Chai Shop Satsangs ~ Morning walks and talks with Mooji

Below a short introduction and taste of the Chai Shop Satsang Audio CD now available on Mooji's website*.

*quotes by Mooji

"Beyond the formal satsangs that took place on the rooftop of SP Guesthouse,
we discovered that satsang with Mooji could arise anywhere
— on a street corner, in a cafe, at a temple — as long as there was an urgency of inquiry.
For a period of time, Mooji would arise early for a morning walk at 6:30 am,
joined by a group of us
that ranged from ten to thirty people.
For all of us, these were very special times
—a chance to hold his hand, walk arm in arm,
ask a question from the heart.
For many of us, the spiritual atmosphere of these sessions
was highly charged: amidst the vigorous dialogue
and hearty laughter, a vast silence often seemed to descend,
and tears flowed freely;
even wandering sadhus silently gravitated to listen.
The result are recordings that are raw and direct,
deeply intimate, and take you to the heart of
satsang with Mooji."

-Pamela Bloom

"Naturally the mind

has no groove;

it is like water, which has no shape.

Consciousness has no shape;

it takes whatever form it gets identified with.

Out of the formless the forms appear."

~

"Questions appear real for as long as you consider yourself to be a person.
When you realize you are the impersonal presence, all questions vanish."

If I address you only as a person then you will respond like flesh and blood...

Now this knowledge comes to you: Consciousness is conversing with consciousness
about the nature of consciousness
—What do you have to do?"

"Find that place

which is effortlessly

at rest within itself.

Be there—be one with that."

~

"Throw everything away, forget about it all!
You are learning too much, remembering too much, trying to hard…
relax a little bit, give life a chance to flow its own way,
unassisted by your mind and effort.
Stop directing the river’s flow!"



"Actually, being what you are is the simplest.

What is difficult is to stop being what you are not.

Because we wish to keep hold of our attachments.

Freedom is to be free of attachments

and the main attachment is to the ‘I’-self."

"The consciousness and life force do what they want...
one minute they put energy to repairing the damaged wing of a butterfly
and the next minute they send a whole town crushing with tremendous force...
who can work it out?"




"You ask:
‘How to live my life?’

But with the question you are suffocating life itself
for life is spontaneity."





"There is an intuitive knowing within us that we are eternal but this gets covered over
with the noise we create while identifying with the impermanent."

~

"We are identifying with what is passing so fear comes.

We are trying to make steady and permanent what is by nature impermanent."

"Don't expect life to be perfect. Leave room for the unexpected. Like this disappointment will no be your regular visitor."

“In the same way that all the creatures in the ocean are wet,
all the beings in existence are conditioned in one way or another.
None have escaped this, and yet,
we are also beyond this as the invisible witness to the play of manifestation."

"You cannot point to any object and say this is the Supreme, the ultimate.
Let us not waste time looking around, where will you look
to find the one who sees all? Can the seer be seen?"

"At the root of all things perceived; who is the perceiver, the experience?

Who is the seer?

Can it be other than you?

Who are you?"

"Leaving all else aside remain as the imageless, the unmoving, silent and centre-less seeing
—it has no name."

"I don’t tell you what you should do or not do; I only show you who you are
—the timeless and unchanging awareness.
When this is firmly established inside you,
your life will unfold spontaneously and joyously."

"Leave your existence to existence, stop caring for yourself so much and let the universe care for you;
it is the best mother.
There has to be some trust, not just belief, because trust is intimate...
something lets go to this invitation to stop holding yourself and let’s go to existence instead.
The very letting go will be observed in your presence."

Ignore the mind out of existence

Ignoring the mind is a beautiful sadhana. This is what many of the sages did. They ignored the mind out of existence. It loses its influence and its potency when it is ignored.

Ignore the mind until there is no future. When there is no future, future is not a trap. Past is not a trap. And then you can talk about anything, because future and past are not sucking from now. You see? Otherwise, with this suck, there is an oscillation between future and past. And that brings in another noise, and another noise…

When the attention is not straying, when it is not picking up all types of nonsense, then you will find that you are in peace.

Boston, MA, USA
October 5, 2008

All Beings know the feeling inside, 'I Am'. Doesn't matter what race you are or what religion you come from. Doesn't matter. This feeling 'I Am' - the king knows it, the criminal knows it, the preacher knows it, the pauper knows it; everybody knows it. The sense 'I Am' transcends every kind of cultural, racial, or religious boundary. It transcends every kind of stereotype.

All beings have the intuition 'I Am'. Start with just that sense of I Am - which nobody gave you - and you hold to that sense. Don't allow it to connect with any other concept, any other thought. Let it stay unto itself. Don't judge. Don't try to evaluate anything that comes into mind. In fact other thoughts are going to try and come and call this I Am-ness into play. You might be aware of this, but stay only with 'I Am'. You can do it.

And one last thing: don't hold an image of yourself.

Sit just like this. Five minutes. Some of you ten minutes. Whenever you feel in the mood, sit with it. But keep the I Am only to itself. Soon you will come to see an incredible field of peace is present in you. It doesn't matter how much noise there has been in your mind. Your past doesn't matter. You may think you are the busiest person alive. It doesn't matter. Five minutes you do. Ten minutes you do. Watch the sense I Am, and don't let it get converted into anything else. Watch that sense with all your being. Feel it, it's there. Whenever you feel existence or aliveness, it's because the sense I Am is there. It's identical with aliveness. Stay with it, that's all. Forget about any pilgrimage or any mantra or any prayers. Stay only with the feeling I Am. And don't give an image to it.

Do this for five minutes, ten minutes, as you can, and then get about and carry on with your life. And I will guarantee you, you will be a much greater human being than you have been before. You will somehow have found a peace without religion, without joining a cult, without calling yourself a member of something, or wearing white or shaving your head or anything like this.

Anybody can do it. And it will reintroduce you to the eternal in yourself.

Boston, MA, USA
4 October, 2008

TOTALLY POSSIBLE

Questioner: What is a Guru?

Mooji: A guru is a human being who has realized their original nature, and has transcended the influence of the ego and the mind.

Questioner: Is this possible in a human being?

Mooji: It is totally possible. It is totally, totally, totally possible! And this is why I am here.

Q: What are you saying?

Mooji: I am saying that If I felt it was not possible that through this sharing, that you will come to irrefutable clarity and doubtlessness that you cannot be anything other than what I am pointing at, I would not bother coming here.

You are not what you've been thinking you are. You are that itself which is timeless, indestructible, undying, eternal, pure and free. If I didn't feel that it is possible for you to see this like I see it and I am, I would not come here.

Questioner: So it is possible to see it. Is it possible to live it?

Mooji: No. There is no nobody who can live it. There is no no one who can live it, because in the seeing of it, there is no one there to live it. And this is freedom. If there was someone there to live it, you would know mostly failure.

The sense of doership in us is mostly a failing device. See that this device is not true. It's a fraud. It is not real. Reject it completely, and what remains is that which is effortless. It is not "living it". It simply is. It does not have to remember how to be this, how to stay like this. This is the common misconception which leads to so much suffering, and the sense of failure.

Questioner: Why is it so uncommon for people to see this and to live this?

Mooji: This is my question! (laughter) Because what I see in you is this. My question and quest is to find out: why don't you see this, what I see?

Boston, Massachusetts, USA 2009
edited by Sri



WATCH the full dialogue

from "Nobody wants you to be Free"

Questioner: I can see that I am one with everything...

Mooji: You cannot see your unicity. Not phenomenally. You can somehow know in the most intimate intuitive sense that you are all-inclusive. That all knowledge, all knowingness, must be arising out of and within your own self. There is a knowingness which cannot be put down on paper. It is a felt knowingness.

I can see what I am not. I can see the objects that I am not. They are connected with me, they appear in me. They maybe appear to be outside of my own self, but I cannot say I am held in them, because I am here to observe them. So what can I be?

This discovery - not speculation - has to happen. Actually, finally, and ultimately - and ultimately does not mean "in time". It does not mean "eventually". It means at the center, at the core, which is most intimate, that within which even intimacy is known. Can that be known? Non-phenomenally there is knowingness that I am That. But be careful! Something is quick to say, "Yes, yes, this is what I am." And this evidence must be rejected, and the one who is giving this evidence must be rejected.

And there must be the discernment to know, "This is false", to know that it is the intellect that is saying this. Because when this truth is felt, you are struck into silence. Therefore I say, though you seek a conceptual answer, perhaps a response of a different kind will take place.

Tiruvannamalai, India, 9 January 2009

edited by Sri

WATCH the full dialogue

Poison for the Mind

Mind cannot be killed with a knife, or with a grenade. It dies from lack of attention. Lack of interest is the poison of the mind. All the sages did was they gradually ignored mind. They used mind in its practical functioning very well. Psychological assistance, no. They ignored it. And it lost power to dominate or influence the Beingness.

If mind comes, well, mind can come. All this world is minds. But something is not concerned with the calculating, interpreting tendency of the mind. Gradually this is lost. Not by effort, just by holding on to that simple pointing that I've been saying. Whatever is arising is in front of you. Whatever is appearing, you are the perceiver of it. See if you can be perceived.

Can the perceiver be perceived?

Just this one point, and forget about everything else. You don't have to meditate. You don't have to chant mantras. You don't have to go praying. You don't have to go into a cave in the Himalayas. You don't have to dip in the Ganga. Just do this thing. That which is perceiving, in whose presence even Arunachala appears. Ganga appears. The planets appear. Mother and father also appear. Gods and demons appear. Heaven and hells can appear. Life and death is appearing. Devotion is appearing. Arrogance is appearing. Humility is appearing. Everything is appearing. This inside which all these appearances are taking place and are perceived - Can this be perceived? Is this also appearing?

Tiruvannamalai, India, 23 January 2009


WATCH the full dialogue

Everything Is Innocent

Q: The feeling arises that mind wants to stay here...

M: That can only happen if you give undue importance to your mind. At a certain point, you'll see that mind actually is very fickle, very flimsy, nothing at all. You will not take it so seriously.

Now, only silence is here. If I'm using words now, silence, space, peace...

Can you stay there now? There's no "you" there. Not the you that you can introduce. But, you are there. The You without you is there.

Seen from here, all of manifestation can play beautifully. All the tastes are there. It was never about that. Whether you are vegetarian has nothing to do with truth. Whether you eat eggs, or whether you are fit or unfit, whether you are clever or not clever, religious or not religious, has nothing to do with this. In this authentic seeing, no one can be exempt from this discovery. It is earlier than belief, earlier than religion, earlier than the first thought. It is pure innocence beyond even the concept of innocence, in recognition of itself.

How? It cannot be known.

(silence)

There is no "and then...", "and then...", "and then..."

"And then" is all past. Come to this place which your mind dreads, and which your mind will come to worship at the altar of this discovery, because it springs out of this.

I have not spoken to you in a language about do's and don'ts. When you discover this, all of your actions are being carried out by the vital force and the universal being.

The sense of individuality and autonomy may be seen as an expression of this. It plays like this. In that perfect place of seeing, it's not that individuality has to change, has to become a better individual. It may happen, of course. Automatically and spontaneously. But the focus is not that. "Improving myself" is not on the front page of consciousness now. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj puts it beautifully. He says, "I leave my human nature to unfold according to whatever its destiny is. I remain as I am." He did not say, "I really worked on myself so well."

Tiruvannamalai, India, January 2009


WATCH the full dialogue

Detonator for the Ego

Q: I was hoping for a very fast dissolution of the ego, and that hasn't happened. The ego comes back to visit.

M: But it's been living there for a long time, so it can come for a visit.

Q: So... there's no magic "poof" to make the ego disappear?

M: Have you been listening to me all these days? I did not say I sell some "detonator" for the ego. I say first of all you can check the credibility of what you call ego, if this is true or not. And also: what is aware of ego? Simple question. What is aware of ego? And we don't want a quick answer about it. Just invite the question to reveal its possibilities. What are you seeing? You say, "ego comes back". But you are there when it comes back! Ego goes, ego comes back. You are here. What's the problem?

You have this thing, "the ego must go". But ego is not. Have you come to that seeing? Ego is only created itself. It's not easy to see.

Ego comes and goes in some presence which is not going and coming. What would that be?

Tiruvannamalia, India, 10 February, 2009

WATCH the full dialogue

The Door of the Absolute

Something is sieving out all the associations until only the I Am remains. When this I Am remains without any association, just I Am… just I Am… then this radiant being, alone, prevails.

Witnessing of this occurs also. We cannot speak about that. That is the Unborn, the Nameless; not subject to time or change. That, referring to the eternal principle: the Absolute, Parabrahman - whichever name you want to call it. It has no name.

A name can be uttered with the aid of consciousness on behalf of the Absolute and you are That. And you are I Am. You are I Am and beyond I Am.

You cannot merely learn this. First it is heard then it must itself awaken as pure conviction and intuitive knowledge. It's not a knowledge that you can teach. It's not a knowledge that you can share. It is there… closer than intimacy. It is there.

Tiruvannamalai, India, 2 February, 2009

WATCH the full dialogue

The Most Auspicious Question

You can have a life called 'Spiritual', but still you may live in ignorance. Who Are You? This is the most auspicious question that can present itself. Don't walk away from it.

From Mooji's Book, Before I Am