Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

This is why Rajiv will be a world teacher in the future. He breaks down my instructions into steps. I never would have taught this way. I say the same thing but in different sequences.


Rajiv:



See, I get a lot of mails from many people.  And they ask me about what exactly  is 
self-inquiry? What are the stages involved in that? What do I need to do to know 
what the ‘I’ is? These are a few questions that arise in everybody’s mind. So 
briefly I will just go through what exactly we have to do, as a sadhak, as a seeker. 
There are basically four stages, or four steps, that any seeker or sadhak will 
benefit by knowing about these stages. 


The first is acceptance... Acceptance of your present state of beingness. Many 
people have difficulty in that. Everybody  is reading a lot of things, everybody  is 
reading about Edji’s shower experience, Autobiography of a Jnani, and many 
other beautiful books, which are there. And they  are not finding or coming to 
terms with their own beingness. That is not a correct thing to do. I feel the first 
step any  beginner,  or intermediate, or advanced disciple, whoever it is, must first 
learn to accept his current state of beingness, whatsoever it may seem like.
So it could be the body  awareness,  it could be the I-ness, it could be an energy 
movement within the body, it could be a feeling of emptiness — anything. There 
should not be any  shame in admitting what your present state of beingness is. 
People want to reach to a state,  and that is a difficult problem. The reaching is 
nothing but by  the mind. There is nowhere to reach anywhere. So first step is 
acceptance. Only  when you accept can you truly  love. Can love be there without 
acceptance? Can you truly love without acceptance?


Say  you have a child. You love him, you accept him — howsoever it is, howsoever he seems, or he appears.  So acceptance leads to love, and love is acceptance, that 
is the number one. So you must treat your present state of beingness as if he was 
your own child. And that is where you have to begin your relationship with your 
beingness, by  truly accepting unconditionally  that this is my present state of 
beingness, and I am going to sink inside of it. I am going to love it. That is 
number one.


Number two: acceptance does not mean that we leave it unattended. Acceptance 
means that we watch over it — continuously, be aware. Don’t we do the same 
thing with our child? We love our child, so it does not mean we leave it, 
howsoever he is. We keep a watch! Every movement is watched.  And that is how 
the relationship develops. That is how it develops — flowers. How has it gotten to 
that state? It is by  watching, observing,  daily, deeply,  seeing all its forms. So we 
must continuously watch over our state of beingness. That is the second.


The third stage.  What happens when we are continuously aware, or continuously 
observing our state of beingness? We will know that awareness, that continuous 
watching, that continuous observing,  has resulted in our beingness changing 
form. The beingness has changed its nature. That will happen automatically.  We 
are not changing anything here.  We have simply  observed. We have simply been 
aware. We have kept a watch on it. And that watch itself is in us. That watching, 
that loving,  that acceptance,  will lead us where we will see that, or observe, that 
the beingness is actually changing form — it has become something else. And as 
my beingness changes form, that ‘I’, the one entity, also changes form. The 
observer becomes the observed because it is the nature of the observer to become 
the observed.


So what have we done in these three stages? We have changed nothing, we have 
not even looked at that ‘I’. What we have done is, we have only been aware and 
observed our state of beingness. And as that beingness changes form, 
automatically  the ‘I’ also follows it. It too changes form. That ‘I’ is completely 
dependent on that beingness. Completely.


As your beingness is, so shall be your ‘I’. So one must not worry  what that ‘I’ is. 
One must completely  attend to the state of beingness — lovingly,  affectionately... 
That is the third.


And the last stage. The last stage is as long as we are becoming something; as 
2long as the observer is there,  know that the 'I' still exists for you. That is a very 
important point. Many people stop in between. They  have some experience of 
oneness, they  have some experience of nothingness, emptiness, they  observe 
their nothingness, they  even become nothingness! And then they stop. They  feel 
there's nothing more to do. They conclude I have become nothing,  or I have 
become joy, or I have become something — that is it. But the fact is, as long as 
you are becoming, there is this ‘I’. Because, who tells me that I  have become 
something...  unless and until there is an ‘I’,  who has observed this?  That ‘I’ is still 
there. Isn’t it?  Inquiry therefore has not come to an end.


Inquiry  comes to an end when there is neither the observer,  neither the observed, 
and neither observation. No witnesser, no witnessing, no witnessed! Until that 
time, self-inquiry  is not complete. So we must not give up until the very  end. All 
becoming, everything that we become, is false.  It is still an illusion. Today  I am 
Jo-Ann, or Dennis, or Janet; tomorrow I  have become something else, then I 
become something else. But who is telling you this? There is someone who’s 
telling you this. So he remains. As long as I know that I  have become something, 
it is still not complete self-inquiry.


Self-inquiry completes when I become unknown. That is it. 


These are the four steps. I have tried to explain, through my experience and 
through what I learned from Guru Shri Edji, what he imparted to me, this 
knowledge. And I have tried to put it as simple in words as possible.
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