Sorrow is at the level of body and mind, and I am the unaffected witness of it … When the mind shuts down, the sorrow which it bears also goes away with the mind.
If you are Turiya, pure consciousness, you don’t have problems. If you have problems, then in some sense you’re still identified with the body and mind … Problems are always there in the three states, but in the one reality beyond the three states there is no problem … Realizing yourself as that, then live your life in the waking state, in the dream state, and in the deep sleep state—you are not affected by any of it.
We do not know ourselves as the immortal existence. We have a desire to live—I must continue living in this body. Why? Because I do not know that I am the immortal … The experiencing Self which we are is immortal. It is not touched by the experience of the world.
To get stuck in a particular body, mind, and personality is ignorance. To step back from a particular body, mind, and personality into the background consciousness is enlightenment.
I am not a bundle of flesh and thought. I am consciousness to which appears this entire universe … Now, the subtle question is what are these objects which appear to us? Are they distinct, are they exterior to consciousness, or are they in some sense interior to consciousness? … Both the world and the body are experienced in thought, and thoughts are experienced in consciousness. When you pursue this line of thought, then the initial distinction which we made to appreciate ourselves as beings of pure consciousness, we begin to see not only consciousness but whatever consciousness is aware of—the entire external universe, the entire internal universe of thoughts and emotions—all of that is also not distinct from consciousness. It’s true that consciousness is distinct from everything it experiences and illumines, but that which it experiences and illumines is not actually distinct from consciousness because it’s just an abstraction to say that something exists outside consciousness.
I may act through the body and mind, but I am not under the error that I am the body and mind.
When we make this division that whatever you experience is an object, very soon we begin to see that the things we experience in the world ‘out there’ are objects but then our body is an object too … And, even more stunning, mind is an object—thoughts, feelings, emotions. Clearly objects come in two varieties: one is a publicly shared (what you can see around you), and one is the first-person private set of objects (memories, thoughts, pleasure, pain, the very personality itself).
To think that I am this waking body and mind, this person, is an error based on ignorance of Turiya, my real Self … You think of yourself as this person—this seems to be the indubitable truth for us. What Vedanta claims is if you investigate in this method of the waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, you will come across the real you—not this person but the witness of this person, the Turiya in which this person is arising, shining, and falling again.
This entire world, body, mind, this person, and all other persons are all appearances in Me, the one consciousness.
Body-mind appearances appear in you, the consciousness, and they disappear within you. You, the consciousness, are the experiencer but ever unaffected.
That thou art. We don’t realize how radical that statement is. It means you are nothing other than God—which means you are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not even this little person. Even more stunning, God is nothing other than you.
The dreamer, and the dreamed world. The dream takes place entirely in our minds. When you fall asleep, and you forget the waking world. You even forget that you are lying on the bed and sleeping, and you generate a dream. It does not feel like a dream at that time; it feels like another waking experience. You only call it a dream after waking up. In the dream, you exist. You have a body in a dream, you meet people in a dream.