Let Nothing Disturb You
Excerpt from The Fire of Freedom
Satsang with Papaji
Edited by David Godman
Question: Sometimes I know I am free, and I live that way, but at other times I just feel worried and tired. I am afraid of being hurt or sick. I feel I am lacking something, and I forget who I really am. Is there going to be a time when I live permanently in a state of real knowing?
Papaji: You said ‘sometimes’. Sometimes you feel free and sometimes you don’t. That’s what you said. So what happens? Who steals away this freedom? Who takes it away from you? It must be some thought that enters into this freedom. That thought trespasses on your freedom, catches you, and takes you away into your past. If you are careful, if you are vigilant, you can prevent these trespassers from distracting you.
Everyone has moments of uncaused happiness and peace during their lives. They may only last for a few seconds or a few minutes, but everyone knows what I am talking about. One feels free; one is content; there is no suffering; thought is absent. At that time one must be very alert, very awake; one must be aware that thought will try to make an encroachment on your peace. Most people do not maintain this alert awareness and they are robbed of their peace. If a thought comes and manages to rob you, it shows that you were asleep when the robber came. If you always keep aware and alert, nothing can disturb you or rob you of your peace.
When you are truly aware, no thought can even enter and trespass on your freedom because that ultimate state of awareness is a fire, a fire of knowledge. Anything that tries to enter that fire is consumed and burnt to ashes. The knowledge ‘I am free’ is a fire that burns up any thoughts that approach.
‘I am free’ means ‘I am free of the thought process that jumps around and connects to objects’. In this state nothing can impinge on your freedom or trespass on your peace.
This is a habit that no one has told you about. No one has tried to impose this one on you. It is something that you have to acquire for yourself. For the first time in your life, for the first time in thirty-five million years of repeated incarnations, you have the chance to acquire this habit. Everybody is asleep. Everybody is being robbed of their peace millions of times, but no one wakes up and apprehends the thief.
These robbers give you the endless trouble of birth, suffering and death, but if you are vigilant and keep them out, even Yama, the Lord of Death, will have to give up and leave you alone. If you are simply aware, watchful and alert, nothing can disturb you. Did you listen to the letter from that French girl Nicole that I read out? She spoke of a trick that I like very much. Listen to this:
Master, my own Self, I feel very deeply that at present for Nicole there is only one thing to do in order to accomplish whatever arises in a day. Not to forget to see myself as the one and only being-principle in all that I touch, I see, I feel, and especially to live life myself as the unique principle itself, seeing itself in what I still call others; and if forgetfulness arises, not to forget that forgetfulness is also the being-principle because other than that nothing exists.
Do you get it? This is the result. This is exceptional.