Transcript
This is a call toward what has been called “the great way,” “the pathless path,” “the fireless flame,” “the gateless gate” where no foot has ever stepped. The way of the ancients, the great work of inner alchemy. The turning of attention not toward something to be seen, but toward THAT which sees. It is the descent into the silence of Being, where the seeker, the search, and the sought burn away in the holy fire of unknowing.
This is the direct way to samadhi. Not a thing to grasp, but the slipping away of all that could grasp. It is waking from the dream of being a someone. The end of pretending to be a character in a story you never wrote. Who remains when the thought “I am” dissolves into the ocean of what has no name?
At some point on our human journey, a desire to know oneself arises. A longing not for another experience, not for pleasure or distraction. It is a call to awaken, and beyond awakening, to liberation. This longing transcends culture, age and time. It is the same spark that ignited in the heart of the Buddha, Patanjali, Nagarjuna and Jesus… that whispered to the desert mystics, that blazed in the hearts of the Sufi lovers.
Underneath the words, customs and practices of all religions that follow the perennial path, there is an essential unity. One sadhana, one universal dharma by which humanity evolves. It is only egoic consciousness and ignorance of our true nature that creates separation. The impulse to awaken can be born of suffering or it can be born of wisdom and insight. In either case, there is an abandoning of all that is false, fleeting, conditioned, and to find out directly WHO and WHAT one is.
The ancient Sanskrit word “sadhana” refers to the means of realization; the path, the practice. True sadhana is not something you do to get somewhere else. It’s not a checklist, a technique or something to add to a spiritual identity. Sadhana in its purest form is the flowering of Being into form.
This sacred flowering is called by many names: surrender, grace, awakening, moksha, liberation. But words will never touch what it is. True sadhana arises from silence and leads to silence. The space of Being.
As long as you believe that you are the doer of sadhana, the one who must practice in order to awaken, you remain caught in the loop of becoming. The mind imagines a better version of “me” that can be attained in the future. But this is only the continuation of ego in more subtle form. Sadhana is not about fixing the self. It is the revelation that there is no self to be fixed. Only silence remains.
For the one who is tired of fixing and improving themselves, this truth is liberating. For the ego, it can feel like a threat. Ego wants to survive at all costs. It will even try to use spirituality as a way to grow its sense of self-importance, to feel superior to others, to bypass the discomfort of actually facing the inner darkness and pain.
Spirituality has become a product, a new identity, another mask for ego to wear. It may use the language of awakening, of non-duality, of Zen or Vedanta, but underneath it is still grasping, still avoiding, still separate.
The path of sadhana is not about wearing spiritual clothes or following exotic rituals. It is about burning away everything that is not real. Everything that you are not. Until only truth remains.
And truth is not something to be attained. It is what you are when you stop pretending to be something else.
It may begin with preliminary techniques; breath work, mantra, meditation. But these are stepping stones, initial preparations, not the destination.
True sadhana is not about adding more to your life. It is about undoing, shedding the layers of false identity.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj said, “You must be serious, earnest, burning with one desire to find what is true. Without this fire, you will only play with words.”
Millions have watched the Samadhi films, but for most, it’s just that… a film. Entertainment for the mind. Another concept to collect. Few are willing to do what it takes. Few are willing to die before they die. Few are willing to sit in the fire and not reach for the exit.
These are the two knots that limit the sense of “I” to the conditioned self: the body craves comfort… the mind craves control.
True sadhana requires two things: a willingness to go beyond comfort, and a willingness to not know. Liberation lives on the other side of both.
We begin with the impulse to break free from illusion and realize our true nature. The ego, the conditioned self, hears the call to awaken and responds: “I will do it.” “I will meditate, fast, practice.”
But the egoic mind misunderstands this impulse. It feels it has to do something, not realizing that it has to burn in the fire of presence. It has to give up control… to give up following a script, because the egoic mind is the script. The knowing that is conditioned or learned, and it is always trying to achieve something. It always wants something other than what is.
To give the ego the job of becoming liberated is like making the criminal the chief of police. The dissatisfied character wants out of prison and it makes it a mission to become liberated. But in fact, it IS the prison.
YOU were never in prison. The whole thing is a case of mistaken identity.
The greatest trick of the ego is not its noise, but its disguise. It sets fire to the house, then runs in dressed as the fireman. It steals your freedom, then parades as the savior who will restore it.
This is why the search goes on endlessly. The very one who claims it will deliver liberation is the one who does not want it. For if freedom is found, the impostor vanishes.
And so the criminal guards the keys, conducts the investigation, pretends to pursue the truth, but all the while it is protecting itself.
To see this clearly is the beginning of true sadhana — to recognize that the seeker itself is the lie and the Self has never been bound, never needed rescue.
The mask of the chief falls and the criminal dissolves. Only awareness remains. Simple, still, unhidden.
Find out WHO and WHAT you are. Who am I?
This film will not answer that question, but it will point you to the silence where all questions and answers end. It will point you to dissolve the questioner and to release the need for conditioned answers.
The purpose of sadhana is to directly realize WHO and WHAT you are.
Directly means not via the conditioned mind.
Sadhana is whatever brings you to stillness of mind. Whatever leads to the cessation of the “I” thought and the cessation of pathological thinking.
In the beginning, we may imitate the techniques, practices, and lifestyle of realized Beings. Just as an artist first copies the masters.
But to become a true artist of Being, you must become a hollow flute, empty of effort, played by the wind of the Self.
Your movement comes not from watching an instructional yoga video, but one is moved by the energy of life itself.
Ethics are not imposed. They are inevitable when you see clearly how suffering arises from false identity.
True sadhana is not imitation. It is not borrowed. It does not come from memory. It is the energy and innate intelligence that flows from presence.
In the world of modern yoga, posture has become performance, a choreography of effort. Downward dog, cobra pose, warriors saluting the sun.
But in the ancient yoga of the sages, in the yoga sutras of Patanjali, posture was barely a footnote. Not an art of contortion, but a portal into stillness.
Patanjali says simply: “Sthira-sukham asanam.” “Posture is that which is stable and comfortable.” That’s it.
You do not need a perfect lotus. You do not need to fold like origami. The only requirement is that the body is quiet enough not to steal the show.
If the body aches, attention will return again and again to pain. But this too can be practice. Awakening is possible even in agony.
What you truly are is untouched. Whatever seems to stand in the way IS the way.
Primordial awareness was never the body, not its posture nor its breath.
On the relative level, it helps to stretch. It helps to loosen the coils so you can sit longer, breathe deeper, open the subtle channels of prana.
It helps to befriend the breath. Breath is a bridge from the outer world of form, to the inner sanctum of formlessness.
But on the absolute level, it doesn’t matter at all. The Self was never stiff. Awareness has no knees.
Enlightenment is not a circus trick. It’s not posture. It’s not in the spine. It’s not even in the breath.
It is the one who watches all postures come and go.
What you are is prior to posture, prior to breath, prior to thought. Rest in that.
Most of what passes for sadhana is still movement in the dream. More doing for the mind, more fuel for the one who seeks.
It builds a new persona, a spiritualized ego, wearing malas instead of jewelry, chanting mantras instead of gossiping, chasing silence instead of noise.
But chasing is chasing. Becoming is becoming.
Whether clothed in business attire or in robes, it is still the same dream of acquisition.
The ego cannot do true sadhana for it does not want to end. It only wants to trade masks from worldly to holy, from ordinary to enlightened.
The body-mind can react to sadhana in different ways.
It may generate hindrances such as tiredness, craving or aversion, restlessness, worry, doubt, expectation, and generally wanting something other than what is.
The ego construct may feel like it is dying, and this may generate fear. It may cling to beliefs or make up stories to halt the process.
A hindrance is only a hindrance when you identify with the appearances in the mind. Shadows mistaken for substance.
Don’t believe your thoughts: doubt, uncertainty, pleasure and pain, right and wrong, good and bad — all just thoughts.
The mind is always evaluating, measuring. Don’t push away or suppress thoughts. Just see them as passing clouds.
The mind will object: “We need thinking. You can’t just drop it. It’s what makes us human.”
No one said thinking ends. The illusion that ends is ownership of thoughts. Find out who you are beyond thinking.
After awakening, thoughts still happen. Plans still form. The body remembers how to drive a car. Taxes still get filed. Groceries still get bought. The child still gets hugged.
But who is the doer? There is doing but no doer. Thinking but no thinker. The dream continues, but you no longer mistake yourself for the dreamer.
The mind becomes a tool again — not a tyrant. A servant, not the master.
As it lets go of control, the ego construct may feel like it is dying, and this may generate fear. It may cling to beliefs or make up stories to halt the process… to feed that fear… to feed what Eckhart Tolle calls the “pain-body.”
As we stay in the now, remaining equanimous, remaining okay with what is, the hindrances become doorways to deeper aliveness.
When attention turns inward, the emotional body may begin to speak. Each emotion carries within it the echo of an incomplete experience — a moment in which the body resisted what was, where a little “I” was born to protect, to survive.
Emotions are composites of thoughts and sensations. Every emotion is a thought plus sensation.
Consider anger: a thought appears — “They shouldn’t have said that” — and almost immediately, fire rises in the belly, tightness in the jaw, a clench in the chest.
The mind spins stories, but these are just old circuits firing. This is conditioning echoing through the body-mind.
The practice is not to suppress or fix, but to feel directly. Stay with the raw energy before the mind names it. Bring presence to the burn, not the story. Burn in it. Burn in the now.
As awareness touches the charge without identification, something miraculous occurs. The scaffolding of belief begins to loosen. The thought dissolves. The identity tethered to it crumbles, and what remains is pure energy — unclaimed, unbound, unburdened.
In this intermediary form of sadhana, emotions become portals: anger becomes fire, grief becomes depth, fear becomes alertness — each transmuted into aliveness, divine current no longer chained to a “me.”
And as the “I” thought loses its grip, energy becomes free of the old patterns.
Bliss, even rapture can arise. This too is a stage. And if we cling to any state, any phenomena, we slow the clearing process.
Most people give up when it gets uncomfortable. The difference between your average person and liberated beings is that the liberated being remains with I-am-ness, letting go of comfort and discomfort. Letting go of knowing. They are willing to burn continuously in the now.
Going to battle with the hindrances is like mistaking a rope for a snake in the dark. Every reaction is driven by that mistake.
But then the lamp is lit. You see it clearly: only a rope. And instantly the fear drops away. The struggle dissolves. The snake was never there.
In the same way, when attention returns to its source, the illusion of separation is seen for what it is. The reactions, the struggle — they fall away naturally.
Awakening is not conquering the dream. It is not about fighting the snake. It is recognizing the dream as dream. And in that recognition, the burden lifts.
The rope is simply a rope. Life is simply life. Peace is what remains.
Joseph Campbell said, “Where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a God. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. And where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence.”
What we have pushed away into the unconscious, demonized and turned into “other,” is actually a part of ourselves.
The idea of conquering the serpent is based on the old dualistic egoic consciousness. When energy is freed from these old fears, beliefs and concepts, we integrate the dragon — the unconscious — and it becomes our power within the dream of life.
The ego says: “What about suffering, famine, war, injustice, greed, inequality? The world is far from perfect and we have to fix it. We have to fight against evil.”
Hegel said, “Evil resides in the very gaze which perceives evil all around itself.”
The so-called external world is simply a mirror, and whatever you see in the mirror shows you where your attachments are, where there is distortion.
To be awake is to realize the One Source everywhere. To view every part of creation as a reflection of the One. Every branch, leaf, and fruit reveals some aspect of the Great Perfection.
To allow what is, to love what is, is liberation. To resist what is, is suffering.
The so-called hindrances are not to be resisted. They are not interruptions to your sadhana — they are your sadhana. What stands in the way, is the way.
Just see what is arising. Just abide as the seer, and something remarkable happens. You will find out who was struggling, who was tired, who experienced fear, pain, doubt, anxiety. Find out who struggles.
Consciousness does not struggle. It simply is.
Whatever shadow comes up from the depths is coming up to be set free. Invite it. Love.
To love is simply to be “one with.” Love every part of yourself without labeling one part good, another bad.
Invite all parts of yourself home to be integrated in loving awareness.
Some on the pathless path are like dry wood. A single spark of truth and they erupt into flame.
The little self vanishes in a flash and only the fire of Being remains.
Others are still green, moist with identity, heavy with concepts. They require kindling, techniques, devotion, bridges of breath and form to soften the resistance.
There is no judgment in this. Green wood is not wrong. It is simply not yet ready to vanish in the blaze.
Even the wettest log eventually surrenders to the fire that has no opposite.
Some who are drawn to engage in sadhana are able to intuit the direct pointers right away.
For others, an intermediary step opens the door.
There are always two possible paths: the path of suffering and the path of wisdom.
Sometimes life itself will interrupt the pattern of “you,” forcing submission, and it is possible to come to realization in this way.
Sometimes life will bring the character to its knees, creating an opening. This is the path of suffering.
The path of wisdom is learning to consciously surrender.
Sadhana before awakening requires a total effort to surrender one’s beliefs and preferences and a willingness to enter into continuous practice; to create conditions of no escape for the ego.
To make attention single-pointed… to realize deep inner surrender.
Before awakening, it starts as something conditioned or learned with the mind.
A technique that may bring one person to clarity and presence may become a prison for another if they attach their identity to it.
Such practices are like a thorn to remove a thorn. The thorn, the technique, only seems to be necessary so long as you believe you are bound. So long as you believe you are the character, the conditioned self.
Sadhana is not about adding more to your life. It is not about adding any new conditioning.
It is not about “doing”, but it is about Wei Wu Wei, “doing not doing.”
Every tradition, every teacher, every pointer that follows the perennial teaching starts by pointing attention away from maya, away from thoughts, to bring attention into the now.
Every technique or practice is to bring about less thinking, less doing, until we come to Being.
An intermediary practice involves placing attention on something that is here now — the breath, a sound, a sensation in the body — something undeniable, immediate, alive. Stay with it single-pointedly. Feel how it changes.
Every meditation object is a doorway, and if you follow it faithfully, it will carry you beyond itself. From form to vibration, from matter to energy.
Energy is the bridge. Breath leads to energy, and energy leads home.
In every tradition, the breath has been the meeting point of spirit and matter. Prana in Sanskrit, Ruach in Hebrew — the divine wind that animates all life.
As attention becomes absorbed in this living current, the traditions describe stages of meditative absorption: the jhanas of Buddhism, the dhyana states of yoga, the inner mansions of St. Teresa’s interior castle, and the stages of samadhi found in the yoga sutras of Patanjali.
Each represents a deepening intimacy with the subtle reality of Being.
Stages where conditioning and illusion fall away one layer at a time. Where thought subsides, energy becomes radiant. Single-pointedness and equanimity become unshakable. The senses withdraw from their objects. The world grows quiet. The body becomes light, transparent, suffused with bliss.
In samadhi, the resistance, the “I” thought is dropped and you become one with the meditation object. One with the breath, the sensations, the sound… all become the changing field of life energy.
The questioning mind has gone silent. Questions no longer arise. Then even that joy, even that light was relinquished.
The mind moved beyond the field of opposites, beyond the labeling of pain and pleasure, gain and loss, joy and sorrow. There, all distinctions were silenced.
The last ripple of becoming subsided. The world stopped. And in that stillness, the unborn was seen, not as something gained, but as what had never been lost.
No Buddha awakened that night, only awakening itself… timeless, without owner, shining through the man who had ceased to be a man.
The Bodhi tree is not made of bark or leaves. The Bodhi tree is within you.
It is the spine of light, the sushumna, the channel of prana from root to crown, where the serpent rises and the Self remembers.
Every tradition speaks of it. The tree of life, the world tree, the axis mundi, the central channel, the silent pillar that connects heaven and Earth.
It’s represented in the ancient traditions as the nagas or kundalini shakti.
It is the bridge to the One Mind, the Logos that extends from the microcosm to macrocosm. The conscious intelligent energy-mind that flows through all of nature and the entire manifested world.
At the base, the root… survival, time, matter. At the crown, the infinite silence… eternity.
In ancient Egypt, they called it the Djed pillar. The Djed is the spine of Osiris. It is your own spine, your own forgotten axis.
To “raise the Djed” is to awaken the light trapped in matter… to return to the eternal. In the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, it says, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.” The cross is not just a symbol of suffering. It is the axis where opposites meet. The cross is the Bodhi tree in disguise.
Just as the Buddha sat beneath the tree and vowed not to rise until illusion was pierced, so too did Christ surrender on the cross. This is where Buddhism and Christianity touch: the total surrender of the ego. The realization that the “I” cannot escape. And in that surrender, grace dawns.
Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross each entered into profound states of absorption, what they called religious ecstasies. In their language, these were not escapes from the world, but transformations of perception. The ego falls away. The senses withdraw from their objects. The soul is caught up in light, spirit, or energy.
In Teresa’s interior castle, the spirit moves through seven mansions, each one a finer vibration of love, each one a step closer to union with the Beloved. The Sufi mystics whirl in the same current and call it “fana”, the dissolution of self in the wine of divine love. The Kabbalists ascend the tree of life. The yogis enter samadhi. The Buddhists describe jhana. Different languages, the same journey inward.
The outer forms differ, but each practice is a refinement of attention itself. Religious ecstasies, jhanas or intermediary samadhi states are part of the phenomena of the pathless path. Not something to cling to and not something to push away.
In these powerful merging experiences, sometimes the higher mind will create a scene or a communication from spirit. But for others, the experience may be energetic. Energy rises. The heart opens. The illusion of separateness burns away until the soul no longer prays to God, but AS God. Until there is no longer saint or sinner, seeker or sought, only the radiant silence that all traditions point toward and none can claim.
The mind may ask, “How does one progress through these stages of jhana or dhyana?” Stay with your meditation object so single pointedly that it changes into something else. Don’t keep changing the object of your meditation. Don’t chase new methods, new mantras, new teachers. Pick one thing, one gate, and go all the way through it.
If you keep digging shallow wells, you’ll never reach water. One well dug deeply will give you the living spring. Whether you place your attention on the breath, on changing sensations, on the sound of “aum”, on the name of God, on the feeling of I am… stay there. Keep returning.
Every distraction is just the mind offering you another patch of earth to dig. You come face to face with your pain, your delusion, all that was pushed away and split off. Yet underneath the same water waits.
At first the digging is hard. The soil of habit, thought, and preference is thick. But as your attention refines, the tool sharpens. You learn to notice the mind more quickly. You come back to your object with less resistance. Something begins to shift. The object becomes luminous. The breath is no longer the breath of a person. The sound of “aum” is no longer a concept. It’s a vibration through all layers of being.
The feeling of “I am” is no longer tied to a body. You may begin to notice energetic phenomena — the rising of kundalini, spontaneous body movements, shaking, emotional purging. These are not the goal. They are the fire transforming the log. Stay with the fire. Let it burn through every illusion of separateness. Even the most ecstatic spiritual experience is still a form — still a wave, not the ocean. At some point, the technique itself falls away.
There is just Being. This is what we call “resting in awareness.” And from this resting, a natural wisdom begins to dawn. The awareness you are begins to illuminate the content of the mind, not from effort, but from pure clarity. You begin to see the beliefs, fears, and patterns as they arise. And in that seeing, they no longer control you. This is the purifying fire of wisdom.
In the yogic traditions, this fire is called “tapas,” the heat of transformation. The more the fire burns, the clearer the mind becomes. The clearer the mind, the more the ego loosens its grip. At some point, it becomes obvious that the one practicing, the one seeking, was never truly there. That the ego was a fiction all along. And even the practices, even the awakening, even the path — all of it was a dream inside the One who never moved.
True sadhana is not about adding anything. It’s about burning away everything that is not real. It’s not about becoming someone new. It’s about discovering who you have always been. The fire reveals that even the separate self who sought the fire was made of ash. And what remains cannot be spoken. It is not a thing. Not even an experience. It is not separate from what you are right now.
But the conditioned mind will not believe this. So it continues seeking. The paradox is that the seeker can never find what it’s looking for, because it is what it’s looking for. This is why the masters point beyond the mind. Why they speak in silence, paradox, and poetry. Because what you are is before language. Before time. Before “you.”
He referred to pure awareness, the groundless ground. Awareness doesn’t do sadhana. It simply IS. Timeless, silent, still. It doesn’t try to awaken. It’s always already awake. It is we, the imagined doers, who practice until we disappear.
Until awakening is realized, a subtle duality persists… the preference for silence over noise, stillness over movement. “Be still and know” — the purest pointer, luminous in its simplicity. Yet even this is only the threshold. Be still and know, be in motion and know.
After awakening from the current of life, we bring stillness back to life. When there is no more discrimination between this and that, then both stillness and movement drop away, revealing the great reality. Do not cling to the empty tranquil state. If you resist thoughts, that resistance is the “I” thought itself.
You will fall into an endless game of “I’ve got it. I’m awake” and “Now I’ve lost it.” If your awakeness is only available on the meditation cushion or in certain situations, it is not realization of your true nature. If it is an experience that comes and goes, then it is not primordial awareness.
At some point, something deeper calls. The river you thought you were watching — it is You. It is life itself. So you let go. You release your grip on the watcher’s perch. You stop clinging to the bank and you let go into the moving stream.
This falling is not back into delusion, not a collapse into Maya. It is awakening as the river itself. Awakening as what is arising. What Dzogchen calls rigpa — the pristine awareness beyond observer and observed.
At first, you awaken from the character. But the deepening of the non-dual state is realizing “I am that too.” You realize that what you thought was witnessing was still just another thought. It was separation — the duality of observer and observed. The witness, noble as it was, stood apart from the river.
There was still a preference, subtle but palpable, of silence over noise. That preference is the last refuge of the “I” thought. Where is that witness? Can you find it? The witness is just another belief, another thought. It is just another movement of the mind.
The fifth skandha that itself is part of the conditioned mind. Try to find it and that mind is like a snake going after its own tail. The real Self doesn’t stand apart. It is the flow, the stillness within the flow, the space in which the river dreams itself into motion.
All is allowed to come and go. Even thoughts and words become an expression of the One. They are not an interruption in the silence. It is possible for the silence to speak, for emptiness to dance. In fact, it is always dancing. Every ripple, every wave is your own expression.
As the Sufis say: you become the empty cup, then the wine, then the intoxication itself. This is the paradox. The witness is necessary, but it is not the end. To awaken is not merely to observe the river. It is to discover that there was never a river, never a bank, never a witness at all.
Don’t mistake my words for what they are pointing to. “It” is YOU — consciousness itself. “It” is closer to you than your mind, your thoughts. It is the ordinary consciousness that is here now. It is closer than close. And again, language fails. “Close” implies that there are two.
You already are THAT which the mind was looking for. It is about noticing the consciousness that is already here. “It” is present here and now. “It” is presence itself. We miss the direct knowing of our true nature because attention is habituated to being on thoughts and sensations, on the body, its comfort, its beliefs, its knowing.
If the sense of WHO and WHAT I am is with those preferences, perceptions, memories, thoughts, sensations, then there is a sense that I am the character to whom those belong. Remain choicelessly present, lucid, alert, inhabiting the now with all of your Being.
With a beginner’s mind, an open mind — a mind that is intimately experiencing all that is arising, but without preferences, without labeling this or that, without grasping or pushing away. When there is no preference, there is no “I” thought. Let go of past memories, teachings, and all that resides in the mind. Let go of wanting something in the future. Let go of hope and fear.
The truth is the mind doesn’t know what to hope for. True samadhi can never be remembered. It can only be experienced directly… now. Whatever the mind remembers, whatever the mind thinks it wants — samadhi is not that. Just let what comes come. Let what goes go. But who are YOU that remains?
Don’t evaluate what is happening now. Let go of all interest in thoughts. Let go of interest in the entire screen or projection of the mind. If there is interest in thoughts, just notice… WHO is interested? Just notice. There’s no need to try to not think. If you try or believe that you should not think, this is just another thought.
Rest. Relax. Be here now. The mind can drop the great burden of knowing and of having to do something. Notice how energy flows and circulates freely when there is nothing to do. Notice whenever the conditioned mind tries to control… to choose… to think. Then there is a contraction in the body and the sense of ease is lost.
Notice if the mind is doing anything to try and follow my instructions. I am not giving instructions. No one can instruct you on how to simply BE. There is no instruction. You already ARE. Just notice Beingness itself. Notice the I-am-ness that is always already present.
The Great Way is to simply BE — which itself is perfect equanimity — neither accepting nor rejecting what is. Abide in this way continuously, in a single-pointed, unbroken fashion. There is something that happens when we turn attention continuously away from Maya.
And again, language is not quite right. Awakening is not a “happening,” but there is a flip of consciousness, a change in the direct knowing of WHO and WHAT I am. No one can tell you what it is. No one can tell you the truth.
You have to directly experience it without using the mind
Abide as I-am-ness, awareness, consciousness. Not a thing, not a thought, not an experience.
Allow what IS, and eventually you will begin to love the allowing itself. You will realize it as what you are.
As you keep attention on Beingness continuously, for hours, for days, all that is hidden in the unconscious mind will surface. There may be old emotions that come up, old traumas, fears, sadness, anger, happiness, joy, bliss. Allow everything to come and go without attachment.
The greatest mistake, the only mistake, is to try to awaken using the conditioned mind. When the discriminating mind drops, both stillness and movement disappear and there is only the direct experience of life itself.
Another name for the pure consciousness that is looking through your eyes right now is “God”. God is another word for I-am-ness. What was revealed to Moses was “I am the I am”.
We abandon that pure loving awareness to have the experience of the objective world… to have the experience of limitation and of being a separate person.
When the “I” thought is dropped, the individual is free to be its fullest expression, an expression of the divine.
When the “I” thought dissolves, when the energy that once fed the ghost self is no longer being spent chasing pleasure or avoiding pain, something remarkable happens. The real individual begins to emerge.
Carl Jung called this “individuation”. The process by which the Self, capital “S”, is made manifest through the vessel of the individual. Jung knew what the ancients knew, that wholeness is not conformity, not becoming a bland grey monastic, but the integration of all one’s parts into the living flame of presence.
The paradox is that only by dropping the “I” do you truly express your unique flowering. It is no longer the conditioned you doing it, the limited you. Life expresses through you… like a flute no longer blocked by the ego’s fingers. Music plays. Never before heard, never again repeated.
When the character is no longer clinging to the script, the body mind becomes a direct expression of the mystery. The inner lotus is nourished by the waters of stillness. Attention no longer looped in old grooves can now pour into creative, spontaneous, undivided action. It is becoming more alive than you ever imagined.
The opening of the inner cosmos, the sambhogakaya realms, the luminous archetypal worlds, the radiant body of bliss begin to reveal themselves. Not as escape, not as reward, but as the natural next octave.
When identification falls away, higher vision, higher intelligence, the voices of angels, guides, the music of the spheres all become available when the false “I” stops clogging the channel. The very energy that once fueled thought forms and suffering now fuels beauty, presence, clarity.
These are the peak experiences, glimpses of a subtler reality arising like sunlight between clouds. They come, they go, they are not the goal. For even the highest bliss, even the purest vision arises in the field of Maya. These are the higher levels of the game. More refined, yes, but still part of the dream.
The true self remains still. It does not ascend. It does not descend. It simply is.
The dream body begins to wake up. Dreams become more awake. The waking world becomes more dreamlike.
You may find yourself in chambers of learning. Temples without walls surrounded by symbols, guides, forgotten memories. These are not dreams in the ordinary sense. They are custom coded transmissions, teachings delivered in the language of your soul, showing you the current situation.
Don’t cling. Don’t try to decode too much. Just bow inwardly and say, “Thank you.”
In the yogic world, the “siddhis” are extraordinary abilities or spiritual perfections, intuition, abilities, mastery over the world of form. These can be byproducts of the pathless path. Once again, not to be chased, not pushed away.
At this stage, sadhana becomes a 24-hour flow. Not forced, natural. Sleep is not a break from practice. It is an extension of it. Rest becomes transmission.
The inner world mirrors the purification of the outer. When this shift begins, it’s a sign. The body mind is ready to receive on higher frequencies. The subconscious is no longer locked in samsaric loops but begins aligning with a deeper blueprint. You are being rewritten by grace even in the dark.
Eventually these realms too dissolve into the unfathomable luminous emptiness.
There is an analogy I like to use to explain what sadhana is and to try to make it clear how it works. This is the “VR” analogy.
Imagine you’ve been in a VR world so long you forgot it was a simulation. How do you wake up? You forgot the headset. You forgot the room you were in. You think you’re the avatar, the character inside the game. You think you are that character, getting older, growing, changing.
Your character is living in a certain location, born to a certain family, living out a human life. Your character has a whole script that it has been given. You are totally engaged in the drama, the comedy, the tragedy of this character. You think you’re leveling up, developing, evolving.
You take damage. You heal. You meditate. You journal. You get therapy. You hear about something called “awakening” and start doing sadhana in the game. The avatar learns breath work. It fasts, bends, prays, does shadow work, and yet something feels off.
Because no matter how much the avatar does sadhana, it never becomes free. That’s the cosmic joke. The one doing sadhana was never you. The seeker is part of the dream. The one who’s trying is part of the loop. The spiritual identity is just more refined ego.
So how do you wake up? Not by upgrading the avatar, not by perfecting the practices, but by seeing the whole thing… the game, the player, the story, the striving as not you. You realize the programming, the script that the character has been following… is not you.
That character never awakens. It can’t. It is YOU who awakens from the character. This is the pivot of true sadhana. The game remains as it is. The avatar, the individual, is as it is. But what drops away is identification.
The “I” thought, the delusion that YOU are that character. The individual or avatar now becomes a vehicle for awakened consciousness. A sacred expression of the One.
Stay in this truth, this realization… that YOU are simply aware. Abide as the Self, as the “I am”, continuously, single-pointedly, letting energy build. This is the way to hack the game. By discovering that YOU were actually never in it.
Eventually the consciousness that you are wakes up. The cosmic joke is revealed.
You began as a seeker seeking something… a state, an insight, a liberation. But what we found is what no thought can hold, and no effort can attain. We found Being. And now the question arises: “how do I keep this? How do I carry it home into daily life, into the world?”
Ah yes, the final trap. The seeker sneaking back in through the back door. The police chief is back.
Let this be known: “You cannot carry what carries you. You cannot hold what holds everything. You cannot integrate the Self. The self is what you are. The wave cannot integrate the ocean.”
Who wants to integrate the self? All effort to do so is the return of the doer… the dreamer tightening their grip on the dream.
So this is the paradox. Integration is not something the character does. Integration is the absence of the character. It is the life that continues when the one who would integrate dissolves in the fire of awareness.
Let sadhana continue endlessly… not as striving but as Being.
As Ramana says, it is a vigilance that never ends, but not a vigilance to do something. A vigilance to simply abide as the Self.
As the Zen master Suzuki Roshi said, “the main thing is to remember the main thing”. In this way, through this vigilance, the remaining vasanas will burn up naturally in the fire of presence, and the tree of life grows during the years ahead.
And so the individual, freed of the old script, returns to the world. They may work, love, stumble, rise. Let the evolution unfold, but something remains forever untouched.
THAT which was never asleep, never bound.
As we enter an age of acceleration where the mirror of AI reflects our collective conditioning at the speed of thought, the importance of sadhana cannot be overestimated.
The world will not be saved by systems, not by reconfiguring the same structures built on separation and fear. Consciousness, as long as it is entangled with the “I” thought, will replicate the virus of division at exponential scale.
This is not a time for spiritual entertainment. It is a time for spiritual fire. The solution is not in fixing the machine. It is in remembering… “who are YOU before the machine began?”
The invitation is simple but not easy. Simply see the seeker and remain as the One who sees. Let the ego walk into the flame. No path, no goal, only the unborn silence that never left.
There will be days when the sky seems cloudy again. When old stories knock at your door. Let them knock. You don’t live there anymore.
When thought comes, let it pass like wind across a still lake. When identity arises, smile gently. The play is playing, but you are not the play.
So walk back into life not with answers but with presence, not with a script, but with the heart and mind of a beginner. Be willing to be No One. Be willing to not know. Be willing to feel life in its fullness, the good and the bad, without labels or evaluation.
Be willing to forget everything you think you are again and again. This is how the integration integrates itself. This is how the transmission continues.
Not through memory but through the clarity of now.
