Things Will Come To You Without Warning - Be Prepared - Wisdom Nisargadatta Maharaj

[00:00:00]People prepare for storms by reinforcing their roofs. Those seeking enlightenment prepare for storms by realizing they are the sky. Nisarata Maharaj the 20th century master of Advita Vetanta never taught his disciples to stockpile food for tomorrow. He pointed to the mind and asked, "Who fears [music] tomorrow? Find it before it arrives."

[00:00:24]Today's topic is paradoxical in its very name. Prepare [music] for the unknown.

[00:00:30]How can one prepare for the unknown? In the dualistic world, it is impossible.

[00:00:35]In Maharaj's insight, it is the only way. For all, mental preparation is based on memory and projection. But reality never repeats, never gives advanced notice. True preparation is not predicting the future. [music] It is dwelling so deeply that when the future arrives in any form, loss, sickness, death, or a flash of enlightenment, you remain unmoved because you realize nothing truly [music] comes to you. Only clouds drift across the sky and you are what you are.

[00:01:13]The only unexpected thing, you were never born, my dear friend.

[00:01:19]Be honest with me for a second. When you woke up this morning, did anyone send you a message saying, "Today you will exist." No. No email from the universe.

[00:01:32]No alarm clock from [music] God. Yet you are here reading these lines, feeling your breath, and something within you is nodding. That is the only unexpected [music] thing and the only thing you need to prepare for your own primordial presence.

[00:01:50]Nisar Gadata Maharaj, a tobacco salesman in Bombay, uneducated, not a cave [music] hermit, pointed this out directly for 40 years. He shouted at his visitors, "Before you were the child of your parents, what were you?" That question is not meant to be answered.

[00:02:07]It's like a scalpel cutting through the entire burden of your life that you carry like a sack. In the advita vdanta this presence is called turya the fourth [music] state the foundation of waking dreaming and deep sleep. The manduki opanishad say it is neither inside nor outside neither neither a mass of consciousness neither a consciousness nor non-conciousness.

[00:02:33]It cannot be seen grasped or conceived.

[00:02:37]It [music] is purely I am. You see everything in your life is foretold.

[00:02:43][music] Birthdays, tax deadlines, meeting schedules, even death. Your doctor might give you 6 months, but there is one thing that is never foretold because it has never gone anywhere to arrive. You. You didn't come into being on the day your mother gave birth to you. You only put on a garment called body on that day. The garment will tear. But what about the thing wearing the garment? Maharaj recounts when my guru told me that I am nothing I [music] believed him and I spent 3 years just being with the feeling of [music] I am. No scriptures, no complicated meditations, just being with the knowing that I exist.

[00:03:27]The result [music] he says I died. The world died. Only the immortal remains looking through these eyes.

[00:03:38]So, how do you prepare for this unannounced event? Paradoxically, you don't prepare.

[00:03:46]You realize [music] you've always been ready.

[00:03:51]Practice with me now. Place your hand on your chest. Don't read any further.

[00:03:57]Close your [music] eyes for 3 seconds.

[00:04:00]Ask, "What is knowing that my [music] hand is on my chest?"

[00:04:06]Don't answer with words. Feel.

[00:04:10]That knowing has no age, no name, no past. It didn't come when you were 5 years old. It was there intact [music] even before you knew the word mother.

[00:04:24]That is you.

[00:04:26]That is the only thing that will never come to you [music] because it is you.

[00:04:32]Everything else, joy, sorrow, gain, loss, is a guest. They come and go. They will not give warning, but [music] the host never leaves. When you truly dwell in this knowing, you will laugh when events knock on your door because you realize [music] the one knocking is you.

[00:04:53]Playing the game of selfforgetfulness only to remember again. Like waves forgetting they are water then [music] panicking when they see the rocky shore.

[00:05:02]Don't believe me? Check tonight before you sleep. Ask yourself what will go into sleep. What will remain when there is no more people, no more world? Don't look for the answer. Be with the question. The question will burn the questioner. And what remains needs no warning. Three guests who don't knock.

[00:05:24]Suffering, loss, and death.

[00:05:27]>> [music] >> My friend, you can plan your wedding, your vacation, even your retirement at 60, but you can't schedule an appointment with suffering. It comes like a thief at 2:00 a.m. when you're laughing the loudest when you've just said, "My life [music] is fine." Why?

[00:05:43]Maharaj answers mercilessly because you signed a contract with suffering the moment you identified yourself as a benefactor. [music] Listen carefully. When you say I am happy, you agreed to I will be sad because happiness and sadness are [music] two sides of the same coin called I am this body mind. You can't just take heads without taking tails.

[00:06:07]Advita Vanta calls this dwanda [music] the opposite pair. Hot and cold, praise and blame, gain and loss, birth [music] and death. They always come in pairs.

[00:06:18]You invite one, the other automatically follows. No invitation needed.

[00:06:24]One, suffering comes unexpectedly because you've made an appointment with the benefactor.

[00:06:31]Have you noticed a newborn baby doesn't have the concept of suffering? It cries because it's hungry, [music] because it's cold. But it doesn't have another layer of why me? Life is unfair. That layer is the benefactor, [music] the one who considers themselves the center and demands the world serve them.

[00:06:51]Maharaj said suffering is necessary until you realize it's unnecessary. It's like the whip of the universe [music] striking the cow so you have to go home.

[00:07:02]What is home here? [music] It's the state of I am without attachment.

[00:07:07]How to prepare for suffering? Not by stockpiling [music] tranquilizers but by seeing pain is happening but I am not the pain. This distance [music] is freedom. In the Bhagat Gita, Krishna calls this sta pragnya. The steadfast one who does not dance when happy [music] nor collapse when sad.

[00:07:29]Two, loss only takes away [music] what is not yours.

[00:07:33]I ask you, have you ever truly [music] possessed anything? A car, tomorrow it might be hit. A lover, tomorrow they might change their mind. Even this body, can you keep it forever?

[00:07:49]You are only borrowing. Borrowing from the earth, water, [music] fire, air, then returning it.

[00:07:58]Maharaj often asks his [music] guests, "Can you hold the breath you just inhaled?

[00:08:04]Try it. You will die."

[00:08:08]Life is a flow of giving and receiving.

[00:08:11]Loss is only a delayed receiving.

[00:08:15]The universe takes back what it has lent you to remind you you are not an accumulator. So what is preparation for loss? It's about dying while alive. It's about saying to everything before going to sleep each night, "Thank you for today. If we don't meet again tomorrow, that's okay." Sounds pessimistic? No.

[00:08:38]That's the greatest [music] love.

[00:08:40]Because only when you're ready to lose can you truly touch what you have. In I am that Maharaj tells the story of a woman who lost her child. She was in pain. Maharaj asks before the child was born. [music] Did you suffer from its absence? No.

[00:08:58]Then what came and went? The child [music] or the notion of my child?

[00:09:03][snorts] Three. The death of the body.

[00:09:06]The birthday of self- nature.

[00:09:09]This is the last guest and [music] the most certain guest. You can avoid taxes, avoid obligations, but you cannot avoid death. But good news or bad news, you were never born, so [music] you cannot die. Death only kills what can die. The body is born, so it must [music] die.

[00:09:28]Thoughts are born, so they will cease.

[00:09:31]But the knowing that knows even the thought, I will die, does [music] that have birth?

[00:09:37]Maharaj in his final days battling throat cancer [music] in excruciating pain still sat and received guests.

[00:09:45]People asked are you in pain? He smiled.

[00:09:49]My body hurts. I don't. That's not [music] philosophy. That's the truth of someone who died before dying.

[00:09:59]Practice funeral meditation 10 minutes a week. I invite you to do this [music] though it's frightening. Lie down on the floor. Close your eyes.

[00:10:11]Imagine today is your funeral. Hear the cries of your loved ones. See your photograph.

[00:10:19]Ask yourself, if this were my last day, what would I [music] regret?

[00:10:25]What would I not dare to live for?

[00:10:28]Then ask one final [music] question.

[00:10:32]Who is witnessing this entire funeral?

[00:10:35]That witnessing is not in the coffin. It cannot be buried. When you touch it once, you will no longer fear death [music] because you realize you have never truly lived as a physical body.

[00:10:49]You are always life in disguise.

[00:10:52]These three visitors, suffering, loss, death, will come without warning. But if you have died to the false [music] self, they will come to your house and find it empty. There is no one to hurt. Like an arrow shot into the void. Preparation is not building walls. Preparation is realizing that you [music] are the sky.

[00:11:15]Clouds come and go. The sky has never been hurt.

[00:11:20]Sudden blessing. The moment you fall out of your dream.

[00:11:25]My dear friend, after talking about the gloomy guests, [music] I must tell you this. There is a guest even more unexpected, more unannounced and more beautiful than all of them. That is enlightenment.

[00:11:40]Or rather, the realization that you have never been unenlightened.

[00:11:45]You've heard too much about the spiritual [music] path, seven stages of meditation, 10 years of aseticism.

[00:11:52]Maharaj will shatter it all. He said, "Enlightenment [music] has no time. It is not the result of practice. It is your nature. How do you attain what you already are?"

[00:12:07]One, enlightenment has no path. It is an accident you have prepared for your whole life. I call it an accident because you cannot plan for it. You can't say next Tuesday at 3 p.m. I will attain enlightenment. If you can do that, it's not enlightenment but a mental experience. And all experiences come and go. But the paradox is this accident only happens to those who are fed up with everything. Fed up with formulas, fed up with teachers, fed up even with the searching. That absolute weariness is preparation. In the Ashtavakra [music] Gita, King Janaka attained enlightenment after hearing just one verse. Why? Because he was ripe. A ripe fruit falls [music] with just a gentle breeze. An unripe fruit cannot be broken even if you pull.

[00:13:02]Two, [music] the story of Maharaj meeting the guru. You are nothing. At 34 years old, [music] Nisar Gadata was an ordinary man with a wife, children, and a [music] small shop. He met Guru Sadharamehar.

[00:13:18]The guru didn't teach him anything [music] nor did he force him to chant scriptures. The guru said only one thing. You are not what you think. You are the ultimate reality. Return to the feeling of I am and do nothing else.

[00:13:36]Maharaj believed. He said, [music] "I simply believed the guru's words. I did not add or subtract. I did not argue. I simply stayed with I am."

[00:13:50]3 years later, he was done. You see, there are no sophisticated techniques, only faith and perseverance in the [music] simplest, the feeling of being.

[00:14:02]The universe is not complicated. Your mind is complicated.

[00:14:09]Three signs [music] of approaching grace. Tiredness of all answers.

[00:14:16]If lately you find all books meaningless, all spiritual videos are the same. [music] All the teachers words sound already known. Congratulations.

[00:14:26]You are not falling behind. You are getting closer. Because the truth [music] is not in the answers. It is when all questions collapse.

[00:14:36]Maharaj calls this [music] state not knowing, not ignorance, but wisdom that has laid down its sword. When you stop trying to know reality, reality reveals itself because it has never hidden. Only the one who wants to know hides it.

[00:14:55]Practice I don't know. Adviser's [music] only mantra.

[00:15:00]From today, whenever your mind draws a conclusion about anything, [music] this person is good. This thing is bad. I understand. Whisper, I don't know.

[00:15:12]I don't know is not a refusal. [music] It is openness. It is you returning to the universe the power of surprise. And the universe is always more surprising than any script you [music] write. When you live in I don't know, you are preparing for the most precious guest, grace.

[00:15:32]It may come while you are washing dishes, stuck in traffic, watching a leaf fall without warning because you have cleaned the house. A clean house welcomes the guest.

[00:15:45]My friend, the entirety of I am [music] that can be summarized in one sentence from Maharaj.

[00:15:53]Your only problem is that you have forgotten who you are. Remember and everything is resolved. Remembering isn't about learning more. It's about letting go of the false. I know who I am. When you are empty, reality flows in. That's what will come to you without warning. Prepare by stopping preparing.

[00:16:18]Be ready by realizing you've always [music] been ready. In the next section, I will tell you about the mind, the betrayer that's foretold, but [music] you always forget.

[00:16:29]Namaste.