You know yourself, when you wake up to who you are. This is the sequence. You can not know yourself without waking up to who you are, from what you think you are. So you have to wake up from what you think you are to what you are really, and then you will know yourself. So, if you want to know yourself, wake up. If you want to be happy, wake up. If you want to know the truth of life, wake up. If you want to enjoy life, wake up. If you want to live a spontaneous life, wake up. If you want to live life free from suffering, hassel, sense of responsibility, wake up.
There is really no other answer, we only believe that there has to be some other answer for my problems. So if there is no other answer, to anything, that is sense of struggle in us, then how it can be difficult or impossible? Then if it is impossible or difficult, let’s say for you in this case, then life has created a strange thing. Then you are in a trap of almost long suffering, long trap of suffering in this case. No? The problem we are experiencing will be solved only when you wake up and you can not (do not want to) wake up, so it’s an impossibility, then you are left with to do nothing.
So, this is what I am trying to tell you that waking up is a sure shot, is the only thing which can be guaranteed actually. But question is, how much you are enjoying life? How much you are suffering it? That basically is the key here. But if you are enjoying life, it basically means that life has problems but it’s OK, it will do. Like “I am OK with this”. But when you say it is not OK with this, then you will try to make some fundamental changes by changing location, relation and job and so on. And if it doesn’t work then you will try something else like, adventure, sports and so on. When even that doesn’t work then you will try may be art and even that doesn’t work then we will try philosophy, literature and so on. And even when that doesn’t work then you know that the problem is still there, I am not happy with life or the way life is for me or the way I am experiencing life, and yet it is not solved. So, then we will try to find some radical way. Then only mostly we will accept that, Really Truly we will accept that waking up is the (only) way. Otherwise mostly it looks like too big an achievement (smiles). It is not really, it is not a too big achievement. It is just that what we are living with, living in, is almost like an experiencial dream, not like a dream separate from experience. If you stop caring about experiences, if you stop valuing experiences you are out of it, into your true state.
(Excerpts from Spontaneous talks, April 2018, Pune)
Joy of Clarity 