It's only pointer

If you just check yourself, every thought you have, any thought you have, will have an opposite thought. Any idea, an opposite. Any concept, an opposite. Anything we conceive, will have an opposite. Any experience, state, an opposite. Any feeling, an opposite. That's what we call duality.

What we're pointing to, is that we can't just be this set of polaric opposites. There's something else which we are, which is either the source or the ground or the infinity, whatever you want to say about it, that's prior to, or beyond, just these opposites.

If you look at any teaching, Indian or other, it's just a concept, just a pointer. If you've understood it, let it go. Any concept or pointer, if you've understood it, let it go, and something else will appear. Don't cling to it, don't cling to it as the truth. It becomes dogma, becomes repetition.

It reminds me of a pointer, whatever can be forgotten is not the truth.

Why is that?

Why is whatever can be forgotten is not the truth? The truth is always and forever right here.

So it can neither be forgotten or remembered.

The truth cannot be remembered, the truth is.

That's right. That's why it can't be forgotten or remembered. So what is? How can you describe what is? What you are. If that's what you're interested in. What are you looking for? What brings you to these talks.

Not looking, just practicing letting it all drop away.

What?

This me-thought, this personal identity, when sitting here it's like it just drops away.

But isn't this letting it drop away another idea? Another belief? So, in other words, do you need to let it drop away. It's what is. What is, is everything and nothing. So what is, is both what is dropping away and what is not dropping away. What is, is both me and even identification, and no me and no identification, because what is, is everything, including nothing.

At this point of the understanding you don't need to drop anything, if you've understood what is. You've accepted what is. Then the me is what lives the rest of this life knowing. The ego lives the rest of this life, knowing it is not just this. It might seem a paradox. The impersonal and the personal, the absolute and the relative, the me and the no me are understood to be one and the same.

What is.

Do you see that?

In a way, yes.

Then the body-mind organism continues to exist. We can't drop this. That's when we die. The ultimate dropping is the death of the body-mind organism. But the body-mind organism needs the ego, needs some identification, for life to be lived, otherwise we'd sit around like beautiful vegetables. Very beautiful, calm, peaceful, blissed out vegetables. We wouldn't be able to function.

Maybe you've had those states, so you don't want to be a vegetable. You want to be an active person, enjoying all the things you enjoy in life, being active, productive, creative, having relationships. That's what the ego allows you to do.

Ego is the functioning element of Consciousness. Consciousness, the body-mind organism, and the ego, these three go together to allow life to happen in this three/four dimensional experience/existence.

When the ego drops away temporarily, in deep sleep, in dream, in an unconscious state, in samadhi as well, we can't function. It is not a desirable dropping away, is it? What we're talking about, when we say drop away, is that we drop away the two ideas that keep us in bondage.

The first is "I am separate". The second is "I am the doer, the author of my actions". These two little ideas keep us in bondage, keep us in psychological, emotional suffering, so that's what we want to drop away, don't you agree?

Yes.

The rest, no need and not desirable, because then how can we do all the things we want to do in life? You see the difference?

Yes, I do.

Ramana Maharishi said, the only difference between the ego of a so called sage and the ego of a so called normal person - I add the word "so called", because there was never been a sage and a normal person there, because it's all just what is, so these differentiations we make are just mental - the ego of the sage is only different from the ego of a normal person because in the ego of the sage there's no sense of personal doership/authorship.