You are not the author

If we look at this deeper playing, blame, guilt and shame, hatred and pride come from two core beliefs. One I have already mentioned, "I am separated".

The second core belief is that we believe we are in control of our actions. Specifically, we are the authors of our actions. It is the root of our seeking and all our emotional and psychological suffering.

You see, if we didn't believe we were the authors of our actions, we wouldn't blame ourselves, we wouldn't feel guilty, or experience shame, we wouldn't hate ourselves or feel proud.

And this is why Advaita, and particularly this type of Advaita teaching, focuses on these two core beliefs.

Even if we forget everything we have heard so far and just come and look at these two core beliefs, we will immediately see where we are stuck, where we are resistant, where we are trapped, where we are hanging on to some belief or some story from the past, or some fear. We will immediately see it comes down to these two beliefs.

"I am a separate being".

"I am the author of my actions".

Everybody knows Ramana Maharshi, great sage of India. He experienced a spontaneous awakening when he was sixteen and a half and died in 1950.

My Guru Ramesh used to quote one statement from him a lot.The only difference between the normal person and the sage (sage is a being where this realization has happened) - is that the sage has no more sense of personal doership, authorship. That's the only difference.

Whether you agree with that or disagree, we can test this. Pick an action, somewhere in the recent past, a simple action from yesterday or the day before, that you are convinced you did. "I did that action."More specifically: "I am the author of that action.'

Look at it in five ways. Have the action in your mind, the circumstances, good or bad, it doesn't matter what type of action.

1. Was there a thought that led to that action?

2. Was there a memory from the past?

3. Did somebody say or do something that led to your action?

4. Did something happen in the natural or the physical environment?

5. Did one of your five senses pick up something that led to your action? For example I suddenly touch a hot surface.

If you look at that, if it was just one of those five things had led to your action, which you think is your action, did you have any control of it? Did you have any control over that thought? Did you have any control over that memory, what the person said or did, what happened in your natural or physical environment, what your five senses picked-up?

I am asking people to do this, if they are interested in finding an unbroken peace of mind, happiness, joy in their life, the sense of deep knowing of what they are. And try it. Try looking at things like this. Do the investigation if you want.

You will quickly find on your own direct experience, not from my words or any books or anybody else, that your suffering, your deep psychological suffering, is rooted in this idea "I am the author of my actions, I am separate". When you do the investigation, when you test it from your own life experience, you will quickly find that something made you do that.

Somebody said something or did something, you had the thought or you had a memory, or something happened in the natural physical environment, or one of our five senses picked up on something. So we can always find the cause.

The starting point when we do the investigation, and the mind ego has this amazing capacity to look at things in a fresh way even though the conditioning is so deep and the resistance might be deep, we have the capacity to look at it in a fresh way - it is not saying that we are not responsible. This teaching does not say that. It's quite different.

Who is author?

If you are not the author of what you have done, but you have done it, what matters who is the author if you are doing it? Who programmed you to do these things?

The body-mind mechanism did the action, but what authored the action?

Let's say it's not you.

That's right, then we are opened to the idea, like Einstein, that it came from somewhere. He was asked 'Where did the theory of the relativity come from?" and he said "I didn't have the capacity, it came from outside." He didn't know where that outside was.

And we can explore that. These concepts go hand in hand, as Oneness, Consciousness, Life-Force, which is everything.

If you accept that, then the mind that accepts that I'm not the author maybe sees that the Life Force is doing everything, the one Universal Energy is doing everything, it's not an individual object that is doing it, doing the action.

And then the question might come, am I separate from this Life-force? Am I separate from Consciousness, from God? Even though I feel separate, and I still continue to feel separate, but then the knowing comes that I have never been separate from the Life Force, Consciousness, even though I feel separate.

The key of the whole thing, and I'm glad you brought up this question, is that in our daily life, knowing we are not the authors of our actions, we still have to face the consequences of our actions. We can't avoid the consequences, but knowing we are not the authors is the end of blame, quilt, shame, hatred and pride.

If you consider this a little while, you can very quickly see you have no control over your senses, emotions and feelings, thoughts coming and going, appearing and disappearing.

This claim, "I am in control, I am the author of my actions", is something we've learned, and that has directly contributed to our psychological and emotional suffering, specifically blame, guilt, shame, hatred and pride.

My experience was that I understood the mind, the mind understood itself, the mechanism of our emotional psychological suffering, blame, shame, guilt, hatred and pride started to drop away and my mind accepted from direct experience that I'm not the author of my actions.

That had an immediately impact in my daily life. I started to experience the inner peace that I was always looking for, and my seeking started to end.

If all of us were told that we might have had a chance – might, it's not sure- not to believe this. Even though we feel separate, we will not believe we are separate. Even if the world tells us that we are the authors of our actions, blames us, and tells us that if you are not good, you are going to hell or you'll be born as a cockroach in the next life .

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