Movie Screen

Once we rest in who we are, we don’t have to tranquilize the events that happen to us in life because those events give us the greatest of all pleasureeven in tragedy, which we naturally would still rather not have. But if it does happen, whether it’s tragedy or happiness, we know we are not those things.

What we truly are cannot be affected

by happiness or by tragedy.

Happiness and sadness are creations

of the mind and the body.

Poonja-ji liked to relate this to a movie screen. We go to a movie theatre and are waiting for the movie to start. The projector hasn’t started yet. We look at the screen and the screen is blank. There’s nothing on the screen. Nothing is playing.

Then the projector starts, light hits the screen and the movie starts. We can be watching a love story. We can be watching an action film. We can be watching a cowboy movie. We can be watching a documentary. All kinds of things are happening on the screen. People are getting killed. People are making love. People are hungry. There are earthquakes, fires, all kinds of things. If a movie is really to our liking there are times when we get so engrossed we can even feel that we are taking part in this movie. Eventually this movie finishes. Then we have to bring ourselves back and say, “Well, it was just a movie!”

But let’s say in the movie there were a lot of bullets that were fired and we look at the screen after the movie was finished. Does the screen have holes in it? Let’s say there was rain in the movie. Is the screen wet? Let’s say there was anger, hatred, love, earthquakes, any catastrophe or any good thing we can imagine. Are these things affecting the essential nature of the screen? The Screen is still there. The Screen is still blank. The Screen was there before the projected images started. The Screen is there after the projected images end.

So if we start to understand that we are the Screen, then how can any of these things that take place with the mind affect what we really are? They’re just composed of a bundle of thoughts that come and go. How can that affect our essential nature? It can try to affect us, but all it takes is just a little vigilance to remember that we are not those things. We say to ourselves, “I can see those things. I can feel those things. I can play with those things. But I am not those things. I am the Screen. I am Consciousness. I am That!”

All we have to do is just to say to ourselves, “I am That.” It doesn’t take too long before we don’t even have to say it any more because we start to realize that even these are just words and what we are really meaning goes far beyond mere words and ideas.

I am CONSCIOUSNESS.

I am THAT.

And that is how it is. This is basically the whole message. It’s very simple and simultaneously complex because this beautiful brain of ours just refuses to accept the fact that it could be so simple. The brain wants to be active in trying to figure out what is beyond its ability to figure out. That is what I call arrogance.

Arrogance is for us human beings to believe that we have the mental capacity to calculate, to postulate, to talk about, to figure out the infinite unknown. How much more arrogant can somebody be than to say that I have this brain, and this finite thing can figure out the Infinite. That’s arrogant!

But it’s not arrogant to say I may not know what it is, but I rest in it. It takes care of me. And I take care of it. I am going to remove from my shoulders this burden of trying to figure out this thing which I know I can’t know with my brain. And I give up. This is a surrendering to the truth of who we are. It is a magnificent thing. It is a victory!