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Excerpt from the book by OM C. Parkin ‘The Birth of the Lion’. 

The book is available at the advaitaMedia online shop.

Welcome to Satsang. Please feel invited to ask a question any time. If you ask a question, I will answer it for you. Who asks the question and who answers it?

You believe I am a person living in this body and answering your question. If you identify with your body as I, you believe that I am a body too. This is the origin of separation. Separation brings about loss, which makes all humans feel cut off from their source, and this illusion has to be dissolved. When you ask a question, the answer you receive is not given by a person, for this body here is only one of my persons. Person, or persona, means “mask”. What do you know about yourself? What do you know about me? As I am no individual, the answer is impersonal. I am yourSelf.

If you want to be still, please feel invited to be still. I am not saying that you necessarily keep your mouth shut, but that you keep quiet within your thoughts. This is the only thing to do anyway, if it’s possible to say there is something to do at all. If anyone has a serious interest in bringing suffering to an end, it is necessary only to be still. Suffering is exclusively a question of thoughts. It is possible for thoughts to calm down without anyone having to do anything about it, without anyone having to sit down and meditate, although there is nothing wrong with meditating. I’m saying that it is possible, at this moment, to relax one’s mind without any effort so that the thoughts simply settle down. If thoughts settle down, if everything settles down, what remains? Usually, the mind is so intensely and continuously occupied with phenomena that there is no possibility of calming down.

It was my good luck that for one moment this trance of phenomena, of images and motion, settled down. At that moment, everything that remained was mySelf.

In a certain way, I have nothing to tell you. I am not saying, however, that I have nothing to communicate. I just don’t have a teaching to spread. No teaching is necessary to learn who you are. The possibility of you recognizing the truth of who you are is only a question of your level of interest, for I have seen repeatedly that for some mysterious reason there is almost no one interested in absolute Self-recognition. Most people are interested in teachings, or they are interested in continually new and exciting experiences, extraordinary experiences, physical experiences, emotional experiences, or supernatural experiences. But almost nobody has total interest in realizing the truth about themselves, about their own immortality.

Satsang is the invitation to be at home. You do not come from anywhere, and you do not go anywhere. You are here. You are not born and you will not die, you are here. In this simplicity, what has to happen, happens, and what does not have to happen, does not happen. There is nothing to do, just total awareness, total vigilance in the face of temptation. Gangaji once compared it to a cat sitting in front of a mouse-hole. Whenever a mouse comes out of the hole, she is present. The mice are thoughts. As soon as the cat falls asleep, as eventually will happen, and gets lost in nonessentials, the thoughts come sneaking out and peace is gone.

Satsang begins where concept and ideologies end. Questions that arise from concepts can only ask “what?” or “why?” or “how?” Satsang asks the question “who?”.

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