E38: Beyond Philosophy: Experiencing the Truth of Consciousness

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.

Tami Simon: Welcome to The Michael Singer Podcast, presented by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information about Michael Singer’s work, access to all prior episodes, and information about upcoming releases, we invite you to join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com

Michael Singer: Jai guru dev, jai masters. So much of tradition, religions, belief structures, and even western, not science, but Western teachings, Western history, Western great beings taught what was called philosophy, religious philosophy, different philosophies. What’s the difference between philosophy and truth? Like great, great enlightened beings, they don’t play with philosophy. Minds like to play with philosophy. What is it differently? Philosophy and reality. Philosophy and truth. Philosophy is something your mind does. It puts together things and tries to explain why they are the way they are, and you have a philosophy of life, your philosophy of health, your philosophy of all religions. You have philosophy of all sorts of things. Philosophy is a very big subject in school. You take philosophy courses. Well, what’s the difference between philosophy and truth? The difference is philosophy is of mind, truth, real truth. It’s a direct experience. How can you experience philosophy?

Well, we’re going to use the example of yogic philosophy, which so I never talk about and I talk about very simply, thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago, they developed a philosophy, so to speak, about reality, about creation, about God, about life, all of it all packaged together into this philosophy, yoga philosophy. But where did it come from? Interestingly enough, it did not come from mine. It did not come from scholars sitting down and talking about things and studying them and try to come up with theories and philosophies about them. It came from very, very great beings. Somehow, I don’t know, I never look back what stories they tell it happened, but imagine the first person that sat down. I don’t know why they did it, but they sat down and all of a sudden they were enlightened. All of a sudden they realized that they were the one, this is how it happened.

It has to happen this way, that they were the one that was looking at things. They were not what they were looking at. That’s an experience. That’s a reality. That’s not a philosophy. You’re not philosophizing that you’re in there, you’re in there. Everybody’s in there. And the fact is that when you look at something, it’s you looking at it. Well, it’s very natural, even your thoughts. It’s you looking at your thoughts. It’s you feeling your emotions. All sorts of philosophies and scientific studies and so on are about what you’re looking at. What is a thought? Where does it come from? What are your emotions? How can you deal with them? What if you have trouble with them? How can we help you? What is your body? Where’d it come from? How does it take a single cell and turn into a whole body baby and then grow?

How do these things happen? And so they study them and study them and study them and try to do the best they can to follow that down. What happened a thousand thousand thousands of years ago in India where it came from, the foundation of the Oggi teachings is someone actually sat down and instead of asking, what am I looking at, what are these thoughts I’m looking at? What do I do about them? What are these emotions I’m having? What do I do about them? What is this body? What do I do about it? What is the world out there? People, relationships, all that stuff. Someone asked a very interesting question, not what am I looking at? Who’s looking? Who’s aware that there are thoughts? Who’s aware that there are emotions? And if I ask you, every one of you, if you know nothing about any philosophy, will say I am.

Are the thoughts? Yeah, how do you know? Because I hear them. I see them who hears them talking to who. That’s where the foundation of yoga philosophy comes from, if you want to call it philosophy, is that someone asked the question not what are my thoughts? Who’s in their experiencing the thoughts? Not what are my emotions? Who’s experiencing them? Not what are my eyes, not what is the piano, not what is the people, not what is the temple, not what is the cloud? Who is experiencing the fact that there’s a cloud? And that became the beginning of the inner journey. And so instead of looking outward at what you’re looking at, the question became who’s looking? And that led to meditation that led to, okay, I’m looking, but this is how I teach it. It’s easy. We’re all experiencing it. I can look that I have thoughts, but they’re rather distracting if you haven’t noticed.

In fact, they’re so distracting that we don’t even know that we’re distracted. We’re always, by the way, what does distracted mean? It means you were doing something and something distracted you. So there are things that distract you from your thoughts. You don’t understand. You’re distracted by your thoughts, but you’re not back there far enough to look it that way. But if you’re thinking and someone’s making noise, you’re distracting me. But if your thoughts are making noise, nothing in there says it doesn’t say anything. It’s just aware that I’m aware and these thoughts are distracting me. You understand that difference, but it’s one thing to be distracted from something is another. Understand, you’re distracted all the time. So a great being who can meditate deep enough or has explored that question. Who sees what I see, who’s what I hear, who is aware of the thoughts?

There’s only one way to find out. You cannot find out who is experiencing your thoughts by thinking. Scientists cannot find out who is back there being aware of the thoughts by studying the thoughts they left the center, they left the seat from which you are experiencing, and they went down to what you were experiencing. It’s sort of like your reflection in the mirror isn’t you. It can never be you to know what it looks like and it can’t know. You can know it, but it can’t know you. So your thoughts cannot know consciousness. They can think about consciousness, but those are thoughts, and the consciousness is looking at the thoughts that are thinking about consciousness, right? I like a lot that, and I don’t argue with anybody, believe me, I just stare here in the woods that if you go ask a neuroscientist who’s studying this sort of stuff, many of them will say that what consciousness is is just the natural evolutionary result of very complex neuro pathways of the neurons connecting together so complicated that they become consciousness.

Don’t believe them because it’s not true. But the question becomes how did they get there Through the mind? They logically looked at this and that, and they tried this and experimented that and looked at the results, did all this stuff mentally looking out. You’re not going to know consciousness by looking away from consciousness. You’re only going to know by asking who’s looking. And that’s what yoga is. That’s what the deep teachings are, is the study of the nature of self, the study of the nature of consciousness. Well, you have to think about it. If you think about it, you’re not studying it, you’re thinking about it. And that’s a totally different ball game. And that’s where meditation comes from. It’s a natural thing. If you want to find out who’s in there, you better not be thinking about it or you’re just finding out what your thoughts are and you better not be looking out the world and studying it.

You welcome to do that. There’s anything wrong with that, by the way, we’ll get through it later. We said a lot of things out there, but it isn’t consciousness. It’s consciousness being aware of what the mind figured out. Okay, so the question is, who studied consciousness itself and is there such a thing or do we have to have a philosophy about it? But the answer is, I hope you’re not going out there to find someone who studied consciousness. Why? Because you’re it. Why would you go out there to have somebody else tell you who you are? No one can know consciousness more than you can. Why? Because you’re conscious. They’re looking at the mind. Look at my mind to figure out what your consciousness is. That’s ridiculous. Why not study what inside of you is aware that you’re aware? And that is the entire process of deep spiritual evolution of meditation, of yoga, Buddhism.

All of them are exactly the same. The inner studies say you’re not going to get there by thinking. But how do you stop thinking? And that’s where it all gets very interesting, doesn’t it? Okay. Because very few people, I won’t say it, ever stopped thinking. There are times that you stop thinking. There are times you stop thinking, you turn the corner, you’re driving, you’re thinking about your troubles that this is happening. What does somebody mean that you turn the corner and the sunset blows you away? It just catches your attention completely to where there are no thoughts. There’s just the experience of the awesomeness of what you’re looking at. And when you have that experience, you tell somebody, it touched me to the depth of my being. I felt like I was in the presence of God. People say things like that, right else they say it when someone who they really, really, really love law hasn’t been around for a while, and then they come and surprise you and hug you and you go, bye-bye ever gone, okay?

Guess what? When you’re bye-bye, you don’t know your bye-bye not till you come back. I went bye bye. This beautiful words I melted in her arms ever melt? That means you’re not thinking. There are no thoughts. There’s just this amazing experience of being and it wouldn’t trade it for anything. If you could stay there, you would stay there. I said people do psychedelic drugs to try and stay there, but no one’s ever stayed there that way. Alright? It’s terrible to say, but if there was a button over there and you could push it and be there, your fingers would stand that button because there’s no higher experience in your life. Every other thing you’re trying to experience, it’s people proud of you. Oh, I had a moment. I felt so good. They were clapping good. You tried to touch that spot, but don stay there.

You’ve never stayed there. Guess what? Not only can you stay there, it is who you are. When you sit there and say a touch with the depth of my being, that’s because at that moment you cease to be distracted by your thoughts. And it’s not an emotion. It’s not an emotion. It’s basically there’s quiet and the self, the consciousness is experiencing its nature. It’s the nature of self. So when the yogis started to study the interstate, well, they just asked the question, who’s in there? Who’s aware? Who knows? You better go in there to find out. You’re not going to go out here to find out, oh, that’s doing distracting you away from yourself. So that’s a K key. By the way, very few people teach that distraction is a very spiritual word. It’s an extremely important spiritual word. If you don’t understand distraction, you don’t understand anything about spirituality.

Why? Because you’re being distracted from the seat of self. You’re being distracted from the consciousness by the object of consciousness. Can you understand that right? Consciousness is an object. Well, what’s looking at what is hearing? What is thinking? Whatever’s going on in front of consci– I want you to feel this location. I always point back here people, why you point back there? Because that’s where you are. You are back here looking out. You are back here looking down. What do you see? First you see your thoughts and you see your emotions. Then you see the world, don’t you? And that’s the fall from the garden. Hit your head each step, boom, boom, boom. Now you’re out here and what do they say in the bible or the fall from the garden, but you were in ecstasy, you were totally freaked. The garden is painted. As you live in that state, you live in a state of complete, total ecstatic wellbeing, but you fell from the garden.

And what happened when you fell from the garden? I love that lineup. All it sits there and says, because you fell from the garden, now you must work. But the sweat of your brow to be okay, that is so deep. It’s the truth. Don’t you work for the sweat of your brow to be okay? Don’t you try relationships that are meaningful to you? Don’t you try to look a certain way? You have people like you. Don’t you try to have money? Work hard at it, don’t you? Don’t you think all the time how to be okay? Do you not try to figure out how to make decisions, how to be okay? Every single thing you’re doing is try to be okay. You want to know why? Because you’re not okay? Why else would you be spending all this time your whole life? What do you want?

What friend do you want? How do people want to talk to you? How do you want to be treated? What do you want to look like? Don’t want to get old. Everything. Everything, all the time. How do I be okay? And if you treat me right, okay, then you stay with me. It makes me be okay and you don’t anymore goly. In other words, you’re admitting you don’t realize. You’re admitting I’m not. Okay. And guess what your society tells you? You’re not. You better buy dial or you’ll smell. You better get a good job. You better get the corner office. You better be respected. You better get all kinds of alphabetic letters after your name. You better do all kinds of stuff to try to be okay. You better have children. You better have the children be good. You better get it together people. Why?

Because you’re not okay. And things can happen out there that make you be better. They do You know that things can happen outside then when they come in, you feel better? Yes or no? But can things happen outside? Make you feel worse? Can you worry that things might happen outside that make you feel worse? In other words, you’re not. Okay, wake up. But the truth of the matter is you’re not only, okay, you’re the most beautiful thing. I’ve walked the face of the earth, but you’re distracted from yourself. That’s what’s happening. The self, the consciousness. When they say the self, they’re talking about the core of your being, your soul, the core of your being, the essence of your being. The essence of your being is consciousness. Essence of your being is not anything you’re looking at. It’s the one who’s looking. It’s the highest thing there is you.

Okay? Let put this. How do I say that? Alright, take away your car. Are you still there? Okay, take away your house. You still there? Do you like the emotions? That’s your feeling because it took away your house. No, take away the emotions. You still there? Are you aware? Oh my God, I was feeling terrible all of a sudden. I don’t. Don’t know why you’re still there, aren’t you? Take away anything and everything. Take away your son, your daughter, your family, your husband, your wife. Oh my God, he said that. Okay, your religion, your church, your synagogue, take it all away. Are you aware it’s gone? Are you aware it’s gone? Okay, I take you away. Are you there? Nothing is there. Take away consciousness. There is nothing. Nothing has any meaning. Nothing exists or exists. You don’t know. Consciousness is the core of your being.

It is the essence of all meaning. Nothing has meaning without consciousness. Hey, like that. Okay, I’ll give you 700 billion, but you’ll not be aware that it exists. You feel good, right? So unless consciousness is present, falling on the object of consciousness, there is no meaning to anything. Consciousness is the core of meaning is the essence of your being. When they say soul, they’re talking about you. They’re talking about the consciousness. That’s the essence of your being and the fall from the garden because you fell from the seed of consciousness, who you are a conscious being into an object of consciousness, your thoughts, your emotions, your body and what comes into your senses. And it doesn’t always feel good. And therefore, now you must work with sweaty or brow to be okay. It’s not just going to happen by itself. But what’s really funny is not only can it happen myself, it is there at all times.

What did Christ say? How nice Jewish yogi, or I’m teaching you yoga, but I love that I can quote Christ because the teachings are yoga. They’re the essence. What he taught was the essence of all the deep teachings. So what did he say? Where did he say the kingdom was? Oh, within you. Guess where it is within you, but within you, not within your thoughts, not within your beliefs, not within your emotions, not within your body. It’s within you. That’s where the kingdom is and that’s where you fell from. So basically consciousness, which we’ll get further into consciousness, but consciousness is the essence of your being. So to study consciousness with the mind is fine. There’s nothing wrong with anything. It’s a very nice practice. There’s to keep yourself busy. It’s wonderful. The yogi did what? The great masters sat down on a cave. Don’t do that.

You don’t need to do that. They did it for you. Okay? They sat down on a cave, renounced everything. What’s this renunciation thing? It’s because they don’t want to be distracted. Is that the only way? Are you supposed to renounce? No, you’re not. We’ll get into that. Renunciation says, I am being distracted by things, therefore I must avoid them. The highest spiritual state says I am not distracted by things, therefore I need to avoid anything. I’m not distracted by it. I can live in New York. The mist of all the turmoil, exactly the same. They live in the woods or a cave. Now you’re there. You understand that? That’s a very great being, isn’t it? Okay, so the key is they practice the traditional practices, which then teach ’em. People teach ’em is renounce. If you’re so caught up in it, you can’t just not be distracted by it.

So the only thing you can do is stay away from it. So basically they practice these practices. Good mazeltov. I’m glad they did it. Alright? And so what happened is by leaving the world and not being distracted by the outside world and then sitting in the cave somewheres or whatever, a hut, and then closing your eyes. So the stuff’s not coming in, then you don’t get distracted by the outside world. So there’s nothing drawing you out. Then learn techniques. Breathing. Mantra. What’s mantra? I’m not distracted by the world because there’s nothing out there, but I’m distracted by my thoughts. Well, okay, it’s hard to stop the thoughts. So why don’t we just make them very simple?

I like that one. Well, what if that’s what the mind says all the time. Not very distracting. Okay? But that’s the whole idea is instead of thinking about this or that, which you didn’t get involved in, but you still think about it, you simplify the whole thing going on in the mind. You purify the mind, if you will. So it’s not thinking about all the, and by the way, I’m not telling you to do these things. We’re just talking about where yoga philosophy came from. Do you understand that? And the difference between experience and philosophy. So you’re in there and you’re working on it. You’re working on quiet in the mind by you can use mantra, you breathing, it’s a breathing quiet. Sit down the mind. It does these things do. They’re great techniques. So now the senses are not distracting you. The mind is not distracting you.

And all of a sudden, if you’re not distract, not have you used will, right? That’s still an act of presence of separation. But because you’re not distracted by the outside world, by the senses, you’re not distracted by the emotions or the thoughts. You’ve quieted it down enough to where the consciousness is not pulled down into it. Not that you managed to put it back up. You didn’t try to force yourself back up to a higher state. This is the real deep, deep teachings. You cease to be distracted by being pulled down by the mind, the emotions, right? Baba once throw to his people. He used to write, oh, loved ones, Baba, found out you can enter samati, a complete state of merger, the highest state of consciousness, and the mind doesn’t have to stop. Now who can understand that? You can, as I’m telling you, it’s because it distracts you that it has to stop.

What if it doesn’t distracts you? Right? There are all kinds of things in the world don’t distract you. There’s trees going by, there’s white lines, there’s clouds, there’s weather, there’s people you don’t know. 99% of every single hire, by the way, 99% of every single thing that comes through your senses does not distract you. You’re already distracted enough by that 1%. You sitting in a crowd of 2000 people trying to look for your girlfriend or boyfriend, you don’t see the 2000 people don’t distract you one iota. Alright? So you get to a state, he was in a state where you’re high enough to where if the mind is, it’s not neurotic, right? But if the mind starts are being created, they don’t pull you down. You don’t get distracted by them. So right now what we’ve said is you’ve managed to withdraw. And so the outside senses don’t distract you.

Now, you’ve worked on yourself enough, deep meditation techniques, mantra this, that whatever. And now the mind is pure enough, quiet enough to where it’s not distracting you. What happens? The consciousness is so beautiful. You listen to me. What happens is the most natural thing in the whole world. I’m not distracted, therefore I’m in consciousness. What does that mean? I’m me. It’s called self-realization. I realize myself is consciousness. I don’t think I’m consciousness. That’s a thought. Nothing is pulling me out, therefore I’m in. And that’s where the great ones went. That’s called self-realization. Okay, well what does that mean? Alright, you guys like to think of it as witness consciousness along the way. You have the stage where I’m here and I notice my thoughts. Isn’t that great? It’s nice. It’s a stage along the way. If you’re going to New York, you made it about to Georgia or South Carolina.

So now you’re here and you notice you have an erotic mind. That’s wonderful. Why? At least now you know have one and you know you’re distracted by it. That’s a very important step along the way. The gray ones didn’t stop there because you reached that state of noticing over time. It has to mature like fruit. It’s beautiful over time. You notice at first you’re freaked out how neurotic your mind is and how much trouble it causes you and everybody else. And then because you see it and you start realizing, I’m not it, that’s the highest psychological technique. Find out you’re not it. Stop watching the stupid thing. If you come to me as a psychiatrist or therapist, oh my God, you don’t understand. I got divorced five years ago. It still bothers me. I still keep thinking about him or her. And then mind saying, so the psychiatrist should say to you, oh, that’s your problem. Well stop it.

If you stop it, you won’t have a problem. He’s gone. He’s not in your life anymore. Why are you doing this? We should be able to say, oh, thank you. Alright, but you say, I don’t know how to because it’s distracting you because you care enough about it. It caused enough problems for you that you kept your problems and you kept the emotion. You kept the thoughts. And so now your mind keeps going back to those because that’s what you stored in there. And so it distracts your consciousness and you’re not at peace. You don’t feel joy. You don’t feel love and meaning. So what if you managed to let go of all that stuff? So the mind is pure enough and the emotions are pure enough, not pure, they don’t swear. Just they’re enough filled with the stuff you stored in there. And so now they don’t distract you.

So now the outside world, the sense are not distracting you. Your mind and emotion not distracting you. Then you’re not distracted. What does that mean? Who got distracted? Well, you’re distracted. You don’t know who got distracted because you’re distracted. Can you hear me? Are you listening to me? We’re going very deep with an understanding of what’s going on, of who you are. If you’re not distracted by who you’re not, then you remain who you are. Even if you’ve never been there before. People can have a deep meditation for one minute, one minute, and their entire life’s changed. It’s not rare at all, just touch it once and all of a sudden, OMG, oh my God, that’s who I am. It’s so real. It’s so deep. It cuts through everything. No philosophy. Now they’re trying to talk about that. No philosophy when somebody says, no, you didn’t go there.

Thank you because you did. How do you know? Write a book. No, prove it. No. It’s just basically, I experienced that now I like that, but I don’t want it to be in the past tense. I love you. It’s so beautiful. I want you to live there. Even if you live in New York and even if you go to work, even you have children, even you get married, even you get fired even if you don’t have money. If you do, I want you always to be there. Where? In the most beautiful place that exists in the universe, you, but you are distracted by. Let’s do that real quickly. Where are you distracted by? A why? I do this all the time, but have to, I’m sorry. Any one of you ever had an experience in your life that you didn’t like? Did you enjoy experiencing it?

No. Did you try to not experience it either outside, apologize, I’m leaving. If you don’t say you’re sorry, I can’t handle this. Say you’re sorry. I mean it. Yes. No, we never did that. Okay, so you try to change the outside. So it didn’t happen. I don’t have to deal with it. I couldn’t handle it. But if you can’t do that, then what do you do inside when it doesn’t feel good? I know what you do. And who else knew what to do? Freud. You suppress it. You push it away, right? Let’s get psychology, foundational psychology into yoga, right? Are you in there, Jack? Are there things that come in you don’t like Jack? Do you push them away? Do you have hands in there that can push away thoughts and feelings that you don’t want to have? I love Freud. He taught obviously great teachings, right? The question is, if I talk to Sigmund, I ask him, Sigman, yes, there’s suppression. Yes, there’s refreshing. Yes, there’s denial. All of that is pushing it away. What are you suppressing? What are you denying? Things I don’t like. Did you suppress the most wonderful experience you ever had? No. I clung to it. Buddhist. Okay, but otherwise I pushed it away. Who did?

The ego? No, the ego is something you built in your mind to try to live within yourself. It’s a thought pattern. Who did all this? The self is doing all this. The consciousness is the one that has the power in there to push things away. And so when they came in and you didn’t like it, and we talk about how that happens, but you didn’t like the experience, so you push it away. What does that do? Does it go away because you push it away? Is that what Freud taught? It’s go suppress the things. It’ll go away. They’ll just dissipate. Just like pollution lets the factories throw all this stuff out. There’s plenty of air. It won’t do anything. It’ll dissipate. They used to think that, okay, well inside, where do you think stuff goes and you push away? You know, just won’t pay attention.

It doesn’t have to be some big thing either you’re sitting there talking to somebody, a friend, and they say something that didn’t feel good. Maybe you misunderstood ’em. Maybe you didn’t. Whatever it is, it hits you. It happens, doesn’t it? Okay, it hits you. I guarantee you, next time you see that person, you will not feel the same as if they hadn’t said that. You understand that? Why? Because you stored it inside. No, I dealt with it. I accepted it. Yeah, sure. The fact that there’s even an, it means you made something out of it. It’s not like the breeze or the wind or the leaf that fell by or the car that drove by. It was what she said. And I can handle it, I’ll handle it. I have to forgive. Have to forgive what that which you didn’t forgive. It’s forgiveness of the wonderful thing.

It’s something you must practice and it’s a stage along the way. Lemme tell you something, if you let go, as it happens, there’s nothing to forgive. Forgiveness means you didn’t let it go. But I’m willing to forgive you anyways. You already judged. It’s already late. But do it. Don’t. I’m not saying that. Do you see the difference? Do you forgive the white lines for being on the road? There’s 80 billion things that come in. You don’t have to forgive them, but you do have to forgive. Somebody hurt you because you held onto it. Otherwise, if you’re a great being, truly great being, no matter what comes in, it passes through. It doesn’t mean you don’t deal with it, it just passes through. There’s nothing to forgive. It’s just basically reality came. It went, it passed me. So all I can do is talk around it. You understand that?

So meantime, you’re in there and you shoved all this stuff down inside of you and you do it every single day of your life. Not just big things, traumatic things. Every day of your life there are things that happen that you don’t like and you store them, you push them away, they get stored in there. They do not go away, period. You dream about them, don’t you? Don’t you have something bad happen, something happen that bothers you, you have dreams about it, you talk to people about it. A week later you remember it. Three years later, if somebody says the name of the person, even though it’s not the person they’re talking about, it comes back up. Why? Because you stored it in there. If you don’t like it and you can’t handle it, and you push it away, it gets stored inside of you. Therefore, something very important to you got stored. Something hurts you. And the same as anything else like the cloud or the weather or this or that. Although the weather can do it. It’s your birthday, you’re six years old, you have your party outside and it’s raining.

You don’t remember that. You don’t remember what you felt like when you’re 60. Someone will say, oh, your granddaughter, let’s have the party outside. No, you don’t have the party outside. I guarantee you I’ve done that. You don’t have the party outside. What’s the matter with you? One stupid experience one day in your life and you built your whole world on top of it. Don’t think it’s rational. It’s not rational. It’s ridiculous. So because you couldn’t handle it, you did something very interesting. You took the worst experience you ever had in your life and decided to keep them. You made a storehouse, didn’t you? That’s what psychology used you. They said you shoved it somewhere. Give it a name. Subconscious. Why is it subconscious? Because you don’t want to come into the conscious, therefore it’s subconscious. See how simple it is? It’s not complicated. A great being once taught, and I see it’s completely that there is no such thing as a subconscious.

There is only mind. You are the one who took part of what came in and shoved it aside as opposed to something else. And therefore it’s stored in a place. You won’t let it come up. You don’t want to look there. I’m not looking over there subconscious. But if you look there, it’s not subconscious anymore. A great being does not have a subconscious mind. They have mind. Can you understand what I’m telling you? Good, good, good. This is deep. So basically that’s why the mind is so distracting because what you stored in there was very distracting. It was the things that distracted you the most. And so they’re trying to finish their journey through the universe, but you won’t let ’em. You keep pushing ’em away subconsciously or consciously. So if anything touches them, it distracts you to pieces. If you were driving a 1967 number old, you probably don’t know anything about that.

A 1995 car of a certain kind and it got in a car accident and you’re driving down the road in Germany five years later and you see a car like that, your heart skips a beat. I right away comes right back up, then come back in. Me want to come back in you. You stored the experience and don’t think that’s natural. It is natural to have a memory, but your mind is brilliant. It’s just like a computer. It has the ability to store things and bring them back. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the fact you didn’t let it get back there to normal memory. You suppressed it and you pushed it away. So now it’s what yogis called again with yogi philosophy. They call that thing that stuck in there as samskara. That’s thousands and thousands of years old. Those words, ancient Sanskrit.

Why? Because they were in there studying and they saw it. They saw what I’m talking to you about way before Freud, way before any of this stuff, thousands of years before. Of course they did because they went inside and they saw what was going on in there, not by studying outside Freud, most of what Freud came up with, the ego, super. And again, I love Freud, the ego and superego he did by studying people outside. He studied institutionalized people. And you get to see extremes. And he saw these patterns, saw patterns that were like the body expressing itself, the animal aspect and the superego society told you how to be. So you have thought patterns like that and the ego that which tries to live in there and forms a self-concept about itself that can live with the hidden ego in the society. All of it was studying outside.

It came up with these great theories, which are true and they’re real. Okay? The yogi says, yeah, I got those, but I’m not it. I’ve noticed that thing. You called the super ego in there. I noticed it. I’m not it. I noticed the ego ever knows. You have an ego. You ever defend yourself, ever care about what people think about you Ever say something stupid and then think about it for the next four days you got an ego that’s called a self concept. Something you want to think of yourself as or something you don’t want to think of yourself as. And you built a mental concept in there about a you that you want to be and a you don’t want to be. And it gets hit, doesn’t it? All the time. It gets hit all the time. It’s so sensitive. It’s absurd. So you are in there watching this.

I’m glad Sigmund figured it out by studying and writing down notes and analyzing and do all that stuff. That’s wonderful. He was right. He’s right. The yogi watches it from the other side, from behind and then it pulls it in. And then you learn to not have it pull you in. You learn how to be comfortable even if your ego’s not, in other words, it doesn’t distract it. I told you the key word is distraction, isn’t it? It doesn’t distract you. What if you say something really stupid and everybody laughs at you and you laugh with them and that’s the end of it. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that be nice? Who said you can’t do that? Who said you can’t learn to do that? It’s just layers and layers of stuff. If you go deep enough inside, and again, going back to what the yogis did, so they were announced the outside.

So the senses are not disturbing and distracting them. Then they learn to work with the mind through mantra and breathing and all different kinds of techniques to where really what they learned to do is to let go of some scar as they stored in there from the past. And eventually nothing in there is distracting the consciousness. That’s the main point I want to say. You didn’t do anything to get back to consciousness. You stopped leaving. It stopped pulling you out. If you take a hot air balloon, alright, a helium balloon, a hot air balloon, okay? And you tie it to the ground, it’s tethered to the ground, it bounces up. It does. They don’t tie it so tight. It bounces up a little bit, but it’s not going up. Well, let’s put more helium in it. It’s not going to go up. It’s tethered. Well, how do I get it to go up?

Cut the tethers. Then what do I do? Nothing. If you cut the tethers, it goes up. That’s its nature. If you stop being distracted, you end up in the seat of the one that was always there being distracted. And that seat is very different than anything you. So the yogis went back there and ended up experiencing the seed of consciousness. I was thinking about it being in it. And they all found the same thing that when they went back beyond witness consciousness, why is it beyond? Because witness consciousness, you’re still looking at you. So you’re taught to watch your thoughts, watch your breath, watch your emotions. Don’t touch them, just watch them. Objective observation. Christian already called it, yes, you’re objective, but you’re still observing something. It’s still catching your attention. What happens when it no longer catches your attention? You realize that you were always realized you were always back there, but you were even pulled down.

And then instead of just watching your thoughts and emotions, when it go deep enough, they all found the same thing, which is my consciousness was like a drop of water studying me when it no longer did that, it fell back into the ocean. And every single drop of consciousness is of the same nature of the same thing. It’s the same ocean. Just like every ray from the sun that falls on the earth. They fall on different places, every single ray. But it’s all the same, isn’t it? It’s all the sun projecting itself. And I don’t like words like universal consciousness. I was a sixties guy that used to have expanding consciousness. When I went deep enough over the years, I would never use the word expanding consciousness. Stop contracting consciousness. Consciousness already the full ocean. You are enlightened right now. You are seated in what you call God in the oneness of the whole universe.

That’s who you are. But you’re paying attention to your stupid little foss and your stupid little emotion. They are stupid. You understand that? I’m sorry to tell you. You don’t like that, do you? No. I should respect my thoughts and emotions. Give me a break. You sit on a little planet in the middle of nowhere, as I always teach you this. 1.3 million earths fit inside the sun. How much room do you take up on the earth? Not to mention the 1.3 million is inside the sun. And the sun is one of 300 billion stars in one galaxy and there are trillions of galaxies and you care about just stupid thoughts. They seem rather stupid if you’re at it that way, right? Oh, I had a zi on my chin. I had to give me a break. I spilled some catch on my pants and I’m embarrassed. I have to watch and go back to work.

But I don’t have time to change. These are very important thoughts in the midst of the reality of the universe. So I get to call ’em stupid. Fair enough. The fact that you’re aware of them, they’re not important. Who’s aware of them is the whole universe. It’s like the ray for the sun fell on something I’m watching goes it lit it up, lit that thing up. Oh my God, look, it’s red. Look, it’s changing the blue. What’s the matter with you? It’s one ray from the whole thing and there’s this beautiful, beautiful sun emanating all of that. You don’t even know anything about it. You don’t look at it. You don’t care about it. You only care about what is shining on your thoughts, your emotions. That’s called being distracted, isn’t it? And why am I so distracted by my thoughts? And I told you, because you storm.

If you store every single thing that bothered you inside your whole life and you have Freud said one years old, two years, blanky, every monkey, everything. If you stored every single thing that bothered you, disturbed you your entire life inside, what’s it going to be like in there? Disturbed? Is it not disturbed in there? Unless you work hard as you can be to make it not be. That’s why. So when they went deep inside, they were able to get beyond the senses. They’re able to get beyond thoughts and emotions. And so now they’re not distracted. How did they do that? You cleanses called cleansing. Now you understand all the teachings. What does cleansing mean? Cleansing means I stored garbage inside of me and I’m let it go. He said it. You’re not going up in a hot air balloon when it’s tethered. You think about all you want, you study it all you want, come up with scientific formulas, anything you want, but you ain’t going up.

I have a philosophy about how to go up. You have to do this and do that and do that, right? Well me, I’m just going to cut the tethers and we’ll go up I an experience and philosophy. So until you let go of this stuff, do I? People ask me all the time, I have some big stuff down there, a lot of it, don’t we little stuff happen every day. Then you have stuff happen next year and then a week and then you got to real. So basically, yeah, stuff down there. Do I have to go down there and find it and take it out and understand where it came from and analyze it and go apologize to people I hurt when I was five, when I’m 55? Do I have to do that? Of course you don’t have to do that. If you have to do that, then you have to do that.

But of course you don’t have to do that. Just let it go. What do you mean it’s over? The people are dead. You are bothered by people that are dead, aren’t you? Well, uncle George did when this and that. Your sister got the bicycle. You wanted the color of it. What are you doing? Accepting that behavior of being bothered by something That’s not even happening. But it did. So what? It’s not anymore happening. Why are you tolerating that? Something’s bothering you. That happened 20 years ago and it’s not happening anymore. Has anybody listening? So they learned to let it go. They made at the motive. I can’t explore consciousness while I’m being distracted by what I stored in here. Make sense? And so you learn to let it go. You let it go. If it comes up, you let it go. I know you don’t know how to do it, but now we’re talking about where the deep tissues came from.

So they let it go. So now, because they let it go, what happened to you? Let it go. If it was stored with pain, it’s coming back with pain. Do you understand that? Somebody wants to ask me, is there some way that it could be stored with pain and not come back with pain? It has its nature. You stored it with pain, it comes back with the pain, doesn’t it? If you did something when you were in fourth grade, you hurt somebody, you did something stupid, right? If I talk about it, it would embarrass you. If you saw that person when you went back to some high school reunion, you’re going to feel embarrassment. It’s not that it didn’t happen, it happened. But why’d you store it? Why do you have to store it? Because I couldn’t handle it when it happened when I was 10 years old.

And I can’t handle it when it comes back up when I’m 50 years old because it feels the same. It feels embarrassing. It feels painful. It feels scary. Growth spiritually means, okay, I was little. I’m not involved as I am now. I couldn’t handle them. I can handle it now. I can handle it now. Not only can I, I will because I ain’t keeping that thing in there because it keeps distracting me either subconsciously or consciously. You know, live like that. You’re scared of yourself. Are you scared that things can happen? That freak you out or remind you from the past and you don’t want to face that stuff? So cleansing means you understand that stuff’s got to come up for you to be free, you have to go down there and find it. You have to go there and get involved in it unless you have to.

That’s your business, alright? But realistically, what if you let it come up? But if you let it come up, I always compare it with childbirth. Okay, women, that’s a painful thing. They go back for seconds and thirds. Why? Because the result is worth the pain. Athletes kill themselves practicing for the Olympics for this and that. No pain, no gain, weight lifting, all kind of stuff, right? Well, why is it not the same here? Why a baby inside? Why don’t you sit there and say, I don’t want this stuff inside. You want this stuff inside of you distracting you. You can’t know who you are. It’s drawing you away from yourself and you’ve built an ego so you can protect yourself, but you’re not the ego. You know that. Who wants to live like that? You’re a very great being, but you’re being distracted by that stuff because like I said, why that stuff?

Because that’s the stuff you couldn’t handle. Therefore you started. Therefore, it’s the most sensitive thing your entire life. So basically you let go, you learn to let go. So we’re now sitting in the cave, we’re doing our thing. Not you. I don’t want you’re doing it. But they did it thousands and thousands of years ago and now they’ve let go of their stuff. They just let go. As it came up, they let go. The more you let go, the less you’re distracted. The less you’re distracted. The more consciousness naturally sits within what’s called the seat of self. You become established in the seat of self. Is that something I did? No. It’s something you didn’t do. And I told you it is not about going back to God. It’s about not leaving. Your consciousness is already there. It always has been, always will be. But you are distracted.

Your consciousness pulled down into you into this tiny little thing going. It’s so funny. Isn’t it funny? Come on. Alright. And so you’re distracted. Well, you learn to cleanse so that you’re not distracted. Like I said, when you’re not distracted, you find yourself being at peace, sitting in the seat of consciousness. But still, you’re still here. You’re still individual. They talk about non-dual. You’re still dual. It’s still consciousness and form, thoughts, emotion, anything like that. But you’re not pulled down into them. It’s called becoming established in the seat of self. You don’t have to do anything. You’re there when you let go enough. Once you start share first your fight is to get back there, to let go and go through as you need to. Eventually, when you are back and you’re naturally not being disturbed, you’ll feel the energy pulling you up, not pulling you down.

The same energy, pulling you down into distraction. All of a sudden there’s an energy pulling you up. There’s an upward pull. Just like if you cut the tethers, the hotter balloon goes up naturally, but you won’t. It takes a great being until let go, because now Christ may must die to be reborn. There’s the teaching now. You’re not letting go of your thoughts now. You’re not giving your emotions. You’re letting go of your sense of individuality. You were this little drop of consciousness and you’re being pulled back to your core, to the source, source of consciousness. How that everything has a source. What’s the source of consciousness? Oh my God, that’s like sacred words seem to say that consciousness has a source and they’re not going to find it by looking at the mind. Now, do you see why I say that? That’s their philosophy.

Now we’re talking about experience, direct experience of what consciousness is because you’re it and it starts to pull you back and you have to let go. Eventually you let go. You’ve been comfortable enough. It’s beautiful enough. And perfect example is a chapter in Aman for yoga Yoga’s book, which was called My Experience in Cosmic Consciousness. He said when the first time he went back there, he merged with the universe. Every star was him. Every galaxy was him. He was expanding at the speed of light in all directions at once. The entire universe was his body. Alright? That’s the state of som. It’s the state of oneness of merger. Yoga means merger means union. The individual Atman merges with Atman. You hear all these words. That’s what they found. It’s not a philosophy, it’s a direct experience. And it’s not a direct experience. Somebody else had it’s direct experience that you’re capable of having.

Everybody’s capable of having it. Why? Just like every ray leaves the sun. They just have to look in the opposite direction. All of a sudden you’re looking up instead of looking down. And so basically that’s who you are. That is what’s going on. And that is what is the core of the deep teachings. And of course yoga is the foundation. And then Buddhism came off of that and all sorts of traditions came off of the deep teachings and Sufism in the Islamic tradition. Sufism, same teaching, same things. They have different flavors. One system says you have to go written down Zen. It’s always so strict, right? You have to stop the mind. Stop this, don’t do this, don’t touch that, don’t anything. And then there’s this book in yoga philosophy. Ever heard of Patan of Yoga Sutras? What did it say? That’s supposed to be the foundation of the yoga teachings.

It was it 500 BC or something? It was written. What did he say? He said your first stage of getting back there, it’s prya. Well, that’s a big word. What does that mean? It means withdraw from your senses. Oh, I thought we just talked about that. The ability to withdraw from your senses so you’re not distracted by your senses. And second darna, what is darna Meditation. No, no, it’s not meditation. It’s the ability now that you have withdraw from your senses and your consciousness inside to one pointedly, focus on one thing. So your mind’s not wandering, nothing’s pulling you away from the focus that you’re on, right? You made a one pointed focus. There’s darn not meditation. It makes a big distinction. That’s just the ability to one pointedly focus the mind and the interstate on one point. So it’s not jumping all over the place.

It’s just there. Then what? Then Dion. Dion is meditation. What is that? Take that one pointed focus and focus it unconscious itself. Let it come back to the seat of consciousness. And that is a meditation. That is yoga. Geez, things. We talked about that all night, didn’t we? And that it’s not so complicated, is it? But the important difference I’m making is it’s not a philosophy. So because you are consciousness, you are the greatest thing ever walked the face of the earth. You are literally, God descendant the problem. You descended a little too far. It came too close. You started identifying with what you were looking at. You identify with your body. You don’t identify with your car, you identify with your husband, you identify with your wife, you identify with your children, you identify with your job, you identify with everything. Identify with your clothes.

I can’t believe you’re wearing that. It doesn’t match. It does. So, alright, we got so close. That’s the fall from the garden, right? That we are so close to it that we said we’re it, I am this. No you’re not. You are aware of this. So if you work your way back, every one of you is capable of the deepest and highest states. And it’s not about leaving your family, it’s not about not having children, it’s not about having money. It’s not about going to India, it’s not about climate. They’re all fine. Yes. Okay, great things can happen. Alright? It’s about ceasing to be distracted by that which you’re not, which is your thoughts. People say, but which thoughts are me? None. If you’re in there noticing them, they ain’t you. If I’m looking at something I don’t know looking. But in the meantime, nicer thoughts are easier to let go of than the not temasek and Rajas, all that kind of stuff.

You heard all the words. That’s how they teach you all the philosophies so that you’re willing to work on letting go. But if your thoughts were totally pure, you say, I have pure thoughts. I have the purest thought in the whole world. No one has ever had thoughts as pure as mine. You ain’t going nowhere except into your thoughts. That’s about spiritual ego. But by understanding that you are the one distracted by all thoughts. Any thoughts, and by emotions and by your body senses stuff and by the world for sure. How do you work your way out? It’s really very simple. First you have to want out, but want out doesn’t mean you’re not married. It doesn’t mean you’ll take care of the children. It has nothing to do with your behavior in the outside world. It’s the entire body is about you’re in the world, you’re doing your thing, but you’re not.

Okay. That’s the ultimate of you’re in the world of it. You ain’t even close to of it. You are literally, God descended playing in his universe and you’re aware of it every single second. Oh my God, imagine that. That is your state of being. There are great masters. Mayor Bob was there. There are great masters that at all times that is who they are. But they’re still interacting with life. They’re still doing things. But it doesn’t matter. It has nothing to do. It has to do with are you aware of who you are? So I hope this helps, but the main point of this talk was realization is not a philosophy. You have to defend it. You’re it.

Tami Simon: You’ve been listening to The Michael Singer Podcast, produced by Sounds True in partnership with Shanti Publications. For more information on Michael’s body of work and all back episodes, please join us at MichaelSingerPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. Sounds True: waking up the world.