The Life vs. Our life:

What is life? Life is a mystery. It is a puzzle that cannot be solved. It is a problem with no solution. Life is that indescribable entity that stands above and beyond all our dreams, imaginations, desires, our intellect, consciousness, awareness, and unawareness. Life is something that stands above everything. By its very nature, it is unknowable. That’s life, in its purest pristine form. Human life is very different. When we talk about the Life, there’s really nothing to talk about, because we don’t understand the Life. This doesn’t mean that none of us have touched that Life. It doesn’t mean that that Life is totally beyond our experience.

There is only one way to experience the Life: By following the path laid out by awakened beings. By following Buddha, by following Jesus, by following that ancient mystical path that leads to that life. Jesus called it eternal life, Buddha called it Nirvana, Enlightened sages have called it the ultimate experience of dissolving into something grander, something bigger. The Life is spectacularly different from our life, from your life, from my life. In fact, our lives are a small subset of the Life. Everything that is there in the Life is also there in our life, but everything that is in our life is not in the Life. It doesn’t even contain it.

The Process of Dreaming:

Existence doesn’t even see our dreams or our desires, because the foundation of the life that we see around us is the dreaming process of the mind. Take away the dream, then what is your life? Everything we are comes from the process of dreaming. We dream our reality and we project it outward. We start reflecting it through our emotions. Eventually, there’s the whole world of experiences, but the foundation of our life is really the process of dreaming; a designing mechanism. Then what is life without a central perception, without a creature to perceive it? What is life? Scientifically, we have proven beyond any doubt that each creature of existence perceives life differently in its own wavelength of perception. No creatures of existence process light or sound the same way. Their understanding of space, time, what is real, what is not real – everything is limited to that spectrum of experiences. It is the same with human beings. We look at our life, we look at reality, we look at our experiences, and we tend to think this is the absolute and that there cannot be anything beyond this, and this is the only version of life.

We can only make sense of life this way. Yes, the Earth is a planet, we are living on it, and we have our economic needs, our psychological needs, our spiritual needs, and we have the need to reproduce. This is our life. But what if this is just our dream? What if this is just your dream? Let me go one step further: There is no “our dreaming.” There is no collective dreaming. This is just an individual dreaming. Each individual independently dreams his life, and we have created a society where, through language, through our ability to exchange ideas, we have come to a common consensus of what is real, based on certain things all of us dream about, because all of us have common fears and common desires.

The fear of death is universal; every creature has this fear of death. Since all of us have this fear of death, it is very easy to conclude that the fear of death is a universal phenomenon, because you are not finding an individual who is not scared of his death – very rare. Once in a while, an individual comes who can actually stay above and beyond all fears, including the fear of death. Usually, we worship him, put him on the wall, and leave him there. These are rare examples of individuals who show us that our life can be so much more different from the way we are experiencing it.

What can we Change?

For me, the Life is the ultimate quest. We have to move slowly, gradually, away from the subset of our individual experiences to the ultimate universal consciousness which exists; that universal aliveness independent of time, space, distance, ideas. Something exists: You are alive. No validation is necessary for that fact. You know you’re alive. Let’s change your name. Are you any less alive? No. You are still you. Well, you might be a little confused for a few days, if your name is suddenly changed. In just a matter of a few weeks, a few months, you would have totally slipped into your new identity. People change names all the time; it’s no big deal. The name that we attach ourselves to so much is simply an idea. Our physicality, our bodies; we can change the way we look, we can change the way we imagine ourselves, and nowadays changing the way you look is just a fashion change – just change the cosmetics outside. If you really want to change your health and something fundamental inside, it’s going to take a little longer.

No matter how much I try, I can keep on trying my best to change you, but I can never get to the core fundamental you and change you, because that cannot be changed. I cannot replace you with me. As obvious and as silly as this might sound, it should be possible. If we can change our clothes, if we can change our thoughts, if we can transform our bodies, if we can change our lifestyles, if we can reimagine our past and our future, why not change the perception of “I”? Because that is where all the problem is, right? Instead of trying to solve all the problems, just change to someone who does not have problems; the ultimate solution. You don’t like your life, there’s something not right with it, and you’re trying to change it. I mean that’s what we are doing all the time. We’re trying to alter our understanding of life, and we are trying to become something different.

The Perception of “I”:

At the center of it is you, who is the root cause of all the problems. Because all these problems are happening to you, then why not simply shift to find a person, find an individual, who you think is the model that you want to replicate and you want to live like. Just clone yourself into that person. Use some technology, something, but it can never happen – not in the near future, not in the distant future, never. Because that perception of “I” is that universal “I”. It’s the universal consciousness. You cannot change it any more than I can change it, because to change that perception of “I” is to simultaneously change the perception of “I” in every creature of existence, including plants, microbes, viruses; every single creature of existence contains this perception of “I”.

A tree, while it looks very different from how we perceive reality, is making decisions. It is moving toward the sun. It is moving in a certain direction. It is deciding where to branch, when to branch, and when to shed leaves. It might appear to us like it’s all just happening. Yes, it’s just happening from the outside, but from the inside, there is a creature that is conscious of this. I mean this might sound ridiculous, but it’s a fact. The whole of existence is alive; not just human beings, not just a few animals. Everything is alive. Not as an independent, separate, aliveness, but we are all connected at the center to one aliveness, one core perception of “I”.

That is why the deeper we go into meditation, the farther we expand our awareness; we don’t become narrow and limited. It’s extraordinarily difficult to explain meditation to people because they look at themselves as a limitation. They do not see a solution in trying to explore this limitation, because they look at the world as the solution and themselves as the problem. They see the solution as to move away from the self, from the body, from the mind, and to go find an experience somewhere in the outside world. If you tell people to sit and meditate because that’s where the solution is, they cannot see it because they look at themselves as a very limited phenomenon of life. They don’t believe that there’s a universe hiding within them. It’s impossible to convince people. You have to go through the journey yourself. I’ve gone through the journey myself. If I had not meditated as much as I had, there’s no way I could say that you are your own universe. It would sound stupid to me because I come from a science background.

We are not the Body
I know how we understand the concept of life, biological life, brain cells, and how ideas are created. I could just have said that because that’s been my education; that’s been my learning. Now, why am I contradicting that? As much as I am for science, I’m totally contradicting the limiting scientific idea that we are our bodies and our consciousness is created in our brains. It’s a totally bullshit idea; it’s totally wrong. We don’t understand life at all. Life is the other way around. There is something pristine, independent, and pure that does not require flesh to think. It does not require such a limiting, such a last byproduct of consciousness as the body, to generate consciousness. That is totally ridiculous. Intelligence is the starting point of life, not the ending point. Our bodies don’t create intelligence, it’s intelligence that creates the body. Just think about it: Our digestion, reproduction system, our breathing, our ability to stay alive – are we saying that the body is creating all these things, and as a byproduct of this we’re getting something called intelligence? Now, if intelligence is the by-product of the body, then who is creating that first intelligence that is necessary for the body to survive, for the body to take care of all these functions?

Do you see the problem? We have flipped the understanding of life on its head, and we’re trying to make sense of life, which will never make sense. The body is just the tip of the tail of a huge, magnanimous creature – that is aliveness. To think that the tail is everything and to base our entire lives on this limitation is where the problem is. That is why we need meditation. Meditation completely opens up our consciousness. It opens up the limitations that we have set for ourselves. A day will come when you’ll be sitting in meditation, you will be lost in that world, and in a single moment, in a single flash, you will realize that there is no inside/outside. There is no me and you. There is no this and that. There is just one single, pure, aliveness that is finding its expression through all of us. I am an expression of that aliveness. You are an expression of that aliveness.

Nobody knows where this aliveness comes from; nobody can know. It is not knowable because it is the ultimate fundamental reality of existence. You cannot ever find the source of the fundamental reality of existence, because it is a fundamental reality. It doesn’t come from somewhere. Everything else you can trace to the source of, you can trace it to somewhere, because everything else is limited. The Life is not limited; it’s abundant, it’s complete, right here right now. To tap into that is to find your life and to move away from my life, your life, our history, our limited experiences of life, to something fundamental – something that is eternally ours. Once we touch that, it is ours. Nobody can take it away from us, and once we touch that zone we will find all the certainty we are looking for.

You are Life:

Ideas of fear, frustration, stress, and worry about the future; not knowing who you are – everything will disappear in a flash, because once you know that you are life, then what is there to fear? You have to fear a limited body, but why should you fear a limitless aliveness? When you are the very thing that is making life possible, can there be any scope for fear in such an environment? A life without fear is a complete life, a life that is perfect at every point, every moment. As of now, we are extensions of our fears. If you observe closely, there is one underlying current of fear always there; we can never escape it as long as we are stuck to the limitation of the mind and the body. That is why meditation is indispensable. Meditation is the ultimate way to transcend our fears. All other ways we find are limited ways of dealing with our fears.

Our pursuit of a better life is really to try to deal with the fear of the now in some temporary way, but it never disappears. But going deeper into oneself and realizing the fundamental truth of life: You are intelligence, you are aliveness, you are consciousness, and most importantly, you are not a product of your body. Your body is a product of you. That changes everything. I can discard my body when the time is right. When I’m old, when I don’t need it, I will just discard it, because I am not the body. Just imagine how different your experience of life could be if, at a very young age, you get to know that you are not your body. Children have that wonderful opportunity. We can teach them. Then we can teach them meditation.

What is Missing?

Contrary to that, we are moving in a completely different direction. We are moving in a direction where we are getting more and more entangled in our thoughts. Something has to remind us that we are the truth, and we are life, and that is meditation. The process of getting to the Life – that is the only thing that is missing in all that we have accomplished, in all that we have become. All our superiority and this feeling of we are the greatest boils down to knowing life. What is life? Life is that ultimate experience that one has to thirst for. Life is that ultimate truth. Once you find it, you are liberated; you are beyond your fears. Our life is just a limitation. It’s born out of our fears.  To see the difference between the Life and our life and to move slowly, gradually, towards the ultimate, single perception of life, is the human quest.