– Transcript 74
R: Good afternoon. I welcome you with all my heart.
Remember this your home. You think you’ve got a home and you have an address and a telephone number and you have a family, a husband, a wife, children, parents. How long do they last? They go one by one. Where do you really belong? You belong to God, to the Self.
When you begin to understand this thoroughly that your home is in God’s house, you will begin to know that, “I and the Father are one.” There is no separateness between you and the source. But as long as you believe that your father, your mother, your wife, your husband and your children, your employers, are eternal, are number one in your life, you will never understand your divine nature.
I’m not saying that you have to give up your families or to give up your work, this is all mental. It’s in your mind where you make the identification. Why would you identify with something that is transient? That is here today and gone tomorrow?
When I say this is your home I am not referring to Henry’s house. I am referring to the Self. The Self is your home. It has always been so. There never was a time when it was not. To whom do you think you belong? Do you belong to the trees, to the mountains, to the ocean, to a person? That is false identification. You belong to the Self because you are the Self. Just the way you are. You are consciousness just the way you are. You are absolute reality just the way you are.
I know some of you are saying, “But this body is frail. I’ve got all kinds of problems. How can I be the Self just the way I am?”
If you stop to think about it you will be frail and you will identify with the world.
But if you teach yourself not to think but to stay in the moment, in that moment you are divine, in that moment you are ultimate oneness. That moment is Sat-Chit-Ananda, nirvana.
There is only the moment, time and space does not exist. Time and space become condensed in the moment. In that moment you are total freedom.
But when you try to think about it you spoil it. When a thought arises, the moment is forgotten. You therefore have to do anything and everything you can to learn to rest in the moment. The moment is right here, right now. There are no problems and no troubles and no sickness and no lack, no evil in this moment. Isn’t that true? It’s only when you start to think. As soon as you start to think you start thinking about what you need, how to make your life better, how to remove certain things from your life so you can succeed and be happier. This is all folly. You can never do that! When will you learn this!When you remove the things from your life that have been holding you back so you say, new things will pop up. It will never end. There is just no end to it. You’ve got to find the moment exactly where you are now. That divine moment does not exist five minutes from now or a second from now. That divine moment is now! It just is and you are that. There is no thing to search for, there is no one to see, there are no special mantras you have to memorize. Even self-inquiry is only a method to put you in the moment.
Asking, “Who am I? To whom do these thoughts come?” Is not the thing itself. It is a method. A method which does not exist. It exists in the same place the world exists, in your mind. Therefore when you cannot keep silent by yourself self-inquiry appears to be the fastest way to awaken. But it’s a method, it’s a practice. It will never bring you home. It will simply give you an inkling to what lies ahead.
The only time you can get anywhere is by whatever method you use. You have caused the mind to become perfectly still, quiet, quiescent. When there is no mind, nothing is happening. When nothing is happening you no longer suffer. You no longer have anxieties, you no longer believe something is wrong somewhere, you’re no longer judgmental you have become bliss consciousness. In that moment, it will not happen tomorrow.
So many people keep inquiring, “How can I practice self-inquiry? Am I doing it correctly? Am I doing this right? Am I doing that right?” But I say to you, you’re getting lost in the method. Don’t worry whether you’re doing it right or not. Keep your mind on the source, on the Self, I am that I am. That is your home. That is where you belong everything else is temporary.
Again do not think I am speaking of not having relationships with people or getting married or loving your family, on the contrary. In this teaching you do not have to give up anything. You simply have to know the truth about these things. It’s knowing the truth that sets you free. And the only place you have to know is in your mind. Therefore you use your mind to know the truth and the truth is silence. That is the highest truth. By all means do everything in your power to make yourself silent.
Do not worry about your affairs. Do the beautiful trees out there worry about their affairs? Does the mountain worry about it’s affairs? Does the ocean worry about it’s affairs?
Everything happens the way it’s supposed to. The flowers bloom, the trees grow, the mountains exhibit it’s splendor and all is well everywhere. Therefore if you learnt to stay in the moment in silence you too will be taken care of by the power that knows the way and you will be led to your highest good.
Silence is the key.
It makes no difference how terrible you think things are or how wonderful you think things are they’re both impostors. You are not trying to exchange negative conditions to positive conditions. We’re not trying to exchange bad for good. They are two sides of
the same coin. We want to transcend both. There is a place that is beyond bad and good, right and wrong, happy and sadness. That place is where you are now. Awaken to it.
I received an interesting phone call this morning from a fellow in San Diego. He apparently had just been released from state prison. After spending ten years for armed robbery. (I don’t know how these people get my phone number? (students laugh) But anyway he made the story real interesting after he told me about that.) He said while he was in prison they put him in charge of the prison library. He never read books in his life.
He had always been in problems and troubles since he was twelve years old. But for some reason he discovered books on Advaita Vedanta. (What are these prisons coming to?) And he started reading these books. He said it just made a lot of sense to him he doesn’t know why. But he started practicing sitting in the silence. He had plenty of time to do that. He didn’t have anywhere to go. And he did this for years. He didn’t know anything about self-inquiry. But he read he should practice, “Who am I?” He read something by Shankara. And he practiced, “Who am I?”
The way he explained was wonderful. For he said he wasn’t really looking for anything. He was not looking to develop supernatural powers or to make himself into anything. The words he used was, “It made sense just to do it.” And after a couple of years of doing this, he found peace. Peace that he’d never had before. He didn’t know what it was but he felt as if the guards were the prisoners and he was free.
He related to me it was like he went into a monastery and he was put into a cell voluntarily, to be by himself, to be alone. The prison he said was a blessing to him. But he didn’t call me about that, he had a question. He explained his background before he asked the question.
He said, “Robert I have been committing foul deeds most of my life. Many of then I have not been caught. I went to prison for a bank robbery but there are many other robberies that I committed and they have not found me out. Now since I have found myself and I’m a completely different person now, will I have to suffer the consequences of my karma, for all those foul deeds I committed in my ignorance?”
That’s a very profound question. Let me digress a few moments and let’s talk about you.
As human beings we are very imperfect. Many of you have committed foul deeds that no one knows about. It’s interesting to note that in the relative world, even if you think about something evil it’s as if you are committing the act. That is strange but very true in the relative world, which doesn’t exist. Yet in the relative world - that doesn’t exist - if you believe you have committed a crime mentally, the subconscious mind does not know the difference between a thought and an act. Thoughts are things - in the relative world that doesn’t exist.
Let’s imagine if you will, you hate someone with a passion and you want to kill this person. But you know that you will be put in jail or visit a gas chamber. That is the only reason that you refrain from doing so. But in your mind you see yourself killing the person everyday. I say to you that - in the relative world that doesn’t exist - your mind does not know the difference between the act and the thought. It’s the same thing. So, all of us have been through periods where we mentally hate someone or we mentally wish evil upon someone. Some of us have committed some dastardly deeds that no one has ever found out. And now that we are studying Advaita Vedanta and we’re working on ourselves, is the karma removed?
That’s the same question that this fellow asked, go back to the story. (Ed always tells me I digress from the story and never come back, this time I fooled you. I usually do that, I digress and never get back to the point.) So we go back to this fellow who wants to know - just like we want to know - do I have to go through the karmic experiences?
First of all if you were realized, liberated you would never ask that question. For there has to be an I to ask that question. This is how I answered him. The I is the world, the ego. The personal I is a thought, an idea, it doesn’t really exist. But yet to answer the question you asked me means you are coming out of the personal I. If you have transcended the I and become liberated there would be no one left to experience karma. There would be no one to go through any experience for the ego, the I, the mind would be dead.
The ego, the I and the mind are synonymous by the way.
They are the ones who appear to go through the rigamarole we call karma, birth after birth experiences. Cause and effect. It is the I that does all that. If you are coming from the I of course you have to go through your experience. You have to experience the effect of the cause that you put in motion - in the relative world that does not exist. Only when you can awaken do you become free from karma.
Now this doesn’t mean that you can go out and rob another bank, or as far as you people are concerned, it doesn’t mean you can go out and think evil thoughts, or hurt people, for if you are enlightened you would never have any idea of doing those things.
As long as you have an idea that someone is trying to hurt you, someone doesn’t like you, you don’t like someone, you want to hurt someone, as long as you have any ideas like these you are working out of your I-thought and karma must return to you. So what should you do?
You should turn away from the past or from the present, if you don’t like the present. If you’re too attached to someone, if you think you’ve got a problem with your health, if you think you’ve got a problem with finances, if you think you’ve got a problem with anything, mentally turn from that condition. I’m not saying you have to do this physically, the physical will take care of itself. But you have to turn to your source.
You came from your source and you go back to the source. If you can find the source before you drop your body you will be liberated. It’s as simple as that. When you are liberated for whom is there karma? From whom is there problems? For whom is there problems? For whom is there sadness? For whom is there anything? Everything that is disturbing you, everything that appears wrong in your life is because you identify with the I-thought.
Some of you are still afraid that if you become liberated, you will fall out of love with someone or you will not care about your job or you will believe that you don’t care about anything, you will become cynical, this is untrue. You become more of a loving person, compassionate, filled with joy. You give your love to your mate in a free way. Expecting nothing in return. Your love increases a thousand times. Because you’re free. You can love someone without any need, unconditioned and you don’t have to think about it.
Therefore I concluded talking to this gentleman on the phone, turn within. Your past is dead we both know this, you’ve become a new person as you say but the I still lives in you. If the I is still alive in you your samskaras are still active. You may be inclined to rob a bank again. You have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow when you allow the personal I to exist. Therefore begin to understand that this I, this ego, this mind is only a thought, an idea. It has no reality.
You must inquire within yourself, “To whom does the mind come? To whom does the I come? To whom does the ego come?” When thoughts about your past come up.
When you think about your ten years in prison. When you think about the evil acts you’ve committed. Immediately do anything you can to halt those thoughts. You can ask, “To whom do these thoughts come?” Or you can just remain perfectly silent and become the witness to the thoughts, not reacting to them. Not trying to stop them at all. If you do not react to your thoughts they will burn themselves out. They only become more powerful when you react to them.
As an example if you’re trying to fight an illness, if you react to your illness by imagining and believing in your mind that it doesn’t exist, that you’re having a terrible time. Why did this happen to me? I can’t take it any longer. This is what’s keeping you back not the illness. But as your illness continues upon you, if you would simply observe it without thinking, become the witness to it without trying to do anything else, or inquiring, “To whom does it come?” In other words do what you have to do to stop the thought process. You use the same method with any other problem or with any other goodness that comes to you.
Remember all the human goodness is also an illusion. So if you have a good life, it is only temporary. If you do not find yourself you will have to come back to this earth again and again and again and have other experiences. You may come back again when the earth is in the dark ages once more and they’re having the Spanish inquisition and you’re hanging by your thumbs while your eyes are being gorged out. And then you may come back in a different life when you are a multimillionaire and you live in a castle and you’re in control of thousands of people.
They are two sides of the same coin. Therefore wake up. Do not try to exchange bad for good. Do not believe that if I become a multimillionaire I’ll be happy or if I get rid of my disease I’ll be happier or if I live in a better home I’ll be happier or if I have a new mate I’ll be happier or if I have no mate I’ll be happier, or if I have this I’ll be happier. It’s all illusion.Happiness is your real nature. Happiness is what you are. You are that now, if you live in the moment. In that moment you are absolute reality. In that moment you are pure awareness. You are Brahman in that moment. You are Sat-Chit-Ananda, ultimate oneness, emptiness. That is your true nature. Identify with that. Focus on that. Become that and you will be ever free.
(silence)
Do ask any questions at this time.
Nate (SC): I’d like to ask a couple questions. (R: A couple only?) Yeah. They’re basic and I know we’ve been through it, all of us many times. Is there a spirit?
R: Is there a soul? Is there a body? Is there a god? As long as you believe that you are the body then there is a spirit. (SC: This is what we’ve been taught?) So what do you want me to do? (laughter)
Nate (SC): Take it away. Okay, one other one, that’s been bothering me, you say we don’t do anything. I’m lifting my arm, I’m forcing my arm to go up and letting it come down. Am I not doing this?
R: Of course you are. (SC: So where does the differentiation come in then? Between the doing and the non doing?) You believe you are the body. As long as you are the body then everything else is real for you. (SC: And that’s what I’m talking about Robert that…) But you are not the body in reality. (SC: But this actual movement even if I’m not the body…) As I explained to you once before Nate, if you’re having a dream and in that dream you are telling me the same thing that you are telling me now. And you lift your arm and you lift your leg and you lift your head and you do all kinds of things, you say, “See I’m doing this and I’m doing that,” and you pinch me and you say, “See you can feel it too.” But it’s a dream pinch, it’s a dream body, it’s all part of the dream. When you awaken it’s all gone.
And so it is with this world. It appears very real because you’re living the mortal dream. Some of us are more attached than others. Some of us are so attached to this world that nothing can ever make them understand that they are not the world. This is most of the world. That there are classes like this and there are people who are beginning to understand that they are not the body, they are not the mind phenomena and the whole universe only exists because the mind exists. Everything is an emanation of the mind. When the mind begins to disintegrate the world begins to look less ferocious and fear leaves you until you awaken.
So everything you’re telling me Nate is the truth as long as you believe you are the body. Change your identification. You of all people should practice harder and you should ask yourself, “To whom does this image come to? Who believes they are the body? What is this strong feeling? “I am the doer,” come from in me?” Ask yourself, ask yourself and something will begin to give, it has to. But of course if you do not do anything like that and you keep identifying with the world by reacting to it very strongly day after day, who is to blame?
I can lead you to the gold mine but you have to do your own digging. It’s up to you. This is why I always say, “Do not believe a word I say. Do not take my word for it.
Find out for yourself.” It’s just as if I took you by the hand and took you to a gold mine and I said, “This is the gold mine dig.” But you said, “Robert I don’t see any gold. (laughter) I only see dirt, rocks. Why should I dig?” If you want the gold Nate you’ve got to dig.
But you start digging and as soon as I go away you stop digging and you keep complaining, “There is no gold, there is no gold,” (students laugh) and you tell everybody, “Robert doesn’t know what he’s talking about there is no gold.” (laughter) You never made enough effort. You never went out of your way to do it. You wanted it to be handed to you. You want me to take you to the gold mine and get somebody else to do the digging for you. If they do they’ll keep the gold. It’s the same with spiritual life. Do not believe what I tell you. Practice what I say and find out what happens.
Glen (SG): Back to the boy in prison Robert, that’s a fascinating story. He was kind of in his own gold mine and he seemed to come up with a golden nugget. But my question is, he asked you a profound question about his crimes prior to the crimes he got caught for. Do you think he was alluding to perhaps what couldn’t be tried for these other crimes because sometimes it can get retried for other crimes was his question specifically about the karma or about the fear that he could’ve…
R: Well the karma included all of those things. (SG: Yeah.) He was afraid that the karma from the past may catch up with him and he wanted to know if it was so. (SG: How did he feel that that was a threat to him in prison?) Well he didn’t feel it was a threat to him, now he was becoming a spiritual person. And it was like he had a born again experience.
(SG: Also like down the line in the next life time or something like that?) Well in this lifetime he wanted to know whether anything can catch up to him. (SG: What was your answer again, I…) My answer was, as long as he believes he is the body, he is the I who asked the question, yes. (SG: Oh I get you, now, yeah.) But when the I is completely eliminated there is no one left to have any experience. And there is no karma.
Jorge (SR): Robert this may be again just totally academic but I keep wondering what is the source of the illusion, where would the illusion arise from that we would have to ever realize that there is no illusion. I know it doesn’t matter but…
R: It matters. (Henry knows what I’m going to say.) It never happened. There is no source in reality for which anything comes. Consciousness is so far out as far as we humans are concerned we don’t have an inkling to what it really is. The finite can never comprehend the infinite. You can never know by answering a question that you ask, “What is this source?” And “Why does the source do this and do that?” It doesn’t. Again that sounds like a cop out, but it’s not. There is no source. You are pure consciousness and pure consciousness is beyond description, there are no words for it, you can…
(break in tape, as tape starts abruptly with students question.) SR: …was that this state?R: No because the person who reflects has been destroyed. There is no one to reflect. There is no personal I there is no mind and there is no ego. Therefore there is no one to do these things. (SR: It’s like dropping the conscious mind, and it’s immaterial?) It’s like dropping a piece of ice in the ocean, it becomes the ocean. But it has nothing to say. It has lost its identity, but now it identifies with the whole ocean. It is no longer isolated to a piece of ice. In the same way when you awaken you become all pervading, omnipresent.
You’re no longer confined to a body. There is one body that is the universal body. There is no longer my body and your body and you become totally free. (SR: I do in my sleep.) Well that’s good because I don’t. (laughter) (SR: It’s clearer now.) See I’m using human words.
Jorge (SR): No it’s clear it’s just that when that happens then this question just arose and then it disappears.
R: If it’s clear you’ve got a problem. (SR: Yeah, the point is there won’t be that question, or that state, it won’t be arising…) When that state comes it is a state so incomprehensible that you will just be in total awe and then the total awe will disappear and you will just be. You will not be this and you will not be that. You will just be. And nothing comes after be. If you think of something that comes after be it’s not that. And you are that now, but you refuse to acknowledge it.
SH: Why do we refuse to acknowledge it?
R: Because you want me to come here and teach you things. (SH: Well please don’t come then.) (laughter) You want to go through all these experiences. (SH: Who wants to.) The one you think is you. The one you think is Henry. (SH: Yeah.) But there is no Henry so nobody wants to. (SH: That’s pretty slack.)
Jorge (SR): Robert where does this philosophy, East Indian philosophy come from that said that consciousness became bored and therefore divided into a sort of a… (R: Um.) …“hide and go seek game.” Is that just to amuse us. That’s what we can achieve on while we’re…
R: Yes, that’s from the Upanishads. Yes, this was written for mortals so you can see that there is something that happened and something that’s keeping to happen that is keeping on happening. If they didn’t write about this there would be no Upanishads.
There would be empty pages. It’s just like the story of Adam and Eve. When you’re asked how did existence begin, the priests, the rabbis, the ministers tell you about Adam and Eve. That sounds like a good explanation. But of course it never happened. (SR: I mean it’s a good one.) It’s a story, it’s a fairy tale. (SR: What’s the best story that you can tell us that isn’t true that maybe we’ll be able to sort of think about?) Dah. (students laugh) SB: That was profound Robert. (Students laugh) Maya baba in his books said that God wanted to limit himself to the most limited form in creation. To search for himself through all the forms of his creation and as the forms went from stone to plant, to animals, to birds, to fish, to animal, to human. As the form got less and less limited, you know, the stone couldn’t move around, consciousness was like sleeping or deep sleep and then it went on to the insects and animals, to movement it was less and less limited and it could express it’s consciousness more and more and it got intuition and intellect and so God limiting itself to the infinite degree only to discover his own
infinite love, infinite possibility, infinite happiness as he realized who he was. That’s what it means from what Maya Baba said…
R: Well if God wants to do all that more power to him. (laughter) (SB: It’s like God loving himself, discovering himself as infinite happiness or infinite love.) Good for God. (laughter) (SB: God is consciousness. It seems that way. (laughter) I thought it was really poetic and romantic.) It is, it’s nice. Sure. (SB: Until the stone realized he’s a man and then the man realized he’s not a man but he was God all along and at that point he was infinite happiness.) That’s a nice story but I’d rather be superman. (laughter) (SB: I thought you were superman.) No. (SB: I thought you were mighty mouse.) Mighty mouse, that’s good.
Nate (SC): Robert how do we discern the difference between the awakened dream and the sleeping dream?
R: When you are sleeping. You’re asleep and everything is quiet, there is no noise, there is no one moving. When you get up, you know you’ve rested and now you’re awake.
When you dream you know you dreamt. So the I is aware of those three states of consciousness. The I is aware of dreaming sleeping and waking. Now you have to ask yourself, “Now where did that I come from?” “What is the source of the I that knows I slept, that knows I dreamt and now knows that I am awake? Where does that I come from?”
When you discover where the I came from then you will transcend the waking sleeping and dreaming state and you will be free.
SK: Aren’t we all destined to wake up no matter what we come to or kind of flop through a few more minor incidences in existence?
R: I like to use the term, “We’re all hell bound for heaven.” Of course, this life is a false identity. So you have to wake up sometime. But by being in satsang you have made the choice to awaken now. That’s the freedom you’ve got, the only freedom. To turn within and not to react to conditions of any kind. By being at satsang you affirm that truth. So satsang is usually for those people who are ready to awaken in this life. But ultimately everybody will awaken.
SY: Could you say something about the difference between understanding something and being that understanding? Nisargadatta would keep saying if you say you’ve understood, you haven’t understood.
R: True. Understanding something is when I am talking or you read a book and intellectually it makes a lot of sense to you. But even if it makes sense intellectually to you, you have not experienced that. If you have not experienced that, it makes no difference how long you’ve been reading books or how long you’ve been discussing truth, or how many classes you’ve gone to or how many teachers you’ve had. You have to be able to do something yourself to have an experience of the reality. Therefore there comes a time in our lives when we stop reading books. We stop running around to teacher to teacher to teacher. We stop going and identifying with certain places in the world and running all over the world. We become still, we go within ourselves a lot. We have a lot of time to ourselves. We question ourselves, we observe ourselves, we look at ourselves and then the Guru within you will tell you what to do, how to do it and where to go and everything will go well with you.
(Robert plays song on tape then Kerema sings one of her songs) Kerema: This is called “Divine Essence.’
(Kerema sings her song)
R: That’s beautiful. Add it to the Jnana Marga songbook.
Kerema: Okay. (laughs)
SB: Now we need Sam to play the chorus for us. We need the chorus for this, it’s beautiful.
SE: And no self records is going to come out with the record for Mary and Kerema I have an announcement, it is announcement time?
R: Sure.
SE: We have four of the Jnani…
(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.