– Transcript 78
4th July, 1991
R: Good afternoon. I welcome you with all my heart. It’s good to see most of you again.
We have some new faces here today. If you’re coming here to hear a great lecture, forget it. If you’re coming to hear a sermon, you’re in the wrong place. If you’re coming to compare the speaker to other speakers, well, I won’t say what I think of that. (laughter) SH: Go ahead. (laughter)
R: You have a reason for coming here. That’s the first mistake you made. There should be no reason. There should be no attitude. There should be no need. You’re coming here because… that’s it. There is no thing I can give you that you don’t already have. There is really nothing I can do for you unless you realize who you are. Who are you? The wisest answer would be, “I don’t know.” For if you think you know who you are, you’re on the wrong track. A self-realized person has no idea who they are, because the “are” and the “they” have been removed. There is no I to know anything. If you say “I am this,” and “I am that,” you’re not really this or that. For the I has made that statement. When the I is gone, there is no one left to do anything or to be anything.
So again, think, “Why did I come here today? To get out of the sun? To leave my screaming family? I saw all the movies in town? I’ve nothing better to do? Somebody told me to come?” They’re all the wrong reasons. There is no reason whatsoever.
Everything should be spontaneous. Do not plan anything in your life. When you do not plan anything, your life will go smoother. Sounds strange, but true. There is a power that knows the way. When you get your little ego out of the way, this great power will take over and lead you into itself.
What is this power? What is the undifferentiated power that is the substratum of all existence? Some people call it Brahman. What is Brahman? There are no words to describe, for any word you use spoils it. Some people say, “Brahman is the unmanifested energy that runs the universe.” Yet when you voice it you don’t know it. For as I said, the finite can never know the infinite.
So there is Brahman. When Brahman gets tired of being Brahman, it begins to play with itself and becomes personified. That personification is called God. God is what we call the first principle, the controlling energy of the universe. When God has had fun and created everything, he becomes consciousness, and everything is dissolved into itself.
So there’s Brahman, that becomes God. God becomes consciousness. Consciousness becomes Brahman again, becomes God again, becomes Consciousness. What a waste of time. Why would Brahman want to do all this? Why would Brahman want to play with himself, or itself, or herself. Does Brahman become tired? Well, we need an explanation of creation. So that’s as good as any. It’s better than Adam and Eve.
Those of you who are taking notes, turn the page, keep it blank. The blankness is the reality. Everything else is really a waste of time. How many teachers have you seen in your life? How many notes have you taken? How many tapes have you purchased? How many books have you read? And you’re still here. Sometimes it’s better if you’d never read a book in your life, if you’d never heard a tape, or even seen a teacher.
You are what you’ve been looking for. The answer’s are within yourself. There is nothing in the external world, for the external world is an emanation of your own mind, your own thinking and your own imagination. You created this world. Are you proud of yourself? Look what you’ve done. You’ve caused man’s inhumanity to man, wars, pestilence, tornadoes. Why would you want to do that? Shame on you. (laughter) Repent.
(laughter)
Anyway, there’s something interesting I must be able to say. There’s a great statement that I’m going to make.(Pause) I’m going to think of it first.(laughter) Okay, Consciousness is the only power, and there is no power in effect. Think about that. Consciousness is the only power, and there is no power in effect. In other words, effect is the world and everything in it. All of your problems, so called, all of your needs, all of your wants, all of your desires, have no cause. They’re all effects. There is no power in the effect, because effect is like a dream. It doesn’t exist for real.
Think of all the things that have been disturbing you, illness, lack, limitation, they do not exist. Those are effects, and there is no power in effect. The same is true of the good things in your life, so-to-speak, all of your so called material happiness, family, friends, job, income, car. All effect. It has no cause. In other words, nothing created it. There is no thing to create anything.
Consciousness is the only power. And consciousness is self-contained absolute reality. You have been identifying with the world of effect. This is why things appear as they do in your life. You’re trying to exchange negative to positive, bad for good, but they’re two sides of the same coin, and they both have to go.
Do not take the universe seriously. Nothing is ever as it appears. Nothing wants to hurt you. Nothing can hurt you when you realize your infinite nature. You are not your measly body, that was born, and goes through experiences, and then appears to dissolve or die. That is not you. You have nothing to do with this world. This world does not exist the way it appears. But as long as you believe you are the doer, that you are the body-mind phenomena, the world is very real for you, as most of you know.
Where did this world come from? I just told you. It didn’t come from anywhere.
Why do you keep asking the same question? Where does a dream come from? The dream appears very real, doesn’t it? Most of you had a dream or two last night that you can still remember. How did the dream begin? Did it begin with Brahman creating the universe?
Did it begin with God and Adam and Eve? The dream just began, in the middle, and it ended when you awoke, (is there such a word as awoke? Awaken, awoke, awaken, they’re both lies,) and you found yourself without the dream. Your body, your mind, your self, was as it always was. In the dream you may have dreamt that you got hit by a car, you had to have your legs amputated, and so forth. Yet when you awake, it’s not like that at all.
Think of the things that have happened to you in your life now. You appear to be getting older and older. Things come into your life, as it appears. You try to exchange wrong for right, good for bad. Yet you refuse to acknowledge that this too is a dream. You want to continue playing the game. You want to play hide and seek, by believing there is a God somewhere, and if you find this God all your problems will be over. So you keep searching.
You can never find your reality by searching. Your reality is where it’s always been, right where you are this moment. It is you. There is not reality and you. You are not in the body of God. God is not in you. For there is no you. There is no body and there is no God. You are That, pure awareness, just the way you are.
There is really no thing you have to do. You simply have to wake up. Why will you not awaken now? Even while I am talking to you, many of you are thinking, thinking, thinking. Can’t you see by now? This is what is holding you back from your freedom, from your bliss, from your joy. Your thoughts. Where did your thoughts come from? They really didn’t come from anywhere, for they do not even exist.
Yet, unfortunately, most of us believe that thoughts exist, for we are bombarded by them day and night. So Sages have to come along and invent methods, means, in order to obliterate the thoughts. Meditation was invented for that purpose. Self-inquiry, all of these yogic exercises, pranayama, mantras, prayer. They’re really to stop your thoughts from proceeding, to keep your mind from thinking. All of these procedures are to make your mind quiescent, quiet, still. If you were able to do this without the methods, then you would be realized. You would be your Self. You would be liberated. But you refuse to do this. You want a teacher to give you methods to wake you up. But I say to you, “Wake up now! Awake!” The methods will keep you back because you get stuck with the methods.
But it makes no difference what I say. You are still going to identify with the world, with conditions, with your body, with your mind. We therefore have to think of a way, the quickest way, for you to awaken. And of all the methods I know, self-inquiry is the fastest, if you are mature enough to be able to handle it. You begin to understand that the I is only a thought, an idea, called the I-thought. And it is the I-thought that predominates your existence. True?
How many times have you said I today? “I am going to hear Robert. I am going to eat breakfast. I am going to take a nap. I don’t think I feel too good. I feel great. I need this.
I need that. The first pronoun, I, dominates your entire existence. Yet it has been known by Sages, if you were only able to annihilate the I, destroy it, kill it, you’d be free. For it is the I that is attached to all of your thoughts. Therefore you begin to follow the I to it’s source.I have to tell you in truth, in reality, there is no I and there is no source, but you will not believe me. You want to play with I. You therefore follow the I to the source, and when the I has been dissolved into the source, you become free. You do this of course by inquiring, “To whom do these thoughts come?” or whatever is disturbing you. You inquire, “To whom do they come? Who’s experiencing this? Who’s going through this? Who thinks they are human? Who feels depressed? Who feels discouraged? Who feels there is a difference between birth and death? I do.”
Can’t you see now that if you get rid of the I, all those feelings will also go. So you ask, “Who am I? Where did this I come from?” You never answer that question. When thoughts come to you, you inquire, “To whom do they come? To me? I think these thoughts? Who am I?” You do not answer.
As you continue to do this process you find that your mind is becoming quieter and quieter. The confusion stops. You begin to feel happier and happier. You are no longer reacting to person, place or thing. You become spontaneous in everything you do. You live in the now.
But you’re not doing that. It’s doing you. In other words you have not decided, “I am going to be spontaneous from now on. I’m going to live in the now.” As you are aware, how many times have you tried that without avail? You can’t make up your mind that you’re going to be spiritual, that you’re going to know that you are consciousness, that you are absolute reality. How many times have you tried to do that, and the first thing that comes into your life, you become upset? You react. Something bothers you. Or something good comes into your life and you become elated. You react in a positive way. They’re both impostors. Remember you’re not trying to change bad for good. You want to transcend everything, and become absolutely free.
(short silence)
See how you’re thinking? Your mind won’t stay still, will it? Whose mind is it that will not stay still? Do you really have a mind? Are you the mind? Who told you this?
There is no mind, there is no body. There are no thoughts. Accept this, if you want to. All it can do for you is liberate you.
We listen to the birds, we see the beautiful trees. Who sees? Who listens? Why, I do. You’re caught in the trap again. For many of you believe, if I behold the beauty of the world, that’s good. It’s better than beholding death, I suppose. But the world is all an illusion. It is not real. The so called beauty is here today and gone tomorrow. Change is the only permanent thing of the relative world. Everything changes continuously.
Therefore, as you go through the vicissitudes of life, and you get rid of your dogmatic thinking, you open your heart. You begin to feel something different. You begin to loosen up. The first thing to understand is that everything that has transpired in your life has been necessary. No matter how it looks, no matter what has happened, everything has been necessary. The second thing to understand is, everything has been preordained. In other words, everything was supposed to happen the way it happened. There were no
mistakes. The third thing to understand is that the first two things are all a pack of lies, for these things do not even exist in Reality.
Everything is preordained, as long as you believe you are the body. Everything is karmic, as long as you identify with the world and believe you are the doer. But as soon as you start to turn within, as soon as you begin to listen to the still small voice within you, as soon as you start practicing self-inquiry, your life begins to change drastically. You become happy. You no longer search for happiness, for you are beginning to realize you cannot find it externally.
You may appear to find it. In other words, you may get married and you believe, “This is great, I found what I’ve always wanted.” Then you may get divorced and you’ll say, “This is great, I finally got rid of that person.” You win the lottery and you say, “This is great, I’m rich.” The IRS comes down on you, and you wind up in San Quentin, and you say, “This is no good.”
All of these different things take place in your life. The world is not your friend.
The world is a phenomena that belongs to a dream. You’ve got to be mature enough to ask the question, “To whom does this world belong? Who lives in the world? Where did the world come from?” and your answer to all the questions begins with I. “I live in the world.
I partake in the world. I see the world.” And we’re back to I again. You finally get the idea that the whole world is hanging on I. The I has to be transcended.
You begin early in the morning, when you first wake up. Before you become aware of I, you notice that you are in a state of peace, of joy, even if for only a few seconds.
I was not present. You are not aware of the world. Catch yourself tomorrow morning. It only happens in a flash, in a few seconds.
Yet all of a sudden the world becomes real for you. I, has awakened. Where did it come from? If you investigate you will see that your spiritual heart center is on the right side of your chest, and the I has come out of your chest, out of your spiritual heart, out of the source, becoming more powerful as it emerges and goes into your brain. Then you become aware of your body and you say, “I am alive.”
Once you become aware of your body and your mind, you become aware of the world, and then the universe. Therefore the wise person catches the I before it goes any further. In other words as the I emerges from your chest, you abide in the I. To the extent that you can abide in the I, or focus on the I, something phenomenal will begin to happen.
The I will reverse it’s course and begin to return to it’s source.
I will repeat this again. To the average person the I begins to become stronger and stronger when you wake up in the morning. It emerges from your spiritual center and heads up your spine to your brain, where you become cognizant of the world. But for the spiritual aspirant who practices self-inquiry, you begin to watch the I doing this. You abide in the I. As you begin to abide in the I, it will reverse it’s course and head back to the center. When it heads back to the center, it will rest on the circumference of the center. That is as far as you can go by yourself. You will be in an effortless thought-free state. You will be in the void, as it tells you in Buddhism.
Yet most Buddhists think the void is self-realization. That’s a mistake. The void is when your I is resting on the circumference of your heart center. When that happens you’ve come a long way. You are a mature disciple. Yet the Self has to pull the I inside the heart. Then you become liberated. This is very rarely done by the self or by yourself. I’m speaking of the small self. Only in a very few, will the I go directly into the heart center and be extinguished.
That is why Sages are necessary. That is why satsang is necessary. For the Sage, who may be a 1000 miles away from you, as long as you have a direct line to the Sage mentally, the Sage is omnipresent, all pervading. Therefore the Sage, and the Self, and the guru and God are one… (tape break) …So that even if you are away from the proximity of the Sage, if you have a close association with that particular Sage, or that Sage is your guru, the Self, which is really the Sage, will pull the I into the heart, and you will be liberated. That’s how it appears to work. The rest is up to you.
(long silence)
I’m sure you have some interesting questions to ask?
SD: Robert you told the legend of Brahman, tiring of itself and creating consciousness, etc., and then explained that was more or less a fable like Adam and Eve but that still leaves the question of why there is even an appearance of an illusion.
R: Yes, why? There really is no appearance. There appears to appear an appearance. But no appearance exists. I always go back to the hypnosis, the mesmerism. The water in the mirage appears real but upon investigation it’s not water at all, it’s sand. The sky appears blue, but if you investigate there is no sky and there is no blue and so forth.
These things do not exist. That is the phenomena. They appear to exist. Creation appears to exist. Go back to the dream. Why does a dream come? It comes out of your mind, it comes out of your imagination. It’s external to you that’s how it appears. A dream appears to be external to you. The whole universe is involved. But where does it come from? Out of your own mind. So all the rest, creation, God, people, places and things come out of the mind. They don’t really exist. (SD: I mean if we are all dreaming is it the same dream?) Everybody is dreaming the mortal dream. It’s just like when you have a dream, we’re all in your dream. Is it the same dream? All of us in this room are in your dream. When you have a dream tonight, you are dreaming this dream and so is everyone else. But it appears as if everyone is having an individual dream. And yet there is only one dream. And when you awaken it will stop. So do not take dreams seriously and do not take the world seriously.
Observe, be the witness, watch, do not react and be happy.
SL: Can a fully realized person go backwards and perform siddhis and miracles?
R: No. (SL: They can’t or do they not choose to?) They have nothing to do with siddhis. (SL: You get a choice?) No. They do not even think of those things. Siddhis, miracles are a part of the I. If the I has been destroyed, the mind has been destroyed. Therefore
there is no one to think of these things or to perform them. To perform miracles there has to be an I present.
SL: But for instance you can speak to us even though…where is the futility in that?
R: There is no futility at all. There is just somebody… (SL: You’re trying to describe your experience for reality.) There is someone here that appears to be speaking to you. Yet nothing is really being said. It’s all silence. (SL: Could there be someone here who appears to perform miracles?) There is nobody there to perform miracles. But the miracle performer would usually be a yogi of some kind. And the miracles appear to be performed. But in reality there is no miracles to be performed. But when you get to a realized Sage there is nothing in that Sage that would even have the desire to perform a miracle.
SL: If the Sage has the ultimate compassion for someone in this dream who appears to suffer. Would the Sage not then…
R: I didn’t hear what you’re saying. The Sage does not have the ultimate compassion. The Sage is the ultimate compassion. There is a difference. The Sage is the ultimate compassion without being the ultimate compassion. In other words the Sage is not aware that he or she is the ultimate compassion. That is their nature, that is what they are. Only the disciple, the devotee sees it as the Sage having the ultimate compassion. But the Sage does not see it that way at all. Because again there has to be someone left, an “I”, to have ultimate compassion. Yet ultimate compassion is the make up of the Sage. It’s a paradox.
In other words, I’ll explain a little more because I know it’s difficult to understand.
A person is dying of cancer. They go to a Sage, and they say, “Please heal me, I’m dying I know you can.” The Sage smiles and says nothing. The Sage does not get involved whatsoever. But because of the proximity of the devotee to the Sage in the unconscious level, the devotee may be healed from coming in contact with the Sage. But the Sage will deny that he or she has ever done anything because there is no one to do it.
SH: Who denies then?
SL: Did Jesus ever claim to perform healings or did they just happen?
R: There are so many works written about Jesus, who knows what the real truth is? But do not be concerned about that. Be concerned rather in finding out who you are and what you are. And then everything will be clear to you. But various Saints, various Sages had different missions in life and did different things. But again, in the real Sage there is no doer. There is no one left to do anything. But to the people it appears to be coming through the Sage.
SH: Does he deny that he has created that? Well he can either affirm or deny it? He can either confirm or deny. (R: Exactly he doesn’t affirm or deny. He just remains silent.) (Silence)
Anyone have anything else to say?
SB: Robert I would just like to clarify this. What is a true guru-devotee relationship? Because I see some teachers who have spectacular teachings but they create a dependency relationship and their devotees have to give them 30% to 40% of their income and they have to leave their houses to them and if they ever sell anything they have to give them three quarter of everything …
and I mean like one side of it is very complicated because one side of the teaching is absolutely great, on the other side, it looks like a total con. What is a true guru-devotee relationship. Is it a dependency relationship or is it a…free.
R: I do not make any comments on other teachers, but truth teachings since the beginning of time have always been free. There should be no charge and no obligation for anybody to come to a true guru or a teaching. But the real guru is within yourself. God, Guru and Self are one. Therefore when you have a relationship with a guru you have a relationship with the Self. There is no difference. And that particular guru is always with you, all pervading, never leaves you. But you are not attached to the physical form of the guru. The guru gives you the freedom to find your Self and to do whatever you want with your life. There is no attachments to rules and regulations. There is total freedom. It’s up to the devotee what kind of a relationship they have with the guru. But the true sat-guru is quiet and demands nothing.
SD: But didn’t you say that when you met Maharshi that just instinctively you asked what you could do for him. Isn’t that the proper attitude to the guru that you would want of your own volition?
R: Well that should be obvious. Actually if you take on a guru, the guru is responsible for your enlightenment and you’re responsible for the guru’s well being. It goes hand in hand. But he’d stay in the silence, there is no big thing made out of it. Everything is done in the silence. ( SB: The guru doesn’t demand it in order to be taking on a student.) Nope.
(SB: Yeah, that’s how they teach us if, all your obligations if they don’t get all this, they don’t even want to talk to you in any way.) What can I say? ( SB: So it should be a freewill offering out of love out of devotion that springs spontaneously…) Always. (SB: …from love?) Always. (SB: But not a demand?) Right.
Okay we have some announcements, or do you have the Jnani to read?
Mary (SM): Oh yes I have that.
(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.