VBT – Week’s Meditation 80
Just Aware
What really happens when you are Just Aware.
As awareness grows, I decrease. In full awareness, you are, but there is no sense that I AM. In words, at the most, this can be said – that you feel a subtle AMNESS, but there is no I.
You feel existence, and you feel it in abundance, a fulfilled moment, but the I is not there. You cannot feel I EXIST; you cannot feel I AM PRESENT; you cannot feel I AM AWARE. That I is part of unawareness, inattention; part of your sleeping state. It cannot exist. It cannot exist when you are really alert and aware and conscious.
This is how supposed questions can arise. You can go on thinking about them, and nothing will be solved. If this happens – that you feel I AM; I AM AWARE – then you only have to note one thing, and that is that you are not alert, you are not aware. Then these feelings – I AM AWARE, I AM CONSCIOUS, I EXIST – these are thoughts, you are thinking them. They are not realized moments.
You can think I AM AWARE; you can go on repeating I AM AWARE – that will not do. Awareness is not this repetition. And when you are aware, there is no need to repeat I AM AWARE. You are simply aware; the I is no more.
Try awareness. Right now be alert. Where is the I? You are – rather, you are more intensely – but where is the I, the ego? In the very intensity of consciousness, the ego is no more. Later on, when you lose awareness and thinking starts, you can feel I AM, but in the moment of awareness there is no I. Right now experience it. Silently you are here, you can feel your presence, but where is the I? The I never arises. It arises only when retrospectively you think. When you lose awareness then I arise immediately.
Even if for a single moment you can experience simple awareness, you are, and the I is not there.
When you lose awareness, when the moment has slipped, gone, and you are thinking, the I comes back immediately. It is part of the thought process. The very concept of I is a thought, it belongs to thinking. I AM – is a thought.
When you are alert and there is no thought, how can you feel that I AM? The AMNESS is there – but that too is not a thought, it is not thinking. It is there existentially, it is a fact. But you can turn the fact into thinking immediately, and you can think about this gap that existed where there was no I.
And the moment you think, I have come back. With thinking, the ego enters – thinking is the ego.
With no-thinking, the ego is not.
Awareness and the ego cannot be together. If awareness has come on, if it is there, the ego has disappeared. This is simultaneous; there is not even a single second’s gap. The light is on and the darkness has disappeared. It is not that it disappears by and by, in steps, gradually. You cannot see it going outside; you cannot say that now the darkness is going out.
The light is there, and the darkness is immediately not there. There is not a single moment’s gap, because if there is a gap then you can see darkness moving out. And if there is a single moment’s gap, then there is no reason why there can’t be a gap of one hour. There is no gap. The act is simultaneous. Really, the coming of the light and the going out of the darkness are two aspects of one phenomenon.
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