Why Everything Feels Real but Isn't | Nisargadatta Maharaj

[00:00:00]Right now, you think you are holding a phone. You feel the weight of your body, the temperature of the room.

[00:00:09]You think you are a unique individual living a life that you control.

[00:00:14]What if I told you that every single thing you are experiencing at this exact second, your deepest memories, your worst anxieties, your very sense of me, is a highly convincing hallucination?

[00:00:30]Nisargadatta Maharaj didn't sugarcoat the ultimate truth.

[00:00:35]He said the world you suffer for, the world you cry over, doesn't even exist.

[00:00:41]You are trapped in a dream defending the very walls of your own prison.

[00:00:47]It's time to wake up.

[00:00:49]We are completely obsessed with our personal story.

[00:00:53]Tomorrow's bills, yesterday's arguments, the constant suffocating weight of the future.

[00:01:02]Our five senses constantly feed us data screaming, >> [music] >> "This is solid. This is real."

[00:01:09]But Maharaj pointed out a fatal flaw in our human perception.

[00:01:14]He challenged the seekers by asking, "How do you know that the world is there when you are not thinking about it?"

[00:01:24]Think about when you are in deep, dreamless sleep.

[00:01:28]Where is your anxiety?

[00:01:30]Where is your career? Where is your identity?

[00:01:34]It completely vanishes.

[00:01:36]The universe literally ceases to exist for you.

[00:01:39]It only reappears the moment the mind powers on in the morning and hits play on the character you call I.

[00:01:49]The reason everything feels so undeniably real is because your consciousness is the perfect projector.

[00:01:58]It illuminates the movie of your life so brilliantly, so flawlessly, that you forgot you are the screen.

[00:02:06]You have confused yourself with the flickering shadows.

[00:02:10]To snap his visitors out of this deep [music] trance, Maharaj frequently used the metaphor of the dreamer.

[00:02:18]Imagine a man who goes to sleep and dreams he's being hunted by a tiger in the jungle.

[00:02:25]In that dream state, his heart is pounding, the terror is absolute.

[00:02:31]The tiger's breath is hot on his neck.

[00:02:34]The suffering is 100% real to the dreamer. But what is the cure for his fear?

[00:02:41]Does he need to find a weapon inside the dream?

[00:02:45]Does he need to outrun the dream tiger?

[00:02:48]No.

[00:02:49]Any action taken inside the dream only makes the dream feel more real.

[00:02:55]The only cure is to wake up.

[00:02:58]Maharaj looked at the people weeping over their life problems in his small Mumbai loft and told them they were trying to fight a dream tiger.

[00:03:10]The problems you are desperately trying to solve right now belong to a person who does not actually exist. [music] So, if this world, this body, this ego is a mirage, what is actually real?

[00:03:26]How do we wake up from the tiger?

[00:03:28]Maharaj's instruction was ruthlessly simple, yet it destroys the ego.

[00:03:34]He said, "Hold on to the sense I am to the exclusion of everything else."

[00:03:40]Notice, he didn't say hold on to I am a failure or I am successful or even I am seeking spiritual awakening. You must drop the story attached to the presence.

[00:03:54]Strip away the adjectives.

[00:03:56]Strip away the history. Remain only in the pure naked presence of I am before a single thought forms.

[00:04:05]Everything added after I am is the fake reality you have been conditioned [music] to believe.

[00:04:13]It feels real only because your attention constantly [music] feeds it.

[00:04:18]Withdraw your attention from the objects of the world and turn it around 180°.

[00:04:25]Look at the looker.

[00:04:27]Find out who is experiencing [music] this illusion.

[00:04:31]When you relentlessly locate the source, the illusion begins to starve.

[00:04:36]It loses its grip.

[00:04:38]The screen goes blank and for the first time in your life, you actually see what you are.

[00:04:46]The next time you feel overwhelmed by the drama of your life, stop.

[00:04:51]Look at your hands. Look at the walls around you.

[00:04:55]Ask yourself, to whom is all of this appearing?

[00:05:00]The vast silence that follows that question is the only real thing in the entire universe.

[00:05:07]Everything else is just dust dancing [music] in the light of your own consciousness.

[00:05:14]Don't believe the dream.

[00:05:16]Be the light.