THE MEANING OF “LETTING GO.”
There was a person that found himself hanging by a branch off a cliff, and the person that was feeling very distraught turned his eyes to God and said, “Oh God, please get me out of this situation. If you get me out of this situation, I will do anything.” God had pity on this man and looked down upon him and said, “I only require one thing”. And the man said, “Anything. What is it?” And God looked and said, “Let go.”
When God said, “Let go, do not hang on to the branch,” the real meaning was, let go of your minuscule ego-self. For whom was the man trying to save in his prayer but just his little ego bodily self, which, as we all know, is very temporary? These three score years and ten pass by in a moment, and within the context of infinity and eternity, it is not even a split second, so you are hanging on for that split second.
To be able to hang on, you need a crutch. The tree branch was a crutch. How many of you could honestly say that “I live without crutches.?” 99.99 per cent of the world’s people live and exist with crutches. While you, the real you, that is imperishable, the real you that is immortal, could never die. Yet knowing this or realizing this to a certain extent, you attach so much importance to your mind and body.
Why attach importance to the perishables? Even all perishables have limited value and limited life. So, when God said, “Let go,” He meant let go of this body and find yourself, know yourself, the authentic self. “Letting go” means you are becoming unified with that eternal factor which is you, and that eternal factor is nothing else but God, for only God is eternal. Only Divinity is eternal. We live in that eternity, for life too is eternal, life too is imperishable. You are not born to be miserable. You are not born to suffer. You are children of joy, created in joy, by joy. But because you do not recognize this factor, you emphasize the wrong places, and you feel all the sufferings and miseries of this world.
YOUR NATURE IS FREEDOM
When you were conceived, what did your parents do? They copulated, and was that not an act of joy for them? It could have been the joy of love, or it could have been the joy of lust, but yet the essence of joy was there when you were conceived, and then you were born. Why does the baby cry when it is born? It is not a cry of sadness; it is the cry of joy. This happens because it instinctively feels it is out in freedom from the confines of the womb. To be himself and not being fed by the umbilical cord but to find that independence. That is what a human being wants all the time.
You want independence, and you want to feel free, for your nature is freedom itself. Yet we have all these branches we hang onto for the dear, so-called life. Yet the branch will break, so let go.
Let go of this mind. Let go of this body in your spiritual practices. Every time I sit down to meditate, I die. The body is dead for me. The mind is dead. I have died thousands and thousands of times. Because the mind is not there to think anymore, and yet every mind goes into thought, I observe the thoughts, and those thoughts do not affect me. I become oblivious of the body. The bodily pains, or what have you, do not affect me. In meditation and spiritual practices, you will reach a different realm, to that higher consciousness, to that Superconscious level where all shackles are gone.
YOU FEAR THE UNKNOWN
We walk around in this world handcuffed, and we were not meant to do that. If you say that you are born in the image of God, then why do you not also realize that you are also born in the image of God, and God is free, so you too must be free. All this hanging on to the branches of life and not wanting to let go is because you fear.
What do you fear? You do not fear death. You fear the unknown. Yet you have had so many, many lifetimes before. You have been born so many, many times before. And you have died so many, many times before. And now, after experiencing all that, you are the sum totality of all your past experiences, and you still fear the unknown.
You should know it. If I walk down your main street a few times, I should know the main road and not fear it because I know it. But that clinging to the ego-self makes you forgetful of your real self—the real self, which is divine. So, as you progress in meditation and spiritual practices, you would find yourself proceeding closer and closer to the cognition of the real self, which is you. Then the fear of death disappears. Then the fear of the unknown disappears.
For nothing can ever be achieved if you do not leap into the unknown, and yet your little mind says, “It is unknown.” But it is not unknown. It is only the conscious mind, that 5 or 10 per cent which you use of the totality of your mind that says or thinks of the unknown. But going deeper through the mind, the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and the Superconscious Mind, and where everything is known.
The Upanishads say, “What is thereby knowing which all else is known?” What is there? The Upanishads are wrong: “What is everywhere by knowing which all else is known.” For you, in essence, are everywhere, but because that little mind divides or cuts you up into pieces, you find separation, separation, separation about.
IT IS ALL JUST ONENESS
That very idea of separation is a superimposition upon the oneness that you are. You are the Universe, you are that Divinity, and you take this little body and mind, and you call it John, Jack, Jean, Joan. Who is John, who is Jack, who is Jean, who is Joan? What gives you the idea that you are Jean or Joan. It is because of your personal mental patterning that makes you feel, “I am apart from everything else.” You are not apart.
If I had a microscope here, a very powerful one, I could show you all the atoms and sub-atomic matter that connects you to me. There is no separation, and it is all just oneness, but you stick to the idea of name and form, which is the grand illusion of life. That makes you cling. That makes you not let go.
But once you take that leap and just let go, where will you land? Then you will land in the area of now here and not nowhere. Just shift the “w” to one side and cut up the word “nowhere.” It would mean now here. That is the “here-ness” that man must experience within himself, and the only way to experience this is to die within oneself. Let the body part. Let the mind die. Only the big I exists in that beautiful meditative state, and there is only one “I”. There are no four thousand million people in the world anymore. And if there are for the sake of name and form, they still exist within me because I am the big I.
Once you can identify yourself with the big I within you, if you can merge the small I within the big I, you do not need any crutches in this world. You become independent. You become a flame that requires no oil to give it light. For you are the light, you are the oil, and you are the lamp. That is finding totality within oneself.
To find the true essence of oneself is to cognize and experience the totality that is you, yet you blame yourself so much for various things around you. You do not need to do that. You do not need to feel all guilty feelings. I said a nasty word to Jane last week, and I relive that nasty word in my mind by thinking of it today. If today I am thinking of what happened last week, I impress my subconscious more with that nasty thought or the nasty word.
THE MIND CREATES THE HEAVENS AND THE HELLS
Man conditions himself because he allows the mind to keep repeating things all the time, even after they have passed away. So, you live in the past or project it into the future, as I always say. But now, is essential. Where are you sitting now? Since you sat down, have you felt yourself sitting down? Have you been conscious of the chair you are sitting on? No, you have not. The mind was taking you away elsewhere. Taking you into yesterday or tomorrow but not here now.
So, when God said, “Let go,” let go. Why are you clinging to your little self, and if you want to cling to your little self, be aware of the little self? For then only would you know the value of the little self, and by discovering the value of the little self and finding its futility, you merge that little self into the higher self which is within you.
No wonder people go to Hell when they die. Do you know why they go to Hell when they die? It is because their mind is filled with hellish problems all the time. What is below is the same up there, or down there is still lower, whichever way you want it. But suppose your mind is filled with thoughts of Divinity all the time. In that case, I guarantee you, I assure you, I have died thousands of times, and I know, I talk from personal experience, that if your mind is filled with thoughts of Divinity, then you surely are going to be in Heaven. It is your mind which conditions the Hereafter. It is your mind that creates the heavens. It is your mind that creates the hells.
LET GO OF THE SMALL I AND EXPERIENCE THE BIG I
So. Let go. Let go, and when you let go, you find so many of the better things of life coming into your life. When you let go, the first sign would be humility. You develop that, you are letting go of your ego self, you are letting go of what you think is so important, and when you do not add importance to that little self, you naturally become humble. When you become humble, you become worshipful. When you become worshipful, you become kind. You develop sympathy, compassion and love. You can never really love if you have no kindness, compassion, or sympathy in you.
So let go from the little I to drop down into the big I. The love I. For that, I, the big I, is love. All of you live a life of falsity, and I would challenge you on this. You are false because your emphasis is on something false or very patterned or minimal, and if your attention is on something limited, then it is false. If your attention is limited, then you do not know the totalness, and if you do not know the totality of life, you are false.
LIFE IS BEAUTI-FULL
How many people can see the beauty of this beautiful, beautiful world in which we live? How much beauty did you see today around you since you woke up until now? Very little, I assure you. Because not knowing the inner self, you have lost your innocence. You have lost not only your integrity but also your inner sense. Your meditation and spiritual practices, and the Shakti the guru keep on sending to you all the time help you find the beauty of life – for life is beautiful. The greatest gift you could ever have.
The Hindus say that it took 84,000 lifetimes in the various stages of evolution to bring you to the stage of a human being. I do not know where they get that figure, but I do know that the path of evolution has been a long, long one until I have become me until you have become you.
WHO IS THE YOU?
Who is you? Have you ever looked into the mirror and asked yourself, “Who am I.” You have not. You look into the mirror to see what you look like, see what your outer self, this little physical thing, looks like. That is why you look into the mirror. And then, of course, you get busy with your stubbles, having a shave or your rouge and your lipsticks and what have you. Where is the mind? Is it concentrated on that stupid little face that we all have? And then you put on a bit of rouge, “Ah, this cheekbone requires highlighting.” So, you put a dark shadow or whatever you do.
In reality, you are shadowing the real you. Because your mind is just functioning on the surface level. How long is it going to last? You can put on your makeup in the best possible way, and you take a walk down the street. Very few, if any, are going to notice you. How many people do you notice when you walk down the road? Very few. And you go to all the time and trouble, a whole hour in front of the mirror, for what? To look nice. And if you want to look nice, for who are you looking nice? Vanity. Another name for ego. If you have vanity, remember you have no sanity, which is true.
When letting go of oneself, you enter a different dimension of life. So innocent. So humble. Pure within yourself. When you take a bath which part of you is bathed? The skin? The body? How about combining a spiritual bath with your physical bath? You can do it. When I lie down in the bathtub, I make sure that the mind is not roaming around on the body only but looking on both sides. Because the mind is in the centre, I look at my inside and my outside simultaneously. Then you can enjoy life. Then you can be joyful, as I am. Then you would have the peace that passeth all understanding, and not only that, but you can also share the peace within you to others with a glance, with an extended hand, or even your presence alone would bring peace in the environment.
FIND THE EFFORTLESSNESS IN EFFORT
This is very, very simple. It is not an arduous task. It is simple and very pleasurable, very joyful, and that joy is produced because you allow the big I within you to function and not the small I. Seeing that you have the small I, being embodied, you would find greater and greater joy in the small I because you are infusing the big I into the small I and the small I is infused into the big I. You see how life could be made so joyously wonderful.
Most people find life to be hard arduous. They find living life to be a task. So many duties to perform; got to go to work, come home, do the cooking, look after the babies, clean up the house, or what have you – such a chore. But it is not – if you can stand apart from yourself and observe yourself scrubbing the floor, then you would have achieved something. Because your real I, your real self, makes no effort at all. If you can look at the effort of the small self with the eyes of your real self, you will see that there is effortlessness in the effort. And when you find the effortlessness in the effort, then it ceases to be a chore. It becomes a joy.
Even if two people are gathered in the name of the big I, He is there. He did not come; he was there, is there, and forever always will be there. You can just open the portals of the Heart.
The flower can never remain a bud all the time. It is the nature of the flower, the bud, to open itself into full bloom, a beautiful flower. And when it opens itself, look at the lovely fragrance it exudes from itself without even trying. So, when you let go of the small I, everything that happens in your life will be pleasurably, joyfully. And that is how you find inaction in action and action in non-action.
I AM SHARING MY HEART WITH YOU
What am I doing here now, you tell me? Am I speaking to you? No. I am not. I am just sharing my Heart with you. And how beautiful it is to share this Heart. It is no effort. I sit, cool as a cucumber, enjoying myself, having fun in this play of life because I know life is nothing else but space, and this little body is just an actor on the stage. But my authentic self is the producer, the director, the scriptwriter, the casting director and the works.
He is all. And He and I are one. My Father and I are one, and this is the realisation that must come to every one of you. Not as a mental concept, but as a realization, something assimilated within you, so that every cell of your being is tinged with that: capital T, capital H-A-T, all capitals. So, live in THAT and not in your hat. That is where all this problem begins, in your hat.
Thank you. It has been so nice speaking to you. I love you all.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1983 – 48