– Transcript 77
R: Good evening.
There are no accidents. Everything is right just the way it is. There are no mistakes.
You are in your right place going through those experiences that are necessary for you.
There is nothing wrong. When you begin to appreciate this you will realize that the universe does not punish you, there is no God that punishes you, there is no world that is against you. Things appear to happen in your lives because it’s necessary for your spiritual unfoldment at this time. What appears to be bad is really a blessing in disguise. What appears to be good may be a hindrance to you. This is why you should never judge yourself. You have to have faith in the powers that be. As you have faith enough you will become happy, just by being yourself.
To the extent that you see everything wrong in your life, to that extent do you perpetuate the condition, and it becomes difficult for you not to react. It becomes most difficult for you to practice self-inquiry, for you are letting the world show you how things are, and you are responding to the world. This is a grave mistake.
The secret is to allow the world to show you what it will, and for you not to react to anything. Have no opinion for or against. Just by doing this alone, you come to the state where you can see and feel that the whole world, the whole universe, is simply an emanation of your own mind.
Forget what you read in the papers, what you watch on TV. Do not take the world too seriously. And above all do not take your life too seriously. There is nothing that wants to hurt you. You can never know yourself as the Self if you keep reacting to your world.
Absolute reality is only revealed to you when you begin to see that the world is an image.
Thoughts become things. They have no reality of their own, but through your thinking process you have given them life, and then you begin to feel the pressure of the life form that you have created.
Compare yourself to no one. You are unique in your own right. Everyone appears on this earth because of karmic conditions, and you can never know that karma does not exist until you stop reacting to it. What’s the use of my telling you that nothing exists, that karma does not exist, that the world does not exist, that the universe does not exist, if you continue to react to conditions. You never know how much time you’ve got left in your body, so-to-speak. You may drop your body tomorrow, next week, next year. And if you do not realize the truth about yourself, you will continue to come back again and again, you will appear to continue to come back again and again. You will be stuck on the wheel, until the time comes when you give up your reaction.
Think how many times today you were disappointed over something, or despondent, or angry, or upset, and you believe that you have the right to be that way. It was because of this or because of that, or because of someone, because of something. Yet you are forgetting that everything is your friend. The mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom, everything is your friend. Especially your so-called enemies. For that’s the motivation for you to see yourself in action. Your so-called enemy is really your best friend. The person you don’t get along with is doing you a favor, for he or she is teaching you not to react.
There are many lessons to learn, but for whom? For you? Who are you? As long as you believe you are a human being and you are part of the earth, then you do have many lessons to learn. But as soon as you give up the idea of your humanhood and start investigating the truth, that you were never born and you never die, until that time you will appear to suffer. You will appear to go through predicaments, through situations, through rebirths, through different experiences.
But I say to you tonight that you do not have to do this. You merely have to recognize that your personal I is the culprit. It is not you. It is your idea of I. It is the I-thought that causes every problem in your life. It is the I-thought that causes you misery, unhappiness, misunderstanding and whatever. You merely have to destroy, annihilate, the I-thought. This is the reason you came back to this planet, so it appears. To find the I and destroy it. This is what you should have been concentrating on all the time. This is your purpose. There is no other purpose.
Everything else doesn’t matter. It appears to matter. In reality it does not matter.
That’s a heavy thing for me to say, for some of you appear to have serious problems in your lives, are saying to yourselves, “How can he say it doesn’t matter? This is about to happen, that’s about to happen. How can it not matter?” If it does matter you will spend the remainder of your life rectifying things that matter. When you’re finished with this, something else will come along. When you finish with that, something else will come along. And it will always matter to you. In other words, you will think it’s very important that you change the condition. There is really no condition to change.
When that happens to you, you should immediately remember that everything is predetermined, everything. There are no mistakes. The worst thing you can do is to feel sorry for yourself. “Why does this happen to me? Why do I have to go through this experience?” It is the experience that makes you turn around and investigate who you are. If everything was going well in your life, 100%, you wouldn’t care about this teaching. You wouldn’t realize that things are going to change sooner or later. Nothing can ever remain the same. It’s only when you have a so-called problem that you begin to think, “Where did this problem come from? Who gave it to me? God? The universe? My fellow man? Who has the problem? I do? What is this I?” And you go right back to the I again.
When you realize the I is only a thought, then you also realize that your problem, so called, whatever it may be, how serious it may look to you, must also be a thought. Can you see that? Because I have the problem. And I is only an idea, a thought. It doesn’t exist for real. If I is only a thought, an idea, and I have the problem, there’s no problem.
This kind of thinking in itself releases you from the clutches of your mind. Things begin to ease up. Even if your situation does not necessarily change right away, you’re no longer trying to change the situation. You still have become grateful for your predicament.
Again this sounds strange. You’re grateful for your predicament because, again, it is your predicament that has caused you to search for the ultimate truth. As you begin to see this you start caring less and less about your predicament.
Now let me make this perfectly clear. It doesn’t mean you’re going to give up anything. It doesn’t mean you’re going to give up your family, or you’re going to give up your job, or you are going to not give a damn for whatever happens in your life. That’s not the attitude I’m talking about. The attitude I’m talking about is simply this. You are beginning to realize that the I that you’ve been calling myself, is not real. All these years since you were born you said, “I feel this and I feel that. I need this and I need that. I am this and I am that.” You’re now beginning to see that I is not real. So naturally again if the I is not real. All of these years of need, of want, of desire, of belief, has been false. It has been like an optical illusion. None of these things are real because my I is not real.
When you come this far you’re going to ask yourself, “Then where did the I come from?” Now you’re getting to the meat of it. In other words, “What is the source of the false I that does not exist? It is a thought. Where did the thought come from? Who thinks that thought?” And you go right back to I again. “I do. I have been thinking since I was born.”
Just think how many times today you said I. “I don’t feel too good. I feel out of sorts. I feel upset. I feel angry. I feel something is wrong.” It is only the I that makes you miserable, nothing else. It is not the experience that you’re going through.
Let me repeat this. The experience, in itself, can never make you miserable, for it comes from an I-thought. It is believing that the I-thought is real that causes the misery, not the situation.
You consequently spend the remainder of your life trying to find out from whence the I comes. You follow the I-thought. You abide in the I. You wake up in the morning and you notice you’re trying to say I again. You catch yourself. “Where was the I before I woke up? How did the I arise?” If you’re doing this correctly, you will feel a sort of pressure on the right side of your chest, and this will give you an inkling to where the I came from, the spiritual heart. As you continue to follow the I back to the spiritual heart, in the process you become happier, and happier, and happier, for you are developing your bliss-consciousness, which you already are, just by following the I. And when the I finally goes back into the heart you rest in an effortless thought free state. You no longer have any effort to make and you are free of thoughts.But this is not final yet. Many people can arrive at this state by themselves. Now the perennial question comes, “Do I require a guru to go further or to awaken to my self-realization?”
The answer is “Yes and no.”
From reading all the books you’ve been reading, you realize there are some people who have never had a spiritual teacher, like Sri Ramana Maharshi, Shankara, a few others here and there. The trouble with reading books like that is that these books build up your ego, especially if you are a westerner. They falsely cause you to believe that you can do it on your own.
To do it on your own is the most difficult task you can ever undertake. And you’re wasting your time. It’s like digging a well to get a glass of water, when you can just turn the tap on. Every time you want a glass of water, you dig a well. That’s how it is to awaken to yourself without a guru. But you have to make sure that the guru you follow is an enlightened Sage, and it’s up to you to find this out for yourself. For only an enlightened Sage can take you out of the effortless thought free stage into pure enlightenment. For that type of sat-guru merely grabs your mind, that is resting on the circumference of your heart center, and pulls your mind in totally. You thus become totally free and liberated.
This is why I always say that this teaching is not for everyone. Many people who come into Advaita Vedanta have very large and enormous ego, a lot of pride. They want everything to happen through words. And yet no Sage has ever said that words alone will cause anything to happen to you. It is the grace of the guru that causes anything to happen to you at all, if anything is going to happen. It is your faith, your humility, your love, that will finally awaken you.
You have to make the initial effort. When you work on yourself diligently, happily, without criticism, without finding fault, you simply work on yourself, and in the process, you help others. You give others support, love, for you look at the whole world as yourself. And you forget about time, you forget about space. You merely do the work required.
When there is enough love, when you have really diligently worked on yourself, you will finally follow the I-thought to the circumference of the heart center, the spiritual heart, and you will be in the effortless thought-free state. Then the grace of the guru will pull the mind completely into the heart and you’ll be free.
The question I have for you is, “What is more important than that?”
Think of the problems you think you have. They will take care of themselves if you have enough faith in the inner power of grace. As I said before, there is nothing in the universe that wants to or can hurt you, if you are diligently working on yourself. That will supersede everything else. It will put a halt on your karma, it will disintegrate your past lives, samskaras. It will cause your mind to slow down, and it will bring you extreme happiness.
But you have to put this first in your life. You have to put it before everything.
This is the reason why not too many people make it. For when I tell them they have to put
this first in their lives, their eyes open wide. But remember I also say to you that you’re not to give up anything. You do not to give up your job, your family. You do not have to move to a cave. You do not have to dress a certain way. You simply put the teaching first in your life. I can assure you that if you do this, you will make fast progress.
But you should not have any motive. You’re not putting it first in your life because you want to become self-realized. If you have a thought like that, you’re keeping yourself back, due to the fact that you’re already self-realized, and when you keep thinking, “I have to become self-realized,” you’re pushing it away, because you’re saying I. The I that you’ve been trying to get rid of all these years, wants to become self-realized, and it can’t. The I has to be totally destroyed, so that there is nobody left who wants to become self-realized.
That’s when things begin to happen by themselves, and that’s when you find yourself in the effortless thought-free state.
This is something to think about. This is something to think about seriously.
I am not interested in attracting hundreds of people, curiosity seekers, giving seminars, or letting people come and look at me. I am only interested in those few people who are tired of living in this world as a body, because they have a feeling that they are absolute reality, they are pure awareness, they are nirvana, they are pure intelligence, and they are ready to go all the way in order to meet the goal. Yet they do not have a goal on their mind. They live spontaneously in faith, and the universe will always appear to take care of them. They take their minds off the body, and the mind becomes weaker and weaker, until they are in the state of no-mind.
When there is no mind, there is no I. When there’s no I, there’s no body. When there’s no body, there’s no world. When there’s no world, there’s no universe. When there’s no universe, there’s no karma, there are no samskaras, there are no past lives, there is no reincarnation, there’s no God. There is only the Self, and you are that.
(Silence)
Fred (SF): Sir, Sri Ramana said something that there is only one consciousness equally distributed everywhere. You, through ignorance give it unequal distribution. No distribution, no everywhere. Something that I wondered was said by another Master that I wonder if it doesn’t amount to the same thing. Another Master said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words will not pass away.” I wonder if his words … what he had in mind when he made that statement. Was it not the pure consciousness that Sri Ramana was referring to. Would you comment on that?
R: It was approximately the same thing. He said, “I am the truth, the way and the life.” And this is what he meant, it will not pass away, I-am. I-am is truth, the way and the life and that is consciousness, that is absolute reality. Those are the words he was referring to. He couldn’t speak this way to the people at that time because the people were in deep ignorance. He therefore used the term, Father. He said, “I-am in the Father and the Father is within me. We are one.” But I-am is not referring to the man, Jesus. I-am is referring to consciousness that he just mentioned. I-am and the Father, meaning I-am and the Father are one. There is no difference. Not only I-am but everyone. I-am refers to omnipresence.When he told his disciples I-am in the Father, he included them and every human being on this earth, every sentient being, the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom. I-am in the Father. Meaning everything is pure consciousness and consciousness is all there is.
Fred (SF): Thank you. Another thing that I’ve been thinking about - that since space and time are creations of the mind, if I’m contemplating a situation in which the element of time in truths then I’m not going to accomplish anything because it’s not real?
R: I’m sorry I lost you, Say that again, I wasn’t thinking. (SF: Sir?) I lost you could repeat your question? (SF: I better, I better…I’m going to let it ride for a while.) Why? (SF: I thought I had to change my mind but I guess I didn’t.) No it was my fault, for some reason I wasn’t listening to you.
Fred (SF): I have another question, I’m told not to have any desires for powers? And I wonder if this not so that because powers are no more or less real in this everyday existence of what we call the world and the danger lies that I might where I might get into a frame of mind where I’d thought they were important or that it made me different or wiser than another person, in other words they are no different than anything else in the so called world?
R: This is true what you’re saying and also remember you said, “I want to obtain powers.” Who is the I? As long as there is an I present, you can never have realization or wake up to yourself. Even with the powers. So siddhis or powers actually keep you back because they build up your ego. They make you believe that you are important and you can do something someone else can’t. Therefore you get caught in that space. It maybe thousands of incarnations before you wake up again.
The safest bet is to go beyond all of these things. It is true on the path of self-inquiry, you do acquire certain things the average human being does not have. You’re sort of able to read minds, you can predict the future, you can do all kinds of things. It comes by itself. But you are not to think of these things and not to allow these things to make you feel egotistical or to make you feel that you know something somebody else doesn’t.
But you are to question yourself, “To whom do these siddhis come? Who has these powers?” And you will see that it is also I. I has become more powerful through these powers and your ego becomes inflated. Therefore inquire, “Who am I? Who has these powers?” And you transcend them and go higher.
(tape break)
I know you’re going to say, “What about Jesus who did healing? And what about if you have some healing powers you can help humanity.” That is a ticklish subject. Tickle me. (laughter) Who said that you have to do something like that for humanity? Who said that you’re supposed to heal anyone? It’s a subject that has a lot of controversy.
But all the great Sages have agreed that everything is preordained. Of course you can say, “my healing the person is also preordained.” That is true to an extent. The safest bet is to become an example of an awakened soul. And as an example, those beings, those people so called who are supposed to be in your presence and be healed will likely be
healed. But you will never have the idea that, “I am a healer and I healed someone.” For there will be no I to make that statement.
As long as there is an I to make that statement that, “I am a healer and I can heal,”
there is a lot of trouble and a lot of chaos and a lot of confusion. The safest bet therefore is to go beyond that. Go right to the heart of the matter. “To whom do these powers come?
Who needs healing? I do?” As long as I believe I need healing then I am still working out of the ego, I am working out of the I. When the I is gone there is no one that needs to be healed and no one who does any healing whatsoever.
If you investigate all of these so called healers that advertise in a Whole Life Times and all the other scandal sheets, they’ve got more problems then the patients because their I is involved in so many people and with so many problems that they pick up the symptoms themselves. And they’re always quarreling with one another. The safest bet is to go beyond all these things and become totally free.
(short silence)
SK: And the memory just becomes this accumulation of - it means nothing? (R: Memory?) It goes beyond memory?
R: Memory is really a conglomeration of all your past thoughts. (S: Yeah.) If there are no thoughts then who has the memory? The memory is no longer necessary because you become spontaneous and there is nothing to remember because there is no past. There never was a past. If you have no I, you have no memory.
(short silence)
Fred (SF): I remember at one point you said I think that someone would go from the no mind state into… - sounded like a higher state which would be the enlightened state. Was I wrong in gathering that there is some difference between the no mind state and the enlightened state?
R: Yes. By working on yourself over the years and over the centuries and following the I-thought. The I-thought will finally leave you, not leave you but lead you rather, toward the spiritual heart, but it will rest in the circumference and only the grace of a guru or a Sage can pull it into the heart making it disappear entirely. (SF: In other words the no mind state can be an intellectual understanding?) Well it’s much much deeper than an intellectual understanding. The no mind state is when you hardly have any thoughts. (SF: It wouldn’t be the end of the ego would it?) It’s not the end, but it’s a very high state.
Glen (SG): It seems scary to go from a state where you have a self where you know who your self is, to a state where there is no self. It’s like dying? It’s suicide?
R: Well to whom does it appear scary? See that’s your mind, your I that says that.
(SG: Right.) It does not want to be destroyed. (SG: Right.) It will come up with all kinds of things like this. It will tell you, “What are you doing to me? Stay the way you are. Don’t change.” It will tell you all kinds of things and will try to scare you, this is true. It will make sort of sometimes devilish beings appear within you to frighten you. They don’t exist. But your mind will create all these illusions. So you have to know to keep on with the work and to go beyond it and to go beyond it. All fear will leave you, all thoughts of demons will leave you. Your past will leave you and you will become free. You have to bear in mind that none of these other things exist.
You have imagined the world. You have dreamt your whole life into being and when you go into the effortless no thought state you are reversing the procedure. So there will be some resistance sometimes. But pay no heed to it. You simply ask yourself, “To whom is this come?” and you carry on. Do not become analytical, do not try to figure out what’s going to happen. In a simple way do the work. Everything will take care of itself.
SH: Why is an enlightened Sage necessary for the mind to be pulled into the heart and to disappear? (R: Due to the fact…) Why can’t it just spontaneously occur?
R: Spontaneously you are already enlightened and there is no one to do anything.
But as you work in the world and with people you find that your past samskaras are very heavy for most people and you can only go so far by yourself. And then you stop and you have a dilemma. So with the help of an enlightened Sage you can go all the way. Where as by yourself you can probably get there someday but it’ll be a long, long time. In other words it’s faster through a Sage than by yourself.
It’s like the example I gave before, if you want to get a glass of water do you have to dig a well all the time. You simply turn on the tap. But an ignorant person will think they have to dig a well every time they want to have some water. So it is with enlightenment. The average person thinks I can do it myself. I can do everything myself and that’s the old ego again telling him that. When you are in the company of a Master, a Satguru, a Jnani, a Sage. When they see that you’re ready and you’ve actually been doing the work all the time and they give you a push just to help you along.
Again it’s just like taking a test in Maths, the teacher sees how studious you’ve been and how you’ve tried so hard to do it by yourself. So the teacher will bypass the rest of the students and go directly to you and give you a helping hand so you can pass, same thing.
SD: So when you said it saves time then you become realized in centuries right? (R: Centuries, sure. Millenniums. Eons.) So how long do we have to have you?
SK: Isn’t time just another illusion?
R: Yes it is. But as long as you’re in the world and you have not found yourself you’re part of the illusion. You therefore you have to work with time to get rid of it. It’s okay to say, “Time is an illusion, my body is an illusion.” But the first truck that knocks you down and you start crying and screaming then there is no illusion as far as you’re concerned. (SK: If you go around trying to find ways to cut out time you’re feeding the illusion.) Sure, you’re not trying to cut out time you are just doing the work that’s necessary. That all great Sages have recommended. Take a short cut and get there faster.
ST: But this being run over by the truck business, it’s going to happen or it’s not going to happen isn’t it, according to what you say? (R: It’s going to happen or it’s not going to happen?) (ST: A human being has nothing to do with what’s going to happen or not?) SH: It’s predetermined that’s what he’s saying.
R: It’s all predetermined but as you go deeper on the path all that karma is wiped away and there’ll be no need to go through that experience. (ST: Are you saying that the only thing that affects the experiences is maybe how you do the practice and go deeper not how alert you are when you’re crossing the street…) Yes, exactly. Everything has to do with your inner work.
Your inner work will take care of everything outside of you. (ST: Is there is no premium on being alert when you cross a crowded street?) It has nothing to do with it.
Glen (SG): Just for the record Robert while we’re talking about it. What we’re talking about is a natural state. Where does man go wrong?
R: Man never went wrong. (SG: Well something went wrong?) For man doesn’t even exist as he appears. (SG: You know what I mean?) I know when you speak of the ultimate like that, “Where did man go wrong?” Man didn’t go wrong because he didn’t exist. It’s a dream. It’s an illusion. Like the water in the mirage. Like the snake in the rope. Like the sky is blue. They’re all optical illusions. And so it is with our appearance. Our appearance appears to be real but it’s not. Consequently man never went wrong. For there was no man to go wrong. (SG: Consequently all the suffering and everything else and the crazy people doesn’t exist either?) Exactly. But because we think it does we have to go through all the self-realization business, and self-inquiry business and do all of these things. If you were able to wake up by yourself none of these practices will be necessary. Yet the ego is so enormous in most people that we think we can do it by ourselves. Very difficult for most people.
Glen (SG): And through meditation and getting in touch with your own guru within ourselves, that’s another illusion or some thing?
R: Getting in touch with your own guru within you, who is that? Who is the guru within you? His name is I. It’s really the I you’re getting in touch with and then you say, “I got in touch with my guru within.” And that’s as far as you go. The I has to go, when the I goes so does the thought of the guru within.
SH: It all seems to be a big put on, a big fake from the word go? There is no separate me, no separate I and yet we assume always that there is? (R: Right.) It’s just a big charade? (R: It’s the big farce.) Farce right. (R: But we believe it. (student laughs) So I have to come here and tell you about it and explain it to you.)
SK: It seems like enlightenment is realized when there is no one to be enlightened. (R: True, but those are words.) Also about life being a dream, it seems when I look back back at my life it’s very easy to see it was dream. Incredibly make believe. It doesn’t seem real at all. (R: Umm, True.)
SY: (laughs) I started thinking about Shakespeare and once said, “All ado about nothing.”
SH: It’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” (R: True.) It’s a big put on.
SY: It seems like working on yourself wouldn’t work because you just strengthen the self?
R: Well you’re practicing self-inquiry and that’s a method to get you further along the path. Otherwise what would you do with yourself? You would worry, you would fear, you would react to the world. When you begin to practice self-inquiry it gives you something to do. So you’re no longer a nuisance in the world. (SY: Well it seems to give the mind something to do.) Yes. (SY: It gives it a toy to keep it out of trouble.) Of course, true. Yet you have to use the toy to find yourself because you refuse to wake up otherwise.
SQ: Children don’t seem to know their I at a very infantile stage? (R: True.) Do you know when they come to become I?
R: When they become sensible. When they hear their parents talking. I love you, I this, I that, and then they also become I.
SD: By that you mean that they start to see themselves as an individual? (R: Right.) SQ: Then they enter the terrible twos. (laughter)
R: True. And here we are. (laughter) It’s all a cosmic joke. (laughter) SH: It sure is. (laughs)
R: But we want to keep on playing.
Do we have any announcements?
Remember to love yourself, to pray to yourself, to worship yourself, to be true to yourself because God dwells in you as you. I love you all, peace. Om shanti.
And we’re all done for tonight.
SD: We’re cooked? (laughter)
R: Not tonight. (laughter)
SH: Warmed up.
R: You’re broiled.
SD: We’re soup.
(laughter as 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.