00:00Show me consciousness devoid of content.
00:19So thought is consciousness.
00:21Show me thought devoid of content.
00:23Tell me that you are thinking about nothing.
00:26When you think, don't you think about an object?
00:31So is there thought without object?
00:35Try thinking objectlessly.
00:41So consciousness is nothing but its own content.
00:47Consciousness is nothing but its own content.
00:59Once I was talking to an audience, so I showed this glass of water.
01:07So I said, you see, these are the contents of your consciousness and they have been poured
01:14into the consciousness from outside.
01:17So a wise girl, she got up and said, so if all the contents can be poured out, would
01:26I have a clean and empty consciousness?
01:28I said, no.
01:29To have a clean and empty consciousness, you have to throw away the glass as well.
01:35You cannot have the glass and not have anything in it.
01:38For when the water goes out, the air rushes in.
01:43You cannot have anything called empty consciousness.
01:48Empty consciousness is no consciousness.
01:55Consciousness does not like a vacuum.
01:59Because consciousness is objective, therefore like the objective world, it abhors vacuums.
02:08Whenever you have a very low pressure area, you know what happens, right?
02:12It tries to suck in anything and everything from everywhere.
02:16And it doesn't differentiate.
02:18Whatsoever can be sucked in, would be sucked in.
02:26If there is a very low pressure zone and you go close to it, you too would be sucked in.
02:36That is consciousness.
02:39Consciousness and its contents are inseparable.
02:46I know some teachers have talked of consciousness without content.
02:51That is a euphemism.
02:54That is a way of addressing zero consciousness or no consciousness.
03:04There is no point talking so much about consciousness because consciousness is conditioned.
03:15Even if you bathe, teach and decorate a slave, he won't become the master.
03:26Why are you so busy talking about the slave?
03:33Why are you so busy attending to and glorifying and investigating about the slave?
03:51If the slave troubles you, the trick lies in going to the master.
03:58And once you are with the master, the slave would fall in line on his own.
04:06And that's where the intellectuals are missing the point.
04:12The psychologists are missing the point.
04:16They too talk of consciousness.
04:21The psychologists, the intellectuals, even the neurologists.
04:26They all talk of consciousness and they are busy looking at nothing but the consciousness.
04:36The slave is behaving erratically, a mean slave who has come to acquire bad manners.
04:47And what are all the intellectuals and psychologists doing?
04:51They are trying to teach the slave a few good manners.
04:58What does the mystic do?
04:59He ignores the slave.
05:02The mystic has nothing to do with the slave.
05:04He goes right to the master.
05:06And once you are with the master, one look of the master is enough to discipline the
05:12slave.
05:14That's the trick that the intellectuals have been missing.
05:20All psychology keeps talking of mind and consciousness.
05:24What they don't talk of is the Lord.
05:27They won't talk of Lord.
05:29They are so afraid.
05:31Truth and mysticism are anathema to them.
05:33They would say, let's limit ourselves to the mind.
05:40So what happens in the mind?
05:42And who would understand that?
05:46If the mind were smart enough to understand itself and its rubbish, why would it stay
05:53engaged in rubbish?
05:57But you don't see this obvious fact.
06:00You want the mind to understand the mind, knowing fully well that that which you want
06:05to understand is stupid and that is why you want to understand it.
06:11Had it been functioning properly, would you have felt a need to investigate what is going
06:15on?
06:17So you want to test a malfunctioning machine using the same malfunctioning machine.
06:30The car is junk.
06:33The engine has collapsed.
06:36And you want to drive the car to the service station in the next city.
06:43You want to get the car repaired using the services of the car itself.
06:50It is so nonsensical.
06:53But then the intellectuals face a very acute dilemma.
07:07They are compulsive avoiders of all mysticism.
07:16It harasses their ego to accept that there is the unknowable and the unknowable is at
07:27the commanding heights.
07:34They would rather self-destruct than devote the self.
07:45You see, man is more terrified of psychological death than physical death.
07:53And the psychological life is the life of the ego and the ego says, I can accept anything
07:59and everything except mysticism.
08:05That is the mark of the stupid man.
08:09To him everything exists except him.
08:19All else is a possibility.
08:22The unknowable one is not a possibility.
08:27He says, I am very open-minded.
08:30I am a liberal.
08:31But he is greatly illiberal because he does not even want to consider the possibility
08:38that that and that alone exists.
08:50In some sense, the open-minded community is the most narrow-minded one.
09:03Their minds are so narrow that nothing broad, nothing immense can gain entry into it.
09:20Only little things find their way into these little minds.
09:39Even in this question, Dori, where is surrender, where is devotion?
09:51These things that you are asking cannot be grasped intellectually.
09:57Why don't you see that the intellect is such an incapacitated organ, a child's little finger
10:19and you want to move the mountains?
10:28You are determined.
10:29You have been exercising the finger regularly.
10:32It's a very muscular finger now.
10:43The Himalayas are shivering.
11:01Next you have asked, do you, Acharyaji, use the concept of consciousness as analogous
11:08to mind?
11:11Yes, broadly.
11:19States of consciousness, happenings in consciousness, are the states of mind and the happenings
11:27in mind, right?
11:37As far as awareness, the foundation of consciousness is awareness.
11:46Pure consciousness, which is zero consciousness, is awareness.
11:55However, that does not mean that to be aware, you have to give up on consciousness, no.
12:11Being aware implies not identifying with consciousness.
12:21So the stupid consciousness is busy with its own little matters.
12:27And where are you?
12:31An arm's length away, that's awareness.
12:38It's always a choice to abide in awareness or to fool around in the domain of consciousness.
12:51And the domain of consciousness, Dori, will keep existing as long as the body is there.
12:58You cannot drain consciousness of its contents.
13:07You cannot just take the vessel and pour out everything it has.
13:21How far back the seat of truth lies?
13:24Awareness and truth are one.
13:29So not very far back.
13:34Just one step behind.
13:37Just one step behind.
13:42You are standing on the edge of the cliff.
13:49Behind you is an abyss.
13:52Just one step behind.
14:00Close your eyes and take a step backwards.
14:09Taking that one step backwards is therefore so impossible to most people.
14:19Because the very dimension changes.
14:23You can take innumerable steps forward and the dimension remains the same.
14:31But behind is an abyss.
14:36That one step will not allow you to remain the one you are.
14:46The earth will change.
14:50The very physics will change.
14:57Your very station will change.
15:01You will change.
15:03That's why that one step is the most difficult thing in the world.
15:13And the saints therefore have gone on wondering that why is the Lord so inaccessible when
15:22He is always so close by.
15:25Now you see why He is so inaccessible?
15:29Where is He?
15:31Just one step behind.
15:34But you are standing on the edge of the cliff.
15:44And your eyes are always looking at the ground, not at the abyss.
15:51However, you are instinctively aware that there is no ground behind you.
16:03So taking that one step backwards is impossibly difficult.
16:11However, you can keep taking a lot of steps forward because nothing changes there.
16:20You are on the terrain and the terrain does not change whether you move left or right
16:33or forward.
16:34But if you move backward, everything changes.
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