Transcribed from an audio recording.
The three main principles of the teaching of Shri Ranjit Maharaj.
Number one, the world is not true.
We generally assume that there is an objective world out there, so to speak, that is shared by everybody. So for example, if you die, someone is going to bury your body or cremate it, right? However, the world ends for you, because the world is actually contained within your own consciousness. If there is no consciousness, there is no world to be seen or experienced.
The way we perceive the world is a function of our minds: the knowledge we have, the experience that we have, the general programming that we have. All of this creates the kind of world that we experience. So the world we experience is our own. Everyone experiences their own world.
In this sense there is no objective world out there, because we cannot experience except through our own knowledge. The world is therefore interpreted, subjective. This is what it means when Maharaj says the world is not true.
Second point, second principle: I don’t exist. Let’s take that one next.
When we say “I”, again we make an assumption that there’s some actual person there. Really what this idea is saying is that there is no person. “I don’t exist” means there’s no person there. A person is again a construct of the mind. Even the concept “I” is is a mental function. Actually we have many many different “I”s: I feel this, I want that, I feel tired, I’m hungry, I’m thinking that I should do this or that, I’m attracted to this, I’m repelled by that. These are all different “I”s because there’s no actual continuity between them. There’s nothing holding them together, as it were. They just follow one another according to the stimulus which is given to them from the surrounding environment. So there’s no person. There’s no person there. That’s what it means when Maharaj says, “I don’t exist.”
The third principle is everything happens.
We generally think in terms of cause and effect. We think, “I want to do this” and then we set in motion a chain of events. We actually turn that thought into action. There’s a cause and effect relationship in in our minds. And that setting into motion cause and effect or “doing” is true to a certain extent, but on a very small scale.
On any larger scale, you can find many examples every day of things which just happened to you. For example, today I was driving to a trailhead. I got the direction wrong. I got off at the wrong place. I assumed I was somewhere else. This kind of thing, it just happens. Now I’m walking back on the road. I had the thought to make this recording. That just occurred to me. It was just a thought that popped into my mind.
Everything happens the only way it can happen. Because of our programming, our mental attitudes, the content of our minds, everything that has gone into the mind in the past is going to produce what the mind experiences in the present.
So that’s what it means when Maharaj says everything happens. He may not actually say that in so many words; more often he said there is no doer, but either way it’s a fundamental principle of this teaching.
Now there is a fourth principle, which you can start to think about if you get some degree of understanding of the three principles we just discussed. This fourth principle is you are He. And this is different because it is positive not negative, that is, it is not focussed on the wrong assumptions that we have. It’s talking about What Is, which is the Self, Reality.
Maharaj says, “When you are not, he is there,” and he then goes on to say, “you are He.” So there are two parts to that. When you are not means when you let go of the false assumptions that you have about being a particular person, about causing things to happen, being a doer, or that the world is existing as a kind of objective reality. If you separate from those things, let them go, then He is there. He just means What Is.
The Self cannot be described. What Is cannot be described, it just is, and you are That, which can be realized when all of these other things are, as it were, abandoned, let go, denied, realized to be untrue.
So in summary, that’s the general method of the system of ideas that we’re working with. It’s the letting go of the false in order to simply be what you already are. You are He.
YOU ARE HE 