chapter three

The Infamous Ego

All there is is Consciousness. In that original state – call it Reality, call it God, call it Absolute, call it Nothingness – there is no reason to be aware of anything. So Consciousness-at-rest is not aware of itself. It becomes aware of itself only when this sudden feeling, I Am, arises. I Am is the impersonal sense of being aware. And that is when Consciousness-at-rest becomes Consciousness-in-movement, when Potential Energy becomes manifested energy. They are not two. Nothing separate comes out of Potential Energy.

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It is Consciousness alone that exists. It creates the illusion of the world-appearance and the ego-sense and perceives the illusion of diversity in what is truly pure Unicity. It seems difficult to comprehend how the universe could exist in the infinite Consciousness that is supposed to be transcendental. Truly there is nothing other than Consciousness, and therefore Consciousness cannot but be immanent in everything that appears to exist. And yet no phenomenal manifestation can have any kind of relationship with Consciousness because a relationship can exist only between two different entities. It is in this sense that Consciousness is transcendental to the manifested universe. The universe exists in Consciousness like future waves in a calm sea – only apparently different in potentiality.

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Every thing or object in the manifested universe is a product of Consciousness, both during the illusion when the manifestation appeared to be ‘real’ and after the realization of the Truth. We are nothing but Consciousness, and never have been anything else. Perhaps it would be easier to ‘understand’ the Truth if it is conceived that there never has been any ‘we’ at any time, and that all there is – and has ever been – is Consciousness. ‘We’ think of ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, as sentient beings and therefore as separate from the manifestation: ‘we’ are the subject and the rest of the manifestation is the object. The reality is that ‘we’, as manifested phenomena, are actually nothing but a part of the one manifested universe. What makes us think of ourselves as separate is the fact that the apparent universe becomes known to us, as sentient beings, by sentience operating through cognitive faculties. This ‘sentience’ is an aspect of Consciousness in itself. And it is for this reason that we cannot get rid of the deepest feeling that ‘I’ am other than the manifested appearance. And so indeed we are, but the illusion (the maya) consists in the fact that instead of collectively considering ourselves as sentience which enables us to cognize the manifestation (including sentient beings) which has appeared in Consciousness, we consider ourselves as separate individual entities. And therein lies our suffering and bondage. As soon as there is realization (awakening to the fact) that we are not separate entities but Consciousness itself (with sentience acting as the means for cognizing the manifestation), the illusion of separateness – the cause of our suffering and bondage – disappears. There is then the clear apperception that unmanifested, we are Noumenon, and while manifested, we are appearance – no more separate than substance and its form (gold and the gold ornament). Manifestation arises from the Unmanifest and in due course sinks back into the Unmanifest. The human beings as individuals are really quite irrelevant except, of course, as illusory characters in a dream play which is known as ‘life’.

People are told by masters that they should fight the ego, kill the ego, but what I’m saying is to accept the ego. Is that not unique? Don’t fight the ego. Accept the ego. Why, because ‘you’ didn’t create the ego. The Source has created the ego, and the Source is in the process of destroying the ego in some cases. That’s why your head is in the tiger’s mouth. There’s no escape. There is no escape if you fight the ego. That’s my point. If you keep on fighting the ego, the tiger will have its mouth open for ages and ages. You accept the ego, and the tiger will snap its jaws quickly.

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Ramesh The resistance is the ego, and the ego, I’m not joking, will not easily give up.

Robert But the desire to have the ego annihiliated is the very thing that keeps the ego alive.

Ramesh You see, that is the joke. That is the divine joke. The ego is divine hypnosis. Where did the ego come from? That is the question, isn’t it? Everybody says the ego is the problem. All you have to do is simply give up ‘your’ ego. But nobody tells you how to give up ‘your’ ego. ‘You’ are the ego! The ‘me’ is the ego, and the ego is not going to commit suicide. The ego could only have come from the same Source from which everything has come. The physical manifestation has come from the Source. The fictional ‘me’ has come from the Source.

Why did the Source create the fictional ‘me’? Without the ‘me’ interhuman relationships would not happen. Without inter-human relationships, life as we know it could not happen. So for life as we know it to happen – for God’s lila, or game, to happen – interhuman relationships have to happen. And for interhuman relationships to happen the ego has to be there. Ego simply means the creation of a feeling through divine hypnosis that ‘I’ am a doer and a separate being in control of this body. But all that really exists is the body-mind organism and the energy flowing through it.

That is the basis, exactly like there is an electrical gadget and electricity functioning through that gadget. But if the electrical gadget were hypnotized then the electrical gadget would think in terms of ‘me’ producing the toast, ‘me’ producing the mixture, ‘me’ producing the light. Basically it is only the electricity and the gadget. Here it is only the same thing – Source, God or Energy, and the body-mind organism through which the Energy, or God, is functioning. So God has created the ego, and it is God who starts the gradual process of annihilation of the ego in some cases.

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The individual ‘doer’ is the thinking mind wanting to know: after the work is done, what is going to happen to me? The ‘me’ is the thinking mind, the ego. The ego, according to my concept, is the identification with the name and form as an individual with the sense of doership – whatever happens to this body ‘I’ am doing it, and ‘I’ am the one who is going to suffer the consequences.

It is always the ‘me’ – the ego, the ‘doer’ – who says, ‘I am doing the work.’ According to my concept, the only way the thinking mind – the monkey mind, the conceptualizing mind – can be stilled is if there is total unconditional acceptance that there is no individual doer. Everything just happens. As long as there is an individual doer who thinks ‘he’ is doing it, then ‘he’ is bound to think and be concerned about responsibility and consequences. This is the thinking mind. But attention can be given to the work at hand without ‘you’ feeling ‘you’ are the doer. That is the working mind.

The real problem is how to arrive at the total, unconditional acceptance that ‘you’ are never the doer, that the doing is just happening. The answer is through practical and personal experience. All the doing that you think is ‘my’ doing is not because of you but in spite of you! And you know that because you have not been getting what you wanted all the time. What happens is never in your control, and that you know from practical experience, personal experience. When will you not feel the burden of responsibility and consequences? Only when you are totally convinced that you were not the doer of any action that happened. You are never the doer, and not only you but no one is ever the doer. No human being is a doer.

The ‘one’ who has come to this conclusion in the beginning is the ego, the ‘one’ who thought ‘he’ or ‘she’ was the doer. Gradually what will happen is the ‘me’, the ego, which came to the con-clusion that ‘he’ or ‘she’ doesn’t exist will then, over a period of time, find more and more from personal experience that ‘he’ or ‘she’ does nothing. Then the ego becomes weaker and weaker, and if it is the will of the Source, the ego collapses.

If the ego collapses, how does the body-mind organism function? The answer is – the body-mind organism will continue to function exactly as it was functioning before. Before, it was the Source that was functioning through the body-mind organism, and in the future the Source will continue to function through the body-mind organism.

That which takes care of itself is the working mind. The working mind continues to do what is necessary in the circumstances. Therefore, you still continue as someone accepted by society as responsible for his actions. So what happens? A deed happens, an action happens, and the deed or action is the will of God, or the Source. The will of God with respect to each body-mind object is what I call the destiny of that body-mind object stamped at the moment of conception.

So what is life? According to my concept life is just a multitude of body-mind objects through which the Source is functioning. We can only accept what is happening. We can never know why the Source is doing what it is doing. Why? Because if you want to know why God is doing what he is doing, then what is really happening is the created object wanting to know the will of the creator Subject. How is it possible? So the created object which has been endowed with the dubious gift of ego – the sense of doership, the thinking mind – can only accept the magnificence of God’s creation. The object and the ego cannot even try to understand why God has done what God has done, because the created object can never know the will of the creator Subject.

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To paraphrase a well-known researcher of the mind and its functioning: it is the ego which is the mechanism in the human mechanism that prevents the human mechanism from seeing its mechanistic nature.

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Ashika When you speak about how our lives are determined, using the concepts of the robot or the computer, it sounds like it’s very limiting – there’s no choice, no freedom. But my experience is that I feel filled up with a sense of freedom.

Ramesh Sure, that’s the whole point. So what is that sense of freedom which arises? What kind of freedom is it?

Ashika I am not that computer or the robot.

Ramesh Exactly! That is the whole point. So, freedom from what? Freedom from that which earlier identified itself with the computer. It means freedom from the computer itself, freedom from the identification with the computer. The feeling Ashika has now is that earlier you thought ‘you’ were the computer, and now you know that you are not the computer. That computer is being used by the Source, or God, to bring about such actions as are supposed to happen through that body-mind organism. Isn’t that right?

Ashika I used to think that freedom was freedom of choice, to do what I want ...

Ramesh Free will.

Ashika Yes. That all seems to die ...

Ramesh So there is no free will. It does not bring a sense of constriction or freedom.

Ashika There is a totally different freedom – freedom of not being involved at all.

Ramesh Yes. Freedom from involvement. Your experience has been that involvement is what causes unhappiness – if there is no involvement there is no unhappiness. So really what you’re saying is that the freedom is from unhappiness because the freedom is from involvement. And ‘who’ gets involved? The ego gets involved. The freedom is the freedom from the ego. And the ego is the sense of personal doership. So the freedom is ultimately the freedom from the sense of personal doership – both for this body-mind organism and other body-mind organisms.

This is remarkable as far as you are concerned. Others may not accept this, but as far as you’re concerned the freedom extends to everybody. No one has free will. All that happens is that actions happen through the billions of body-mind computers. So there is no need for Ashika to feel guilty or proud or hate anybody. Is that acceptable?

Ashika Yes.

Ramesh This is the freedom that is reflected in your understanding – freedom from guilt, freedom from pride, freedom from hate and envy – which means what? Freedom from involvement. It is the involvement which causes unhappiness – a little bit of happiness, a lot of unhappiness. So accepting what happens as something with which Ashika cannot be involved and over which Ashika has no control at all – this is the freedom that whatever is happening is beyond the control of anyone. Therefore whatever is happening is just accepted as something which is supposed to happen – and not by the will of any individual.

Ashika I was feeling confused because there was this tremendous sense of freedom, but it wasn’t a sense of freedom from or a freedom to do. It was just this freedom to be.

Ramesh You see, the freedom from involvement is freedom from the bondage of the ego. The ego is restricted. So the ego who thought earlier that ‘he’ was free to do whatever ‘he’ liked now finds there is no ‘Ashika’ to do what anybody wants. This is the freedom from responsibility, freedom from the sense of personal doership, and freedom from guilt or pride.

This same freedom is translated by the ego as the loss of ‘its’ own personal free will. You see? So really this freedom is itself freedom from the ego, but the ego can’t feel this freedom. Ego feels ‘it’ has lost the free will to do whatever it wants to do – which ‘it’ thought ‘it’ had. This was the confusion you felt – the freedom which arose from the loss of the sense of personal doership meant the loss of freedom for the ego. Does that make sense?

Ashika Yes.

Ramesh I repeat: freedom from the sense of personal doership means loss of freedom for the ego. And that is the confusion, because there is still this identification of the ego with this body-mind organism called Ashika. The ego still remains and feels terribly restricted.

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Ramesh I say, ‘Thy will be done,’ which means the human being has no free will. And yet I tell you, ‘Do whatever you like. What more freedom do you want?’ Do you have a problem with these apparently contradictory statements? Can you explain why there is no problem for you, Nazneen? If there is no problem, it means they are not truly contradictory statements. Can you explain this? Some people may say they are obviously contradictory.

Nazneen For me it doesn’t present a contradiction because whatever has been happening has been happening anyway. ‘I’ haven’t been doing anything. So there really is no individual doer, and there never has been an individual doer. So when you say, ‘Do whatever you like,’ it means that whatever is going to happen is going to happen.

Ramesh Wait a minute. To ‘whom’ do I tell ‘Do whatever you like’?

Nazneen You’re telling the ego.

Ramesh I’m still telling the ego which exists. What you just said was that if there is an understanding that there is truly no ego, then there is no problem. That’s correct. But that is not my point.

My question is – does the ego have a problem when I say, ‘Do whatever you like. What more freedom do you want?’ and yet to the same ego I’m saying, ‘Thy will be done,’ meaning you have no free will? Is there a contradiction? The ego asks the question, ‘How do I live in society if I have no control over my actions?’ And my answer to the ego is, ‘Do whatever you like. What more freedom can you want?’

Nazneen Yes, but your answer is that whatever you want and whatever you like is what God wants and God likes.

Ramesh That is the point! But why is it not a problem? That is the issue. And the problem is always, always for the intellect. Any problem is always for the intellect. The intellect says, ‘You tell me that nothing happens unless it is the will of God; there-fore, I have no free will. And yet you tell me to do what I like. What more freedom do I want?’ So the intellect says that these two concepts are contradictory. How do you explain to the intellect – which is the ego, the thinking mind – that these are not contradictory?

The answer is you may do what you like, but what you like to do is exactly what God wants you to like to do at that moment in the given circumstance. Therefore, there is no contradiction. Do whatever you think you like. And how does God manage that? Through the programming. What you think you like is based on the programming – genes plus conditioning. God acts through the programming.

What use is that total freedom to do what you like to do if what happens is not in your control? To that extent you have no free will.

James And therefore the freedom is useless.

Ramesh Ah! That is the point. That is the conclusion the ego has to come to – the impression of freedom, which it has been under for so many years – is useless.

Reina But then, nothing really matters.

Ramesh That is the final conclusion you come to! Nothing really matters. What is the final effect of Self-realization, of enlightenment? – whatever happens, what does it matter? The intellect will say, ‘How can you tell me nothing matters? Of course it matters.’ To the intellect everything matters. So ‘nothing matters’ is for the conclusion, the answer, the feeling that comes from the heart. What the sage feels every moment is – whatever is happening – what does it matter? But the ego says, ‘Of course it matters.’

When the answer finally comes from the heart – nothing that happens really matters – what is the meaning of this? What is the significance of the heart coming to this conclusion? The significance is that whatever the ego perceives as happening – and that it matters – is really an illusion.

So only after the total final understanding is it that nothing happens. And if nothing happens what can matter? To ‘whom’? So you go back to the first line of the saying by Ramana Maharshi as the final Truth – ‘There is no creation, there is no destruction.’ If there is no creation, there is no dissolution. If there is no creation, to ‘whom’ can anything matter? You see? So it is not the ego which says, ‘What does it matter?’ Of course it matters to the ego. But when the ego is demolished and the total, final understanding happens, then the real feeling comes up – what does anything that appears, matter? Because whatever appears is just that, only an appearance! What does an appearance matter? What does it matter? What is ‘it’? The ‘it’ is an appearance. Nothing really happens. Nothing is created. The ultimate understanding is, it really doesn’t matter.

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Lara So when a sage talks about serenity and peace ...

Ramesh You see, the ‘peace’ is given as a bait to the ego who seeks enlightenment. In other words, the ego says, ‘What do I get out of it?’ What ‘you’ get out of it is nothing, and getting that ‘nothing’ means what? You are not seeking anything. What you are getting is the absence of seeking, and the absence of seeking means the absence of the seeker. So what does the seeker get? His own absence – which is peace. You have to use a word.

You see, in the beginning the seeker is questioning, ‘What will I get out of it?’ He or she is concerned with what happens in life. So in life, in Buddhist terms, what does the seeker find from ex-perience? That samsara or life is dukkha. Life is misery. Having said this, what will the seeker want? He will want to leave the misery and go somewhere where there is no misery. The Buddha also gave that a name, and he called it nirvana. So in the beginning of the seeking what the Buddha tempted the seeker with was that life is misery, and that misery will stop only if you get nirvana. Then to make the joke a tragic joke, he said that samsara and nirvana are one! Meaning, you cannot go from one place called life, or samsara, to another place called nirvana. They are the same.

The significance of this, which very few accept, is that you have to find nirvana – or what nirvana represents, the peace – while being in samsara. You cannot escape samsara. You cannot escape life that is misery. All you can find, if that is the will of God and the destiny of the body-mind organism, is the peace, which represents nirvana, while being in life. So the final point is you cannot escape life. You have to accept life as it happens, and accepting life as it happens means the peace of nirvana.

How does the acceptance of life as it happens come about? How can it happen? Only if the ego-doer – ‘I’ live my life, ‘I’ am responsible for my life – gets removed. And that is God’s will and the destiny of the body-mind organism.

But if the sense of personal doership gets removed, there is still a Lara. This point I must make clear. The sense of personal doership, when that is removed, the ego is removed, and when the ego is removed, Lara as the ego-doer is removed, but Lara is not removed. Ramana Maharshi lived for fifty years after Self-realization, so for fifty years he lived as Ramana Maharshi. If someone called him by name – Swami or Ramana or Bhagavan – he responded. That Ramana Maharshi responded to a name being called means there was identification with a name and form. So identification with a name and form continued with only one difference – there was no sense of personal doership. So when enlightenment happens, Lara does not disappear. Lara continues with the identification of this body and name. Lara’s reactions continue more or less as before because they are based on the programming. And the programming more or less con-tinues as long as the body continues.

Ramesh The bhakti turns into jnana. The devotion towards God as an entity turns into knowledge that all there is is the Source. So that is exactly what you’re saying, you went in search of God and returned being God.

Lara Who was so peaceful and happy and not touching the ground anymore, like floating?

Ramesh No one. The peace prevailed, and the peace was experienced by that identification with a name and form – that identification with the name and form which responds to the name Lara being called.

Lara So that’s okay?

Ramesh Certainly. That is part of what happens. So there is a Lara.

Lara There is a Lara?

Ramesh That is why I say that Lara need not fear that Lara disappears. Even after realization Lara will be pretty much there to respond to her name being called, but with this big difference: Lara who responds to her name being called knows that Lara doesn’t do anything, nor does anyone else. So how does that peace happen? That peace happens because Lara, the identification with a name and form, realizes that she is not the doer nor is anyone else a doer. A sense of pleasure or a sense of regret may arise in that body-mind organism, but what will not arise, Lara, knowing that it is not ‘your’ action which has produced the appreciation or denouncement, is pride or guilt.

Lara The original reaction is impersonal in a way.

Ramesh It is impersonal, Lara. That is exactly the point I’m making. The reaction that arises in that body-mind organism because of that unique programming is impersonal. The ego comes in only when the ego reacts to that impersonal feeling.

Lara If there is no one who enjoys it, what’s the point? Impersonal is just ...

Ramesh Yes, but therefore I said that Lara does not go away. So long as the body-mind organism is there – the identification with name and form – there is a Lara. Don’t be misled, Lara will be still there saying, ‘That was a good meal.’ You see? ‘I enjoyed that meal.’ Lara will still be there to say, ‘I enjoyed that meal.’

Lara, make no mistake. Enlightenment means the annihilation of Lara as the doer, the sense of personal doership. That goes and what remains is really harmless. What remains after enlightenment is harmless – in the terms of Ramana Maharshi – like the remnants of a burned rope. A burned rope will still leave a shape. Enlightenment will still leave identification with a name and form. Inputs, events which happen in the body-mind, continue to raise reactions, even fear and anger. So it does not mean that after enlightenment the sage is never angry. Of course, that is untrue. In that body-mind organism if the programming is such that anger is to arise, anger will arise. Even fear will arise. Compassion will arise almost all the time. A sense of gratitude will arise every time the thought occurs. You see, the thought would occur, ‘How lucky I am. I’ve had a good life, and on top of it God has been kind enough to give the understanding.’ A sense of gratitude arises.

Lara The confusion is from when I read the Ashtavakra Samhita. Because of my little understanding when I read it, there was the implication that there is no pleasure and no pain.

Ramesh That is right. Therefore, the written word has infinite limitation. That is the advantage of a satsang like this. If there is any clarity required, I can provide the clarity. But a book that is written, the author cannot anticipate all the different kinds of misunderstandings and try to solve them. For example, the feelings of pain and pleasure you mention. The pain and pleasure occur, but in the sage there is no ‘one’ to say, ‘“I” am in pain’ or ‘“I” am in great pleasure.’ So the absence of ‘I’ as the individual experiencer is what Ashtavakra meant. Pain and pleasure will be there, but there will be no individual experiencer of that pain or pleasure.

Let me put it this way. There are two body-mind organisms, one is an ordinary person and the other is a sage. Both are programmed in such a way that it is easy to feel pain. And, for ex-ample, the ordinary person thinks ‘he’ is enlightened and when pain occurs will do his best not to shout because ‘he’ thinks ‘he’ is not supposed to. In the case of a sage if there is pain there is no ‘he’ to think what ‘he’ should or should not do. But will ‘he’ shout? No. The body-mind organism will shout. And that is what happened in the case of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and in the case of Jesus. ‘Oh, Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?’ Who said that? Not Jesus. The body cried out in pain. Jesus didn’t. You see? Then promptly the understanding comes, ‘Thy will be done’ – meaning, this is your will and the destiny of the body-mind to suffer the pain of being on the cross. It is happening. So let the body shout. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was suffering from cancer and said, ‘Mother, why are you making me suffer like this?’ That ‘me’ is the identification with the body-mind organism. So the body shouts in pain. Or the body may laugh at some amusement, which is really the reaction of the brain to an event, the input, with laughter the output. The output is the shouting in pain or being timid or terrified or grateful. Any of those things can happen, but in the happening of any of these the ego is not involved.

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Ramesh If a sage and an ordinary person see compassion arising in another person, the sage will witness the compassion arising in that body-mind organism. But the ordinary person will say, ‘He’s a compassionate person. Why am I not that compassionate? I would also like to be that compassionate.’ That is the ego. In the case of a sage the happening of compassion, whether it arises in some other body-mind organism or in his own body-mind organism, makes no difference. The compassion arising, in whichever body-mind organism, is merely witnessed.

Lara It’s all the same play really. It’s just one play.

Ramesh That is the point! It is the same play; it is the same Energy; it is the same Source; it is the same God producing whatever is produced through whatever body-mind organism. Thinking, doing, experiencing – whatever happens through whichever body-mind organism, there is no individual doer. It is the same Source or Energy or God. That is the understanding of the sage. And therefore the sage does not see separation. In what sense does the sage not see separation? In this sense – nobody does anything. It is the same Energy functioning through every body-mind organism.

Therefore, there is truly no separation between body-mind organisms except in appearance. Whatever is seen is an appearance. The differences – the separation – are only appearances, not real. What functions through those different appearances is the same Energy, the same Source, the same God. In that sense the sage does not see separation. It is not that the sage does not see differences in different people. Of course he sees the differences in people – tall, short, handsome. All those differences are seen, but the differences are seen in appearances, in created objects. But the understanding is that through all those created objects the same Energy functions, therefore there is no separation. Anger arises in one case. Anger doesn’t arise in another case. Compassion arises – it makes no difference, because what arises depends on the programming over which there is no one in control.

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Ramesh What you are saying is, I think, that with this understanding there is a certain amount of loneliness.

Lara An enormous amount of loneliness.

Ramesh That loneliness is felt by the identification with the body-mind organism. That identification continues, and Lara continues to live without a sense of doership and feels loneliness because the body-mind organism is programmed to like company. If the body-mind organism is programmed to like company, then there will be a sense of loneliness. But if in some other organism in which the understanding happens and that body-mind organism prefers to be by itself, there is then no loneliness. There will be joy, the priviledge of being alone.

Now if that loneliness hurts and you say, ‘I don’t want this loneliness,’ then that is the ego. Loneliness happens because that is the programming. But if there is ‘I don’t like this loneliness, I prefer to be in company’, then that is the ego which is still lurking.

Lara I much prefer to be alone, but I feel just as lonely along with my friends. Perhaps even more.

Ramesh That is the programming, so you have to accept it. It’s simple. You have to accept it. The final word is acceptance of whatever happens without wanting What-is to be changed. The final peace occurs because regardless of the actions happening through this body-mind – there is no pride, no guilt. With actions happening through some other body-mind organism affecting Lara the hurt or pleasure may be there, but there is also the understanding that no one does anything. If there is hurt, hurt will be there, but Lara cannot find herself hating anybody. Whom would she hate? When the understanding is no one has the power to do anything, how can Lara hate anybody? So understanding that no one is a doer – neither Lara nor anyone else – means no pride, no guilt, no hate, no envy, no jealousy, which is equivalent to peace. The peace of nirvana which prevails in the waking state.

Lara So there is nothing to hang on to.

Ramesh Nothing to hang on to because there is no ‘one’ to hang onto anything. You see? But so long as there is the one who comes in occasionally and wants to hang onto something, that ego is still there. All right, accept it – ego is still there. Let it remain as long as it wants to or as long as it is God’s will. So the final acceptance is the acceptance of the ego.

Conclusion

When the ego is supposed to ‘die’, only the sense of personal doership is annihilated. The identification with the body-mind organism as an individual, living entity continues.

The ego – as an individual entity – therefore need not be afraid of being annihilated through Self-realization.

The ego, without the sense of personal doership, remains merely as the identification with the body-mind organism, function-ing as the mere witness of all the actions happening through all body-mind organisms as divine happenings without anyone ‘doing’ anything.