Imagine that you don’t know what the next moment is going to be. When I’m sitting here talking, I have no clue what I’m going to say. I don’t know what the next word is going to be. Imagine not knowing what the next moment is going to be for you. If that’s easy to imagine, that’s good. If it’s hard to imagine, then that’s a problem, because that’s your actual situation.
You don’t have the slightest clue about one second from now. You have not the tiniest bit of control over one second from now. You don’t know if you’re going to be breathing. You don’t know if you’re going to be sitting up or face down. You don’t know if a meteor is going to come through the ceiling. You don’t know if your heart is going to explode. You don’t know anything beyond this very second, right now, and even that, you’re probably not too sure of.
But that’s your real condition. That’s what people are running away from—facing that that’s the actual fact. I wanted to say “the Truth,” but you don’t have to get highfalutin; it’s a simple fact. You can’t say anything about what’s going to be one second from now; if your heart will be beating, if your lungs will be breathing. You may have nine fingers three seconds from now—you don’t know. You literally have no way. You literally have no say. You literally are music coming out of the flute. This note may happen next—that note may happen next. You don’t know.
I’m not suggesting that you walk around constantly focused on that and freaked out because if you look up, a safe might be coming towards your head. What I’m suggesting is that at some point—and why not now?—you fully get it that that’s the truth. Fully get it that that’s your actual situation. You’re truly in a situation of the unknown. You’re right now sitting in the unknown. We tell ourselves, “We are in the known—the known world.” Wherever we are telling ourselves we are, it’s a lie. It’s a delusion, a commonly agreed-upon social compact, agreed-upon delusion. Illusion. There’s no United States. It’s lines on a map. There’s no California. It’s lines on a map. No such thing. If Hitler had won, this would not be California. This would be “Hitler-ana.” It’s arbitrary. Agreed-upon names and lines on a map, on a piece of paper. Don’t believe so steadfastly in these things. They aren’t true.
See the truth. You aren’t sitting in Los Angeles. You aren’t sitting in a room. You’re sitting, right now and always, in the very epicenter of the unknown. That’s where you are; that’s what you were born to; that’s where you have always been. That’s the only place you have ever been. That’s the only place you can be.
Isn’t it better to know where you are, than to be walking around with illusory ideas about where you are? I’m not saying forget this is Los Angeles. I’m saying first know, primarily know, that you’re in the unknown. Because nothing can be known about the next second and nothing is for sure about this second.
If you really face that, and really get it, fully get it, viscerally get it, psycho/physio/biochemically get it, that you’re in the unknown and of the unknown—if you really get it in your cells, if you really open yourself to that truth—it will change you. Something will happen. Something might happen for you, that will be very different for him, and very different for her.
Whatever it is, it will be closer to the Truth. You will be closer to the Truth, because you’re closer to what’s real. You will have more understanding and more of a right attitude towards what’s real. What’s real is: You’re in the unknown. That’s more real than that you’re in Los Angeles. When that’s more real for you, even for a second, it changes everything. How can the perspective be the same after that? It changes.
An excerpt from Swami Premodaya’s book ~ Truth Speaks: Answers from the Master, Volume 1
