– Transcript 62
R: Peace, shanti, shanti, Om, Peace.
Greetings and salutations from the land of the Jnanis. The land of the Jnanis is where you live. You are all Jnanis, but some of you believe you’re a body. And as long as you believe you are a body, you separate yourself from the land of the Jnanis. You believe you belong to the earth, and if you’re earthbound, you have to partake of all the problems, sufferings, happiness, joys, that come from the earth. You have to choose who you shall follow, if you should follow the divine urge that tells you that you are absolute consciousness, or the call of mammon, which is the world. You have to make that choice.
The choice you make determines what happens to you from here on. It’s very simple. You either realize that you are not of this world, that you are absolute reality, your divine nature is pure awareness, and you rest in that, or you worry, and you fear, and you try to make things happen, and you’re always scheming, and planning, and looking at the future with dismay, worrying about the past. The choice is really yours.
And even when some of you say, “I am absolute reality,” you’re still referring to the body, for you are saying, “I am,” and you don’t know I am as consciousness. You’re saying, “I am absolute reality,” meaning that your body, your ego, is absolute reality, and this is a great mistake. You have to understand when you say, “I am absolute reality,” I am and absolute reality are both synonymous. You’re declaring the highest truth. You can say it this way, you may say, “I am is absolute reality,” for if you’re having problems, if you think something is wrong, and you say, “I am absolute reality,” you’re really saying my problems, and my negative thinking, is absolute reality. That’s what you mean by I am.
So remember what I am really means. I am is God. I am is nirvana, emptiness. I am is consciousness, and that is your reality. So there’s no real difference between me and you. Absolute reality, consciousness, is all pervading. If it’s all pervading, how can you be something else? You see the folly of your thinking? There is only absolute consciousness.
There is only the reality. It is all pervading. There’s nothing else.
Just being aware of this, your thoughts stop. There is nothing to think about. There is no thing you have to do. There are no mantras you have to keep chanting. There are no formulas that is going to turn you into ajnani. There are no yoga practices that you have to keep doing. You simply have to be aware that absolute reality is omnipresent, all pervading, and there is no room for anything else.
I am is Brahman. It goes further than that. I am is Parabrahman, beyond Brahman.
It’s unpronounceable, unfathomable. You are that. You are that consciousness, and there is absolutely nothing to think about. There is no thing you have to get rid of. There is no special reading you have to do. There is no one you have to really see. You simply have to be aware of the fact that absolute reality is all there is. There’s not even room for a thought, for a question, for an answer. There’s no room, because the absolute reality takes up all the room.
There is nothing to wonder about. You do not have to be worthy. You do not have to deserve it. There is no use thinking about your past, because your past never existed and never will exist. The past and the future are just dreams. Awaken from the dream by realizing absolute reality is the only power. It is everywhere. There is not the world and absolute reality, and then you have to overcome the world to find your reality. There is no world to overcome. There is no God to pray to. Brahman is yourself. Shiva is your consciousness. You are that.
What else is there to know? You do not have to be a scholar of the Upanishads.
You do not have to memorize various passages. You have to become like a little child and stay centered in the present. No one exists but you. You are the only existence. There is no other existence.
If you took this room and everything in it, the tape recorders, the bodies, the flowers, the carpet, and began to melt it down to it’s most minutest particles, you would get pure energy from everything. Everything will come from the same source. That source is absolute reality. It is the substratum of all existence. And that source is you. You are that.
You are nothing else. Everything else is a lie. You’re searching, and you’re striving, and you’re looking for this, and you’re looking for that. Give it up. Stay put. Do not allow your mind to think past your nose. Catch your mind. Observe it thinking, and laugh.
Where do the thoughts come, that you think about? They are formed by habit. For years you’ve been using your mind to think, and you believe the only way you can survive is through thinking. But now you are beginning to understand that what you call your mind is not really your friend. It is some optical illusion that keeps you earthbound, and makes you worry about your affairs, and concerns you with the ways of the world.
But what if you understood that the world doesn’t exist? The world is like the water in a mirage. It appears to exist, just as your body appears to exist, but when you investigate you will laugh, for there is nothing at all that exists. If you wish to listen to your mind, you’re going to have a hard time on this earth, for you will find that some things go good one day, and seem to go bad the next day. And then you’re happy when you get things going your way, and you become miserable when they go the other way.
This is the way of the world. It plays games with you. You have to awaken. You have to surrender all of your games, all of your mental attitudes, all of the past and future, all of your beliefs and conceptual thinking. All of these things must go, all of your objects and subjects, all of your so called human intelligence, everything you’ve learnt. It has to be transcended and then you’ll be free.
But as long as you hold on to the slightest thing — it may be that you’re in love with a rose. If you look at the rose and believe in the rose, it will keep you earthbound.
You are the rose. The rose exists because you exist, just as the world exists because you exist. When you cease to exist, the world ceases to exist. When you cease to exist, there’s only the reality, and you become absolutely free.
(Musical interlude.)
Many people still can’t understand why people who become self-realized seem to suffer, physically or otherwise. A week doesn’t go by when somebody doesn’t ask me this question, “How can a person who claims to be self-realized like Ramana Maharshi and Ramakrishna and many others, die such horrible deaths? Is it worth going after freedom like that? Is it worth becoming liberated when you’re going to die a horrible death of cancer, or something else?”
Now this kind of question is completely ludicrous to me. It’s ludicrous to me because who asked the question, the Jnani or the ajnani? Who suffers? Can’t you see by now, that what you see is only in a certain dimension. Where most of you are right now, you see birth and death, sickness and health, poverty and riches. You see duality. So naturally your body was born to die if that’s what you see, and that’s where you’re coming from, and suffering appears to ensue. But from the Jnanis viewpoint, there is no one who was ever born, and no one suffers.
Ramakrishna appeared to be wasting away, and some of you say, “How can you say that? Look what happened to him? We witnessed it. We saw it. We read about it.”
Who’s this we? Who are you anyway? If you consider yourself a human being, naturally you are going to witness suffering. But did Ramakrishna admit he was suffering? Did Ramana Maharshi admit he was suffering? They were laughing all the way to hell. No ones ever suffered, and no one will ever suffer. It’s the way you see things. You have to lift yourself up, and you have to see things from a different viewpoint. You did not come to this earth. You were never born. Your body is not even maintained and sustained. Neither is the world. There is only the absolute reality.
So many of these Sages, to make the public feel better, they say what happened to these people is they took on the karma of their devotees, now that’s a lie. It’s a lie because there’s no karma! There is nothing to take on! It appears like this to the ajnani, who beholds, with his or her eyes, somebody suffering.
Now I don’t want you to go out and laugh at the people in the hospital who are dying, or go to a dying person and say, “You’re not suffering. You’re just making believe.”
That would be nonsense, stupidity. When you realize a person believes that they are suffering, you should never tell them they’re not, because at that stage of life they don’t know what you’re talking about. It is therefore your duty to help. It is your duty to come to the aid of everyone in trouble, as long as you believe you are human, and you are the body, and you go through experiences. So does everybody else that you see. But when you come to the life of a Sage, it’s a completely different ball game. The Sage doesn’t see the same things that you see.
A good example of that is the chalkboard. Imagine the Sage as the chalkboard, and you draw a picture of a human being suffering, dying of cancer, wasting away. Everyone who looks at the chalkboard will relate to the human being drawn on it. They will not relate to the chalkboard. They will relate to the picture, especially if the picture looks real and covers most of the chalkboard. But did anything happen to the chalkboard? Did the chalkboard get hurt? Was the chalkboard born? Did the chalkboard grow old and die from cancer? Now you can erase the picture and the chalkboard is all the same, as it was before.
No change.
Therefore do you see yourself as a dying individual, who gets older, and has problems, and might catch a disease? Or do you see yourself as the substratum, as consciousness, as pure awareness, and a so-called problem is merely an imposition upon the Self?
How do you see it? Ponder this.
How do you see all the situations in the world? Think of a gigantic chalkboard if you will, and now someone is drawing pictures of the whole world on the chalkboard, the whole universe, galaxies, planets, people, places, things. The whole chalkboard is covered with images. Does the chalkboard feel this? Does the chalkboard feel the good images and rejoice with it, and cry over the bad images? The chalkboard remains ever the same. New pictures come, old pictures go.
And so it is with most of us. Your life is painted on the chalkboard, and then when you appear to drop your body, someone appears to draw a new one on the chalkboard, and that’s called reincarnation. And the picture that is drawn on the chalkboard of your new body, goes through those experiences in accordance with karma. That’s part of the grand illusion. But nothing ever happens to the chalkboard.
A Sage is like the chalkboard. His or her body may be appearing to decay, to waste away for one reason or another, but the Sage is not identified with that. To others it may appear that way, but that Sage is absolute reality, all pervading. There is nothing but the Sage. There’s no room for anything else. There’s no place for anything else. The Sage is the Self. The Self is all there is.
You must subsequently awaken. When you hear these words, chew them up, assimilate them. Let them go into your spiritual heart center. Understand what this means.
You are free. You have always been free. You have no bondage to anything. Do not believe what your eyes show you. If I make hospital visitations, if I help the homeless, it doesn’t mean that I’m agreeing with this or accepting it. It is just being done. Again, I do not become arrogant. I do not become cynical. When I see a homeless person I do not say they are not really suffering. Of course they are, because they are the images on the chalkboard.
This is the Maya. This is the illusion. This is the dream, and they’re caught up in that dream. It’s all prearranged, preordained. That’s the experience they’re going through now. But when they wake up, then there’s no such thing as anything being prearranged or
preordained. That all goes out the window with everything else, into the garbage. Then there’s only pure awareness, ultimate oneness, and there’s nothing else.
This is what you have to work on, to clear up your idea of what’s going on. And the easiest way to do this is, no matter what you see, or what you believe, or what feelings come to you, simply say, “To whom do they come?” Find out. To whom do these images come, these chalkboard images? “Who sees them? Who identifies with them? Who becomes angry over them? Who sees disease, poverty, lack, limitation, man’s inhumanity to man? Is this reality?” And then you’ll realize they are chalkboard images, that’s all they are, and you’ll be able to erase them.
You begin to understand that all these images belong to the personal I. Imagine a string, and you tie onto the string everything in the world, and everything in the universe.
It’s all hanging on to the string. If you get rid of the string, there’ll be no place for these things to hang onto, and they’ll have to dissolve. It is the string that gives them their power. The string is your personal I.
When you wake up in the morning, the personal I comes out of your heart center and runs up into your brain. You then identify with the body, and when you identify with the body, the I expands and you become the world, and you say, “I see the sky, I see the moon, I see man’s inhumanity to man, I see love,” and you see all these human things, which you gave birth to.
Can’t you see now, they all came out of you. They came out of your mind. This is what the teaching of no-mind means. When there is no mind, there is no existence. So the idea is to transfer them back to whence they came, and you do that by tracing the I-thought. It’s only a thought. You trace the I back to its source. As far as you’re concerned, the source is the spiritual heart on the right side of the chest. Has nothing to do with chakras. It is absolute reality. It is nirvana, your spiritual heart. The I and the whole world goes back into the heart. Then there is only self-contained absolute reality and nothing else.
Do not make it complicated. Do not be analytical. Simply realize the source of your problems is I. I belongs in the heart center, not in my head. As long as I is in my head, I relate to the world. When I abide in the I, hold on to it, and you do that by inquiring, “For whom does the I come?” or “Who am I?” the I will finally disappear, and only the source, or Brahman, will be left. That’s what you are. That is your real nature. Abide in it, love it, be it and be happy.
I consider what we covered today is of the utmost importance. Therefore if you feel that you did not quite understand what we were talking about or if you have any kind of question pertaining to that feel free to ask. Because what we covered is actually the whole teaching, that’s it. It’s simple, to the point, you do not have to be a scholar, you do not have to go to India to find any kind of a guru. You simply realize that everything is happening within you. Everything that you believe has been programmed and what you are is karmic. When you awaken all of that is gone and you become all pervading. Keep it simple. Forget about all the formulas, the processes, just be the chalkboard.Any questions?
SU: You, you’re the chalkboard?
R: I’m the chalkboard? We’re all the chalkboard? (SU: I mean there is no chalkboard then without the I?) Of course but the example is, we are like the chalkboard. (SU: You erase the I? What do you do with it?) The I goes back into your heart center and becomes the Self.
The I was always the Self. (SU: But what is the Self without the all pervading which would include the chalkboard?) The Self, the chalkboard and the all pervading are synonymous.
They’re all one and you are that. That’s you. (SU: So you won’t have to…) You won’t have to what? (SU: You won’t have to erase the chalkboard?) You erase the chalkboard because the chalkboard is like the stick you use to turn the fire and you throw everything into the fire and burn it up. All your thoughts, your emotions, your past, your karma, everything is burnt up. So the stick that is left over that you turn the fire with is the chalkboard. (SU: You mean you just turn away from it?) Then you throw it in and get rid of that. (SU: I mean, can’t you turn away without trying to destroy it?) No because there has to be someone to turn away. There is no turning away. When you see the truth it all disappears. Just like when you’re dreaming. In your dream you are going through all of this, teachings, you’re going to teachers, you’re learning about chalkboards, but all of a sudden you wake up, what’s left? It’s all gone. You’re the only one that exists. The chalkboards are gone, the classes are gone, the teaching is gone, God is gone, the universe is gone, you’re awake. It’s the same thing. So you use all of these things as examples while you’re asleep. But when you awake they’re not necessary because you’re free, you’re the Self.
SB: In order to fall into the spiritual heart center in the right side of your chest, does the mental attention have to dissolve and that is when you fall into that?
R: You have to abide in the I. When you inquire, “From where does the I come?”
That’s mental attention, you’re putting your attention on the I. But the more you inquire the weaker the attention becomes and the weaker the I becomes. Until the attention and the I both fall into the heart and then there is absolute awareness. (SB: So ultimately it’s like a dissolving of the whole structure of attention, concentration?) You can say that but remember if you think of it as something dissolving, it’s like thinking of a piece of ice that has to dissolve. It may take centuries. It’s better to realize that you have nothing to dissolve. For nothing ever existed to begin with. You are the imperishable Self. Never born, can never die, you are that. Abide in that. That’s what I mean with what I was talking before about making it too analytical. Using too many procedures looking for formulas, drop all those, just be the Self and awaken. Be what you are. And you will find everything takes care of itself. The Self takes care of itself because it is the only Self that is all pervading. So when you drop all of your mind stuff and your formulas and your thinking, the Self automatically takes care of itself and you are that. It’s very simple.
Let’s not make it complicated. Even by thinking about it you make it complicated because thinking about it presupposes that there is a thinker. There is a subject and an object and that brings confusion. Therefore do not allow your mind to get involved in all
the game play of subjects and objects, dissolving things, trying to become something.
Surrender all of that and just be who you are.
Fred (SF): Robert what does self-contained mean? When you say that the Self is self-contained?
R: It means it’s all pervading. The Self is contained, everything is contained within the Self, it is self-contained. There is only the Self and there is nothing else. There is not the Self, and. There is no room for anything except the Self and you are that.
SU: The Self is all possibilities besides being all pervading? (R: You made Bob jump.
You scared him. (laughter) What was the question?) You said the Self is also all possibilities?
R: The Self is not all possibility, the Self is only the Self. It is absolute awareness.
But it has no possibility. Possibility for what? (SU: Anything can occur?) There is no place for it to occur. Think of something that takes up all the space in this room. How can anything occur, there is no space? Where would it occur? There has to be space. So the Self takes up all of space and there is no room for anything else. (SU: So nothing ever happens?) Nothing has ever happened. Nothing is happening. Nothing will ever happen.
Glen (SG): The birds aren’t real? (R: The birds?) Yeah.
R: Well if the birds are real so is war and so is man’s inhumanity to man. And so are the trees and the squirrels and the leaves. They are real as long as you believe you are the body. If you believe you are real then everything you see with your eyes is also real.
Therefore you do not deny the world, you merely work on yourself to the best of your ability to remove the I that is the perceiver. When the perceiver becomes demolished so does the world.
Mary (SM): What was the word? (R: Demolished.) Who demolishes?
R: As long as you believe you are the personal I, then the birds and everything else are real. The birds as well as everything else in the world remember is the image on the blackboard that you drew. But it doesn’t affect the blackboard one iota. You can erase the birds and draw squirrels. Makes no difference to the blackboard.
SU: What happens to love?
R: Nothing. What do you want to happen to it? (SU: Well if there is no love there is nothing?) Excuse me? (SU: If there are no birds there is nothing, how can there be love?) Without birds how can there be any love? (laughter) (SU: Well…?) What you really are Josephine is so divine and so blissful it makes the birds seem like cockroaches. (students laugh) (SU: I don’t like that!) Your true nature can never come up to the birds. The birds are just mental expressions. Of course they’re beautiful enjoy them. But then the birds have to die and then you cry. (SU: You can just love them.) You love them, then they die, then you cry, then you love some more words. (SU: Can you get the love without crying, I don’t know I can’t but can you?) Well when you say, “I can’t,” who are you referring to? (SU: I mean the state I’m in now, I haven’t reached the state where I can just love.) Then get out of that state you are in now and become free. (SU: Just love?) Just love sure. The Self is love. Most of the things you love right now, you love for a reason. You love the birds, but if one sat on your head and started pecking on your head you wouldn’t love the bird any more. You only love the bird when it’s doing what you want, singing. (laughter) But when it goes to the bathroom on your head (laughter) and does other things then where did the love for the bird go? (more laughter) That is how fickle human love is.
SB: And then for thanksgiving we eat the bird. (laughter) That’s the way we give thanks to God, we eat the birds. (R: We eat the bird, right. Well we’re cannibals.) SU: You don’t stop loving your dog because he does something.
R: No but you slap him when he does something you don’t like. (SU: We don’t because he’s not responsible.) You’re not responsible also. Everything is an emanation of your mind. Stop the mind and the world will stop. (SU: You don’t try to stop the mind either.) No don’t try. I’m using semantics. (SU: I know what you’re saying.) Keep the mind quiet, quiescent still. (SU: Will it subside on its own?) Yes, if you don’t bother it. Remember the example I always use, if you have a friend and you do not pay attention to your friend, will your friend stay around? Your friend will leave. And so it is when you do not pay attention to your mind, the mind will subside. But when you’re always thinking about your mind and identifying with your thoughts the mind becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. So do not pay attention to your mind. You do that by inquiring, “To whom do these thoughts come?” And they will come less and less and less and less and less until the mind is absolutely quiet. Then the Self within you will grab the mind and snuffle it and pull it into the heart. And you’ll be free.
Mary (SM): When you have problems Robert and inquire, “To whom do the problems come to?”
they just dissipate.
R: You’re right if you keep practicing that and asking, “To whom do the problems come?” Something happens. You start to see things from a different viewpoint and you rise above the old hurts. The same things that used to hurt you previously disappear, you have risen.
SB: Robert the mind seems to be only resistant to the silence of what is?
R: Well you’re using fancy words. (SB: Well I’m just thinking it seems to be whatever taken as a whole. That’s all it is really, just resisting this surrendering in the silence, that it is the case.) That’s how it appears to be. (SB: Yeah.) But remember your reality that there is no mind to resist. See don’t hold on to the point that you have something to overcome because you’ll always have something to overcome if you do that. When your mind seems to resist, do not feed it any more power by thinking it’s resisting. That alone is a drawback.
But simply inquire, “For whom does it resist?” And don’t think about it just inquire. And you’ll see there is no mind to resist. (SB: So inquiry breaks the identification?) Yes. Remember do not believe there is anything that you have to overcome. For you will spend eternity overcoming. There is nothing that exists that you have to overcome.
Glen (SG): Robert, it seems that all that’s been said is so abstract… (R: Umm.) …and when people before were saying, the birds are beautiful you shouldn’t love them because they will die.
R: No I never said that. I didn’t say you shouldn’t love them because they are going to die. I said the people who just love humanly also weep humanly. For the things they
love ultimately die. So how can that be real? Anything that dies, can that be real? Can that be eternal? Can that be absolute? (SG: No but isn’t it important to appreciate the beauty of the absolute reality expressing through the forms whether they die or not?) As long as you feel you are the body you should enjoy everything, of course. You should not hold back. I’m not trying to tell you as a human being to say the birds do not exist or the world does not exist. I’m speaking from absolute reality terms when I say that. But what I’m saying is, do what you have to do from where you’re coming from. As long as you feel identification with the body then your world is very, very real to you and you have to act accordingly. So instead of trying not to see the birds, feed the birds, feed the homeless, do what has to be done but see the truth within yourself and to the extent you know the truth within yourself, to that extent will everything begin to change outside. (SG: But isn’t that why also the birds become beautiful because we see reality that we see in them is within yourself and we can feel yourself as part of that oneness?) We are many facets. So one of the facets is to see the beauty of the world. But that is not absolute reality. It’s only a facet of consciousness. As you go higher you begin to see the birds have come out of your mind. They are an emanation of your own mind, of your own thoughts. And when you take the I back, the birds, the worms, the corpses, the human beings, all go with the I back into the center and then what you felt about the birds becomes a million times stronger within yourself and that is called bliss.
It’s beyond explanation how you would feel when you draw back into yourself.
You have been giving credence to everything that exists. It came out of your divine nature.
As you draw it back then that divine nature becomes your Self instead of the birds. And again it’s a billion times stronger, the beauty and the joy and the harmony. We take the word bliss for granted. But bliss is a word that cannot even be explained, it can only be experienced. And when you feel your own bliss, by your own I mean, the Self bliss which is omnipresent all pervading. Then all those feelings you gave the bird intensifies a million times within yourself and yourself is the Self of the universe. There is nothing else. But the question you asked comes from human values. From humanhood. So again naturally as long as you identify with your humanhood identify with the birds and the trees and the flowers and the roses and everything else, you have to.
SU: But how can you draw the birds back into yourself and not draw back the corpses?
R: You do. (SU: Yeah but what happens to that, is that stronger too?) It’s all dissolved into bliss. (SU: Why?) Because bliss is the only reality. (SU: You mean that there is the bliss of pain?) There is no pain. Who sees pain, who feels pain? Pain is only felt by your humanhood. If your humanhood is gone there is no pain. That is what we were talking about all night, all afternoon. The Sage feels pain that’s how others see the Sage, but the Sage himself feels nothing. Even when he appears to hurt. The others see the hurt but not the Sage.
SB: Didn’t Ramana say there is pain?
R: No. (SB: No? Nisargadatta said there is no pain…they asked him whether he was in pain when he was dying and he said there is pain, he didn’t say I’m in pain but he did say there is pain.) Well I don’t know what he was referring to, so I can’t talk for him. But pain is part of the human experience.
SQ: Are you saying that if we identify with our limitations that we identify with the emotions that go with the world and the limitations of the world and circumstances of the world. That we experience the thing we experience all because…?
R: Of course, but you don’t have to identify with that. It’s because you identify with the personal I then all those things come by themselves. (SQ: And then when you said identify with your limitless…) Instead see the I dissolve in your heart. Bring it back to the heart center to the source and then you become abominable love. That is what I mean when I say, “Be what you are.”
SU: Is it like an emanation? (R: Like a what?) An emanation?
R: To have an emanation… (SU: I mean if it goes back into the Self and comes out…) It doesn’t come out. It doesn’t go in or come out. When the I goes into the heart then the Self appears as it is. There is no more coming, there is no more going. (SU: And no emanation?) No emanation. Because you have to have a source for an emanation. You’re going back into the source which is reality. There is no emanation, there is nothing left. (SU: Can the source stop emanating?) No it’s doesn’t emanate anything? To emanate there has to be something that emanates as. (SU: Itself that emanates.) It just is. (SU: But if its nature is to…) It has no qualities. It’s beyond the human qualities. Human attributes. Beyond that. (SU: But all that resides in it?) It is that. All the stuff you’re talking about is burnt up in it. Just like a fire.
You throw your fears into the fire and your emotions and your anger and your conceptual thinking and your preconceived ideas, all that goes into the fire and gets burnt up. Then you also throw the idea which we were just talking about, into the fire also. And then the realization that there was no fire. There was nothing to be burnt, it never existed.
SH: Is this what you do just have a big laugh? (R: If you like to laugh?) Cosmic laughter breaks out. (R: Of course, you’re right, you do laugh.) SB: If there is no you Robert who laughs?
R: The laughter laughs, just laughter. Nobody’s laughing, just laugh.
Fred (SF): Robert we are so crystallized in our body minds. Whenever we come here to hear dialogues and to hear you. It’s very tough, it seems that you keep repeating and repeating again and again… (R: I repeat it until I get it right.) …and also, we keep asking you again and again the same questions. I was grown up in the Catholic tradition and I remember when I was a kid they used to give me the catechism… (R: Umm.) …it’s a little booklet with little teachings that you have to cram in your head. (R: Um-hm.) And I went to a Zen center one time and a custom there was to chant, before any session they would chant the heart sutra. In which the main teachings or the whole summary of the teaching was there. (R: Umm.) They used to chant, the whole group, I would say with so much strength and conviction. That I believe that all that would probably leaves it marks on the people who were chanting them. I was going to ask you Robert, maybe if you could dictate us a resume which would serve us like a sutra, a chanting sutra for us, so we can do a little bit of that before we start these meetings. It’s an idea.
R: Well we have chants before we start. (SF: No something like a summary of the main points of the teaching in honor to Robert.) Oh I see what you mean.
SE: The Robert sutra.
(general discussion)
R: It sounds nice but isn’t this more confusion? (SB: It’s more stuff for the mind to fight over.) And then we’re going to believe in the sutra.
Fred (SF): No there is conception, a very strong conception on the body-mind. (R: I know what you mean.) To counteract that there could be something that crams in your head the main points of the teaching Robert.
R: At a certain point you’re right and if you want that by all means we’ll do it. But don’t make it your God. (SF: No of course not.) This is the reason I try to shy away from writing books or even making tapes or doing things like that because people are depending on those things, instead of depending on themselves. (SF: Of course if taken in the right perspective, I mean that is just a chanting material, it could serve its purpose.) If you want that we’ll do it. I’m here to please. (laughter)
SU: I was in a Zen center too with the chanting, it didn’t make any difference. (R: Yeah.) I don’t mean, I don’t object to it, but it didn’t do it. Everything has to happen by itself.
Glen (SG): It hasn’t solved the problems of Catholicism.
SE: Let’s do it in Sanskrit so nobody can understand it.
R: And then we’ll only have the elite people who understand it.
Glen (SG): And then we get a priest and pay them to interpret it for us. (laughter) SM: In Catholicism they say if they get a child before they’re 7 years old and indoctrinate him into Catholicism, then you’ll have him for life. (R: Didn’t they say that about communism?) Yes, yes. (laughter) SY: How about no criticism, why is there a need for criticism? (SM: That’s right.) Why is there a need for criticism? (SM: Well it isn’t criticizing we are just stating a fact. It wasn’t intended that way.) (R: All is well.) R: Yes. We can do that Horat. (SF: Robert it’s just an idea, I mean, you know?) SD: I think that’s something great.
R: It’s not only that but I know what he means. Like Ramana Maharshi had the thirty verses and they would chant that in the temple all morning.
SU: I guess the main thing is, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. That was the name, I did it. (Mentions a chant)
R: Yes. So we’ll let brother Ed make it up. (laughter) He can be in charge of the sutras. (laughter)
(tape ends)
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.