful. Be grateful now. Be grateful forever. Don’t worry about it coming and going. Let it go. Open the door and say, “Go if you want.” Open the door of you heart and say “Oh, you are my own being. It’s so lucid in this moment but you can do what you want. The door is open. Go for a walk. Go enjoy the sky, the sea, the beautiful hills, the moon, the sunset.” Don’t put any boundaries on that thing. Never cling to your own realization. Never cling to your own realization. The clinging will really set up a wave of disturbance. So the key is just to remain humble and simple and in love and be in love.
Participant: That devotional part of it is kind of missing somehow, I don’t know why. I mean, the realization’s there. The awareness of the awareness being aware, you know all that kind of stuff. But there is no, there is no love in it for some reason, what we would call love.
David: There is no love in there, you are right. In That there is no love.
Participant: And maybe there shouldn’t be. Maybe that’s just the process.
David: Maybe there shouldn’t be, very good. Don’t overlay anything on That, just keep it clean.
Participant: So it’s like I was thinking like its somehow evolutionary that there one day will be or should be.
David: No, absolutely not.
Participant: Right on.
David: Not the path that you are treading because you winging this as a kind of freelancer. So for someone like you coming into it from your angle, you just continue to wing it.
Participant: Yeah, I’m getting winged.
David: You’re getting winged. The air is buoyantly casting you nice and high. You’re feeling free. You’re understanding what the taste of freedom is, the light of awareness, the inner light of freedom. So, that’s so beautiful, there is no comment to be made.
Participant: Yeah, occasional taste.
David: Occasional taste. An occasional taste is full taste. All tastes are occasional. Listen. If you taste it, it’s an attainment. In other words, it’s episodic. What that other thing is, when all the tastes merge into one taste, you can’t even talk about that. So, every time you open your mouth, it always generates itself into a discussion on episodic enlightenment. That’s all you can talk about. I’m not saying that’s all there is. You can be “Whoosh,” right, but you can only approach that in metaphor. And as for devotion, just let it go. If it’s not a topic that’s relevant to you, just let it go. Devotion is this, it’s two humans caring enough about each other to discuss this, to understand the aridity of not having this in your life. When you’ve met someone who loves this subject matter as much as you, you’re sharing devotion.
Participant: It may be there already, it’s just not a noticing of it as being called devotion or whatever.
David: I’m sure that’s the case. I’m sure that’s the case.
Participant: That’s what it is, right?
David: That it’s kind of immersed in the whole process of knowingness.
Participant: Without defining it.
David: Without defining it, without any kind of outline or boundary, very good. So we won’t say it’s not there, we’ll just say that it’s somehow merged in there with everything else.
Participant: Yeah, like it is with everybody, right? It’s the one taste.
David: I don’t know. [Laughs] I never talk about everybody.
Participant: Is that right? …or everything?
David: I only talk to one person at a time.
Participant: That’s good to know that there is not like a… I guess the human mind always wants to interfere that there is supposed to be a standard.
David: The human mind can only think in terms of stages, because the human mind itself is a fragment. The human mind is a bunch of broken processes that have to perceive this whole realm of change. So, it too breaks.
Participant: And it wants to get somewhere, keep itself going.
David: Yes, that’s all part of fragmentation, karma, movement, right, destiny and all that stuff. But we are talking here about that which is immaculate, but we don’t have to end the karmic realm to see that which is fully immaculate. That’s the trip I want to keep you away from, but you may fall into it anyway. Even the best of us do, even Ramana fell into that trip for a while. That’s why he can talk so lucidly about permanent, full awakening, is because he got to know all the ins and outs of how the mind defiles itself around the process of awakening. And at some point his own innate brilliance kicked in and said “Ho, wait a minute, this is the way it is.”
And so at some point, magically you begin to talk from freedom. You are no longer talking about It. You are talking in It. You are talking as It and if you have a compassionate heart, you are talking to It. You are never talking to someone who is in ignorance, right? I’m never seeing you as ignorant. I never see anyone as ignorant. The only time I will entertain a discussion about working through ignorance is if someone admits that and wants to talk about it as such. Then we can have that conversation. But everybody who walks in here, to me, is like a realized yogi or yogini. Everyone is a fully realized being until you prove otherwise and then we can discuss that and we can sand paper that rough edge down until your mind is nice and sweet and shiny and it’s not doing that nasty thing to itself anymore. That’s all. It’s not that I’m fixing you. It’s that we are interfacing in a single reality. One person claims not to see it clearly, the other person claims to be it absolutely. So in there, there is a chance of having a spiritual relationship, a spiritual connection. That’s a real spiritual connection. Again, it’s not that I have it and you don’t. It’s that you are saying “I can’t see totally clearly yet,” and I say “Ok, let’s just relate for a while and see if that light will shine all edges of your mind and convince it otherwise.”
Participant: It’s not really the mind, right?
David: In what sense?
Participant: I mean sandpapering the mind which is so limited. The mind is irrelevant in this thing, right?
David: No, it’s very relevant. It’s what we… no, it’s relevant.
Participant: That’s what part, I don’t get that.
David: It’s not relevant as separate from that process of awakening. It’s relevant from within that process, because it’s the mind that’s informed that awareness it’s seeing itself.
Participant: Yeah, right, ok, as a reflection.
David: As a reflection, it’s reflected into the mind, right?
Participant: Right, I got you there.
David: So in that sense, the mind is useful and important. But we know that the mind, as such, goes beyond itself. We don’t ever want to say the mind, self-contained, exists separate from That but you can’t deny the mind either. This is the trap that many people get caught in. They want to think that it’s other than the mind because they’ve gone beyond the mind once and they’ve seen that it is so, so now they conclude with their ignorant mind that that photographic picture they got in that instant is now the epitome of the spiritual process, so people are condemned by their own stubbornness and attachment to their own awakening.
Participant: And the mind goes back into memory, thinking it’s getting…
David: Of course, but I say let it go. I say let it go. Cooperate with your delusional process, right? Let it go. It’s got all this momentum, all this frustration and repression in it. Of course it’s going to start to unwind, when awareness sees itself. You’re going to go crazy in this process because the mind’s tendency to seek, is actually intensified by realization, especially after you’ve tasted it at the beginning. You’ll go crazy. “I have to find it again. I can’t live without that.” All that nonsense is going to have to kick in. You are going to have to live right through it, until you become it resolutely and then it’s not a problem anymore. But you’ll never feel like you’ve attained anything. There is no credit to be gained. Nothing is gained, nothing is lost. Everything is just the way it is. So at that point you say, “I’m not a teacher. I’m not a student. I’m nothing. I’m just simple consciousness.” But here are various degrees to which that reality can confess itself to your entire intelligence and being and give you a really deep informative view point about this entire thing that we call the spiritual process or sadhana. We haven’t talked about Shakti tonight. I don’t even want to go there. I don’t want to get too complicated. Do you feel this potency sitting there? …a kind of potency, a vibratory power.
Participant: Yeah, I felt it even before we started. We were talking about this exact thing and I’m starting to feel something.
David: So, that’s the potent aspect of the Absolute. Do you understand? There is a quiet aspect to the Absolute that has no potency in it, it’s just pure silence. It’s like a lake without a single wave in it. It’s completely flat, nothing. It’s beautiful. If you saw the moon in that lake, you’d actually think it was the moon, it’s so clear, right? But then there’s also a side to the Absolute that then turns in radiant light like the sun and radiates out. It actually casts light out of itself. So that’s also what we call transmission here in this room, and you’ll feel that. It’s visceral. You can’t miss it. That’s also termed Shakti. So do you feel the Shakti?
Participant: Yes, in the sense of the awareness of, how can I put it?
David: Feel it as current right now, the current.
Participant: Yeah. Yeah.
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