Wednesday morning, August 20
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A satsang comprising Q&As across a variety of topics, including follow up questions from the day before on surrender and desire.
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Question: Yesterday morning you talked about surrender and moving the burden of responsibility from the individual to the divine. But from morning to night our intellect keeps giving us guidance, where to go, who to talk to, what to say. So my question is when do we depend on our intellect and when do we depend on surrendering to God? When should I depend on my intellect and when should I surrender to God?
AMMA: There is nothing wrong with depending on your intellect. If it is mature enough, the choices it makes will be right. If it feels it is not enough, it surrenders. In a surrender mode you can complete tasks and do what is expected. It’s not that you will not do what has to be done. Do whatever is possible for it, in a surrendered state. Know that everything is the divine will and whatever you are supposed to do, you do. And you know that the outcome is also the divine will.
Next a young man had some queries for Amma.
Question: We know that Bhagavan’s first upadesa to his mother was whatever is supposed to happen will happen and whatever is not supposed to happen won’t happen. And at the end of the statement, it says the best course is to remain silent. Then how can we even say that I am doing good or I am doing wrong or I am saying the truth or I am not saying the truth?
AMMA: It’s an absolute knowing that whatever is happening through me or through others or whatever around me is nothing other than happening. Even my choices, my choicelessness, everything is happening. It includes everything, all your actions.
Question: If everything is happening, then is my whole life already surrendered? Then why am I trying to surrender?
AMMA: Are you fully surrendered? Surrender is about ownership. It means you have no question about what is happening to you and through you. You accept everything equally. It is the truth that everything is a happening, but only the one who has no ownership can say that.
Question: So it’s like life is just happening and I am just witnessing it?
AMMA: Yes. There is no complaint. It is an absolute acceptance of whatever is happening.
Question: So it’s like the best course is to remain silent.
AMMA: That is the truth. Nothing can happen otherwise.
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Question: How can I make my intellect mature so that I can be a silent witness and not react to a situation?
AMMA: Keep silent. You be silent. It’s an absolute knowing that whatever happens, what doesn’t happen, what we are trying, what we are not trying, everything is a happening is a realisation, rather than an intellectual knowing. We should not take it for granted. The sincere one will always go into the root and finish it. We should not take it for granted.
Question: Is my attempt to do self-inquiry or surrender something that is already destined, or am I trying to do it?
AMMA: Why do you want to know that? Who wants to know it?
Question: That is something that came as a belief to me, this Bhagavan’s upadesa, that’s what I mean.
AMMA: That belief has to become your realisation, not an intellectual belief. Everything which Bhagavan said, you cannot just take it as a belief, it should be your realisation. Until then, you cannot stop. You should not stop. Bhagavan said you are the Self, and if you know you are the Self, then there is no problem. He also said do self-enquiry. If everything is a happening, he wouldn’t have said that.
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Question: What is Guru Tattvam, and can I develop the viveka (inner guru) to not need an outer one?
Amma: The guru is already there, within you. The ultimate job of the Guru Tattvam is to make us realise that the Guru is ever within me, so your idea of “within” and “without” leaves you. It becomes one. This is the ultimate grace of the Guru.
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Question: Is trying to get rid of anger, lust, pride, and all these things a waste of time, because it is all pre-destined?
AMMA: That is not our nature, sometimes some people in the prakriti, it comes sometimes, they cannot get rid of it, that is a different thing, but however possible, we should come out of it, otherwise we suffer. By keeping all this, we cannot be in the peace of the Self. So it is not for someone else we are doing it, it is for our own sake.
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Question: I am grateful for your guidance on how to stay centred, by returning to a sense of presence or existence. This has been very helpful. I can easily feel this presence in stillness, but when I am in action, like speaking or walking, I feel a faint sense of doership. I try to question who is doing it, and I come back to that same sense of presence. I don’t know how to get over this feeling of doership.
AMMA: It is okay. It is not doership. If you feel the presence, you know that you are not doing it. It is only a thought that comes, ‘I am doing it’. This is not true. Whatever you do, you are not doing anything. It comes from the Self. That presence, that Self, is not doing anything. So, from where is your identity? From there, you will feel whether you are doing or not doing.
Question: It feels like half of me is in the centre and the other half is engaged in the action. When I’m in action, it feels like a complete package, and I think, ‘I am talking, I am doing’.
AMMA: Even then, you can be aware that the presence is not doing anything. Slowly and steadily, you will come to that.
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Question: So yesterday you said that I enjoy having desires. How not to enjoy having desires? I have seen worldly desires being replaced with spiritual desires like sitting in silence, time with guru etc, but they still stem from a dissatisfaction with the current moment.
AMMA: It is not that one day all the desires disappear, give time for them to disappear. There’s no magic, no trick. When we are truly searching for the Self, and when we don’t know what is Self, you come in the presence of the Guru.
They say, ‘You are that’, so the whole search of looking everywhere for God or Self-Realisation, doing all the sadhanas, it all seems impossible until you hear that ‘You are that.’ It is such a relief. I am Atma Brahman, the I as Atma is Brahman itself, there is no difference, it’s a knowing which happens within.
Once you seek that I within and find the ultimate pure I, the realisation comes, I am Brahman. What exists here is only the Brahman, that’s the finishing. Even when different forms and shapes and appearances come and go, I know there is only Brahman. So everything merges from it, everything dissolves into it. When you close your eyes, it is the absolute, and when you open your eyes, it is Sarvam Khalvidam Brahman (all this is indeed Brahman).
Amma finished by simply saying, ‘Ok’.