Every night when you sleep you experience leaving everything behind - your relations and friends, your house, your country, the mountains, and rivers. You don't see anything when you are asleep and you have no trouble; you are happy. This is a very short experience which we have every night due to the compassion of your own Self; giving you a hint to discover Eternal Bliss. This is for a very short time. When you go to sleep you are at peace. The only troublesome states are waking and dreaming. Who wakes up and gets into trouble? Who dreams? The dreamer gets into trouble, but no one knows who they are and where they have to return to. This is so simple that every reasonable person can solve it, here and now.
We speak every day about this which has been lost. You turn outside to a guide who is deceiving you and you trust that guide. Who is that guide? It is your own mind. Although he has always deceived you, you return to the same guide because you are used to him. He has been your guide since the beginning, but he has always deceived you. Now ask yourself the question, “Who am I?” for the first time. This question has never been asked. You have simply trusted the mind to tell you what to do and you have obeyed. This is the time for all of us here to ask this question. Do away with this guide and you will return to your Eternal Home, to Existence, to Consciousness, to Bliss.
Is there any time when you are not in the mind, when you stop your race after pleasures of the senses, when you simply see? Keep still and this guide disappears, simply with the question, “Who are you?” Then you will know what the mind is, and it disappears. This question has never been asked. This guide has never been challenged before. Wherever you have gone until now you have allowed it to deceive you. It has told you this or that is good, and you accepted it - that this is a world of pleasure, and you accepted it - that these gods will give you pleasures in heavens, and you accepted it. When you challenge the mind it disappears instantly. This is why every day we emphasize the question, “Who are you?”
~ Papaji
