Elgin, IL retreat — 13 Oct 2019

"Hi everyone. We have Dennis from the Arunachala Ashrama in New York. So, Dennis has been kind enough to agree to share his experience towards meditation, self inquiry and devotion. So Dennis, can you please share your experience."

Dennis: “So Bhagavan said that effortless and choiceless awareness is our natural state. And if we can be in that, that is good. Otherwise, practice is necessary. Not many people can get into that effortless and choiceless awareness state, or the state of the pure Self, without practice. Bhagavan did it and he practiced for only a few minutes but he said probably everything was done in a previous life. So for us people we have to practice. Practice means do what comes natural to you for stilling the mind. Whether you do japa or parayana, recite scriptures, or you sing bhajans. Whatever works for you to still the mind, you just keep doing it until the mind becomes still. And with the still mind you can turn it within and practice self inquiry easily. Even doing breath control you can still the mind. But without stilling the mind, to do self inquiry is very difficult. So to do self inquiry you just hold on to the awareness of ‘I’ and you hold onto it single pointedly until you dissolve into that Awareness of ‘I’ which is the Self. We all are already the Self and we can all realize it just by doing and doing and doing until everything becomes still. When everything becomes still, it is all over for us. Whether we live or die doesn’t matter. That’s the purpose of life, to know who we are. And we can do that ... by practice only. So that is the message of Bhagavan. And that is what we are trying to do here and that is why we came to this retreat. We are doing and doing just to become still and do nothing, and realize we are not the doer. That is the whole meaning of life. And we realize at some point ... we realize that there is nothing to do but that. When that comes, we are near the goal; we are near the ideal. We are about to realize the Self. So that is the purpose of this retreat, or any retreat, or any practice, or any religion or any effort made to realize your true nature. Okay.”