– Transcript 56
R: It’s good to be with you again. What if I told you that you are absolute reality. Would you believe me?
Student: Yes.
R: You would? Why? (S: Because it’s the truth.) Whose truth? (S: The truth.) Robert continues: It’s a word. Absolute reality. But can you identify with that? Can that be your truth? Unfortunately most of us believe we have to go through experiences.
We have to perform sadhana. We have to practice spiritual disciplines. We have to do all sorts of weird things. And then, if God likes us, we will become self-realized. It’s all a lie.
You’ve been hypnotized into believing everything that you believe, everything. For instance, if you think that you accept the truth and that helps you, you’re wrong.
As an example, if I ask you is the world real then most of you would say no. But that’s ridiculous, because the relative intelligence that said those words is the same relative intelligence that holds the world together. You see, they’re both coming from the same place. Do you follow me? The world is relative intelligence. When you say the world is not real you’re speaking from relative intelligence. If you knew the answer, you would realize it’s silence. The answer is silence, pure intelligence.
Reality is pure intelligence. The world has nothing to do with it. Neither does your mouth, or your body, or your mind. Pure intelligence is silence, Sat-Chit-Ananda, Parabrahman, pure awareness! That’s you. As long as you express it and think about it, you’re not that. But when you let go and you have become silent without thoughts, then you become pure being, and you have absolutely nothing to do with the world. So the world is real, to the extent that you believe your body is real. You cannot believe in your body and your mind, and believe the world is false. Only when you transcend your ego, then you become pure intelligence, which is what you’ve always been anyway. Otherwise, it’s like the sun traveling all through the universe looking for light, and it asks the moon, “Can you show me where the light is?’ And it appears that to the moon, it reflects the suns light. So the moon believes it has wisdom. It doesn’t realize it’s reflecting the suns light. It believes it has a light of it’s own.
So it is with us. We believe we are alive as a mortal being. We believe we have substance and our mind tells us we’ve got to go through all kinds of experiences to learn, to become a super being, to become superman, to break through the shell of the chakras, and the rest of it. So we work all of our lives trying to accomplish this. In the end we drop dead. And we continue again. Thinking, judging, manipulating, searching, seeking, we go through it again and again and again, until the time comes when we become disgusted with the whole thing. And that, my friends, is the best thing you can ever do. Become disgusted with the whole teaching. Then you let go. You stop fighting. You stop trying to accomplish anything. You stop trying to be intelligent. You just relax. And your divinity shines by itself. There is nothing you need. As I make that statement and the following statements, your mind starts thinking. When I said there’s nothing you need some of you start thinking of the things that you need. There is nothing you have to become. There is no one you have to search out for, to help you.
Can you accept that everything happens by itself? Well it does. It sounds strange I know, because you’ve been taught to believe that unless you make it happen, it’s not going to happen. But you’ve been programmed. You’ve been programmed since you were born.
And you’ve been programmed from other lives. So all you are now, is a bundle of programming. That’s all you are. A bundle of programs.
You’re predictable. How are you going to act when certain incidents approach before you? How are you going to react when you see certain things in your life? Right now you may think you’ve got everything under control, but if you went home and you found out that your wife or husband ran away with the milkman, you wouldn’t be too happy, would you?
Things still control you. Situations still cause you to react. All that has to go. To become free you have to be empty, no preconceived ideas, no concepts, no judgments, no human knowledge. You have to be completely empty. When you’re empty you’re like space. Space appears as nothing. Yet space is filled with energy. I recently read an article where scientists are going to grow food in space. Out of space they’re going to grow food.
You heard about growing food under water. Well they are predicting that all of the land and all of the water mass will be used up in years to come, then we’ll have to grow food in space. I don’t mean up in space somewhere. I mean in space right here. Out of nothing.
What you call space is Consciousness. It appears as nothing to you because of your mind/body phenomena. If you actually were able to comprehend and see what you were immersed in, your body couldn’t take it. All around you right now, in different dimension, are all sorts of particles, radiations, electromagnetism and much more. But it doesn’t affect you, because your body-mind is made that way. Yet you are not your body or your mind. You are pure consciousness. You are space. You are emptiness, nirvana. So what are you going to do about it? Cry? Get upset? Become affected by peoples words or actions?
There appears to be two different kinds of realization. One is when you transcend and you’re still aware of yourself. You’re separate from the universal, but you have transcended. The other one is when you have transcended the body so completely that you have become all pervading, omnipresent. You have become the universe. There is no longer me and mine. You no longer believe I own this, and you don’t. This is mine. You’ve become the universe and thoughts like mine and thine no longer enter your mind. But the
one before that, is you’re still aware of yourself as consciousness, but not universal consciousness, personal consciousness.
You can tell if you’re getting there by the way you see things. If you’re beginning to feel that you’re like the screen, and that everything, everything that you see, including your body, is a superimposition on the screen, and you feel radiantly happy for no reason, you know you’ve come a long way. But when you feel like one of the images on the screen, and you do not remember that you are the screen, then you’re still part of the world.
It may sound strange but everything, the trees, the sky, the moon, the sun, people, your relatives and your body, your mind, are all superimpositions on yourself. Just hearing this should make you happy. You are the imperishable Self. There never was a time when you were born, and there never will be a time when you disappear. You are that. You are that Self, without others. Wake up. Know yourself for what you really are. Stop believing that you are a man or a woman, and you’re going through certain experiences. Stop believing you’ve got to work out your karma and that everything that happens to you is karmic. That’s human thinking Stop believing that God punishes and God rewards. There is no such God. Wake up. You’re living the mortal dream and you’re believing in it. Nothing can ever happen to you. There is no one called you. You don’t exist. No thing that you can imagine exists. Realization doesn’t exist. Liberation doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist because you’ve got to think about it. And of course everything you think about is false imagination. You can only confirm this truth in the silence.
I realize that I only see most of you about four hours a week, and the world has you most of the time. Maya is very strong. Do not kid yourself. It doesn’t exist, but appears very strong. Take a look at your actions this week and you’ll see what I mean. Everywhere is Maya. It’s like a magician playing a game with you. Making you believe what is false is real, and what is real is false. And you’re accepting it. Give it up. Become free. All you’ve got to do is give up your thoughts. Stop trying to analyze. Become totally still.
There is no one to search for. There is no place to go. There is absolutely nothing to do.
It’s too simple, that’s why you won’t do it. You want to get involved, don’t you?
You want to get involved in all kinds of teachings. You want to store knowledge in your head. Can’t you understand this is what’s keeping you back? You’re reading all these books, going to all these teachings, accumulating all this knowledge. And you are becoming smarter and smarter and smarter, and getting caught in the trap of Maya. Why do you think you have to learn a foreign language, like Sanskrit? Why do you think you have to learn the Kabbalah? Why do you think you have to learn all these different teachings, Zen, Buddhism, Tao? What do you get from all of this? Human knowledge. You learn to out-talk everybody else with your profound knowledge. But then when you get by yourself, you become like a little baby. You realize you’re huffing, and you’re in need. You have desires. You become a complicated human being.
This is the reason that in the old days beings became self-realized faster. Because they had no paper to make books. No pencils and pens to write with. They didn’t have transportation like we have to day, so you can run from one guru to the next. They had to stay where they were and figure it out by themselves. All the answers you’re looking for are within yourself. There is nowhere you have to go. Everything you want you already possess. You just can’t see it because you’re so involved in the ego.
There is a substratum of existence called consciousness. Another name for this consciousness is bliss. It is all pervading. As you begin to merge with it, it becomes you. It is your real nature. It is self-contained. The world, the universe, did not come out of it. I’ll repeat that. There are teachings that tell you that the world is a modification of consciousness, and we have to return to consciousness. There is nothing to return to.
Consciousness is pure awareness. It is aware of itself as absolute reality. The world is like a reflection in the mirror. Where did the reflection come from? From nowhere, because it doesn’t really exist. You can not try to grab the image in the mirror, for you grab the mirror. When you awaken you understand that you are the mirror, and the reflection of the world is like the water in the mirage, like the snake in the rope, like the sky is blue.
Why does this happen? It doesn’t. It appears to happen. Why does it appear to happen? It doesn’t. The appearance appears to happen. Why does the appearance appear to happen?
it doesn’t. It appears to appear to appear to happen. And we can go on like this all night.
It is difficult for the human mind to grasp that you are not what you appear to be, yet this is exactly what we have to do. As long as you believe you’re human and you have to fight your way out of it by learning certain yoga techniques, or by meditation, or by any other method, you’ve got a long way to go. You’re already that. You are that which you seek. There is nothing else. There are no real techniques. The reason that Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta and others gave techniques is because the aspiring student expected something.
As an example, if you were in my ashram and you came and asked me all these stupid questions, I would just look at you and wouldn’t answer. And you would have the answer. But because there are always new people and you have certain questions, and I only see you four hours a week, I make up all these answers. They are totally meaningless.
And you think you found an answer to your question. But you are not the questioner, and there is nowhere for the answer to go. You are pure intelligence. And as pure intelligence, there’s no question and there’s no answer.
So what are you looking for? What do you want? Your mind should be a blank when I ask you this. If you think you want something, or you need something, you’re making a mistake. I am merely a reflection of yourself. You see me as yourself. Therefore, whatever you think of yourself you’re seeing in me. But when I see you, I see my Self with a capital S. To me there are no others. Everything is the one Self. When I refer to myself, I’m referring to abs lute reality and those of you who are ready, because of my saying the Self Is omnipresence, those of you who are ready are merged into the Self and also become that.
But there’s no separateness. There is not me and you. There is only me as you. Me, meaning the Self. You, meaning the Self. There is only the Self, and we are that. So wake up. Stop thinking of ways and means to become self-realized. Become free. All is well. All is exceedingly well. All has always been well. Om, shanti, shanti, shanti, Om, shanti, Peace.
S1: Is there any difference for visions and dreams?
R: Oh, no. A dream is like this. The only difference is this is longer. It seems to last longer. But otherwise it’s all a mortal dream. When you’re dreaming, that’s your world for now. You’re not conscious, through your sleeping, of the waking world. But you believe the dream is a waking world. When you wake up it changes, and this becomes a waking world. But there’s no real difference. They’re both the same. (S: And visions are part of the dream?) Visions are all part of the imagination. They’re part of the dream. They’re a little higher than a dream. But they are in the dream category, because, after all, who’s having the vision. The real Self does not need any visions. So a vision is manifested by the mind.
Yet as long as you are in your body, you’ll have dreams and visions sometimes. But when you are really awake, you will be the witness to your visions, to your dreams, and also to this world.
S2: Robert, is there anything you could say for when a person who has a temporary loss of identification with their body and mind, and during those hours that the person has the sense of being, just being. Is there anything that can be done during those hours to help prevent the awareness or focus slipping back into body-mind?
R: What’s going to happen will happen of it’s own accord. When you have periods of nirvikalpa samadhi, that’s good. All you’ve got to do is keep on doing what you’re doing, and it will intensify all by itself when you’re ready. There’s something within you that knows exactly when it’s going to happen. Everything is preordained. But your job appears to be to dive deeper into the Self. When you feel yourself coming out of it, pose the question, ‘Who’s coming out of it? Who went in?’ The person who went in it doesn’t exist any longer. He’s been transcended. So who’s coming out of it, and in what form? Ask the question to yourself and you will find that you stay in it longer and longer. But everything is right. There are no mistakes. So when you do come out of it do not believe there’s something wrong, or you’ve got to stay longer. After all, that’s the ego that says that. But simply watch yourself. Observe, look, be, and everything will take care of itself.
The worst thing you can do is to analyze. Do not analyze what happened. Just watch, observe. The ego is the great analyzer. It wants to analyze everything. It wants to know. When there is no one left to know, then you will be that all the time. After all, who knows? The shadow knows. Remember the shadow? (S: Yes, Lamont Cranston.) Right. (S: What evil lurks in the heart of man.) That’s right. (S: We’re all from the same generation.) S: Would hypnosis be useful as a means to breaking the hypnosis?
R: No, because hypnosis simply contacts the subconscious. It reinforces your ego.
Your already hypnotized. So you don’t want to double your hypnosis. Because then you have to get rid of the hypnotic trance as well as the waking trance. (S: That’s how it appears it should be.) That’s how it appears that it should be? How’s that? (S: That’s actually breaking the trance.. Hypnosis can’t break the trance.) Only you can. By admitting and realizing there never was a trance. That you’re already free and liberated now.
S: Robert, scientists and psychologists and other people, they always try to unlock the limitations of the brain. We use only say 10% of the brain. If we somehow get to the point of using 100% of our brain, would that get us more immersed..?
R: More immersed in the ego. (S: Yes. It is fortunate that we only use 10%..) You’re right, because after all, what is the brain? It’s an extension of the body. And the more you use the brain, the more lost you become in Maya. So you don’t want to expand the brain.
You want to transcend the brain.
S: Robert. Does a dog take a physical body again and again? They seem so free.
R: Say that again. (S: Does a dog take a physical body again and again? They seem so free?) You mean do they reincarnate? What happens to animals, they have a collective consciousness. And they simply go back into the collective consciousness. And come back out of it again. Whereas humans have an individual consciousness and they reincarnate with the same soul, that’s the illusion. But animals go into a pool of collectiveness, and re-emerge from that, for what it’s worth. (S: How do you know that?) Who knows? (S: You’re supposed to.) I don’t know. It just came to me as I was talking. (S: It’s a nice theory, but is it true?) The only thing that’s true is that you are absolute reality. (S: Granted.) That’s it. (S: The rest is all…) Malarkey. (S: Thank you. That kind of ends the question.) (S2: That’s a good question,..) Sure. We can always see where were going.
S: What is the so-called blue pearl or the sesame seed supposedly. Is that soul?
R: You mean what Swami Muktananda refers to? (S: Yes. I heard it referred to by other Swamis or whatever.) The blue pearl is a point of consciousness. Ramana Maharshi uses the right side of the heart, in the right side of the chest, where the heart which is consciousness resides. So the blue pearl is the same thing. Blue pearl, white pearl, gray pearl, the right heart, left heart, it’s all the same. It’s just a point of reference. It has no real significance. It’s a place where you concentrate for the beginner. A beginning student needs to concentrate on a point in the body, to become one-pointed, so they stop thinking. So they concentrate on the imaginary blue pearl, or in the heart in the right side of the chest, or between the eyebrows or your navel. And that just makes you one-pointed. When you’re one-pointed you can give up all that, and stop thinking all together. Then you become totally free.
Catch yourself. What are you thinking about? It’s those very thoughts that keep you from awakening. Always catch yourself thinking. And ask yourself, ‘To whom do these thoughts come?” even if they’re good thoughts. Makes no difference. There’s something within you that knows what to do. There is a power greater than you that knows how to take care of you without your help. All you’ve got to do is to surrender to it. Surrender your thoughts, your mind, your ego, to the current that knows the way. It will take
care of you. It will take better care of you than you can ever imagine. Most people are under the mistaken impression that if their thoughts stop they will vegetate and become a vegetable. On the contrary, you will become spontaneous. You will think just enough to take care of the moment and everything will be taken care of for you. Try it. We always think we’re very important, and we have to think. Only remember the cliche “I think therefore I am.” It should be “I am, therefore I don’t have to think.” How would you like to sit like this all night? (S: I could do it.)
S: It’s funny. Tonight I’m feeling more energetic . …All this is really, it somehow makes me think this is why it’s called liberation. (R: Good.) ( S: I feel good also.) S: (referring to sitting) I could do it. But I don’t know if the body would care for it.
R: Well, you don’t have to sit. You can lie down on the floor and stretch. But some of you are always thinking you’re going to miss your favorite TV show.
S: Robert, in talking with some satsangees, some of them they say that “I cannot do much of self-inquiry,” or some of them also say “I don’t care much for self-inquiry,” or “What I want to do is go and sit with Robert.” Would you comment on that?
R: Well, what can I say. Actually our being together at satsang is the entire teaching. The words are merely a pointer to be able to sit in the silence together and find peace.
So what you’re saying, Jorje, is true. Just being together does the trick. (S: What’s the trick?) The trick is to wake up. I call it a trick because most people don’t realize that all they have to do is keep quiet and then they’ll be awake. So I trick them into making a speech, instead of telling them just sit with me and all will be revealed. Thereby hearing the words, people believe they found something out. But the words are to make you sit quietly and behave yourself.
S: Robert. You’re saying that it’s the grace that flows from the silence that transforms us?
R: Oh yes, true. Grace is already there. You simply have to be quiet enough to pick it up. When your mind is noisy you pick up the vibration of the world. Just like with a pool of water. When the water is still it reflects the moon and the stars, but when the water is noisy it cannot do that at all. It reflects nothing. So when your mind is noisy, it reflects chaos, confusion. When your mind is still and quiet, it reflects your divinity.
S: Would you advise certain kind of disposition, Robert, before we come to the meetings?
R: That’s a good question. It’s a good idea, before you come, to sit for an hour by yourself and reflect upon yourself. Still your mind. Become peaceful. Or you can read a spiritual book, if you like, for about an hour prior to coming to the meeting. This will help.
(S: Just to make peace of mind?) Well, everything is unfolding as it should. Be true to yourself and right action will take place in your life. So thank you for coming. I love you.
Remember to worship yourself, to pray to yourself, to kneel to yourself, because God dwells in you as you. Peace.
(end)
Absätze ohne Sprecherpräfix gehören dem zuletzt genannten Sprecher — so steht es im Buch, wo der Präfix nur den Anfang einer Rede markiert. Die Zuordnung ist eine Folgerung dieser Ausgabe. Namen in Klammern sind aus dem Text erschlossen: sicher belegt sind SM = Mary, SF = Fred, SJ = Jay, SC = Nate, wahrscheinlich SG = Glen, SR = Jorge. Alle anderen Kürzel bleiben stehen, weil der Beleg nicht trägt.